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Friday, May 3, 2013

April report to show whether weak hiring persisted

In this Thursday, April 11, 2013, photo, people wait in line before the Dr. King Career Fair at the Empire State Plaza Convention Center in Albany, N.Y. The government issues the April jobs report on Friday, May 3, 2013. (AP Photo/Mike Groll)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? A report Friday on April employment could show whether weak hiring in March marked a temporary lull or the fourth year in which a slumping economy has slowed job growth.

Economists predict that the job gains likely improved on March's 88,000 ? the fewest in nine months. But the hiring isn't expected to be much better. Most analysts think employers in April added more than 100,000 jobs but far fewer than the 196,000 that were added on average from September through February.

The unemployment rate is expected to remain unchanged at a still-high 7.6 percent.

The Labor Department will release the report at 8:30 a.m. EDT.

Economic figures in recent days have been mixed. The government said Thursday that the number of Americans applying for unemployment aid fell last week to a seasonally adjusted 324,000 ? the fewest since January 2008.

Unemployment applications reflect the pace of layoffs: A steady drop means companies are shedding fewer workers. Eventually, they'll need to hire to meet customer demand or to replace workers who quit.

At the same time, surveys have shown that hiring by private companies was weak and that manufacturing activity declined in April. And exports fell in March.

The economy grew in the January-March quarter at an annual pace of 2.5 percent, much better than in the previous quarter. Economists worry, though, that federal spending cuts and higher Social Security taxes could hurt the economy. And new requirements under the federal health care law may be causing some small and midsize companies to hold back on hiring.

Analysts forecast that growth will slow in the current quarter to 2 percent or less. That could mean that job growth will remain sluggish at least through summer.

Economists at Bank of America Merrill Lynch forecast that the spending cuts could reduce April's job gains by 25,000. That figure would include layoffs by government agencies and defense contractors.

The higher Social Security tax has cut take-home pay for nearly all working Americans. It's reduced pay for a typical household earning $50,000 by about $1,000 this year. A household with two highly paid workers has up to $4,500 less.

Consumers, so far, have shown resilience despite the tax increase. Americans boosted their spending from January through March at the fastest pace in more than two years.

But their spending slowed toward the end of the first quarter. And in March, consumers cut back their spending at retail stores by the most in nine months. Most economists think consumer spending is slowing further in the current quarter.

Still, some reports suggest that hiring could pick up later in the year. Applications for unemployment benefits fell to a five-year low last week, signaling fewer layoffs and potentially more job gains.

Americans are buying cars at a healthy pace, prompting some automakers to add jobs. Auto sales rose 8.5 percent in April compared with a year ago to nearly 1.3 million ? the best April total since before the recession began.

Home prices are rising, a trend that makes homeowners feel wealthier and more likely to spend. Higher home prices are also encouraging some people to buy homes before prices rise further.

Cheaper gas could also get people spending more. The national average for a gallon of regular on Wednesday was $3.52, 11 cents less than a month ago and 28 cents below the year-ago level.

Consumer confidence rose in April. The outlook improved mostly because Americans expect the economy to deliver more jobs and higher pay in the next six months.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-05-03-Economy/id-82f249d1aa634b469924bd70c1340183

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Thursday, May 2, 2013

Kutcher's company settles suit against CA DMV

FILE - This May 4, 2012 file photo shows actor Ashton Kutcher at the Barnstable Brown Derby party in Louisville, Ky. Kutcher's production company Katalyst Media has settled a lawsuit against the California Department of Motor Vehicles over a planned reality show, records filed in LA Superior Court on Friday April 26, 2013 show. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings, file)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Ashton Kutcher's production company has settled a lawsuit against the California Department of Motor Vehicles over a planned reality series focusing on the agency's offices.

Court records in Los Angeles show Kutcher's production company Katalyst Media Inc. has settled its case for undisclosed terms. The company sued the DMV in June claiming it reneged on a reality show deal worth at least $1.4 million.

The lawsuit stated the DMV backed out of the reality show on claims it was no longer in the agency's best interests, but it had already been promised to the TruTV channel.

Katalyst's attorney Michael E. Weinstein declined to comment in an email message.

The DMV wrote in a statement that the case was amicably resolved and no further comments would be issued.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-05-02-Kutcher-DMV%20Lawsuit/id-1cd57dcf71324df9b6a9f3016dad63a8

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SOINN gets intelligence boost, uses web-based image search to ID objects

Tokyo Institute of Technology's SOINN (Self-Organizing Incremental Neural Network) bot was impressive enough during our first introduction back in 2011, but the intelligent device can now tap the web for its latest trick: accurate object identification. The updated system, which appears to utilize a database akin to Google's image search, can scour the web for similar shots, making it possible to ID objects based on comparable structures published on the web. It can distinguish a box cutter from a knife, for example, or a rickshaw from a car. For now, SOINN is limited to identifying objects in images, including those captured in realtime with a camera, but its designers imagine that future revisions could enable content recognition in video streams, and audio clips, too. Our friends at DigInfo saw the update in action -- check it out for yourself in the video after the break.

Filed under: Robots, Internet, Alt

Comments

Source: DigInfo.TV

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/01/soinn-robot-image-search/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Farrah Abraham Sex Tape Photos: Released! Definitely Not Inhibited!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/05/farrah-abraham-sex-tape-photos-released-definitely-not-inhibited/

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Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Mother of Boston Marathon bomb suspects found deeper spirituality

BOSTON (AP) ? In photos of her as a younger woman, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva wears a low-cut blouse and has her hair teased like a 1980s rock star. After she arrived in the U.S. from Russia in 2002, she went to beauty school and did facials at a suburban day spa.

But in recent years, people noticed a change. She began wearing a hijab and cited conspiracy theories about 9/11 being a plot against Muslims.

Now known as the angry and grieving mother of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Tsarnaeva is drawing increased attention after federal officials say Russian authorities intercepted her phone calls, including one in which she vaguely discussed jihad with her elder son. In another, she was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, U.S. officials said.

Tsarnaeva insists there is no mystery. She's no terrorist, just someone who found a deeper spirituality. She insists her sons ? Tamerlan, who was killed in a gunfight with police, and Dzhokhar, who was wounded and captured ? are innocent.

"It's all lies and hypocrisy," she told The Associated Press in Dagestan. "I'm sick and tired of all this nonsense that they make up about me and my children. People know me as a regular person, and I've never been mixed up in any criminal intentions, especially any linked to terrorism."

Amid the scrutiny, Tsarnaeva and her ex-husband, Anzor Tsarnaev, say they have put off the idea of any trip to the U.S. to reclaim their elder son's body or try to visit Dzhokhar in jail. Tsarnaev told the AP on Sunday he was too ill to travel to the U.S. Tsarnaeva faces a 2012 shoplifting charge in a Boston suburb, though it was unclear whether that was a deterrent.

At a news conference in Dagestan with Anzor last week, Tsarnaeva appeared overwhelmed with grief one moment, defiant the next. "They already are talking about that we are terrorists, I am terrorist," she said. "They already want me, him and all of us to look (like) terrorists."

Tsarnaeva arrived in the U.S. in 2002, settling in a working-class section of Cambridge, Mass. With four children, Anzor and Zubeidat qualified for food stamps and were on and off public assistance benefits for years. The large family squeezed itself into a third-floor apartment.

Zubeidat took classes at the Catherine Hinds Institute of Esthetics, before becoming a state-licensed aesthetician. Anzor, who had studied law, fixed cars.

By some accounts, the family was tolerant.

Bethany Smith, a New Yorker who befriended Zubeidat's two daughters, said in an interview with Newsday that when she stayed with the family for a month in 2008 while she looked at colleges, she was welcomed even though she was Christian and had tattoos.

"I had nothing but love over there. They accepted me for who I was," Smith told the newspaper. "Their mother, Zubeidat, she considered me to be a part of the family. She called me her third daughter."

Zubeidat said she and Tamerlan began to turn more deeply into their Muslim faith about five years ago after being influenced by a family friend, named "Misha." The man, whose full name she didn't reveal, impressed her with a religious devotion that was far greater than her own, even though he was an ethnic Armenian who converted to Islam.

"I wasn't praying until he prayed in our house, so I just got really ashamed that I am not praying, being a Muslim, being born Muslim. I am not praying. Misha, who converted, was praying," she said.

By then, she had left her job at the day spa and was giving facials in her apartment. One client, Alyssa Kilzer, noticed the change when Tsarnaeva put on a head scarf before leaving the apartment.

"She had never worn a hijab while working at the spa previously, or inside the house, and I was really surprised," Kilzer wrote in a post on her blog. "She started to refuse to see boys that had gone through puberty, as she had consulted a religious figure and he had told her it was sacrilegious. She was often fasting."

Kilzer wrote that Tsarnaeva was a loving and supportive mother, and she felt sympathy for her plight after the April 15 bombings. But she stopped visiting the family's home for spa treatments in late 2011 or early 2012 when, during one session, she "started quoting a conspiracy theory, telling me that she thought 9/11 was purposefully created by the American government to make America hate Muslims."

"It's real," Tsarnaeva said, according to Kilzer. "My son knows all about it. You can read on the Internet."

In the spring of 2010, Zubeidat's eldest son got married in a ceremony at a Boston mosque that no one in the family had previously attended. Tamerlan and his wife, Katherine Russell, a Rhode Island native and convert from Christianity, now have a child who is about 3 years old.

Zubeidat married into a Chechen family but was an outsider. She is an Avar, from one of the dozens of ethnic groups in Dagestan. Her native village is now a hotbed of an ultraconservative strain of Islam known as Salafism or Wahabbism.

It is unclear whether religious differences fueled tension in their family. Anzor and Zubeidat divorced in 2011.

About the same time, there was a brief FBI investigation into Tamerlan Tsarnaev, prompted by a tip from Russia's security service.

The vague warning from the Russians was that Tamerlan, an amateur boxer in the U.S., was a follower of radical Islam who had changed drastically since 2010. That led the FBI to interview Tamerlan at the family's home in Cambridge. Officials ultimately placed his name, and his mother's name, on various watch lists, but the inquiry was closed in late spring of 2011.

After the bombings, Russian authorities told U.S. investigators they had secretly recorded a phone conversation in which Zubeidat had vaguely discussed jihad with Tamerlan. The Russians also recorded Zubeidat talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation with reporters.

The conversations are significant because, had they been revealed earlier, they might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate a more thorough investigation of the Tsarnaev family.

Anzor's brother, Ruslan Tsarni, told the AP from his home in Maryland that he believed his former sister-in-law had a "big-time influence" on her older son's growing embrace of his Muslim faith and decision to quit boxing and school.

While Tamerlan was living in Russia for six months in 2012, Zubeidat, who had remained in the U.S., was arrested at a shopping mall in the suburb of Natick, Mass., and accused of trying to shoplift $1,624 worth of women's clothing from a department store.

She failed to appear in court to answer the charges that fall, and instead left the country.

___

Seddon reported from Makhachkala, Russia. Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan and Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report from Washington.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mother-bomb-suspects-found-deeper-spirituality-224317582.html

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Tense Calif. town hunts for killer of 8-year-old

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Law enforcement patrols have been increased outside a school in a small Northern California town where a search is continuing for a man suspected of stabbing an 8-year-old girl to death.

Deputies from the Calaveras County Sheriff's Office on Monday were deployed outside Jenny Lind Elementary School in Valley Springs, as classmates of the victim, Leila Fowler, returned to school.

Grief counselors were also expected to be available at the school. A class of sixth-graders placed ribbons outside to remember Fowler, a third-grader.

Authorities say Leila was fatally stabbed at her home in Valley Springs on Saturday during an apparent break-in. The girl was found by her older brother who told deputies that he had encountered a male intruder in the home.

Authorities have issued a vague description of a suspect but have not been able to identify the man.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

After door-to-door sweeps proved fruitless, law officers urged residents of a small town in Northern California to lock their doors and keep a close eye on streets and yards for a man who stabbed an 8-year-old girl to death in her house.

The attacker, only described as wearing a black shirt and blue pants, was the subject of a broad search Sunday by the sheriff's departments of Calaveras and surrounding counties, the California Highway Patrol and the state Department of Justice.

Leila Fowler was stabbed to death on Saturday at the home in Valley Springs, Coroner Kevin Raggio said. Sheriff's officials say investigators have collected fingerprints and what they believe is DNA from the home. Calaveras County Sheriff's Capt. Jim Macedo told the Modesto Bee (http://bit.ly/14CJ5s2) authorities hope to have lab results on the evidence in a week.

"This is way too close to home," Julia Poland, who took her 13-year-old daughter to an afternoon news conference on the search, told the Bee. "This kind of thing does not happen here."

Leila was found by her brother ? reported by local media to be 12 years old ? after he encountered a male intruder in the home. When the intruder ran away, the boy found his sister stabbed. She was pronounced dead at a local hospital, officials said.

Authorities spent Saturday night and into Sunday conducting a door-to-door sweep of homes scattered across hilly terrain, checking storage sheds and horse stables, and even searching attics.

"It is a difficult area to search, it's rural, remote," sheriff's Capt. Jim Macedo said.

Mass notifications alerted residents about the attack and the search for the suspect, officials said.

"I was working on my tractor and a CHP copter kept flying over my house," Roger Ballew, 35, told The Associated Press on Sunday.

A SWAT team showed up at his house Saturday night and told him to stay inside.

"It was nerve-racking, I didn't sleep well," Ballew said.

Investigators on Sunday were interviewing several people, but no suspects had been named by late afternoon. Detectives were checking out tips that had come in to the sheriff's office, including possible leads from outside the county, officials said.

"It's just terrible," resident Paul Gschweng told Sacramento television station KCRA. "What can I say about it, it's just a tragedy."

The station reported that a neighbor told police that a man was running from the girl's home after the attack.

Investigators were asking area residents to call authorities if they had any information, knew of anyone who had unexplained injuries or may have left the area unexpectedly after the girl was killed.

Valley Springs is a community of about 2,500 people in an unincorporated area of Calaveras County, known as "Gold Country," in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, about 60 miles southeast of Sacramento.

The county became world-famous in 1865 with Mark Twain's short story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County," according to the Calaveras County Chamber of Commerce website.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/tense-calif-town-hunts-killer-8-old-181719127.html

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Recording studio in Newcastle: What makes a good facility? - Artipot

Finding a recording studio in Newcastle isn't a difficult job as there are many but you have to choose a facility according to your needs so that you get what you want. For instance take a home based facility. This facility would work well, if your needs are limited and you have just one project to complete. But if you want to work on many projects then you should locate a professional facility.

Could a home based facility be a professional facility? Yes it could, provided it has all the equipments required for producing different beats. The facility should be managed by experienced musicians that understand the needs of their clients. There are many factors to consider other than cost or the service charge of the facility. If price matters most then you should look for a home based facility because home studios charge much less than their commercial counterparts.

Start with determining your needs. If you know how to play music instruments and produce musical sound beats then you could manage to complete your project in a substandard facility. But if you are looking for professional assistance by experienced sound engineers then you should look for a commercial facility, where you have access to everything from necessary equipments to sound mixing software.

How much a facility would charge? Here you can't do a comparison between the service charge of a home based facility and a commercial studio because former charges much less than latter. But you could do a comparison between two home based facilities. Do an online search and find some home based studios located close to your home. Pay a visit to the facilities to know their services. If you are satisfied with the services, a home based recording studio in Newcastle is offering, you could go ahead and search more facilities.

Before choosing a home based facility, do a quality comparison between former and a professional recording studio in Newcastle. Look at the quality of services of both the establishments and choose one that you find reliable. Also look at the suitability and convenience of both the facilities. In this way, you would be able to find a perfect studio.

Whether you are a singer, website designer or an ad maker, you could improve your business with the help of a professional recording studio in Newcastle. Your professional studio could be a home based facility or a commercial establishment. You should explore all the options.

Source: http://www.artipot.com/articles/1564563/recording-studio-in-newcastle-what-makes-a-good-facility.htm

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