Building a Better Truth Machine

158378010 Emergency workers stand in front of the Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Conn.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

When something momentous is unfolding?the Arab Spring, Hurricane Sandy, Friday?s horrific elementary school shooting in Connecticut?Twitter is the world's fastest, most comprehensive, and least reliable source of breaking news. If you were on the microblogging site Friday afternoon, you were among the first to hear the death toll, watch the devastated reactions, and delve into the personal details of the man the media initially identified as a killer. But there?s also a good chance you were taken in by some of the many falsehoods that were flying, like a letter one of the young victims purportedly wrote to his mother before the shooter entered the classroom. And, of course, all of those social media pages that were making the rounds turned out to belong to innocent people, including the real suspect?s brother.

The hoaxes and mistaken identities pale in importance next to Friday?s real tragedy, of course. The victims and the apparent perpetrator were already dead, and nothing anyone wrote on social media was going to change that. But they caused unnecessary hurt and confusion. And in ongoing events like natural disasters, the stakes of Twitter misinformation can be much higher. During Sandy, for instance, some tweets helped emergency responders figure out where to direct resources. Others provoked needless panic, such as one claiming that the Coney Island hospital was on fire. And a few were downright dangerous, such as the one claiming that people should stop using 911 because the lines were jammed.

A redeeming feature of Twitter is the relative speed with which its users manage to sniff out and debunk the most widely circulated falsehoods. On Friday, for instance, word that the media had fingered the wrong suspect was circulating on Twitter while TV networks were still running with the false reports. The New Yorker's Sasha Frere-Jones has called the site a "self-cleaning oven." In Sandy's wake, Buzzfeed's John Hermann declared it a "truth machine." But those metaphors can mislead. Keeping Twitter clean takes time and human effort, and in the interim, the gunk can cause serious problems. The Andy Carvins, Alexis Madrigals, and Tom Phillipses can do only so much. Often the false information spreads further and faster than the correction.

For the average Twitter user, that's merely a pitfall to keep in mind. But for emergency responders and humanitarian workers who would use the site to guide their efforts, it's a potentially deadly obstacle. "Verification is one of the biggest challenges to using social media in the humanitarian space," says Patrick Meier of the Qatar Foundation's Computing Research Institute, an expert on the use of technology in crisis response.

That antipathy is starting to thaw as Twitter proves its worth to aid workers in fast-moving events, such as the Haiti quake, during which reliable information is scarce. "Before the earthquake in Haiti, if you brought up social media with my colleagues at the U.N., it was basically a nonstarter,? Meier says. Still, the fear remains that reliance on Twitter will result in costly mistakes. Their solution: Build a better truth machine.

I spoke with Meier last week about new academic research that looks at the potential of machine-learning algorithms to automatically assess the credibility of information tweeted during a disaster. The idea is that, while it takes humans precious time and resources to vet the numerous tidbits that flood Twitter during a disaster, computers might one day be able to quickly and automatically offer at least a preliminary assessment of their credibility. Basically, Meier joked, "We're trying to scale Andy Carvin," the NPR online strategist who became a Twitter celebrity for his superhuman efforts to relay and vet breaking-news items during the Arab Spring.

A 2010 paper from Yahoo Research analyzed tweets from that year's 8.8 Chile earthquake and found that legitimate news?such as word that the Santiago airport had closed, that a supermarket in Concepcion was being looted, and that a tsunami had hit the coastal town of Iloca?propagated on Twitter differently than falsehoods, like the rumor that singer Ricardo Arjona had died or that a tsunami warning had been issued for Valparaiso. One key difference might sound obvious but is still quite useful: The false rumors were far more likely to be tweeted along with a question mark or some other indication of doubt or denial.

Building on that work, the authors of the 2010 study developed a machine-learning classifier that uses 16 features to assess the credibility of newsworthy tweets. Among the features that make information more credible:

- Tweets about it tend to be longer and include URLs.

- People tweeting it have higher follower counts.

- Tweets about it are negative rather than positive in tone.

- Tweets about it do not include question marks, exclamation marks, or first- or third-person pronouns.

Several of those findings were echoed in another recent study from researchers at India's Institute of Information Technology who also found that credible tweets are less likely to contain swear words and significantly more likely to contain frowny emoticons than smiley faces.

In a new paper, to be published in the journal Internet Research next month, the authors of the Chile earthquake study?Carlos Castillo, Marcelo Mendoza, and Barbara Poblete?test out their algorithm on fresh data sets and find that it works pretty well. According to Meier, their machine-learning classifier had an AUC, or ?area under the curve,? of 0.86. That means that, when presented with a random false tweet and a random true tweet, it would assess the true tweet as more credible 86 percent of the time. (An AUC of 1 is perfect; an AUC of 0.5 is no better than random chance.)

My guess is that a knowledgeable and experienced human Twitter user could do better than that under most circumstances. And of course, if a given algorithm became widespread, committed trolls like the Hurricane Sandy villain @ComfortablySmug could find ways to game it. Still, an algorithm has the potential to work much faster than a human, and as it improves, it could evolve into an invaluable "first opinion" for flagging news items on Twitter that might not be true. Meier said that perhaps those flagged tweets could then be posted to a platform that invites humans to vet them and eventually either verify or debunk them for good. Even that wouldn't fully prevent Twitter lies from spreading or misleading people. But it might at least make their purveyors a little less comfortable and a little less smug.

This article arises from Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, the New America Foundation, and?Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, visit the?Future Tense blog?and the?Future Tense home page. You can also?follow us on Twitter.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=bfccb37000eea76113593711ffaf00c8

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App Rating7.68 / 240
App Update2012.12.15 08:15
App Price$9.99
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App RequirementsiPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. iOS 5.0 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.
App support languagesEnglish, Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish
App SizeEnglish, Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Dutch, Finnish,
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Current Version Info about iphone ipa?/? Medical?/? TactioHealth (Weight Loss, Fitness, Hypertension & Diabetes Family eHealth Tracking System)
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? New! Wahoo Fitness Balance integration, 52-Week Range Sliding Indicator on Dashboard, Body Fat Estimation Method
? Updated! Lots of fixes in this update and its faster in many ways!
? NEW! WAHOO FITNESS ?BALANCE? eHealth SCALE
TactioHealth v3.3 brings a new type of eHealth integration. The Wahoo Fitness new Balance is integrated via Bluetooth 4.0. It therefore requires almost no setup. Simply press connect and voil?. Each time you step on the scale, you will see TactioHealth go all white with a live weight indicator, as if you were looking at the scale itself. You will get instant feedback on your BMI, and TactioHealth will automatically compare your current weight with the last one measured, display the delta in color, red or green, depending whether you are nearing your target or drifting away (that never happens right?). It requires no setup ? no wires ? no data entry.
? NEW! 52-Week Range Indicator
We are working on making the ?My Health? dashboard more smart and useful for you and your healthy lifestyle plans. As such, we?ve added a new 52-week range indicator that provides you a quick view of your current weight, as compared to the min and max weight you logged in the past, for up to the last 52-weeks. Slide it to see more ranges, like Body Fat, BMI, Blood Pressure, etc?
? NEW! BODY FAT ESTIMATION METHOD
Up to now if you had never entered a ?measured? body fat percent value, then TactioHealth would provide an estimated value. That estimation was based on Deurenberg method, published in 1991. TactioHealth now performs the body fat estimation using Jackson method, published in 2002. The Jackson method was derived from studies involving US and Canadian subjects, where as the previous method was based on older data from subjects in the Netherlands. In addition, the Jackson study used a better method for body composition assessment.
? UPDATED! NO NEED TO RE-ENTER EHEALTH IDs
If you were using eHealth, you probably notice lately that you needed to re-enter some of the credentials on every update. We have redone and streamlined the eHealth connectivity so now there are two new changes here. First, you will need to reenter them again this time, but that should be the very last time. Next updates if you ever need to do that again, please report it to our support as this will no longer be normal. And second, when you do connect, you only need to enter your credentials once, not twice like before, so it?s faster, easier and since we do not keep your credentials anymore, it is now more secure.
? NEW! SPEED, LIKE IN FASTER!
TactioHealth v3.3 is faster in many ways. Faster at launch time. Faster at saving and updating when you logged new data. Faster on exiting the app. Faster to render the gorgeous activity charts, especially on the iPad where you get all the activity icons into the colored bars. Is that it? Of course not, performance is a never-ending engineering project at Tactio!
? FIX! LOTS OF FIXES
TactioHealth v3.3 fixes several issues that you kindly reported to our support by email. Again, do not report via iTunes AppStore because we may never see it and we cannot interact with you to nail the issue and fix it. Use our support team, they reply to everyone within 24 hours and we fix every issue. Fixes here are related to Profile Wizard, to Health Professionals Appointment Editing, to some Health Coach Notifications, to Recording Audio Notes and to TactioSync in the weird circumstance where some users had some sort of Sync Ping-Pong going on between their two devices. It was exotic, but should not happen again!
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TactioHealth tracks Height, Body Weight, Body Fat , Waist Size, Body Mass Index and Waist-to-Height Ratio from manual data entry or automated eHealth sync from Fitbit, iHealth, Withings or Wahoo Fitness scales.
? Blood Pressure Tracking
TactioHealth tracks Systolic, Diastolic, Resting Pulse and Mean Arterial Pressure from manual data entry or automated eHealth sync from iHealth or Withings BP Cuffs. TactioHealth also computes the user Heart Age from BMI and Lipid based data as well as health related profile questions.
? Daily Steps Tracking
Tracks Daily Steps from manual entry or automated eHealth sync from BodyMedia or Fitbit Trackers.
? Physical Activity Tracking
Tracks both cardio and strength physical activities by manual data entry or automated eHealth sync from RunKeeper App.
? Cholesterol Tracking
TactioHealth tracks LDL, HDL and Total Cholesterol by manual entry into the app.
? Glucose Tracking
TactioHealth tracks Fasting Glucose and Triglycerides by manual data entry into the app.
? Health Risk Assessment
TactioHealth computes the following health risks and displays charts to let the user know about the risk, its ranges and where the user stands in the ranges. They are Framingham 10-Year General Cardio-Vascular Disease Risk, Type 2 Diabetes Risk and Metabolic Syndrome.
? Nutrition Plan
Provides a personalized nutrition plan with day-to-day, meal-by-meal calories with the explanation of where this plan comes from in terms of resting metabolism, weight loss plan and physical activity. TactioHealth disables this function if user sets an unhealthy weight loss plan.
? Tactio Health Coach
TactioHealth delivers just-in-time personalized messages to coach the user to best practices of preventive healthcare. The simple presence of the app on ones iPhone or iPad generates reminders for weigh-in, BP, Cholesterol, family doctor checkup, dentist, eye exam, breast auto-exam, prostate cancer screening, etc... The Health Coach also brings advice from CDC and WHO based active lifestyle recommendations.
? Tactio Backup & Sync
TactioHealth provides an automated secured backup system of the users data so it can be recovered on another device in case of loss or stolen device. TactioSync uses this online backup service as well as Apple iCloud to keep all the users devices in sync with one another. So data can be logged on the iPhone during the day while charts can be analyzed in the evening on the iPad.
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TactioHealth generates a complete Executive Health Report right from the app in a single PDF that can be shared by email to anyone. All the data. All the charts. All the computed factors and colour coding.
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TactioHealth supports a wide variety of eHealth interfaces to its partners medical devices and apps. That includes various body scales, blood pressure cuffs, activity monitors and fitness coaching apps.
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TactioHealth supports up to 8 users for tracking supporting entire families. CDC growth data and percentiles are included from 2 to 75 years old.
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Supports note taking in text, audio or photo format. That can include anything from test results to food notes to an audio recording of any kind. All the notes are organized in a chronological journal.
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Vizio M3D651SV

What a difference a year makes. When we tested Vizio's XVT3D650SV last year, we thought its $3,699.99 list price was reasonable for a full-featured 65-inch LED backlit HDTV with 3D capabilities. The company's latest 65-inch set, the M3D651SV ($1,749.99 list), rings up at less than half the price of last year's model, and it too offers LED backlighting and a boatload of features, including integrated Wi-Fi, passive 3D along with glasses, and plenty of Web apps. More importantly, it delivers a bright picture with solid blacks in both 2D and 3D mode. Its green levels are a tad high and its cabinet design is nothing to write home about, but neither gripe prevents it from becoming our latest Editors' Choice for midrange LCD HDTVs.

Design and Features
Like the aforementioned XVT3D650SV and the more recent Vizio M3D550KD, this set's plain-jane design won't win any style awards, but at 2.3 inches thick the cabinet is relatively slim. Wide (2-inch) rounded glossy black bezels frame the screen on all sides, and there's a black grilled speaker bar mounted below the bottom bezel. A bezel-free design such as the one featured on Toshiba's 55L7200U would look more elegant, but would likely also command a steeper price.

The huge, shiny, black oval stand does a fine job of supporting the 92.8-pound cabinet but does not provide swivel. There's a silver multifunction dial on the lower left side of the cabinet that controls power, volume, channel changes, and input source; you won't find any other function buttons on the set.

The unique double-sided remote is 6.3 inches long, 2 inches wide, and 0.6 inches thick. One side holds a typical set of buttons including a direction pad, number pad, four color keys, player controls, and dedicated 3D, Amazon, Netflix, and M-Go buttons. The buttons are smaller than what you'll find on most remotes, which can be problematic if you have big hands. The flip side is matte gray and contains a QWERTY keypad and four directional arrow keys. These keys are also small but come in handy when using the many Web apps that come with this set.

At the rear of the cabinet, two USB ports, four HDMI ports, and two audio outputs (optical and analog) face left, and LAN, VGA (PC video-in), PC audio-in, component audio and video jacks, and a cable/antenna coaxial connector face down. In addition to wired Ethernet, the M3D651SV offers built-in Wi-Fi networking via the single-band 802.11n radio.

The set comes with a full roster of Vizio Internet Apps (VIA) including Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, Rhapsody, Vudu, and the soon-to-be-released M-Go entertainment app. You also get Yahoo Weather, News, Sports, and Finance, as well as the Yahoo Connected TV Store which offers scores of free and paid apps.

Picture settings are plentiful. You get nine presets including Standard, Movie, Game, Vivid, Custom, and four Sports modes. With the exception of the Standard and Movie modes, I found the presets to be too bright and plagued by oversaturated colors.

Basic settings include Brightness, Contrast, Backlight, Color, Tint, and Sharpness. The Advanced Settings menu offers Smooth Motion and Real Cinema settings that can be used to smooth out jaggies and reduce judder, three Noise Reduction modes, Color Temperature with user adjustable RGB gain and offset levels, Backlight Control, and Adaptive Luma (dynamic brightness control). There's also an Ambient Light Sensor control that works with a built-in sensor to adjust backlighting according to room lighting conditions.

The M3D651SV uses passive technology to bring 3D to the big screen. Vizio bundles four pairs of lightweight, Roy Orbison-style glasses with this model, but if you need more you can always purchase an additional four-pack for $24.99.

Performance
Using images from the DisplayMate HDTV diagnostic tests and a Konica-Minolta chromameter, the M3D651SV produced a peak brightness measurement of 224.57 cd/m2 (candelas per square meter) and a nice deep black level of 0.02 cd/m2, resulting in an impressive contrast ratio of 11,228:1.

Color accuracy was generally good out of the box. Reds and blues were pretty much in line with the CIE 1931 chromaticity standards (see the chart below). Green levels were slightly warm but not to the point where they caused tinting or color tracking errors.

?

In my tests, the benefits of a generous contrast ratio became apparent while watching scenes from The Bourne Legacy on Blu-ray. Aerial flyover scenes of the snow-covered mountains really showed off the M3D651SV's ability to deliver very good shadow and highlight detail, and flesh tones were natural looking throughout the movie. Colors remained bold and the picture stayed bright when viewed from an extreme side angle.

The M3D651SV's passive 3D technology delivered good depth and a very bright picture while playing Sharks 3D. Watching 3D on a screen of this size really puts you on the center of the action. The picture was crisp and artifact-free for the most part, but there was a trace of crosstalk (image ghosting) when viewed from an extreme side angle, which is a common characteristic of passive 3D technology.

As with the Vizio E601I-A3, Vizio's non-3D 60-inch LED HDTV, the M3D651SV lacks the dedicated power-saving features that are standard issue on most HDTVs. The set averaged 145 watts of power during testing. That's a bit more than what we saw with the E601I-A3 (118 watts), but still not what you would call a power hog for its size.

Conclusions
With the Vizio M3D651SV you get your money's worth and then some. Its huge 65-inch LED illuminated screen, sharp imagery, and generous interactive Web app catalog are enough to recommend it to anyone looking for a big-screen HDTV for under $2,000. Throw in passive 3D with four sets of glasses, Wi-Fi, and a neat little remote with a QWERTY keypad, and you've got our latest Editors' Choice for midrange LCD HDTVs.

More HDTV Reviews:
??? Vizio M3D651SV
??? Samsung PN51E6500EF
??? Samsung PN60E6500EF
??? Sony Bravia KDL-42EX440
??? Vizio E701I-A3
?? more

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Source: Suspect is Adam Lanza; older brother Ryan being questioned

WASHINGTON (AP) ? A law enforcement official says the suspect in the Connecticut school shootings is 20-year-old Adam Lanza, the son of a teacher at the school where the shootings occurred. A second law enforcement official says the boy's mother, Nancy Lanza, is presumed dead.

The first official says Adam Lanza's older brother, 24-year-old Ryan, of Hoboken, N.J., is being questioned by police. An earlier report from a law enforcement official mistakenly transposed the brothers' first names.

Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record about the developing criminal investigation.

The first official said Adam Lanza is dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ap-source-suspect-drove-mothers-school-211145701--politics.html

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Conn. school massacre: 28 dead, including 20 kids

The massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School shook everyone in Newtown, Conn., including the first responders, who will be undergoing counseling. NBC's Anne Thompson reports.

By Pete Williams, Miguel Llanos and Tracy Connor, NBC News

Updated at 8:25 p.m. ET:?A kindergarten teacher's son, clad in black and carrying two 9mm pistols, rampaged through a Connecticut elementary school Friday, killing 20 small children and six adults, a tragedy President Barack Obama said had broken the hearts of America.

The gunman, identified as?Adam Lanza, 20, was found dead at the scene of the slaughter, Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, law enforcement officials said. The body of a woman believed to be his mother was found at their home in Newton, authorities said.

Officials initially misidentified the shooter to NBC News as Lanza's brother, Ryan. But a senior official later said that Ryan was nowhere near the shooting, is not believed to be involved, and is cooperating with the investigation.

Ryan told police that?Adam has a history of mental illness, according to the senior official. Yet the motive for the mass killing ? the nation?s second-worst school shooting -- was a mystery.


The weapons used in the attack were legally purchased and were registered to the gunman's mother, two law enforcement officials said.?Two 9mm handguns were recovered inside the school. An AR-15-type rifle also was found at the scene, but there were conflicting reports Friday night whether it had been used in the shooting.?

Police believe Lanza fatally shot her in the face, then drove to the hilltop school where she worked and unleashed a blizzard of bullets on children and staff in two rooms before apparently taking his own life.

"Evil visited this community today," Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy said Friday evening. "We are all in this together."

Adam Lanza, the man who allegedly committed one of the worst shootings in U.S. history, was 20 years old. He entered the Sandy Hook Elementary School carrying two handguns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, police said. NBC's Pete Williams reports.

Some young survivors -- ages 5 to 10 -- described the terror of the shooting and a massive police response that included SWAT officers going room to room to search for victims as students huddled in classroom corners.

More coverage:?NBCNewYork.com?and?NBCConnecticut.com?
BreakingNews.com's coverage of the incident

Robert Licata said his 6-year-old son was in class when the gunman burst in and shot the teacher.

"That's when my son grabbed a bunch of his friends and ran out the door," he told The Associated Press. "He was very brave."

One student told NBC Connecticut she was in the gym when she heard ?seven loud booms.?

?The gym teachers told us to go in the corner, so we all huddled,? she said.?"And I kept hearing these booming noises. And we all ? started crying.

"All the gym teachers told us to go into the office where no one could find us," she added. "So then a police officer came in and told us to run outside. So we did and we came in the firehouse.?

The high death toll and the tender age of many victims sent shock waves all the way to the White House, where the flag was lowered to half-staff.

President Obama, his voice cracking at times, said he reacted to the tragedy first as a parent.

?Our hearts are broken today,'' he said. ?The majority of those who died today were children. Beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old.?

Authorities in the small bedroom community 60 miles from New York City were alerted to the unfolding carnage by a 911 call around 9:30 a.m., and then reached out to state police and neighboring police departments for help.

An elementary school student recalls the terrifying moments following sounds of shots fired at her Connecticut elementary school, saying "teachers told us to go in the corner so we all huddled."

Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance said troopers fanned out across the school and searched ?every door, every crack, every crevice? of the building.

Most of the bodies were found in two rooms in one section of the 600-student school, which goes up to the fourth grade.

Two children were taken to Danbury Hospital, but they died. A third person was being treated at the hospital, which went into lockdown mode and cleared trauma rooms as doctors waited for an influx of survivors that never came.

After police finished searching the school and determined there was only one gunman, they led the children outside, telling them to close their eyes, apparently to avoid seeing anything gruesome.

At a staging area ringed by police vehicles that raced to the school from across the state, the dazed and crying kids were reunited with worried loved ones.

The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that killed more than two dozen, 20 of them children, left the quiet community of Newtown, Conn., desperately trying to understand what happened. NBC's Kate Snow reports.

Brenda Lebinski, mother of a third-grader, said she found a ?horrendous? scene.

?Everyone was in hysterics -- parents, students. There were kids coming out of the school bloodied. I don't know if they were shot, but they were bloodied,'' she said, according to Reuters.

One parent picking up his 7-year-old son said the shooting was ?the most terrifying moment a parent can imagine." He went on to describe the anguish of waiting to find out if his son was a victim and then running to his child when he saw him.

?It was the greatest relief in my existence,? the father said. ?I?m just happy that my kid?s OK.?

The FBI was assisting with the widening investigation, and authorities said there were many unanswered questions, including the motive.

?There is a great deal of search warrant activity?in and out of the state,? Vance said, without giving specifics.

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy was meeting with grieving families.

?As you can imagine, the governor is horrified by what?s happened,? said aide Roy Occhiogrosso.

The death toll is the highest from a school shooting since a gunman killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007. At Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, two teens killed 13 people and wounded 24 in 1999.

Parent Stephen Delgiadice, whose 8-year-old daughter was not hurt, said he never could have imagined such bloodshed in the quiet town of 27,000, where the police force has only three detectives.

"It's alarming, especially in Newtown, Connecticut, which we always thought was the safest place in America," he told The Associated Press.

Obama said Friday?s shooting, following the massacre at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., and other murder sprees, showed the need for ?meaningful action?regardless of the politics? to prevent more blood from being spilled.

New York City Mayor Bloomberg, who has been pushing for tougher gun laws, called for Washington to act immediately.

?Not even kindergarteners learning their A, B, Cs are safe,? he said. ?We heard after Columbine that it was too soon to talk about gun laws. We heard it after Virginia Tech. After Tucson and Aurora and Oak Creek. And now we are hearing it again.?

For up-to-the-minute coverage of the tragedy at Sandy Creek Elementary, stay with NBCNews.com,?and tune in to your local NBC station to watch tonight?s special report on Dateline NBC.

Michelle Mcloughlin / Reuters

The second deadliest school shooting in U.S. history sent crying children spilling into the school parking lot as frightened parents waited for word on their loved ones.

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Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/14/15907407-elementary-school-massacre-20-children-among-28-killed-in-connecticut-slaughter?lite

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Google app for Android updated with new photo-sharing features, emoticons, GIFs and more

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who canceled an overseas trip last weekend because of illness, suffered a concussion after fainting due to dehydration, prompting the postponement of her scheduled congressional testimony on the attack on a U.S. mission in Libya, officials said on Saturday. "While suffering from a stomach virus, Secretary Clinton became dehydrated and fainted, sustaining a concussion," State Department spokesman Philippe Reines said in a statement. "She has been recovering at home and will continue to be monitored regularly by her doctors. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/google-app-android-updated-photo-sharing-features-emoticons-010217472.html

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Google shuts down features and services for 'winter cleaning'

Google shuts down features and services for 'winter cleaning'

Seasons change and web services shut down -- such in life. Google today announced some "difficult decisions" regarding a number of properties, particularly Calendar, which will see the end of several "less popular" features on the 4th of next month. On the list of blacked out capabilities are the ability to make reservable times through the service's Appointment slots. Smart Rescheduler and Add Gadget by URL are also set to go black on that date, while the ability to check one's calendar and create events via SMS are coming to an end today. On January 30th, meanwhile, it will no longer be possible to set up new devices with Google Sync. That date also marks the end of Google Sync for Nokia S60 and SyncML -- and today, the company's discontinuing Google Calendar Sync. Also on the chopping block are Google's Issue Tracker API and Punchd. More info on all the shutdowns can be found in the source link.

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Via: The Next Web

Source: The Official Google Blog

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/14/google-winter-cleaning/

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An International Tribunal Has Ruled On Whether Or - Business Insider

Wikimedia Commons

The International Tribunal of the Sea in Hamburg has ruled that Ghana must return Argentina's naval vessel, the ARA Libertad immediately, MercoPress reports.

The boat has been impounded since October 2nd, when hedge fund manager Paul Singer got a Ghanaian Court to rule that the boat be detained because of Argentina's outstanding debt to him, and a number of other hedge fund managers. A bail was set for $20 million.

As the boat languished in the Port of Tema, Argentina had it out with Singer in a New York Courtroom. The country refuses to pay Singer and other plaintiffs $1.3 billion in outstanding sovereign debt that they bought in 2001, citing the fact that, unlike other bondholders, the plaintiffs did not take the opportunity to restructure their debt in 2005 and 2010.

The majority of bondholders accepted a 70 percent haircut on their investment, but Singer is holding out because he and his fellows want to be paid in full. That's why he had Argentina's vessel impounded as collateral, and that's why Argentina refers to him, and other holdouts as "vulture" funds.

As that case went to an Appeals Court, there was conflict on the ARA Libertad. At one point the 40-plus sailors on the boat drew their guns when Ghanaian port officials tried to force the them to move the boat to a sleepier part of the port.

Argentina filed suit with the International Tribunal of the Sea to get their vessel back in mid November. The Court said that it would decide on the matter by December 15th, and Judge Shunji Jenai's ruling was firm (from MercoPress):

?Ghana must release with no conditions the frigate, guaranteeing that the vessel, its captain and the crew can leave the port of Tema and ensuring their provision? said the unanimous ruling. ...

The U.N. court considered a statement from Argentina that attempts by authorities in Ghana to move the ship "could lead to an escalation" which could lead to "incidents which could endanger life" Judge Yanai said.

The court also considered Argentina's claim that the ship could not be maintained correctly during its arrest and that the vessel's safety could so be endangered.

Now there are a few things that need to happen before the boat heads back to Argentina. Both Ghana and Argentina must submit a report on paying their own costs by December 22nd, and the Tribunal will make more decisions about the dispute then.

Meanwhile, the New York Appeals Court will make an additional ruling on the fight between Argentina and bondholders in February.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/tribunal-says-return-argentina-vessel-2012-12

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Bank of America sues MBIA over bond tender interference

(Reuters) - Bank of America Corp has sued bond insurer MBIA Inc in a New York state court for allegedly interfering with the bank's offer to buy MBIA's bonds.

At issue are changes MBIA sought to make to the terms of some of its bonds to eliminate the risk that it might be considered in default if a troubled unit were put into rehabilitation or liquidation by New York regulators.

Bank of America countered with an offer to buy the bonds, saying it believed the changes would increase the risk of MBIA's insurance unit being placed in rehabilitation or liquidation, which could jeopardize all policyholder claims.

On Thursday, Bank of America said it had purchased $136 million of senior notes in that tender and issued a default notice over the attempt to change terms.

The bank claims in the lawsuit that the consent solicitation was the latest of MBIA's "premeditated and subversive actions" since 2008 to benefit executives and stockholders to the detriment of Bank of America and other policyholders.

In the lawsuit, filed late on Thursday, Bank of America alleged that MBIA illegally interfered with its tender offer and asked for the consent solicitation and amendment to be declared invalid. The bank also is seeking punitive and other damages.

MBIA spokesman Kevin Brown said: "Like its purported notice of default, Bank of America's latest lawsuit is meritless and we will respond to both accordingly."

MBIA shares fell 6.7 percent to $7.95 Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.

The legal wrangling is a major cloud hanging over both companies, which have struggled to recover from mortgage-related troubles from the financial crisis.

MBIA claims that Bank of America owes it billions of dollars over soured mortgages that it wants the bank to buy back. Bank of America says the insurer will likely owe it billions over certain credit default swap transactions.

MBIA and Bank of America were in court this week on pre-trial motions in a 2008 case the bond insurer brought against Bank of America's Countrywide Financial unit, accusing the lender of misrepresenting the quality of loans underlying mortgage-backed securities it insured.

MBIA claims the bank should be liable for refusing to buy back defective loans.

The two are also awaiting a decision by a New York judge over whether the state insurance department was right to approve MBIA's 2009 split into two units.

Bank of America claims it was harmed in the restructuring when $5 billion was transferred out of the MBIA unit that insures risky mortgage debt and into a new unit that guarantees municipal bonds. The judge must rule on whether to annul that split.

The newest case is Bank of America Corp. v MBIA Inc, New York State Supreme Court, 70444/2012, County of Westchester.

(Writing by Ben Berkowitz; additional reporting by Rick Rothacker; editing by Bernadette Baum, Matthew Lewis and Carol Bishopric)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bank-america-sues-mbia-over-bond-tender-interference-230832669--sector.html

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The Secrets Behind The Hobbit's 3D Wizardry

Peter Jackson has always loved the magic of moviemaking. After watching the 1933 classic King Kong at age 9, he started shooting stop-motion films with his family's Super 8 camera. Three years later, he carved up an old fur coat that belonged to his mother and used it to create a model of the great ape. In his early 20s, the budding director was baking latex molds in his mother's oven to produce the prosthetic hands and heads for Bad Taste, the homemade horror flick that earned him a trip to Cannes in 1987. But the eclectic cast of characters in the Lord of the Rings trilogy truly put his powers of invention to the test.

To make the wizard Gandalf appear a few feet taller than his onscreen colleagues, Jackson employed a number of tried-and-true cinematic tricks. In one scene, he used a custom-designed wooden cart to position Elijah Wood (Frodo) far to the right and a few feet behind Sir Ian McKellen (Gandalf) and recorded the action at an angle that made it look as if the two actors were seated side by side. In the Hobbit trilogy, Jackson's latest tribute to the mythic Middle-earth world created by author J.R.R. Tolkien, such sleight of hand was not possible. "Once you shoot in 3D, it completely blows your cover," he says. "Your forced-perspective tricks are naked to the audience. With 3D glasses on, they can see exactly how far away the characters are."

This left the director with only one alternative: To conjure a community peopled with hobbits and dwarves, he would have to resort to the cumbersome process of filming man and halfling separately and uniting them digitally in postproduction. Jackson had occasionally used that technique in TheLord of the Rings, but The Hobbit was filled with dialogue?often two or three script pages in succession?between Gandalf and his pint-size pals. "It's very difficult for them to have a conversation that feels natural," says Jackson, citing his early attempts to unite the wizard with hobbits. "We would have Ian do half the conversation and then Elijah would have to fill in the hole Ian had left him. It was a stilted way of doing it."

So before filming began on The Hobbit, Jackson asked his team to come up with a better approach?one that would allow him to direct every scene in real time. The answer arrived in the form of an innovative motion-control system. Instead of shooting the actors one at a time, the director placed them on two different sets?50 feet apart?and recorded them with different cameras. The live, or master, rig was outfitted with encoders that measured the pan and tilt of the camera, the motion of the boom that held it aloft, and the speed and movement of the dolly beneath the whole setup. This data was crunched, scaled, and instantly relayed to a slave-rig camera on a green-screen set, allowing it to move on three axes in perfect harmony with the first.


In this way, Jackson could place the slave camera much closer to Gandalf and?with the magic of software?remove the green background and merge the images from the two sets so it appears as if the wizard towers above the dwarves. One challenge was to create a green-screen set that precisely mirrored the live set?archway, walls, chandelier, etc. If Gandalf rested his hand on a green-screen table, it could not appear to float above the top of the table on the live set. To precisely position everything, the crew invented a device called the Pinger. Think of it as a laser-beam protractor: It measures distances and angles, allowing the crew to pinpoint the critical contact spots common to both sets.

Once those spots were aligned, the live-set and slave-set cameras worked together to generate the proper perspective. The system included a monitor that supplied Jackson with a live composite of the two shots so he could watch the scene unfold. The actors on both sets used green tennis balls to locate their sightlines and hidden earpieces to follow the dialogue.

In the system's trial run, Gandalf pays a visit to Bilbo's Bag End home with a company of dwarves clustered around him. In the course of the shot, he has to duck below an archway, bump his head on a chandelier, greet each character by name, lay the dining room table with forks and knives, and accept a cup of wine from a cohort.

The live set was built to human scale. The table, the plates, the drinking cups were all of normal size since they would be filmed next to average-size actors. The items on the green-screen set were scaled down by 25 percent. In Gandalf's hand, the wine cup looks tiny. But because the slave camera was placed closer to him, the cup and the hand both appear much larger on film. In fact, when the two images were combined, the cup looks exactly like those in the hands of the dwarves.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/digital/3d/the-secrets-behind-the-hobbits-3d-wizardry-14851524?src=rss

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