Depardieu flies to Russia, may receive passport

MOSCOW (AP) ? Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman says French actor Gerard Depardieu has flown to Sochi, where he is likely to meet with Putin and receive a Russian passport.

Putin on Thursday approved the actor's application for Russian citizenship, causing a scandal in France, where Depardieu has been fighting a proposed 75 percent income tax on the superrich.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by the state RIA Novosti news agency as saying Depardieu arrived Saturday in Sochi, the host city of the 2014 Winter Olympics, and could meet with Putin on Saturday evening.

Peskov said "it cannot be excluded that during the meeting Depardieu could receive a passport."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-01-05-Russia-Depardieu/id-a45986c608cd49b5ae7649dc21692140

john elway i have a dream speech fox news debate martin luther king jr mlk mlk school closures

Odd mammal may not be extinct after all

A critically endangered mammal thought to be extinct in Australia since the last ice age may still exist there, a new study suggests.

That speculation comes from the discovery that at least one long-beaked echidna, an egg-laying mammal thought to exist only in New Guinea, was found in Australia in 1901 and that native Aborigine populations reported seeing the animal more recently. The 1901 specimen, described in the Dec. 28 issue of the journal Zookeys, had been shot and stuffed and was lying in a drawer, long forgotten, in the Natural History Museum in London.

"What's amazing about this study is it all hinges on a single specimen, and it's a very well-documented specimen that was collected in 1901 in Australia," said study co-author Kristofer Helgen, a zoologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. "It's taken until 2013 for myself and the team to really unbury the specimen from the cabinets of the Natural History Museum of London."

Primitive mammal
Monotremes, which include bizarre little mammals like the duckbill platypus, lay eggs like reptiles but feed their babies milk. They may have diverged from all other mammals as far back as the Triassic Period, which lasted from about 248 million to 206 million years ago. [ Image Gallery: Photos of Bizarre Monotremes ]

While short-beaked echidnas and duckbill platypuses still live in Australia, the long-beaked echidna, the largest monotreme in the world, was thought to live only in rain forests of New Guinea. The secretive creature, which can weigh up to 20 pounds (9 kilograms), is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Forgotten in a drawer
Scientists knew the spiny, nocturnal creatures once inhabited Australia but thought it died out after the last ice age, between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago, when New Guinea and Australia were one continent, Helgen said.

Helgen said he was visiting the Natural History Museum in London to look at its collections when he happened upon a skinned long-beaked echidna that was neatly tagged with the species name and where it was discovered.

It turns out that in 1901, an Australian naturalist named John Tunney shot the echidna on Mount Anderson, a mountain in a vast, arid and sparsely populated region of northwest Australia, while on an expedition for a British collector. Tunney, who was trained in taxidermy, stuffed and delivered the specimen, which was later bequeathed to the Natural History Museum. There it lay forgotten for a century.

Once they realized the echidna had been spotted in recent history, the team went back to aboriginal communities in the West Kimberley region. Some of the women remembered watching their parents hunt long-beaked echidnas.

1. Science news from NBCNews.com

   1. Big-brained fish reveal evolution's trade-offs

      Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: Experiments with guppies support the view that bigger brains ? in fish as well as humans ? come with an evolutionary price.

   2. Atoms hit record cold temperature
   3. Ancient terrace farming found in Petra
   4. Carving depicts stylishly plump princess

"They remembered that there used to be an echidna in the area that was much larger, and they pointed to pictures of the modern long-beaked echidna from New Guinea," Helgen told LiveScience.

Still out there?
The new findings raise the possibility that the long-beaked echidna is still out there in Australia, and scientists should lead an expedition to find it, Helgen said. But the elusive, critically endangered creatures are difficult to spot even in New Guinea. They venture out at night, avoid humans and curl up into a spiky, unidentifiable ball at the first sign of danger, he said.

The discovery not only points to the importance of maintaining museum collections, it radically changes the picture of long-beaked echidnas, said Christopher Norris, a museums specialist at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, who was not involved in the study. The New Guinea rain forest where long-beaked echidnas are normally seen is dramatically different from the rocky, arid scrubland of the Kimberley, Norris told LiveScience.

"It overturns our ideas about how this particular animal lives," he said.

Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook? and Google+.

? 2012 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50366056/ns/technology_and_science-science/

florida state meghan mccain wilson chandler bristol motor speedway prometheus grand canyon skywalk tonga

Missing dog mystery is on Mass. author's mind

Author Dennis Lehane stands next to a poster for his missing dog in Brookline, Mass., Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013. The dog, a beagle named Tessa, went missing on Christmas Eve 2012. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Author Dennis Lehane stands next to a poster for his missing dog in Brookline, Mass., Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013. The dog, a beagle named Tessa, went missing on Christmas Eve 2012. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

A poster for a missing dog is attached to a shop window, in Brookline, Mass., Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013. The missing dog, a beagle named Tessa, which belongs to author Dennis Lehane, went missing Christmas Eve 2012. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Dog groomer Casey Mabardy, of Lexington, Mass., places a poster for a missing dog in the rear window of her car, in Brookline, Mass., Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013. The missing dog, a beagle named Tessa, that belongs to author Dennis Lehane, went missing on Christmas Eve 2012. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

BROOKLINE, Mass. (AP) ? There's a new mystery on Dennis Lehane's mind, but the story isn't something the best-selling author can control from behind a keyboard.

The plot kicked off Christmas Eve, when the crime novelist's rescue beagle Tessa escaped from his yard after an outdoor gate latch didn't lock all the way.

Since then, Lehane's family has launched an all-out search. They've posted fliers, organized foot searches and used social media to try to bring Tessa back to their home in Brookline, Mass., near Boston.

The 47-year-old author of books including "Mystic River" and "Gone, Baby, Gone" is offering a monetary reward and has said he'll name a character in his next book after whoever finds Tessa.

Lehane said Thursday outside his home that he's surprised by the media attention the story has attracted, and thinks it has something to do with the character offer.

But he said as word of the missing dog spread, his family has heard from people across the country on a "Finding Tessa" Facebook page. They even got an offer of help from a dog psychic in San Francisco.

"No dog since Lassie ever got this attention ... the flip side of the comedy is, who wouldn't do this for their dog?" he said.

The doggie dilemma comes as Lehane faces a Friday deadline for finishing a movie script based on his short story "Animal Rescue," timing he said may be "sadistic irony." The movie is scheduled to begin shooting in March in New York City.

The author said he's been spending about four hours a day searching for the tri-colored female beagle after he finishes writing, and his wife has dedicated about 10 hours a day to the effort.

They adopted the 4-year-old beagle not long ago from a Florida rescue agency. Before that, Tessa was a stray in Georgia.

With the help of Twitter and Facebook accounts, Lehane and his wife organized two search efforts Thursday in sections of Brookline and Boston, where they suspect Tessa could be. In the beginning, there were three sightings within about two miles of their home not long after a house sitter reported that the dog was loose.

But the trail went cold for days after a sighting near a McDonald's restaurant. Tessa wasn't wearing tags, but does have a microchip.

"Every dog expert we talk to is strongly suggesting that she's in somebody's house," Lehane said. "That's why we keep saturating the area with pictures. Because somebody could have her and just not know."

Missing dog posters dotted the family's Coolidge Corner neighborhood Thursday, including in the front windows at Durty Harry's dog grooming shop where Tessa is a client. Shop owner Michelle Fournier said interest in the search took off even before people knew Tessa had a famous owner.

"This is about a dog and her family. This is about a community who loves dogs," she said.

Lehane said Thursday that Tessa is so sweet that she'd taken to spooning the family's puppy before her disappearance. He said if someone knows where Tessa is, he only cares about a happy ending, not about solving the mystery of where she's been.

"It's a no-questions-asked issue," the author said. "... Bring the dog to a shelter or call me and I will pick up the dog."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-01-04-People-Dennis%20Lehane-Dog/id-93743fed6793411281e10be79fe79351

brian dunn vin scully petrino fired george zimmerman charged big sean sherri shepherd sherri shepherd

California meteorite reveals secrets thanks to crowdsourcing (+video)

Recently published research describes a collection of meteorite pieces that landed in California in April. The study came about through a group effort dubbed "crowdsourcing" by the lead scientist. ??

By Elizabeth Howell,?Space.com / December 20, 2012

Barely eight months after a fireball lit up California and Nevada skies, the first scientific paper is out examining the meteorites it left behind.

Skip to next paragraph

' + google_ads[0].line2 + '
' + google_ads[0].line3 + '

'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { ad_unit += ''; } } document.getElementById("ad_unit").innerHTML += ad_unit; google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_client = "pub-6743622525202572"; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_feedback = "on"; google_ad_type = "text"; google_adtest = "on"; google_image_size = '230x105'; google_skip = '0'; // -->

Subscribe Today to the Monitor

Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of
The Christian Science Monitor
Weekly Digital Edition

"It was done very quickly," said Peter Jenniskens, a meteor researcher who suddenly found himself managing a small army of volunteers when the Sutter's Mill meteor broke up April 22.

Dozens of scientists jumped to Jenniskens' aid as he?searched for meteorite fragments. But less publicized will be the volunteers who phoned in reports of meteorites, or sent in?pictures and video of the fireball?by e-mail.

Jenniskens' team?commandeered an airship?to search for fragments. Meanwhile, the team caught a lucky break ? Doppler radar information from nearby weather stations showed the track of the meteorite. Adding this data to the pictures and video sent in by volunteers, the scientists could reconstruct the impacting asteroid's early history. [Photos: Fireball Drops Meteorites On California]

According to Jenniskens, the paper, to be published Friday (Dec. 21) in the journal Science,?was made possible by the mass crowdsourcing effort that enabled a large amount of data to be collected in a short time.

"It's all very important, and it's fantastic how this came together," said Jenniskens, a meteor astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). "For me, it was personally very exciting."

Peeling back the years

The Sutter's Mill meteorite turned out to be a rare type ? a?carbonaceous chondrite?that contains information about the early stages of the solar system. The meteorite pieces originated in a space rock that was perhaps as much as 3.3 yards (3 meters) across.

A space rock is called an asteroid or meteoroid until it hits the Earth's atmosphere. The resulting fireball is then called a meteor until it hits the ground, at which point it is dubbed a meteorite.

The asteroid that would later impact California orbited the sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, making about three trips around our star in the time it takes Jupiter to orbit once. Such a ratio, known as a resonance, is common in the solar system ? some of?Jupiter's moons are in resonance?with each other, for example.

The asteroid's resonance was a little "off" from a perfect 3 to 1 ratio. At some point, Jupiter's strong gravity muscled the asteroid out of its normal orbit and sent it on a trip to the inner solar system. This pushed the asteroid into a new orbit that brought it in as far as Mercury's orbit when it got closest to the sun.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/2uF_M25U_-Y/California-meteorite-reveals-secrets-thanks-to-crowdsourcing-video

the maldives harper lee mega millions numbers the fray seahawks new uniforms 2012 tornadoes in dallas anchorman 2

5 Top Tips to Successfully Publish an Ezine Newsletter :: Web ...

There was a time when publishing an Ezine or electronic newsletter was thought to be a bit ?old hat? ? but that?s all different now. Why so? Well, it?s all about permission marketing and if you?re new to internet marketing you may never have heard of this term or what it means ? but believe me when I say, this is VERY IMPORTANT for your online business, so pay attention to what I?m going to share with you!

The phrase permission marketing was coined by Seth Godin, a thought leader in the internet marketing world, and is the opposite of the traditional interruption marketing. Permission marketing is all about building an ongoing relationship of increasing depth with your customers. Seth described it as ?turning strangers into friends, and friends into customers.?

Publishing your own Ezine is a great way to stay connected with visitors to your blog or website who have given you their permission to send them useful information on a regular basis.

Here are ?5 Top Tips to Successfully Publish an Ezine? to help you get started on your Ezine:

?Turning strangers into friends and friends into customers?

Tip #1 ? Let an Autoresponder to Do All the Work

Don?t make the mistake of thinking you have to physically send out each edition of your Ezine yourself. This is the mistake a lot of new entrepreneurs make when they take their offline business online ? thinking they have to reply to every email themselves! Do NOT do this! The technology is out there to help you ? you?ve got to start using it to work SMARTER and the solution is an Autoresponder. There are several Email Marketing companies out there who do a good job, I use 1ShoppingCart mainly because it integrates my shopping cart with my autoresponders (making my life a WHOLE lot easier) but I believe AWeber is really good and a friend of mine uses Constant Contact and loves it. So there you are ? make sure you let the autoresponder do all the hard work and not you!

Tip #2 ? Never Sign People Up Without Their Permission

Another big mistake I see newcomers make is adding everyone they know to their Ezine mailing list and hoping for the best ? this is definitely a big ?No, No?. The ICANN anti-spam rules which govern this area state you must have the person?s permission before you send them commercial emails. So even if you?re making only 3 cents with Google Adsense ? you are effectively a commercial user. If you don?t adhere to these rules you?ll end up in a lot of trouble and worse still, your reputation will suffer and you could be labelled as a spammer.

Remember, you always need permission before you send out unsolicited emails.
But there is always an ethical way to go about your business and send out your
Ezine, here are three ways you can stay on the right side of the ICANN rules:

• Ideally send your friends or business contacts to a one-page website, also known as a Squeeze page, that you?ve created stating all the benefits of your newsletter and include an opt-in box where they can provide their name and primary email address. Once they sign up ? you?re ?good to go?.

• When attending conferences, presentations, etc make sure you make people aware you have an Ezine, then make a point of writing a big ?P? on the back of their business card to remind yourself to add them to your list now they?ve given you permission to do so.

• If you?re invited to speak at an event, prepare a form beforehand and give people the opportunity to. The form should say something like ?I would like to receive???????s newsletter for tips and techniques on ???????. This way you are absolutely sure they have given you their permission before you start sending them emails.

Using these three methods will keep you on the right side of the ICANN rules.

Tip #3 ? Make Sure Your Content is Useful

People have signed up for your Ezine because you?ve promised to deliver the latest news or weekly tips ? so that?s what you?ve got to give them! Don?t just fill your Ezine with adverts for your affiliate products or your Joint Venture partners. Follow the 80/20 Pareto rule ? give 80% content and 20% promotion. You probably wouldn?t care much to receive a newsletter full of adverts and hardly anything else, would you? So make sure you don?t fall into this trap right from the beginning.

Tip #4 ? You?re in Business ? Don?t Forget This!

Although we?ve just covered the useful content subject in #3, let?s not forget you are actually here to make money! You?re in business now and whilst it?s great to add useful content? don?t go overboard, you?re main reason for sending the Ezine (and doing all the hard work!) is to education your prospective customers and build an ongoing relationship ? so make sure you promote a product or service (ideally your own or as an affiliate) you personally think will also be useful to them. At the end of the day, it?s your reputation online ? you?ve got to protect it.

Tip #5 ? Keep To A Schedule, People Expect It

No matter what schedule you decide to publish, ie weekly, bi-weekly,or monthly just make sure you DO actually meet your deadlines. Remember, a lot of your content can be repurposed for the future? or you can look at what you have produced in the past and rework it. Just make sure you meet your customers? expectations by being professional and getting it to them on time.

Always work at least one or two weeks in advance and ahead of your schedule,
this way if anything unexpected happens (and it will, believe me!) you?ll be ready to publish your newsletter? no matter what.

To create your own electronic newsletter sign up with AWeber or Constant Contact and get started today!!

Source: http://www.webwomenonline.com/5-top-tips-to-successfully-publish-an-ezine-newsletter/

Target Black Friday PacSun apple store bestbuy bestbuy gamestop black friday deals

Bonobos will share with strangers before acquaintances

Jan. 2, 2013 ? You're standing in line somewhere and you decide to open a pack of gum. Do you share a piece with the coworker standing to one side of you, or with the stranger on the other?

Most humans would choose the person they know first, if they shared at all.

But bonobos, those notoriously frisky, ardently social great apes of the Congo, prefer to share with a stranger before sharing with an animal they know. In fact, a bonobo will invite a stranger to share a snack while leaving an acquaintance watching helplessly from behind a barrier.

"It seems kind of crazy to us, but bonobos prefer to share with strangers," said Brian Hare, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University. "They're trying to extend their social network." And they apparently value that more than maintaining the friendships they already have.

To measure this willingness to share, Hare and graduate student Jingzhi Tan ran a series of experiments with bonobos living in the Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. The experiments involved piles of food and enclosures that the test subjects were able to unlock and open. Tan and Hare describe their work in a paper in the Jan. 2, 2013 edition of PLOS ONE.

In the first series of experiments, a pile of food was placed in a central enclosure flanked by two enclosures, each of them holding another animal. The test subject had the knowledge and ability to open a door to either of the other chambers, or both. On one side was a bonobo they knew from their group (not necessarily a friend or family member) and in the other was a bonobo they had never really met, but had only seen at a distance.

Upon entering the chamber with the food, the test subjects could easily just sit down and consume it all themselves, or they could let in one or both of the other animals to share.

Nine of the 14 animals who went through this test released the stranger first. Two preferred their groupmates. Three showed no particular preference in repeated trials. The third animal was often let in on the treat as well, but more often it was the stranger, not the test subject, who opened the door for them.

Tan said that by letting the third animal into the enclosure, the stranger voluntarily outnumbered himself or herself with two bonobos who knew each other, which a chimpanzee would never do. In 51 trials of the experiment, there was never any aggression shown, although there was quite a bit of typical bonobo genital rubbing between the strangers.

To isolate how much motivation the animals receive from social interaction, the researchers ran a second set of experiments in which the subject animal wouldn't receive any social contact with another animal. In the first of these experiments, the subjects couldn't get any food for themselves regardless of whether they chose to open the door to allow the other animal to get some food. Nine out of ten animals shared with the stranger at least once.

In the final experiment without social contact, the subject animal was given access to the food in such a way that opening the door to share with the other animal would cost them some food. But they still wouldn't have any social contact as a reward. In this instance, the animals chose not to share. "If they're not going to see a social benefit, they won't share," Hare said.

This second test is similar to something called the dictator game in which humans are given the chance to share cash with a stranger, Hare said. Most people will share anonymously, but they share even more when they aren't anonymous. Bonobos won't share at all in the anonymous condition if it costs them food.

"They care about others," Hare said, but only in a sort of selfish way. "They'll share when it's a low-cost/low-benefit kind of situation. But when it's a no-benefit situation, they won't share. That's different from a human playing the dictator game. You really have to care about others to give anonymously."

The findings, which Hare calls "one of the crazier things we've found" in more than a decade of bonobo research, form yet another distinction between bonobos and chimpanzees, our two closest relatives. "Chimps can't do these tests, they'd be all over each other."

The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the European Research Council.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Duke University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Tan J, Hare B. Bonobos Share with Strangers. PLOS ONE, 2013; 8 (1): e51922 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0051922

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/2bif2nwe0DY/130102173312.htm

luck sag awards 2012 nominees sag awards pro bowl 2012 roster yamaguchi road house occupy oakland

Who forced a 'fiscal cliff' deal? Try foreign investors.

Washington is now all too aware that foreign creditors and investors will punish it for any macroeconomic mismanagement. American competitiveness was at stake in the fiscal cliff negotiations.

By the Monitor's Editorial Board / January 2, 2013

A trader works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange on the day after the ?fiscal cliff? compromise. For all its chaos and controversy, the deal was enough to send the stock market shooting higher on the first trading day of the new year.

AP Photo

Enlarge

Take a guess. Which of these put more pressure on US lawmakers to strike a deal and avoid the ?fiscal cliff? ? voters or global financial markets?

Skip to next paragraph

' + google_ads[0].line2 + '
' + google_ads[0].line3 + '

'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { ad_unit += ''; } } document.getElementById("ad_unit").innerHTML += ad_unit; google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_client = "pub-6743622525202572"; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_feedback = "on"; google_ad_type = "text"; google_adtest = "on"; google_image_size = '230x105'; google_skip = '0'; // -->

Subscribe Today to the Monitor

Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of
The Christian Science Monitor
Weekly Digital Edition

If you picked markets, you may be right.

On the day after the last-minute agreement, an uptick in global stock prices seemed far more welcome in Washington than the reaction of voters. The reason is that foreign creditors to the US Treasury had been near a tipping point in wanting their money back, possibly forcing a crisis for US debt.

Investors worldwide now demand the US government display more stability and trust. Globalization has given them a big say in the policy logjams of many countries, and the United States is not immune. Its lingering disputes over issues like taxes and spending have become a prime indicator of its ability to remain innovative, reliable, and productive.

Elections do have consequences, for sure. But today so does a country?s economic competitiveness, measured in part by its level of dependability, openness, and flexibility in governance. On those sorts of attributes, the US needs work. Consider these latest rankings:

On a global index of innovation, the US has dropped from No. 1 in 2007 to 10th. On economic competitiveness, it has dropped to seventh in the last few years. And compared with other countries, the trust by Americans in their government ranks 54th.

The greatest weakness of the US is seen in its lack of macroeconomic stability. On that measure it fell last year from 90th to 111th.

Economic freedom in the US has been falling and now ranks 10th ? behind even the African country of Mauritius. It ranks fifth in the ease of doing business, according to the World Bank.

In 2012, the US fell from the top tier of a ?global prosperity index,? which measures such nonmaterial factors as entrepreneurship, safety, education, and governance. It now ranks 12th.

Within two decades, China is expected to have as many college graduates as the entire workforce in the US. The number of Chinese universities in the world?s top 500 has risen from 12 to 22 in just eight years.

The US must compete much more aggressively for foreign investment even as the flow of those investments has declined. Last year, the US was no longer the No. 1 destination for foreign investments. China beat it out.

Policy disputes over entitlements and taxes are important, but resolving them is even more important if the US is to enjoy a healthy economy. Lawmakers who fight over how to divide up the economic pie must, at some point, collectively agree on how to expand the pie. Prolonged bickering doesn?t do that.

The rest of the world still looks to the US economy as one of the most stable, open, innovative, and competitive places to invest. The limited fiscal-cliff deal shows some political ability to build on those qualities. Investors, as much as voters, demand more ? and, when it comes to dealmaking, they may even have more influence.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/YxTJWyFdVfo/Who-forced-a-fiscal-cliff-deal-Try-foreign-investors

After Christmas Sales 2012 Charles Durning Webster Ny amber alert Mcdonalds Restaurants Open on Christmas Day jessica simpson