The Tumblr app is, admittedly, a wonderfully designed one. And there's no denying it has more functionality than something like Postcards. But for those who use Tumblr more as a means of finding articles to read instead zipping through streams of GIFs, this might be exactly what you're looking for.
     |
teresa giudice atlanta hawks 2012 white house correspondents dinner forrest gump bernard hopkins devils la riots
Popular Mac photo editing application Pixelmator has just received a major update pushed out via the Mac App Store. The Pixelmator team has been teasing the update -- known as 2.2 Blueberry -- in recent days on their blog, but today it has pushed out complete with over 100 new features and improvements.
As such, we're not going to go through them all; the day isn't long enough. The headline features read well, though. Blueberry brings Smart Shape tools with easy-to-use controls for adjusting outlines, a Smart Move tool that intelligently knows when you're working with shape or image layers and gives you the right tools for the job, and a new Light Leak effect for 'retro-artistically' illuminated images.
And that's just the beginning. Additional tools include new color popovers for quicker access to swatches, improved drawing tools, an improved Type Tool, and major performance improvements.
This update is huge, a major push forward from the Pixelmator team. We're going to need to spend a little time getting to know Blueberry, and play around with some of these fantastic sounding new features. The 2.2 update is available free of charge to anyone who has previously purchased Pixelmator from the Mac App Store, and is available to new customers for $14.99.
What do you think to the Blueberry update to Pixelmator? Does it now tick more of the boxes for you? How about first time Pixelmator users, are you glad you dropped the money on it? Let us know in the comments!
| |
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/zsrDVB1Q8pA/story01.htm
egoraptor gisele bundchen the bourne legacy roland martin suspended lake vostok montgomery county public schools the river
By Kim Palmer and Kevin Gray
CLEVELAND (Reuters) - Three young women newly freed from a decade-long kidnapping ordeal in Cleveland endured their captivity in the dungeon-like squalid confines of a house, where they were raped, starved, beaten and kept in chains by the man who abducted them, authorities said on Wednesday.
Their accused tormentor, Ariel Castro, 52, a veteran school bus driver fired from his job last fall, was formally charged on Wednesday with kidnapping and raping the women, who were rescued from his house on Monday evening shortly before his arrest.
His two brothers, initially arrested as suspects in the case, were not charged, and police said investigators had determined they had no knowledge of the abductions or captivity of the women.
The three victims, abducted separately from the surrounding neighborhood and completely cut off from the outside world during their captivity, were found alive together when neighbors were alerted by cries for help from one of the women, Amanda Berry.
She told police that her escape two days ago was her first chance to break free in the 10 years that she was imprisoned in the house, during which time she conceived and gave birth to a daughter, now 6, authorities said.
The little girl was rescued along with Berry, 27, who was a day shy of her 17th birthday when she disappeared in 2003, and the two other women - Gina DeJesus, 23, who went missing at age 14 in 2004, and Michelle Knight, 32, who was 20 years old when she vanished in 2002.
Chilling new details of their captivity emerged as two of the women were treated to jubilant celebrations with relatives - Berry and her daughter arriving at her sister's house and DeJesus at her mother's home in separate homecomings captured on national television.
Knight remained in a Cleveland hospital, where she was listed in good condition.
BRUTAL MISCARRIAGES
Berry's pregnancy with her daughter was not an isolated incident, according to Cleveland City Councilman Brian Cummins, who said he had read portions of a police report from the initial investigation and was briefed by numerous police department sources.
Cummins said one of the three women - he did not know who - had suffered at least five miscarriages, which Castro is accused of inducing by starving her for weeks and beating her in the abdomen.
Berry's baby was born in a plastic inflatable kiddy pool on Christmas Day, 2006, authorities said. A paternity test will be conducted to determine the girl's father.
All three women were held in the home's basement for long periods, restrained with ropes and chains and occasionally starved, according to Cummins. He added that the victims were kept apart from each other in the house until their captor at some point gained sufficient confidence in his control over them to allow them to mingle.
Moreover, the councilman said all three women were abducted by Castro when he offered them rides in a vehicle.
Cummins said much of their ordeal was recounted by the three women as soon as they were freed.
"En route to the hospital there was just a flood of information shared by these victims immediately," he said. "One can only imagine the mental distress and eruptions of joy and emotions."
Castro, owner of the modest, two-story house, had been thought by neighbors to live there alone. Berry has said she only managed to call for help when he briefly left the premises on Monday.
"The only opportunity, after interviewing the young ladies, to escape was the other day when Amanda escaped," Cleveland Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba said at the news conference. "They don't believe that they've been outside that home for the last 10 years respectively."
Authorities said the women recalled leaving the confines of the house just twice during their captivity, on both occasions to go into a garage on the small lot while disguised in wigs and hats.
Tomba said that during their separation in the house, the three women were kept in different rooms but were aware of the others' presence.
TELEVISED HOMECOMINGS
Berry and her daughter could be seen from an aerial television camera arriving in a convoy of vehicles at her sister's house and entering through a back door.
DeJesus was rushed into the home she had not seen in nine years, clenched in a tight embrace by her sister Mayra. DeJesus hid her face in a yellow hooded sweat-shirt but raised her hand in a thumbs-up sign to spectators chanting "Gina. Gina."
Her mother Nancy DeJesus came outside after a little while.
"I want to thank everybody that believed," she said. "Even the ones that doubted, I still want to thank them the most because they're the ones that made me stronger, the ones that made me feel the most that my daughter was out there."
Neither Berry, who was last seen leaving her job at a fast-food restaurant, nor DeJesus, who vanished while walking home from school, spoke publicly.
Castro faced arraignment on Thursday morning, the prosecutor said.
Investigators took some 200 pieces of evidence from his house, which Tomba said was "in quite a bit of disarray," but found no human remains on the site. Police were still searching a second house.
The three brothers were arrested on Monday evening within hours of the women's escape. However, there was no evidence Pedro Castro, 54, and Onil Castro, 50, were involved, the prosecutor said.
However, the two brothers were slated to appear in court on Thursday on unrelated outstanding misdemeanor warrants.
"There is nothing that leads us to believe that they were involved or had any knowledge of this, and that comes from statements of our victims, their statements and the brothers' statements," Cleveland city prosecutor Victor Perez said, adding, "Ariel would have kept everybody at a distance."
Berry can be heard naming Ariel Castro as the man she was fleeing on the frantic emergency call she made to a 911 operator after a neighbor heard her scream and helped her break through a locked screen door.
Born in Puerto Rico, Ariel Castro played bass in Latin music bands in the area. Records show he was divorced more than a decade ago and his ex-wife had since died. He is known to have at least one adult daughter and son.
In 2005, Castro was named in a complaint of domestic violence in a custody dispute with his ex-wife that accused him of breaking her nose twice, knocking out her tooth, dislocating her shoulder twice and threatening to kill her and her daughters several times.
The complaint was eventually dismissed. (Additional reporting by Daniel Trotta and Barbara Goldberg; Writing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Steve Gorman; Editing by Paul Thomasch, Bernard Orr and Eric Walsh)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cleveland-captive-tells-police-she-took-first-chance-000104440.html
deer antler spray Jason London rick ross yahoo finance iOS 6.1 BlackBerry Kwame Harris
May 8, 2013 ? A gene associated with both protection against bacterial infection and excessive blood clotting could offer new insights into treatment strategies for deep-vein thrombosis -- the formation of a harmful clot in a deep vein. The gene produces an enzyme that, if inhibited via a specific drug therapy, could offer hope to patients prone to deep-vein clots, such as those that sometimes form in the legs during lengthy airplane flights or during recuperation after major surgery.
The research, which was led by Yanming Wang, a Penn State University associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and Denisa Wagner, senior author with decades of research on thrombosis at the Boston Children's Hospital and the Harvard University Medical School, will be published in in the Online Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week ending 10 May 2013.
The team's new findings are an extension of previous research by Wang and other scientists. In earlier studies, Wang and his colleagues had revealed that a gene in mice called Pad4 (peptidylarginine deiminase 4) produces an enzyme that plays an important role in protecting the body from infection. The researchers discovered that cells with a functioning PAD4 enzyme are able to build around themselves a protective, bacteria-killing web that is dubbed a NET (neutrophil extracellular trap).
Now, in their new research, team members have studied the PAD4 enzyme's role in clotting. Wang explained that, as a part of its NET-producing duties, PAD4 regulates the formation of chromatin -- the condensed form of DNA that the cell remodels to form chromosomes. "PAD4 decondenses chromatin by loosening up the interaction between DNA and special proteins called histones. The resulting chromatin threads then combine with protein fibers, blood platelets, and other materials to become, not only the bacteria-killing NET, but also the fluffy, scattered ball that comprises a blood clot." Wang added that, in some individuals, blood clots tend to form within deep veins. These clots can then travel to the heart, causing cardiac arrest, or to the lungs, causing breathing problems.
In one of their experiments, team members compared mice with a normally functioning Pad4 gene to mice with a defective gene. They found that, when veins were constricted, genetically normal mice -- those able to produce the PAD4 enzyme -- formed clots as expected. However, genetically mutated mice -- those unable to produce the enzyme -- did not form clots normally. In fact, the scientists noted a two-fold difference in clot formation between genetically normal and genetically abnormal mice at six hours after the procedure. After 48 hours, the difference had reached 10-fold. "We noted some clotting activity in these genetically abnormal mice, but the clots were not as bulky and were not maintained over time," Wang said. "Clearly, the PAD4 enzyme plays a critical role in the formation of a blood clot, as well as in the formation of a bacteria-fighting NET."
In another experiment, the research team transferred infection-combatting white blood cells -- called neutrophils -- from normal mice to genetically mutated mice. First author Kim Martinod, a graduate student in the Immunology Graduate Program at the Harvard University Medical School, found that, in response to vein constriction, these "rescued" mice now could function normally, forming clots as efficiently as mice with a functioning Pad4 gene, demonstrating that the Pad4 gene did produce a functioning PAD4 enzyme in these white blood cells to regulate blood clotting.
"PAD4, which is also called PADI4 in humans, is a necessary enzyme involved in multiple disorders," Wang explained. "On the one hand, it plays an integral part in the body's defense system, as we showed in earlier work: It is necessary in the production of the protective, bacteria-killing NET. On the other hand, our earlier work also showed that this enzyme acts to silence tumor-suppressor genes. Now, in our new research, we are starting to see that its overactivity also may be part of the reason that some individuals suffer from deep-vein clotting." Wang added that patients prone to deep-vein thrombosis might benefit from drugs that target the PAD4 enzyme. "In future research, specific drug therapies could be developed and tested with the goal of targeting this enzyme," Wang said. "If we could find a way to dial back the enzyme's clot-forming effects, we might be able to offer new hope to patients suffering from clotting disorders and deep-vein thrombosis."
In addition to Wang, Wagner, and Martinod, other scientists who contributed to this research include Jing Hu from Penn State; Melanie Demers, Tobias A. Fuchs, Siu Ling Wong, and Alexander Brill from the Harvard University Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital; and Maureen Gallant from Boston Children's Hospital.
The research was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/health_medicine/genes/~3/1rsBh-XFno4/130508093050.htm
texas news kim mulkey sarah palin today show dallas tornado video 1940 census instagram for android dallas news
Foursquare's been rather attentive to the other mobile plaforms this year, releasing updates for Android, BlackBerry and iOS in 2013. The time has finally come for Microsoft mobile users as well, as a fresh WP8-compatible version has just hit the Windows Phone app store. Version 3.0 lets users pin people and places to Start screens, provides lock screen notifications and lets folks check-in and share via NFC. Oh, and should you grow weary of using swipes and taps, the addition of speech controls allows you to search and check-in using only your voice. Should you be among the socially-inclined Microsofties, you know what to do.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Microsoft
Via: The Verge
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has both joked about his weight and said that it's a real concern, secretly underwent a weight-loss surgery in February that experts say could help him if he gets exercise and watches what he eats.
The father of four agreed to the surgery, in which a band was placed around his stomach to restrict the amount of food he can eat, after turning 50 in September, spokesman Michael Drewniak confirmed to The Associated Press on Tuesday. Christie told The New York Post, which first reported the surgery, that he said he wasn't motivated by thoughts of running for president.
"I've struggled with this issue for 20 years," he told the newspaper. "For me, this is about turning 50 and looking at my children and wanting to be there for them."
Christie has never disclosed his weight, but it's been an issue throughout his political career. Christie said four years ago that then-Gov. Jon Corzine was bringing it up in a campaign commercial that accused Christie of "throwing his weight around" to get out of traffic tickets.
Comics including Jimmy Kimmel and David Letterman also have made fun of it. In interviews with Letterman, Orpah Winfrey, Barbara Walters and others, Christie has both joked about the issue and said solemnly that he's trying to shed pounds.
During a February appearance on "The Late Show with David Letterman," the governor pulled out a doughnut and said his girth was "fair game" for comedians.
Over his appearances the next few days, he was asked repeatedly about his weight. At one point, he said he had a plan for shedding some pounds: "Whether it's successful or not," he said. "You'll all be able to notice."
The next day he responded angrily to comments from a former White House physician who said she worried about him dying in office. The governor said Dr. Connie Mariano should "shut up."
Ten days after that, on Feb. 16, Christie had the surgery. He said the operation lasted 40 minutes and he was home the same afternoon.
Christie, who is in the midst of a re-election campaign, declined to say how much weight he has lost since the surgery.
"A week or two ago, I went to a steakhouse and ordered a steak and ate about a third of it and I was full," he told the Post.
The Republican governor is running for a second term in November, although his name is often mentioned as a possible presidential candidate.
"I know it sounds crazy to say that running for president is minor, but in the grand scheme of things, it was looking at Mary Pat and the kids and going, 'I have to do this for them, even if I don't give a crap about myself,'" he said.
The revelation about Christie's surgery came the same day that MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski's book featuring comments from Christie hit bookstores.
In the book, "Obsessed: America's Food Addiction ? And My Own," Christie describes working out four times a week but not seeing major weight drops and hearing critics say that his weight shows he's undisciplined. He also talks about what others have said on Twitter, such as: "HEY GOVERNOR, WHAT DID YOU HAVE FOR BREAKFAST TODAY, ONE STICK OF BUTTER OR TWO?"
"For somebody like me who's had so much success in my life, and really been successful at everything I've tried, to not be able to be successful at this is incredibly discouraging," he said.
Approximately 160,000 stomach-reducing procedures of various types are performed each year. Gastric bypass, sometimes called stomach stapling, is the most common, where surgeons shrink the stomach's size and reroute food to the small intestine.
Gastric band surgery, best known by the brand name Lap-Band, is a less invasive and reversible alternative, where an adjustable ring is placed over the top of the stomach and tightened to restrict how much food can enter.
Candidates for gastric banding must have a body mass index of between 30 and 40 ? plus a weight-related medical condition, such as diabetes or high blood pressure ? or a BMI of 40 and higher. They also must have previously attempted to lose weight through diet and exercise.
Christie, who says he does not have any other significant health problems, has talked about working with a personal trainer since he first ran for governor four years ago.
"If you eat appropriately and chew your food, it works nicely," said Dr. Christina Li, a bariatric doctor at Sinai Hospital of Baltimore.
She said Christie has the resources to have people help him eat right and get exercise. While the band is removable, she said patients are told to adjust to having it for the rest of their lives.
Li said risks include infection, and that it does not work for all patients.
Dr. Jaime Ponce, who practices in Dalton, Ga., and is president of the American Society for Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery, said that people who have the procedure Christie had often lose 1 to 2 pounds per week.
Christie's procedure was performed by Dr. George Fielding, head of NYU Medical Center's Weight Management Program, who did the same procedure for New York Jets coach Rex Ryan three years ago.
The adjustable Lap-Band has been available in the U.S. since 2001 for the most obese patients. In 2011, the Food and Drug Administration expanded approval to somewhat less obese patients.
___
AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard in Washington and AP writer Katie Zezima in Newark contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nj-governor-had-secret-weight-loss-surgery-113910417.html
Kevin Clash Walmart Black Friday 2012 Paula Broadwell Tilted Kilt Barbara Palvin Yahoo Fantasy Football Nick Foles
Manchin (AP/File)
NEW YORK?West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin said Tuesday he's optimistic that a revised bipartisan bill to expand background checks for gun sales will pass the Senate.
"We really need five votes," Manchin, a Democrat, said during an interview at the Atlantic's New York Ideas Festival. The original bill, which Manchin co-sponsored with Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, failed in a 54-46 Senate vote last month.
A new bill, Manchin said, is in the works. "Oh, it's coming back," he said.
Manchin said he needs to educate law-abiding gun owners who support the legislation but don't trust the government.
"The big problem is that they're afraid that this is the first step because they've seen overreach," he said.
The background check bill, Manchin said, not only protects Second Amendment rights, but expands them.
Other detractors said the bill might infringe on gun transfers between family members. "It doesn't at all," Manchin said.
The Democratic senator also scoffed at talk of the "culture war" discussed at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston over the weekend as cage-rattling rhetoric.
"What you saw was the division that's going on across the country," Manchin, a gun owner and member of the NRA, said. "I don't know why we can't sit and talk and work together as Americans."
Manchin said the school shootings Newtown, Conn., affected his views.
"If Newtown didn't change you, nothing will," Manchin said. "It made you think, 'Can we do something a little better?'"
Twenty-six people, including 20 children, were killed in the Dec. 14, 2012, shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Manchin added: "None of those families came to my office and asked to repeal the Second Amendment." They asked him to make it harder for people who are bent on killing to get guns.
"That was a small ask," he said.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/manchin-background-check-bill-150416144.html
carlina white Sam Champion Engaged Infield fly rule Taken 2 Venezuela Elections Skyfall Chicago Marathon 2012
All Critics (101) | Top Critics (28) | Fresh (99) | Rotten (2)
Nichols takes his time with the story, dwelling on how the boy is shaped by the killer's tragic sense of romance, yet the suspense holds.
"Mud" isn't just a movie. It's the firm confirmation of a career.
"Mud" unfolds at its own pace, revealing its story in slivers. The performances are outstanding, especially from Sheridan, who plays tough, sweet, vulnerable and confused with equal conviction.
The film is drenched in the humidity and salty air of a Delta summer, often recalling the musical, aphoristic cadences of Sam Shepard, who happens to appear in a supporting role.
A wonderful, piquant modern-day variation on "Huckleberry Finn.''
One of the most creatively rich and emotionally rewarding movies to come along this year.
A stirring ode to innocence that evokes classics like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Stand By Me.
Mud has some interesting things to say about southern manhood, and is observant about the struggle between head and heart, even if it is less forthcoming on how you get a boat out of a tree.
A bold, intelligent, 21st century take on Mark Twain - with added occult tendencies.
Mud is a potent and earnest rumination on love and change that gets muddled by moments of overblown as well as scattered storytelling.
The setting, characters and situations in "Mud" are fully formed and fully satisfying.
A modern-day Huck Finn adventure pulled along in the mesmerizing current of a crime yarn and anchored to a teenager's heartbreaking quest for emotional moorings.
Like great directors before him -- Hitchcock, Polanski, Altman, et al. -- Nichols uses duality with real skill and impact.
Poignant coming-of-age tale has some edgy content.
This is no Southern Gothic pastiche but a convincing portrait of a South rarely seen onscreen, the South of Walmarts and water moccasins, of Piggy-Wiggly and punk rock.
I liked Mud. What's frustrating is feeling as if I could have loved it.
It's a lovely, coherent piece of storytelling, with a unique sense of place. Nichols has carved out a niche as a distinctive film-maker.
With Mud, Jeff Nichols demonstrates once again that he's that rare breed of filmmaker who prefers to bury himself in the dirt of rural America rather than carve his initials into the concrete of sprawling urbanity.
Nichols weaves it all together with consummate skill and a little black pepper.
It's rare that films manage to capture the actual experience of what it is like to be a child, but 'Mud' seems to nail the ethos.
Mud is a captivating drama with well-rounded characters and fantastic performances from its three leads.
...a respectful, storyteller's approach to rural America. No mockery, no Hollywood-knows-better, no nonsense. That kind of thing is in shorter supply than the universe's collective desire for McConaughey to return to rom-coms.
Jeff Nichols' script for Mud is a lot like the Mississippi River that serves as a backdrop for the tale of unrequited love. There are times it is big and powerful and other times when it becomes so serene it's easy to forget the depths that hide below.
Mud combines the poignance of a boy coming to terms with life's realities with the excitement of top-notch suspense.
This densely atmospheric film could have used more Mark Twain-like adventure and less dreary adult intrigue.
No quotes approved yet for Mud. Logged in users can submit quotes.
Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mud_2012/
masters tickets one direction tulsa news scalloped potatoes the ten commandments charlton heston moses
By Caroline Valetkevitch
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Standard & Poor's, initially known as the Standard Statistics Company, created its first stock market index in 1923. It consisted of the stocks of 233 companies and was computed weekly.
Three years later, it developed a 90-stock composite price index computed daily. That was expanded over the years.
On March 4, 1957, the Standard & Poor's 500 <.inx><.spx> was introduced.
The S&P 500 index has became synonymous with the term "U.S. stock market." It is one of the leading benchmarks for the market, even though others, including the Russell and Wilshire indexes, are broader measures of the market. Still, investors use the S&P 500 as the main index to measure their portfolios' performance, with roughly $5.6 trillion benchmarked to the S&P 500.
The S&P's 500 companies represent the U.S. market more broadly than the Dow Jones industrial average, which includes the stocks of only 30 companies.
American Telephone and Telegraph was the heaviest-weighted stock in the index in 1957. The company, now known as AT&T
Today the S&P 500 index has a total market cap of about $14.96 trillion. Sixty-nine of the 500 original companies remain in the S&P 500 today.
Below are some key dates and milestones in the history of the S&P 500.
1923: Standard Statistics Company, as S&P was formerly known, develops its first stock market index consisting of the stocks of 233 U.S. companies, computed weekly.
1926: Standard Statistics creates a 90-stock composite price index, computed daily.
March 4, 1957: The Standard & Poor's 500 index is introduced, tracking the performance of the stocks of 500 leading U.S. companies. With a total market capitalization of $172 billion, the S&P 500 followed the performance of 425 industrial, 15 rail and 60 utility stocks.
1958: S&P 500 ends the year up 38.06 percent, its best year in terms of percentage gain.
June 4, 1968: S&P 500 closes above 100 for the first time.
August 31, 1976: Vanguard introduces the first retail index mutual fund, the Vanguard First Index Investment Trust, which tracks the S&P 500, allowing individual investors for the first time to buy into the broad market with a single purchase. The fund, now known as the Vanguard 500 Index Fund
April 21, 1982: The Chicago Mercantile Exchange begins trading futures based on the S&P 500.
July 1, 1983: Options contracts based on the S&P 500 index begin trading on the Chicago Board Options Exchange.
Oct 19, 1987: S&P 500 registers its worst daily percentage loss, falling 20.47 percent. The one-day crash, known as "Black Monday," was blamed on program trading and those using a hedging strategy known as portfolio insurance. Despite the losses, the S&P 500 still ended up that year.
January 22, 1993: State Street's Standard & Poor's Depositary Receipts, or the SPDR S&P 500
September 9, 1997: CME introduces the S&P E-mini futures, which is valued at $50 multiplied by the price of the S&P 500, or one-fifth of the size of the "big" S&P futures contract. It has since become the most heavily traded futures contract on the CME.
February 2, 1998: S&P 500 closes above 1,000 for the first time.
March 24, 2000: The S&P 500 index reaches an all-time intraday high of 1,552.87 during the dot-com bubble.
March 24, 2004: Trading begins in futures on the VIX <.vix>, the CBOE Volatility Index measuring implied volatility of S&P 500 index options. The VIX is known as the market's "fear gauge." It tends to rise when stocks fall. It recently fell to levels not seen since April 2007.
March-September 2005: The index is transitioned from simply market-value weighted to float adjusted, where the market capitalization is calculated using only the number of shares available for public trading.
October 9, 2007: Index closes at a record high of 1,565.15.
October 11, 2007: S&P 500 hits intraday record high of 1,576.09.
Oct 13, 2008: S&P 500 marks its best daily percentage gain, rising 11.58 percent. It also registers its largest single-day point increase of 104.13 points.
2008: For the year, S&P 500 falls 38.49 percent, its worst yearly percentage loss. In September 2008, Lehman Brothers collapsed as the financial crisis spread.
March 9, 2009: S&P 500 closes at 676.53, its closing low after the onset of the 2008 financial crisis and the Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy.
August 20, 2012: Apple becomes the biggest U.S. company and takes over as the market capitalization leader in the S&P 500, pushing Exxon Mobil
March 28, 2013: S&P 500 ends at 1,569.19, surpassing its previous record closing high set in 2007.
April 10, 2013: S&P 500 hits new all-time intraday record high at 1,589.07, surpassing previous record of 1,576.09 set in October 2007.
April 10, 2013: S&P 500 closes at a record high of 1,587.73 - eclipsing the record reached on March 28, when it climbed above the October 9, 2007, milestone of 1,565.15.
April 29, 2013: S&P 500 ends at a record high of 1,593.61.
April 30, 2013: S&P 500 climbs to an all-time intraday high of 1,597.57 in the final moments of trading - and ends at that level, which also represents another record closing high.
May 2, 2013: S&P ends at a record high of 1,597.59, just off a fresh intraday high of 1,598.60.
May 3, 2013: S&P 500 closes above 1,600 for the first time - finishing at 1,614.42 after a much better-than-expected April U.S. non-farm payrolls report. The index also hit an all-time intraday high of 1,618.46.
May 6, 2013: During the session, the S&P 500 hits an all-time intraday high 1,619.77.
May 6, 2013: S&P 500 ends at a record high of 1,617.50.
Sources: S&P Dow Jones Indices Senior Index Analyst Howard Silverblatt, the Standard & Poor's book, "Innovation & Evolution, The S&P 500," CME, CBOE, Vanguard Group Inc, State Street Global Advisors, Thomson Reuters.
(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Jan Paschal and Nick Zieminski)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/key-dates-milestones-p-500s-history-213242943.html
breaking dawn part 2 breaking dawn part 2 Jennifer Lacy Honey Baked Ham hostess israel AMA
This player is used on Facebook and anytime it's embedded outside of our sites.
Small business notebooks are finally getting a little sexy. HP?s new ProBook 400 series of notebooks feature a more consumer-friendly design while still retaining the performance and durability of its previous generations of small biz systems.
The ProBook 400 Series will be available in screen sizes ranging from 13.3 inches to 17 inches, and will be up to 18 percent lighter and 36 percent thinner than HP?s previous small business notebooks. They will feature a Meteorite Grey casing with aluminum accents. The Duraflex lid has a soft-touch finish that?s comfortable to the touch, and resists fingerprints well.?
At launch, the ProBook 430 will be the only model that supports Intel?s upcoming Haswell processor; everything else will come with either a 3rd Generation Intel Core processor or AMD for now. The second number in the name (for example, the 3 in 430) indicates the screen size, while the third number indicates the type of processor?0 for Intel, and 5 for AMD.
Small business-friendly features include a spill-resistant keyboard, fingerprint reader, Microsoft security Essentials and a Kensington lock slot. All the ProBooks will have a removable battery and an easy-access latch to upgrade the hard drive and RAM. Other options include a hybrid hard drive, 4G WWAN, and HP ClientSecurity. And, you can expect to keep your ProBook around for a while. HP says that these notebooks have undergone 115,000 hours of reliability testing.
The HP ProBook 400 series will be available in May, and start at $499.?
Follow Mike Prospero on Twitter and Google+. Follow LAPTOPMAG on Twitter, Google+ or Facebook.
Source: http://blog.laptopmag.com/hp-announces-new-probook-400-series-for-small-business-starting-at-499
katie couric barista university of kentucky oakland news alec baldwin alec baldwin college basketball
Scientists have developed the first global model that analyses the routes taken by marine invasive species.
The researchers examined the movements of cargo ships around the world to identify the hot spots where these aquatic aliens might thrive.
Marine species are taken in with ballast water on freighters and wreak havoc in new locations, driving natives to extinction.
The research is published in the Journal Ecology Letters.
There has been a well-documented boom in global shipping over the past 20 years and this has led to growing numbers of species moving via ballast tanks, or by clinging to hulls.
Some ports such as San Francisco and Chesapeake Bay have reported several exotic new species arriving every year. Economic estimates indicate that marine invaders can have huge impacts that last for decades.
Now, scientists from the UK and Germany have developed a model that might help curb these unwanted visitors. They obtained detailed logs from nearly three million voyages that took place in 2007 and 2008.
"Our model combines information such as shipping routes, ship sizes, temperatures and biogeography to come up with local forecasts of invasion probabilities," said Prof Bernd Blasius from the University of Oldenburg.
While this is a mathematical model, the researchers were able to adjust it by carrying out field observations. They were able to estimate the probability that a species can survive a journey and establish a population in a subsequent port of call.
"It is called ecological roulette," said Dr Michael Gastner from the University of Bristol.
Continue reading the main storyOne of the most celebrated examples of invasives is the Zebra mussel. They travelled by cargo ship from the Black Sea to the Great Lakes in the US in 1988. The invaders have caused severe economic problems as they have multiplied rapidly, clogging water pipes. At one point, they cut off a town's water supply
"The probability of winning from the perspective of the invader is really tiny - but because the number of attempts are now growing with more and bigger ships, you play this roulette so often that you become a likely winner sooner or later," he added.
The team says that the key hotspots for invasion are Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Panama and Suez canals. Cooler climates like the North Sea are less likely to be troubled, unless ships come from similar waters such as the east coast of the US. They conclude that very long trips are less likely to be a cause for concern.
"If you are travelling 20,000 km, it is rather unlikely that an organism will survive this, as ballast water is not the most cosy environment to live in," said Dr Gastner.
"There is a certain intermediate range of distances that you can survive as a potential invader. You are the new kid on the block and can increase your population in a very short time," he added.
While the growth in cargo carried across the oceans means that the risk of future invasions is severe, the researchers say that tackling the ballast water issue can be a powerful means of mitigation.
But Dr Gastner is worried that economic pressure might prevent ship owners from taking the necessary steps.
"There is no single solution that seems to be working on a global scale; different ship sizes have different engineering constraints - and it takes too much time to have the water filtered."
"For the shipping industry, even an extra half an hour in port means additional costs and they are trying to reduce this as much as they can," he said.
Follow Matt on Twitter.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22397076#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
aubrey plaza boston marathon turbotax Catching Fire trailer Marfa Texas leonhard euler venezuela
By Dominic Evans and Oliver Holmes
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Israeli jets devastated Syrian targets near Damascus on Sunday in a heavy overnight air raid that Western and Israeli officials called a new strike on Iranian missiles bound for Lebanon's Hezbollah.
As Syria's two-year-old civil war veered into the potentially atomic arena of Iran's confrontation with Israel and the West over its nuclear program, people were woken in the Syrian capital by explosions that shook the ground like an earthquake and sent pillars of flame high into the night sky.
"Night turned into day," one man told Reuters from his home at Hameh, near one of the targets, the Jamraya military base.
But for all the angry rhetoric in response from Tehran and from the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, it was unclear whether the second such raid in 48 hours would elicit any greater reaction than an Israeli attack in the same area in January, which was followed by little evident change.
The Syrian government accused Israel of effectively helping al Qaeda Islamist "terrorists" and said the strikes "open the door to all possibilities"; but Israeli officials said that, as in January, they were calculating Assad would not pick a fight with a well-armed neighbor while facing defeat at home.
Denying it was weighing in on the rebel side on behalf of Washington - which opposes Assad but is hesitating to intervene - officials said Israel was pursuing its own conflict, not with Syria but with Iran, and was acting to prevent Iran's Hezbollah allies receiving missiles that might strike Tel Aviv if Israel made good on threats to attack Tehran's nuclear program.
What Israel was not doing, they stressed, was getting drawn into a debate that has raged in the United States lately of whether the alleged use of poison gas by Assad's forces should prompt the West finally to give military backing to oust him.
Israel was not taking sides in a civil war that has pitted Assad's government, a dour but mostly toothless adversary for nearly 40 years, against Sunni rebels, some of them Islamist radicals, who might one day turn Syria's armory against the Jewish state.
It is a mark of how two years of killing in which at least 70,000 Syrians have died has not only inflamed a wider, regional confrontation between Shi'ite Muslim Iran and Sunni Arabs, some of them close Western allies, but have also left Israel and Western powers scrambling to reassess where their interests lie.
Egypt, the most populous Arab state and flagship of the 2011 Arab Spring revolts where elected Islamists have replaced a Western-backed autocrat, has no love for Assad. But on Sunday it condemned Israel's air strikes as a breach of international law that "made the situation more complicated".
ROCKETS TARGETED
Israel does not confirm such missions explicitly - a policy it says is intended to avoid provoking reprisals. But an Israeli official told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the strikes were carried out by its forces, as was a raid early on Friday that U.S. President Barack Obama said had been justified.
A Western intelligence source told Reuters: "In last night's attack, as in the previous one, what was attacked were stores of Fateh-110 missiles that were in transit from Iran to Hezbollah."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his aim for Israel was to "guarantee its future" - language he has used to warn of a willingness to attack Iran's nuclear sites, even in defiance of U.S. advice, as well as to deny Hezbollah heavier weapons.
He later flew to China on a scheduled trip, projecting confidence there would be no major escalation - though Israel has reinforced its anti-missile batteries in the north.
Syrian state television said bombing at a military research facility at Jamraya and two other sites caused "many civilian casualties and widespread damage", but it gave no details. The Jamraya compound was also a target for Israel on January 30.
Hezbollah's Al-Manar television showed a flattened building spread over the size of a football pitch, with smoke rising from rubble containing shell fragments. It did not identify it.
Syrian state television quoted a letter from the foreign minister to the United Nations saying: "The blatant Israeli aggression has the aim to provide direct military support to the terrorist groups after they failed to control territory."
Obama defended Israel's right to block "terrorist organizations like Hezbollah" from acquiring weapons after Friday's raid, and a White House spokesman said on Sunday: "The president many times has talked about his view that Israel, as a sovereign government, has the right to take the actions they feel are necessary to protect their people."
It was unclear that Israel had sought U.S. approval for the strikes, although the White House spokesman said: "The close coordination between the Obama administration, the United States of America, is ongoing with the Israeli government."
Obama has in recent years worked to hold back Netanyahu from making good on threats to hit facilities where he says Iran, despite its denials, is working to develop a nuclear weapon.
On Sunday, some Israeli officials highlighted Obama's reluctance to be drawn into new conflict in the Middle East to explain Israel's need for independent action.
Syria restricts access to independent journalists. Its state media said Israeli aircraft struck three places between Damascus and the nearby Lebanese border. The city also lies barely 50 km (30 miles) from Israeli positions on the occupied Golan Heights.
Tehran, which has long backed Assad, whose Alawite minority has religious ties to Shi'ite Islam, denied the attack was on armaments for Lebanon and called for nations to stand firm against Israel. A senior Iranian commander was quoted, however, as saying Syria's armed forces were able to defend themselves without their allies, though Iran could help them with training.
Hezbollah, a Shi'ite movement that says it is defending Lebanon from Israeli aggression, declined immediate comment.
ISRAELI CONCERNS
Analysts say the Fateh-110 could put the Tel Aviv metropolis in range of Hezbollah gunners, 100 km (60 miles) to the north, bolstering the arsenal of a group that fired some 4,000 shorter-range rockets into Israel during a month-long war in 2006.
"What we want is to ensure that inside the Syrian chaos we will not see Hezbollah growing stronger," Israeli lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi, a confidant of Netanyahu, told Army Radio.
"The world is helplessly looking on at events in Syria, the Americans in particular, and this president in particular," he added of Obama. "He has left Iraq, Afghanistan and has no interest in sending ground troops to Syria ... That is why, as in the past, we are left with our own interests, protecting them with determination and without getting too involved."
Video footage uploaded onto the Internet by Syrian activists showed a series of blasts. One lit up the skyline of Damascus, while another sent up a tower of flames and secondary blasts.
Syrian state news agency SANA said Israeli aircraft struck in three places: northeast of Jamraya; the town of Maysaloun on the Lebanese border; and the nearby Dimas air base.
"The sky was red all night," one man said from Hameh, near Jamraya. "We didn't sleep a single second. The explosions started after midnight and continued through the night."
Central Damascus was quiet on the first day of the working week, and government checkpoints seemed reinforced. Some opposition activists said they were glad strikes might weaken Assad, even if few Syrians have any liking for Israel: "We don't care who did it," Rania al-Midania said in the capital. "We care that those weapons are no longer there to kill us."
(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Marwan Makdesi in Damascus, Maayan Lubell, Dan Williams, Jeffrey Heller and Crispian Balmer in Jerusalem, Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, Roberta Rampton Aboard Air Force One and Arshad Mohammed and Phil Stewart in Washington; Writing by Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Will Waterman)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/explosions-shake-damascus-syria-says-israel-attacked-001502034.html
84th annual academy awards beginners 2012 oscars the shore meryl streep oscar wins sasha baron cohen oscars the artist
The GBU-57A-B Massive Ordnance Penetrator
| |
Republican National Convention Karlie Redd guild wars 2 adrian gonzalez Jerry Nelson Foo Canoodle
