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PHOENIX (AP) — Photos taken in the aftermath of the attack that killed six people and wounded former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords show the handgun, high-capacity pistol magazines and knife that Jared Lee Loughner carried with him as he carried out the January 2011 attack.
The 600 photos, released Tuesday, also show images of a credit card record showing earplugs Loughner bought, and dozens of vehicles that were in the parking lot of the shopping center where the shooting unfolded.
The most graphic image shows a small puddle of blood on the ground outside the shopping center amid plastic bags and other trash. Another photo shows a specimen cup that contained a bullet fragment recovered from the shooting scene.
At the time of the shooting, Loughner had two magazines that held up to 31 bullets, two 15-round magazines, a 4-inch knife and other items. Loughner had cleared a federal background check and legally bought the 9 mm Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol at a sporting goods store months before the shooting. Though he was carrying the knife during the attack, Loughner didn't use it to injure anyone.
Other photos show sheriff's deputies talking to people in the parking lot, the interior of the cab that Loughner took to the Safeway supermarket where the attack occurred, the motel room where he stayed the night before the attack and a motel record noting the time he checked in but also saying in a handwritten notation that the motel operators "don't know when he left."
A series of photos shows a sheriff's patrol car that was turned into a makeshift whiteboard. Authorities used markers to record the phone numbers of investigators and the hospitals where victims were being treated. Loughner's name and birth date also were written on the car's trunk.
Police made a note on the car that Loughner had previously been cited for possession of drug paraphernalia, a charge that was dismissed after he completed a diversion program. Someone drew a stick-figure sketch of the scene, including where Loughner and Giffords were located at the time of the attack.
A Post-it note on the patrol car listed the name of Bryce Tierney, a high school friend of Loughner's who hadn't talked to Loughner in months. Loughner had left a message on Tierney's cellphone hours before the shooting, saying, "Hey Bryce, it's Jared. We had some good times together. Peace out."
Mavy Stoddard, who lost her husband Dorwan Stoddard in the massacre and suffered three gunshot wounds herself, said seeing photographs of the gun that killed her husband was hurtful but she understood the public eventually would see them.
"It's upsetting, of course. It's what I know killed my husband," she said.
Americans for Responsible Solutions, a gun control advocacy group founded by Giffords and her husband, declined to comment on the photos.
The images were made public nearly two months after the Pima County Sheriff's Department released roughly 2,700 pages of investigative reports examining the shooting, marking the public's first view into documents that authorities had kept private since the attack.
The records provided more detail about the deteriorating psychological condition of Loughner in the hours leading up to the attack and the first glimpse into Loughner's family.
News organizations seeking police records and photos from the shooting were denied access in the months after the arrest of Loughner, who was sentenced in November to seven consecutive life sentences, plus 140 years, after he pleaded guilty to 19 federal charges.
In late February, U.S. District Judge Larry Burns cleared the way for the release of the photos and records after Star Publishing Co., which publishes the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, joined by Phoenix Newspapers Inc., which publishes The Arizona Republic, and KPNX-TV, sought their release. The judge said Loughner's right to a fair trial was no longer on the line now that his criminal case has resolved.
Arizona's chief federal judge and a 9-year-old girl were among those killed in the rampage. Thirteen people were injured, including Giffords, who was left partially blind with a paralyzed right arm and brain injury, resigned from Congress last year.
Loughner's guilty plea allowed him to avoid the death penalty. He is serving his sentence at a federal prison medical facility in Springfield, Mo., where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and forcibly given psychotropic drug treatments to make him fit for trial.
Pam Simon, a former Giffords staffer who survived two gunshot wounds to her chest and wrist, hasn't seen the photos yet but she's not avoiding them either.
For Simon, the release is a reminder of the magnitude of tragedy of gun violence. She said she has recognized the trauma it has created when talking to people who were working at the grocery store and nearby businesses.
"As far as I'm concerned, I don't have any burning desire to see them (the photos) right now, I don't feel any urgency," she said. "I've worked really hard at gathering at the puzzle pieces for myself. I feel like I see that day through the people I've talked to and the pictures I have seen, clearly enough."
Fonseca reported from Flagstaff, Ariz.

subset: commoncrawl


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Someone who rises to the occasion to plan or help plan a course of events that will lead to legendary night out. In order to keep acting position of VP social you must be awesome at short term planning, on the spot decision making and networking. VP social is an electoral position where majority vote in a crew designates VP social to a 2-year term unless performance of acting VP social is compromised or lame.
Emily was removed from acting VP Social role due to poor performance to make epic night out, burgers alone were round like meatballs. Jeremy organized 50 shades of awesomeness time and time again that led him to be the VP Social in his crew.
by Durtis May 22, 2013
buy the domain for your art vlog


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Those lazy days of American summer that I dont have
By Andrei Codrescu
People are starting to close their letters to me with Have a deep lazy summer, and I find myself writing back, You, too, but dont fall out of the hammock. I mean, can you believe that? I dont even remember my last deep lazy summer. A summer so deep and lazy the light in the foliage dapples my body so I wont even turn over so as to better look like a leopard. And when I do turn over, there is a triple-scoop-vanilla-ice-cream-cone-cloud with the face of a pug licking slowly over me until the next thing I know Im smelling cocoa butter and Im being brushed lightly by two friendly breasts. Then someone yells, cut!
Actually, a day like that might be enough, even if its just a shoot on the beach Im acting in for free. A whole summer might get cloying. Anyway, Im drifting from the subject, which was, I think, that people who write to me imagine that as soon as summer comes I sink into some kind of fleur-scented decrepitude among the fragrant vines on my wrought-iron veranda and allow myself to sink into the arms of a three-months long reverie until the first autumn breezes startle me and I remember with a shudder, My God! Work! The People! And then I rise and produce feverish golden eggs, the fruition of all that reverie, and the world is startled, amused and hates me for it.
The trick I perfected once was to lie on cool grass under a perfect blue sky in a mountain meadow and let the memory of another time on a cool sand beach being lapped by a sleepy wave go through my mind while pulling with it the time I lay in the hammock above the tiled patio at my cousins house watching a lizard watch me and then letting the lizard pull in a lazy smoke ring floating over my crib from below a felt hat that covered me with sleep. Yes, this is called peace knitting, and its an imaginative way to draw together some of your most satisfying moments of deep lazy summer to prolong the one youre not having. The texture of the peace knitting comes from bringing together similar moments of bliss.
Its so not Zen this thing. Its work, actually, the opposite of that laziness people wish for me and for themselves. Everybodys a workaholic and a worrywart these days, so even good wishes for sluggishness must come with a method. Which is why I give you peace knitting.
You can knit other moods, of course. I like afterglow knitting, which is made from postcoital blisses.
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Open box, returned, demo, or otherwise gently used Power Play Pro paddle. Colors vary. Unfortunately, we aren't able to guarantee what color you are shipped. Most of these paddles are customer returns or demo paddles used by our staff. We inspect them before making them available for sale. All sales of this paddle are final, and they are not eligible for return, exchange, or refund (unless we've made a misrepresentation about the paddle).
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Children's Hospital Los Angeles is a nonprofit academic pediatric hospital that treats the sickest and seriously injured children in Los Angeles County and surrounding areas. Many of the children are so sick they spend the holidays in the hospital. The hospital staff does what it can to bring the holidays to the children with the help of monetary and toy donations.
Maniacos Car Club of Los Angeles decided to hold a toy drive to reach out to the staff of Children's Hospital Los Angeles in hopes of offering a donation of toys for the kids there. The second Saturday in November 2010, Maniacos held their toy drive at Boulevard Burgers in Bell, California. Traffic, High Class, Majestics, and Delegation were some of the clubs that came to show their support. Big Spike from Majestics brought out his show-winning Regal, and Mark from Traffic showed up with his reworked 58 Impala hardtop.
Chiquis from the Mun2 network reality show Jenni Rivera Presents Chiquis & RaqC showed up with three vehicles filled with toys. Chiquis spent time in the Mun2 booth signing autographs and taking photos with her many fans. She took time before leaving to walk the event and take a few photos with the car clubs and car owners.
Community service and charity work are a big part of Lowriding that many in the general public are unaware of. Lowriding is more than just car clubs and car shows. Lowriding is also about giving back to our communities and setting a positive example to today's youth. Because of the generosity of Maniacos Car Club and others, the children of Children's Hospital will have a holiday season filled with gifts.
Benefiting Children's Hospital Los Angeles


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Celebrating The Oregon SeniorsPosted by Connor Pelton on February 28th, 2013
On a night when the biggest story will be the return of an injured freshman, arguably the best group of seniors in the league will play their final home game at Matthew Knight Arena tonight. From a four year, in-state star to a trio of junior or senior transfers, all four graduating Ducks have had major impacts at separate points throughout the season. We break them down below.
Arsalan Kazemi has been Oregon's difference-maker this year, bringing the Ducks from what most thought would be a bubble team at the beginning of the season to a team vying for the conference crown. The native Iranian spent his first three years at Rice, and if he had stayed put in Houston, he most likely would be named the C-USA Player of the Year. Kazemi is the definition of a hustle player, a constant ball-diving type who leads the team in rebounds and steals. He will be sorely missed by Oregon fans, but his story is far from over, as Kazemi is the type of player that can lead a team through the first week of the NCAA Tournament and beyond.
Tony Woods and Carlos Emory transferred to Eugene two years ago, and have been providing highlight-reel blocks and dunks since their arrival. Woods' length in the post makes him a viable threat against opposing defenses, but it's on his defensive end of the court where he makes a difference for the Ducks. Woods is the team co-leader in blocks per game, and his 6'11" frame clogs up the paint with great efficiency. Emory is by far the more athletic of the interior duo, and his versatility allows him to play at the three, four, or five, depending on where he is most needed.
Finally we come to the dean of the Oregon seniors, E.J. Singler. Singler has been a crucial part of Oregon's six- or seven-man rotation in all four of his seasons with the Ducks, and he has averaged double figures in the scoring column in all but his freshman year. The small forward was Oregon's Kazemi before Arsalan arrived at Oregon, so he has taken a bit of a back seat in terms of production this season. But that doesn't mean he hasn't been crucial to Oregon's success at times; his 25 points in Oregon's 79-77 win at Washington State led the Ducks to a grind-it-out, overtime win on the Palouse; and earlier in the season he poured in 22 as the Ducks demolished Vanderbilt. Singler has played through injuries his entire career and will go down as one of the best four-year players in Oregon history.


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Wofford grad Ingram one of Jeopardy's all-time most successful winners
By Drew Brooks
Spartanburg Herald-Journal
Published: Thursday, July 11, 2013
Ben Ingram's long run on Jeopardy! finally came to an end Thursday, but he'll still go down as one of the long-running quiz show's greatest champions.
Ingram, 30, a Florence-native with degrees from Wofford College and the University of South Carolina, finished Thursday's contest in third place.
His $1,000 consolation prize brought his total winnings to $177,534, good for ninth all-time, according to the Jeopardy! website.
Officials have confirmed that Ingram's streak of eight consecutive wins was tied for fifth-best all-time.
The Charlotte, N.C. IT consultant who now lives in Lake Wylie filmed his appearances on the show in late March, but was sworn to secrecy on how he did.
Now, nearly two weeks after his Jeopardy! run began, Ingram is finally free to tell all.
After Thursday's show, Ingram said he felt as though a weight had been lifted.
Even though he knew he would lose, Ingram said he tuned in to watch the match, which he said was his favorite of his nearly two-week run.
"That was a really good game," Ingram said. "That was amazing."
Ingram held the lead after the first round and, at one point in the second round, the three contestants were separated by fewer than $2,000.
He entered Final Jeopardy! in third place, and his answer "What is the 1812 Overture?" was correct, but Ingram wasn't able to close the ground between him and his competitors.
The clue was "This piece that premiered in Moscow in 1882 includes strains from "God Save the Czar" and "La Marseillaise."
Wofford College alumni who gathered to watch the performance at Hickory Tavern in Spartanburg said they were proud of Ingram.
One group of alumni said Ingram's long run brought the school together.
Debbie Thompson, Wofford's alumni director, said the Wofford name has exploded on social media and across the nation thanks to Ingram's success on popular quiz show, which officials said averages 25 million viewers each week.
"It's been unbelievable," Thompson said.
Incoming Wofford freshman Ellie Varn said Ingram has been the talk of campus.
Ingram's Jeopardy! run became must-see television for Wofford College faculty and alumni.
Viewing parties were also held in Ingram's hometown of Florence, and even Gov. Nikki Haley weighed in on Ingram's performance.
Last week, after Ingram's first five victories were aired, Haley said on social media that South Carolina "has another reason to smile."
"Congrats Ben … you've made your state so proud!" Haley said.
Ingram said he was recognized in public a few times, including once at McHale's Irish Pub in Fort Mill.
That's where Ingram hosts a weekly trivia night on Tuesdays which just so happens to start just after Jeopardy! goes off the air.
Ingram said that earlier this week, guests who must have watched Jeopardy! recognized him.
"It's been a lot of fun," he said. "I said this was not going to change my life, but I was wrong about that. I've met some great new friends. It's been a great experience and I'm grateful."
Jeopardy! observers, including the authors of the show's fan-site, thejeopardyfan.com, repeatedly praised Ingram for his strategy and skill during the run.
"Personally, I've really enjoyed Ben's run," said Andy Saunders, who along with Jeanie Kenkel reviews Jeopardy! contests for thejeopardyfan.com.
Saunders said Ingram's strategy of hunting for Daily Doubles had been used successfully in the past.
The Daily Double can completely change the game, he said, especially if a trailing opponent gets it.
With those options off the board, a comeback is even less likely.
"Ben's strategy makes it much more difficult for opponents to beat him," Saunders said.
Ingram's habit of targeting high-value clues early can also be disconcerting to his opponents.
"It can be disheartening to find yourself down $3,000 and only seeing $400 and $800 clues on the board," Saunders said.
But Ingram's Jeopardy! run hasn't been without its critics.
Saunders said Ingram's habit of only betting just enough to win is risky in and of itself, as evidenced by Ingram's tie game last week.
"His strategy certainly isn't universally liked, by any means — my own father has complained to me about Ben's Daily Double hunting, and Alex has made a point of jibing Ben about his small bets on the show," Saunders said. "But liked or not, Ben knows what it takes in order to win!"
Ingram said he never cared about his monetary earnings. When he arrived for the first match, he had modest goals.
"I came on there just wanting to win one game," he said. "I told myself, 'If I win one game, I'm okay with it.'"
But with only a 10-minute break between filming, Ingram said his win quickly grew. He said he didn't fully comprehend what he had done until he was in the airport waiting for his flight home.
Ingram wasn't new to trivia when he first stepped on the Jeopardy! stage. He has competed in similar events since middle school and was a member of the 2005 Wofford College Bowl team that traveled to the national championship tournament in Seattle.
Ingram's former College Bowl coaches have been among those watching.
Natalie Grinnell, a Wofford English professor, said Ingram was an anchor of the 2005 team.
She remembers him as being impressive, even then, and particularly remembers an instance where, on the way to a College Bowl tournament, Ingram spent an hour telling his team the differences between Titanic the ship and Titanic the movie.
Grinnell and other professors and been good-naturedly harassing Ingram about his few wrong answers, she added.
"It's been a sheer delight," Grinnell said. "His breadth of knowledge is a tribute to a liberal arts education … But he knew everything in College Bowl, too. He knows the most obscure things."
"At 8 p.m. each night, Facebook explodes with comments," Grinnell said, referring to the large number of supporters following Ingram's nightly Jeopardy! appearances.
Mark Byrnes, an associated professor of history who also served as a College Bowl coach for Ingram, said Ingram's many dominate wins were very familiar.
"He could be an absolute machine like that," Byrnes said. "He can get into a zone and he's just unstoppable. If he's locked in, he'll know every answer."
Both Grinnell and Byrnes called Ingram a class act and quality competitor.
"He's a very serious competitor but he's very much a gentleman about it," said Byrnes, who called Ingram a smart, quick and instinctive player.
But Ingram's streak hasn't been without its drama.
Grinnell she worried on several occasions that Ingram's streak was cut short.
"You can't tell with the look on his face," she said.
And Byrnes took to screaming at his television late last week when the Final Jeopardy! clue was about which two U.S. presidents were in office a decade to the day of their inauguration.
Ingram answered correctly, guessing Franklin Roosevelt and Grover Cleveland. But you couldn't tell by his poker face.
"I was personally desperate for him to know it," Byrnes said. "I yelled 'You know this!'"
As for Grinnell, she said she's impressed by Ingram's emphasis on his South Carolina roots.
"It's fantastic for Wofford," Grinnell said. "It's fantastic for South Carolina."
With his winnings, Ingram said he hopes to give back to the communities where he grew up.
"I'm just very, very proud to come from the Palmetto State," Ingram said. "And I'm very proud to come from Florence."
He hasn't decided exactly what to do, but Ingram said he hoped whatever he decides would have an impact that would last forever.
Copyright © 2013 GoUpstate.com — All rights reserved. Restricted use only. Reprinted with permission.


text: Clinical trials completed by the Chinese state that some effect can be gained from acupuncture in about 80 per cent of strokes. These trials are difficult to interpret clearly as a significant number of stroke patients recover spontaneously; furthermore, the Chinese trials are poorly designed and the exact definition of the success and failure of treatment is unclear. The success rate claimed is very high but to some extent this success rate is mirrored by the experience of a variety of doctors in the West. Whatever criticism one has about Chinese research methods, Western medicine often has little to offer the stroke patient and therefore acupuncture is always worth considering. Ideally strokes should be treated within six months of the damage occurring. The patient may continue to benefit for up to two years after the stroke but, as a rule, acupuncture can effect little improvement if the damage has been present for more than two years.


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Quick Spins: Review of Bright Eyes' 'The People's Key'
Bright Eyes The People's Key
"I'm taking some comfort in knowing the wave has crested," Conor Oberst sings halfway through Bright Eyes' "The People's Key," sounding more wise than world-weary, more sage than crank. It's a tone of embrace - of experience, electronic timbres, enlightenment - that the eighth Bright Eyes album strikes. And even if only about half the songs are worthy additions to Oberst's now-estimable canon, that still qualifies the record as a success.
The big news from the 10-track disc is Oberst's turn away from the rootsy Americana that has long been the backbone of his sound. Flourishes still decorate the songs - the intro to the title track, the easy lope of "Beginner's Mind" - but seasoned rock-and-roll songwriting and thick electronic tones are the chief sonic signatures.
Oberst continues to compulsively adorn his songs with verbal flotsam (here, courtesy of Texas musician Denny Brewer), but the surging melodies of "Haile Selassie" and "One for You, One for Me" are where the real wisdom lies. On those tracks and on gripping mid-tempo rockers such as "Shell Games" and "Triple Spiral," he sings with the maturity of a veteran musician (soon to turn a crusty 31, he's spent half his life as a professional rocker).
His vocals are as rich as they have ever been, and despite a couple of tiresome clunkers - the dirgelike "Ladder Song" and awful opener, "Firewall" - "The People's Key" is perhaps the most listenable Bright Eyes record ever.
"Children they fill the bleachers/one is the next Caesar," Oberst sings at one point, not for a second sounding like he feels the need to compete with them. That ability to let go has made him a greater artist. Here's hoping he continues to offer his audience rewards this rich.
- Patrick Foster
Recommended tracks: "Haile Selassie," "One for You, One for Me," "A Machine Spiritual (in the People's Key)"


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BYRON – For Eastland's Devin Hartman, it will be a trip to somewhere he's already been. For Oregon's Ben Gardner, it was a chance to go to a place he's only dreamed of.
The two seniors were the only Sauk Valley golfers to advance to the Class 1A state tournament this weekend at Prairie Vista Golf Course in Bloomington.
Competing in the 1A Byron Sectional at PrairieView Golf Course, both boys needed every shot they had to become one of the 10 at-large qualifiers.
Gardner shot an 83 to grab the 10th and final spot, while Hartman was one of four golfers to finish at 82.
Two-time defending state champ North Shore Country Day edged Byron for the team title, 311 to 315. Stockton grabbed the final state berth with a 320.
After a shaky performance at the regional, Hartman had hoped to return to his postseason form of 2012, which saw him earn all-state honors.
"The front nine (44) was rough," said Hartman, whose father Dale was a long-time baseball coach at Byron. "The short game and putting saved me. I was not hitting the driver well."
That was the exact opposite of Hartman's play at the regional.
"I have one more chance to put it all together," said Hartman, who shot a 78 to take second overall at last year's Elgin Sectional.
Like Hartman, Gardner had one bad nine.
"The front nine (46) was terrible," Gardner said. "I couldn't chip or put."
That all changed after the turn, as Gardner began to be more aggressive. On the par 4, No. 12, he put his drive in the middle of the fairway 80 yards out. A wedge shot landed within 12 feet and the putt found the hole for a birdie.
"That was the biggest hole for me," Gardner said. "I started making putts for birdies and ended up with a 37."
As a team, Oregon finished in seventh place with 352 strokes. Mark Nehrkorn had an 86, Carson Buck an 89 and Taylor Brubaker a 94.
"The guys that didn't score well didn't putt well," Oregon coach Jim Spratt said. "We competed hard, but didn't execute the mid-irons into the green and couldn't avoid triple-bogeys."
Behind very balanced scoring, Morrison was right behind with a 353. Ben Tegeler, Noah Hogue, Brock Smith and Colton Smith all went from 87 to 90. And, all will return next year.
"I'm happy. We shot our average today," Morrison coach Ben Sondgeroth said. "Only two of the six played in the sectional last year. I'm looking forward to the next couple years with this group."
Lucas Wiebenga of Fulton shot an 85 and missed qualifying by two strokes.
"I started OK, but the final nine was up and down," Wiebenga said.
Todd Nelson also was in the mix, but his 86 fell short after a fast start.
"On the back nine [his first nine], I had a 40," Nelson said. "Then I fell apart."
No other area golfer broke 90.
Even though North Shore graduated its top three golfers, it was able to defeat Byron on the Tigers' home course. It helps, though, when your No. 6 man shoots a 77.
"After a poor regional, we came ready to play," NS coach Joe Bosco said. "It also helps being as deep as we are."
North Shore's Andrew Blechman shot a 74 to claim medalist honors. Byron had three golfers with 79s and one with a 78.
"We're senior-dominated, and our kids have been on this course forever," Byron coach Tim Sedam said. "We know how good North Shore is. They proved it today."


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OAKLAND, Calif. — Sebastian Janikowski kicked a 43-yard field goal on the last play as the Oakland Raiders scored the final 13 points after wide receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey was knocked out and hospitalized by a scary hit to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 34-31 on Sunday.
The game turned somber early in the fourth quarter when Heyward-Bey was knocked unconscious by a helmet-to-helmet hit in the end zone by Steelers safety Ryan Mundy that was not called a penalty by the replacement officials. Heyward-Bey was taken to the hospital with a neck injury.
Carson Palmer then threw his third touchdown pass for Oakland (1-2) and Janikowski kicked two field goals to beat the Steelers (1-2) and give coach Dennis Allen his first win.


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By Jennifer Clark
MILAN (Reuters) - Chrysler Group LLC's minority owner is expected to lay out its argument on Monday in a legal dispute over the price Italian carmaker Fiat will pay for the first of several incremental stakes in the U.S. carmaker.
The increases could raise Fiat's stake from 58.5 percent to as much as 75 percent, advancing Fiat's ambition of eventually merging the two companies.
Fiat wants to pay $139.7 million (109 million euros) for 3.3 percent of Chrysler, a figure reached by using a formula set up when Fiat took control of Chrysler as it emerged from bankruptcy in 2009. But other Chrysler shareholders have objected to the price and the dispute has ended up in court.
While Fiat already has management control of Chrysler, owning the entire company would allow it to restructure debt and ensure that Chrysler generates enough cash to support Fiat's loss-making European operations, analysts said.
Investors will watch the filing on Monday in a Delaware court to see how the minority owner, a healthcare trust affiliated with the United Auto Workers union, values the stake it is selling. The healthcare trust is a voluntary employees beneficiary association (VEBA).
Investors will also be looking for any counterclaims from the VEBA that raise questions about the legitimacy of the 2009 contract with Fiat that governs the VEBA's sale of the stake.
"We believe it is in both sides' interests to find a way forward, and we believe it is inevitable that Fiat will eventually fully consolidate Chrysler and move to restructure debt and pool cash," Bernstein Research analyst Max Warburton wrote in an October 10 report.
The VEBA involved is for retired Chrysler union workers. Separate trusts cover healthcare costs for retirees at General Motors Co and Ford Motor Co.
The VEBA took a stake in Chrysler as part of the company's 2009 bankruptcy restructuring.
Fiat was the stronger of the two automakers in 2009 but those positions have been reversed, due largely to the economic crisis in Europe. Last month, Fiat Group Automobiles reported a third-quarter trading profit of 128 million euros ($164 million) while Chrysler reported a trading profit of $706 million (551 million euros).
"When we signed the damn thing in 2009 it was clear," Fiat and Chrysler Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne told reporters on October 8 in Columbus, Ohio. "Today, now that things have changed and we're making some money" at Chrysler, VEBA and Fiat disagree on how the six-month tranches should be priced, he said.
After Monday's deadline, Delaware Court of Chancery judge Donald Parsons is likely to schedule a case management hearing to decide how to proceed.
The parties agreed to have the dispute heard in the non-jury Court of Chancery, popular for its speed and business expertise. Judges have a wide array of options at their disposal to achieve fairness. They can impose penalties, postpone deadlines, order payments.
"We hope the legal proceedings will conclude by the end of the year," Fiat Chief Financial Officer Robert Palmer said on a conference call on October 30.
The trust is looking to maximize the value of its Chrysler stake to cover escalating healthcare costs for the U.S. automaker's retirees. VEBA officials have declined to comment on the matter.
As part of the 2009 agreement, Fiat is able to exercise call options to purchase portions of the stake held by the healthcare trust starting in July 2012.
Fiat can buy up to 3.3 percent of Chrysler every six months through the first half of 2016, or until it reaches the 16.58 percent cap for this type of share purchase. CEO Marchionne said he would continue to incrementally increase ownership in Chrysler every six months. He said last month that he wanted to merge Fiat and Chrysler by 2015.
"The objective has always been to try and bring unification by 2014 or 2015," Marchionne said on October 30. "I'd still like to see that done."
(Additional reporting by Bernie Woodall and Deepa Seetharaman in Detroit, Tom Hals in Delaware; Editing by Nick Zieminski)


text:
Hurricane-force winds, torrential rains greet morning commuters
Thousands left without power in Massachusetts
Hurricane-force winds and torrential rains swept across the region, causing power outages and downed trees.
A wind gust of 80 miles per hour was recorded at the Blue Hills Observatory early Thursday morning, StormTeam 5 meteorologist Mike Wankum said.
Route 114 in Peabody was closed mid-morning when several utility poles were brought down by the high winds.
Greg Deschenes, of Drew Mortgage Associates, saw the poles come down.
"It was crazy. There was pandemonium all over the place. You hear four or five big crashes and then you saw loose bolts and cars were going by literally as the poles were falling," he said. "Just really lucky that everyone survived and no one got hurt."
In Boston, a tree fell and crushed a car on Blue Hill Avenue.
"I heard it, but I thought it was the wind, but when I came and looked out front at the bus stop and that's when I (saw) the tree on the car," one witness said.
Junior Rozado's father owns the now-crushed pick-up. A friend called this morning to tell him what had happened.
"I don't understand how the wind knocked it down," he said. "We just got the truck like a month and a half ago. It's brand new."
A billboard came crashing down on two vehicles parked at Roxbury Motors on Columbus Avenue in Roxbury.
A massive tree toppled on the roof of home in Webster, and branches shot through the home's windows. The residents, who were home at the time, were not harmed.
National Grid said about 29,000 of its customers are without electricity, and NStar reports that about 5,400 of its customers are without power. Western Mass. Electric Co. is reporting nearly 3,100 outages, and Unitil has nearly 900.
The National Weather Service issued a high wind warning from Wednesday at 10 p.m. through Thursday at 9 a.m. Steady winds from the southwest at 20 to 30 mph were forecast, with gusts up to 60 mph.National Grid spokesman David Graves says they have extra crews coming in, along with extra tree crews to clear any debris. Extra crews are also on call for southeastern Massachusetts, the Merrimack Valley and North Shore.
Nstar spokesman Mike Durand says the utility has activated their emergency response plan and has placed crews throughout the region and extra support staff in service centers.


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Curtailed of Fair Proportion
Compubitch, Mistress of the Universe
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Curtailed of Fair Proportion
Come In, Please (Inception, Arthur/Eames, rated R)
13th-Oct-2010 11:49 pm
Come In, Please
R (violence, disturbing imagery)
"Never Have I Ever" is never a good idea. Arthur/Eames,
So I'm not dead, still. This is unabashedly the most romantic thing I've ever written. It still has dead bodies in it. Thank you as always to
for holding my hand and pointing out my overuse of commas.
He's on a train. His hand is wrapped around a bar that's greasy with other people's hand prints. His body sways automatically, gently, adjusting as the train pitches from one side to the other. His feet hurt like he's on the tail end of a long commute. Stale air blows down on his face, not quite covering the stink of someone standing too close. He can tell just by the squeal of the brakes that it's New York. Of course. It could only be New York.
When he opens his eyes, the train is full of people. He's got enough room to breathe deeply and not much more than that, but he sucks his gut in anyway and pushes his way through the car. No one looks up, earphones firmly placed and eyes locked on the ground. Eames laughs softly. Even dreaming, New Yorkers mind their own fucking business.
The train tilts and Eames tilts with it. The train is packed enough that he couldn't hit the ground even if he tried but someone grabs his elbow, steadying him. The man is young, black, hood up on a gold jacket. His eyes are hard enough that Eames thinks
not American
, and is rewarded when the man asks if he's all right with a Trinidad accent. "Yes, thank you," Eames says and makes his move. He gets an arm across the man's narrow shoulders, pinning him against the person behind him, who hits the train doors with a muffled grunt. His other hand pushes the gun up under the ribs. Not hard enough to hurt. Just hard enough to let Arthur know it's there.
Then he hears laughter. Soft, low enough that Eames barely hears it over the shuffle of the train running over its track. Arthur is standing at the other end of the car. The man Eames thought he was wearing vanishes as soon as Eames looks away. Arthur smirks at him and slides the train door open towards the next car. He's getting better at this, the smug son of a bitch.
The train door is heavy enough that Eames puts his back into opening it. He feels a little naughty doing so; years (decades now) in the criminal underworld haven't quite put paid to some of the bourgeois niceties that he grew up with. Don't step on the grass, don't discuss money or politics, don't walk between the moving train cars. It's
The door slides shut behind him, nearly taking his fingers off. He lingers for a second on the little platform, eyes closed, fingers reaching out for the handle of the next car. His toes nearly off the edge, hanging out over space and the endless length of the rails. The smell of the subway coats his lungs like greasy water, like everything he hates about New York. He takes a deep breath, then another, and on the last moment of his exhale,
. He can taste it.
Eames pulls the door open and steps out into the desert.
The sand is orange and gritty under his feet. Blue sky the only color he can see where the dust isn't kicked up by the helicopters circling overhead. Even the men around him are orange, indistinguishable from the desert and each other by their gear and dust. He doesn't see Arthur anywhere, but Arthur could come up and give him a smart one on the ass and Eames couldn't tell for sure if it was him until he knocked the damn helmet off. It's a good thing he isn't looking for Arthur, not this time. It's Eames' turn to hide.
Someone is yelling at Eames, waving at him in that short, irritated way that every CO has when you're just not fucking getting it. Maybe Eames is about to get taken out by one of the helicopters. He ducks, just in case, and trots over to the man. "Sir, yes sir!" Eames shouts. For a second he thinks he's about to get decked, but all that the man does is order him to get the fuck on the convoy that's forming at the edge of the camp. He hadn't noticed it before, but that's because it's revealing itself in eddies of dust, materializing where the camp goes into soft focus and bleeds out into dust. Eames pulls himself into the last Humvee, tips his helmet at the three guys already crammed into the back seat. There's nothing to distinguish them as Marines except for Eames' memory that once upon a time Arthur was, once upon this time, apparently.
He wipes at the dust on his face, only serving to drag it into rivers of mud on his cheeks and neck. He wants to take the helmet off - he must be wearing his own body weight in armor and it's hot, not hot like Africa is but so fucking dry that his throat feels fit to crack even in the dream - but he knows something's coming. He can feel it in the vibration of the Humvee as it starts up, the way that the chatter of the men in the car fades underneath the noise of the engine, the sound of a train clattering over its tracks. He feels it like splinters underneath his fingernails. He glances out the window, to where the rows of tents are slowly being forgotten, and thinks,
. It's as good a response as any, because there he is, looking younger than Eames thought possible, head thrown back and mouth open. He's laughing even though he has to spit dust right afterwards, and Eames was wrong. He'd know Arthur anywhere, apparently.
Eames shrinks down into his seat, trying to look nonchalant. It's impossible to tell from here whether he's watching a memory or Arthur himself, digging head first into the dream instead of hunting Eames down, like he's supposed to. So Eames watches. Arthur - maybe Arthur - climbs into the Humvee three ahead of Eames' vehicle, his foot dangling out of the cab, twitching from side to side. The soldier Arthur was laughing with kicks it the rest of the way in and climbs in after him, grinning. The convoy jolts into motion. The Humvee tilts and Eames tilts with it.
The ride isn't long - and it is, of course, it could have been hours of Arthur's life collapsed into a few minutes of dreaming, but Eames feels every second like time is a physical hand on his shoulder. He's sweating more than he thought possible, which annoys him. His fingers are slippery over the grip on his gun. He can't see Arthur out the window of his Humvee. All he can do is imagine what these last few moments were like for that young man who laughed so hard.
He hears it coming, of course. Just enough time to flinch in the wrong direction. The whistle of the shell sounds like it's coming from everywhere, but there's only one and it hits almost directly under the vehicle two spots ahead of him. It explodes and Arthur's goes with it, lifted ridiculously from behind and flipping over twice, landing the wrong side up. The wrong way to flinch turns into a lucky break when shrapnel takes out Eames' driver and tears through the seat where Eames' heart would otherwise have been. They hit the car ahead of them and Eames slams hard into the front seat, the butt of his gun catching him underneath his chin. He spits blood into the sand climbing out of the Humvee, his rifle up and ready before he remembers that this isn't the point of the game. He's not here to save anyone.
Arthur's Humvee is on fire and being shot at from both sides. Upside down it's cover against the gunfire but another shell would tear right through it. Everyone around Eames is screaming, hunkered down against their vehicles. Eames the only one standing straight, his gun loose at his side. A stray bullet could kill him, take him right out of this memory and right back into consciousness but all that he can do is turn his back and walk away. There are scattered bursts of return fire coming from under the Humvee. He knows there won't be another shell, because if there had been then the Humvee would have been shredded and Arthur would have been jelly underneath it, chopped into lumps small enough to take home and fry up for a lonely dinner.
He walks until the sound of gunfire melts into the howl of the desert, the wind whipping rocks against his ankles hard enough to sting. It only ever takes this long into the game for him to forget why it always seems like such a good idea up there. He walks, shedding the armor and the helmet. He keeps the rifle tucked up under his arm but there's nothing out here. Nothing at all, just flat desert and dust. Reluctantly, he turns around and retraces his footprints.
It doesn't take him long to get back to the ruin of the convoy. He doubts there's anything else here, anymore; the base camp gone, the soldiers gone, the mujaheddin gone. He wonders where the hell Arthur's gone, if he's tracking Eames the way he's supposed to, if he has Eames' head in the crosshairs of that beautiful M-40A3 he was carrying.
The center vehicle is still on fire. The air is heavy with the stink of melted plastic and scorched meat. Arthur's vehicle is, thankfully, out. Everything is still. It makes him think of Srebrenica, of a village massacred and twenty, thirty people left to rot. The only warning they had the utter silence of the place. Of the first corpse he found, an old man sitting in front of his house, his head tipped far over the back of the chair and his gums already pulling back from his teeth. The bullet hole in his chest big enough to kill him but not knock him out of the chair. His granddaughter's bare feet sprawled like she fell running, the only part of her visible from through the open doorway to the family home.
Eames sighs and drops slowly to his knees in front of the ruined vehicle. He has to get onto his belly to crawl into it. The cab smells dry and dusty, an incongruity with the corpse in the back seat. It's strapped in and upside down, arms sprawled along the shadowed sand. Its tongue is black and bloating between crooked teeth. An abandoned ILBE is next to it, open. A field message book is inside, along with a jumble of other treasures that Eames ignores.
On the first page, neatly written in capital letters, is his message.
Eames digs the flask out of the bag. Reaches further in and finds two shotglasses. One says "Welcome to Jamaica!" in cheery, Rastafarian colors and the other says "I need a stiff one!" Eames fills them both and takes the Stiffy. Whiskey, and not very good whiskey, which surprises him. It burns his throat almost as much as the desert does and Eames leaves it upside down in the sand. The other he leaves for Arthur to find and drink himself. Eames has won this round, for what it's worth.
He scoots backwards, belly down, out of the wreck. The sun blinds him coming up and the first thing the he can see is the muzzle of the gun, an inch away from his nose. "Oh," Eames says stupidly and closes his eyes. He doesn't open them again until he hears the train door open and close again.
It's not rush hour on the subway anymore. There's a knot of drunk club kids hanging off the bars at the far end of the car. Eames hardly looks at them. Doesn't want to look at them, to see what Arthur's wearing, if he can spot the cracks in Arthur's skin. He's angry, which he supposes is the point - for Arthur to dig his fingers in up to the wrist and for Eames to do it right back. More than any of the others, a forger and a point man need to be hard, need to be able to turn someone's memories against them and never ever let it happen the other way around. But this isn't right; he didn't want to see that and he
have. Arthur is playing dirty, and the fact that Eames is surprised at all by that is almost
Well, Eames thinks, taking a deep breath. He sucks in another one, lets it out slowly between his teeth. There's always more than one way to get under the skin and Eames is quite good at ferreting out every single crack.
He brushes past the club kids without a glance, one hand smoothing down the front of his impeccably tailored suit jacket. He makes a point of it, these days, for the break in his trousers to fall just so, for the cut of his jacket to fall perfectly across his broad shoulders and especially for the seat of those trousers to show off his best waking assets. And if the color his shirt underneath is just a little garish for taste, Arthur's eyes have always been able to find those well made seams. He can feel eyes following him towards the car door, from the little urchin in the short skirt and neon tights. He can see her in the glass, shifting in her seat. Waiting for him to step through so that she can follow.
When the door closes behind him, the lights go out. Eames brings them up himself, knowing that he has a moment before Arthur is awake. No matter how many subway cars he passes through, they're in Arthur's mind and he lets Arthur fill in the blanks: the no-color walls, the anonymous filing cabinets, the relic of a desk off to the side of the room. He lets Arthur provide the uniform on Eames' shoulders, even if the skin Eames slips on is a real one, a man who's been dead nearly eight years. The man who taught Eames how to dream. The woman in the corner barely notices, her attention on vials and compounds.
Eames settles onto the desk to wait. There are six dreamers, including Eames, who is used to seeing his own face by now. He was thinner then. The wear and tear of Bosnia still showed a little on his face, on the restless way that he slept. The Eames in the chair is the first one to wake and it's all together, all at once, jolting to awareness like a vampire. Eames smiles reassuringly at his younger self, then turns his attention to the other members of the team, who are all sitting up and looking groggily around. Marlowe is the second one up, sitting with his head in his hands like he can't quite remember where he is, the other members of the team a little slower to move around.
Eames claps his hands twice and they all look at him immediately. He starts the pep talk and barely feels his mouth running; great job, longest so far against militarized hostiles, blah blah. He's looking for Arthur. When they first started these little exercises, Arthur's forgeries were so laughable that Eames would have felt like he was insulting the dear man not to call him on it immediately. Arthur is improving, of course - even though Eames can still see the seam on Arthur's skin like an errant lock of hair - but more importantly, so is the game. He lets his gaze linger on each of them in turn, never one more than the other. He taps the folder against his knee as he talks. In the world above, it had contained Eames' first field mission. Down here, Eames' mind has filled it.
He wanders over to the filing cabinets. "Of course," he says, getting to the point and opening the top drawer. He drops the folder inside. "We should celebrate your progress." The bottle is in the drawer below, and he calls to the chemist to help him with the shot glasses he can't hold in his free hand. She does so gracefully. She was a civilian, Eames remembers, still a little shy around military men, and she had moved from Wales as a child but you could still hear traces of it in her voice. Her name was Jenna. He remembers liking her big, round features, the audacity of her bottle blonde hairstyle.
He leaves the bottle unopened on the desk. "Before we drink, a word, Lieutenant?" He draws the extractor to his side, leaving the others to chat among themselves. The memory of Eames has wandered over to Jenna, hip propped up against the desk that she had promptly retreated back to, once the business with the shot glasses was over with. That Eames is fool enough to leave his back to the rest of the room, missing out entirely on the way that Marlowe's eyes narrow, almost imperceptibly.
He lets the conversation with the Lieutenant limp towards pleasantries, the projection parroting nonsense back at him picture perfectly. They slip into the background. The real action is going on behind the Lieutenant. All that Marlowe, that Arthur will see is that other Eames bending closer over the little desk, the way Jenna raises her eyes hesitantly and smiles back. What Eames sees is Marlowe's bright green eyes flickering unhappily into Arthur's dark ones, his hands curling on the knees of his regulation trousers.
Oh, Arthur
, Eames thinks, and even with so many years of knowing it still twists his stomach to see. He unscrews the bottle and pours out two unsteady shots. He has only a few seconds left to do so, after all.
Eames, the young Eames, still scarred from war and with a smile on his face that is nervous instead of cocky, is reaching out to touch Jenna's hand when she pulls a gun out from under her desk and shoots him in the face.
Blood sprays up towards the ceiling like someone squeezed it out of a bottle. Eames' body knocks over the IV, tumbles over two of the chairs before it lands in a heap in the center of the room. Before it hits the ground she takes out two more soldiers. She doesn't even flinch when one of them get a shot off, the only one they even managed, in all truth. It hadn't come anywhere near her. That shy flower Eames had courted for two weeks, never realizing that he'd been asleep the whole time, had taken out their entire team in seconds. Another messy fucking exercise that had Eames haunted for days afterwards, sick with doubt and terror that this was it, that he would never really
be sure
. He'd never even heard of a Forger before.
Eames gives a great bellow and she catches him in a great, theatrical spin. The bullet gets him in the shoulder and it hurts,
fuck it hurts
, but it's convincing enough that when Marlow catches her dead between the eyes he doesn't even look over.
Arthur drops Marlowe's skin as soon as everyone else is dead. Eames stays twisted over on the floor and tries to look like a convincing corpse. His ears are still ringing, the gunshots impossibly loud in the small room. Arthur looks over the bodies slowly, frowning. Probably wondering which one is Eames. He settles for the obvious - a lack of imagination may be overstating the case but Arthur can never be anyone but
, in all his bloody-minded straightforwardness - and crouches down by the dead body that actually looks like Eames. He doesn't even look down at it, though; he's staring at the chemist, looking distinctly off balance. The blank frown on her face is a near echo of the one on his, as if to say,
that didn't work nearly as well as it was supposed to
Eames fell at an angle that makes it difficult to see the top of the desk, but he can see Arthur's slim form turn towards the filing cabinets and dig out the file. There's alcohol leaking onto his collar and cheek, which annoys Eames both because it stinks and because he'd set up the two shots so nicely. It would really have tied the scene together. Arthur comes back to the desk to read the folder, his regulation boot heels clicking on the tile. Eames can't see his face as he flips the file open. There's a long stretch of silence as Arthur reads the message Eames has left for him.
He doesn't tip his head back and laugh, not exactly. Probably couldn't, anymore. Eames saw exactly how that man, that boy, died a messy death in a desert so far away, but even though it's quiet Arthur still
, raking a hand through his hair, his shoulders shaking. "Eames," he says, quiet, like he knows Eames is listening, "you stupid son of a bitch."
He takes his shot, still laughing, shaking his head. He's halfway across the room, stepping carelessly over limbs, when something makes him pause. He turns back. He tracks blood across the tile as he walks back to the desk. Eames' heart was already in his throat but he doesn't dare move, not now. All that Arthur does is right the glass Eames knocked over and refill it for him.
The door opens, and before it clicks shut Eames can hear the train.
He sits up, wincing. He wipes at his face ineffectually. He looks at the wound on his shoulder. Lucky, this time. A graze on the outside of his arm instead of a smoking hole. Little more than a flesh wound, as they say in the movies. He staggers to his feet. The massacre looks a lot worse once he's standing. The room still stinks of gunpowder. Eames looks down at the open folder.
He picks up the shot. It's Scotch, and excellent Scotch at that, too nice to be knocking back. The glass itself says "Stop Thinkin' and Get Drinkin'!" He considers the message carefully, considers the liquor itself, and then leaves it be.
Surprisingly, he is still on a train. He is still in New York. His shoes are wet and they squeak on the floor when he moves. His jacket is wet. Everyone around him has an umbrella. His shoulder aches where he was shot. The doors slide open. A mumbled voice over loudspeakers probably tell him that he's at West 4th. Numbly, Eames steps off the train, hoping that he isn't leaving Arthur on it heading somewhere Uptown or, heaven forbid, to Queens. He spots a dark head vanishing up the stairs, about halfway up the platform. Eames follows quickly.
He steps out into the rain, unfurling the umbrella that he unhooked from the back of some unsuspecting student's backpack. The street is awash with light, broken up by shapes made nearly formless in the city night. Somewhere close by, a girl is laughing. Arthur leaves the lamplight for a side street, too far ahead for Eames to hear him splashing grimly through puddles. Eames leaves his own skin behind in between shadows, stepping into the body of a slender young man, close enough to Arthur's own type that the other man probably won't notice him. This skin doesn't want a jacket, the bandage on his skinny arm the only concession to his open wound and the weather.
He almost loses Arthur in the short walk. Arthur moves like he knows where he's going, which is hardly a surprise; he's a native and anyway that's how he always is. Eames can count the times he's been to New York on one hand, twice of those with Arthur. Arthur, who towed him and Cobb around the city like he was leading children by the hand. Eames has yet to return the favor; Arthur favors France over England, Southeast Asia over Africa and -
He's lost Arthur. "Fuck," Eames says to no one. He stops dead on the street corner. He's alone along a row of brownstones. The only sound is the whisper of the rain, chilly on his bare shoulders. He rubs a hand through his hair and tries to orient himself. The street looks familiar in the same way that every street in a dream does, the way that everywhere in London looks. Just a place he's stumbled through drunk or sober on his way somewhere else.
That finally turns the tumblers of his memory and Eames heads northwest. He's been here before, with his hand held like a child. They'd gotten riotously drunk in Chelsea the night before Zimbabwe, that cockup of a job, the first they'd worked without Mal, who was years away from jumping but a few weeks away from giving birth. He and Arthur had been getting on well, then.
The bar is just how he remembered, and exactly the kind of place Eames would expect to find Arthur. Recessed lighting, apothecary bottles lined up on the wall, tastefully lit. German Expressionist on the walls, woodblock prints of abject misery. Cobb had been the one who protested over the price of the drinks, and Eames had paid for everything.
Arthur is sitting alone at the bar, his trench coat folded neatly on the stool next to him. Eames can't see what he's drinking but it's probably gin. Eames slides belly up against the bar at the other end, not even risking a glance over. He watches out of the corner of his eyes as a bright young thing comes and chats Arthur up, gym body and blond hair. Open expression like the hardest thing he has to deal with each day is shitty tips. Arthur is flirting back.
Arthur is good at it, at flirting, his head tipped backwards to look the boy in the face, his expression interested and warm. In the nearly empty bar, he's made room for the boy. Hips angled, shoulder thrown out to accommodate the boy against his body. It's strange, and probably not the reaction Arthur was hoping for, but Eames is happy to see this. Happy to see Arthur's thin fingers loosening his tie, his smile so charming that the motion almost looks accidental. He wants for Arthur to have taken this boy home and fucked his silly brains out, to wake up in the morning and not exchange numbers. Not exchanging anything but a warm, lingering kiss goodbye.
He's not terribly surprised when Arthur stands, his thumbs rubbing over the boy's narrow hips. The boy holds Arthur still long enough to slip a piece of paper in his hand - a phone number, Eames would guess - and then Arthur walks away. Eames can't help but stare after Arthur; he cuts a severe, impeccable line through the crowd, and when Eames looks back the boy is watching him. It's inevitable that the dreamer's projections catch on but it gives Eames a shiver every time, even after so many years. He's waiting for the guns to be drawn but all the boy does is look, not giving anything away. He holds Eames' eyes with a directness that Arthur has always found hard to achieve.
Eames doesn't want to look away. He nearly misses the three men trailing Arthur out of the bar and hastens after them. He hits the sidewalk a moment too late to see where they've gone. The skies have opened up and everyone around him is hunched against the rain, everyone wearing impeccable, severe suits - and then he hears a noise. It's soft, wet sort of sound. Someone chokes. Eames slides one foot forward. The skin's body is narrow and soft. He doesn't want to rush it into the alleyway where those noises are coming from, doesn't want to slip back into his own body and lose the game. He can't defend Arthur from his own memories. All that he can do is watch.
It's almost over. Eames can only peer into a slice of the alley without giving himself away, but it's enough to witness Arthur brutally beating the last man with a piece of pipe. The man is trying to crawl away. Blood is smeared across the brick wall like a firework where a skull hit, and hit hard. The other two men are unmoving shapes scattered on the ground, hardly more meaningful than the black bags of garbage lined up along the wall. Arthur is asking the man something - probably the standard who sent you, who are you working for - but Eames can't hear the particulars.
It ends abruptly. The man twists to look up at Arthur and the pipe catches him on the back of the neck. He drops so fast that his head makes an unpleasant smack against the pavement. Arthur looks annoyed. He straightens, dragging a hand through his hair to put it back in order. Eames pulls away to loiter on the opposite curb.
Arthur materializes at the edge of shadows, straightening his cuff links, the trench coat draped over his forearm. He puts his hand up for an approaching taxi but Eames gets there first, yanking open the cab door and sliding inside before Arthur can get a better look at him.
Arthur lives close by, close enough that they'd walked back from this bar, weaving through Chelsea towards the waterfront. Arthur's flat is the third floor of a small building, whitewashed brick with the ghosts of old advertisements painted on the side. The vulnerability of the fire escape not outweighing the easy escape that it offers. Eames scales it quickly, unsure of his reception to this place. There are projections milling around on the High Line and Eames feels ridiculously exposed. It's always a risk to break into a dreamer's home.
Thankfully, all that he encounters is a rusty window lock. Arthur's subconscious is far more welcoming than the reality. He slides the window closed and locks it again, tucks his pocket knife away. He leaves the lights off and kicks his shoes away, stepping soundlessly across the hardwood floor. Headlights flash across the ceiling to warn him that Arthur's taxi has arrived. There are four good places that Eames can hide. He'd tallied them in his head the morning after, blinking awake earlier than Arthur and Cobb and stealing the only time he'd be allowed to really look at the place. The art on the walls too abstract to be personal hells, mostly glimmering neon tubes in fields of color. It had been early enough that the sunlight took the sting out of the stainless fixtures, the uncomfortable furniture and it looked like someone lived there, really lived there and considered it a home.
The flat still looks like a home, even in the dark. The light from the stairwell cuts a wedge against the bare floors and Eames steps back into the narrow laundry room. It gives him a decent view of the rest of the flat, enough to see Arthur shrug his wet jacket off onto a table and make himself a drink. His movements around the flat are tidy, which is how Eames knows he's already drunk. Drunk and still able to murder three men in an alley. Maybe that's the point of Arthur showing Eames this memory, like Eames doesn't already know that Arthur is a very, very dangerous man.
Arthur sets the drink on his coffee table and sprawls onto the couch. Eames remembers it as more comfortable than it looks but not by much. Arthur is boneless on it, one knee up and the other dangling on the ground, his ankle moving loosely, like he's twisting in the wind. One hand covers his face. There are bruises on his knuckles and blood underneath his fingernails. At least some of it is Arthur's blood; now that the jacket's off Eames can see the long slice through Arthur's shirt, the faint smear around it.
He wants, more than anything, to call this off. To step out with his hands up and, more likely than not, have this projection of Arthur shoot him and get the whole bloody mess over with. If it is a projection. Eames' money is on the real Arthur sitting in the hotel across the way, crouched in front of a lovely big window watching Eames through the scope of a sniper rifle. One foot slides forward, silent on the hardwood, but closing any distance between he and Arthur has always been impossible, and before Eames can make up his mind to do it, Arthur has fallen asleep.
His hand slips off his face and lands ungracefully on the floor. It's a testament to how exhausted Arthur is - or how drunk - that it doesn't jolt him awake. Unconscious, he looks uncannily like that young man Eames saw laughing in the desert. His face is soft and open, his lips slightly parted. His shirt is rucked up and nearly pulled out of his trousers.
And Eames is not one given to watching people sleep. It's not a habit he finds endearing or romantic. He feels like an idiot and yet here he is, standing in Arthur's laundry room, and he can't look away. He traces the lines of Arthur's body like he's never seen the man before. He can't even remember how old Arthur is anymore, how long it must have been since those desert days, how many years it must be since Arthur looked so undone. He's seen Arthur asleep, of course, dozens of times but this -
He draws a hand through his hair. His fingertips tremble when they touch skin, even though it's his own. He doesn't want to end this anymore. Doesn't even want to move, for fear of waking this stranger. He should have known better than to think he could derail this thing between them.
Hope is a monster curled around his heart and before he can think better of it, Eames goes to Arthur. He stands over Athur just long enough to memorize the smooth lines of his face, but as he turns away he sees the little piece of paper, curled in the palm of Arthur's hand. He stoops, plucking it free. It's not a phone number. At least, not anymore.
The drink is on the table, untouched and well within reach, but Eames doesn't even glance at it. He walks to the front door, takes a deep breath, and steps through.
The air smells like the ocean and of the olive grove beneath the balcony, like cut grass. There's a chill on the breeze, the first hint of the season's mistral. There's a glass of champagne in Eames' hand and he lifts it to his lips approvingly. Lights are strung through the olive grove and Eames can see the children running heedlessly in their fancy clothes, up and down each neat row. Music behind him, quieter now after hours of food and drink and dancing.
Eames can clearly remember his utter, utter shock when the letter had caught up with him in Liberia, delivered to his door by the oldest daughter of the local schoolteacher. There were a thousand fingerprints on it and the edges were worn with Africa's red earth, but the inner envelope was still crisp, the lettering unequivocally an invitation. He'd worked with Dom and Mal a few times but they were hardly friends. Dom had seemed as surprised as Eames felt when he rang Dom up and said truthfully yes, he'd love to come and see them get married.
Arthur is standing in the olive grove. His hands in his pockets, chin tipped up. Staring at Eames, who raises the champagne towards Arthur, half toast, half invitation. He watches Arthur cross the grove, loses him just for a moment when he goes under the balcony. Something twists in Eames' chest painfully as Arthur approaches, a hesitant expression on his face. He comes to rest against the rail close enough that Eames can feel the heat of him, but not close enough to touch. He doesn't look at Eames.
This isn't how it happened. He and Arthur hadn't been getting along at the time and barely spoke the entire evening. Arthur drank too much wine and had gotten up and made a toast. Eames had danced with both of Mal's grandmothers.
"Eames," Arthur says, as if his heart is breaking. It's enough that Eames turns around, trying to find what Arthur is staring at so intensely - oh. And Eames knew what he was doing, bringing Arthur here, but the sight of Dom and Mal dancing, her hand tucked against his chest, is still enough to take his breath away.
They stand in silence for a long time. This part did happen, although Arthur had been the one on the balcony and Eames the last unmarried dancer standing, Mal's sister clinging sleepily to his shoulders. He remembers watching Arthur watch the newly wedded Cobbs, something amazingly simple and quiet in his eyes.
"I still think about," Eames says, and clears his throat. "About what might have happened if I'd come over to you and said hello."
Arthur huffs a little, his mouth quirking up in one corner. He looks at Eames without moving towards him, his head tilted. "Nothing," he says. "Well, probably. I spent most of the night hating your guts." He looks away again when all Eames does is smile.
"You were just jealous that I looked better in my tuxedo," Eames says.
"Your ass was amazing," Arthur agrees. He takes Eames' champagne and takes a long sip. Eames lets him finish it, saying nothing.
"Do you still believe it?" he asks, after a while. Arthur looks at him and Eames clarifies. "Your speech, what you said. Do you still think -" He trails off, not quite knowing how to finish.
Arthur is not a quiet person, nor is he shy. And as caustic as he can be Arthur is, at heart, a deeply romantic soul. Not the sort that tends towards flowers and casual affection, but the sort that will stand up with a cheap microphone and a glass of wine to inform the world that although he has seen and done terrible things, the fact that love exists as it does between Dom and the brand new Mal Cobb makes him believe that all the pain in the world is worth it. That seeing for his own eyes that there could be two halves of a whole made everything worth it. And that even if it ended in pain and suffering, it would still be worth it.
Arthur turns towards him, lips parted. Over his shoulder, Mal and Cobb spin on the dance floor like no one else exists. Eames tries to keep his eyes on them, tries to look anywhere but Arthur's face.
"No," Arthur says, and steps forward, into Eames.
Eames startles, winces when his side hits the railing. His eyes widen as Arthur crowds him backwards and there's an endless moment where they are nearly, nearly pressed together from shoulder to hip, Arthur's arm curling around him. It would be so easy to push forward and close that last bit of distance. Eames' body is hot and then cold all over and then Arthur moves back, not nearly far enough, a bottle of champagne in his hand from the table just behind Eames. He lifts it to his lips and swallows deeply, his eyes never leaving Eames'. When he hands over the bottle their fingers brush and Eames struggles to breathe.
He almost fancies he can hear Arthur's heart pounding, underneath his tuxedo.
They both look up when Edith Piaf begins to sing. Arthur is the first one to glance back down and crack a smile. The wind breathes over them and somewhere in the darkness Eames can hear the long whistle of a train. It blows a strand of hair down onto Arthur's forehead and Eames reaches out. Smooths it back. He can feel Arthur's breath on the inside of his wrist as he pulls away. Something aching and foolish is stuck inside Eames' throat, and they forget to look away from each other. Arthur has an inch on him, though Eames will always look taller. The world is tilting and Eames is tilting with it, tilting towards Arthur. He wants to say something. Arthur beats him to it.
"Will you dance with me?" Arthur asks.
He lets Arthur lead. One hand settles on the small of Eames' back and pulls him close. They fit together from shoulder to hip. They don't speak. The music is just a little slower in a dream, just a little softer, and as it soars towards wakefulness and the real world Arthur draws Eames' hand in and tucks it against his own chest, holding it there.
Thanks for reading :).
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After 6 hours and 34 minutes of testimony before the Commodity Futures and Trading Commission, U.S. agriculture isn't any closer to solving problems that surfaced in the commodity markets in early March, when extreme price volatility nearly paralyzed forward contracting of crops.
Walter Lukken, acting chairman of the CFTC did announce that the Commission has decided to delay action on proposals to raise the speculative limits for certain agricultural commodities, at least until there is a better understanding of what's behind the market turmoil.
From January until mid-April, futures prices for wheat, corn, soybeans and rice hit all-time highs. The price of rice increased by 118 percent, wheat by 95 percent, soybeans by 88 percent, corn by 66 percent, and cotton by 47 percent.
Normally, this would be cause for celebration among commodity producers. But the highly volatile market led to runaway margin calls, which snapped credit limits for hedgers and in some cases put them out of business. Bids disappeared at a time when producers desperately needed to lock in high prices to combat rising production costs.
These problems led to the April 22 meeting where commodity exchanges, USDA officials and representatives from almost every agricultural organization crowded into a meeting room at CFTC's Washington D.C. headquarters.
Memphis cotton merchant William Dunavant cited the events of March 3, 2008, as evidence of a broken cotton market. On that day, "cotton traded from 84.95 cents per pound synthetically to a $1.09. That made no sense.
"If you translate what happened in the futures market that day, it was like the Dow Jones going from 12,000 to 15,500 in one day, a 3,500 point move. That will never happen, but it gives you some idea of how dramatic cotton's problems are. The market is out of whack and somebody has to step in and give it some relief.
"The cotton producer is being penalized, cotton cooperatives are being penalized. We need to function as a futures market with some stability. We certainly don't have it now. Traders and commercial hedgers need to be treated on a totally different basis than speculators and commodity funds."
"Overnight, we have been stripped of a vital tool in which to conduct our business," said Joe Nicosia, CEO, Allenberg Cotton Co., and incoming president of the American Cotton Shippers Association. "We are now exposed to greater risk, which allows only the few highly financed or leveraged companies to function."
Nicosia said as a result of the early March upheaval, "the commercial trade had to close out futures at huge losses to generate the cash to repay its loans. Some smaller merchants, who could not withstand these losses, were forced to discontinue operations. Larger merchants with more substantial balance sheets were severely impacted as well and in some cases had to cease or greatly reduce the scope of their operations. At the end of the day, over $1 billion would be posted in margin calls."
Nicosia pins most of the blame "on the advent of index funds, with an estimated aggregate value of $1 trillion, and the participation of over-the-counter traders, which take a myriad of forms. While bringing record liquidity to the agricultural contracts, these entities have turned these contracts into investment contracts, thereby defeating the purposes for which agricultural contracts were created.
"The result has rendered the agricultural contracts, particularly the cotton contract, ineffective for hedging against price risks, the discovery of prices, and the actual pricing of commercial transactions."
In response to a question from CFTC Commissioner Walter Dunn on what happened in the cotton market, Nicosia said, "The problem was that (the CFTC) doesn't have the information to determine what went wrong. So much is taking place off the exchange. Fundamentally what took place was a systematic approach to push prices higher. You saw larger volume and larger price prices that ever existed in night sessions while the industry slept.
"You should ask for all the (funds) to put forth their swap and/or cash activities to see if there is a reason for them to have those sizable positions."
Woods Eastland, CEO of Staplcotn, and director of AMCOT, which represents the nation's four major cotton cooperatives, said unwarranted price changes in the markets "are defined in the (Commodity Futures Trading Commission Act) as an undue burden on interstate commerce, which puts the burden on ICE (Intercontinental Exchange) and CFTC to make sure that it doesn't happen again.
"The consensus here is that something happened in the cotton industry that is not understood. I urge the CFTC to investigate in depth what went on in cotton. If it happens once, it very well could happen again, or it could happen again in some other market."
Alan Underwood, Underwood Cotton Co., Lubbock, Texas, says the move to an all-electronic trading platform has significantly changed the behavior of the markets.
"Anyone trading the futures market recently should be able to testify to the strange and rhythmic flow of the current market – floating up and down, quickly making price swings in minutes that used to take months. It is no longer driven by supply and demand, but by computer programs chasing each other in an endless computer game where traditional hedgers are nothing more than cannon fodder subject to unfair trade practices never before seen in this magnitude."
The grain markets suffered from the same problem as the cotton markets, noted Diana Klemme, with the Grain Service Corporation. "If we distill everything down to one issue it has to do with the ability to finance these markets. There would be new crop bids and 2009 crop bids aplenty in every commodity if the elevators, grain companies and everybody else up and down the chain could feel confident that they could meet their margin calls.
"But if you don't have the credit lines or you're afraid the credit line won't be there, you don't dare go down that road. Then the bids disappear. The farmers are at a disadvantage because their input costs and land costs go up and they can't market cash grain."
Tom Buis, president of the National Farmers Union, said, "We began raising concerns in March after hearing from a number of producers who were being shut out of forward contracting their grain by local elevators and co-ops that had exceeded their credit limits to meet margin calls.
"Input costs have tripled over the last two years. If a farmer cannot forward price these commodities at higher prices, we got a train wreck coming that's going to be greater than any we've ever seen.
"For those who say that everything is working right, I'm sorry, maybe I'm wasting my time here, but there are problems out there and it is incumbent upon us all to address them."
John Popp, with the Independent Bakers Association, says "removing 22 million acres from the food supply and putting it into fuel supply," is a big part of the problem. "We're not faced with the surplus problems of year's past. We now have a limited supply (of commodities) and we have a lot of dollars chasing a tight supply. It's time to take some of that Conservation Reserve Land and put it back into production. We're going to need more supply of tillable land."
Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Keenum said USDA's commodity loan programs have not experienced any negative effects – yet. "Because of high market prices, the adjusted world price for cotton, rice, grains and oilseeds are significantly above the loan rates. However, if market prices collapse, there could be significant impacts on program activity and government expenditures."
Index and commodity fund managers said their activity in the commodity markets is being unfairly portrayed. Bob Greer, with PIMCO, which manages an index-based commodity fund, noted that a long-only investment such as the PIMCO fund, "is assuming some price risk that producers and other interests in the commodity business would like to shed themselves of. There are now over 200,000 individual investors in this country who are offering to do exactly that.
"I don't think we can measure it, but they have reduced by their collective efforts the amount of risk premium that the commodity producer must pay as they mitigate their risk in these markets."
Charles Carey, with the CME GROUP, which operates the Chicago Board of Trade, acknowledged that the marketplace "is in a tough spot, particularly with the traditional risk managers, the elevators, the processors, the people who take on the inventory and are the short hedgers.
"One thing that we're going to have to put on the table is innovation.
Whether this is a shifting paradigm, or a one-time aberration, we're going to require more and better products to meet the needs of the marketplace. If we continue to innovate, we'll go a long way toward meeting the needs of the marketplace."
CFTC Commissioner Michael Dunn said the CFTC would look at suggestions offered at the forum, but finding answers won't be easy. "There is not a silver bullet or single solution to address the problems we are currently facing."
Lukken noted, "During such turbulent times, it is tempting to shoot first and ask questions later. But it is exactly at such moments that government must endeavor to be informed and proportional in its response. It is critical that we understand the problem fully so we can get it right and ensure that the cure is not worse than the disease."
The CFTC, which regulates futures contracts for agricultural commodities, was created in 1974 with the enactment of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Act.
e-mail: [email protected]


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WHAT: ARM has released its RealView® Embedded System Level (ESL) Application Programming Interface (API) specifications, which will enable 3rd parties to create models that plug-and-play in SystemC environments. Developed collaboratively with industry leaders such as Mentor Graphics and Synopsys, these interfaces are provided openly to the industry to enable designers and IP suppliers to develop C, C++ and SystemC models to a single set of interfaces.
The use of ESL design techniques, such as those supported in the RealView CREATE Family of ESL tools, show time-to-market advantages of up to 40% for SoC designers. The RealView ESL APIs will further enable tool and IP model design-chain support to enhance the ease of adoption for ESL solutions.
The RealView ESL APIs provide a foundation for stable, supported integration of transaction-based system simulation, debug and profiling. The simulation API is a single, protocol-generic interface that handles both detailed cycle-accurate and abstract instruction-accurate models.
WHEN: ARM RealView ESL APIs are freely downloadable today.
WHERE: http://www.arm.com/products/DevTools/RealViewESLAPIs.html
WHO: ARM designs the technology that lies at the heart of advanced digital products, from wireless, networking and consumer entertainment solutions to imaging, automotive, security and storage devices. ARM's comprehensive product offering includes 16/32-bit RISC microprocessors, data engines, 3D processors, digital libraries, embedded memories, peripherals, software and development tools, as well as analog functions and high-speed connectivity products. Combined with the company's broad Partner community, they provide a total system solution that offers a fast, reliable path to market for leading electronics companies. More information on ARM is available at http://www.arm.com .
ARM and RealView are registered trademarks of ARM Limited. All other brands or product names are the property of their respective holders. "ARM" is used to represent ARM Holdings plc; its operating company ARM Limited; and the regional subsidiaries ARM INC.; ARM KK; ARM Korea Ltd.; ARM Taiwan; ARM France SAS; ARM Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd.; ARM Belgium N.V.; AXYS Design Automation Inc.; AXYS GmbH; ARM Embedded Technologies Pvt. Ltd.; and ARM Physical IP, Inc.Contact Details
Niall O'Malley
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+44 208 846 0740


text:
by Gwynn Kaitis
Photography Courtesy of SAMA
The Society of American Mosaic Artists (SAMA), an organization dedicated to educating, inspiring, and promoting excellence in the mosaic arts, has a new website. The site gives members the ability to connect with other mosaic artists, provides a gallery for members' work, and offers a place to obtain greater knowledge of the mosaic art form.
This article was originally published on page 54 of the May/June 2012 issue of Glass Art.


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SYDNEY (AP) — Australia's government says North Korea is seeking to reopen its embassy in the nation's capital.
Foreign Minister Bob Carr said Wednesday that he has welcomed the request by Pyongyang. Carr told Australian Broadcasting Corp. it would give Australia the opportunity to express its concerns about what it views as North Korea's "catastrophic position on human rights."
North Korea closed its embassy in Canberra in 2008, citing financial reasons.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says a timeframe for the reopening of the embassy has not been set.
Australia has diplomatic ties with North Korea, though they are strained. Australia imposed targeted sanctions on North Korea in 2006 in response to Pyongyang's steps to develop atomic weapons.


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HITECH Business Associates Task Force Established by the Health Law Section
Last February's stimulus legislation included not only the promise of funding for electronic health records and related healthcare projects, but the most significant changes to health information privacy and security law since HIPAA. These changes affect not only healthcare organizations but also their business associates – including lawyers.
Under the new law, the Health Information Technology for Clinical and Economic Health (HITECH) Act, HIPAA regulatory jurisdiction has been extended to expressly include business associates. As of February 2010 business associates will be required to comply with the HIPAA security regulations and a number of other requirements, and every business associate contract will have to be amended to become consistent with the new law. One set of requirements, mandating security breach notification to individuals affected by unauthorized access to protected health information, will become effective September 23, 2009.
To help health lawyers and their clients address these daunting new compliance requirements the Health Law Section has established the HITECH Business Associates Task Force. The Task Force is charged with developing analyses, templates, forms and educational materials dealing with key HITECH business associates compliance issues. The work is being done through committees, including Security Compliance for Business Associates; Lawyers as Business Associates; Employer Plan Compliance; Security Breach Notification; and Business Associate Contract Provisions and Templates.
Work has begun already, and ABA members are welcome to volunteer. We're all affected, and this is our opportunity - and challenge – to help ourselves and our clients deal effectively with new compliance obligations many don't yet understand.
For information about participating in the Task Force, please contact Simeon Carson, Membership, Technology and Publication Specialist, at firstname.lastname@example.com or 312-988-5824.
The ABA Health eSource is distributed automatically to members of the ABA Health Law Section . Please feel free to forward it! Non-members may also sign up to receive the ABA Health eSource.


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As we start to head more heavily into free agency and the draft season, we wanted to start a series of posts that takes a look at the top five position players at each spot. Ed Valentine had a good idea with his series, so we're stealing a page from his work. So without further ado, we're going to starting piecing together lists of the top five prospects at each spot based on the Perfectly Coifed One's lists and then adding some consensus data (CBS, Fox, etc.) on round rankings.
Up first, the safeties.
Kenny Vaccaro- Texas - 6'1" 218 lbs (1st Round)
Matt Elam* - Florida - 5'10" 206 lbs (1st - 2nd Round)
Tony Jefferson* - Oklahoma - 5'10" 199 lbs (2nd Round)
Eric Reid* - LSU - 6'2" 208 lbs (2nd Round)
Phillip Thomas - Fresno State - 6'1" 215 lbs (2nd-3rd Round)
Jets Status: The Jets played two new free agent veterans at the spot last year and it was definitely an upgrade from 2011 and 2010. The wildly athletic LaRon Landry had a Pro Bowl season and Yeremiah Bell was a durable contributor as well for the team. The Jets drafted two younger players in Josh Bush and Antonio Allen in 2012 and of the two, Bush seemed to find a more natural fit. Bush is the coverage player, while Allen played a position in college that might approximate well to the "Big Nickel" role for the Jets should the team part ways with Eric Smith.
Analysis: Free safeties are much more prized than strong safeties in the modern NFL because of the need of safeties to so frequently defend the pass, whether from the safety spot or as an extra cornerback. For the first time in a few years, the safety class has a promising group of talented players that might go in the first three rounds. The top talent is Kenny Vaccaro, who played well in spite of the play of the Longhorns' defense. Vaccaro has protypical size and speed and has a penchant to be a playmaker. Elam is the younger brother of former Jet Abram Elam and is more set to be a strong safety type player. Elam might not have the prototypical size, but his vision and ability to read a play will make him a desirable player for a team in the NFL. Jefferson played at OU since his freshman year and was a huge contributor to the defense with 33 starts in his time with the team. Jefferson might lack some ideal size, but his versatility is his biggest strength. He can blitz, play the run, or cover very well. Eric Reid is an interesting prospect and some have said that he's a better player than Mark Barron was in last year's class ... but his biggest problem is his ability to read and diagnose a play. Because of this, Reid seems to be talked about as a solid second rounder at this point in the draft. Reid has the right size and can play well in coverage but has a tendency to not wrap up his tackles and to play a little over-aggressive, thereby taking himself out of a play. The last player, Phillip Thomas has not garnered the national attention he might deserve. Thomas broke his leg in 2011 which didn't help matters. Even so, Thomas is considered one of the nation's best playmakers and has a knack for committing turnovers in the air or on the ground. He's got prototypical size, but he's not as fast and will need to work on his agility to become a player that could stand out in this draft class.
Keep an Eye On ... : I think the Jets might be too high in the draft to pull the trigger on Vaccaro, and then unless they trade around they might not be in the right spot to land any of the other guys ... assuming Thomas doesn't impress with his Combine numbers, I could see the Jets calling Phillip Thomas's name at the top of the third round.