Sunday, June 23, 2013

Apple 2013 Best Designed Apps - Business Insider

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Asa Mathat | D: All Things Digital

A little over a week ago, Apple revealed the winners of its 2013 design awards.

The awards are meant to recognize the best and most innovative Mac and iOS app produced by independent developers. It is also a way for Apple to show off the most creative uses of its products.

The apps that Apple selected are useful, fun, and of course beautiful.

Without further adieu, here are 2013's winners.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-2013-best-designed-apps-2013-6

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Saturday, June 22, 2013

Happy 31st Birthday, Prince William!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/06/happy-31st-birthday-prince-william/

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Judge blocks audio expert testimony in Trayvon Martin case

By Barbara Liston

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Two voice identification experts who suggested that unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin screamed for help before he was shot and killed by George Zimmerman will not be allowed to testify at his murder trial, the judge in the case has ruled.

The ruling by Judge Debra Nelson was released on Saturday, marking the last major hurdle before opening statements in the high-profile case begin on Monday in Seminole County courthouse in Sanford, Florida.

Prosecutors had sought to call audio experts to testify about a 911 emergency call in which screams for help can be heard in the background during an altercation between Zimmerman and Martin before the shooting.

The screams could be pivotal evidence and help identify who was the aggressor on the night of the February 2012 killing. Zimmerman's family and supporters claim the voice was his, while Martin's parents insist the voice belonged to their son.

Last year, an FBI expert said a voice analysis of the call was inconclusive.

David Weinstein, a Miami lawyer and former prosecutor, called the ruling a victory for Zimmerman's defense team.

"Now there won't be a witness who can 'identify' the voice with certainty as a particular person," he said. "Each side can argue who they believe the voice belongs to and the jurors will have to decide who they hear."

Prosecutors say Zimmerman followed and confronted Martin despite a police dispatcher telling him not to pursue the 17-year-old. Zimmerman, 29, has said the two fought and that he shot Martin because he feared for his life.

An all-female jury will decide whether Zimmerman is guilty of second-degree murder, a charge that carries a potential life sentence. Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty.

Nelson said in her 12-page order that the decision does not prevent either side from playing the 911 tape and presenting witnesses familiar with Zimmerman's and Martin's voices from stating their opinions.

Lead defense attorney Mark O'Mara has called the recording "the most significant piece of evidence in the case."

Two state experts, in what they qualify as tentative or probable findings because of the poor quality of the recording, have said that the chilling screams heard in the background came from Martin.

Lawyers for Zimmerman, a former neighborhood watch volunteer, sought to block the testimony on grounds that the methods used by the state's voice recognition experts were based on questionable science.

Audio experts who testified for the defense in a lengthy pre-trial hearing argued that voice recognition techniques cannot identify an individual from screams made under extreme duress.

On Friday, the judge also dismissed a defense motion to bar certain words and phrases from the prosecution's opening statement.

She ruled prosecutors could allege that Zimmerman, who is Hispanic, "profiled" Martin but ordered them not to use the term "racial profiling."

(Additional reporting by David Adams; Writing by Kevin Gray; Editing by Eric Beech and Eric Walsh)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/judge-blocks-audio-expert-testimony-trayvon-martin-case-153333340.html

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Flooding forces 75,000 from western Canadian homes

CALGARY, Alberta (AP) ? Flooding forced the western Canadian city of Calgary to order the evacuation of its entire downtown Friday, as the waters reached the 10th row of the city's hockey arena.

Communities throughout southern Alberta were inundated by overflowing rivers that washed out roads and bridges, soaked homes and turned streets into dirt-brown waterways. Police say as many as four people might have died.

About 350,000 people work in downtown Calgary on a typical day. However, officials said very few people need to be moved out, since many heeded warnings and did not go to work Friday.

Twenty-five neighborhoods in the city, with an estimated population of 75,000, have already been evacuated due to floodwaters in Calgary, a city of more than a million people that hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics and serves as the center of Canada's oil industry.

Outside the city, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said two men were seen floating lifeless in the Highwood River near the hard-hit community of High River on Thursday, but no bodies have been found. They also say a woman who was swept away with her camper has not been located. And it wasn't clear whether a man who was seen falling out of a canoe in the High River area was able to climb back in.

In the downtown Calgary, water was inundating homes and businesses in the shadow of skyscrapers. Water has swamped cars and train tracks.

The city said the home rink of the National Hockey League's Calgary Flames flooded and the water inside was 10 rows deep.

At the grounds for the world-famous Calgary Stampede fair, water reached up to the roofs of the chuck wagon barns. The popular rodeo and festival is the city's signature event. Mayor Naheed Nenshi said it will occur no matter what.

About 1,500 have gone to emergency shelters while the rest have found shelter with family or friends, Nenshi said.

Nenshi said he's never seen the rivers reach so high or flow so fast, but said the flooding situation was as under control as it could be. Nenshi said the Elbow River, one of two rivers that flow through the southern Alberta city, has peaked.

The mayor suggested that levels on the Bow River ? which, in Nenshi's words, looked like an ocean ? would remain steady for the rest of the day as long as conditions didn't change.

Police urged people to stay away from downtown and not go to work.

The flood was forcing emergency plans at the Calgary Zoo, which is situated on an island near where the Elbow and Bow rivers meet. Lions and tigers were being prepared for transfer, if necessary, to prisoner holding cells at the courthouse.

Schools and court trials were cancelled Friday and residents urged to avoid downtown. Transit service in the core was shut down.

Residents were left to wander and wade through streets waist-deep in water.

"In all the years I've been down here, I've never seen the water this high," resident John Doherty said.

"I've got two antique pianos in the garage that I was going to rebuild and they're probably under water," he said. "We're shell-shocked."

Alberta Premier Alison Redford promised the province would help flood victims put their lives back together and provide financial aid to communities that need to rebuild. The premier said at a briefing that she had spoken to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was heading to Calgary and promised disaster relief.

Redford urged people to heed evacuation orders, so authorities could do their jobs. She called the flooding that has hit most of southern Alberta an "absolutely tragic situation."

The premier warned that communities downstream of Calgary had not yet felt the full force of the floodwaters.

It had been a rainy week throughout much of Alberta, but on Thursday the Bow River Basin was battered with up to 100 millimeters (four inches) of rain. Environment Canada's forecast called for more rain in the area, but in much smaller amounts.

Calgary was not alone in its weather-related woes. Flashpoints of chaos spread from towns in the Rockies south to Lethbridge.

More than a dozen towns declared states of emergency. Entire communities, including High River and Bragg Creek, near Calgary, were under mandatory evacuation orders.

Some of the worst flooding hit High River, where an estimated half of the town's residents experienced flooding in their homes.

Military helicopters plucked about 30 people off rooftops in the area. Others were rescued by boat or in buckets of heavy machinery. Some even swam for their lives from stranded cars.

A spokesman for Defense Minister Peter MacKay said 354 soldiers are being deployed to the entire flood zone.

Further west, in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, photos from the mountain town of Canmore depicted a raging river ripping at house foundations.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/flooding-forces-75-000-western-canadian-homes-205858183.html

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Friday, June 21, 2013

Insight: Chinese whispers: Who wants to bet on the 'Nicaragua Canal'?

By Ivan Castro and Lomi Kriel

MANAGUA/PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - For centuries since the colonization of the New World, entrepreneurs have dreamed of building a canal spanning Nicaragua to make it easier to tap Asia's riches.

Sixteenth century Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes yearned to cleave the isthmus, and ever since, French, American and Dutch financiers have all made abortive, Quixotic attempts to bisect the Central American country's volcano-studded terrain.

Now it's the turn of the Chinese. And skepticism is as strong as ever.

The Hong Kong-based company that won a concession to design, build and manage a $40 billion canal to rival Panama's says it has been lured by an energy renaissance in the United States and its belief that world trade could double by 2030.

The company, HKND Group, was registered last year in the Cayman Islands. This would be its first infrastructure project, and its 40-year-old boss, Wang Jing, is relatively unknown.

There is still no firm route for the proposed canal, which would cost about four years' worth of Nicaragua's annual gross domestic product, and would likely be three times longer than the 48-mile (77-km) Panama Canal, which took a decade to build. Engineers also note that the geography poses some major challenges - not least a 20 foot tide differential between the two coasts.

For all those reasons, investors and infrastructure experts are highly dubious that a canal will ever be built.

"Are international shipping companies going to trust a one-guy shop with minor telecommunications experience to be the system integrator on a $40 billion project in a country whose transparency is already subject to question?", said Evan Ellis, a professor of national security studies at the U.S. Government's National Defense University.

Greg Miller, a shipping consultant at IHS Fairplay, a global maritime intelligence company, was also highly skeptical.

"The Nicaragua canal will never be built and the only people who'll financially profit from this proposal are the consultants paid to do the feasibility studies," he said.

Rosario Murillo, the wife of President Daniel Ortega and his government spokeswoman, said at a ceremony with Wang after the concession was granted: "This is a day of miracles, of wonders." Government officials declined to comment on skepticism that has emerged since then.

BETTING ON ENERGY BOOM

HKND Group is a unit of holding company the HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co., Ltd. which was incorporated last year, according to the Hong Kong Companies Registry.

It bases its projections for the future success of a Nicaragua canal on the U.S. shale revolution, which has unlocked decades of oil and gas supply. If the United States wants to export more to Asia, the theory goes, it will need to send more and bigger ships from Gulf Coast refineries by canal to the Pacific, and Panama won't be able to handle it all.

"This project can be undertaken now, and only now, thanks to the discovery of prodigious amounts of gas and oil in the United States," said Ronald MacLean-Abaroa, HKND Group's spokesman, who is a former mayor of Bolivia's La Paz and one-time World Bank governance specialist.

"Three years ago that didn't exist," he told Reuters in an interview, saying the company would seek to raise private financing in Asia. On its website, the company also pointed to growth in U.S. exports of iron ore, coal and grains.

The Panama canal is already expanding to accommodate growth in traffic, and experts say the shale oil boom could benefit a Nicaraguan project, if it is ever completed.

Maersk Line, the world's largest container shipping company and the Panama Canal's top customer, has rerouted services from Asia to the East Coast of the United States via the Suez Canal. Its newest ships are too big for the Panama Canal, even after a third lane is built.

A spokesman for Maersk Line Central America and Caribbean said it was too early to speculate on the Nicaragua project, but it would be monitoring developments.

"We applaud bold initiatives that can boost the possibilities for container shipping for the benefit of both lines and our customers," Ariel Frias said.

Panama Canal officials have said it is too early to speculate on the viability of the Nicaraguan waterway or how it could affect trade.

OUT OF THE BLUE

Little is known about the Chinese lawyer and businessman behind the canal project, Wang Jing.

According to his identity card data, Wang was born in Beijing on December 24, 1972, but there is no information on him publicly available until 2010, when he became the head of the Xinwei Telecom Enterprise Group, a wireless communications company. Wang visited Nicaragua in 2012 and signed a wireless telecoms deal.

Xinwei's website says the group's core markets include public telecoms operations, public security, oil fields, power grids, water conservancy and transportation and emergency communication, and lists several subsidiaries in China, Hong Kong, Russia and Cyprus.

The site, which does not mention HKND Group, carries photographs of Xi Jinping, now China's president, and Li Keqiang, now premier, visiting Xinwei.

"Your future is very bright. Full of hope," the site quotes Li as saying of Xinwei, picturing Wang with the leader. It said the visit took place on December 21, 2010.

At Wang Jing's listed office in Hong Kong, a woman declined to say where he was. HKND Group's plush office takes up a large part of the 18th floor of Two International Finance Centre, which it occupied in May.

The office is large and brand new with a view of Victoria Harbor outside its floor-to-ceiling windows. Big LED screens by the front door play the company's promotional videos in a loop. The office was very quiet and few people were working there.

An HKND spokesperson contacted by email said Wang was not available to comment for this story.

The company has given little information on the practicalities of building the proposed canal. The concession simply lists a shipping canal, ports and terminals, an oil pipeline, a railway, free trade zones and an airport.

Unlike the Panama Canal, a canal cutting across Nicaragua could theoretically be built at sea level, without locks, but there is a problem with the tides at either end. The timing and height of the tides are different, meaning that the water level can be as much as 20 feet higher at one end.

"It means a lot of water is going to come from west to east," said J. David Rogers, professor or geological engineering at Missouri University of Science & Technology.

"Everybody would love to have a sea-level canal between the Pacific and the Atlantic," he said, adding that engineers would likely have to consider tidal weirs.

"I'm not saying you can't do it, but it has some major engineering challenges that have to be overcome, and if it's your first project, I wouldn't invest in it."

Environmentalists are concerned the project could contaminate Lake Nicaragua, Central America's largest reserve of fresh water, which would almost certainly be part of any route.

President Ortega said last week the government was going ahead with feasibility studies that should be done by 2015, when work on the canal could begin.

Under the terms of the concession, HKND Group would face no legal or economic sanctions for failing to complete the project.

"Who knows if this is actually going to happen or not, but it seems much more serious at this point. There's some real heavy-weights involved," said Margaret Myers, director of the China and Latin America program at the Washington D.C.-based Inter-American Dialogue.

She noted HKND Group says it is working with several respected international companies, including Environmental Resources Management, a leading sustainability consultancy, and consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

McKinsey declined to comment, citing client confidentiality. Environmental Resources Management confirmed it had been hired to do a study.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

Another open question is the financing.

Christopher Erckert is a partner at the U.S. Mayer Brown law firm, which advised the Panama Canal Authority in its $5.25 billion expansion. A specialist in Latin American project finance, he said the main risk would be if Nicaragua nationalized the canal in the future.

"Nicaragua is not an investment grade country. That's a fact," he said. "That makes this a speculative grade investment... which limits the kind of investors who can play."

Several project financiers Reuters spoke to, who asked not to be named, said they had seen no signs in the industry of interest in the project.

If the project does go ahead, it might depend on China's desire to flex its muscles in America's backyard.

Alfonso Guzman, managing director at Castalia Strategic Advisors, an international economic and financial advisory firm, said it was hard to see how the project would be commercially viable.

"The only way it can be viable is if someone like the Chinese government provides a lot of grants and low-cost money so that the cost of the project is low and the prices charged for using this canal are lower or comparable to what the Panama canal offers," he said.

(With reporting by Lomi Kriel in Panama City, Isabella Cota in San Jose; Krista Hughes, Gabriel Stargardter and Simon Gardner and Elinor Comlay in Mexico City, Jonathan Standing and Koh Guiqing in Beijing, Lavinia Mo, Anne Marie Roantree and James Pomfret in Hong Kong and Kristen Hays in Houston; Writing by Gabriel Stargardter and Simon Gardner; Editing by Claudia Parsons)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/insight-chinese-whispers-wants-bet-nicaragua-canal-085902132.html

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Google Admits Its Trickiest Job Interview Questions Are Bullshit

If you're hoping for a job at Google but can't fathom the answer to "How many golf balls can you fit into an airplane?," don't worry?the company is phasing out its notorious brainteasers, because they are meaningless, the New York Times reports.

Surprisingly, asking massively difficult questions and expecting an answer on the spot didn't yield qualified candidates?"they serve primarily to make the interviewer feel smart," says Google HR honcho Laszlo Block. "They don't predict anything," other than, probably, the ability to deal with batshit hypotheticals. Google will now start relying more on questions about real life experience. Huh! This will come as an enormous relief to everyone other than the people who created a cottage industry coaching applicants on how to answer these nonsense questions. [via QZ]

Source: http://valleywag.gawker.com/google-admits-its-job-interview-questions-are-bullshit-516505218

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Ministry Apologizes to Gay Community and Shuts Down (Taegan Goddard's Political Wire)

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