Oh, and you updated the rules ^^ I like the number after six the best~
EDIT: Annnnd, Boy 3. ^_^ Sorry it took me so long to add him, I wanted to read... and re-read.. and re-read again, their little bio things ^^ lol
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/Ec6-LaxjZ24/viewtopic.php
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By Kim Dixon
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Wednesday will issue a greatest hits list of ideas to raise $580 billion in new tax revenues over a decade, including a minimum tax on the wealthy and putting an end to some corporate tax breaks, administration officials said.
The president's 2014 budget proposal, expected to be released in full later on Wednesday, has no chance of moving forward in the divided U.S. Congress. But as lawmakers consider a revamp of the tax code and face a deadline on the government's debt limit this summer, some Obama measures could play a role.
The bid will revive Obama's offer last year to Republican House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner during the negotiations to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff of looming tax hikes and spending cuts.
Senior administration official previewed the budget on condition of anonymity to reporters ahead of the release.
Obama will officially propose a new "Buffett tax" named for investor Warren Buffett that phases in a minimum 30 percent tax rate on household income above $1 million, the advisors said.
He had earlier backed the idea but not included it in his budget proposals.
The White House also will bring back a long-running proposal to cap itemized deductions and exemptions among wealthier taxpayers - starting at household income of roughly $250,000.
The cap would apply to the same list of deductions in years past, officials said. That includes the charitable tax break and the exemption for municipal bond interest.
Obama is not seeking to raise individual tax rates as he has in prior budgets, according to a White House document. For years, he sought to raise rates on household income above $250,000.
The fiscal cliff deal raised rates for households earning more than $450,000 a year, from 35 percent to 39.6 percent.
Also in the budget is ending the tax break for "carried interest" profits earned by fund managers like those who run private equity and other investment firms, officials said.
Administration officials also said to expect the White House to pitch familiar ideas to limit energy tax breaks, curb tax shifting to low-tax countries like the Cayman Islands, and a bid to end a tax break for corporate jets.
Obama proposes cutting the top U.S. corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 35 percent, now the highest in the industrialized world.
Obama has said that he backs a full-scale revamp of the entire tax code, both individual and corporate, and a White House summary called the budget proposals a "down payment."
Top tax-writers in Congress also back a tax rewrite, but the process is fraught with disagreement over how to streamline the code and whether to raise new revenue in the process.
(Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Eric Walsh)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-pitch-buffett-tax-killing-corporate-tax-breaks-100313227--sector.html
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Though Sens, Joe Manchin (R) of W. Va and Pat Toomey (R) of Penn. have reached a deal on background checks to take form as an amendment to the Senate gun control bill, a key piece of the White House?s gun control plan is at risk of failure ?? specifically, the process by which law enforcement agencies trace the original source of a gun sale during criminal investigations. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is using 1960s era technology to manage a 21st century problem. As gun traces increase under stepped up enforcement, the system must be updated in order to keep up.
The ATF?s Firearms Tracing System is used to determine the ?chain of custody? of confiscated weapons by matching serial numbers and other descriptive information to manufacturer and points-of-sale records. That information is used by investigators to link guns to suspects and to uncover potential trafficking.
You might think the feds would employ state-of-the-art computers to deliver the gun tracing information to police investigators within a few minutes, but far from it. The ATF?s ?system? is largely a manual process based on the use of microfiche, the same technology that libraries have been using for 50 years to archive newspapers and magazines.
OPINION: 6 reasons why President Obama will defeat the NRA and win universal background checks
When a trace request comes in to the ATF?s National Tracing Center in Martinsburg, W. Va., employees trek to the microfiche department, where 500 million records are stored. They use special readers that magnify the itsy-bitsy images and report their findings. Urgent requests are turned around within 24 hours, but the process generally takes five days, sometimes longer.
That?s not nearly good enough. The ATF processed 350,000 gun traces last year, a workload that?s been growing and will continue to rise as lawmakers, in the wake of the Newtown tragedy, turn their attention to what had been a routine law-enforcement function. In mid-January, when President Obama introduced 23 executive orders on gun safety, he also issued a memo requiring federal law enforcement to submit trace requests for all guns recovered during criminal investigations.
The ATF, part of the Department of Justice, knows it has a problem in fulfilling that mandate. Earlier this year, Attorney General Eric Holder paid a visit to the National Tracing Center to have a look for himself. There?s only one conclusion Holder could possibly reach: The Firearms Tracing System needs an overhaul.
ATF?s chief information officer, Richard Holgate, euphemistically describes the microfiche system as a ?target of opportunity.? He would like to replace it with a faster, more efficient digital imaging system at a cost of about $4 million. That?s not cheap, but it?s a small price to pay to expedite a process that supports one of the White House?s top priorities ? and public safety. The ATF?s overall tech budget this year is about $80 million, minus some $15 million if sequestration takes full effect.
Yet, as important as it is, upgrading the Firearms Tracing System hasn?t made its way to the top of the ATF?s to-do list. Mr. Holgate has had his hands full with other projects, including transitioning the agency?s email system to cloud computing, making aggregate gun-trace data available to the public, and moving email records to an online archive.
As the ATF contemplates its next move, one step that?s not an option is deployment of a modern database of gun owners or firearms registrations, which would really speed the tracing process up. While technically feasible, that?s prohibited by the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986. The gun lobby wants to make sure that restriction remains in place.
The ATF must instead concentrate on accessing and integrating the records that are available under current law. As a step in that direction, it created a web application called eTrace that lets law enforcement agencies request gun traces online. The ATF could use computer-integration software and web technologies to streamline other parts of the gun-tracing process.
Other federal computer systems involved in gun enforcement are also in need of attention. The FBI?s National Instant Criminal Background Check System buckled under a spike in activity late last year when the prospect of stiffer federal laws prompted a surge in gun sales. The FBI is bringing in Accenture Federal Systems to modernize the system.
But the National Instant Criminal Background Check System doesn?t exist in a vacuum; the ATF operates a referral system that ties into it. When a would-be gun buyer completes an application, an ATF Form 4473, the FBI has three days to complete a background check before that transaction is allowed to proceed. If disqualifying information is discovered after a sale goes through, ATF agents have the sensitive job of repossessing the firearm. Those potentially dangerous situations could be minimized if the FBI and ATF were better at information sharing.
THE MONITOR'S VIEW: Are gun politics too complex? Simplicity would help.
The bottom line is that the White House?s gun safety initiative will only work if the computer systems involved are up to the job. When it takes 60 seconds to fire 45 rounds, but 24 hours to trace the gun, Washington has a major technology fix-it project on its hands.
John Foley covers federal information technology (IT) policy as editor of InformationWeek Government. His recent columns include ?ATF?s Gun Tracing System Is A Dud? and ?Federal Gun Control Requires IT Overhaul.? Follow him on Twitter at @jfoley09.
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If you want a (semi) pocketable S Pen experience, well, then the 5.5-inch Galaxy Note II is the device for you. If you want something more akin to carrying around a digital legal pad, there's the well proportioned Note 10.1. But if one note is too small for you, and the other too big, then maybe the Note 8.0 is just right. The mid-sized tablet, announced at MWC, is finally hitting American shores on April 11th for $400. Under the hood are the same powerful internals we got a good look at in Barcelona, including the 2GB of RAM and 1.6GHz quad-core processor. But, sadly, Samsung removed the cellular radios for the US variant -- which means this slate won't double as a comically large phone. Well, at least the lack of HSPA+ should mean that the 4,600 mAh battery should last a little bit longer. You'll be able to pick up the Galaxy Note 8.0 in just a few days from all usual suspects (Best Buy, Amazon, Newegg, and so on). If you need a proper reminder of all its various specs and features, check out the preview and the PR after the break.
Filed under: Tablets, Mobile, Samsung
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/09/galaxy-note-8-0-coming-to-the-us-on-april-11th-for-400/
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Public release date: 10-Apr-2013
Share ] Contact: Karline R. L. Janmaat
karline_janmaat@eva.mpg.de
49-341-355-0227
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
This press release is available in German.
Fruit-eating animals are known to use their spatial memory to relocate fruit, yet, it is unclear how they manage to find fruit in the first place. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have now investigated which strategies chimpanzees in the Ta National Park in Cte d'Ivoire, West Africa, use in order to find fruit in the rain forest. The result: Chimpanzees know that trees of certain species produce fruit simultaneously and use this botanical knowledge during their daily search for fruit.
To investigate if chimpanzees know that if a tree is carrying fruit, then other trees of the same species are likely to carry fruit as well, the researchers conducted observations of their inspections, i.e. the visual checking of fruit availability in tree crowns. They focused their analyses on recordings in which they saw chimpanzees inspect empty trees, when they made "mistakes".
By analysing these "mistakes", the researchers were able to exclude that sensory cues of fruit had triggered the inspection and were the first to learn that chimpanzees had expectations of finding fruit days before feeding on it. They, in addition, significantly increased their expectations of finding fruit after tasting the first fruit in season. "They did not simply develop a 'taste' for specific fruit on which they had fed frequently", says Karline Janmaat. "Instead, inspection probability was predicted by a particular botanical feature - the level of synchrony in fruit production of the species of encountered trees."
The researchers conclude that chimpanzees know that trees of certain species produce fruit simultaneously and use this information during their daily search for fruit. They base their expectations of finding fruit on a combination of botanical knowledge founded on the success rates of fruit discovery and an ability to categorize fruits into distinct species. "Our results provide new insights into the variety of food-finding strategies employed by our close relatives, the chimpanzees, and may well elucidate the evolutionary origins of categorization abilities and abstract thinking in humans", says Christophe Boesch, director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology's Department of Primatology.
###
Original publication:
Karline R. L. Janmaat, Simone D. Ban & Christophe Boesch Ta Chimpanzees use Botanical Skills to Discover Fruit: What we can Learn from their Mistakes Animal Cognition, 10 April 2013
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 10-Apr-2013 Share ] Contact: Karline R. L. Janmaat
karline_janmaat@eva.mpg.de
49-341-355-0227
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
This press release is available in German.
Fruit-eating animals are known to use their spatial memory to relocate fruit, yet, it is unclear how they manage to find fruit in the first place. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have now investigated which strategies chimpanzees in the Ta National Park in Cte d'Ivoire, West Africa, use in order to find fruit in the rain forest. The result: Chimpanzees know that trees of certain species produce fruit simultaneously and use this botanical knowledge during their daily search for fruit.
To investigate if chimpanzees know that if a tree is carrying fruit, then other trees of the same species are likely to carry fruit as well, the researchers conducted observations of their inspections, i.e. the visual checking of fruit availability in tree crowns. They focused their analyses on recordings in which they saw chimpanzees inspect empty trees, when they made "mistakes".
By analysing these "mistakes", the researchers were able to exclude that sensory cues of fruit had triggered the inspection and were the first to learn that chimpanzees had expectations of finding fruit days before feeding on it. They, in addition, significantly increased their expectations of finding fruit after tasting the first fruit in season. "They did not simply develop a 'taste' for specific fruit on which they had fed frequently", says Karline Janmaat. "Instead, inspection probability was predicted by a particular botanical feature - the level of synchrony in fruit production of the species of encountered trees."
The researchers conclude that chimpanzees know that trees of certain species produce fruit simultaneously and use this information during their daily search for fruit. They base their expectations of finding fruit on a combination of botanical knowledge founded on the success rates of fruit discovery and an ability to categorize fruits into distinct species. "Our results provide new insights into the variety of food-finding strategies employed by our close relatives, the chimpanzees, and may well elucidate the evolutionary origins of categorization abilities and abstract thinking in humans", says Christophe Boesch, director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology's Department of Primatology.
###
Original publication:
Karline R. L. Janmaat, Simone D. Ban & Christophe Boesch Ta Chimpanzees use Botanical Skills to Discover Fruit: What we can Learn from their Mistakes Animal Cognition, 10 April 2013
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/m-bit040913.php
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FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Telekom has received conditional regulatory approval to upgrade its copper network via a process called vectoring, or VDSL2, in order to offer faster Internet.
The German federal network agency said on Tuesday in a draft decision that Deutsche Telekom would have to give its competitors access to the new technology but it could deny access in areas where alternative networks are available.
In the next 20-25 years as much as 80 billion euros ($104 billion) is needed to roll out a fiber optic network in Germany, investment that will need to be shared among the local telecoms operators.
In the meantime Deutsche Telekom wants to upgrade its copper network via vectoring, or VDSL2. This cheaper alternative will enable it to offer Internet speeds of up to 100 megabits per second, up from current levels of 16 Mbit/s.
Cable companies at the moment offer 50 Mbit/s Internet for the same price or less than Deutsche Telekom's current speeds, and can already supply up to 150 Mbit/s.
Vectoring is a technology which makes it possible to double bandwidth by cancelling electromagnetic interference between lines in so-called distribution boxes.
To make it work the technology can only be installed by one operator in the boxes. After that the new infrastructure can be used by all operators.
Deutsche Telekom, which said on Tuesday it welcomed the decision, owns about 330,000 such boxes in Germany, while its competitors have connected to about 8,200 of these boxes with their own lines.
In Germany cable operators such as Kabel Deutschland and Liberty Global's Unity Media are chipping away at Deutsche Telekom's share of the broadband market with faster, cheaper offerings.
Their cable lines, designed to deliver TV to homes, have been upgraded to carry voice calls and Internet at speeds often five times faster than competing services from the telcos.
Deutsche Telekom controls more than 40 percent of the broadband market. Vodafone has about 12 percent.
Kabel Deutschland, the largest cable operator with about 15 million of the 28 million homes served by cable, said in December the market penetration of it and its rivals in fixed-line broadband was below 15 percent.
($1 = 0.7682 euros)
(Reporting by Harro ten Wolde an Peter Maushagen; Editing by Mark Potter)
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A woman is suing Hooters for employment discrimination based on disability status for allegedly being forced out of her job as a waitress at the racy restaurants after she underwent cancer surgery, lost her hair and had a large scar on her head.
Hooters reportedly wanted her to wear a wig. ?The woman tried, but it hurt her scar, which was still healing. ?She says her hours were then cut back until she eventually was forced to quit.
Imagine a place like Hooters being so superficial.
Hooters, for anyone unaware, is a chain-restaurant where the waitresses wear very skimpy clothes in order to show off their usually-large breasts, which are known as ?hooters? in American slang.
The St. Louis Post Dispatch?does a good job walking through the legal issues here (media doesn?t always do so well on that). ?But in a nutshell, disability rights laws protect you from discrimination based on your disability or your perceived disability (meaning, someone refuses to hire you because they think you have AIDS, even if you don?t). ?In this case, allegedly pushing a waitress out because her cancer has made her less attractive (in the management?s eyes), is a tough sell. ?As the paper points out, the plaintiff needs to be able to prove that she was able to do her job. ?But the question arises ? or it?s one that Hooters will try to sell to the court ? as to whether being a ?hot chick? is essential to doing your job at Hooters.
While, sure, being a hot woman is essential working at HootersI?m not sure how a judge rules in favor of Hooters on this one, lest every business start alleging that its ?public face? is important, and thus they discriminate against people with disabilities, and even minorities and women, because it?s ?what the customers want.?
Now granted, we?re dealing with Hooters here. ?But as FindLaw explains, it?s really not enough to simply say ?our customers like pretty girls.?
Title VII?prohibits employers from discriminating in employment decisions based on gender, race, national origin, religion or age. Many states make it illegal? to discriminate based on sexual orientation or transgender status.
Title VII also, however, allows for discrimination based on protected characteristics (except race), when that characteristic is what is called a ?Bona Fide Occupational Qualification? (BFOQ). To be a BFOQ, being a member of that group is essential to the job.
To use this exception to the rule against discrimination, an employer must be able to prove that no member outside the desired group could perform the job. A simple example would be a job for a women?s bathroom attendant.
Employers can, and often do, however, go too far. For example, airlines have been prohibited from hiring only female flight attendants because men too can perform the basic function of the job.
Hooters went on to settle that other case. ?So it?s still not entirely clear what would happen if they hadn?t settled. ?But I?m not sure what the difference is between saying Hooters? customers find cancer scars disturbing and saying every restaurant customer finds cancer scars disturbing. ?Cancer is disturbing. ?And too bad. ?You don?t get to end someone?s career over it. ?That?s kind of the whole point of disability laws.
I?m not entirely convinced that it should be legal for Hooters to exist at all. ?But to the degree we want to make an exception for quasi-sexual jobs like Hooters, I think you have a much harder sell saying that we should now start making exceptions to disability laws as well. ?At some point, a judge is going to say ?enough.? ?How much you want to bet Hooters settles this one too, rather than risk a defeat that could impact its restaurants nationwide?
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