Do you have an exit strategy for you and yours in place, should a major earthquake, terrorist attack, or similar large scale disaster occur? You should. And with the help of San Francisco's new social emergency preparation website, you will.
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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/Ov9j7xODn1s/san-francisco-launches-a-website-to-prep-for-the-big-on-1448746040Dennis Coffey.
The Motor City's own Dennis Coffey joins us for this installment of Sense of Place: Detroit. The veteran musician holds strong ties to the city's R&B and soul sound. As a guitarist and producer, Coffey spent a good amount of time in Motown's Studio A, which artists dubbed "the snake pit."
On Wednesday's episode of World Cafe, Coffey talks with host David Dye about getting on producer Norman Whitfield's good side at Motown after playing the wah-wah pedal in the classic opening of The Temptations' "Cloud Nine." Coffey also takes a moment to describe the creation of his huge instrumental hit, "Scorpio."
BOSTON (AP) — Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's lawyers may try to save him from the death penalty in the Boston Marathon bombing by arguing he fell under the murderous influence of his older brother, legal experts say.
The outlines of a possible defense came into focus this week when it was learned that Tsarnaev's attorneys are trying to get access to investigative records implicating the now-dead brother in a grisly triple slaying committed in 2011.
In court papers Monday, federal prosecutors acknowledged publicly for the first time that a friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev told investigators that Tamerlan participated in the unsolved killings of three men who were found in a Waltham apartment with their throats slit, marijuana sprinkled over their bodies.
The younger Tsarnaev's lawyers argued in court papers that any evidence of Tamerlan's involvement is "mitigating information" that is critical as they prepare Dzhokhar's defense. They asked a judge to force prosecutors to turn over the records.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 20, faces 30 federal charges, including using a weapon of mass destruction, in the twin bombings April 15 that killed three people and injured more than 260. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died in a gunbattle with police days later.
The government is still deciding whether to pursue the death penalty for the attack, which investigators say was retaliation for the U.S. wars in Muslim lands.
Miriam Conrad, Tsarnaev's public defender, had no comment.
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said the defense may be trying to show that the older brother was the guiding force.
"If I was a defense attorney and was seeking perhaps to draw attention to the influence the older brother had in planning the bombing, I would use his involvement in other crimes to show that he was likely the main perpetrator in the Boston bombing," Dieter said.
"I would take the position that my client, the younger brother, was strongly influenced by his older brother, and even if he is culpable, the death penalty is too extreme in this case."
Similarly, Aitan D. Goelman, who was part of the legal team that prosecuted Oklahoma City bombing figures Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, said the defense may be looking to minimize the younger brother's role in the bombing.
"I think the mostly likely reason is that if they are arguing some kind of mitigation theory that the older brother was a monster and the younger brother was under his sway or intimidated or dominated by him," he said.
Investigators have given no motive for the 2011 slayings. One victim was a boxer and friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev's.
Federal prosecutors said in court papers that Ibragim Todashev, another friend of Tamerlan's, told authorities that Tamerlan took part in the killings. Todashev was shot to death in Florida in May by authorities while being questioned.
Prosecutors argued that turning over the records would damage the investigation into the killings.
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Smith reported from Providence, R.I. Associated Press writer Pete Yost in Washington contributed to this report.
DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Tanzania's economy grew 6.7 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2013 from 6.4 percent in the same period a year ago, but weakened compared with the first quarter, official data showed on Wednesday.
The economy grew by 7.5 percent in this year's first quarter, according to the state-run National Bureau of Statistics.
East Africa's second-largest economy is targeting GDP growth of 7 percent this year, slightly higher than the 6.9 percent achieved in 2012. Growth in the second quarter was driven by growth in financial services and communications sectors, while the fishing sector lagged, NBS said in a report.
Financial services grew fastest at 15.2 percent, from 11 percent in the same quarter in 2012.
Tanzania's economy has been growing at more than 5 percent a year for nearly a decade but infrastructure spending has lagged, with poor transport links and energy shortages blamed for uneven growth.
Transport and communication grew at 14.8 percent compared with 13.6 percent in the same period in 2012, but was at a slower rate than the 22.2 percent it attained in the first quarter of this year.
Construction grew by 12.3 percent, compared with 4.3 percent in the year-ago period, while mining and quarrying in Africa's fourth-largest gold producer rebounded to 4.3 percent from a negative growth rate of 5.1 percent a year ago.
Gold output fell to 9.827 tonnes in the second quarter of 2013 compared to 9.963 tonnes a year ago.
"The growth rate (of the mining sector) was attributed to increased production of diamonds and Tanzanite," NBS said.
Tanzanite is a blue/purple mineral found only in Tanzania.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/tanzania-says-gdp-growth-rises-6-7-pct-120030022--sector.htmlOctober 23, 2013
By Florence Ion | TechHive
It's not even Hump Day yet and already we're salivating over Apple's new arsenal of gadget releases. The iPad Air made a particularly big splash in Apple's hour-long event with the news that it features the 64-bit A7 processor and a 48 percent thinner chassis, while dropping the weight to a measly one pound.
Its body and build quality alone reinforces the fact that Apple's penchant for product design is its strongest weapon in the gadget wars, but its the specs and content offerings that will determine whether or not you shell out $499 for it come November 1. Here's a quick overview of how the iPad Air stacks up to the three latest large tablets out on the market, including Microsoft's recently launched Surface 2, Nokia's just-announced Lumia 2520, and Amazon's Kindle Fire HDX 8.9, which was announced earlier this month.
[ Also on InfoWorld: The new iPads: Want thrills? Look elsewhere. | See InfoWorld's recommendations for a road warrior's must-have mobile toolkit, and discover the best productivity apps for your iPad. | Keep up on key mobile developments and insights with the Mobile Edge blog and Mobilize newsletter. ]
The latest tablet landscape and the affordable price points make choosing a device to bring home perhaps one of the hardest buying decisions. The question is no longer which tablet gives you the most bang for its buck, but which will meet your needs the best.
Thin is in
You certainly wouldn't want to lug around a bloated, too-thick tablet, would you? Apple's new iPad Air is the thinnest of the latest tablets. At 0.29 inches, its almost paper-thin chassis makes the Surface 2, Lumia 2520, and the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 look and feel like antiquated hardback books. But it's not the most compact: the HDX 8.9 is smaller and weighs less than the iPad Air, making it the most stowable device of the bunch. Of course, its screen is smaller, too.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government is going into uncharted waters. It is deep-sixing the giant paper nautical charts that they've been printing for mariners for more than 150 years.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Tuesday that the traditional paper charts won't be printed after next April.
NOAA's Capt. Shep Smith said the agency will still chart the water for rocks, shipwrecks and dangers, but mariners will have to see the information using private on-demand printing, PDFs and electronic maps.
The 4-by-3 foot roadmaps of the oceans won't be printed because of the Federal Aviation Administration. Smith said the FAA took over federal chart-making in the 1990s and recently told NOAA it will stop making the charts to save money.
Detroit officially makes its case for bankruptcy before a federal judge on Wednesday. The city is currently saddled with $18 billion in long-term debt, and officials see bankruptcy as their only choice.
Detroit officially makes its case for bankruptcy before a federal judge on Wednesday. The city is currently saddled with $18 billion in long-term debt, and officials see bankruptcy as their only choice.
In Detroit on Wednesday, a federal trial begins that will determine whether that city is eligible for the nation's largest-ever municipal bankruptcy.
Hundreds of the city's creditors are lining up to oppose the bankruptcy, arguing that Detroit is violating Michigan's constitution and that if officials tried harder they could find enough savings to pay the city's bills.
Officials here say a declining population, decades of mismanagement and at times corrupt city government has cost Detroit a lot of tax revenue, leaving it drowning in red ink.
So much so that in March, the governor appointed Kevyn Orr to be an emergency manager and take control of the city's finances. He spent months crafting payment arrangements with some creditors, but hundreds of others rejected offers that amounted to accepting pennies for every dollar they were owed by Detroit.
Orr says that leaves Detroit with roughly $18 billion in long-term debt, and no other option but bankruptcy.
"There's no way out," Orr says. "The mountain of debt we have to climb over simply is insurmountable without some kind of process to resolve it. We simply cannot pay it. That's it."
Where Business Stands
Detroit's business community overwhelmingly agrees with Orr.
Dan Gilbert owns Quicken Loans, the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers and in recent months has bought more than $1 billion worth of buildings in Detroit's downtown. He's betting that Chapter 9 protection will allow Detroit to get out from under its crushing debt load and pour money back into city services, which would help make his investments pay off.
"As hard as that is to sort of suspend democracy, for a short period of time if you will, my view is, let's get it over with," Gilbert says. "Let's get it done. Let's stop talking about it [and] go through the pain and then move forward, and I think it will fade into the background."
But some of Detroit's longest-standing creditors are fighting a bankruptcy declaration, arguing that it would create big problems for them.
At the headquarters of AFSCME Council 25, the union representing the majority of city workers here, a half-dozen retirees are making phone calls. Juanita Scott says Detroit's potential bankruptcy puts her pension, her health care and her future on the chopping block.
"Because they're going to cut my medical, that's going to really hurt me bad," says the 86-year-old Scott. "Right now I'm under three different doctors' care and trying to stay in my neighborhood."
Scott says she has to have a burglar alarm because all the houses around her are going vacant. "This whole thing of bankruptcy, it's just bad," she says.
The union leadership argues Detroit's bankruptcy filing itself violates state prohibitions against cutting public pensions. Union attorney Herb Sanders even questions if Detroit is truly insolvent, because the state forbade city officials from approving tentative labor agreements that he says could have saved millions annually.
"When you think that the purpose of bankruptcy is to restructure debt, is to save the city money, and if that is your true intent then why wouldn't you sign the collective bargaining agreement with the unions that would indeed do that?" Sanders says.
The Possibility Of Lawsuits
The union will argue in court Wednesday that Detroit did not bargain in good faith. But bankruptcy attorney Douglas Bernstein says the judge may see things differently.
"There's no bright line which says what constitutes good faith and what isn't good faith," Bernstein says. "There's isn't an awful lot of precedent in Chapter 9."
Bernstein's firm worked with several of Detroit's creditors who decided not to fight the city's bankruptcy filing. He says those creditors and the city will be thrown into financial turmoil if the court finds Detroit is not eligible for Chapter 9 protection. The likely result would be a flood of lawsuits, he says.
"So they'll be fending off all the creditors in a variety of courtrooms where everybody in the creditor body is trying to get the best deal for themselves rather than in an organized, unified setting in the bankruptcy court," he says. "So you would have chaos."
And chaos is the last thing Detroiters need in a city that has seen more than its share of it in recent years. Former officials sent to prison for corruption, high unemployment and crime rates, faltering city services and now a fight over what's left in the city's coffers.
