Here's what we learned following the Oscars: Jamie Foxx wants to Channing all over your Tatum.
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Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Japan PM won't 'tolerate' China island challenge
Saturday, 23 February, 2013
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Wedding Ring Flushed, Then Found A Week Later
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. ? We?ve all been there, a close call with something valuable falling down the drain or worse.
Recently Joe Meyers was on the receiving end of a fateful flush and a free falling wedding ring.
Joe and Angela Meyers have been happily married for four years, with a custom ring on Joe?s finger to prove it.
But a week ago he took that ring off to wash his hands and it took a dive into the now swirling waters of the toilet.
?I went to put it on and I either nicked my finger or I lost the grip and down it went, down the toilet,? said Meyers.
Like a scene from the movie Lord of the Rings, Meyers? ring was on it?s own course through the Grand Rapids sewer system.
?I didn?t know how she (his wife Angela) was going to react, so I was like, Ang?? She was like, what? I just flushed my ring down the toilet,? he said.
Angela responded, ?My first reaction was what?? Are you serious??
They couple?s own quest to retrieve the ring proved unsuccessful so they called the Grand Rapids sewer maintenance department.
Angela said the person who answered the phone kept her expectations in check, ?He goes, I don?t want to get your hopes up thinking I?m going to bring a ring to you.?
Adam Wohlfert said he was in the area when he heard about the Meyers? problem.
?A lot of time we will get calls from people losing their keys down a storm drain or a wallet,? said Wohlfert.
When Wohlfert heard about the job, he didn?t have much hope.
?It would be a matter of time before it ends up in a 48 inch sewer pipe and it?s just lost in a pile of dirt,? said Wohlfert.
But he did have an idea, ?We?ll block the outgoing pipe with that basket and the ring just kind of rides the flow.?
His plan worked. ?I shut the water off and sure enough there it is, just sitting right there.?
Wohlfert was able to get the ring back to it?s owner.
?I said here you go, he was very appreciative, very thankful and then I was on my way,? he said.
Angela said she was beyond thankful to get the ring back, ?He went down into the sewer to get a piece of metal that meant nothing to him.?
That would have been the end of this story until Angela finally realized exactly who brought the ring back.
?I said Adam Wohlfert? Oh my God.? That is a third cousin of mine,? said Angie.
Family aside, Meyers just wanted to say thank you to the city workers for the time they took just to look.
?I was really overwhelmed by that,? Angela said.? ?I just couldn?t believe what he did.?
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/wxmi-news/~3/H9eT1wSOUgw/
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Jennifer Lawrence, 'Silver Linings' Win Big At 2013 Indie Spirits
The 'Silver Linings Playbook' star's win was one of four awards the dramedy took home a day before the Oscars.
By MTV News Staff
Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and David O. Russel at the 2013 Film Independent Spirit Awards
Photo: Getty Images
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1702495/independent-spirit-awards-2013-winners.jhtml
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Amber Rose Shares Photo Of Son Sebastian With Dad Wiz Khalifa
Amber Rose Shares Photo Of Son Sebastian With Dad Wiz Khalifa
Proud new mom Amber Rose has shared the first photo of her newborn son, Sebastian “The Bash Taylor Thomaz, with her Twitter fans. The 29-year-old model posted a picture of her baby boy being cradled by his father, rapper Wiz Khalifa. Awww… Rose tweeted the photograph of her fiance early Friday morning, writing, “Best daddy ...
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Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/02/amber-rose-shares-photo-of-son-sebastian-with-dad-wiz-khalifa/
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Saturday, February 23, 2013
5 Time-Saving Social Media Tools for Small Businesses
Is your small business quite new to the market? Are you aware of the social networking, bookmarking and blogging sites? Are you aware how social media can push up your sales?
To find all the answers to the above question you need to have social media accounts. But to push the sales of your business you need to be registered in many sites, but how can you mange them in midst of your business? You need to feed them instant updates, regular blogs and that?s time consuming.
So, if there is a will, there is a way, and hence we are sharing with you some of the greatest social media tools to manage a number of social networking and bookmarking sites in a hassle free way.
TwitterFeed
Twitter and blogs are one of the powerful combination and their free online services TwitterFeed will help you to generate your blog updates to Twitter, Laconica, Ping.fm or HelloTxt. As soon as you sign up with the TwitterFeed, you have to connect your Twitter with TwitterFeed. Helps to provide you with a feed name and enter in the URL to the RSS blog feed.
TwitterFeed helps you to choose how often you need to Tweet and you can shorten the URL. If you are able to maintain multiple blogs, then you feed with additional blogs under the same TwitterFeed account.
FriendFeed
If you are starting your small business then you must be aware of some social networking tools, and FriendFeed is most common among them. It is used to share and discuss things with your friend, which you find online. This is just like other social media sites in which you find friend contacts within that service itself. At the same time, you can publish your FriendFeed to a number of other social networking sites like Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Posterous
A free online service, that helps to save ample of time for the regular bloggers. Posterous is able to update your feeds to multiple blogs and social networks, just you need to e-mail the post to [email?protected], attach the media or links along with your email. Posterous allows you to tag the person, you just need to mention the names in the subject of your e-mail, just use a special syntax header. As soon as you send an update, it is posted on your Posterous blog and the mini-feed gets published in other social networking sites. Posterous at present supports Twitter, TypePad, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr, WordPress, Xanga, Blogger, LiveJournal, and Movable Type.
Flock
A Mozilla powered social web browser is used to publish updates across million profiles and accounts. It is able to support number of social networking sites like Bebo, Gmail, Facebook, Digg, and others. You are able to operate specific social media features like Twitter updates and Facebook chat. In a single control panel, you are able to manage multiple social accounts. The built-in-blog editor enables to post your blog, helps in gathering RSS feeds, upload photos to the Flickr, or Tweet all from the Flock browser.
FriendBinder
It is a free online service that helps you top track your friend in one place or the other and post updates and replies directly from the Frienbinder. You can stream the updates and replies on multiple social sites and make them visible quite easily consuming less time.
The tools mentioned here are not only time-saving, but they are free. as your small business is having a low capital in the beginning, so these free tools will be of great help.
Author?s Bio: Mark Martinez, is writing on personal finance, small business ideas and marketing for over a decade. He is a frequent contributor to a number of reputed financial blogs. He is also the financial consultant in one of the reputed outsourced call centers that provides solutions to both small and mid-sized businesses.
Post Tags: apps, friendfeed, social media, tools
Source: http://socialwebtools.info/time-saving-social-media-tools/
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London Midland's "inadequate" service putting people's jobs and livelihoods at risk
London Midland's "inadequate" service putting people's jobs and livelihoods at risk
10:20am Friday 22nd February 2013 in Local
INCREASING delays and cancellations on London Midland services are causing significant detriment to economic productivity, a new independent survey by passengers shows.
The survey of over 300 London Midland commuters, including many from Redditch, revealed that two out of five commuters had been spoken to by their boss about their timekeeping, as a result of London Midland delays.
Recent figures show 40 per cent of all services were delayed in December and January, the worst since records began four years ago.
Joanne Ashford, one of the passengers responsible for the survey, said: ?Amidst difficult times for our economy, London Midland is putting people?s jobs and livelihoods at risk, and hindering national productivity.
?London Midland made repeated promises to improve its services by December 9, after the Prime Minister said the company was on ?a warning list? because of its unacceptable service.
?However, our research showed that only six per cent of respondents had experienced no delays since December 9.
?As paying passengers, we want to see the performance statistics London Midland is submitting to the government as a result of being on the ?warning list?, as well as a clear action plan on how they will improve the service. We have put up with a poor quality of service for long enough, and now London Midland must be held accountable.?
Karen Lumley, Redditch MP, and member of the Transport Select Committee (TSC), said: ?The results of this survey show London Midland?s failures are putting jobs at risk and damaging the economic prospects of commuters.
?In places such as Redditch, people are dependent on these services. Commuters are being asked to pay more and more, yet the service provided has worsened.
?I will continue to press the Department of Transport to ensure people have the service they pay for and rightly deserve.?
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Friday, February 22, 2013
Keeping Up With the Future: Risk Management for Rapid Technology Adoption
Everyone knows that protecting an organization's technology footprint has always been a delicate balancing act. Nowadays, literally everything about a given organization's technology portfolio is in a near-constant state of change; technologies change, usage changes, and the threat landscape changes.
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Rare southern mammoth remains found in Russia
MOSCOW, Feb 22 (Reuters) - The rare remains of a prehistoric species of southern mammoth, whose giant tusks stretched more than a metre long, have been uncovered in southern Russia, news agency Itar-Tass reported.
It is the eighth known find of a full skeleton of the gargantuan mammal ? which stood at an estimated height of 13.12 feet. Four have been found in Russia.
The mammoth was discovered when a cliff collapsed in the mountainous province of Kabardino-Balkaria in Russia's North Caucasus. Palaeontologists said the remote area is so full of the bones of prehistoric beasts that local highlanders have been collecting them for years.
"It is very likely that we are not only talking about a single skeleton, but a whole graveyard of prehistoric animals," Viktor Kotlyarov told Tass this week.
"Locals use some of the backbones as stools."
One of the largest beasts to roam Earth, the southern mammoth is thought to more closely resemble today's elephants than its furry northern cousin, the woolly mammoth. (Reporting By Alissa de Carbonnel, editing by Paul Casciato)
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2013. Click For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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Megan Fox Reunites With Michael Bay For 'Ninja Turtles'
'Transformers' star becomes first actor cast in Bay's reboot of 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.'
By Josh Wigler
Megan Fox
Photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1702393/megan-fox-ninja-turtles-michael-bay.jhtml
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Friday, February 15, 2013
Consumer sentiment improves in February on job outlook
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Consumer sentiment improved in February, buoyed by signs of increased hiring, though worries heightened about a decline in future income, a survey released on Friday showed.
The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's preliminary reading on the overall index of consumer sentiment rose to 76.3 from 73.8 in January, topping economists' forecasts of 74.8.
The barometer of current economic conditions rose to 88 from 85, while the gauge of consumer expectations rose to 68.7 from 66.6.
Households with incomes below $75,000 were among the most optimistic, "with expected gains in employment more than offsetting declines in after-tax incomes due to the end of the payroll tax cut," survey director Richard Curtin said in a statement.
U.S. employment grew modestly in January and job gains for the prior two months were larger than first reported.
However, expectations for inflation-adjusted incomes were more negative in early February than they were in 1980, when prices were increasing at double-digit rates, the survey showed.
That, Curtin said, was because "even the current low rate of inflation is dramatically higher than the zero growth rate expected for household income."
The most recent Labor Department data showed U.S. consumer prices rose 1.7 percent in the year to December.
One-year inflation expectations held steady at 3.3 percent, while the survey's five-to-10-year inflation outlook rose to 3.0 percent from 2.9 percent.
(Reporting By Steven C. Johnson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/consumer-sentiment-improves-feb-job-outlook-145724861--business.html
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Cellular renewal process may underlie benefits of omega fatty acids
Thursday, February 14, 2013
A search for genes that change their levels of expression in response to nutrient deprivation has uncovered potential clues to the mechanism underlying the health benefits of omega fatty acids. In the Feb. 15 issue of Genes & Development, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers describe finding that feeding omega-6 fatty acids to C. elegans roundworms or adding them to cultured human cells activates a cellular renewal process called autophagy, which may be deficient in several important diseases of aging. A process by which defective or worn-out cellular components and molecules are broken down for removal or recycling, autophagy is also activated in metabolically stressful situations, allowing cells to survive by self-digesting nonessential components.
"Enhanced autophagy implies improved clearance of old or damaged cellular components and a more efficient immune response," says Eyleen O'Rourke, PhD, of MGH Molecular Biology, lead author of the report. "It has been suggested that autophagy can extend lifespan by maintaining cellular function, and in humans a breakdown in autophagic function may involved in diseases including inflammatory bowel disease, Parkinson's disease, and in a more complex way in cancer and metabolic syndrome."
O'Rourke is a research fellow in the laboratory of MGH investigator Gary Ruvkun, PhD, whose team investigates the development, longevity and metabolism of C.elegans. Ruvkun and other researchers have discovered that simple mutations in genetic pathways conserved throughout evolution can double or triple the lifespan of C. elegans and that similar mutations in the corresponding mammalian pathways also regulate lifespan. Many of these mutations also make animals resistant to starvation, suggesting that common molecular mechanisms may underlie both response to nutrient deprivation and the regulation of lifespan.
To find these mechanisms O'Rourke searched genomic databases covering many types of animals for shared genes that respond to fasting by changing their expression. She found that expression of the C. elegans gene lipl-4 increases up to seven times in worms not given access to nutrients. A transgenic strain that constantly expresses elevated levels of lipl-4, even when given full access to food, was found to have increased levels of arachidonic acid (AA), an omega-6, and eicosapentanoic acid (EPA), an omega-3 fatty acid and to resist the effects of starvation.
Following the implication that omega fatty acids stimulate a process leading to starvation resistance, the researchers found that feeding AA and another omega-6 fatty acid, but not EPA, activated autophagy in non-transgenic C. elegans with full access to nutrients. Since activation of autophagy has been shown to increase lifespan in several genetic models, the authors tested the effect of omega-6 fatty acids on C. elegans lifespan and found that roundworms consuming a full normal diet supplemented with omega-6 fatty acids lived 20 to 25 percent longer than usual.
Since dietary supplementation with both omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids has been shown to prevent or improve several human health conditions, the researchers tested the response of cultured human cells to omega fatty acid supplementation. As in C. elegans, the human cells responded to supplementation with the omega-6 acids, but not to EPA, by activation of autophagy, measured by levels of marker proteins. That result suggests that omega-6 acids induce autophagy across the full range of multicellular animal species. The researchers then showed that the lifespan-increasing properties of omega-6 fatty acids in C. elegans depend on the presence of genes required for autophagy.
"Almost all the mechanisms of lifespan extension studied until now ? sterility, insulin insensitivity, and caloric restriction ? have been shown to depend on activation of autophagy," says O'Rourke. "Our finding that omega-6 supplementation activated roundworms' cellular response to fasting ? namely autophagy ? even though the worms were eating normally suggests that consumption of omega-6 fatty acids may provide the benefits of caloric restriction without the need to limit food consumption. It also suggests that the reported benefits of omega-6 acids could depend in part on activation of an evolutionarily ancient program for surviving food deprivation."
O'Rourke and her co-authors note that many investigators and clinicians believe that omega-6 fatty acids ? commonly found in meats, poultry and vegetable oils ? may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, despite epidemiologic evidence that omega-6 consumption actually reduces cardiovascular risks. "We hope that our findings ? made by investigating the cellular responses of a 1-millimeter roundworm ? will lead the scientific and medical community to look back at all the epidemiologic, basic and clinical research data and to study the effects of omega-6 fatty acids on multiple types of human cells and live animals in order to gain better knowledge on how balanced intake of these nutrients benefits human health," she says.
###
Massachusetts General Hospital: http://www.mgh.harvard.edu
Thanks to Massachusetts General Hospital for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126798/Cellular_renewal_process_may_underlie_benefits_of_omega_fatty_acids
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A husband, a wife and their quest for liver cancer treatments
Bart's granddaughter Bridget loves to see Bart fish. Says Barb Peluso: "She knows as long as Grandpa is fishing, he is OK!"
This is a love story.
Bart and Barb Peluso drive an RV on vacations. They enjoy spending time with family. In fact, Barb, a midwife, delivered some of their grandchildren. Bart, who turned 70 in December, over the past decade has built with one of his sons a successful Davie, Fla., marketing company called Everything Tradeshows.
?We?re just regular people,? Barb said.
About a year ago, while Bart and Barb visited the San Francisco area ?doing the wine country thing,? Barb said, Bart didn?t feel quite right. As time went by, he increasingly complained about pain in his gut. Barb thought it might be a kidney stone, and she sent him to an urologist, who ordered an MRI.
The images showed multiple masses on Bart?s liver. He had liver cancer.
The Pelusos looked at their options, namely treatments and transplant. But because Bart?s liver wasn?t as ravaged as someone with hepatitis, for example, he didn?t meet the criteria for a transplant.
?He doesn?t have a drinking history. He doesn?t have a drug history. He doesn?t have hepatitis,? Barb said. ?He was just a guy who had bad luck.?
Bart?s first step was interventional radiology, where ?spears? of radiation were shot directly at the largest tumor as a way of containing the cancer.
?You don?t survive liver cancer, you just try to keep it where it is,? Barb said.
Three treatments later ? with side effects like a rare radiation ulcer but little pain ? doctors spotted dead liver cancer cells. The treatments were working.
But because you can have only so much radiation, Barb said, Bart hasn?t received a fourth treatment.
Ron Leuty covers biotech, higher education and China for the San Francisco Business Times.
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Thursday, February 14, 2013
Wellness Carrots & Sticks
Health Incentives Cut Healthcare Costs
By Elizabeth Weinstein
At the Council on Foreign Relations, a non-profit think tank based in New York, getting employees to leave their desks, stretch, or even duck out for a quick lunch can be an uphill battle. So to get heart rates rising and competitive juices flowing among its highly educated workforce, the Council?s wellness team crafted a ?Stairwell Challenge.?
At each floor in the Council?s stairwells (six in New York and eight in the Washington, D.C. office) workers encounter an unmarked photo of a famous bridge, such as London?s Tower Bridge or the 16th century ?Stari Most? in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Next to the bridges are motivational statements like ?Walking down improves strength and muscles.? The stair climber who identifies the most bridges correctly can win prizes that range from a coffee gift card to fitness accessories.
This creative fitness challenge is just one element of an overall wellness strategy the 300-person organization uses to keep workers healthy and health care costs under control. Like a growing number of companies nationwide, it uses incentive-based programs like the stair challenge, personalized health care tools, and health and fitness resources and discounts to encourage employees to take a personal stake in their health and ultimately, their health care costs. It?s a strategy that?s paying off. Last year the Council?s overall health premiums declined a half percent?savings it passed on to employees. By contrast, annual premiums for employer-sponsored family health coverage rose 4 percent nationally in 2012, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey.
Incentives for wellness programs?
Using incentives?and sometimes?disincentives?to motivate employees to improve their health isn?t just a fad; it?s soon to be part of federal health law. Under a provision of the Affordable Care Act that goes into effect January 1, 2014,?employer health plans?that offer reward-based wellness programs will be able to discount up to 30 percent from employees? health benefit costs if they participate in a wellness program and/or meet specified health goals. The law gives the federal government the discretion to raise this amount up to 50 percent in the future. Employers seem to be getting the message. A?survey?of 1,800 organizations by human resources consulting firm Aon Hewitt found that the number of employers embracing wellness incentives programs increased to 54 percent in 2012, up from 49 percent two years earlier.
But employers must think beyond simply offering prizes to get employees motivated, something Arlington County, Virginia learned since starting its wellness program in 1994. Indeed, thinking creatively and preventatively about workplace wellness can net real results, says Katie Sweeney, Arlington County?s employee wellness manager.
?The programs that are most successful are group oriented and have a relatively short time frame ? they?re also the easiest to implement,? Sweeney says.
She points to Arlington?s ?Maintain, Don?t Gain? program around the holidays, which featured healthy cooking demonstrations and a simple box for employees to check to track weight gain from week to week. This month, Arlington kicks off its ?28-Day Yoga Challenge,? which encourages employees to reduce stress by taking free yoga workshops, trying yoga poses, and recording them in an online ?Feel Great Tracker.? At the end of the month, participants who tried a pose for 20 out of 28 days qualified for free yoga classes.
In past years, Arlington has held pedometer challenges and a ?HealthSmart Idol? competition where participants competed against each other to reach personal health goals.
Additionally, the county performs annual confidential health assessments and uses the resulting data to determine which wellness programs it offers.?In the past two years, Arlington has given employees a $40 one-time premium reduction for taking the voluntary assessment, but the county does not tie wellness program participation to ongoing premium reductions.?Wellness specialists visit worksites annually to take confidential blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol screenings, among other measures. Today, 95% of the county?s 3,800 employees know their blood pressure readings, Sweeney says. The combination of these programs has helped decrease the county?s health costs.?In fiscal year 2013, premiums for Arlington?s two health plans rose only 3% or?not at all?a substantial reduction from the 5 to 11 percent increases the county had seen in past years.
Real change takes time?
Though incentive-based wellness programs are growing in popularity, studies are still inconclusive about whether they work long term. A 2009 study by University of Pennsylvania researchers found that financial incentives got employees to stop smoking?and remain smoke free?up to 18 months after they started the study. Still, another 2011 study by Carnegie Mellon researchers of overweight veterans found that financial incentives resulted in significant weight loss at first, but that participants regained weight after the intervention. And enticing workers with financial rewards worth more than $450 has little additional effect on participation rates in wellness programs, according to research by a St. Paul, Minnesota health management company.
?You have to change behavior intrinsically, and changing it over time can take years,? says Stephen Musgrave, president of the Wellness Council of Northeast Ohio. ?It?s not accomplished by the whip?the whip is to be used only once you get your employees? attention.?
As employers find their way in developing the most effective wellness programs for their workers, the mind-body connection to overall health is gaining prominence in programming, says Robert Duggan, author of ?Breaking the Iron Triangle: Reducing Health-Care Costs in Corporate America.?? Duggan, an acupuncturist and co-founder of the Tai Sophia Institute in Laurel, Md., advises companies nationwide on wellness programs.
He says corporations are shifting their health care strategy from one that attends to workers? piecemeal health problems to models that emphasize wellness and disease prevention.? That means workers can expect more in-house yoga classes, acupuncture, massage, and an emphasis on modest behavioral changes ? like drinking more water and walking. Learning about how the body works and how it generates its aches and pains can make a significant dent in the $8,000 annually companies spend per employee on health care.
?We have a fair amount of research over the years showing that if you treat somebody and their symptoms go away, they?re not satisfied,? Duggan says. ?Satisfaction is correlated when a patient says ?I?ve learned how to control my symptoms.??
______________________________________________
Elizabeth Weinstein is an Alexandria, Virginia-based journalist.
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Source: http://fruitguys.com/almanac/2013/02/13/wellness-carrots-sticks
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Buffett's Berkshire in $23 billion deal to buy Heinz
Two iconic brands -- legendary investor Warren Buffett and 125-year-old ketchup-maker H.J. Heinz -- are coming together in the largest deal ever in the food industry's history.
Heinz confirmed Thursday that it agreed to be acquired by Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital Management for $72.50 a share, or $23.3 billion. Including debt, the deal is valued at $28 billion. The deal was first announced on CNBC.
Berkshire and and 3G will each put up $4.4 billion in equity for the deal, along with debt financing from JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Berkshire is also buying $8 billion of preferred stock that pays 9 percent.
The deal is an unusual one for Buffett since he is partnering with 3G, a Brazilian investment firm that owns a majority stake in Burger King. Typically, Buffett prefers to make his acquisitions outright. However, the billionaire investor told CNBC that he was approached with the idea for the deal in December, and thought it was "my kind of deal."
"This is my kind of deal and my kind of partner," he added. "Heinz is our kind of company with fantastic brands." Buffett added, "but I have a file on Heinz that goes back to 1980."
3G founder Jorge Paulo Lemann approached Buffett in mid-December about a possible deal, and both approached William Johnson, Heinz's chairman, president and CEO, soon after. The first offer was made in mid-January.
According to Buffett, 3G will be the primary supervisor Heinz's operations after the deal closes. Other 3G founders include Carlos Alberto Sicupira, Marcel Hermann Telles, Roberto Thompson Motta, and Alex Behring. "We look forward to partnering with Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital, both greatly respected investors, in what will be an exciting new chapter in the history of Heinz," Johnson said in a statement.
Buffett noted that the Heinz deal leaves Berkshire with enough cash on hand to bag another "elephant."
More from CNBC: Buffett says he's 'ready for another elephant'
Berkshire and 3G were both advised by Lazard, JPMorgan, and Wells Fargo. 3G's legal advisor was Kirkland & Ellis and Berkshire was advised by Munger, Tolles & Olson.
Heinz was advised by Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, Centerview Partners, and Davis Polk & Wardwell.
Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/warren-buffetts-berkshire-23-billion-deal-buy-heinz-1C8369091
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Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Scientists questioning priorities of breast cancer research | WGN-TV
A new report by scientists, government officials and patient advocates suggests too little of the money the government spends on breast cancer research goes toward finding environmental causes of the disease and ways to prevent it.
The report says that of the federal agencies that spent the most on breast cancer, only about ten percent of recent research involved the environment and prevention.
Environmental factors include radiation, pesticides, industrial pollutants, consumer products and drugs.
Source: http://wgntv.com/2013/02/12/scientists-questioning-priorities-of-breast-cancer-research/
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Tennessee school, Union University, to reopen Wednesday after closing due to ?stomach virus? outbreak
The private, Christian university located in ?Jackson, Tennessee will reopen tomorrow morning for classes after closing Monday in an attempt to control and contain an outbreak of a gastrointestinal infection that has sickened scores, according to a Union University news release.
Union President David S. Dockery said the school was closed?after consultation with health care professionals.??The conventional wisdom is that if we can limit further spread of the illness immediately, we can address these health concerns fairly quickly?, Dockery said.
All undergraduate and graduate classes plus the school?s library, wellness center and the Barefoot?s Joe coffee shop were closed due to the outbreak.
Union Director of News and Media Relations Tim Ellsworth said Monday?said about?300?students are currently sick. He said the illness is a type of stomach virus that will be confirmed in the next few days, according to a Jackson Sun report Monday.
Ellsworth said about 1,100 students live on campus at Union. A majority of the students who are sick live on campus, he said.
This is not totally unusual according to Dockery. ?Several Jackson-area schools took similar steps when faced with widespread illness that resulted in absences prior to Christmas break,? Dockery continued. ?They were able to conduct classes again very soon following the brief closing of the school.?
Union advised students this afternoon that if they?are still sick, they should continue to seek care and make every effort to stay away from campus activities.
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Canada cans net surveillance law
Canada?s Conservative government has decided not to proceed with its attempt to pass the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act, also known as Bill-C30, after community opposition to the proposed law?s surveillance measures.
The Bill (PDF) describes its purpose as follows:
?The purpose of this Act is to ensure that telecommunications service providers have the capability to enable national security and law enforcement agencies to exercise their authority to intercept communications and to require telecommunications service providers to provide subscriber and other information, without unreasonably impairing the privacy of individuals, the provision of telecommunications services to Canadians or the competitiveness of the Canadian telecommunications industry.?
And yes, that does translate as ?This law means Police and spooks can require carriers and ISPs to hand over details about their customers, and that they do online or on the phone.? The Bill even required ?telecommunications service providers? to decrypt data they held.
Various Canadian groups opposed the Bill on privacy and civil liberties grounds, not least because the Bill makes warrantless interceptions possible. Openmedia.ca created a website, stopspying.ca, gathered more than 100,000 ?signatures? to a virtual petition opposing the bill.
Conservative politicians retorted that opposing the bill was tantamount to opening the online floodgates to smut-peddlers, but opponents asked the public to see beyond the Bill?s name, arguing it disguised its true intentions.
Public anger seems to have won out, with Canadian public television reporting Justice Minister Rob Nicholson as saying ?We will not be proceeding with Bill C-30 and any attempts that we will continue to have to modernize the Criminal Code will not contain the measures contained in C-30, including the warrantless mandatory disclosure of basic subscriber information or the requirement for telecommunications service providers to build intercept capability within their systems.?
All of which looks like a victory for the forces of non-invasive online regulation.
Openmedia, however, isn?t convinced the bill won?t be back, as the less-than-triumphal tweet below shows:
?
Source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/13/canada_cans_net_surveillance_law/
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Vascular brain injury greater risk factor than amyloid plaques in cognitive aging
Feb. 11, 2013 ? Vascular brain injury from conditions such as high blood pressure and stroke are greater risk factors for cognitive impairment among non-demented older people than is the deposition of the amyloid plaques in the brain that long have been implicated in conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, a study by researchers at the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at UC Davis has found.
Published online February 11 in JAMA Neurology (formerly Archives of Neurology), the study found that vascular brain injury had by far the greatest influence across a range of cognitive domains, including higher-level thinking and the forgetfulness of mild cognitive decline.
The researchers also sought to determine whether there was a correlation between vascular brain injury and the deposition of beta amyloid (??) plaques, thought to be an early and important marker of Alzheimer's disease, said Bruce Reed, associate director of the UC Davis Alzheimer's Disease Research Center in Martinez, Calif. They also sought to decipher what effect each has on memory and executive functioning.
"We looked at two questions," said Reed, professor in the Department of Neurology at UC Davis. "The first question was whether those two pathologies correlate to each other, and the simple answer is 'no.' Earlier research, conducted in animals, has suggested that having a stroke causes more beta amyloid deposition in the brain. If that were the case, people who had more vascular brain injury should have higher levels of beta amyloid. We found no evidence to support that."
"The second," Reed continued, "was whether higher levels of cerebrovascular disease or amyloid plaques have a greater impact on cognitive function in older, non-demented adults. Half of the study participants had abnormal levels of beta amyloid and half vascular brain injury, or infarcts. It was really very clear that the amyloid had very little effect, but the vascular brain injury had distinctly negative effects."
"The more vascular brain injury the participants had, the worse their memory and the worse their executive function -- their ability to organize and problem solve," Reed said.
The research was conducted in 61 male and female study participants who ranged in age from 65 to 90 years old, with an average age of 78. Thirty of the participants were clinically "normal," 24 were cognitively impaired and seven were diagnosed with dementia, based on cognitive testing. The participants had been recruited from Northern California between 2007 to 2012.
The study participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) ? to measure vascular brain injury ? and positron emission tomography (PET) scans to measure beta amyloid deposition: markers of the two most common pathologies that affect the aging brain. Vascular brain injury appears as brain infarcts and "white matter hyperintensities" in MRI scans, areas of the brain that appear bright white.
The study found that both memory and executive function correlated negatively with brain infarcts, especially infarcts in cortical and sub-cortical gray matter. Although infarcts were common in this group, the infarcts varied greatly in size and location, and many had been clinically silent. The level of amyloid in the brain did not correlate with either changes in memory or executive function, and there was no evidence that amyloid interacted with infarcts to impair thinking.
Reed said the study is important because there's an enormous amount of interest in detecting Alzheimer's disease at its earliest point, before an individual exhibits clinical symptoms. It's possible to conduct a brain scan and detect beta amyloid in the brain, and that is a very new development, he said.
"The use of this diagnostic tool will become reasonably widely available within the next couple of years, so doctors will be able to detect whether an older person has abnormal levels of beta amyloid in the brain. So it's very important to understand the meaning of a finding of beta amyloid deposition," Reed said.
"What this study says is that doctors should think about this in a little more complicated way. They should not forget about cerebrovascular disease, which is also very common in this age group and could also cause cognitive problems. Even if a person has amyloid plaques, those plaques may not be the cause of their mild cognitive symptoms."
Other study authors include Natalie Marchant of UC Berkeley and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging; Roxana Dhada and William Jagust of UC Berkeley; Charles DeCarli and Dan Mungas of UC Davis; Stephen Kriger and Micheal Weiner of UC San Francisco and Nerses Sanossian, Wendy Mack and Helena Chui of the University of Southern California.
The research was supported by grants number AG012435, AG00266 and AG10129 from the National Institutes of Health.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Davis Health System.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Natalie L. Marchant et al. The Aging Brain and Cognition: Contribution of Vascular Injury and A? to Mild Cognitive. JAMA Neurology, 2013 DOI: 10.1001/2013.jamaneurol.405
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/DKHFWVUYivk/130211162335.htm
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Huskers an early co-leader for Florida QB
February 12, 2013
Huskers an early co-leader for Florida QBThe Nebraska coaches have landed potential difference makers at quarterback in each of their past two recruiting classes. And the search has already begun for the signal caller who will sign with the Huskers' 2014 class. A Sunshine State prospect recently received his verbal offer from NU.
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Monday, February 11, 2013
Medical Supply Companies Atlanta wholesale medical supplies ...
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Source: http://kaitamnavatur.blogspot.com/2013/02/medical-supply-companies-atlanta.html
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Video: Blizzard snarls travel in Northeast
>>> beyond the roads, today was a travel nightmare in the new york area for anyone who had planned to fly or take the train. nbc's rehema ellis is at laguardia airport with more on that. rehema, good evening to you.
>> reporter: good evening, lester. new york airports are getting back to the business of flying. but air travel is still far from normal tonight. there were more than 1800 cancellations at new york airports alone over the past few days, because of the storm. at one laguardia airport , about 20 stranded passengers spent the night sleeping on cots provided by the airlines. a few others camped out on the floor. the airport was virtually deserted. today, crews worked to dig out from under nearly a foot of snow at laguardia to get some flights operating again. amtrak passengers traveling between new york and boston, however, had no luck at all. as train service on that route was shut down again today. passengers we spoke to have been extremely patient and extremely understanding about all this. many of them saying it's because they had plenty of warning about what to expect. lester?
Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/50756942/
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Sunday, February 10, 2013
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Saturday, February 9, 2013
Twitter searches to finally include tweets older than one week
Twitter has developed a way to bring up tweets older than a week in searches, potentially putting an end to a common frustration among users.
Up until now, searches conducted on the Twitter website (or through Twitter apps) brought up only recent tweets, making it difficult for users to discover anything that was posted more than a week ago. But on Thursday, Paul Burstein, a Twitter engineer working on the service's search infrastructure, explained in a post on the official Twitter blog that changes to searchs will be rolled out "over the coming days."
Burstein adds that search results will still only "represent a fairly small percentage of total tweets ever sent," but that Twitter will be "steadily increasing this percentage over time." (Perhaps one day we'll be able to search every tweet ever posted? One can only hope.)
The move to expand the search feature follows the announcement of a tool allowing users to download their full Twitter archive. Access to this tool began gradually rolling out at the end of 2012.
Want more tech news or interesting links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.
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Gove's new exam plans will not help RE, says CES - Catholic Herald
Michael Gove addresses the House of Commons PA Photos
The Catholic Education Service (CES) for England and Wales has reiterated concerns that Religious Education will remain relegated among academic subjects, after plans to introduce the English Baccalaureate were scrapped yesterday.
Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, had planned to introduce an English Baccalaurate Certificate (EBC) for five core subjects, excluding Religious Education, but it was announced yesterday that plans for the EBC would not proceed after all.
A statement from the CES said that under new proposals RE would still not be given sufficient importance. It said that the Catholic Education Service was ?disappointed that Religious Education remains effectively relegated to outside the ?core? under these proposals when it is at the very heart of the curriculum in every one of our more than 2,000 schools in England.?
It continued: ?GCSE RE is a valuable and worthwhile subject, but it could be better, and we hope to be able to work with Ofqual and Examination Boards to ensure that it becomes so.?
The statement added: ?We welcome the announcement today by the Secretary of State for Education concerning the reform of qualifications at 16. It is clear that the government?s own consultation regarding examination reform showed broad consensus, accepting the need for reform yet rejecting the initial proposals for that reform. That the Secretary of State proposes to reform exams ?with the help of school and university leaders? is particularly welcome. Working closely with education professionals will help ensure that any reform will enjoy the widest possible support and confidence.?
Source: http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2013/02/08/goves-new-exam-plans-will-not-help-re-says-ces/
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Friday, February 8, 2013
Girl band splits up amid Muslim cleric's fatwa, threats
AFP - Getty Images, file
Kashmir's first all-girl rock band Pragaash perform at the annual 'Battle of the Bands' in Srinagar on Dec. 23, 2012.
EDITOR'S NOTE: NBC News obscured the faces in this photo to protect the band members' identities because of safety concerns.
By Ian Johnston, Staff Writer, NBC News
The only all-girl band in India?s troubled Kashmir region has split up after a controversial Muslim cleric issued a fatwa against them.
However, the cleric -- Grand Mufti Bashiruddin Ahmad ? is now facing a backlash with a leading human-rights lawyer planning to take him to court over his claim that the band, Pragaash, was un-Islamic and other pronouncements.
After the fatwa, the three teenage girls received online threats prompting police to arrest three people, according to several reports including one by BBC News.
Omar Abdullah, chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, said on Twitter that he was ?glad? that arrests had been made.
In an interview with India?s NDTV, a band member named as Aneeka, who is still in high school, insisted that ?nothing has forced us to quit.?
?We quit for the happiness of our people. As the grand mufti said, it is un-Islamic ... that?s why we quit,? she said. NDTV pixilated her face when the interview was broadcast.
?Mufti ? is a saint. He knows about our religion and must be respected,? Aneeka added.
'They feel very harassed'
However, for human rights lawyer Parvez Imroz, of the Jammu & Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, the fatwa against Pragaash was the last straw and he is now planning to take Ahmad to court.
?The lives of these girls were threatened. They feel very harassed,? he said.
Imroz, who is Muslim, said the grand mufti had appointed himself to the role and set up his own ?supreme court.?
Ahmad's comments about Pragaash were the latest in a number of ?very controversial? fatwas over the last few years, Imroz said, including calling for Americans to leave Kashmir and for Christians to appear in his court.
?We are filing the case because he?s claiming to be some ?grand mufti.? Under no law is there any such title,? the lawyer said. ?Kashmir is very tolerant. Music ? is part of our culture. These girls, they have a right to do it, but I?m telling you we are raising the bigger question about this institution in the society, this self-appointed priest and mufti who has been giving a very reactionary ? view of Islam.?
Imroz said he wanted the court to rule that Ahmad had no legal standing, describing him as a ?non-entity.?
Kashmir is claimed by India and Pakistan, which have fought two wars over the region. It is the only state in India where the majority of people are Muslims.
In comments posted on NDTV?s website, some expressed their anger at the criticism of the band.
?We're heading in prehistoric era thanks to morons,? one said.
?It's really disheartening to see such narrow views are still being propagated in the country,? another added.
Related:
India alleges Pakistan cross-border attack was 'pre-planned,' warns of retaliation
Nuclear-armed rivals trade barbs over 'barbaric' cross-border attacks
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No more Saturday mail? Postal Service plans cuts
Mail carrier Bruce Nicklay walks along East Third Street in Winona, Minn., delivering letters to homes Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013. The U.S. Postal Service will stop delivering mail on Saturdays but continue to deliver packages six days a week under a plan aimed at saving about $2 billion annually, the financially struggling agency says. (AP Photo/Winona Daily News, Andrew Link)
Mail carrier Bruce Nicklay walks along East Third Street in Winona, Minn., delivering letters to homes Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013. The U.S. Postal Service will stop delivering mail on Saturdays but continue to deliver packages six days a week under a plan aimed at saving about $2 billion annually, the financially struggling agency says. (AP Photo/Winona Daily News, Andrew Link)
Postmaster General and CEO Patrick R. Donahoe speaks during a news conference at U.S. Postal Service headquarters on Wednesday Feb. 6, 2013 in Washington. The financially struggling U.S. Postal Service says it will stop delivering mail on Saturdays but continue to disburse packages six days a week. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Charts show U.S. Postal Service operating losses and total mail volume since
In this Saturday Dec. 19, 2009 file photo, U. S. Post Office letter carrier Tim Bell delivers the mail during a snow storm in Havertown, Pa. The financially struggling U.S. Postal Service says it will stop delivering mail on Saturdays but continue to deliver packages six days a week under a plan aimed at saving about $2 billion a year. In an announcement scheduled for later Wednesday Feb. 6, 2013, the service is expected to say the Saturday mail cutback would begin in August. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma)
Postmaster General and CEO Patrick R. Donahoe speaks during a news conference at U.S. Postal Service headquarters on Wednesday Feb. 6, 2013 in Washington. The financially struggling U.S. Postal Service says it will stop delivering mail on Saturdays but continue to disburse packages six days a week. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? We could soon be seeing the end of Saturday mail delivery.
The Postal Service has announced plans to cut back to five-day-a-week deliveries for everything except packages to stem its financial losses in a world where the Internet has dramatically altered how we communicate and pay our bills.
"Our financial condition is urgent," Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe declared Wednesday.
The way the Postal Service describes it, the move allows the service to change with the times in hopes of eventually operating in the black.
But efforts by the service to make cutbacks before have been stymied by Congress.
Some questions and answers about the Postal Service plan:
___
Q: What is the plan and when would it take effect?
A: Beginning in early August, mail would be delivered to homes and businesses only from Monday through Friday but would still be delivered to post office boxes on Saturdays.
Post offices now open on Saturdays would remain open and delivery of packages of all sizes would continue six days a week.
Packages have been a bright spot for the agency. Package delivery has increased by 14 percent since 2010, officials said, while the delivery of letters and other mail has plummeted.
___
Q: Why has the Postal Service decided to cut back its delivery schedule?
A: Money.
The Postal Service suffered a $15.9 billion loss in the past budget year and has forecast more red ink in 2013. It says it expects to save $2 billion annually with the Saturday cutback. The Postal Service, an agency independent of government, does not receive tax money for its operations but is subject to congressional control over major aspects.
The majority of the service's red ink comes from a 2006 law forcing it to pay about $5.5 billion a year into future retiree health benefits, something no other agency does. Without that payment ? $11.1 billion in a two-year installment last year ? and related labor expenses, the mail agency sustained an operating loss of $2.4 billion for the past fiscal year, lower than the previous year.
The Postal Service is in the midst of a major restructuring throughout its retail, delivery and mail-processing operations. Since 2006, it has cut annual costs by about $15 billion, reduced the size of its career workforce by 193,000, or 28 percent, and consolidated more than 200 mail-processing locations, officials say.
____
Q: What has been the reaction to the plan?
A: It has been met with vigorous objections from farmers, the letter carriers' union and plenty of lawmakers.
Alaska Democratic Sen. Mark Begich called it "bad news for Alaskans and small business owners," who he said need timely delivery to rural areas.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she was disappointed, questioned the savings estimate and worried that the loss of Saturday service might drive customers away.
"The Postal Service is the linchpin of a $1 trillion mailing and mail-related industry that employs more than 8 million Americans in fields as diverse as direct mail, printing, catalog companies, magazine and newspaper publishing and paper manufacturing," she said. "A healthy Postal Service is not just important to postal customers but also to our national economy."
Despite that opposition, the Postal Service clearly thinks it has a majority of the American public on its side. The service's market research indicates that nearly 7 in 10 people support the switch as a way to reduce costs, Donahoe said.
And two Republican lawmakers said they had sent a letter to leaders of the House and Senate in support of the elimination of Saturday mail. It is "common-sense reform," wrote Rep. Darrell Issa of California, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
____
Q: Can the Postal Service really make this change?
A: It thinks so. Over the past several years, the Postal Service has advocated shifting to a five-day delivery schedule for mail and packages ? and it repeatedly but unsuccessfully has appealed to Congress to approve the move.
The proposed change is based on what appears to be a legal loophole. Congress has long included a ban on five-day-only delivery in its spending bills, but because the federal government is now operating under a temporary spending measure rather than an appropriations bill, the Postal Service's Donahoe says it's the agency's interpretation that it can make the change itself.
"This is not like a 'gotcha' or anything like that," he said. The agency essentially wants Congress to keep the ban out of any new spending bill after the temporary measure expires March 27.
Might Congress try to block the idea?
"Let's see what happens," Donahoe said. "I can't speak for Congress."
___
Q. What do regular mail customers think?
A. Reaction has been mixed, with some people criticizing the decision and others saying it would have little or no impact on them.
"It is bad news, a bad decision, let me tell you," Konstantine Christov, 73, said while riding the El train in Chicago. "You can read the mail much more quietly on Saturday. I get news from my bank. I can plan for next week. If I need to pay my bills I have more time to do it."
"The mail isn't that important to me anymore. ... I don't sit around waiting for it to come," said James Valentine, the owner of an antiques shop in Toledo, Ohio. "It's a sign of the times. ... It's not like anyone writes letters anymore."
___
Associated Press writers Jennifer C. Kerr and Nedra Pickler, researcher Monika Mathur and broadcast correspondent Jerry Bodlander in Washington and AP writer David Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report.
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Hacker gains access to Bush family emails, photos
HOUSTON (AP) ? Turns out even former presidents can fall prey to hackers.
A mysterious email hacker apparently accessed private photos and messages sent between members of the Bush family, including both retired commanders in chief.
The Secret Service is investigating the breach, which appeared to yield little more than a few snapshots and some family discussions. But the incident illustrated how easily hackers can pry into private lives, even those of one of the nation's most prominent and closely guarded political clans.
The Smoking Gun website displayed photos it said came from the hacker, including one that purported to show the elder Bush during his recent stay in a Houston hospital, where the 88-year-old spent almost two months undergoing treatment for complications from a bronchial infection.
The website said the hacker, who went by the online moniker "Guccifer," gained access to the material through Bush family members and friends.
That could have made George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush vulnerable, even if they have the finest security that technology can provide. A friend or relative who clicked on a deceptive link or unwittingly downloaded a suspicious program might accidentally have exposed correspondence involving the former presidents.
"We can't control what our friends do," said Dan Wallach, manager of Rice University's computer security lab and a computer science professor at the Houston school. "If my friends post a photo of me on Facebook, I can untag myself, but I can't delete it. It's not my photo. And that's just a general-purpose problem."
Reached by email, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush called the hacking "outrageous."
The rest of the family stayed quiet.
"There's a criminal investigation and, as such, there's nothing else we can say," said Jim McGrath, a spokesman for George H.W. Bush in Houston.
Freddy Ford, a spokesman for George W. Bush, who has a home in Dallas, declined to comment.
Free email accounts from commercial providers are especially vulnerable to hackers who exploit easy-to-use features to reset email passwords. Many passwords can be reset by a hacker who discovers, for example, the birth year of a person's mother, a father's middle name or the name of a favorite pet.
That's what happened to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in 2008, when she was the Republican vice presidential candidate.
"That's the first thing I thought of," said Tyler Moore, an assistant professor of computer science at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "The key here is when you're famous or a well-known person or celebrity, there's not a lot you can do if you're targeted."
A Tennessee college student named David Kernell was convicted two years later on federal charges.
Last year, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's free Microsoft Hotmail account was hacked after The Associated Press revealed that he and some top aides had used private email accounts to conduct state business at times when Romney was governor of Massachusetts.
The anonymous hacker claimed to have guessed the answer to a security question about Romney's favorite pet to gain access to the account and change the password.
Email security is "a constant concern" in presidential politics, Romney senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said Friday.
"What we learned is that no matter how secure you make your system, there is someone out there spending every waking minute trying to subvert it," he said.
Last year, a group of hackers known as the D33D Company published a list of what it said were usernames and passwords for more than 450,000 email accounts, including more than 25,000 AOL accounts. It was not immediately clear whether the Bush family's hacked AOL accounts were among these.
On the Smoking Gun site, the word "Guccifer" was plastered across the photos in translucent, neon blue print. The site said "Guccifer" is a self-described veteran hacker who has long been in the government's sights.
Whoever targeted the Bush family was probably not a "high-tech nation-state adversary," Wallach said. "If it were, you wouldn't see their tracks. ... It's probably somebody who thought they could make a quick buck."
Unlike the email scams known as phishing that attempt to fool users into giving up bank account information and passwords, more sophisticated attempts called spear-phishing go after specific individuals or institutions, Wallach said.
According to the FBI, spear-phishing sends legitimate-looking emails that offer plausible explanations for requesting personal data, along with a link. Clicking on the link can download malware that gives the hacker access to things like address lists.
"It's hard to know what kind of miscreant we're dealing with here," Moore said. "It could be someone trying to seek attention to show they can do it. You target a political figure, you're trying to show, 'Nobody is above what we can do.'"
Guccifer could be outside the U.S., making things more complicated for authorities in pursuit, Moore said.
"Of all the famous people to pick on," he added. "I wouldn't pick on someone who has an entire law enforcement branch dedicated to protecting them."
___
Associated Press writers Diana Heidgerd and Jamie Stengle in Dallas, Ted Bridis in Washington, Gary Fineout in Tallahassee, Fla., and Steve Peoples in Boston contributed to this story.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/hacker-gains-access-bush-family-emails-photos-171302105.html
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