Iraqi extremists try to harness opposition rage

BAGHDAD (AP) ? Iraqi insurgents are trying to capitalize on the rage of anti-government protesters and the instability caused by rising civil unrest, complicating the government's efforts to stamp out a resurgent al-Qaida and other insurgent groups.

Organizers of the protests attracting minority Iraqi Sunnis insist they have no links to terrorist groups. Yet Iraqi and U.S. officials have expressed concern that violent extremists could benefit from the demonstrators' feelings of alienation and hostility toward the Shiite-led Iraqi government.

And tensions are rising.

At least five protesters were killed and more than 20 were wounded on Friday when soldiers opened fire at stone-hurling demonstrators near Fallujah. They were the first deaths at opposition rallies that have been raging around the country for more than a month.

Tens of thousands of protesters turned out in the former al-Qaida stronghold in western Iraq ? some waving black banners emblazoned with the Muslim confession of faith. Two soldiers were later killed in an apparent retaliatory attack for the protesters' deaths.

The vast desert territory on Syria's doorstep was the birthplace of the Sunni insurgency that erupted after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and where Iraqi officials believe al-Qaida's Iraq arm is regrouping.

Protesters also have staged demonstrations in other areas with large concentrations of Sunni Arabs who feel discriminated against by the government. Their list of demands includes calls for the release of detainees and an end to policies they believe unfairly target their sect.

For now, the American Embassy said it has no indication that al-Qaida is gaining support from the demonstrations, but the fear remains, particularly as the security situation deteriorates in neighboring Syria.

An embassy official said the U.S. had expressed concern that the protesters' so far peaceful expression of their concerns must not be usurped by extremists trying to provoke violence. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter.

Protest organizers and the politicians who support them are eager to distance themselves from extremist rhetoric.

Sunni lawmaker Ahmed al-Alawani recently urged Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to meet demonstrators' demands so al-Qaida and other extremists could not exploit their frustration.

That was a sentiment echoed by protest organizer and spokesman Saeed Humaim in Ramadi, the Anbar provincial capital that has been the focus of daily sit-ins and frequent mass rallies. He said protesters have no intention to take up arms, but will defend themselves if attacked by government security forces.

Still, many Iraqi Sunnis have little doubt that the protests strengthen militant groups.

"I don't think the al-Qaida people would miss an opportunity to move freely when the government and security forces are busy handling these spreading protests," said Ayad Salman, 42, who owns a shoe store in northern Baghdad. "The country is slipping toward a new round of civil war, or at least some groups are planning and pushing for this."

The rallies broke out just over a month ago in Iraq's western Sunni heartland of Anbar following the arrest of guards assigned to the Iraqi Finance Minister Rafia al-Issawi, a Sunni who hails from the province.

In an interview aired late Thursday, al-Maliki suggested that al-Qaida and members of Saddam Hussein's ousted regime have a hand in the demonstrations.

"I hope that these protests would not turn violent ... and drag the country to a sectarian war," he told al-Baghdadiya TV.

Al-Qaida's local affiliate this week posted a statement praising the protesters, saluting what it called "the true Muslims who revolted in defense of their honor and religion."

A senior Iraqi security official who specializes in terrorist activities said al-Qaida is making use of the resentment in predominantly Sunni provinces, where local residents who used to provide authorities tips about terrorist activities are growing much more reluctant to snitch.

He and another senior security official said al-Qaida fighters now have more freedom to move around. That is partly because state security forces' movements are being restricted in Sunni areas so they cannot be accused of unfairly targeting the Muslim sect, they said.

The second official said the demonstrations give extremists a good opportunity to try to mobilize Sunni opposition and portray themselves as the only groups who can safeguard the rights and interests of the Sunni minority.

The Iraqi officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss security operations with the media.

The local wing of al-Qaida, known as the Islamic State of Iraq, generally does not operate beyond Iraq's borders. But al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri last year urged Iraqi insurgents to support the Sunni-based uprising in neighboring Syria against President Bashar Assad, whose Alawite sect is a branch of Shiite Islam.

Iraqi officials believe Sunni fighters aligned with al-Qaida's Iraq franchise are moving back and forth across the Syrian border to help Sunni rebels overthrow Assad.

Rebel gains in Syria are giving Iraq's Sunni protesters and insurgents alike a sense that their fortunes may be shifting too.

"Sunnis seem ascendant in Syria. That is a major psychological boost to the Sunnis in Iraq," said Kamran Bokhari, an expert on Mideast issues for the global intelligence company Stratfor. "They're trying to capitalize on that."

Other militants are trying to tie their fight to the protests too.

Earlier this month, uniformed members of the Naqshabandi Army appeared in an online video urging Iraqis to continue their protests, sit-ins and acts of civil disobedience. It called on security forces to turn their weapons on the "traitors and foreign agents" ? a likely reference to what many Sunnis see is Shiite powerhouse Iran's influence over the government.

The group, a network of former Iraqi military officers and jihadists, frequently claims responsibility for attacks on government security forces.

The highest ranking member of Saddam's regime still at large, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, has separately lent his support to the demonstrators. Al-Douri, who is suspected of having ties to the Naqshabandi Army, is thought to have played a key role in financing Sunni insurgents seeking to undermine Iraq's post-Saddam government.

Another small jihadist group, the 1920 Revolution Brigades, put out a statement of its own backing the protest movement.

___

Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Sameer N. Yacoub contributed reporting.

___

Follow Adam Schreck on Twitter at http://twitter.com/adamschreck

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iraqi-extremists-try-harness-opposition-rage-063906910.html

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Organic ferroelectric molecule shows promise for memory chips, sensors

Friday, January 25, 2013

At the heart of computing are tiny crystals that transmit and store digital information's ones and zeroes. Today these are hard and brittle materials. But cheap, flexible, nontoxic organic molecules may play a role in the future of hardware.

A team led by the University of Washington in Seattle and the Southeast University in China discovered a molecule that shows promise as an organic alternative to today's silicon-based semiconductors. The findings, published this week in the journal Science, display properties that make it well suited to a wide range of applications in memory, sensing and low-cost energy storage.

"This molecule is quite remarkable, with some of the key properties that are comparable with the most popular inorganic crystals," said co-corresponding author Jiangyu Li, a UW associate professor of mechanical engineering.

The new carbon-based material could offer even cheaper ways to store digital information; provide a flexible, nontoxic material for medical sensors that would be implanted in the body; and create a cheaper, lighter material to harvest energy from natural vibrations.

The new molecule is a ferroelectric, meaning it is positively charged on one side and negatively charged on the other, where the direction can be flipped by applying an electrical field. Synthetic ferroelectrics are now used in some displays, sensors and memory chips.

In the study the authors pitted their new molecule against barium titanate, a long-known ferroelectric material that is a standard for performance. Barium titanate is a ceramic crystal and contains titanium; it has largely been replaced in industrial applications by better-performing but lead-containing alternatives.

The new molecule holds its own against the standard-bearer. It has a natural polarization, a measure of how strongly the molecules align to store information, of 23, compared to 26 for barium titanate. To Li's knowledge this is the best organic ferroelectric discovered to date.

A recent study in Nature announced an organic ferroelectric that works at room temperature. By contrast, this molecule retains its properties up to 153 degrees Celsius (307 degrees F), even higher than for barium titanate.

The new molecule also offers a full bag of electric tricks. Its dielectric constant ? a measure of how well it can store energy ? is more than 10 times higher than for other organic ferroelectrics. And it's also a good piezoelectric, meaning it's efficient at converting movement into electricity, which is useful in sensors.

The new molecule is made from bromine, a natural element isolated from sea salt, mixed with carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen (its full name is diisopropylammonium bromide). Researchers dissolved the elements in water and evaporated the liquid to grow the crystal. Because the molecule contains carbon, it is organic, and pivoting chemical bonds allow it to flex.

The molecule would not replace current inorganic materials, Li said, but it could be used in applications where cost, ease of manufacturing, weight, flexibility and toxicity are important.

Li is working on a number of projects relating to ferroelectricity. Last year he and his graduate student found the first evidence for ferroelectricity in soft animal tissue. He was co-author on a 2011 paper in Sciencethat documents nanometer-scale switching in ferroelectric films, showing how such molecules could be used to store digital information.

"Ferroelectrics are pretty remarkable materials," Li said. "It allows you to manipulate mechanical energy, electrical energy, optics and electromagnetics, all in a single package."

He is working to further characterize this new molecule and explore its combined electric and mechanical properties. He also plans to continue the search for more organic ferroelectrics.

###

University of Washington: http://www.uwnews.org

Thanks to University of Washington for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126465/Organic_ferroelectric_molecule_shows_promise_for_memory_chips__sensors

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N.M. Rep Takes Heat for Abortion Bill

New Mexico State Rep. Cathrynn Brown has come under attack for a bill she recently introduced that would brand survivors of rape and incest who become pregnant and chose to have abortions as felons.

On Wednesday, Brown, a Republican from Carlsbad, submitted House bill 206, which equates a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest as evidence, meaning that terminating the pregnancy would constitute destruction of evidence.

"Tampering with evidence shall include procuring or facilitating an abortion, or compelling or coercing another to obtain an abortion of a fetus that is the result of criminal sexual penetration or incest with the intent to destroy evidence of the crime," the bill reads.

A spokeswoman from NARAL, which supports abortion rights, said the group was keeping an eye on the legislation.

"Any elected official who wants to put criminal liability on survivors of rape or incest is cold-blooded," said Donna Crane, policy director for NARAL Pro-Choice America.

The New Mexico Democratic Party pegged the bill as another attack in the "war on women."

"This is a sad day for women, and really a sad day for all New Mexicans," Javier Gonzales, chairman of the New Mexico Democratic Party, wrote in a statement Thursday. "Instead of focusing on the No. 1 priority of bringing jobs to New Mexico, Republican lawmakers continue their war on women by introducing this atrocious piece of legislation. It's like Republicans were wearing blinders when the results came in last November, because Republicans lost numerous seats on this very issue, but they apparently did not get the message."

Brown's office responded today, saying any characterization of the bill as targeting survivors was "a misinterpretation of the intent of the legislation." The Current-Argus of Carlsbad reported that Brown blames "a drafting error" for this mistake.

Brown plans to submit a new bill "to make the intent of the legislation abundantly clear."

"House Bill 206 was never intended to punish or criminalize rape victims," Brown said in a statement emailed to ABC News. "Its intent is solely to deter rape and cases of incest. The rapist - not the victim - would be charged with tampering of evidence."

Scott Forrester, spokesman for the Democratic Party of New Mexico, said the party "would have to look at any new legislation introduced."

"But this is what she introduced," Forrester said of House bill 206. "This is what New Mexicans are seeing, and they're outraged by what Rep. Brown has introduced."

Constituents and critics outside New Mexico took to Brown's Facebook page to express that outrage. Many took personal digs at the Republican state lawmaker, even going so far as to comment on a recent picture of her son's graduation, asking, "Are you teaching your son to be a rapist?"

Nine representatives co-sponsored the legislation, according to Forrester. But with a Democratic majority in both New Mexico's House and Senate, the bill wouldn't seem to have much chance of passing.

Also Read

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/n-m-state-rep-takes-heat-abortion-bill-000548365--abc-news-politics.html

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Ashton Kutcher Is Actually Pretty Good In First 'jOBS' Clip

Ashton Kutcher's Steve Jobs biopic, which is closing this year's Sundance Film Festival, has yet to screen in Park City, but the very first clip from "jOBS" has hit the web, courtesy of Entertainment Tonight. The clip shows Kutcher as the Apple founder trying to convince Josh Gad as Steve Wozniak that his idea is [...]

Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2013/01/24/ashton-kutcher-steve-jobs-clip/

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From "Skyfall" to "The Avengers," how the foreign box office is trouncing domestic

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Foreign audiences are buying what Hollywood is selling, pushing the industry to a record-breaking year at the worldwide box office.

Last year, blockbusters like "The Avengers," "The Dark Knight Rises" and "Skyfall" deftly navigated cultural barriers everywhere from Toluca, Mexico, to Hyderabad, India, demonstrating how the film business' future hinges on a global cultural and commercial exchange.

Internationally, ticket sales grew by 3 percent to $23.1 billion compared to $22.4 billion the previous year, with foreign territories accounting for 68 percent of the top 10 grossing films. Thanks to a 5.8 percent rise at the domestic box office from roughly $10.2 billion to $10.8 billion, according to Rentrak, it was the biggest tally in box-office history.

"We are the beneficiaries of growing markets," Chris Aronson, head of 20th Century Fox's domestic distribution, said. "You're seeing big numbers coming out of places like China that keep increasing every year - and other places like India and Russia that are evolving. They're not yet mature movie going markets, but they're going to be fantastic."

All of this expansion has come while much of the world, particularly Europe, has been mired by recession. Yet studio executives say that a massive expansion of IMAX and 3D-capable theaters in certain regions has cushioned the blow in softer markets like Italy and Spain.

"We've seen some downturn in parts of the world, but the tremendous growth we've experienced in other places like Russia, Latin America and now China has compensated for it," Veronika Kwan Vandenberg, president of distribution at Warner Bros. Pictures International, said.

Of course, some of those areas present thorny regional challenges, perhaps none more so than China.

With its massive population of moviegoers, China remains a marketplace with almost boundless potential. However, its rigid bureaucracy is frequently protectionist and suspicious of foreign investment, making it an elusive profit center.

Things are improving, though. Thanks to a much touted trade agreement that was signed last year, more non-Chinese films can be distributed in the country. As a result, analysts now think that China is poised to become the second largest market for U.S. films, surpassing Japan.

By 2020, some speculate it could even eclipse the United States.

That doesn't mean China has always welcomed the increased competition with its own domestic-made films. After authorities became concerned that the influx of U.S. blockbusters was hurting their own local productions, they scheduled "The Amazing Spider-Man" and "The Dark Knight Rises" to open against each other last summer. Industry executives say that significantly cut into their box office takes.

More recently, "Skyfall" became the latest film to run afoul of China's stringent censors and was forced to re-edit scenes.

It also saw its release in the country pushed back from November to January to give Chinese films a wider berth.

"It's a very interesting, very exciting country right now, but the whole aspect of having a country that on the one hand is becoming more and more capitalist, but on the other hand still has lot of government control, just makes it extremely difficult to navigate," said Charles Roven, producer of "The Dark Knight Rises."

Those hurdles won't cool Hollywood's expansionist kick. Particularly endearing foreign markets to Hollywood is the fact that audiences overseas are more tolerant of films that bomb domestically.

"Total Recall," for instance, cost $125 million to produce but only managed to earn a meager $58 million stateside. It mopped up some of that red ink by grossing $139.6 million, perhaps benefiting from audiences who were unfamiliar with the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger original.

However, box-office analysts caution that the days of foreign markets feasting on hamburger and mistaking it for steak may one day come to an end.

"International audiences are more forgiving, but the bar is set higher now in terms of the need to do just more than just putting special effects on screen," said Bruce Nash, founder of the box office statistics site The Numbers. "A studio can no longer guarantee success simply by spending $150 million on a movie."

Credit for the sizzling box office does not rest simply with bigger budgets, analysts and studio executives say. They contend it goes to a slate of films like "The Amazing Spider-Man" or "Skyfall" that have an aspirational quality that makes them easily accessible in some far-flung parts of the globe.

"Whether you're growing up in Moscow, Seoul or Kansas City, you could imagine yourself being Spider-Man, and I think many guys fantasize about being James Bond," said Rory Bruer, worldwide president of distribution at Sony Pictures. "These stories may be set in New York or England, but they don't belong to us, they belong to the world."

Not that all superhero films are created equal. Take "Iron Man" and "Iron Man 2" - some box-office watchers think that the character's narcissism and arrogance rankled Asian audiences, resulting in the films being the rare blockbusters that actually performed better domestically than abroad.

However, partner Iron Man with Captain America and Thor in "The Avengers" and the message of team-work resonates much more strongly with the same audiences that may have rejected the character in his solo ventures. The result was that $888.4 million of the film's box office take came from foreign territories.

"The narrative arc transcends borders," said Kristen Simmons, senior vice president of the worldwide motion picture group at the research firm Ipsos MediaCT.

"You have these flawed characters coming together for the common good and that is culturally appealing across the world."

Studios are also taking pains to tailor stories so they aren't as geographically specific - setting them in the future or in a city or countryside that could double for urban or rural environments anywhere in the world. And they're peppering their cast with international stars, so their films will be more reflective of the ethnic makeup of their audiences.

Among the recent instances of global casting were Indian star Irfan Khan's key roles as a scientist in "The Amazing Spider-Man" and the narrator of "Life of Pi," as well as Wang Xueqi, the so-called Sean Connery of China's addition to the cast of the upcoming "Iron Man 3."

That can do a lot to increase playability abroad and to bring in fans who remain stubbornly immune to the charms of Robert Downey Jr. or Will Smith.

Sometimes the bet works, as in the case of "Life of Pi," which rode its international setting and cast to $356.3 million at the foreign box office. That far surpasses the $95.6 million in domestic receipts and is the major reason the costly film will make a profit despite its $125 million budget and esoteric storyline about the search for faith.

Other times the globe-trotting gamble doesn't pay off. "Cloud Atlas" spanned time, space and multiple continents, but bombed both domestically and abroad. Despite its sprawling, international troop of actors, the film eked out a mere $71 million worldwide, which won't cover its reported $100 million production costs.

Producers say that casting decisions can't just be a case of tokenism, they have to be dramatically sound. Nor do the films have to be pandering.

"If you stay true to the concept and elements that originally attracted you to the material, you can still make it appealing on a worldwide basis," Roven said.

"I don't believe making a movie accessible means you have to dumb them down," he added.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/skyfall-avengers-foreign-box-office-trouncing-domestic-005908502.html

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Linda Pugach, blinded in infamous NYC crime, dies

NEW YORK (AP) ? Linda Pugach (POOH'-gash), who was blinded in 1959 when her lover hired hit men to throw lye in her face ? and became a media sensation after later marrying him ? has died in New York City. She was 75.

The 2007 documentary "Crazy Love" details the infamous New York City crime.

Her husband, Burton, says his wife died Tuesday at a hospital in Queens. The cause was heart failure.

Burton Pugach served 14 years in prison for hiring the thugs to attack his then-girlfriend Linda Riss after she spurned him. He was married at the time.

After his release, Pugach divorced his first wife and convinced Riss to marry him in 1974.

He told The Associated Press Thursday that theirs was a "fairy tale romance."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/linda-pugach-blinded-infamous-nyc-crime-dies-124535479.html

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