Romney back on national stage, if only briefly

BOSTON (AP) ? Mitt Romney is back, if only briefly.

The former Republican presidential candidate is re-emerging after nearly four months in seclusion at his Southern California home.

Former aides describe his burst of activity this month ? a national broadcast interview, a speech at a gathering of conservatives ? as a thank-you tour of sorts designed to close out a lengthy political career.

His party isn't exactly clamoring for his return.

In his first public comments in months, Romney used a Fox News interview to criticize President Barack Obama's leadership. The former Massachusetts governor said Obama has been "flying around the country and berating Republicans and blaming and pointing" instead of preventing Washington's latest budget crisis.

In about two weeks, Romney is to deliver his first postelection speech, at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

A few Republican governors who aggressively supported Romney's presidential bid last fall offered lukewarm responses in recent days to the question of Romney's future role in the GOP. Conservative leaders suggest they're ready for a new era without a prominent Romney role.

"He has every right to be involved. And certainly he gave a lot for the cause," said Tim Phillips, president of the national conservative group Americans for Prosperity. "But most of the movement is wanting to look forward. They want to look forward to the next generation of leaders."

Without a public office or a prominent position in the private sector, Romney lacks a ready platform.

Before Romney, the previous two losing nominees, Republican John McCain in 2008 and Democrat John Kerry in 2004, eased their way back into national politics through the Senate seats they retained after the elections.

After his loss in 2000, former Vice President Al Gore appeared in a documentary film about climate change and became an outspoken advocate for environmental protections.

But almost immediately after his defeat, Romney retreated to the privacy of his California home. He surfaced in the national media in recent months only in photographs such as those showing him pumping gas, enjoying a day out with his family at Disneyland and shopping at Costco.

In his goodbye message to staffers at his Boston headquarters last November, Romney promised to remain an active voice in the party. Four months later, former aides say that he's more likely to play a quieter role focused on fundraising, while using his status to help elevate issues from time to time.

"We were on a roller coaster, exciting and thrilling, ups and downs. But the ride ends. And then you get off," Romney told "Fox News Sunday" in an interview taped Thursday in California. "And it's not like, 'Oh, can't we be on a roller coaster the rest of our life?' It's like, 'No, the ride's over.'"

Several Republican governors, already jockeying to fill a leadership vacuum in an evolving GOP, offered reserved responses when asked during last weekend's meeting of the National Governors Association about Romney's re-emergence.

"We need as many voices for conservative reform and leadership as possible," said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, among those Republicans thought to be weighing a 2016 presidential bid. "I welcome Gov. Romney and anybody else who will help to make that message and help to take that fight."

Another possible GOP presidential contender, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, said "the jury's out" as to what role Romney could play.

Gov. Nikki Haley, R-S.C., was more enthusiastic. She said Romney has "a power in his voice that we want to see continue."

There is little updated polling on Romney's popularity, but a Bloomberg poll last December found that just 30 percent of those surveyed rated him as excellent or good to help the Republican Party figure out how to win more races, including the presidency.

Some Republicans suggest that Romney's greatest value to his party may be his vast fundraising network. His last presidential campaign raised more than $446 million.

___

Online:

Fox video: http://tinyurl.com/aqtnah8

___

Thomas reported from Washington. Associated Press News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/romney-back-national-stage-only-briefly-140231246--election.html

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Video: 'League of Legends' hits the Mac

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Sequester about to begin, but effects won't be instantaneous

By Tom Curry, National Affairs Writer, NBC News

It?s Friday, March 1, and that means the federal government has crossed the much-hyped and dreaded deadline for the fiscal reductions known as the ?sequester.?

The members of Congress who for voted for the Budget Control Act ? and the budget cuts contained within ??and President Barack Obama who signed it into law on Aug. 2, 2011, may not have believed the day would arrive, but now it has.

But today is only the beginning of the beginning.

For one thing, Obama must sign an order formally starting the ?sequester? or spending reductions ? which according to a new estimate from the Congressional Budget Office ??would amount to $42 billion in the current fiscal year.

And White House aides have indicated that the president is not likely to put pen to paper on that order until after he meets with congressional leaders, a meeting slated for Friday morning.

Once Obama signs the order to start the spending cuts, any furloughs of federal workers could not begin at least for another 30 days due to federal regulations and to collective bargaining agreements which the government has with the unions that represent roughly half of the federal workforce.

Alex Wong / Getty Images

House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi speaks during a news conference Feb. 28, 2013 on Capitol Hill in Washington.

So the Border Patrol Agents in Arizona won?t suddenly vanish on Friday and the civilians who repair Navy ships won?t be ordered to immediately put down their tools.

As with many things the federal government does, there are multiple rules, regulatory hurdles, avenues for appeal and opportunities for litigation.

As Under Secretary of Defense Robert Hale, the Pentagon?s Chief Financial Officer, explained last week, ?The bottom line is, furloughs would not actually start for DOD employees until late April.?

He explained, ?There's a whole series of notifications. We started the first one today (Feb. 20), with the notification to Congress, along with a message by the secretary of defense to our civilian employees. That starts a 45-day clock ticking. Until that clock has run out, we cannot proceed with furloughs.?

He added, ?At some point in mid-March, we will send a notification to each employee who may be furloughed. That starts a 30-day clock, waiting period, before we can take any action. And then later on in April, we will send a decision to employees, and they have a one-week period, once we've made that decision, to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board.???

The Merit Systems Protection Board is the independent agency which hears and decides complaints when a federal employee claims that he or she has been the victim of an unfair, punitive, or discriminatory personnel action. The board issued 7,585 decisions last year.

Related: Budget cuts likely to be felt on Main Street

In a memo sent Wednesday to Cabinet officers and the heads of federal agencies, Danny Werfel, the controller of the Office of Management and Budget, emphasized that agency heads ?must allow employees? exclusive representatives? ? their unions ? ?to have pre-decisional involvement? in planned furloughs or other personnel actions ?to the fullest extent practicable? and must bargain with the unions over the impact of furloughs. The head of each department or agency must comply with ?any and all collective bargaining requirements.?

In his memo, Werfel did not flatly warn federal agency heads to not hire any new personnel, but he did say they should give ?increased scrutiny? to hiring any new workers, as well to the money they spend on training programs, conferences, and travel.

Like Hale at the Pentagon, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano emphasized in her briefing for reporters this week that the effects of the spending cuts ? while they will be substantial ? won?t be instantaneous.

?The impacts people are going to see ??and they will build over the next several weeks; you won?t see them immediately like a shutdown, but it will accrue over the next few weeks,? she said. ?Lines, procedures, wait times (at U.S. ports of entry and airports) are all going to get longer.?

She added, ?It won?t be like a (government) shutdown, where it?s like turning off the light switch. But all I can say for folks is these are the effects that will accrue. Please don?t yell at the customs officer or the TSO (transportation security officer) officer because the lines are long. The lines over the next few weeks are going to start to lengthen in some dramatic ways in parts of the country.?

Just as the personnel decisions will take weeks to ripple their way through the federal workforce, so too will decisions on contracts for new ships, drones, and electronic gadgets.

?I don't anticipate that we will cancel many, if any contracts, because we'd incur substantial costs,? Hale told reporters last week.

He said that due to the spending cuts, the Pentagon might delay entering into new contracts, ?but I wouldn't expect that we will terminate existing contracts.?

Federal agencies are warning about potentially devastating impacts from the automatic budget cuts that will go into effect on Friday. Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Development, discusses.

Seeking to reassure contractors, Hale said, ?If you've got a contract with us, we're going to pay you ... . Even under sequestration and furloughs, we will find a time to keep our payments to our employers and the vendors on time.?

The slow grinding of the bureaucratic wheels does not mean that furloughs won?t hurt, if they occur.

A fact sheet issued by the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal union which representing 650,000 federal and D.C. government workers, spells out some of the possible pain:

?Up to 22 days out of work with no pay, equivalent to a 20 percent pay cut;

?Reduced contribution to workers? retirement savings accounts;

?Reduced take-home pay due to the deduction of health insurance benefits at the full salary rate.

But as a recent report from the Congressional Research Service pointed out, the sequestration procedures provide for exemptions for many groups.

Among the categories which the law spares from the spending cuts are:

?Social Security benefits

?The Medicaid health insurance program for low-income people

?Payments to individuals in the form of refundable tax credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-wage workers and the tax credits under the 2010 health care law to help people buy health insurance.

?Retirement benefits paid to retired federal workers

?Child Nutrition Programs, including the School Lunch and School Breakfast programs,

?The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly called ?food stamps?

?Pell Grants for college students

?Unobligated cash balances, carried over from prior years, for nondefense programs

?Pay for military personnel.

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 1, 2013 12:00 AM EST

Source: http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/28/17136205-sequester-about-to-begin-but-the-effects-wont-be-instantaneous?lite

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Dust Entertainment: 8 Insane and Crazy Body Modifications

Good day! welcome to the new Dust Entertainment of 2013! expect more and more entertainment for your reading pleasure.

Today, I have some interesting feats about human body modifications. These are not just your ordinary piercings or tattoos. They take it to the highest level that it makes it look so weird.

This modifications are done by professional and I suggest and I REPEAT do not attempt doing this at home. Here are 10 insane and crazy body modifications.

1. Corset Piercings

?This is not a tattoo this is actually a corset piercings. They are pierced with two vertical columns and laced together with a ribbon.?

2. Eyeball tattoo

It may be weird till now, but corneal tattoo has been done for more than 2,000 years. It was common in the 19th century for use of correcting eye defects such as corneal scarring and leucomas. Today, it is rarely done, because prosthetic technology is now available. But for some who wants to look like aliens, they do this kind thingy.

3. Scarification

Forget tattoo, this one looks a lot more painful.?Scarification is the creative and artistic application of scars in a controlled manner to achieve an aesthetically or spiritually pleasing result. The process involves cutting your skin to create an artistic scar, this may be painful to many but some loves the thrill of scarification.

4. Tongue Bifurcation?

?

So much for tongue twisting, this one is on a new level. Tongue splitting is a new trend in body modification where your tongue is being separated in half just like we see on snakes. But this one can be modified, just like you see above, it has zipper so that you can make it whole once again.

5. Modified lips

I don't know what this guy is thinking, but as you can see his lips looked like pretzels. Lips modification is very easy to do, you just have to eat a lighted dynamite then BOOM! you have a lips modified, hehehe, just kidding.

6. 3D art implant

A 3D-Art implant is any object implanted fully under the skin for the purpose of affecting a sculptural change of the surface. Horns, piercings, metal balls are just some of the few used in 3D art implants.?

?

In the Philippines we have this called "bulitas", it is a small metal balls inserted to a mans organ. It is said in some province that males having "bulitas" can satisfy a women than those that who has no bulitas.

7. Branding

Human branding is probably the most painful way to get a modification.?In full-scale branding, the iron is heated hot enough and applied long enough that the resulting wound is a third degree burn, which destroys the nerve. This third degree burns never regains sensitivity and will took many years to heal.
I think many has seen this on shows like "Ripley's believe it or not". Body suspension is suspending the body using modified fishing hooks. There are some parts around the world that uses body suspension as an spiritual ritual.

This creeps the hell out of me

?how about you?

Source: http://dustent.blogspot.com/2013/03/8-insane-and-crazy-body-modifications.html

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Internet's dad wants to talk to animals

Nidhi Subbaraman , NBC News ? ? ? 42 min.

We humans are a well wired species. But people who invented the Internet think there are connections we've yet to forge--with other intelligent animals on this planet, and unknown species on others

Vint Cerf, who helped build the early Internet (and now sits at Google as their chief Internet evangelist) and three other Internet and animal communication experts recently explained how we could connect with animals and help animals talk to each other. They call it the "Interspecies Internet" or I2I project, and introduced the audience at TED 2013 to the concept in a panel at Long Beach, CA on Thursday (Feb. 28).

"Although it will clearly be used by beings of the same species for communication a special emphasis will be made on communications between species, including our own," Peter Gabriel, the project's founder writes on the project's Facebook page. "It will also allow us and our children many insights into the nature of the other species , or sentient beings, with whom we share the planet."

The idea of an Internet for animals started out when Gabriel began doing jam sessions with bonobos and was struck by how similar they were to human musicians. He tracked down researchers who have been observing and animal communication, and convinced them to get on board.

Given the project's goals, it makes sense that Neil Gershenfeld is involved. Gershenfeld has been a fixture at MIT for a decade (now director of the Center for Bits and Atoms) and has a long history of studying the way the Internet connects us, as well as the things we own.

Gershenfeld and Cerf first announced the project at the World Science Festival last year in October. "They draw they play games. They're smart, they interact, they're social," Gershenfeld said then, describing interactions that dolphins and apes have had with iPads, which researchers have been studying for some time. "There isn't a firewall between us and them."

"If we are ever going to have first contact with aliens, the first thing we need to understand is how to interact with species on our own planet," Cerf added.

Even if Cerf did seem to be half-joking, animal communications experts seem to agree that he has a point.

?You can?t get more alien than the dolphin. We?re separated by 95 million years of divergent evolution. These are true non-terrestrials,? animal communications researcher Diana Reisstold the audience at TED. Reiss did pioneering work on dolphin communication and intelligence, and her early work with dolphins and mirrors helped researchers understand how smart the ocean mammals are.

The way the researchers see it now, the network will have many similarities to the regular Internet today. "Many of the phenomena of the net, universal communication, open access to information and education, group behavior and social networks will have their parallels in the Interspecies Internet," Gabriel writes.

NBC News has reached out to I2I and we will update this story when we hear back.

Via: Fast Company, The Verge

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/internets-dad-wants-talk-animals-1C8640290

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Army Chief on budget cuts: "I can't train 80% of my units" (cbsnews)

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Plight of the American bumblebee: Disappearing?

The photo provided by amateur Illinois bee spotter Johanna James-Heinz, shows a rusty-patched bumblebee, on Aug. 14, 2008, in Peoria, Ill. It is one of four types of bumblebees researchers say is in trouble. (AP Photo/Johanna James-Heinz)

The photo provided by amateur Illinois bee spotter Johanna James-Heinz, shows a rusty-patched bumblebee, on Aug. 14, 2008, in Peoria, Ill. It is one of four types of bumblebees researchers say is in trouble. (AP Photo/Johanna James-Heinz)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? It's not just honey bees that are in trouble. The fuzzy American bumblebee seems to be disappearing in the Midwest.

Two new studies in Thursday's journal Science conclude that wild bees, like the American bumblebee, are increasingly important in pollinating flowers and crops that provide us with food. And, at least in the Midwest, they seem to be dwindling in an alarming manner, possibly from disease and parasites.

Wild bees are difficult to track so scientists have had a hard time knowing what's happening to them. But because of one man in a small town in Illinois in the 1890s, researchers now have a better clue.

Naturalist Charles Robertson went out daily in a horse-drawn buggy and meticulously collected and categorized insects in Carlinville in southern Illinois.

More than a century later, Laura Burkle of Montana State University went back to see what changed. Burkle and her colleagues reported that they could only find half the species of wild bees that Robertson found ? 54 of 109 types.

"That's a significant decline. It's a scary decline," Burkle said Thursday.

And what's most noticeable is the near absence of one particular species, the yellow-and-black American bumblebee. There are 4,000 species of wild bees in America and 49 of them are bumblebees. In the Midwest, the most common bee has been Bombus pensylvanicus, known as the American bumblebee. It only stings defensively, experts say.

But in 447 hours of searching, Burkle's team found only one American bumblebee, a queen.

That fits with a study that University of Illinois entomologist Sydney Cameron did two years ago when she found a dramatic reduction in the number and range of the American bumblebee.

"It was the most dominant bumblebee in the Midwest," Cameron said, saying it now has pretty much disappeared from much of its northern range. Overall, its range has shrunk by about 23 percent, although it is still strong in Texas and the West, she said.

"People call them the big fuzzies," Cameron said. "They're phenomenal animals. They can fly in the snow."

Her research found four species of bumblebees in trouble: the American bumblebee, the rusty-patched bumblebee, the western bumblebee and the yellow-banded bumblebee.

A separate Science study by a European team showed that wild bees in general have a larger role in pollinating plants than the honey bees that are trucked in to do the job professionally.

Those domesticated bees are already in trouble with record high prices for bees to pollinate California almond trees, said David Inouye at the University of Maryland.

Scientists suspect a combination of disease and parasites for the dwindling of both wild and domesticated bees.

___

Online:

Science: http://www.sciencemag.org

___

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2013-02-28-Wild%20Bees/id-281a791001cb4884af2f092be204af1d

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