Israel frees Palestinian prisoners, pushes settlement plan

By Mohammed Abu Ganeyeh

BETHLEHEM, West Bank (Reuters) - Israel freed 26 Palestinian prisoners on Wednesday as part of U.S.-brokered peace efforts, but said it was pressing on with plans to build more homes for Jewish settlers, in an apparent move to appease hardliners.

The inmates, who were convicted of killing Israelis, basked in a heroes' welcome from hundreds of relatives and well-wishers in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

"Our heroes are coming home, long live the prisoners," crowds chanted outside the office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Issa Abed Rabbo, convicted of murdering two Israeli hikers in 1984, was carried through the alleys of the Biblical town of Bethlehem on the shoulders of cheering Palestinians as fireworks went off and patriotic songs blared.

"My feeling is that of a commander returning from battle, carrying a banner of victory and freedom," Abed Rabbo said, his outstretched fingers forming a triumphant V.

The inmates, jailed before or just after the first Israeli-Palestinian interim peace deals were signed 20 years ago, were released as part of a limited amnesty demanded by the Palestinians to revive long-stalled statehood negotiations.

The second prisoner release since peace talks resumed in July after a three-year break opened fissures in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rightist government. A pro-settler coalition partner, the Jewish Home party, and members of his own Likud, called on the leader to cancel the amnesty.

SETTLEMENTS

Israel's Interior Ministry announced it would proceed with a plan for 1,500 new housing units in Ramat Shlomo, a settlement in an area of the occupied West Bank that Israel considers part of Jerusalem.

Those plans were first announced in 2010, clouding a visit to Israel at the time by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who condemned the project, which was subsequently shelved.

Israel announced last December it would proceed with the construction but froze the move again ahead of a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama in March this year.

The Palestinians, who want to establish a state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, territories captured by Israel in a 1967 war, condemned the move.

"This policy is destructive for the peace process," said Nabil Abu Rdeineh, a spokesman for Abbas.

Most countries deem Israeli settlements, built on occupied land, as illegal, and Palestinians say the enclave could deny them a viable state. Israel says Ramat Shlomo, as part of its Jerusalem municipality, will remain in its hands in any future peace deal.

Outside Israel's Ofer prison in the West Bank, where the inmates boarded buses for home, dozens of Israelis protested against the release. One held a sign with the photographs of some of the Israelis they killed.

"The victims of terror are turning they graves," one placard read.

In all, 104 long-serving Palestinian inmates will be freed in accordance with the U.S.-brokered understandings that paved the way for the revival of peace talks.

Yuval Steinitz, Israel's strategic affairs minister and a Likud member, made clear in a radio interview on Monday that by agreeing to the prisoner releases, the government effectively had quashed a Palestinian demand to halt settlement building.

But at the celebrations in Ramallah, Abbas denied any connection between the prisoner release and settlement expansion.

"The settlements are void, void, void," he told the crowd.

(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Writing by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Andrew Heavens)

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/dogged-dissent-israel-frees-26-palestinian-prisoners-052946325.html
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Big Bird, Elmo to encourage kids to eat produce

WASHINGTON (AP) — A trip down the grocery store produce aisle could soon feel like a stroll down "Sesame Street."

Under an agreement being announced Wednesday by Michelle Obama, the nonprofit organization behind the popular children's educational program will allow the produce industry to use Elmo, Big Bird and Sesame Street's other furry characters free of charge to help market fruits and veggies to kids.

The goal is to boost consumption of fruits and vegetables among children who often turn up their noses at them.

Sesame Workshop is waiving its licensing fee for two years under an arrangement with the Produce Marketing Association and the Partnership for a Healthier America, a nonprofit organization that supports the first lady's nationwide "Let's Move" campaign to reduce childhood obesity in the U.S.

Starting as early as next spring, eggplant could be brought to you by Elmo, Big Bird could be pushing the beets and the Cookie Monster could become the Celery Monster. The produce association will develop guidelines for how members should use the characters.

Shoppers and, any children who accompany them, can expect to see their favorite Sesame Street characters on bagged, boxed and individual pieces of produce.

"Just imagine what will happen when we take our kids to the grocery store, and they see Elmo and Rosita and the other Sesame Street Muppets they love up and down the produce aisle," Mrs. Obama was to say. "Imagine what it will be like to have our kids begging us to buy them fruits and vegetables instead of cookies, candy and chips."

The collaboration between Sesame Workshop and the produce association will show kids that "fruits and vegetables don't just make us feel good, they taste good, too," she said.

Sam Kass, the executive director of "Let's Move," applauded Sesame Workshop for agreeing to waive its licensing fee, which is a major source of income.

"For them to step in and do this is a really big thing," said Kass, who also is an assistant White House chef.

Sherrie Westin, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Sesame Workshop, said it was too early to say how much revenue would be lost. Westin said waiving the licensing fee is not normal practice, but that the deal gives the company another outlet to push the healthier-eating messages that appear on its program.

"It would be a shame not to use them to that end," she said of the Sesame Street characters.

Larry Soler, president and chief executive of the partnership, said kids younger than 5 don't eat enough fruits and vegetables, and that it gets worse as children get older. He said the agreement hopefully will "drive excitement" and interest in fruits and vegetables that might not otherwise be there.

The announcement will be the first since a White House summit on food marketing to children that Mrs. Obama convened last month, where she urged a broad range of companies to do more to promote healthier foods to youngsters.

Sesame Street characters Elmo and Rosita were joining her for the announcement. Afterward, the first lady was taking them to her produce garden on the South Lawn for the annual fall harvest. They were to be helped by children who attend schools in the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.

___

Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/big-bird-elmo-encourage-kids-eat-produce-170929422--politics.html
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Obama to cite Mass. health care law's slow start

President Barack Obama speaks in Statuary Hall on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2013, during a memorial service for the late former House Speaker Thomas S. Foley. Foley was a 30-year veteran of the House who died last week at the age of 84. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

President Barack Obama speaks in Statuary Hall on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2013, during a memorial service for the late former House Speaker Thomas S. Foley. Foley was a 30-year veteran of the House who died last week at the age of 84. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is citing the Massachusetts health care system's slow start to keep expectations low for early sign-ups for his own overhaul. And he's pointing to the bipartisan effort to get the program launched in Massachusetts to encourage his opponents to stop rooting for his law's failure.

The president planned to speak about the embattled law Wednesday from Boston's historic Faneuil Hall, where Massachusetts Republican Gov. Mitt Romney was joined by the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy to sign the state's 2006 health care overhaul bill.

There's been no such bipartisanship surrounding Obama's effort, particularly this month as the marketplace to allow individuals to buy health insurance went online with myriad technical problems. Republicans say the dysfunction is more reason to repeal the law, and they're pressing Obama administration officials for an explanation.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was testifying Wednesday before a Republican-led House committee, a day after Medicare chief Marilyn Tavenner was questioned by lawmakers about the problems.

Tavenner apologized for the website woes, but stressed it was improving daily. She repeatedly declined to say how many people have been able to sign up despite problems accessing Healthcare.gov, saying the figures would be released in mid-November.

An internal memo obtained by The Associated Press shows that the administration had expected nearly 500,000 uninsured people to sign up for coverage in October, the program's first month. But Tavenner forecast less impressive figures. "We expect the initial numbers to be small," she said.

The White House said Obama planned to point out Massachusetts' sluggish start Wednesday. Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor who advised both Romney and Obama on the development of their laws, said only 123 paying consumers signed up the first month of the Massachusetts law, with 36,000 coming on by the time penalties kicked in for failing to have insurance.

"That same kind of outcome will happen at the national level, but it will take time," Gruber said in a media call previewing the trip organized by the White House. "We need to be patient and measure the outcomes in months and years, not days and weeks."

While more people did sign up as the deadline approached in Massachusetts, its law never faced high-profile computer woes or such fierce opposition. Even though the federal law was modeled on Romney's, the former governor ran against Obama last year on a campaign to repeal the federal version.

In a statement Wednesday, Romney said he believes "a plan crafted to fit the unique circumstances of a single state should not be grafted onto the entire country."

While in Boston, Obama also planned to speak at a fundraiser for House Democrats at the home of his former ambassador to Spain, Alan Solomont. About 60 people paid $16,200 to $64,800 to dine on Spanish-influenced fare, to be followed by Red Sox cookies in honor of the World Series game being played in town the same night.

___

Associated Press writer Steve LeBlanc in Boston contributed to this report.

___

Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nedrapickler

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-10-30-US-Obama/id-b098be341cbc4d178183abc21fb004ea
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Sprint's iPhone gamble still isn't paying off as it loses 360,000 customers in a quarter

Sprint has managed to shrink its operating losses to $398 million for Q3 23013 compared to $1.6 billion last quarter on a record $8.7 billion in revenue. However, despite now having 230 US LTE markets as of yesterday including Queens and Manhattan, the operator managed to lose 360,000 all-important ...

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/Q7eAMeUt3Yk/
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Book News: Amazon's Kindle MatchBook Is Out — Will Publishers Opt In?

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveils new Kindle reading devices during a 2012 news conference.

David McNew/Getty Images

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveils new Kindle reading devices during a 2012 news conference.

David McNew/Getty Images

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

• Amazon launched Kindle MatchBook, a service that lets customers buy steeply discounted ebook versions of books they've already bought in print (from Amazon, of course) on Tuesday. Publishers must opt-in, and as of Wednesday morning, some 75,000 ebooks were available for $2.99 or less. Of course, it may prove difficult to persuade publishers to sell popular ebooks at such sharp discounts. NBC News' Helen A.S. Popkin called the selection "70,000 shades of blah," pointing out the lack of bestsellers by authors such as Stephen King, E.L. James and Dan Brown along with classics by the likes of Mark Twain, Maya Angelou and others.


• Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble is releasing a $119 black-and-white version of the Nook e-reading device. Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey tells The New York Times that consumers may be wary of the new Nook because of B&N's corporate struggles: "[W]ill people perceive that Barnes & Noble as a company will be around to fulfill the promises that that device makes? It's a shadow that hangs over the entire Nook enterprise right now."


• "Hyperbole and a Half" creator Allie Brosh spoke to NPR about dealing with depression: "Depression can be such an isolating experience, and it's deceptive, you know, you think, 'Surely I'm the only one that's ever gone through this, or felt this depth of misery.' I spent a lot of time, just because it was so difficult to get the balance between looking at the subject with a little bit of levity and also treating it with enough respect. But I really felt that it was important to talk about it. It was cathartic for me, and cathartic — I hope — for other people."


• Over at NPR's Monkey See blog, Linda Holmes says one of the reasons Brosh's work is so moving is its immediacy: "In the conversations surrounding her book, Brosh has made it clear that she is not looking at depression in the rearview mirror in some sort of 'let me tell you about this thing that happened to me once' kind of way. She's in it, and she lives with it, and sometimes it's better, and sometimes it's worse. It means you don't see her for a while, because she's a real person and it's a real thing."


• We Need to Talk About Kevin author Lionel Shriver describes the daily life of a writer in The New Republic: "I have grown perversely nostalgic for my previous commercial failure — when my focus was pure, and the books were still fun to write, even if nobody read them."


• Anna Holmes writes about the value of Twitter in literary criticism: "It may not be a coincidence that in contrast to the shameful gender ratio endemic to so many literary publications, some of the most widely read critics on Twitter are women. One might argue that many critics' outright dismissal of the technology is directly related to their feelings of privilege. 'Some of these people don't need to be on Twitter because they already have all the access they need,' the fiction writer and critic Roxane Gay told me."

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/30/241798608/book-news-amazons-kindle-matchbook-is-out-will-publishers-opt-in?ft=1&f=1019
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6 people dead in SC in apparent domestic dispute

GREENWOOD COUNTY, S.C. (AP) — Six people were found dead in a home by SWAT team members who stormed in after police unsuccessfully tried to make contact with someone after receiving a call from a man who said he was thinking about hurting himself.

Authorities found the bodies of four adults and two children, including that of whom they believe to be the man who called police, Greenwood County Sheriff's Office spokesman John Long told The Associated Press. The ages of the dead ranged from 9 years old to early 50s, Long said. He could not immediately say how the six were killed.

A preliminary investigation indicates the deaths were related to "a domestic-related incident," Long said. He declined to call it a murder-suicide.

Officers first went to the home in Greenwood County after receiving a call from a man who said he was thinking about hurting himself, Long said. He said while police were on their way, one of the man's neighbors called 911 saying four children from that address had arrived at her house and told her a shot had been fired. He said the children remained at her house.

After about an hour and "several unsuccessful attempts" by officers to make contact with anyone in the home, the SWAT team entered and discovered the bodies, Long said.

The county coroner's office did not immediately respond to an email seeking the deceased's cause of death and identities.

___

Associated Press writer Lisa J. Adams in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/6-people-dead-sc-apparent-domestic-dispute-044126972.html
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Plasmonic crystal alters to match light-frequency source

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

29-Oct-2013

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Contact: Neal Singer
nsinger@sandia.gov
505-845-7078
DOE/Sandia National Laboratories

A device like a photonic crystal, but smaller and tunable

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. Gems are known for the beauty of the light that passes through them. But it is the fixed atomic arrangements of these crystals that determine the light frequencies permitted passage.

Now a Sandia-led team has created a plasmonic, or plasma-containing, crystal that is tunable. The effect is achieved by adjusting a voltage applied to the plasma. Because the crystal then is agile in transmitting terahertz light at varying frequencies, it could increase the bandwidth of high-speed communication networks and generally enhance high-speed electronics.

"Our experiment is more than a curiosity precisely because our plasma resonances are widely tunable," says Sandia researcher Greg Dyer, co-primary investigator of a recently published online paper in Nature Photonics, expected in print in November. "Usually, electromagnetically induced transparencies in more widely known systems like atomic gases, photonic crystals and metamaterials require tuning a laser's frequencies to match a physical system. Here, we tune our system to match the radiation source. It's inverting the problem, in a sense."

Photonic crystals are artificially built to allow transmission of specific wavelengths. Metamaterials require micron- or nano-sized bumps to tailor interactions between manmade structures and light. The plasmonic crystal, with its ability to direct light like a photonic crystal, along with its sub-wavelength, metamaterial-like size, in effect hybridizes the two concepts. Its methods could be used to shrink the size of photonic crystals and to develop tunable metamaterials.

The crystal's electron plasma forms naturally at the interface of semiconductors with different band gaps. It sloshes between their atomically smooth boundaries that, properly aligned, form a crystal. Patterned metal electrodes allow its properties to be reconfigured, altering its light transmission range. In addition, defects intentionally mixed into the electron fluid allow light to be transmitted where the crystal is normally opaque.

However, this crystal won't be coveted for the beauty of its light. First, the crystal transmits in the terahertz spectrum, a frequency range invisible to the human eye. And scientists must tweak the crystal's two-dimensional electron gas to electronically vary its output frequencies, something casual crystal buyers probably won't be able to do.

###

The paper is titled "Induced transparency by coupling of Tamm and defect states in tunable terahertz plasmonic crystals."

Other authors are co-principal investigator Eric Shaner, Albert D. Grine, Don Bethke and John L. Reno, all from Sandia; Gregory R. Aizin of The City University of New York; and S. James Allen of the Institute for Terahertz Science and Technology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The work was supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) and performed in part at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, a Sandia/Los Alamos national laboratories user facility of DOE BES.

Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies and economic competitiveness.

Sandia news media contact:

Neal Singer
nsinger@sandia.gov
(505) 845-7078

---

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

29-Oct-2013

[


| E-mail

]


Share

Contact: Neal Singer
nsinger@sandia.gov
505-845-7078
DOE/Sandia National Laboratories

A device like a photonic crystal, but smaller and tunable

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. Gems are known for the beauty of the light that passes through them. But it is the fixed atomic arrangements of these crystals that determine the light frequencies permitted passage.

Now a Sandia-led team has created a plasmonic, or plasma-containing, crystal that is tunable. The effect is achieved by adjusting a voltage applied to the plasma. Because the crystal then is agile in transmitting terahertz light at varying frequencies, it could increase the bandwidth of high-speed communication networks and generally enhance high-speed electronics.

"Our experiment is more than a curiosity precisely because our plasma resonances are widely tunable," says Sandia researcher Greg Dyer, co-primary investigator of a recently published online paper in Nature Photonics, expected in print in November. "Usually, electromagnetically induced transparencies in more widely known systems like atomic gases, photonic crystals and metamaterials require tuning a laser's frequencies to match a physical system. Here, we tune our system to match the radiation source. It's inverting the problem, in a sense."

Photonic crystals are artificially built to allow transmission of specific wavelengths. Metamaterials require micron- or nano-sized bumps to tailor interactions between manmade structures and light. The plasmonic crystal, with its ability to direct light like a photonic crystal, along with its sub-wavelength, metamaterial-like size, in effect hybridizes the two concepts. Its methods could be used to shrink the size of photonic crystals and to develop tunable metamaterials.

The crystal's electron plasma forms naturally at the interface of semiconductors with different band gaps. It sloshes between their atomically smooth boundaries that, properly aligned, form a crystal. Patterned metal electrodes allow its properties to be reconfigured, altering its light transmission range. In addition, defects intentionally mixed into the electron fluid allow light to be transmitted where the crystal is normally opaque.

However, this crystal won't be coveted for the beauty of its light. First, the crystal transmits in the terahertz spectrum, a frequency range invisible to the human eye. And scientists must tweak the crystal's two-dimensional electron gas to electronically vary its output frequencies, something casual crystal buyers probably won't be able to do.

###

The paper is titled "Induced transparency by coupling of Tamm and defect states in tunable terahertz plasmonic crystals."

Other authors are co-principal investigator Eric Shaner, Albert D. Grine, Don Bethke and John L. Reno, all from Sandia; Gregory R. Aizin of The City University of New York; and S. James Allen of the Institute for Terahertz Science and Technology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The work was supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) and performed in part at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, a Sandia/Los Alamos national laboratories user facility of DOE BES.

Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies and economic competitiveness.

Sandia news media contact:

Neal Singer
nsinger@sandia.gov
(505) 845-7078

---

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-10/dnl-pca102913.php
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