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US court won't block its Texas redistricting map (AP)
AUSTIN, Texas ? A federal court refused late Friday to block a congressional redistricting map it drew up for Texas, rejecting a request from the state's attorney general just hours after the Republican accused the court of "undermining the democratic process."
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott had asked the San Antonio-based court to stay the implementation of its interim map, which the court drafted when minority groups challenged the original plan passed by the Republican-dominated state Legislature.
The court-drawn map would ensure minorities made up the majority in three additional Texas congressional districts. If the 2012 elections were held under the court's map, Democrats would have an advantage as they try to win back the U.S. House.
Abbott said he would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the court-ordered map will remain in place until the legal fights are resolved.
In a court filing earlier Friday, Abbott accused the court of overstepping its authority.
"A court's job is to apply the law, not to make policy," he wrote. "A federal court lacks constitutional authority to interfere with the expressed will of the state Legislature unless it is compelled to remedy a specific, identifiable violation of law."
The court drew the maps after minority groups filed a lawsuit, claiming a redistricting plan devised by the Republican lawmakers didn't reflect growth in the state's Hispanic and black populations.
Abbott argued in his court filing that the "legislatively enacted plans incorporate constituents' concerns about communities of interest and proper representation." Therefore, the court's departure from the map approved by the Legislature "not only undermines the democratic process, it ignores the voice of the citizenry."
Lawmakers redraw boundaries for the state's legislative districts every 10 years to reflect changes in census data. Texas' population boom in the last decade gave it four new U.S. House seats, which will be filled in the 2012 election.
Like other states with a history of racial discrimination, Texas can't implement those new maps or other changes to voting practices without federal approval under the Voting Rights Act. No federal approval, and looming deadlines for county election officials, made it necessary for the court to issue its own plans ? which could be implemented immediately.
Minorities currently are the majority in 10 of Texas' 32 congressional districts. The new court-drawn map would raise that to 13 out of 36 districts.
Republican lawmakers insist the maps drawn by the Legislature merely reflect the Republican majority in Texas. Experts say that under the legislatively approved map, three of the new seats would likely be won by Republicans.
When drawing the interim map, the court gave priority to ensuring minority voting strength was protected in the 2012 election.
In its own filing Friday, the NAACP cheered the court-drawn interim map as a "step forward for Texas." The group said it, "recognizes the growth of the minority population and takes significant steps toward remedying some of the startling lack of proportionality in the prior plans."
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Pakistan stops NATO supplies after raid kills up to 28 (Reuters)
YAKKAGHUND, Pakistan (Reuters) ? NATO helicopters and fighter jets attacked two military outposts in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing as many as 28 troops and plunging U.S.-Pakistan relations, already deeply frayed, further into crisis.
Pakistan retaliated by shutting down vital NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, used for sending in just under a third of the alliance's supplies.
The attack is the worst single incident of its kind since Pakistan uneasily allied itself with Washington in the days immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. targets.
Relations between the United States and Pakistan, its ally in the war on militancy, have been strained following the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by U.S. special forces in a raid on the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad in May, which Pakistan called a flagrant violation of sovereignty.
A spokesman for NATO-led troops in Afghanistan confirmed that NATO aircraft had been called in to support troops in the area and had probably killed some Pakistani soldiers.
"Close air support was called in, in the development of the tactical situation, and it is what highly likely caused the Pakistan casualties," said General Carsten Jacobson, spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
He added that he could not confirm the number of casualties, but ISAF is investigating the "tragic development".
"We are aware that Pakistani soldiers perished. We don't know the size, the magnitude," he said.
The Pakistani government and military brimmed with fury.
"This is an attack on Pakistan's sovereignty," said Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. "We will not let any harm come to Pakistan's sovereignty and solidarity."
The Foreign Office said it would take up the matter "in the strongest terms" with NATO and the United States.
The powerful Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, said in a statement issued by the Pakistani military that "all necessary steps be under taken for an effective response to this irresponsible act.
"A strong protest has been launched with NATO/ISAF in which it has been demanded that strong and urgent action be taken against those responsible for this aggression."
Two military officials said that up to 28 troops had been killed and 11 wounded in the attack on the outposts, about 2.5 km (1.5 miles) from the Afghan border. The Pakistani military said 24 troops were killed and 13 wounded.
EARLY MORNING ATTACK
It remains unclear what exactly happened, but the attack took place around 2 a.m. (2100 GMT) in the Baizai area of Mohmand, where Pakistani troops are fighting Taliban militants.
"Pakistani troops effectively responded immediately in self-defence to NATO/ISAF's aggression with all available weapons," the Pakistani military statement said.
The commander of NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, General John R. Allen, said he had offered his condolences to the family of any Pakistani soldiers who "may have been killed or injured".
The U.S. embassy in Islamabad also offered condolences.
About 40 Pakistani army troops were stationed at the outposts, military sources said. Two officers were reported among the dead.
"The latest attack by NATO forces on our post will have serious repercussions as they without any reasons attacked on our post and killed soldiers asleep," said a senior Pakistani military officer, requesting anonymity.
Reflecting the confusion of war in an ill-defined border area, an Afghan border police official, Edrees Momand, said joint Afghan-NATO troops near the outpost on Saturday morning had detained several militants.
"I am not aware of the casualties on the other side of the border but those we have detained aren't Afghan Taliban," he said, implying they may have been Pakistani or other foreign national Taliban operating in Afghanistan.
The Afghanistan-Pakistan border is often poorly marked, and Afghan and Pakistani maps have differences of several kilometres in some places, military officials have said.
However Pakistani military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said that NATO had been given maps of the area, with Pakistani military posts marked out.
"When the other side is saying there is a doubt about this, there is no doubt about it. These posts have been marked and handed over to the other side for marking on their maps and are clearly inside Pakistani territory."
The incident occurred a day after Allen met Kayani to discuss border control and enhanced cooperation.
"After the recent meetings between Pakistan and ISAF/NATO forces to build confidence and trust, these kind of attacks should not have taken place," a senior military source told Reuters.
BLOCKED SUPPLIES
NATO supply trucks and fuel tankers bound for Afghanistan were stopped at Jamrud town in the Khyber tribal region near the city of Peshawar hours after the raid, officials said.
"We have halted the supplies and some 40 tankers and trucks have been returned from the check post in Jamrud," Mutahir Zeb, a senior government official, told Reuters.
Another official said the supplies had been stopped for security reasons.
"There is possibility of attacks on NATO supplies passing through the volatile Khyber tribal region, therefore we sent them back towards Peshawar to remain safe," he said.
The border crossing at Chaman in Baluchistan was also closed, Frontier Corps officials said.
Pakistan is a vital land route for nearly half of NATO supplies shipped overland to its troops in Afghanistan, a NATO spokesman said. Land shipments only account for about two thirds of the alliance's cargo shipments into Afghanistan.
A similar incident on Sept 30, 2010, which killed two Pakistani troops, led to the closure of one of NATO's supply routes through Pakistan for 10 days.
NATO apologised for that incident, which it said happened when NATO gunships mistook warning shots by the Pakistani forces for a militant attack.
U.S.-Pakistan relations were already reeling from a tumultuous year that saw the bin Laden raid, the jailing of a CIA contractor, and U.S. accusations that Pakistan backed a militant attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul.
The United States has long suspected Pakistan of continuing to secretly support Taliban militant groups to secure influence in Afghanistan after most NATO troops leave in 2014. Saturday's incident will give Pakistan the argument that NATO is now attacking it directly.
"I think we should go to the United Nations Security Council against this," said retired Brigadier Mahmood Shah, former chief of security in the tribal areas. "So far, Pakistan is being blamed for all that is happening in Afghanistan, and Pakistan's point of view has not been shown in the international media."
Other analysts, including Rustam Shah Mohmand, a former ambassador to Afghanistan, said Pakistan would protest and close the supply lines for some time, but that ultimately "things will get back to normal".
Paul Beaver, a British security analyst, said relations were so bad that this incident might have no noticeable impact.
"I'm not sure U.S.-Pakistan relations could sink much lower than they are now," he said.
(Additional reporting by Bushra Takseen, Saud Mehsud, Jibran Ahmad and Saeed Achakzai in Pakistan, Tim Castle in London, and Hamid Shalizi and Christine Kearney in Afghanistan; Writing by Augustine Anthony and Chris Allbritton; Editing by Ron Popeski and Rosalind Russell)
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Turns out, Americans still like business after all ? Hot Air
posted at 5:25 pm on November 23, 2011 by Tina Korbe
It?d be easy to think, based on all the press coverage Occupy Wall Street has received (we?re up to 333 violent or outrageous incidents, by the way!), that the American people hate business. After all, what is ?Wall Street? except an abstraction of business? But, as it turns out, more than 60 percent of Americans have a favorable view of major companies and a full 90 percent of Americans have a favorable view of small businesses, according to a Public Affairs Pulse Survey cited in an article on?ChamberPost.com.
But what was arguably most interesting about the study is that it revealed Generation Y ? ages 18 to 34 ? are actually the most likely to think highly of major companies. That might be yet one more statistic that helps to correct the popular misperception that Occupy Wall Street consists of mainly spoiled adolescents. As more information about the demographics of OWS has come out, it?s become increasingly evident that the original hippies are still the hippies. According to data from Fast Company, about 44.5 percent of the protesters are aged 25 to 44 and another 32 percent are older than 44. Just 23.5 percent of the protesters are 25 and under.
This encourages me because, when Occupy Wall Street first started, I feared for what my generation might bring upon the country, with what I perceived as our characteristic entitlement attitude. The truth is more nuanced than that. Yes, we?ve inherited certain attitudes from our Baby Boomer parents and, in some ways, because of those attitudes, we?re especially susceptible to class warfare rhetoric. I still maintain that my generation has not necessarily responded with the unique challenges that face us ? particularly high unemployment ? with as much nobility as I would like. But, at the same time, we?ve benefited from the technological innovation of companies like Microsoft and Apple and have learned in some ways to revere inventors and to seek a creative outlet for our own energies and efforts.?As I?ve reported before, my generation is actually particularly apt to make the connection between excessive government regulation and excessive joblessness ? something not everyone is able to do.
Bottom line: Young people believe in the promise, as well as the peril, of business ? and that right there might be the best reason to believe in young people.
Source: http://hotair.com/archives/2011/11/23/turns-out-americans-still-like-business-after-all/
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How drought-tolerant grasses came to be
Thursday, November 24, 2011
If you eat bread stuffing or grain-fed turkey this Thanksgiving, give thanks to the grasses ? a family of plants that includes wheat, oats, corn and rice. Some grasses, such as corn and sugar cane, have evolved a unique way of harvesting energy from the sun that's more efficient in hot, arid conditions. A new grass family tree reveals how this mode of photosynthesis came to be.
The results may one day help scientists develop more drought-tolerant grains, say scientists working at the U. S. National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.
From the grasslands of North America, to the pampas of South America, to the steppes of Eurasia and the savannas of the tropics, the grass family contains more than 10,000 species, including the world's three most important crops: wheat, rice and corn. We rely on grasses for sugar, liquor, bread, and livestock fodder.
Like all plants, grasses harvest energy from sunlight by means of photosynthesis. But grasses use two strategies that differ in how they take up carbon dioxide from the air and convert it into the starches and sugars vital to plant growth. The majority of grasses use a mode of photosynthesis called the C3 pathway, but many species ? especially those in hot, tropical climates ? use an alternate mode of photosynthesis known as C4. In hot, arid environments, C4 grasses such as maize, sugar cane, sorghum and millet have a leg up over C3 plants because they use water more efficiently.
An international team of researchers wanted to figure out how many times, and when, the C4 strategy came to be. To find out, they used DNA sequence data from three chloroplast genes to reconstruct the grass family tree. The resulting phylogeny represents 531 species, including 93 species for which DNA sequence data was previously unavailable.
"By working collaboratively across many labs, from the US to Argentina to Ireland to Switzerland ? with some people providing new plant material, and others doing the DNA sequencing ? we were able to get a lot done in a very short amount of time," said co-author Erika Edwards of Brown University.
The results suggest that the C4 pathway has evolved in the grasses more than 20 separate times within the last 30 or so million years, Edwards said.
What's most surprising, she added, is that C4 evolution seems to be a one-way street ? i.e., once the pathway evolves, there's no turning back. "We can't say whether it is evolutionarily 'impossible', or whether there simply hasn't been a good reason to do it, but it seems increasingly unlikely that any C4 grasses have ever reverted to the C3 condition," Edwards said.
"The new tree will be extremely useful for anyone who works on grasses," she added.
For example, scientists are currently trying to engineer the C4 photosynthetic pathway into C3 crops like rice to produce more stress-tolerant plants. By helping researchers identify pairs of closely related C3 and C4 species, the evolutionary relationships revealed in this study could help pinpoint the genetic changes necessary to do that.
"The next challenge is getting these species into cultivation and studying them closely, and ideally, sequencing their genomes," Edwards said.
The results will be published this week in the journal New Phytologist.
###
Grass Phylogeny Working Group II (2011). "New grass phylogeny resolves deep evolutionary relationships and discovers C4 origins."New Phytologist. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8137.2011.03972.x
National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent): http://www.nescent.org
Thanks to National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) for this article.
This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/115455/How_drought_tolerant_grasses_came_to_be
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Griffin O'Neal pleads guilty to DUI
SAN DIEGO (AP) ? Griffin O'Neal, the son of actor Ryan O'Neal, has pleaded guilty to driving under the influence of drugs stemming from a head-on crash that injured another motorist.
The San Diego Union-Tribune says O'Neal pleaded guilty Tuesday to driving under the influence and possession of a firearm by a felon, both felonies. He also acknowledged he has a 1992 conviction for shooting into an unoccupied vehicle.
Prosecutors say O'Neal was on drugs Aug. 2 when he veered into oncoming traffic and collided with another vehicle in San Diego County.
Defense attorney Heather Boxeth said at a previous hearing that her client had been trying to help his half-brother Redmond O'Neal, who had been arrested on suspicion of heroin possession the same day.
Griffin O'Neal faces up to four years in prison.
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Supercommittee failure complicates election year (AP)
WASHINGTON ? The failure of Congress' supercommittee adds a new dimension to the 2012 political contests by drawing political battle lines around broad tax increases and massive spending cuts that are now scheduled to begin automatically in 2013.
President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger now must debate urgent alternatives for reducing deficits in the face of looming consequences of congressional inaction. The lines are sharply drawn. Obama supports deficit reduction that includes a mix of spending cuts and tax increases on the wealthy. Republicans have declared themselves averse to tax hikes.
An election shaping up as a referendum on Obama's stewardship of the economy will now require the candidates to offer competing forward-looking deficit-reduction plans to avoid cuts and tax hikes that neither side wants to see materialize.
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Arizona lawmakers say they will build border fence (AP)
PHOENIX ? Arizona is taking on immigration once again, with state lawmakers collecting donations from the public to put fencing along every inch of the state's porous Mexican border in a first-of-its-kind effort.
The idea came from state Sen. Steve Smith, a Republican who says that people from across the nation have donated about $255,000 to the project since July, when the state launched a fundraising website that urges visitors to "show the world the resolve and the can-do spirit of the American people."
Smith acknowledges he has a long way to go to make the fence a reality. The $255,000 collected will barely cover a half mile of fencing. Smith estimates that the total supplies alone will cost $34 million, or about $426,000 a mile. Much of the work is expected to be done by prisoners at 50 cents an hour.
The fence is Arizona's latest attempt to force a debate on whether the federal government is doing enough to stop illegal immigration. Key provisions of the state's contentious immigration bill were suspended by a judge, and Gov. Jan Brewer is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court to get them reinstated. Brewer also signed the fencing bill.
Critics of the private fence plan say the idea is a misguided, piecemeal approach to border issues that will prove to be ineffective and hugely expensive. They point to the billions of dollars spent by the federal government to build fencing that hasn't stopped illegal immigration.
"You're going to get 50 yards of fencing, if that," says Alfredo Gutierrez, a former Democratic state senator and immigrant-rights advocate who ran for governor in 2002.
But Smith and other supporters don't care.
They say the federal government has done little to secure the border and that additional fencing will close gaps exploited by smugglers and illegal immigrants. Even if the fence isn't completed, Smith and others believe the project will send a message to Washington.
They have found support for the idea from Border Patrol agents.
"I take my hat off to them," says George McCubbin, a Border Patrol agent in Casa Grande and president of the National Border Patrol Council, the agency's union. "I don't believe it's the state's responsibility, but by them attempting this, they will continue to have this problem brought out, and hopefully someone will take notice of it."
Although he praises the effort, McCubbin thinks building more border fencing is "a waste of time."
"A fence slows down traffic. It doesn't stop it," he says. "You need to put your money in effective resources that you know will work."
He believes the federal government needs to crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, increase penalties against those caught in the country illegally, cut off social services for others and put more agents at the border.
The fence project is being overseen by the 15-member Joint Border Security Advisory Committee, comprised of lawmakers, state law enforcement officials and four sheriffs, including Maricopa County's Joe Arpaio. The committee meets once a month and will decide when and where to put up the new fencing and what construction firms win bids.
Wherever they put it ? private, state, or federal land ? they will need to get approval.
Smith is confident the state will comply, so he's focusing his efforts on private landowners. It isn't clear if the federal government will allow the fence on land it manages.
"In light of their doing nothing, I would hope they wouldn't want to deter a state from protecting its own border," he says.
The project's first priority is to build fences at busy border-crossing points. Other plans include constructing fences along the 80 miles of border where none currently exist.
The law also allows Arizona to enter an agreement with California, New Mexico and Texas to build fencing in those states, although there's no immediate plan to do that.
Fencing currently covers about 650 miles, or one-third, of the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. Nearly half sits in Arizona ? the busiest gateway for both illegal immigrants and marijuana ? with the rest equally divided among California, New Mexico and Texas.
Existing border fencing varies in quality from simple barbed wire or vehicle barriers to carefully engineered, 18- to 30-foot-high fences.
On top of $2.5 billion spent by the federal government to build the fence, a government report projects it will cost another $6.5 billion over the next 20 years to maintain.
Smugglers often circumvent the barriers by cutting or driving through them, climbing over them, launching drugs with catapults over them, or digging tunnels under them. In the last week alone, two drug tunnels were found in Nogales in southeastern Arizona.
Despite the relatively low amount of money raised so far, Smith says work will begin sometime next year. One company has pledged to donate materials for a mile or two, another has promised to sell supplies at a discontinued rate, and some construction firms say they'll contribute free labor.
"Something will be in the ground by 2012," he says.
___
Online:
Arizona's border-fence fundraising: http://bit.ly/vWJySa
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New York Yankees raise price of bleacher seats
Associated Press Sports
updated 8:38 p.m. ET Nov. 22, 2011
NEW YORK (AP) - The Yankees are raising the price of bleacher seats for next season in an effort to cut down on resales by ticket brokers.
New York said Tuesday the price of bleacher seats will be $20 and $12 next year, up from $15 and $5.
The team is keeping 70 percent of ticket prices unchanged, including all field-level seats between the bases. The prices of field-level seats in fair territory in the outfield, which sometimes had unsold areas last season, are being reduced, from $100 to as low as $65.
Some Field Level MVP seats, starting with the outside edge of the dugouts, will be reduced by $35-$50.
The Yankees averaged 45,107 fans this season, down from a major league-best 46,491 last year and 45,918 in 2009, when the stadium opened.
? 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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??SportsTalk: With the new labor agreement, we have testing for HGH and two additional wild-card teams. What does it all mean? We break it down.
Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45410708/ns/sports-baseball/
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Refugee reunites with son after 34 years
ROCHESTER, N.Y.?? A Vietnamese war refugee who survived a 1977 pirate attack that separated him from his wife and infant child reunited with his grown son in upstate New York on Monday after nearly 34 years apart.
Hao Truong was tossed into the South China Sea after pirates attacked a boat taking refugee families to Thailand in December 1977. He said he managed to stay afloat for 16 hours before being rescued by a fishing boat.
In a Thai refugee camp, Truong learned weeks later that his wife had died ? her body washed up on shore along with another female victim. But he said he'd long assumed that their 7-month-old baby, Kham, had survived and was raised by someone else.
Truong resettled in the United States in 1978, sponsored by an uncle living in Louisiana. On a trip to Thailand in June after hearing Kham might be alive, a social worker helped him locate his son, now a 34-year-old father of two named Samart Khumkhaw who lives in Surat Thani province.
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"At this minute, I feel so excited and happy," Truong said as he stood next to his son at Rochester's airport surrounded by two dozen relatives and friends waving tiny U.S. flags and "Welcome Home" balloons. "We're going to have a big Thanksgiving holiday!
"When I found him in Thailand, I stayed with him for almost three weeks. Then we know each other well, without asking anything, just like we know (each other) a long time ago."
PhotoBlog: Refugee in NY reunites with son after 34 yearsU.S. Sen. Charles Schumer helped Truong obtain a visitor's visa for his son, a carpenter, to travel alone to Rochester to meet his father's family. During a four-month stay, Khumkhaw also plans to visit his 86-year-old grandfather in Texas.
"We don't want to keep him too long away from his own family," his father said, adding that "he knows my wish is to bring him to USA" someday.
In late 1978, Truong traveled to Rochester to meet his late wife's siblings and stayed. He remarried, raised four children and was a metalworker for 30 years before being laid off in 2009. At age 54, he's studying for a community college degree and retraining as a machinist.
During four days of captivity before being pushed overboard, Truong said the pirate boat crew seemed enthralled at how cute his child was. "That's why he never think for a moment that anybody would kill this little baby," said his sister, Hong Truong.
While the circumstances of the child's passage to safety remain murky, he was given to a bereft young couple in Thailand whose daughter had died two days after birth.
"A lady ? we don't know the relationship ? told the couple she had a little baby boy and asked if they would raise him," Truong's sister said. "The foster mom saw the baby and wanted to adopt him, but she can't ask where the baby come from."
More than 3 million people fled Communist-controlled Vietnam and neighboring Laos and Cambodia after the Vietnam War ended in 1975. Many sailed long distances in overcrowded small boats, at risk of shipwreck and pirate attacks.
The plight of the so-called "boat people" turned into a humanitarian crisis as they came under sometimes deadly assault. More than 125,000 refugees from Vietnam were resettled in the U.S. between 1975 and 1980, according to the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45392313/ns/us_news-life/
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Crystal Cathedral sees risky future without church
This Oct. 27, 2011 photo shows the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif. As the ministry famous for its ?Hour of Power? television program muddles through bankruptcy, churchgoers face the possibility of seeing the property sold to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange and being forced to move to a new location. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
This Oct. 27, 2011 photo shows the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif. As the ministry famous for its ?Hour of Power? television program muddles through bankruptcy, churchgoers face the possibility of seeing the property sold to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange and being forced to move to a new location. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
This Oct. 27, 2011 photo shows the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, Calif. As the ministry famous for its ?Hour of Power? television program muddles through bankruptcy, churchgoers face the possibility of seeing the property sold to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange and being forced to move to a new location. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) ? The sale of the Crystal Cathedral to the Catholic church could mark an end to the storied televangelist ministry broadcast around the world that came crashing down in hard times.
While the church's spiritual leaders vow to carry on in a new location, the cathedral's own financial expert says it is impossible to see the future once the congregation loses its famed, glass-spired home.
What began more than 50 years ago as a weekly prayer service atop a drive-in movie theater snack bar in Orange County evolved into a televangelist empire broadcasting from the striking sanctuary that became an icon of the Rev. Robert H. Schuller's ministry.
The church raked in millions in donations through its "Hour of Power" television program to pay for the elaborate building and 40-acre grounds in Garden Grove filled with Biblical messages and statues. But it saw revenue plummet in 2008, and despite massive budget cuts, sought bankruptcy protection last year.
Now, congregants question the future of the church without the building they have come to love ? and that has given the ministry its name. And many worry the "Hour of Power" broadcast ? the source of 70 percent of the church's revenue ? is doomed once the congregation moves to a new location that is unfamiliar to viewers and pales in comparison to the glimmering church that lets worshippers see the sky and swaying palm trees through its glass-paned walls.
"People think the ministry isn't about a building. Usually they're right. But that one represents Jesus Christ, positive thinking, and if you believe in yourself and believe in the Lord there isn't anything you can't do," Sherwood Oklejas, a congregant who opposed the diocese's bid, told a federal bankruptcy court judge at a hearing on the church's future. "If the ministry no longer has the Crystal Cathedral to operate from, in my opinion, it will not last at all."
The Crystal Cathedral is selling its property to help pay creditors more than $51 million and emerge from federal bankruptcy protection. After weeks of intense bidding, a federal bankruptcy judge on Thursday night approved the church's sale to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange. The diocese plans to use the building designed by renowned architect Philip Johnson as a long-sought countywide cathedral.
Oklejas is one of many congregants who rallied for the church to accept a competing bid on the property from Orange County's Chapman University that would have paid up to $59 million and let them continue using the church ? which they see as critical to their ability to survive.
But the ministry's board of directors flip-flopped at the last minute and instead backed a $57.5 million offer from the diocese, arguing the sale will preserve the campus as a religious, not an educational, institution ? as donors intended.
Under the plan, the Crystal Cathedral will be able to lease the building for up to three years, but then must move to a new location, possibly a smaller Catholic church up the street that the diocese will vacate.
Crystal Cathedral leaders insist the ministry founded by Schuller under the auspices of the Reformed Church in America will survive even without the landmark building, noting its educational programs and efforts to help the homeless will continue ? just at a new location.
"Crystal Cathedral church is not a building. A church is comprised of people who are dedicated to practicing through words and works," senior pastor Sheila Schuller Coleman ? the daughter of the founder ? said in a statement.
Church attorney Marc Winthrop said the congregation could even keep its name, though U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert N. Kwan said he didn't see how that would be possible.
Losing the church is an especially hard hit because the congregation's identity is so tied to the building, said William Dyrness, a professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary.
But religion experts said the Crystal Cathedral's troubles run far deeper than the loss of the campus and stem from Schuller's retirement, an ill-fated attempt to hand over the ministry to his son and the church's failure to adapt to attract younger worshippers.
On the contrary, some said losing the building will force the ministry to do some much needed soul-searching on how it can remain relevant.
"If they stayed in place, they were doomed to slowly dissolve into nothing over time. And if there's any hope for them at all, it is a kind of rebirth out of these ashes," said Scott Thumma, a professor of sociology of religion at the Hartford Institute for Religious Research.
"That Crystal Cathedral has in fact encapsulated them and held them in a crystal prison," he said.
Moving forward, a key challenge will be shoring up the Crystal Cathedral's finances. The church should emerge with close to $7 million in surplus cash from the sale of the property, according to an attorney for the committee of unsecured creditors. But many congregants question whether the "Hour of Power" program can continue to draw viewers ? and donations ? without the iconic setting.
"It's virtually impossible to know what will happen to ministry revenue if the campus changes hands to a non-Protestant religious institution," Michael VanderLey, the church's financial adviser, told the bankruptcy court. "It's just a very uncertain set of potential revenues."
In 2008, the church's revenues plummeted amid a decline in donations and ticket sales for holiday pageants. Church officials blamed the recession, but some experts said the church's leadership struggles alienated members.
VanderLey said the decline in revenue appears to be slowing and the church is poised to reel in $3.5 million in December ? a key month for revenue ? down from $4 million in the same month last year.
But some churchgoers say their ranks are dwindling and will only get smaller once the ministry leaves its beloved building.
Dante Gebel, pastor of the church's Hispanic ministry, wrote on his Facebook page that his growing Spanish-speaking congregation will likely need a larger venue in three years' time such as a nearby stadium or convention center, and he stressed the group's independence from the English-language church.
These days, the Crystal Cathedral's parking lot is empty when worshippers pull up to attend Sunday services, though it was packed just a few years ago, said congregant Rob Ekno, who questioned whether the ministry can survive.
"Anything is possible," he said. "Obviously, we're dealing with a church here, so it's all in God's hands."
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House protects pizza as a vegetable (Reuters)
(Reuters) ? The House of Representatives dealt a blow to childhood obesity warriors on Thursday by passing a bill that abandons proposals that threatened to end the reign of pizza and French fries on federally funded school lunch menus.
The scuttled changes, which would have stripped pizza's status as a vegetable and limited how often French fries could
be served, stemmed from a 2010 child nutrition law calling on schools to improve the nutritional quality of lunches served to almost 32 million U.S. school children.
The action is a win for the makers of frozen French fries and pizza and comes just weeks after the deep-pocketed food, beverage and restaurant industries successfully weakened government proposals for voluntary food marketing guidelines to children.
"It's an important victory," said Corey Henry, spokesman for the American Frozen Food Institute (AFFI). That trade association lobbied Congress on behalf of frozen pizza sellers like ConAgra Foods Inc and Schwan Food Co and French
fry makers McCain Foods Ltd and J.R. Simplot Co, the latter best known as a supplier to fast-food company McDonald's Corp.
"Our concern is that the standards would force companies in many respects to change their products in a way that would make them unpalatable to students," Henry said.
Other AFFI members include H.J. Heinz Co, General Mills Inc and Kraft Foods Inc.
The school lunch provisions were a small part of a mammoth bill that provides money for all parts of the federal government. The House sent the bill to the Senate for final Congressional approval.
"They started out with French fries and now they have moved on to pizza," said Jared Polis, Colorado Democrat, who lamented the government's subsidy of unhealthy diets through school meals. "Pizza alone (without side dishes) ... common sense, it's not a vegetable."
Calls to Minnesota-based Schwan and its external public relations firm and ConAgra were not returned.
Mark Dunn, AFFI's chairman and J.R. Simplot's main lobbyist, referred requests for comment to a company spokesman, who declined to respond.
PIZZA AS A VEGETABLE
Polis mentioned French fries in reference to a provision in the bill that would have blocked the government from limiting servings of white potatoes to one cup per week in meals served through the roughly $18 billion U.S. school meals program overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In addition to potatoes, USDA also proposed limits on starchy vegetables including corn, green peas and lima beans, while requiring lunches to serve a wider variety of fruit and vegetables.
Another provision bars the USDA from changing the way it credits tomato paste, used in pizza. The change would have required pizza to have at least a half-cup of tomato paste to qualify as a vegetable serving. Current rules, which likely will remain in place, require just two tablespoons of tomato paste.
According to a USDA report from November 2007, pizza and French fries were among the most commonly consumed lunch foods by participants in the national school lunch program.
Sam Farr of California, the Democratic leader on the appropriations subcommittee in charge of the USDA, said the interference with USDA rule-writing was "wrong" and "shouldn't be done". Still, Farr supported passage of the overall bill.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Wednesday that U.S. school children would still see more fruit and vegetables, more grains, more low-fat milk and less salt and fat in meals despite the language in the spending bill.
"First of all, we can assure parents of school-age children (that) USDA will do everything it can" to improve the nutritional quality of school meals, as required by the 2010 child nutrition law.
Vilsack was speaking via teleconference from Hanoi during a U.S. trade trip.
Healthier school lunches are a cornerstone of First Lady Michelle Obama's campaign to end childhood obesity. Nearly one in three children in America is overweight or obese and the numbers are growing.
"Clearly more pizza and French fries in schools is not good for kids, but it's good for companies that make pizza and French fries," said Margo Wootan, nutrition policy director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group that advocates better food and nutrition policies.
Wootan said U.S. food makers trumpet products they say are healthy while at the same time lobbying against regulations aimed at improving the nutritional quality of their products.
"A year ago, I was walking the halls of Congress arm-in-arm with the food industry, fighting for healthier school lunches," Wootan said. "Today, we are on opposite sides, and I'm battling to keep them from weakening school nutrition standards and school marketing guidelines and other provisions."
(Editing by Martinne Geller)
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শুক্রবার, ১৮ নভেম্বর, ২০১১
READ: Players File Legal Complaint Against NBA In California ...
On Tuesday, we noted?that the artists formerly known as the National Basketball Players Association filed antitrust lawsuits against the NBA in both California and Minnesota.
We also linked up the Minnesota lawsuit (which can be read in PDF form?here). After iPhone 4s-level anticipation -- with readers sending such a long line of anxious emails that it extended around my living room three times -- you can now finally read the California lawsuit in?PDF form right here?via Ken Berger of CBSSports.com.
Like the Minnesota complaint, the California complaint names all thirty NBA teams, including the Portland Trail Blazers, as defendants. The complaint alleges that the NBA, through statements made by commissioner David Stern, threatened to overhaul the league's financial system for more than four years prior to the expiration of the league's collective bargaining agreement and pretty much refused to negotiate on those demands.?An excerpt...
In June 2007, more than four years prior to the expiration of the 2005 CBA, NBA league officials warned NBA players and their then-collective bargaining representative, the National Basketball Players Association ("NBPA"), that Defendants intended to substantially reduce the players' share of Basketball Related Income ("BRI"), to impose more restrictive "salary cap" limits affecting players' individual salaries, and to remove or restrict a number of important "system" provisions that protect player rights.
The NBA and the NBPA began negotiations concerning a possible 2011 CBA in 2009. In those negotiations, the NBA and its team owners refused to negotiate their 2007 demands in any meaningful way. On July 1, 2011, immediately upon the expiration of the 2005 CBA, and while negotiations concerning a new CBA were continuing, the Defendants unilaterally imposed a lockout.
Despite the lockout, the NBPA attempted to continue to negotiate a new CBA. Although the NBPA made concession after concession, including concessions that would cost its members more than one billion dollars over a six-year period, the NBA essentially refused to negotiate its basic 2007 demands. Instead the NBA continued to make punitive demands upon the players, continued the lockout, and began canceling preseason and regular season games. In fact, essentially the only movement by the NBA was to demand and then modify the requested concessions from the players in addition to the concessions demanded in 2007. Throughout this time, the NBPA kept making additional concessions in search of a reasonable way to reach a new CBA.
The lawsuit then goes on to cite specific instances where Stern made ultimatums over the last month or so. It also alleges that the NBA sought to obtain "a guaranteed profit of at least 10 percent of revenues, regardless of how effectively the owners control costs and manage their teams" and threatened a "career-crippling lockout for a year or more" if that demand wasn't met.
Howard Beck of The New York Times?with a timeline.
No hearing date has been set for the players' primary lawsuit, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The case was initially assigned to a magistrate judge, with a case management conference scheduled for Feb. 29. However, at the players' request, the case is being reassigned to a district judge, with a hearing date to be determined.
David Boies, the lead lawyer for the players, is hoping that a hearing can be scheduled much sooner, in time to save the season.
-- Ben Golliver | benjamin.golliver@gmail.com |?Twitter
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Shawn Lawrence Otto: Republicans Cut Top Science Office by 1/3
Scientists are regarding it as yet another attack on science by a political party that has, in the words of GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, become "the antiscience party."
A 2012 spending bill expected to be approved this week slashes the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) budget by a whopping 32 percent. The cuts "will have real consequences on OSTP's operations," said spokesperson Rick Weiss.
The OSTP is the White House's overall coordinating agency for federal science initiatives ranging from clean energy research to economic competitiveness to space exploration to climate change to education.
Cutting the top office responsible for insuring scientific integrity in government is the latest action by a Republican party whose leadership seems to be prosecuting an assault on science at almost every level, including House Speaker John Boehner's attempts to have creationism taught in science classes and his false assertion that climate scientists are arguing carbon dioxide is a carcinogen.
Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA), who chairs the House appropriations panel that oversees NASA and the OSTP, is a fierce opponent of the Chinese government and doesn't want any cooperation between the US and China. "Frankly, it boils down to a moral issue," said Wolf. "Would you have a bilateral program with Stalin?" Wolf inserted two sentences into the April 2011 spending bill that prohibit any joint scientific activity between the two nations that involves NASA or is coordinated by the OSTP.
But that ban doesn't apply to the president's ability to conduct foreign policy, argued Science Advisor John Holdren in a May 4 congressional hearing. That authority, Holdren said, extends to a bilateral agreement on scientific cooperation that Holdren and China's science minister signed in January that builds on a 1979 pact that has generated activity between many U.S. agencies and their Chinese counterparts.
Science has, like business, gone global. It knows no geographical borders, and scientists are collaborating on projects around the world over the internet in unprecedented numbers. Science creates knowledge, and as Francis Bacon pointed out 400 years ago, knowledge is power. Politics is the exercise of power. Science is, by definition, inherently political and so scientific exchange is a part of diplomacy.
In October, the Government Accountability Office released a report that disagreed with the administration's position that scientific cooperation is part of diplomacy, and said that by conducting a May meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Holdren violated the law as expressed in Wolf's April bill language.
Wolf and House Republicans siezed on the report as a basis to punish the OSTP with a budget cut of 55%, effectively eliminating much of its research coordination, transparency, education and oversight roles in US science. Senate leaders subsequently reduced the cut to 9%, and this week the bill passed out of conference committee with a 32% "compromise" cut.
Wolf says his action is meant to prevent China from getting any US technology, but it is a bit like shooting yourself in the foot because you didn't maintain your driveway, walked into a pothole and twisted your ankle. Science and technology are responsible for more than half our economic growth since World War II, and drive close to 60% of our economic activity currently. But we have let science slide as a national priority in funding, education, and public dialogue for the last several decades.
US students, for example, fell from 7th in a 1972 ranking known as the First International Science Study to 23rd in the 2009 OECD's Program for International Student Assessment (PISA ) report, falling below Hungary and just above the Czech Republic. This is far below China, whose world rankings were 1st (Shanghai), 3rd (Hong Kong), 12th (Taipai), and 18th (Macao) by region. This is one of the major priorities Holdren's OSTP has been trying to find ways to turn around -- particularly by focusing on science and math education -- a wholly wholesome and nonpartisan goal that benefits all American children.
"Whenever the people are well informed," Thomas Jefferson wrote, "they can be trusted with their own government." We are poised to create as much new knowledge in the next 40 years as we have in the last 400 years. That poses a serious threat to American-style democracy at a time when so many of our problems revolve around science and so few of our students -- and policy makers -- value what science does for them enough not to turn it into a political football -- or even seem to understand its fundamental relationship to democracy, power, and politics. Are Americans still well-enough informed to be trusted with their own government?
Get Shawn Lawrence Otto's new book: Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America, Starred Kirkus Review; Starred Publishers Weekly review. Like him on Facebook. Join ScienceDebate.org to get the presidential candidates to debate science.
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Follow Shawn Lawrence Otto on Twitter: www.twitter.com/shawnotto
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shawn-lawrence-otto/republicans-budget-science_b_1098793.html
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