Published May 21, 2013 in the Rutland Herald Various home improvement loans available for all incomes By Pat Goudey O?Brien Purchasing a home is often cited as one of the largest ? if not the single largest ? financial transactions a consumer will make, while maintenance and improvement can also weigh in on the list of expensive propositions. As a result, most people seek loans to finance home purchases, and to make needed repairs or improvements. To secure financing for home improvement projects, the house itself may provide equity value to secure a loan or second mortgage. However, for borrowers who don?t want to tap into their equity, some lending institutions offer alternatives for home improvement financing. In addition to options like second-mortgages or home-equity lines of credit, KeyBank (NYSE: KEY) of Vermont allows qualified borrowers to acquire unsecured loans for needed repairs or improvements, said Brigitte Ritchie, director of community relations. ?The maximum [loan] amount available depends on the person?s personal credit,? Ritchie said. ?But, it?s a great way to finance repairs or improvements for people who don?t want to tap into the equity in their home.? Interest rates for unsecured loans for home improvement may be higher than those for home equity or secured lines of credit, said Ritchie, but they are often lower than credit card rates. And, while home equity loans and lines of credit may be used for things not related to the home, funds from an unsecured home improvement loan must go into the home. Philip Smith, KeyBank?s senior vice president of community banking in Vermont, said the prospect of borrowing without using equity in the home is attractive to consumers, but it may not be the best option for all homeowners, based on their personal financial profile. ?The people on my team have been trained to have a broad conversation about a borrower?s financial profile, and not rush into one type of loan or another,? Smith said. ?It really comes down to the individual?s situation.? Sometimes, consolidating debt from credit cards or other types of loans is the best option, he said, with a low-interest secured loan providing an affordable alternative. The bank analyzes the situation, looks at fixed loans versus a line of credit, and prepares a recommendation on the best product for the individual person, added Ritchie. Unsecured loans require broad documentation of the borrower?s income and debt profile, so consumers should be prepared to provide data including several years of tax returns, a balance sheet on income and financial obligations, and assets and liabilities, said Ritchie and Smith. For the self-employed or business owner, additional information on the business will be required. ?The most important advice I can give is to sit with your banker, describe the particulars of your situation, your financial status, and your project plans,? Smith said. ?Have that larger, holistic conversation about where you are and where you want to be.? For moderate- and lower-income homeowners, financing options may be available through NeighborWorks Alliance of Vermont, which has home ownership centers in St. Albans, Burlington, Barre, Lyndonville, West Rutland, Springfield, and Brattleboro. The Green Mountain Loan Fund, which offers rehabilitation and repair loans through the Central Vermont Community Land Trust (CVCLT), is associated with the NeighborWorks Alliance center in Barre, which serves Washington, Lamoille, and Orange counties. The home ownership center provides extensive services to moderate- and low-income homeowners, including debt counseling and project financing, Dupuis noted. The agency also offers a home repair and rehabilitation program that sends a rehabilitation specialist out to the home, at no cost to the homeowner, to write job specifications for things like roof repair, structural repairs, heating and electrical system repair, and weatherization. The specialist remains available to help with choosing a contractor and supervising the work during the course of the project. Program eligibility is determined by a borrower?s income level and the number of people in the home, among other factors, said Patti Dupuis, loan-fund manager for the Green Mountain Loan Fund. ?It?s a great program,? Dupuis said. ?Our specialist inspects the home and finds things that need to be upgraded to make the home healthy and safe, [and] comes back and provides us with a scope of work and the costs.? A variety of loan arrangements can be made, said Dupuis, including a zero-percent deferred-payment option for some borrowers, said Dupuis; the loan doesn?t have to be repaid until the home is sold or the title transferred to a new owner, though a borrower can begin to pay back the loan sooner, if preferred. Chandra Pollard, director of the home ownership program at the CVCLT, said the Healthy Homes Program provides grants to eligible low- or moderate-income homeowners for things like lead paint abatement, as well. Visit www.vthomeownership.org/ and www.cvclt.org. for more information.
May 21, 2013 ? Rice University scientists have unveiled a robust new method for arranging metal nanoparticles in geometric patterns that can act as optical processors that transform incoming light signals into output of a different color. The breakthrough by a team of theoretical and applied physicists and engineers at Rice's Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) is described this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Rice's team used the method to create an optical device in which incoming light could be directly controlled with light via a process known as "four-wave mixing." Four-wave mixing has been widely studied, but Rice's disc-patterning method is the first that can produce materials that are tailored to perform four-wave mixing with a wide range of colored inputs and outputs.
"Versatility is one of the advantages of this process," said study co-author Naomi Halas, director of LANP and Rice's Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a professor of biomedical engineering, chemistry, physics and astronomy. "It allows us to mix colors in a very general way. That means not only can we send in beams of two different colors and get out a third color, but we can fine-tune the arrangements to create devices that are tailored to accept or produce a broad spectrum of colors."
The information processing that takes place inside today's computers, smartphones and tablets is electronic. Each of the billions of transistors in a computer chip uses electrical inputs to act upon and modify the electrical signals passing through it. Processing information with light instead of electricity could allow for computers that are both faster and more energy-efficient, but building an optical computer is complicated by the quantum rules that light obeys.
"In most circumstances, one beam of light won't interact with another," said LANP theoretical physicist Peter Nordlander, a co-author of the new study. "For instance, if you shine a flashlight at a wall and you cross that beam with the beam from a second flashlight, it won't matter. The light that comes out of the first flashlight will pass through, independent of the light from the second.
"This changes if the light is traveling in a 'nonlinear medium,'" he said. "The electromagnetic properties of a nonlinear medium are such that the light from one beam will interact with another. So, if you shine the two flashlights through a nonlinear medium, the intensity of the beam from the first flashlight will be reduced proportionally to the intensity of the second beam."
The patterns of metal discs LANP scientists created for the PNAS study are a type of nonlinear media. The team used electron-beam lithography to etch puck-shaped gold discs that were placed on a transparent surface for optical testing. The diameter of each disc was about one-thousandth the width of a human hair. Each was designed to harvest the energy from a particular frequency of light; by arranging a dozen of the discs in a closely spaced pattern, the team was able to enhance the nonlinear properties of the system by creating intense electrical fields.
"Our system exploits a particular plasmonic effect called a Fano resonance to boost the efficiency of the relatively weak nonlinear effect that underlies four-wave mixing," Nordlander said. "The result is a boost in the intensity of the third color of light that the device produces."
Graduate student and co-author Yu-Rong Zhen calculated the precise arrangement of 12 discs that would be required to produce two coherent Fano resonances in a single device, and graduate student and lead co-author Yu Zhang created the device that produced the four-wave mixing -- the first such material ever created.
"The device Zhang created for four-wave mixing is the most efficient yet produced for that purpose, but the value of this research goes beyond the design for this particular device," said Halas, who was recently named a member of the National Academy of Sciences for her pioneering research in nanophotonics. "The methods used to create this device can be applied to the production of a wide range of nonlinear media, each with tailored optical properties."
Beer-industry advertising guidelines: Rating panels may help industry assess itselfPublic release date: 17-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Thomas F. Babor, Ph.D.
babor@nso.uchc.edu
860-679-5485
The University of Connecticut School of Medicine
David H. Jernigan, Ph.D.
djernigan@jhsph.edu
410-502-4096
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research
The alcohol industry has developed and regulates its own guidelines regarding advertising.
A new study has investigated the ability of panels to find consensus around code violations.
Results indicate that a modified Delphi Technique may enhance the ability of regulatory agencies to monitor the content of alcohol-beverage advertising.
In order to avoid exposing vulnerable groups such as children and young adults to alcohol advertising, industry groups have developed their own self-regulation guidelines. However, these guidelines have been criticized for possible conflict of interest, lack of objectivity, and unresponsiveness to complaints about violations. A study of violations of the U.S. Beer Institute code has identified a relatively inexpensive method of assessing whether alcohol-advertising content is in compliance with the industry's voluntary standards.
Results will be published in the October 2013 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.
"Research suggests that alcohol advertising pre-disposes young people to have favorable attitudes toward drinking, and to prefer certain brands, particularly those marketed to young adults, and to promote an earlier onset of drinking," said Thomas F. Babor, professor of public health and community medicine at The University of Connecticut School of Medicine as well as first author of the study. "The strength of the association, the consistency of the findings, the dose-response relationship, and the theoretical plausibility of the effect strongly suggest that alcohol advertising increases the likelihood that young people will start to use alcohol and will drink more if they are already using alcohol."
"Given that alcohol use is the leading drug problem among young people, and responsible for approximately 4700 deaths per year among persons under 21, and since the earlier young people start drinking, the more likely they are to experience alcohol problems later in life, there is a strong public health interest in reducing youth exposure to alcohol advertising," added David H. Jernigan, associate professor in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
"Advertising codes of practice have been developed by the advertising industry, and more recently by the alcohol industry, including trade associations representing the beer, wine and spirits producers," explained Babor. "Over the years, the alcohol industry has taken increasing responsibility for specifying the exposure and content limits of their marketing, primarily to avoid government regulation. Although they have created a structure that is purportedly 'independent,' it is actually controlled entirely by industry personnel. As currently organized, the voluntary self-regulation programs set up by the alcohol industry provide a convenient way to claim they are being responsible without having to modify their advertising campaigns, which are often directed at young people."
"This is a case where the fox is not only minding the chicken house, but has actually built it," said Jernigan. "The codes are created and enforced by the industry. They are vague and may be changed with impunity. There are no penalties for violations, and according to reviewers engaged by the industry, violations are few indeed, the Beer Institute's Code Compliance Review Board has never found an ad in violation of the beer industry's code."
Babor and his colleagues selected six alcohol advertisements based on their likelihood of having violated the "Beer Code," and then had two panels of raters a community panel of college students, and an expert panel of health professionals (n=286) assess whether the ads had violated the alcohol industry's voluntary standards. The ratings addressed issues such as whether the actors depicted in the ads appeared younger than age 21, the amount of drinking suggested in the ad story situation, and the association of the beer product with social success. The alcohol advertisements were rated on two occasions, separated by one month.
"Our study shows that it is feasible to obtain consistent evaluations of marketing code violations from both health professionals and members of vulnerable groups, and that such information could be rapidly translated into decisions about whether an alcohol ad should be broadcast," said Babor. "Results indicate that the modified Delphi Technique can facilitate consensus development around code violations, which may enhance the ability of regulatory agencies to monitor the content of alcohol-beverage advertising."
"While both groups found violations in the ads, the expert raters were more conservative and less likely to be influenced by feedback, either from their own ratings as a group or from the ratings of the other group," added Jernigan. "The authors found that as few as 15 raters could produce consistent estimates of code violations, suggesting that it is possible, and relatively inexpensive, to put together an independent panel of raters to assess whether the content of alcohol ads is in compliance with the industry's voluntary standards."
While Babor was somewhat surprised that college students identified more violations than experts/health professionals, Jernigan was not; both noting that older health experts were less adept at seeing content designed to appeal to young persons through humor, sexually suggestive material, and associations between drinking and social success. "Much of the content of alcohol ads flies under the comprehension radar of adults," said Jernigan. "This underscores why it is important to include young people and young adults in rating panels assessing industry compliance with its standards."
"The procedure we've developed at the very least can be used to rapidly detect code violations and report them to industry sources so that they can remove ads with objectionable content," said Babor. "More importantly, it may be used to document the extent of code violations so that policymakers can consider whether stronger measures are needed, such as a total ban on alcohol marketing, as is done for tobacco products."
Jernigan would like to go even further. "Unless a panel of raters is permitted to 'pre-vet' the advertising, that is, to judge the ads before they are released to the public, even scientifically sound content assessments will always occur after the damage of youth exposure to them has already been done," he said. "Realistically, there are two ways of addressing the influence of alcohol advertising on young people: changing the content of the ads so they are less likely to influence kids, or changing where and when the ads are shown in other words, placement to reduce the likelihood that kids will see the ads. This study shows that the content of the advertising can be assessed and judged reliably by 'civilian' rating panels. But because of the difficulty of assessing and blocking ads before they are released to the public, addressing placement of the advertising that is, reducing the likelihood that kids will see the ads in the first place is critical if we are to give parents, teachers and law enforcement the support they need to safeguard our youth from the harmful effects of alcohol use."
"Parents may be interested in knowing this procedure could be used to protect young persons from ad content designed to make alcohol more appealing to them," added Babor. "For example, most people would be surprised to learn that each year, several of the beer ads broadcast to millions of young persons on Superbowl Sunday contain serious code violations that may contribute to binge drinking by American youth."
###
Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research (ACER) is the official journal of the Research Society on Alcoholism and the International Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism. Co-authors of the ACER paper, "A New Method for Evaluating Compliance with Industry Self-Regulation Codes Governing the Content of Alcohol Advertising," were: Ziming Xuan of the Boston University School of Public Health; and Donna Damon of the Department of Community Medicine and Health Care at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. The study was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. This release is supported by the Addiction Technology Transfer Center Network at http://www.ATTCnetwork.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
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.
Beer-industry advertising guidelines: Rating panels may help industry assess itselfPublic release date: 17-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Thomas F. Babor, Ph.D.
babor@nso.uchc.edu
860-679-5485
The University of Connecticut School of Medicine
David H. Jernigan, Ph.D.
djernigan@jhsph.edu
410-502-4096
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research
The alcohol industry has developed and regulates its own guidelines regarding advertising.
A new study has investigated the ability of panels to find consensus around code violations.
Results indicate that a modified Delphi Technique may enhance the ability of regulatory agencies to monitor the content of alcohol-beverage advertising.
In order to avoid exposing vulnerable groups such as children and young adults to alcohol advertising, industry groups have developed their own self-regulation guidelines. However, these guidelines have been criticized for possible conflict of interest, lack of objectivity, and unresponsiveness to complaints about violations. A study of violations of the U.S. Beer Institute code has identified a relatively inexpensive method of assessing whether alcohol-advertising content is in compliance with the industry's voluntary standards.
Results will be published in the October 2013 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.
"Research suggests that alcohol advertising pre-disposes young people to have favorable attitudes toward drinking, and to prefer certain brands, particularly those marketed to young adults, and to promote an earlier onset of drinking," said Thomas F. Babor, professor of public health and community medicine at The University of Connecticut School of Medicine as well as first author of the study. "The strength of the association, the consistency of the findings, the dose-response relationship, and the theoretical plausibility of the effect strongly suggest that alcohol advertising increases the likelihood that young people will start to use alcohol and will drink more if they are already using alcohol."
"Given that alcohol use is the leading drug problem among young people, and responsible for approximately 4700 deaths per year among persons under 21, and since the earlier young people start drinking, the more likely they are to experience alcohol problems later in life, there is a strong public health interest in reducing youth exposure to alcohol advertising," added David H. Jernigan, associate professor in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
"Advertising codes of practice have been developed by the advertising industry, and more recently by the alcohol industry, including trade associations representing the beer, wine and spirits producers," explained Babor. "Over the years, the alcohol industry has taken increasing responsibility for specifying the exposure and content limits of their marketing, primarily to avoid government regulation. Although they have created a structure that is purportedly 'independent,' it is actually controlled entirely by industry personnel. As currently organized, the voluntary self-regulation programs set up by the alcohol industry provide a convenient way to claim they are being responsible without having to modify their advertising campaigns, which are often directed at young people."
"This is a case where the fox is not only minding the chicken house, but has actually built it," said Jernigan. "The codes are created and enforced by the industry. They are vague and may be changed with impunity. There are no penalties for violations, and according to reviewers engaged by the industry, violations are few indeed, the Beer Institute's Code Compliance Review Board has never found an ad in violation of the beer industry's code."
Babor and his colleagues selected six alcohol advertisements based on their likelihood of having violated the "Beer Code," and then had two panels of raters a community panel of college students, and an expert panel of health professionals (n=286) assess whether the ads had violated the alcohol industry's voluntary standards. The ratings addressed issues such as whether the actors depicted in the ads appeared younger than age 21, the amount of drinking suggested in the ad story situation, and the association of the beer product with social success. The alcohol advertisements were rated on two occasions, separated by one month.
"Our study shows that it is feasible to obtain consistent evaluations of marketing code violations from both health professionals and members of vulnerable groups, and that such information could be rapidly translated into decisions about whether an alcohol ad should be broadcast," said Babor. "Results indicate that the modified Delphi Technique can facilitate consensus development around code violations, which may enhance the ability of regulatory agencies to monitor the content of alcohol-beverage advertising."
"While both groups found violations in the ads, the expert raters were more conservative and less likely to be influenced by feedback, either from their own ratings as a group or from the ratings of the other group," added Jernigan. "The authors found that as few as 15 raters could produce consistent estimates of code violations, suggesting that it is possible, and relatively inexpensive, to put together an independent panel of raters to assess whether the content of alcohol ads is in compliance with the industry's voluntary standards."
While Babor was somewhat surprised that college students identified more violations than experts/health professionals, Jernigan was not; both noting that older health experts were less adept at seeing content designed to appeal to young persons through humor, sexually suggestive material, and associations between drinking and social success. "Much of the content of alcohol ads flies under the comprehension radar of adults," said Jernigan. "This underscores why it is important to include young people and young adults in rating panels assessing industry compliance with its standards."
"The procedure we've developed at the very least can be used to rapidly detect code violations and report them to industry sources so that they can remove ads with objectionable content," said Babor. "More importantly, it may be used to document the extent of code violations so that policymakers can consider whether stronger measures are needed, such as a total ban on alcohol marketing, as is done for tobacco products."
Jernigan would like to go even further. "Unless a panel of raters is permitted to 'pre-vet' the advertising, that is, to judge the ads before they are released to the public, even scientifically sound content assessments will always occur after the damage of youth exposure to them has already been done," he said. "Realistically, there are two ways of addressing the influence of alcohol advertising on young people: changing the content of the ads so they are less likely to influence kids, or changing where and when the ads are shown in other words, placement to reduce the likelihood that kids will see the ads. This study shows that the content of the advertising can be assessed and judged reliably by 'civilian' rating panels. But because of the difficulty of assessing and blocking ads before they are released to the public, addressing placement of the advertising that is, reducing the likelihood that kids will see the ads in the first place is critical if we are to give parents, teachers and law enforcement the support they need to safeguard our youth from the harmful effects of alcohol use."
"Parents may be interested in knowing this procedure could be used to protect young persons from ad content designed to make alcohol more appealing to them," added Babor. "For example, most people would be surprised to learn that each year, several of the beer ads broadcast to millions of young persons on Superbowl Sunday contain serious code violations that may contribute to binge drinking by American youth."
###
Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research (ACER) is the official journal of the Research Society on Alcoholism and the International Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism. Co-authors of the ACER paper, "A New Method for Evaluating Compliance with Industry Self-Regulation Codes Governing the Content of Alcohol Advertising," were: Ziming Xuan of the Boston University School of Public Health; and Donna Damon of the Department of Community Medicine and Health Care at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. The study was funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. This release is supported by the Addiction Technology Transfer Center Network at http://www.ATTCnetwork.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
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.
As you can imagine there has been a lot of major changes since 1.3, and even a reasonable amount since Elastix 2.0.
Elastix 2.4 does not have any major bugs that would affect faxing, so working on that basis, need to look at the following areas
1) Confirm your country is setup under /etc/dahdi/system.conf
2) Confirm your country is setup under /etc/modprobe.d/dahdi.conf
3) Turn echo cancellation off for the FXO line(s) that faxes are coming in on.
Give that a check/try first, otherwise post your logs (asterisk full logs and possibly the hylafax log of the call coming in..
As police searched for him, and as he lay bleeding in his boat hideout, Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wrote "F*** America" on the side panel of the boat, police in Massachusetts told ABC News.
Officers said they also discovered the phrase "Praise Allah" on the boat's side panels and several anti-American screeds, including references to Iraq, Afghanistan and "the infidels."
A Massachusetts official showed ABC News what he said was a cell phone picture of the phrase "Praise Allah," written in black ink, with a bullet hole above it, believed to have been written by Dzhokhar as he hid inside the boat in Watertown, Mass.
Also seen in the picture was the faintly written word "brother," which the official said was part of a reference by the younger Tsarnaev "that was something about his brother is lucky to be with Allah first."
Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed hours earlier during a shootout with police several blocks away from the location of the boat.
Spokespeople for the Massachusetts State Police and the Watertown police had denied the existence of the writings when first asked about them by ABC News two weeks ago.
Today, both departments referred reporters to the FBI. A federal law enforcement official confirmed reports first broadcast by CBS News that writings had been discovered inside the boat.
The discovery of writings intensified tensions between the FBI and local police when FBI agents believed some Boston officers and state police had taken cell phone pictures of the writing.
Agents demanded the phones of all officers at the scene the night of the capture of Dzhokhar be confiscated to avoid the photos becoming public before being used as evidence at trial, according to two law enforcement officials.
A FBI spokesperson said agents cannot confiscate phones without a warrant and officials said none of the police approached would agree to turn over their phones to the FBI.
Dhzokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev are accused of setting off a pair of bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon April 15, killing three people, including an eight-year-old boy, and injuring more than 260 others. Tamerlan was killed in a shootout with police days after the attack, while Dhzokhar was wounded and later captured in the boat.
FULL COVERAGE: Boston Marathon Explosion
CLICK HERE to return to The Investigative Unit homepage.
ShopSavvy, the world's leading mobile shopping platform, today announced an all-new version 7.0.1 of the mobile shopping app that delivers a better shopping experience than ever before on iOS mobile devices. New features include completely redesigned navigation, easier list creation and improved look and feel, as well as enhanced exploratory features to find top products within the ShopSavvy community on both the iPhone and iPad.
The popular mobile shopping app retains its core value of helping people save money, but with this redesign ShopSavvy enters into the larger product discovery space.
"ShopSavvy has been successful in giving users what they want - the lowest prices on the products they need - but this update takes that a step further by showing them new products they might not know they want or need based on the items for which they've scanned and searched," said Chris Makarsky, vice president of product at ShopSavvy. "This redesign caters to the traditional, in-store window shoppers who are interested in looking at items and learning more by visually seeing new products."
By updating ShopSavvy on their iOS mobile devices, users can take advantage of its many new features, including:
* Categories that give users the ability to see the top trending products within the ShopSavvy community, including books, movies, electronics, video games and more * Cleaner and simpler navigation that provides easier list viewing, product scanning and searching, history viewing and user profile access * Larger, more prominent and higher-resolution product images to make browsing even easier * Improved product and category lists through a user experience enhancement that allows shoppers to easily create, view and update lists by swiping from screen-to-screen and dragging and dropping products into the lists.
ShopSavvy's update not only helps consumers by providing new information on products they may not know about, but also benefits retailers and brands looking to reach new consumers through mobile advertising.
The redesign is the latest in a series of moves by ShopSavvy intended to continually improve the mobile experience for shoppers and help businesses of all kinds bridge the gap between themselves and their target audiences in new and innovative ways.
ShopSavvy 7.0.1 is Free and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Utilities category.
Ethan Jones (center) and German Hernandez help clear out Bill Jones' destroyed home. (Jason Sickles/Yahoo News)??
CLEBURNE, Texas - Living in ?Tornado Alley,? 77-year-old Bill Jones has heard the blare of civil defense warning sirens more times than he can count. But on Wednesday night it was the mighty oak trees in his yard that finally persuaded him to take cover.
?They were swirling every which way,? Jones said of the 40-year-old trees. ?We knew it was pretty serious the way the wind was blowing.?
The hallway where the Jones family escaped the twister. (Jason Sickles/Yahoo News)
Jones, his wife, Nadine, and their daughter and son-in-law hurried into an interior hallway, slamming a door shut in the nick of time.
?We saw the chimney come crashing down through the ceiling,? Jones said.
For a harrowing 20 minutes, they hunkered down in the 3-by-5-foot space where family photos on the wall kept watch over them.
?My wife was praying pretty loud,? Jones said. ?We were all scared.?
Outside the hallway, their home of 41 years was being butchered by what many residents and storm spotters described as a milewide twister.
?When I first saw it, my heart almost stopped,? storm chaser Mike Casey told Yahoo News.
At least 10 tornadoes touched down across North Texas on Wednesday evening. In Cleburne, where scores of homes were damaged but no lives lost, forecasters said early reports had the tornado packing winds of 136 to 165 mph.
[Photos: See images from the Texas tornado outbreak]
Casey and a fellow storm chaser were behind a thunderstorm that had already spawned a deadly twister in nearby Granbury when a flash of lightning revealed the dark beast in front of them.
?We were freaking out a little bit,? he said.
So were Jones? grandsons, who live two miles away and feared the twister was headed for Jones' home.
?We tried calling him and couldn?t get him on the phone,? said Ty Jones, 19. ?We could see the actual funnel. It was huge.?
Bill Jones, a retired loan officer, didn?t need to see it to know what was happening.
?The boards were rattling,? he said. ?You could hear everything crackling and falling apart.?
The tornado wrecked the family's home of 41 years. (Jason Sickles/Yahoo News)
He and his family emerged from the hallway unscathed, but they found the roof gone and nearly every window in the red-brick home blown away. The trees that had warned him of the tragedy to come were toppled like toothpicks.
Jones is insured, but he doubts the house in which he and Nadine raised two children can be saved.
?We?ve done a lot of living here,? he said, at times fighting back tears. ?It?s the worst thing that?s ever happened to me.?
Many of their possessions and family heirlooms now litter the house. Wading through his den, Jones picks up a soggy book cover and then puts it back down.
?I don?t even know where to start,? he said.
But his family did. With the help of friends, his grandsons spent Thursday morning hauling away the chimney bricks which came close to claiming their grandfather?s life.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday it would be up to the U.N. Security Council to decide whether to establish a no-fly zone inside Syria and said he backed the involvement of Russia and China in planned peace talks.
Speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington a day after discussing Syria with President Barack Obama, Erdogan said a no-fly zone could be discussed at a planned international conference on Syria backed by Washington and Moscow.
Turkey, a U.S. NATO ally, has been one of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's fiercest critics, throwing its weight behind the uprising against him, allowing the rebels to organize on its soil and sheltering 400,000 refugees.
But Erdogan has grown frustrated by a lack of international consensus on how to respond to the violence. Car bombs, which tore through a Turkish border town last weekend in the deadliest spillover of violence yet, have added to the sense of urgency.
"With respect to a no-fly zone ... it is not a decision that could be taken between the United States and Turkey. It is something that would have to come through the U.N. Security Council," Erdogan said.
"We are in the process of putting together a conference in Geneva ... If that process decides on such a zone, as Turkey, we would also do whatever is necessary," he said.
During his visit to Washington this week, Erdogan had been expected to push Obama, at least in private, for more assertive action on Syria.
Obama - who has been reluctant to arm Syrian rebels or become enmeshed militarily in the conflict - made no mention of deeper engagement during a joint news conference with Erdogan on Thursday, where the leaders sought to project a united front.
Western leaders have been cautious about the prospects of the planned talks in Geneva achieving any breakthrough, and Russia's desire that Iran should attend could complicate matters because of potential opposition from the West.
Iran is a U.S. foe and the main regional ally of Assad's government, which has also received support from Russia. Tehran's desire to participate in a June 2012 meeting on Syria hosted by the United Nations in Geneva was a bone of contention between Washington and Moscow.
The main Syrian opposition, expected to decide its stance next week on the planned conference, has previously demanded Assad's exit before any talks, something Erdogan reinforced.
"President Obama talked yesterday about a process without Assad ... Having a transition with Assad in place cannot be a solution and the opposition wouldn't accept it in any case," Erdogan said.
SHUTTLE DIPLOMACY
Last year's Geneva talks brought together the foreign ministers of the U.N. Security Council's five permanent members - Russia, the United States, China, France and Britain - along with Turkey, Kuwait, Qatar, the Arab League and EU.
The new meeting will aim to include the same global powers, but this time would also have representatives of the Syrian government and opposition.
"A second Geneva process with Russia and China included has our support," Erdogan said.
He said he planned to travel to Moscow and to Gulf states to discuss the Syrian crisis after his visit to Washington.
Turkey has been among the strongest opponents of Assad but its enthusiasm for action against Syria has waned recently, partly in frustration at the fractured Syrian opposition and the growing brutality by both sides.
Erdogan has said Turkey, which has been testing blood samples from Syrian casualties for chemical weapons use, had shared its evidence with the United States, Britain and others and said Assad's forces had also fired several hundred missiles.
"According to NATO they have used 283 missiles, and according to other information they are using the chemical sarin," Erdogan said on Friday.
"These are issues that should be discussed in the U.N. Security Council and also perhaps in the U.N. General Assembly."
(Reporting by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Eric Beech and Jackie Frank)
On the heels of its very first Android tablet after a long affair with webOS, HP's just announced its second device running the Google operating system, and it's ushering in that Android notebook fad we've all heard whispers about. Enter the SlateBook x2, the first Tegra 4-powered, 10-inch Android convertible.
Take the 3D sensor inside the Microsoft Kinect, shrink it down to a tenth of its original size and add a bunch of mobile capabilities, and you have yourself PrimeSense's latest conquest, better known as Capri. The company, which is the brains behind the Kinect, has been openly working on bringing a tiny-yet-advanced 3D experience to tablets, televisions and smartphones for quite some time now. And it's proud enough of its progress so far that it's willing to give some real-life demonstrations to developers attending Google I/O. You may not see Capri embedded on the PCB of your portable gadget anytime soon -- at least, not until PrimeSense winds up wooing the pants off a lucky OEM or two -- so in the meantime, the company has connected the sensor board to the Nexus 10 via micro-USB.
Unlike the Kinect, however, PrimeSense doesn't think gestures will play a significant role in how we use Capri to interact with our gadgets. Rather, it seems to be more focused on 3D-based use case scenarios, many of which haven't even been thought up yet. As you'll see in the video below, we were shown an AR game that takes the environment around you -- walls, furniture and other elements -- and uses them as restrictions, just as much as they would be in real life. In another app, Capri snapped a three-dimension shot of an object on the table in front of us, captured its measurements and let us export that image to another device or even a 3D printer. In many respects, PrimeSense appears to be taking the same strategy Google does with Glass: get developers excited about the tech in the hopes they'll come up with clever uses for it. And while the company isn't ready to put Capri in their hands yet, the SDK is up for grabs, and I/O is no doubt an ideal place to build excitement for it. If you're looking for more info, we have a gallery, video and press release below, and you'll find the SDK at the More Coverage link.
KENNEWICK, Wash. (AP) ? A Washington woman whose car was stolen from her apartment complex saw the stolen SUV hours later ? in the drive-thru of the McDonald's restaurant where she works.
The Tri-City Herald reports (http://bit.ly/11H2tDS ) Virginia Maiden called police Tuesday after seeing her SUV in the drive-thru.
Officers arrested the driver, a 22-year-old Kennewick woman, at the restaurant.
Police found clothes in the car that had been stolen from department stores.
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Information from: Tri-City Herald, http://www.tri-cityherald.com
NEW YORK (AP) ? Netflix shares are trading at levels not seen since 2011 when it lost hundreds of thousands of customers after hiking prices for people who wanted continued access to DVDs as well as its streaming service.
The company's stock jumped another 4 percent Wednesday to a 52-week high and are up nearly 40 percent since the start of the month.
The cost of a company share is actually rising more sharply than the lead up to the all-time high near $305 reached in July 2011, right before the change the subscription plan for which CEO Reed Hastings later apologized.
Netflix later acknowledged that it had lost 800,000 U.S. subscribers between July and September, much worse that it had expected.
But Hastings never backed down on the new price plan and Netflix pushed hard into the streaming side of the business. It has also produced its first original in "House of Cards" to some acclaim.
Shares have come roaring back from south of $53, where they labored just last summer.
The debate has begun all over again about how best to value a company that dominates the market, but has competition lurking all around it.
RBC Capital Markets believes that the market still hasn't realized the company's true worth, saying that the domestic streaming business could generate $10 in earnings per share within the next three to five years.
"We continue to believe that Netflix has achieved a level of sustainable scale, growth, and profitability that isn't currently reflected in its stock price," analyst Mark Mahaney wrote this week.
He backed his "outperform" rating and $250 price target for the stock.
Shares of Netflix Inc., based in Los Gatos, Calif., rose $9.49 to $243.46 in midday trading.
Colorado QB arrested: A University of Colorado quarterback was arrested while out with Alexander Lewis, who was a Colorado lineman until Friday, when he announced he was leaving Colorado for Nebraska.
By Associated Press / May 13, 2013
Ralphie the buffalo entertains fans before the University of Colorado's spring NCAA college football game, Saturday, April 13, in Boulder, Colo. A Colorado QB and ex-lineman have been arrested on assault charges.
Cliff Grassmick / The Daily Camera / AP
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University of Colorado quarterback?Jordan?Webb?and former Colorado offensive lineman Alexander Lewis are facing assault charges after witnesses said another man was knocked unconscious when Lewis shoved his head into a brick wall and both men pushed the victim to the ground and punched him.
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According to a Boulder police report obtained by The Daily Camera,?Webb?and Lewis, both 21, were arrested Saturday on suspicion of second-degree assault. Lewis also faces two counts of harassment.
According to police, the victim, Lee Bussey, 22, was walking back to an apartment with a woman around 3 a.m. Saturday when Bussey and Lewis bumped into each other.
Police say that led to an argument and a shoving match.
A witness told police Lewis repeatedly shoved Bussey into a brick wall, causing his head to hit the wall several times. The witness told police?Webb?then came and the two men shoved Bussey to the ground and began punching him.
Officials said Bussey had no recollection of the incident and was bleeding from the head. He was taken to Boulder Community Hospital and received stitches.
Lewis told police they had been in Denver celebrating a friend's graduation. He and?Webb?then took a taxi back to Boulder and were walking home when he bumped into Bussey.
Lewis told police Bussey tried to throw a punch at him but missed, so he shoved him away. He said Bussey got up and tried to throw another punch, so he again shoved him to the ground. Lewis said at no point did?Webb ever get involved in the shoving.
Investigators said Lewis told them he drank six glasses of wine, 10 beers, and six shots the night of the fight.
Lewis' attorney, Donald Brenner, said at a hearing Monday that his client was wearing Nebraska Cornhuskers apparel, which may have led to him being "accosted." He added that Lewis only shoved Bussey.
"He might not have handled the situation properly, but he's a kid," Brenner said. "It's a really sad event for a really nice kid."
Meanwhile,?Webb's?attorney, Lou Rubino, said his client's involvement in the altercation was "non-criminal."
"I believe Mr.?Webb?will be exonerated," he said. "It's not who he really is. He's been a good kid in high school, at Kansas and at CU."
Webb?was Colorado's primary starter last season, throwing for 1,434 yards and eight touchdowns with eight interceptions. He is recovering after tearing his right ACL during spring practice.
Lewis, the starting left guard who announced Friday he was transferring to Nebraska, also was charged with two counts of harassment.
"Once all of the facts come to light, if?Jordan?is found responsible for any misconduct, he will be disciplined according to team rules," first-year Colorado coach Mike MacIntyre said in a statement. "As for Alex Lewis, as of Friday he was off of the team when he did a media interview and announced that he is transferring to Nebraska. Since he is no longer a Colorado Buffalo, it will be up to Nebraska to decide what discipline he might face."
Prosecutors are expected to formally charge?Webb?and Lewis on Wednesday.
Information from: Daily Camera,?http://www.dailycamera.com/
BAGHDAD (AP) ? A car bomb exploded near a bus station in Baghdad's main Shiite district Wednesday, the deadliest in a series of explosions that killed at least 33 people nationwide, officials said.
The bloodshed came amid growing tensions between the Shiite-led government and minority Sunnis following a deadly security crackdown on a Sunni protest camp in the country's north. Violence has ebbed sharply in Iraq, but a spike in attacks has raised fears about a return of the sectarian bloodshed that pushed the country to the brink of civil war in 2006-2007.
Majority Shiites control the levers of power in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. Wishing to rebuild the nation rather than revert to open warfare, they have largely restrained their militias over the past five years or so as Sunni extremist groups such as al-Qaida have targeted them with occasional large-scale attacks. An increase attacks against Sunni mosques has fed concerns about a return to retaliatory warfare.
The day began violently when an explosives-laden car parked in the center of the ethnically divided city of Kirkuk at around 3:00 p.m., killing three civilians and wounding eight. An hour later, another parked car bomb exploded in the same area, killing two children and their parents as they were traveling in a car nearby, the city's deputy police chief Maj. Gen. Torhan Abdul-Rahman Youssef said.
Civilians joined forces with rescuers and policemen in searching for survivors in a partially damaged house after the first explosion. A wailing man was repeatedly trying to make his way through to the house, but he was prevented by the crowds. After the second attack, firefighters struggled to extinguish the blaze that engulfed the car with at least three charred bodies of a woman and two children visible.
Kirkuk is home to a mix of Arabs, Kurds and Turkomen, who all have competing claims to the oil-rich area. The Kurds want to incorporate it into their self-rule region in Iraq's north, but Arabs and Turkomen are opposed.
Hours later, several bombs struck within a 90-minute time frame as Iraqis were heading home from work or doing errands in mainly Shiite areas of Baghdad.
The deadliest was in the sprawling slum of Sadr City, an area that saw some of the fiercest fighting between Americans and Shiite militias during the peak of sectarian bloodshed. Police and hospital officials said a car bomb exploded near a crowded bus stop in the area, killing at least seven people and wounding 20. The blast also damaged several shops and cars in the area, which was sealed off by police.
A car bomb also struck firefighters minutes after they arrived on the scene to extinguish a burning car in the mainly Shiite Kazimiyah district in northern Baghdad, killing two and wounding nine others.
Amajad Hussein owns a clothing store and witnessed the blast.
"We ran from the place after the explosion, but we returned to see wounded firefighters on the ground and at least one fire engine in flames," he said. "Once again, the innocent people are paying the price for the security failures in this country."
At least six other bombings occurred in rapid succession near other bus stops or outdoor markets across the Iraqi capital, killing 15 people and wounding nearly 50 people.
In other violence, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle struck a police patrol, killing two officers and wounding eight other people in the town of Tarmiyah, 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber rammed his motorcycle into a police patrol, killing two policemen and wounding eight other people, a police official said.
Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures for all the attacks. All of the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release information.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for Wednesday's attacks, but car and suicide bombings are a hallmark of al-Qaida's Iraq branch.
Insurgents routinely target Iraqi police, government officials and civilians in an attempt to undermine Iraq's government or to exacerbate political tension.
For the past five months, Sunnis have been protesting against what they claim is second-class treatment by the government and to demand an end to some laws they believe unfairly target them. Violence has flared on occasion between security forces and protesters.
But the matter came to a head April 23 after government troops moved against a camp of Sunni demonstrators in the town of Hawija, about 240 kilometers (150 miles) north of Baghdad. The clashes there sparked a wave of violence across Iraq that has killed more than 230 people, posing the most serious threat to Iraq's stability since the last American troops left in December 2011.
Under Saddam, Iraq's Sunni minority held a privileged position, while the Shiites were largely oppressed. But since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam, those dynamics have been flipped, and a Shiite-led government now holds power in Baghdad.
Authorities also raised the death toll from Tuesday's attack on a row of liquor stores in eastern Baghdad to 12 after one man died of his wounds in the hospital. Families gathered outside a Baghdad morgue to receive the bodies of their relatives. Several wooden caskets were loaded on vehicles as mourners chanted: "There is no God, but Allah."
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Associated Press writer Sinan Salaheddin contributed to this report.
Residential investment and rising home prices are definitely a current trend, but how much investing and home buying occurs is highly contingent on the dynamics of the local economy, CoreLogic said in its latest MarketPulse Report.
The real estate data and research firm said residential investment is not occurring evenly throughout the country, but rather is concentrated in certain parts of the U.S.
When looking at price declines experienced from peak levels set prior to the downturn, the western region ? including California, Nevada and Arizona ? ?performed the worst with steeper price declines. The Mountain and Pacific regions alone saw 41% and 39% drops, respectively, from peak levels.
However, home prices in the West-South Central part of the U.S., including Texas, and the East-South Central Division fared the best after the real estate downturn. West-South Central states fell only 9% from peak prices, while the East-South Central Division, which includes Mississippi, fell 13% after reaching peak levels.
Real estate investment activity also seems to be market specific in many cases.
"Residential investment is not occurring evenly throughout the United States but is concentrated in geographies that are either recovering from the boom-bust cycle, or exhibiting strong economic fundamentals and strengthening demographic demand," wrote Sam Khater and Mark Fleming with CoreLogic.
The good news is real estate is once again a significant contributor to economic growth. The researchers say the overall economic recovery has transitioned from an uptick in traditional business equipment and software investment to residential investment in recent months.
An industry expert has recommended small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK should outsource IT support to increase productivity.
Paul Lowton, head of O2?s Small Business Division, has set out his support for IT outsourcing for SMEs across the UK in an article for the Guardian.
Mr Lowton said with the demands upon SME owners increasing as margins tighten under poor economic conditions, it was important they realise their time is of significant worth and they should consider outsourcing IT support and HR to reduce their workloads.
However, the expert did sound a warning note, telling SME bosses they should make sure they share similar principles with the outsourcing firm they choose ? making sure they have a good reputation for completing work on time.
Mr Lowton also advised SMEs to try encouraging employees to bring in their own IT devices. Many workers feel more comfortable using their own devices and, as such, are more productive and happy than if they were forced to use a company provided computer.
Bring your own device (BYOD) policies also help encourage staff to complete unfinished jobs at home, although this must be balanced to ensure employees do not become burnt out after overworking on days off or after work.
When O2 launched its BYOD programme in December 2011 many employees were ?empowered? by the changes. Additionally, the telecommunications company reported it had saved money through the programme.
It is, however, important any devices employees bring in are protected by security measures such as passwords and firewalls to ensure data is not compromised.
Mr Lowton said: ?Flexible working practices will only become more prevalent as 2013 progresses as more employees use their own devices for work, so it?s worthwhile putting in place systems to help staff get better connected now.?
?Alongside bringing in specialist help, you will be well on your way towards recovering time to concentrate on what you do best: running your business.?
CHICAGO (AP) ? The way this series is turning out, it's hard to believe the Miami Heat ever trailed the Chicago Bulls.
They're running away with the Eastern Conference semifinals, and another performance like this will end it.
LeBron James scored 27 points and the Heat nearly matched a franchise record for fewest points allowed in a playoff game, pounding the listless and short-handed Bulls 88-65 on Monday night to take a 3-1 lead in the series.
"We just worked as hard as we could on defense," Chris Bosh said. "After the Game 3 performance, we really didn't feel like we did a very good job. We just wanted to have more energy today and concentrate on our coverages a lot better."
Well, how's this for a result?
The 65 points allowed were only two more than the all-time postseason low for a Miami opponent, and it was easily the worst offensive performance by a Chicago team in the playoffs.
Never before had the Bulls scored fewer than 69 in a playoff game nor 10 or less in a quarter during the postseason, but both those marks fell on a night when they were dominated on both ends of the floor.
Miami led by 11 at the half and put this one away in the third quarter, outscoring Chicago 17-9 in the period.
Now the Heat will try to wrap up the series at home Wednesday night, taking what they hope will be the next step toward a second straight championship.
They're in this spot because they shook off a loss in the series opener and haven't looked back.
Miami pounded Chicago in Game 2, coming away with its most lopsided playoff victory while handing the Bulls their worst ever postseason loss ? and the Heat continued to roll from there.
James had his usual complete game with eight assists and seven rebounds Monday.
Bosh finished with 14 points after scoring 20 and grabbing 19 rebounds in Game 3, and the Heat won again despite another quiet night from Dwyane Wade (six points), whose right knee was bothering him again. He appeared to aggravate it on a fallaway jumper during the game but was able to return after getting re-taped.
"It's frustrating at times, but you just try to do what you can," Wade said.
Norris Cole also struggled with seven points after back-to-back 18-point performances, but the Heat had more than enough in this one.
They shot about 49 percent while the Bulls set a franchise playoff low at 25.7 percent. Chicago was particularly bad from the outside, going 2 for 17 from 3-point range.
The Bulls again were missing ailing Luol Deng and injured Kirk Hinrich (calf), and a team that kept finding ways to win despite being short-handed all season simply appeared to run out of steam, even though coach Tom Thibodeau rejected that idea.
"No," he said. "I think the thing is they're (Heat) a great team. We have to come out with great intensity ? but we also have to make shots."
There's no denying the Bulls have been in a tough spot all year with Derrick Rose recovering from knee surgery and just about every other major player sidelined at some point. They've been hit particularly hard in the postseason, too.
"They're in a tough situation," James said. "They've had some injuries and illnesses and whatever's going on. They don't have their full roster, but that's not for us to worry about. They beat a very good Brooklyn team (in the first round) without their full roster."
Carlos Boozer had 14 points and 12 rebounds for his fifth double-double in the postseason, but was just 3 of 14 from the field. Jimmy Butler scored 12 and Joakim Noah grabbed nine rebounds, but it was a miserable night for Chicago ? particularly Nate Robinson. With Cole and Mario Chalmers harassing him and the big men helping out, he missed all 12 of his shots and did not score.
He said he fell hard on his left shoulder on a pick-and-roll at one point, although he couldn't remember exactly when, and had it wrapped in ice afterward. Then he took off the wrapping and threw it hard to the floor.
"Go back to the drawing board and figure it out," he said.
Richard Hamilton scored 11 points in a rare postseason appearance, and the former All-Star guard made it clear afterward he's not thrilled with his reduced role.
"Lot of stuff in life you don't understand," he said. "This (playoffs) is what I was brought here for. To not be able play and help my teammates, it's hard, it's rough. But I try to stay positive. I don't try to rock the boat."
Hamilton said he and Thibodeau have talked. Then, he reiterated, "It's hard to understand."
Notes: The Heat and Bulls were well represented on the NBA's all-defensive first team, with James and Noah being selected. ... Thibodeau had nothing to say about the $35,000 fine from the league for comments he made about the officiating in Game 3. Asked if he was surprised by the amount, he said, "I've got no comment on that. We're just getting ready for Game 4." ... Deng was listed as active after initially being ruled out for Chicago. Hinrich and Rose were inactive.
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Public release date: 17-May-2013
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