Colo., NM wildfires spread with high winds

Evacuations were ordered in areas of Colorado and New Mexico where wildfires quickly spread Saturday fanned by high winds -- including one fire that burned through 10,000 acres in one day.

In Colorado, a fire 15 miles of west of Fort Collins was at 200 acres Saturday morning and grew to between 2,000 and 3,000 acres, the fire incident command reported. Plumes of black smoke could be seen from the Denver metropolitan area.

Evacuations were ordered for some 40 homes in several communities.

The cause of the fire was still unknown.

In New Mexico, a lightning-sparked fire that started Friday had grown to 10,000 acres, fanned by 20 mph winds. Crews were dealing with flames 150 feet high at times.

Burning 15 miles north of Ruidoso, where heavy smoke hung in the air, the fire crossed Highway 48 and destroyed or damaged up to 20 structures, the fire incident command reported.

Campgrounds and communities were evacuated in the immediate area.

"It's nowhere near controlled. We're doing a lot of evacuations," Lincoln County Undersheriff Robert Shepperd was quoted by the Alamogordo Daily News as saying.

Some 350 more crew were expected to be on the firelines on Sunday.

"It's nerve-racking right now," Ruidoso Mayor Ray Alborn told the newspaper, adding that "real heavy smoke" was rising from the Sierra Blanca mountain range.

"Today all we see is smoke," he said. "Last night, we saw the flames too and it was an awesome expression of power. It was red, red and we could see it going across the top."

New Mexico is also still dealing with its largest wildfire on record, a massive 275,000 acre blaze in the Gila National Forest.

The 826 firefighters there were also battling high winds, but have been able to bring containment to 32 percent after a month of efforts.

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Fear lingers in blind Chinese activist's hometown

DONGSHIGU VILLAGE, China (AP) ? The fear is palpable and most people only dare whisper Chen Guangcheng's name in this village amid wheat fields where the blind activist was held under brutal house arrest.

The guards and cameras are gone, but residents remain terrified of local officials and the fellow farmers who meted out the mistreatment ? and still live nearby. Even Chen's mother says he should not come home.

"The government spent lots of money to watch the little blind one," Liu Wencai, an elderly farmer, told The Associated Press as he walked down a village alley Friday.

But when asked about the hired enforcers, Liu said, "I cannot answer."

Chen escaped six weeks ago and is now living in New York with his wife and two young children. The villagers he left behind don't want to talk about the brutality he and his family were subjected to during 19 months of house arrest.

A middle-aged man on a motorcycle refused to speak about the guards who once stood at the entrance to Dongshigu and chased outsiders away. He made a throat-slashing gesture before riding away ? a warning that the topic of security remains taboo.

The edginess was in contrast to the lushness of early summer and the bucolic scene: Freshly harvested wheat lay in open spaces and women thrashed laundry by a river that borders this village of about 500 people some 370 miles (600 kilometers) southeast of Beijing.

Days ago, the security cameras, watchmen's huts and even piles of garbage created by the surveillance squad were all rapidly cleared away, without explanation.

Chen's relatives were able to host reporters for the first time in the nearly two years since the activist was released from a four-year prison term, only to be confined to his home.

His brother, Chen Guangfu, showed AP reporters Chen's rural courtyard home and his escape route: He clambered over rugged 13-foot-high (4-meter) rock walls and tumbled into a neighbor's pig sty, where he lay an entire afternoon before emerging under the cover of night.

He eventually reached Beijing, where U.S. diplomats arranged with the Chinese government for him to travel to New York for study, along with his wife Yuan Weijing, 6-year-old daughter Kesi and 10-year-old son Kerui.

The only remaining resident at his house in Dongshigu is his 78-year-old mother, Wang Jinxiang, who frets over what food Chen will find in America and misses him terribly ? but who says he should not come back.

"Come back for what?" she asked. "He just spent all his time at home because they wouldn't let him go out."

Chen and his wife lived in a room where plastic sheets covered cracks in the wall and a pink mosquito net hung over the bed, next to a three-drawer wooden desk. A pink child's bike stood near the door. In the courtyard, a kitten ran around a chicken coop and a dog barked at strangers.

Just a couple of months ago, security guards occupied the courtyard and formed rings around the outside of the home. No neighbors were allowed to visit, Chen's family said.

Blinded by fever in infancy, Chen taught himself law and became known for defending the rights of poor farmers and the disabled in the wheat, soybean and peanut farming country of Shandong province. His exposure of forced abortions and sterilizations under the government's one-child policy embarrassed local officials.

He was imprisoned on what supporters say were trumped-up charges. Then, after he was released into house arrest, local officials and the people they hired sometimes beat Chen and his wife, roughed up his mother and harassed their young daughter. Some of the hired toughs came from local communities, getting paid 100 yuan, or $16, a day to chase away unwanted visitors and torment the Chen family.

On the road outside Chen's home, three women ? taking a rest from field work ? told reporters they are happier now that the security guards are gone. But they quickly dispersed when four local officials showed up and asked reporters to leave so as not to distract farmers during harvesting season.

"This village is very peaceful. Nothing happens here," one of the officials said. "It needs a quiet environment to develop its economy."

Two of them said they were from the village and two from a Yinan County team in charge of fostering economic development in Dongshigu. All refused to give their names.

Chen's family has said the enforcers came mostly from neighboring communities, including Xishigu and Xiaobu, where Chen says government official Gao Xinjian was a ringleader in recruiting the surveillance team.

"They sold out their conscience for money," his brother, Chen Guangfu, said. "It was a pretty good gig: 100 yuan per day and three free meals. Villagers cursed their ancestors, but they did not care."

The dozen or so residents of Xishigu interviewed by the AP all denied that their fellow villagers worked to guard Chen Guangcheng.

In Xiaobu, the streets were largely deserted, but a skinny, bespectacled man who ran a convenience store and who refused to give his name referred vaguely to residents who worked as guards.

"They used to be farmers, and now of course they went back to farming," he said. "They simply want to make some money."

Soon, a middle-aged man in a dark striped shirt walked up and asked reporters to leave. He declined to give his name or identity. Later, the officials who had confronted reporters in Dongshigu arrived in a silver sedan. They threatened to confiscate the reporters' car and then followed them out of town.

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The nation's weather

A suicide bomber dressed in a burqa blew himself up near a French patrol in Afghanistan on Saturday, killing four soldiers and wounding five, one of the deadliest attacks on the French contingent in months, as the Taliban step up a spring offensive. The attack occurred in the mountainous Kapisa province in the east of the??

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Moving Forward with Enterprise Risk Management - blog*spot

More companies are beginning to realize the value of Enterprise Risk Management (?ERM?) as a discipline that can propel a business forward rather than hold it back. In the recent past, many ERM programs focused primarily on revisiting problems from the past or examining all risks regardless of size. While these types of exercises can keep people busy coachoutletonlineusa.weebly.com, they rarely benefit a company that is trying to navigate forward to achieve successful outcomes.

However, according to recent comments by a risk expert at the Risk and Insurance Management Society coachoutletonlineusa.weebly.com, ERM is evolving into a highly valued business practice. Here is what she had to say in an interview conducted by propertycasualty360.com. Today cheap aviator sunglasses, a growing perception that ERM ?is a business discipline that can advance an organization?s [big-picture] objectives? is driving higher adoption rates across all types of organizations, says Carol Fox cheap aviator sunglasses, director of strategic and enterprise-risk practice with the Risk and Insurance Management Society. While there is also a perception that risk managers are having difficulty getting invited to a seat at the C-suite table cheap aviator sunglasses, Fox believes that most corporate leaders, with only rare pockets of resistance, are eager for expert input about the strategic risks the organization faces.

?With all the external pressures?whether it?s Dodd-Frank, shareholders or the disclosures required now by the SEC for public companies?there is plenty of demand, visibility and support at the board level and at senior-management level? for ERM, she says. As more board members and senior executives become acquainted with the usefulness of a well-designed ERM program, the discipline will become a ?must have? for companies looking to compete in the new economy.

Related?

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Ralph Nader: Bill Clinton ?laying the groundwork? for Hillary by ?undermining Obama? [VIDEO]

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LinkedIn: So far, no user accounts breached

11 hrs.

LinkedIn said Saturday that none of the 6.5 million user passwords that were stolen and published on a website have been used to get into member accounts.?

In an update to users in a blog post, LinkedIn director Vicente Silveira said:

It's important to know that compromised passwords were not published with corresponding email logins. At the time they were initially published, the vast majority of those passwords remained hashed, i.e. encoded, but unfortunately a subset of the passwords was decoded. Again, we are not aware of any member information being published at any time in connection with the list of stolen passwords. The only information published was the passwords themselves.

So far, he wrote, "we have no reports of member accounts being breached as a result of the stolen passwords. Based on our investigation, all member passwords that we believe to be at risk have been disabled."

The social networking site for professionals said Thursday it is?working with the FBI to investigate how the theft occurred. LinkedIn had 161 million members worldwide, at the end of March, with 61 percent of them based outside the U.S.

Online dating site eHarmony and Internet radio site Last.fm were also dealing with password leaks last week.

Silveira said in Saturday's posting that that "those members whom we believed were at risk, and whose decoded passwords already had been published, had their passwords quickly disabled and were sent an email by the Customer Service team."

By the end of Thursday, he said. "all passwords on the published list" were disabled by LinkedIn, "regardless of whether or not the passwords were decoded. After we disabled the passwords, we contacted members with instructions on how to reset their passwords."

Pay attention if you do get an email from LinkedIn about resetting your password, and make sure it is from LinkedIn and not a phishing attempt, which will ask you to click on a link or cut-and-paste an enclosed URL in your Internet browser to confirm your email address.

As Silveira said June 6 in a blog post, "There will not be any links in these emails. For security reasons, you should never change your password on any website by following a link in an email."

If?your password has not been disabled, based on its investigation so far, "we do not believe your account is at risk," wrote Silveira.?

However, he said, it's a "good practice to change your passwords on any website you log into every few months. For that reason, we have provided information to all of our members via the?LinkedIn Blog, as well as a banner on our homepage instructing members on how to change their passwords."

Silveira said LinkedIn has "built a world-class security team," and one of the company's "major initiatives?was the transition from a password database system that hashed passwords, i.e. provided one layer of encoding, to a system that both hashed and salted the passwords, i.e. provided an extra layer of protection that is a widely recognized best practice within the industry."

That transition, he wrote, was done before the news of the password theft became public. "We continue to execute on our security roadmap, and we?ll be releasing additional enhancements to better protect our members," he said. Some in the security field said last week they thought LinkedIn might have "hashed," but not "salted" their passwords.

Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on?Facebook,?and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

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Low Cost Interior Design and Decorating Tips | Cleanups.Us

Friday, June 8th, 2012. Author : Aditiya Sulistiawan. 8 views.

Thinking of a home or office renovation, but worried about the cost of the interior designing and decorating? Do you think you can?t afford to spend much on the interior designing but wish for an elegant make over for your room? You don?t have to get vexed about not having too much money to spend on your decoration, because you can do a fabulous job of decorating your house without spending much of your pennies, if you do it wise.

Plan your budget
Low or high, you should always have a specific budget plan for your work, rather than saying ?I want the room?s interior design to be done at a low cost it is better to have an idea of how much you are ready to spend. Coming to the correct value may not be possible but giving an almost accurate estimate will always help. Divide your budget under different task like, $ 100 for new furniture, $ 50 for paint etc rather than quoting the whole amount. But remember your budget plan should be realistic and should be strictly followed for a successful low cost interior designing.

Be the interior designer yourself
Hiring a firm or a specialist to do the makeover might give you a completely remarkable room or office, but remember the more established they are, the more you will end up paying them for the service alone. So it is best to take your imagination into play and come up with how much you are going to spent and what would have to be changed or introduced. You can refer articles in magazines or the internet to get ample ideas on how to do the job at minimum cost.

Shop low and wide
You are planning to decorate the interiors of the room, so it calls for full day fun shopping. Are you aware that most of the goods you buy at the branded Shoppe may be available at an unbelievably slashed price in local shops and auction houses? So take your time to hunt in the second hand shops, bargain market and any shop with a year ending sale or shop renovation sale sign board. You are going to hit on something great at an unbelievable price. But just getting the thing at a low price should not tempt you to buy it; you should buy only those things you came to shop for. Otherwise, the low priced shopping experience will turn to a conflicting one.

Get your things auctioned
If you are renovating the place, you may have to remove a piece of furniture, curtains and a lot of junk you may no longer require. Rather than shifting them to the storeroom, you can get these things sold at a low price to get a tip on your budget; you can either auction it or sell it to a second hand shop. Remember your stuff might not fetch much, but removing these will help you to de clutter the room and at the same time get a small raise on your budget. But if you are doing the interior designing and decorating from start, don?t worry for not having anything to sell; you can have an option of choosing very wisely and designing the room afresh with no time loss.

Reuse your stuff
You can use a lot of things at hand in a novel and creative way to make the interior designing a fun and creative experience. You can make a cushion cover out of your old curtain by stitching together the pieces but while choosing the fabric, see to it that it either gives an arresting effect to the otherwise blunt room or else combine with the mood of it. You can also use an old piece of furniture and polish it to make a centrepiece of the room. Your grandmother?s chest drawer can boast the main attraction in your drawing room if you space it well and take care to project it.

Decorative pieces
Decorative items and wall painting can come in any range and sometimes it may cost you a fortune. But it?s not just costly decorative pieces and antique collections that can make your interior boast a good appearance. You can use a family portrait or a painting your little one did to give a new look to the walls. These paintings and photos don?t just come free, they are worthless and just a good frame will do the job. Similarly you can also use decorative candles and gift pieces in a creative way to change the face of your room.

An extra coat of paint
An extra coat of paint can always give a facelift to a room. Interior designing is never complete without a well painted wall. Choose the same shade of paint as your previous one as getting a new shade will require more coats of the paint and hence it will increase the cost of painting. But you can do a contrasting shade on just one wall if you are bored with the ?same old paint? this not just give a new face to the room, it also saves a bit on the paint.

Keep it simple
Be it kitchen, bedroom, office or study; keep the room as simple as possible. Reduce the number of furniture and extra piece of couch to give your room a neat, organised, spacious and new look. Your rooms and office should also have a touch of your personality so work on it.

Try it out and enjoy being the interior designer.

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U.S. Military's Green Energy Criticized By Congress

The White House and military brass are calling for the development of alternative energy. One goal is cutting dependence on foreign sources. Another is reducing the carbon footprint of the largest fossil fuel consumer in the world. But now some on Capitol Hill are blocking the effort to green the military. Audie Cornish talks with Juliette Kayyem of the Boston Globe about the fight.

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ZTE Tania waves Windows Phone flag for China, makes official mainland debut

ZTE Tania waves Windows Phone flag for China, makes official mainland debut

When it rains Windows Phone in China, it pours. After HTC claimed top honors for being the first to bow a Redmond-powered handset in the region, the floodgates opened with Nokia quickly doling out its Tango wares and, now, ZTE. The company, formerly a white label manufacturer, has finally gotten its Tania act together, releasing the not-so-secret phone on China Unicom with a slight upgrade to its previously announced spec list. Though most of what it offers falls in line with WP hardware requirements -- 800 x 480 display, 512MB RAM -- the processor's been bumped from 1GHz to 1.4GHz, giving the 4.3-incher a welcome speed boost. Interested parties can also look forward to a 5-megapixel rear shooter, 4GB of storage, as well as black and white color options. If you're living in the land to the far east and like the live tile approach, you might want to consider this as your next.

ZTE Tania waves Windows Phone flag for China, makes official mainland debut originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jun 2012 23:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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American Crystal, union reps remain deadlocked

American Crystal Sugar leaders and union representatives aren't making progress on contract talks in a dispute that has locked out workers and dragged on for 10 months.

Friday marked the fourth time the two sides have met with a federal mediator in an attempt to end the impasse. About 1,300 union workers are locked out at plants in North Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa.

The company says in a statement that the union's proposals are not consistent with Crystal's final offer and the "parties remain far apart."

A union spokesman says he is disappointed but not surprised at the outcome.

Unemployment payments for most of the workers who were locked out at the company's plants in Minnesota will end in the next month. North Dakota workers were not eligible for unemployment.

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