WEDNESDAY, July 22 (HealthDay News) -- New information about a
cellular protein might help in efforts to develop drug treatments for
diabetes and Alzheimer's disease, researchers say.

In tests on rats, they found that humanin, which may prevent nerve
cells from dying, also helps improve insulin action and lower blood
glucose levels.

"This new role of humanin in glucose metabolism, in addition to its
role in Alzheimer's disease, is very intriguing since scientists have long
proposed a link between type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer's disease," Dr. Nir
Barzilai, a professor and director of the Institute for Aging Research at
the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, said in a news
release from the college.

"Humanin could turn out to be a therapeutic option for two common
debilitating diseases that affect millions of people, Barzilai said.
"Additionally, humanin may help treat other age-related diseases."

The study appears online July 22 in PLoS One.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Aging has more about Alzheimer's disease.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Sugarland singer Jennifer Nettles is on vocal rest after canceling two shows over the weekend.
In a video message to fans posted on the duo's Web site, Nettles said she has been dealing with voice problems since January.
She says she "blew her voice" from the combination of singing in the studio and on the road.
Sugarland canceled their Saturday appearance with Kenny Chesney in San Francisco and their Sunday concert with Keith Urban in Los Angeles.
The duo, which also includes guitarist Kristian Bush, are scheduled to perform Thursday in Sandy, Utah.
___
On the Web:
htp://http://www.sugarlandmusic.com/

FRANKFURT (Reuters) –
The German states that are home to General Motors (GM.UL) unit Opel's factories still prefer Magna's (MGa.TO) offer for the German company over the one made by RHJ International (RHJI.BR), several people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

The states of Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia and Thuringia discussed the matter in a telephone conference on Wednesday, two sources said.

(Reporting by Angelika Gruber; Writing by Maria Sheahan)

Since the 1990s, the idea of replacing the income tax with a national sales tax has been floated in the United States; many of the actual proposals would include giving each household an annual rebate, paid in monthly installments, equivalent to the percentage of the tax (which varies from 15% to 23% in most cases) multiplied by the poverty level based on the number of persons in the household, in an effort to create a progressive effect on consumption. While many political observers consider the chances remote for such a change, the FairTax Act has attracted more cosponsors than any other fundamental tax reform bill introduced in the House of Representatives.

Determination of ways to legally reduce the amount of tax due on a transaction. For instance, how a company structures its invoices can affect the taxability of the entire transaction. In many states an item can become taxable if not separately stated on the invoice.

Sales Tax Consulting

HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) –
After regular beatings, torture and attempted murder by her husband, 35-year-old Zahra tried to burn herself to death to escape her marriage. Then she learned of a safer option: divorce.

Zahra is among a growing number of women in Afghanistan's western Herat province who, with the help of a women's charity, have taken on patriarchal laws to get a divorce, a taboo in the devoutly Muslim, formerly Taliban-led state.

"I did not spend a single happy day with my husband ... he was not like a human being. He used to beat me every day," she said, revealing scars on her right leg and feet where her husband had deliberately given her electric shocks.

After marrying at 14, Zahra, who declined to give her full name for her own safety, said she suffered years of abuse. Then a property dispute with her in-laws turned her marriage into a full-blown nightmare.

"They wanted to kill me three or four times. Once they gave me rat poison ... I cannot go out because of the divorce and my four brothers are looking for me; they are after me to kill me."

The divorce led to her father disowning her and cost her custody of her seven sons and two daughters.

Initially her ex-husband let her keep her daughters on condition that she didn't remarry. But her financial circumstances were so dire in a country where women rarely work that she eventually remarried and when her ex-husband found out he took the daughters back.

A MAN'S LAW

Suraya Pakzad runs a safe house for women in Herat and has helped several women, including Zahra, divorce their husbands.

She says her outreach programs, which inform women about divorce, discourages them from burning themselves and helps them tackle divorce law.

The number of divorces have doubled in Herat over the past two years, according to Pakzad, while reported cases of self-immolation have declined.

"In 2006 we had 98 cases of women killing themselves with fire ... in 2008, there was about 73 cases, so there has been a definite decrease," Pakzad said.

"When we brought the number of self-immolation cases down, automatically the number of divorces went up because women realized that they could not solve their problems by burning themselves," she said.

Under Afghanistan's Islamic law, a man can divorce without needing his wife's agreement. But if a woman seeks a divorce then she has to have the approval of her husband and needs witnesses who can testify in court that the divorce is justified.

"A man can, with great ease, tell the court that his wife's behavior is inappropriate, that she does not behave in the home, and wants to divorce her. A man decides a woman's future with one piece of paper," said Maria Bashir, chief prosecutor in Herat.

A woman can appeal for a divorce on grounds that her husband is absent for a long time, he cannot adequately provide for the family, either financially or because he is physically incapable, or if he is impotent or abuses her to the point where her life may be at risk, Bashir said.

To get their husbands' agreement for the divorce, women were usually forced to let the husband and his family keep the children, a prospect that dissuaded many battered women.

"Women prefer death to the pain of being separated from their children ... This is why many women, before consulting the law, will resort to self-immolation, or suicide or running away."

Pakzad moved her office from Kabul to Herat, which is a much more conservative town compared with the capital, even though it is perhaps Afghanistan's most prosperous city due to greater security and flourishing trade with bordering countries.

"In Kabul, women's access to finance or the economy is much more limited compared with Herat, but they have much better access to freedom. The atmosphere is easier for women and more relaxed," Pakzad said.

"Afghan families think that a woman should not be divorced, whatever she goes through, she should be patient and put up with it. She should die before asking for a divorce," Pakzad said.

Pakzad links the women with one of five or six law firms in Herat which take on divorce cases. They are mostly defense lawyers and attend court with the woman who is also able to appeal her case if the ruling is unsatisfactory.

But the expense, difficulty of access to legal professionals and immense stigma the process brings ensures that most women will never take their cases to court because the burden of proof rests on their shoulders.

"Women know this and that's why they tend to put up with their problems," Pakzad said.

"We don't want to work against the law. We have an enemy in the Taliban and we don't want to create another enemy out of the government but the law needs to change and we need a (parliamentary) session on this to change it."

MY ONLY WAY OUT

A few miles away, in Afghanistan's only hospital ward dedicated to "khod soozi," or self-burning, Dr Mohammad Aref Jalali stands over one his patients and asks how she feels.

Twenty-year old Zarbakht's entire body is cocooned in white plaster. She lies in bed on her back all day, like a mummy. She can barely move her lips to speak and her eyebrows, partly burned off, are knitted in pain. She says her family never visits.

"I had to marry at 14. I was compelled to marry because my family are so poor ... I had no other way. After five years I couldn't take it anymore, what else was I supposed to do?" Zarbakht said in a strained whisper, her jaw almost clamped shut by bandages.

For Dr Jalali, who confirmed there were slightly fewer self-immolation cases in Herat so far this year compared with 2008, it comes as no surprise that divorce is not something his patients are ever likely to contemplate.

"The problem is 80 percent of Afghan women are not literate, and they don't have the means to solve their problems so they resort to extreme and desperate measures, like suicide," he said.

Last year, of the 85 patients admitted to his ward, 63 died of their self-inflicted burns.

Back in Pakzad's office, a 21-year-old woman from the northern province of Kunduz smiles shyly as she sits dressed in a white chador decorated with swirly white flowers.

She ran away from her husband, who beat her for not being able to have a baby and refused to accept that he was infertile despite diagnoses from three different doctors. She was 12 years old when they married, he was 32.

The woman, who declined to give her name due to fear of her husband, did not have anywhere to turn to in Kunduz, 750 km (465 miles) from Herat. She made her way to Herat alone after hearing about Pakzad's organization.

Her husband has agreed to a divorce but demands that she pay him 60,000 afghanis ($1,200) to refund him for the cost of marrying her or find him an alternative wife.

The woman, who is literate, is working in several jobs including teaching to pay her husband back.

"I hope that one day we can be in a position to help other women in the world, so that we will no longer be seen as the women the rest of the world sees as helpless ... We are not helpless, history has forced helplessness onto us," Pakzad said.

(Editing by Paul Tait and Megan Goldin)

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's pledge to make sure health care legislation is fully paid for excludes $245 billion to raise fees for doctors treating Medicare patients, a senior administration official said Tuesday.
Peter Orszag, the budget director, said the administration always had assumed the money would be spent to prevent a cut of more than 20 percent in doctor fees that is scheduled to take effect.
The Congressional Budget Office said Friday that the addition of money for doctors would cause the health care bill to produce deficits totaling $239 billion over the next decade.
A few hours earlier Friday, Obama had said at the White House, "I've said that health insurance reform cannot add to our deficit over the next decade. And I mean it."
Orszag's statement put him in agreement with House Democratic leaders, who have also pledged a deficit-neutral health care bill, but who exclude the physician fees from that commitment.
The House Republican leader, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, said, "This is yet another broken promise from a White House that pledged it wouldn't support health care legislation that adds to our deficit."
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who is presiding over talks aimed at a bipartisan agreement on health care, said the issue has not yet come up in the talks.
The decision by Democrats and the White House to include the money in the legislation was key to gaining the support of the American Medical Association, which represents doctors.

SAN FRANCISCO – Yahoo Inc. eked out a slightly higher profit in the second quarter as its new, no-nonsense chief executive cut enough expenses to shake off the Internet company's sharpest drop in ad revenue since the dot-com bust.
The worsening ad slump overshadowed Yahoo's first quarterly earnings increase since the start of 2008, causing the company's shares to fall more than 2 percent after the results were released Tuesday.
Yahoo also said it plans to spend at least $75 million promoting its brand, hiring more engineers and improving some of its services during the third quarter. On top of that, the Sunnyvale-based company expects to surrender about $75 million in revenue by reducing the volume of ads that management has identified as being too obnoxious.
Both those plans threaten to crimp third-quarter profits unless ad sales bounce back.
Carol Bartz, Yahoo's CEO of the past six months, said advertisers appear willing to spend a little bit more during the second half, although she stopped short of predicting better times ahead.
"There's just so much conflicting information in the market that it's just too early to call," Bartz told analysts in a conference call Tuesday.
Yahoo earned $141.4 million, or 10 cents per share, in the three months ending in June. That was up from income of $131.2 million, or 9 cents per share, last year.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had predicted Yahoo would earn 8 cents per share.
Revenue for the period slid 13 percent to $1.57 billion. That's the biggest decline so far in a three-year slump that has seen Yahoo fall further behind Internet search leader Google Inc. in the online ad market.
After subtracting commissions paid to its advertising partners, Yahoo's revenue stood at $1.14 billion. That matched analyst projections.
Yahoo shares slid 38 cents, or nearly 2.2 percent, in extended trading Tuesday after the results were released. Earlier, it finished the regular session down 26 cents at $16.75.
The higher second-quarter profit suggests Bartz is successfully weeding out some of the problems that plagued Yahoo under its two previous CEOs, company co-founder Jerry Yang and Terry Semel.
Since her arrival, Bartz has been identifying Yahoo's strengths and weaknesses, streamlining the company's decision making and cutting deeper into a payroll that had already begun to thin under Yang.
Yahoo ended the quarter with 13,000 employees, down 9 percent from 14,300 workers at the same time last year. That enabled the company to lower its cash expenses by about 25 percent, excluding severance costs, said Tim Morse, a cost-cutting specialist whom Bartz recently hired as Yahoo's chief financial officer.
"The quarter was a mixed bag, but I am pleased we could control the things that we could control — and that was the cost side of the equation," Morse said in an interview Tuesday.
By contrast, Google's revenue rose 3 percent to $5.5 billion in the second quarter.
Yahoo encountered its biggest problems in the lucrative search market that generates most of Google's profits. Yahoo's ad sales alongside the search results appearing on its own Web site fell 15 percent to $359 million.
As a possible remedy, Yahoo has discussed turning over its search advertising sales to rival Microsoft Corp., which is eager to pick up more market share to mount a more serious challenge to Google. A blog affiliated with The Wall Street Journal reported the two sides are getting close to reaching a deal that could be announced as early as this week.

Although Bartz wasn't asked directly about the Microsoft talks in Tuesday's conference call, she praised a recent upgrade to her rival's search engine — now called Bing.

"Microsoft should be given kudos for Bing," Bartz said. "I think they've done a nice job."

Meanwhile, Yahoo is sprucing up its highly trafficked home page for the first time in three years to make it easier to see what's happening at the Internet's other hot spots. The makeover made its debut in the United States Tuesday.

Even as Yahoo allows its users to plug into popular online hangouts like Facebook and MySpace, Bartz said the company intends to remain "the Internet king makers at the center of the online ecosystem."

NEW YORK – Notre Dame and Army have reportedly agreed to play the first football game at the new Yankee Stadium next year.
The Times Herald-Record, citing unidentified Army sources, said Friday that the Fighting Irish will play their traditional game against the military academy at the new ballpark.
The newspaper said Army will also play games there in the 2011, 2012 and 2013 seasons. The Yankees scheduled a news conference for Monday to make a "major announcement regarding college football at Yankee Stadium."
John Heisler, Notre Dame senior associate athletic director, said the school is talking to Army about playing at Yankee Stadium next season but there is no deal in place.

Alexander Lebedev is telling the story of how he met his girlfriend, Elena Perminova, who is 22 and heavily pregnant. We are sitting in the dining room of Lebedev's house in the ultra-exclusive enclave of Rublyovka, just west of Moscow, early this year. The house includes an underground pool with a cherub-laden fresco on the ceiling, Italian marble floors and a huge ovoid window onto a grand staircase that, Lebedev says, is typical of classical Italian architecture. Outside, there are four or five guards milling around in the driveway. Former President Boris Yeltsin once lived beyond the trees on the other side of a nearby tennis court, now covered in snow. A black BMW with tinted windows, its engine running, sits next to a wall that wraps around the compound. Lebedev, 49, dressed in jeans and a white button-down shirt and black vest, is sporting his signature glasses with rectangular lenses. He has tousled gray hair and a mostly English accent that sounds carefully studied, because that's exactly what it is - in the 1980s, Lebedev spied for the KGB while posing as an economic attachÉ at the Soviet embassy in London. Today, he looks more like a movie director.
"She was distributing drugs in a disco in Novosibirsk," Lebedev says of Perminova. "She was actually arrested when she was 16, and she cooperated with the authorities, and she almost got killed." The police, Lebedev says, were unable or unwilling to provide a safe haven for people who helped them arrest local drug barons. Perminova's father wrote to Lebedev, he says. At the time - this was about five years ago - Lebedev was still a deputy in the Duma and lobbying for a witness-protection program. He says that no one in the Duma leadership supported him, but that he met with Perminova's father - and Elena - and that eventually they started seeing each other. "We've been together since she was 19 or 20," he says. Perminova is a model and an economics student at Moscow State University. Throughout our two-hour breakfast, she alternately serves as waitress - doling out espressos, porridge, and pastries stuffed with black caviar - and as significant other, sampling the kiwi fruit and playing on her laptop. (See pictures of Russia celebrating Victory Day.)
At this particular juncture in Russian history, it is Lebedev's self-assigned role to play, simultaneously, the oligarch and the anti-oligarch - to be the big, brash banking magnate whose estimated wealth prior to the financial crisis was around $3.7 billion and to decry the system that produces people like him, to live among the powerful while lambasting those who lord it over others. Before the global downturn, which Lebedev says has cost him $1 billion, he was a predictable, if persistent, critic of former President and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, routinely calling for an independent legislature, a free press and free elections, and a crackdown on corruption. Improving his image has been the Moscow tabloid he co-owns, Novaya Gazetta, which is known for publishing stories on the war in Chechnya, bribe-seeking officials and the nation's abysmal public services. Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist famous for her dispatches from Chechnya, was one of the paper's star reporters before being shot to death in 2006, presumably for writing the wrong story. (Read: "A Russian Reporter's Murder: Will a Retrial Bring Justice?")
But since the Russian stock markets crashed in mid-September - Bloomberg has reported that Russia's top 25 wealthiest people have lost a collective $230 billion - Lebedev's campaign has acquired a new urgency. He has ridiculed the efforts of Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev to revive the economy, including bailouts for the oligarchs that he estimates at roughly $11 billion. He has announced plans for an English-language radio channel in Moscow; bought the London newspaper the Evening Standard; announced plans to launch a democratic political party with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev; and (briefly) run for mayor of Sochi, host of the 2014 Winter Olympics. (Read a TIME article on why Mikhail Gorbachev is an environmental hero.)
"The system doesn't work," Lebedev says. "It has nothing to do with the ordinary Russian." He pauses for just a moment. "I don't think I'm an enemy of this state. I am a critic, yes. But they need an opposition who is going to correct their mistakes, and they need a different political system."
Lebedev seems an unlikely person to make that case. A few weeks earlier, near the center of Moscow in a stately pink building where he sometimes works and sleeps, Lebedev gave me a condensed history of the Russian state since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 - the beginnings of post-Soviet capitalism, the rise of the oligarchs, the loans-for-shares scandal, his acquisition of National Reserve Bank, the rise of Putin, the fall of the oligarchs, his 28% stake in Aeroflot, the Khodorkovsky affair, the forthcoming launch of his restaurant in London, the end of democracy in Russia, Davos, and fellow oligarch (and Chelsea Football Club owner) Roman Abramovich. (See pictures of EURO 2008 soccer.)
The Oligarchs and the State I ask Lebedev where the word oligarch comes from. "I think it was invented by Berezovsky somewhere in the '90s," he says dismissively, referring to Boris Berezovsky, the former oil and media magnate who prospered during Yelstin's rule but fled Russia facing accusations of fraud after Putin took charge. For most of that decade, between five and 10 businessmen (most notably Berezovsky, Mikhail Fridman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vladimir Potanin and Vladimir Gusinsky) ruled Russia. Their power reached its height at Yeltsin's re-election as President in 1996 - the same oligarchs who financed Yeltsin's campaign went on to buy lucrative state assets at knock-down prices. When he took power in 2000, Putin immediately set out to rein in the oligarchs, offering them a straightforward deal: Keep your money, but stay out of politics. Khodorkovsky, now confined in a prison five time zones east of Moscow, is testament to what happens to oligarchs who don't play by the rules. The former head of Yukos was on the verge of forming a partnership with Exxon-Mobil, and had called for a more open and democratic nation - both big no-nos in Putin's Russia - before he was arrested in 2003.
Read: "Boris Yeltsin: Not Your Average Statesman."
See pictures of the fashions of Russian Czars.
Today, the word oligarch is bandied about in the media, but it is a misnomer. The oligarchy is no longer detached from, or in opposition to, the state. It is an extension of it. Many of the very rich people who once ran Russia still run it - but they have been brought to heel by a vastly more powerful Kremlin. Their wealth is "granted" to them by a Kremlin that demands loyalty and is prepared to use all means available to enforce it. They serve the Czar (or President, or Prime Minister) at his pleasure. They understand very well that to defy the Czar is to sacrifice everything they have. They are glorified managers or subordinates who enjoy great wealth that can be taken from them at any minute, and the only way they know to secure their fortunes is to endear themselves to the state - to become cheerleaders for it. "Russia is ruled by the same people who own it," says Masha Lipman, a political analyst at Moscow's Carnegie Center. "It's not even a legitimate question to ask whether the 'oligarchs' ... work 'for the Kremlin,' for it is sometimes impossible to draw the line between the 'oligarchs' and the Kremlin."
Herein lies the reason for Lebedev's split personality. He is indeed an oligarch - the Russian magazine Finans reported that he was the 25th wealthiest person in the country in 2008, up from No. 46 in 2007. But he has never bent the knee to Putin. In Lebedev we find, if you like, the good oligarch - the Russian with whom Westerners can do business. He has made friends with prominent people in London (Elton John, Margaret Thatcher) and Hollywood (Kevin Spacey, John Malkovich), floating freely between boardrooms and state dinners. In March, Lebedev traveled to Washington with Gorbachev, who was slated to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama. "I do and say whatever I want," he says. "If somebody wants to kill me, I do not treat it as enough reason to stop doing something, if I'm pursuing certain values or principles. It's simple." (See pictures of Obama in Russia.)
The Question Lenin Asked What is not simple is Russia. That quintessentially Russian query - What is to be done? - continues to bedevil the Kremlin. The country is, after all, falling apart. The price of oil is down sharply from its high of $147 a barrel in July 2008. The markets have been badly shaken by Putin's attack on steel giant Mechel, the breakup of the oil conglomerate TNK-BP (during which the Russians none-so-subtly squeezed out their British partners), and last summer's war with Georgia. And then, of course, there's the global financial crisis, which has hit Russia particularly hard. On top of all the economic woes, there's a shrinking population, a military that remains something of a joke and a problem with AIDS. Plus, you still can't (or shouldn't) drink a glass of tap water in central Moscow.
All this has aroused Lebedev's reformist zeal. More than ever, he says, Russia needs an independent judiciary and legislature, a free press, real elections, real political parties. The oligarchs, he says, understand that the system cannot survive forever. They are scared and looking for handouts. (At the top of the list is Oleg Deripaska, head of investment firm Basic Element, which has interests in the aluminum, energy and financial-services sectors among others, and recently received a $4.5-billion infusion from the state.) "Once they found themselves in trouble they started this sort of SOS signal, calling on Putin's door, 'Give us the money,' " he says. Lebedev says he is not receiving any government cash, and that the crisis and the bailouts are only widening the chasm between the "first tier" of people who own (and run) Russia and everyone else. "The first tier, this is where the crisis happened. As far as the second tier of the country is concerned, there could be no crisis because the crisis was there permanently, for 500 years."
Russia's problem, Lebedev thinks, is not Putin but the bureaucracy, which is sprawling and antidemocratic, and stymies reform. "As far as Putin is concerned, I'm not blaming it on him. I think he doesn't see it. These TV channels pocket billions of dollars in exchange for flattering Putin." Lebedev has hopes for Medvedev. He was impressed with the President's decision to meet with Novaya Gazetta editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov and Gorbachev earlier this year, following the killing of yet another Novaya Gazetta reporter. "Medvedev ... said he's a full supporter of the Gulag Memorial project," Lebedev says. (Memorial was the most important human-rights group to emerge from the perestroika era. For years it has pushed for a monument in the center of Moscow recalling the victims of the gulag.) Putin, Lebedev says, would never back anything that subtracted from the Soviet record. "I think Putin thinks that this commemoration would spoil the everyday spirit," Lebedev says. "Stalin, for them, represents the state, and sometimes you can see Putin as sort of - in that way." (See pictures of Putin.)
But is Lebedev the reformer he sees himself as, or does he play another role? "There's a belief - and this existed in Soviet times - that allowing a pressure valve of dissent and allowing certain voices out there is important for legitimacy," says Robert Amsterdam, a Canadian attorney in London who has represented Khodorkovsky and frequently blogs about Russia. "In a strange way, and whether or not Lebedev is part of this, he may well be seen as a demonstration of the regime's legitimacy." As long as he doesn't "cross any of these invisible lines, Lebedev may actually shield the Kremlin from further criticism," Amsterdam says.
Lebedev understands that he has multiple uses - that he alternately angers, inspires, amuses and mystifies the Kremlin, fellow oligarchs, democratic activists and Western allies alike. Yet this much seems indisputable: simply by calling for a more open Russia and denouncing the myopia and ignorance of "the power," Lebedev is helping to make room for a new kind of politics. This is the overwhelming sense you get when speaking with him: that possibilities are opening, that things are happening that you are only vaguely aware of. You sense - you hope - that these things will somehow deliver Russia from its current doldrums, and they may very well do that. Lebedev is in charge of this puppet show. And that must be a good thing.
See TIME's Pictures of the Week.
See the Cartoons of the Week.

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Internet radio was pioneered by Carl Malamud. In 1993, Malamud launched "Internet Talk Radio" which was the "first computer-radio talk show, each week interviewing a computer expert." However, as late as 1995, this service was not available via multicast streaming; it was distributed "as audio files that computer users fetch one by one."

On November 7, 1994, WXYC (89.3 FM Chapel Hill, NC USA) became the first traditional radio station to announce broadcasting on the Internet. WXYC used an FM radio connected to a system at SunSite, later known as Ibiblio, running Cornell's CU-SeeMe software. WXYC had begun test broadcasts and bandwidth testing as early as August, 1994. WREK (91.1 FM, Atlanta, GA USA) started streaming on the same day using their own custom software called CyberRadio1. However, unlike WXYC, this was WREK's beta launch and the stream was not advertised until a later date.

Internet Radio

LOS ANGELES – The Southern California hospital where Nadya Suleman's octuplets were born has been fined $187,500 for failing to protect their medical privacy, state health officials said Thursday.
The California Department of Public Health said it was the second time Kaiser Permanente's Bellflower hospital was fined under new legislation designed to protect patients' medical records. In May, the hospital was fined $250,000 when it was determined employees looked at Suleman's medical information.
Kaiser Permanente spokesman Jim Anderson said Thursday an internal investigation found that eight Bellflower Medical Center employees improperly accessed four of the babies' records during the week after they were born on Jan. 26.
Four of those eight employees resigned in February for looking at Suleman's medical files, the hospital said. One more was fired, two employees resigned, and another was disciplined for looking at the babies' records, Anderson said.
Kaiser officials said a total of 27 people looked at either the mother's or the babies' records without authorization: Altogether, two were fired, nine were disciplined, and 16 resigned.
"We have no reason to believe that anyone gave this information to anyone else or the media," Anderson said. "The state followed up on our report and checked that we reported accurately."
Kaiser reported the violations connected to Suleman to the state in February and the violations connected to the four babies in late April. The public health officials issued their own report and announced the fines Thursday.
The births of the first surviving octuplets sparked a media frenzy. But public adoration soon turned to scorn after it was revealed that Suleman was unemployed and had conceived the octuplets, along with six older children, through in vitro fertilization.

Mouse Pads

The three most important benefits of the introduction of the mousepad were higher speed, more precision, and comfort for the user. A secondary benefit was keeping the desk or table surface from being scratched and worn by continuous hand and mouse rubbing motion. Another benefit was reduction of the collection of debris under the mouse, which resulted in reduced jitter of the pointer on the display.

Originally, mousepads were available in a simple rectangular shape. In recent years, though, they have been available in many shapes and designs. Ergonomic designs are available with built-in wrist rests made of silicone gel, foamed and beaded materials.

MOSCOW (Reuters) –
The abduction and murder of a prominent human rights activist from Chechnya sparked international outrage on Thursday and her grieving supporters asked "Who is next?."

Friends carried Natalia Estemirova's body from neighboring Ingushetia, where she was dumped in woodland after she was abducted as she left home, and buried her in Chechnya.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Russia to clarify the circumstances surrounding her killing.

"I expressed my shock at the death," Merkel said after meeting Russian President Dimitry Medvedev in Germany.

Medvedev called it "a very sad event" and said he was determined to find and punish Estemirova's killers.

His remarks contrasted to those of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who when president in 2006 was dismissive of slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, saying she had "minimal influence" on Russian society.

Politkovskaya was gunned down in her Moscow apartment building in 2006. Nobody has been convicted of her murder.

The human rights organization she worked for, Memorial, and Helsinki Group, Russia's oldest NGO, blamed Chechnya's Kremlin-backed president for Estemirova's killing.

Amnesty International said it stemmed from a culture of impunity both within Chechnya and in Russia as a whole. The United States called it an "outrageous crime."

A close friend of Politkovskaya, Estemirova, aged about 50, and who leaves a 15-year-old daughter, worked for Memorial in the Chechen capital Grozny and documented abuses by law enforcement agencies.

Her abduction in Chechnya on Wednesday and killing was the latest of a series of deaths of establishment critics which have led to questions about Medvedev's pledges to uphold the law.

Russia's Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev told reporters in Munich the government was pursuing several scenarios, while prosecutor General Yury Chaika was shown on Russian television saying he would take personal control of the case.

Memorial's chairman Oleg Orlov blamed Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, an ex-rebel turned Kremlin loyalist.

"I know, I am sure of it, who is guilty for the murder of Natalia ... His name is Ramzan Kadyrov," he said in a statement.

"Ramzan already threatened Natalia, insulted her, considered her a personal enemy."

Kadyrov's spokesman said her killers would be punished.

"Estemirova defended human rights. She couldn't possibly have had enemies amongst clear-thinking people," he said. "Those who took her life do not deserve to be called people. They deserve no mercy and they should be punished as the cruelest of criminals."

BURIED IN HER NATIVE CHECHNYA

Friends took Estemirova's body, wrapped in a green and floral blanket, out of a yellow van in her native village of Ishkoi-Yurt in Chechnya.

Dozens of women sobbed under the blazing sunshine as men gave condolences to her family. She was buried in a cemetery in the small town of Koshkeldy, a witness said.

In front of her office in Grozny, a black-clad mourner held up the sign "Who is next?," TV showed.

In Moscow, around 100 people stood silently near a central square, some holding photos of Estemirova and Politkovskaya.

"I wish to believe in the sincerity of his words ... I don't have faith that we will see the right people in the dock," said supporter Natalia Rostova of Medvedev's promise.

IHS Global Insight said the authorities could be responsible.

"There are plausible signs that the perpetrators either belonged to the security forces or had false identifications, as they managed to cross the tightly guarded border between Chechnya and Ingushetia," analyst Natalia Leshchenko said.

Her body was found with two wounds to the head and the Ingush Interior Ministry said she had been murdered on Wednesday morning. Rights groups said she had been shot.

Rights groups said Estemirova -- the inaugural recipient in 2007 of the Anna Politkovskaya Award given by the charity Reach All Women in War -- was snatched as she left home, and cried out she was being kidnapped as she was forced into a vehicle and driven away.

Separatists in mainly Muslim Chechnya fought two wars against Moscow in the 1990s. It still faces a simmering Islamist insurgency along with Ingushetia and Dagestan.

Human rights groups have repeatedly accused the authorities in Chechnya of serious abuses including house burning, extra-judicial killings, torture and illegal punishment.

(Additional reporting by David Alexander in Washington and Oleg Shchedrov in Munich; Editing by Alison Williams)

SANTA ANA, Calif. – A Chinese-born engineer was convicted Thursday of stealing trade secrets critical to the U.S. space program in the nation's first economic espionage trial.
A federal judge found former Boeing Co. engineer Dongfan "Greg" Chung guilty of six counts of economic espionage and other charges for hoarding 300,000 pages of sensitive documents in his home, including information about the U.S. space shuttle and a booster rocket.
"The trust Boeing placed in Mr. Chung to safeguard its proprietary and trade secret information obviously meant very little to Mr. Chung," U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney wrote in his 31-page ruling. "He cast it aside to serve the PRC (People's Republic of China), which he proudly proclaimed as his `motherland.'"
Federal prosecutors accused the 73-year-old stress analyst of using his 30-year career at Boeing and Rockwell International to steal the documents. They said investigators found papers stacked throughout Chung's house that included sensitive information about a fueling system for a booster rocket — documents that Boeing employees were ordered to lock away at the close of work each day. They said Boeing invested $50 million in the technology over a five-year period.
The judge convicted Chung of six counts of economic espionage, one count of acting as a foreign agent, one count of conspiracy and one count of lying to federal agents. He was acquitted of obstruction of justice.
Chung was handcuffed and taken into federal custody following the ruling. He is set to be sentenced Nov. 9.
Federal prosecutor Ivy Wang said Chung could face a maximum sentence of more than 90 years in prison.
"I hope that one of the messages that goes out is if someone is going to steal proprietary information and steal that information for the benefit of another country, they are going to be charged in this country and face very serious punishment for doing so," Wang said after the ruling.
Chung opted for a non-jury trial that ended June 24. During the 10-day trial, defense attorneys said Chung was a "pack rat" who hoarded documents at his house but insisted he was not a spy.
They said Chung may have violated Boeing policy by bringing the papers home, but he didn't break any laws and the U.S. government couldn't prove he had given any of the information to China.
After the ruling, defense attorney Thomas Bienert said he planned to appeal.
"A big feature (of this case) is not about what China wanted Mr. Chung to do, but about what Mr. Chung was willing to do," Bienert said outside the courtroom. "There is no evidence that China used or benefited from anything in this case."
Chung had been free on $250,000 bail before the verdict. His attorneys asked the judge to let him remain with his family in Orange until sentencing, but the government said a man facing such a long sentence with close ties to China could easily flee to the Chinese consulate and never return.
The Economic Espionage Act was passed in 1996 to help the government crack down on the theft of information from private companies that contract with the government to develop U.S. space and military technologies.
The legislation became a priority in the mid-1990s when the United States realized China and other countries were targeting private businesses as part of their spy strategy.
Since then, six economic espionage cases have settled before trial. Another is set for trial in U.S. District Court in San Jose this year.
Chung worked for Rockwell International until it was bought by Boeing in 1996. He stayed with the Chicago-based company until he was laid off in 2002. After the Columbia space shuttle disaster in 2003, Chung was brought back as a consultant. He was fired when the FBI began its investigation in 2006.
The government believes Chung began spying for the Chinese in the late 1970s, a few years after he became a naturalized U.S. citizen and was hired by Rockwell.

Prosecutors said they discovered Chung's activities while investigating another suspected Chinese spy, Chi Mak. Mak was convicted in 2007 of conspiracy to export U.S. defense technology to China and sentenced to more than 24 years in prison.

Mak was not charged under the Economic Espionage Act.

Cap Cana's area includes more than one-hundred and twenty millon square meters of land, of which twenty-five million will be developed in its first phase. It also includes 8 kilometers of beach and coasts, 5 of which are considered to be among the most spectacular in the Caribbean, locally considered to be neck-in-neck to the beaches of Bahia de Las Aguilas (literally, Bay of the Eagles) located in the southwestern municipality of Perdernales- often referred by past visitors as some of the most beautiful in the world.

Cap Cana is a tourism development with an investment of upwards of two billion dollars in the eastern lands of the Dominican Republic. This area renown for its great hotels and beaches, lacks exclusivity to the high upper class which Cap Cana hopes, in part, to offer. The area was conceived with the backing both financially and publicly of "elites" such as Donald Trump, Jack Nicklaus, and other holders.

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