Phoenix, Las Vegas Heat Wave: Temperatures Of Nearly 120 Degrees Expected Over Weekend

PHOENIX ? A blazing heat wave expected to send the mercury soaring to nearly 120 degrees in Phoenix and Las Vegas over the weekend settled across the West on Friday, threatening to ground airliners and raising fears that pets will get burned on the scalding pavement.

The heat was so punishing that rangers took up positions at trailheads at Lake Mead in Nevada to persuade people not to hike. Zookeepers in Phoenix hosed down the elephants and fed tigers frozen fish snacks. And tourists at California's Death Valley took photos of the harsh landscape and a thermometer that read 121.

The mercury there was expected to reach nearly 130 through the weekend ? just short of the 134-degree reading from a century ago that stands as the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth.

"You have to take a picture of something like this. Otherwise no one will believe you," said Laura McAlpine, visiting Death Valley from Scotland on Friday.

The heat is not expected to break until Monday or Tuesday.

The scorching weather presented problems for airlines because high temperatures can make it more difficult for planes to take off. Hot air reduces lift and also can diminish engine performance. Planes taking off in the heat may need longer runways or may have to shed weight by carrying less fuel or cargo.

Smaller jets and propeller planes are more likely to be affected than bigger airliners that are better equipped for extreme temperatures.

However, Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport officials reported no such heat-related problems with any flights by Friday evening.

The National Weather Service said Phoenix reached 116 on Friday, two degrees short of the expected high, in part because of a light layer of smoke from wildfires in neighboring New Mexico that shielded the blazing sun. Las Vegas still was expecting near record highs over the weekend approaching 116 degrees while Phoenix was forecast to hit nearly 120. The record in Phoenix is 122.

Temperatures are also expected to soar across Utah and into Wyoming and Idaho, with triple-digit heat forecast for the Boise area. Cities in Washington state that are better known for cool, rainy weather should break the 90s next week.

"This is the hottest time of the year, but the temperatures that we'll be looking at for Friday through Sunday, they'll be toward the top," said National Weather Service meteorologist Mark O'Malley. "It's going to be baking hot across much of the entire West."

The heat is the result of a high-pressure system brought on by a shift in the jet stream, the high-altitude air current that dictates weather patterns. The jet stream has been more erratic in the past few years.

Health officials warned people to be extremely careful when venturing outdoors. The risks include not only dehydration and heat stroke but burns from the concrete and asphalt. Dogs can suffer burns and blisters on their paws by walking on scorching pavement.

"You will see people who go out walking with their dog at noon or in the middle of the day and don't bring enough water and it gets tragic pretty quickly," said Bretta Nelson, spokeswoman for the Arizona Humane Society. "You just don't want to find out the hard way."

Cooling stations were set up to shelter the homeless as well as elderly people who can't afford to run their air conditioners. In Phoenix, Joe Arpaio, the famously hard-nosed sheriff who runs a tent jail, planned to distribute ice cream and cold towels to inmates this weekend.

Officials said personnel were added to the Border Patrol search-and-rescue unit because of the danger to people trying to slip across the Mexican border. At least seven people have been found dead in the last week in Arizona after falling victim to the brutal desert heat.

In June 1990, when Phoenix hit 122 degrees, airlines were forced to cease flights for several hours because of a lack of data from the manufacturers on how the aircraft would operate in such extreme heat.

US Airways spokesman Todd Lehmacher said the airline now knows that its Boeings can fly at up to 126 degrees, and its Airbus fleet can operate at up to 127.

While the heat in Las Vegas is expected to peak on Sunday, it's unlikely to sideline the first round of the four-week Bikini Invitational tournament.

"I feel sorry for those poor girls having to strut themselves in 115 degrees, but there's $100,000 up for grabs," said Hard Rock casino spokeswoman Abigail Miller. "I think the girls are willing to make the sacrifice."

___

Carlson contributed in Death Valley, Calif. Also contributing were Robert Jablon in Los Angeles, Julie Jacobson and Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas, Michelle Price in Salt Lake City, Cristina Silva and Bob Christie in Phoenix and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, N.M.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/28/phoenix-las-vegas-heat-wave_n_3520075.html

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Justin Bieber Photo Shoot Contract: No Selena Gomez Music!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/06/justin-bieber-photo-shoot-contract-no-selena-gomez-music/

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Ecuador heats rhetoric as Obama downplays Snowden

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) ? President Barack Obama tried to cool the international frenzy over Edward Snowden on Thursday as Ecuador stepped up its defiance and said it was preemptively rejecting millions in trade benefits that it could lose by taking in the fugitive from his limbo in a Moscow airport.

The country seen as likeliest to shelter the National Security Agency leaker seemed determined to prove it could handle any repercussions, with three of its highest officials calling an early-morning news conference to "unilaterally and irrevocably renounce" $23 million a year in lowered tariffs on products such as roses, shrimp and frozen vegetables.

Fernando Alvarado, the secretary of communications for leftist President Rafael Correa, sarcastically suggested the U.S. use the money to train government employees to respect human rights.

Obama, meanwhile, sought to downplay the international chase for the man he called "a 29-year-old hacker" and lower the temperature of an issue that has raised tensions between the U.S. and uneasy partners Russia and China. Obama said in Senegal that the damage to U.S. national security has already been done and his top focus now is making sure it can't happen again.

"I'm not going to have one case with a suspect who we're trying to extradite suddenly be elevated to the point where I've got to start doing wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues, simply to get a guy extradited so he can face the justice system," Obama said at a joint news conference with Senegal's President Macky Sall.

While the Ecuadorean government appeared angry over U.S. threats of punishment if it accepts Snowden, there were also mixed signals about how eager it was to grant asylum. For days, officials here have been blasting the U.S. and praising Snowden's leaks of NSA eavesdropping secrets as a blow for global human rights.

But they also have repeatedly insisted that they are nowhere close to making a decision on whether Snowden can leave Moscow, where he is believed to be holed up in an airport transit zone, for refuge in this oil-rich South American nation.

"It's a complex situation, we don't know how it'll be resolved," Correa told a news conference Thursday in his first public comments on the case aside from a handful of postings on Twitter.

The Ecuadorean leader said that in order for Snowden's asylum application to be processed, he would have to be in Ecuador or inside an Ecuadorean Embassy, "and he isn't." Another country would have to permit Snowden to transit its territory for that requirement to be met, Correa said.

WikiLeaks, which has been aiding Snowden, announced earlier he was en route to Ecuador and had received a travel document. On Wednesday, the Univision television network displayed an unsigned letter of safe passage for him.

Officials on Thursday acknowledged that the Ecuadorean Embassy in London had issued a June 22 letter of safe passage for Snowden that calls on other countries to allow him to travel to asylum in Ecuador. But Ecuador's secretary of political management, Betty Tola, said the letter was invalid because it was issued without the approval of the government in the capital, Quito.

She also threatened legal action against whoever leaked the document, which she said "has no validity and is the exclusive responsibility of the person who issued it."

"This demonstrates a total lack of coordination in the department of foreign affairs," said Santiago Basabe, a professor of political science at the Latin American School of Social Sciences in Quito. "It's no small question to issue a document of safe passage or a diplomatic document for someone like Snowden without this decision being taken directly by the foreign minister or president."

Other analysts, however, saw not confusion but internal divisions in the Ecuadorean government.

Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank focused on Latin America, said many in Washington believed that Correa, a leftist elected to a third term in February, had been telegraphing a desire to moderate and take a softer tack toward the United States and private business.

Harder-core leftists led by Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino may be seeking to maintain a tough line, he said, a division expressing itself in confusing messages.

"I think there really are different factions within the government on this," Shifter said. "Correa wants to become more moderate. That has been the signal that has been communicated in Washington."

Embarrassment for the Obama administration over the surveillance revelations continued as the British newspaper The Guardian reported that it allowed the National Security Agency for more than two years to collect records detailing email and Internet use by Americans. The story cited documents showing that under the program a federal judge could approve a bulk collection order for Internet metadata every 90 days.

A senior Obama administration confirmed the program and said it ended in 2011, according to The Guardian. The records were first collected during the Bush administration and involved "communications with at least one communicant outside the United States or for which no communicant was known to be a citizen of the United States."

The report said that eventually the NSA was allowed to "analyze communications metadata associated with United States persons and persons believed to be in the United States," according to a 2007 Justice Department memo marked secret.

The U.S. administration is supposed to decide by Monday whether to grant Ecuador export privileges under the Generalized System of Preferences, a program meant to spur development and growth in poorer countries. The deadline was set long before the Snowden affair.

More broadly, a larger trade pact allowing reduced tariffs on more than $5 billion in annual exports to the U.S. is up for congressional renewal before July 21. While approval of the Andean Trade Preference Act has long been seen as doubtful in Washington, Ecuador has been lobbying strongly for its renewal.

On Wednesday, Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, pledged to lead an effort to block extension of U.S. tariff benefits if Ecuador grants asylum to Snowden, who turned 30 last week. Nearly half of Ecuador's billions a year in foreign trade depends on the United States.

The Obama administration said Thursday that accepting Snowden would damage the overall relationship between the two countries and analysts said it was almost certain that granting the leaker asylum would lead the U.S. to cut roughly $30 million a year in military and law enforcement assistance.

Granting asylum to Snowden would cause "great difficulties in our bilateral relationship," State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said. "If they take that step, that would have very negative repercussions."

Alvarado, the communications minister, said his country rejects economic "blackmail" in the form of threats against the trade measures.

"The preferences were authorized for Andean countries as compensation for the fight against drugs, but soon became a new instrument of pressure," he said. "As a result, Ecuador unilaterally and irrevocably renounces these preferences."

Alvarado did not explicitly mention the separate effort to win trade benefits under the presidential order.

He did suggest, however, how the U.S. could use the money saved from Ecuadorean tariffs ? to train government employees to respect citizens' rights.

"Ecuador offers the United States $23 million a year in economic aid, an amount similar to what we were receiving under the tariff benefits, with the purpose of providing human rights training that will contribute to avoid violations of people's privacy, that degrade humanity," he said.

___

Pace reported from Dakar, Senegal. Gonzalo Solano in Quito, Peter Orsi in Caracas, Venezuela, and Ken Thomas in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ecuador-heats-rhetoric-obama-downplays-snowden-194838354.html

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Kenya's economic growth quickens in Q1 helped by farming

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya said on Friday its economy expanded by an annualised rate of 5.2 percent in the first quarter of 2013 from 3.9 percent in the same period last year, helped by a buoyant agricultural sector.

A presidential election in March had been expected to drag on growth in the first quarter, because of fears that Kenya could see a repeat of the violence that marred the previous vote five years earlier and put a brake on the economy.

"Given what we know now of the smooth passage of elections, and the rapid recovery in confidence post-election, the outlook for full year 2013 growth looks very positive," Razia Khan, head of Africa research at Standard Chartered Bank, wrote in a note.

The statistics office said the looming presidential vote had dampened business activity in the first quarter, but said in its statement that the agricultural sector had performed well.

"The first quarter of 2013 experienced improved weather conditions for some key crops compared to the same quarter of 2012," it said.

Mark Bohlund, senior economist at Global Insight, was more circumspect about prospects, saying the fact that agriculture based on good weather was the main driver suggested underlying economic momentum remained relatively weak.

He forecast 2013 growth of 4.6 percent, below the 5.5 percent predicted in a Reuters poll earlier in June.

Noting an upwardly revised growth estimate of 5.1 percent for the fourth quarter of 2012, Khan said the second quarter could expect a bounce back in the restaurant and hotel business, the sector that was most affected by concerns about the vote.

"The challenge for Kenya will be to steer a steady course, maintaining this positive momentum, while avoiding any new credit or asset market bubbles," she wrote.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kenyas-economic-growth-quickens-q1-stats-office-140519150.html

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When will your company begin accounting for nature? | GreenBiz.com

Corporate accounting may not sound like a domain that intersects neatly with environmental metrics. While this disjuncture has been historically true, it may be undergoing a 180-degree change.

The Dow Chemical Co. and other corporate decision-makers are looking at environmental metrics as important for incorporating into corporate accounting and spreadsheets. Advocates argue that this work would provide a more complete and accurate picture of the investments and flows of natural resource inputs, as well as goods and revenues from a company over time.

This more comprehensive picture of the business realities is contingent upon introduction of new metrics of how mutually dependent business, built infrastructure and natural systems are functioning today and in the future. Once the analytical approaches are developed in the coming years, this work may well become the norm for business.

In many ways, this shift is what futurist Peter Schwartz would dub an "inevitable surprise." Dave Batker of Earth Economics asserts that we are at a fundamental inflection point in how we track and measure economic and financial "well-being" and flows. In their book "What's the Economy for Anyway?" he and co-author John de Graaf assert:

"We're not in the 20th century anymore. ... The climate is changing, with potentially disastrous consequences. Useful water is less available, while floods are increasingly prolific. Unlike in the 1930s, when roads and indoor plumbing were scarce [in the U.S. and Europe] and forests, water and wetlands were abundant, now roads [in many parts of the world] are abundant and natural systems and their services, such as flood protection, are increasingly scarce and more valuable. Yet neither our economy nor our measures of economic progress reflect these realities."

We need significant changes in what is measured and managed by both the private and public sector alike.

Dow now is trying to identify a pathway forward that can be operationalized in corporate accounting. The company and The Nature Conservancy announced a collaboration in January 2011 to help Dow and other companies recognize, value and incorporate nature into global business goals, decisions and strategies.

Forest image by Stephane Bidouze via Shutterstock.

Next page: Interdependence and profitability

Source: http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2013/06/28/when-will-your-company-begin-accounting-nature

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Microsoft Build 2013 event wrap-up

We came. We handled Windows 8.1. We grabbed news about the latest and greatest from Microsoft. We picked up a few new Steve Ballmer catch phrases ("touch touch touch touch!"). Then, we left. In a nutshell, this was our experience covering Microsoft Build 2013 this week at the Moscone Center, though it obviously was much more involved. Fortunately, we were able to bring you, dear reader, along for the action -- but in case you missed any of the excitement as it happened, you'll find a list of all of the announcements, hands-ons and other posts we covered during the event below the break. Feel free to also visit our Build event page for an extra visual oomph.

Filed under: Announcements, Microsoft

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/FG8GDkyE3dA/

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Filing: Gov doesn't want challenge to surveillance

CHICAGO (AP) ? Lawyers for a U.S. citizen charged with terrorism in Chicago said Friday in a filing that the government is purposely dodging questions about whether it used expanded secret surveillance programs against their client in a calculated bid to ensure the hotly debated practices can't be challenged in the Supreme Court.

The claim came in an early morning filing at federal court in Chicago by attorneys for Adel Daoud. The 19-year-old, of Hillsdale, is accused of trying to ignite what he thought was a car bomb outside a bar last year in Chicago. Daoud, whose trial is set for Feb. 3, has pleaded not guilty to attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and other charges.

In their own filing last week, federal prosecutors refused to say whether they used far-reaching surveillance programs to launch their two-year investigation of the suburban teenager, saying they were under no legal obligation to spell out just what led to an FBI sting focused on Daoud.

Recent leaks by a former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden, revealed that a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA court, authorized one program that gathers U.S. phone records and another that tracks the use of U.S.-based Internet servers by foreigners with possible links terrorism.

Friday's 13-page defense filing argues the government's refusal to confirm or deny whether it used those programs left defense attorneys legally hamstrung: With no answer, they have no grounds to mount a challenge to the programs' constitutionality, and yet prosecutors could still use the evidence at trial.

"Whenever it is good for the government to brag about its success, it speaks loudly and publicly (about its surveillance methods)," the filing says. "When a criminal defendant's constitutional rights are at stake, however, it quickly and unequivocally clams up under the guise of state secrets."

A message seeking comment was left early Friday with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago. Federal prosecutors typically do not comment on pending cases.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman, who is overseeing Daoud's case, has said she will hear oral arguments soon on the dispute. She could order government attorneys to state clearly if they used the expanded surveillance or she could agree with prosecutors that they are under no obligation to do so.

The main point of contention in Daoud's case, as in much of the national debate over U.S. surveillance, is the secret FISA court ? set up by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

FISA amendments adopted by Congress in 2008 allow the government to obtain broad intercept orders from the court ? raising the prospect that calls and emails between foreign targets and innocent Americans could also be subject to surveillance.

In February, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to throw out an attempt by U.S. citizens to challenge the 2008 expansion of FISA on grounds they could not prove the government will monitor their conversations along with those of potential foreign terrorist and intelligence targets.

But the high court added that its decision did not insulate the FISA expansion from judicial review, and it suggested a couple of ways a challenge could be brought, including a scenario in which an American lawyer did get swept up in FISA monitoring.

Prosecutors have said the investigation of Daoud began in 2011 when the FBI detected he was active on extremist Internet forums and sites in which he inquired about killing Americans. By 2012, undercover agents posing as terrorists had engaged Daoud in email conversations, telling him they would help him stage an attack. On Sept. 14, 2012, Daoud allegedly drove a Jeep Cherokee to the Chicago bar with what he thought was a bomb inside. After he pushed a mock triggering device, FBI agents moved in and arrested him.

___

Follow Michael Tarm at www.twitter.com/mtarm

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-06-21-US-Chicago-Terrorism-Arrest-Surveillance/id-807faf1a41634b82aedb925718eeaa8d

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Graphene-based system could lead to improved information processing

June 21, 2013 ? Researchers at MIT have proposed a new system that combines ferroelectric materials -- the kind often used for data storage -- with graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon known for its exceptional electronic and mechanical properties. The resulting hybrid technology could eventually lead to computer and data-storage chips that pack more components in a given area and are faster and less power-hungry.

The new system works by controlling waves called surface plasmons. These waves are oscillations of electrons confined at interfaces between materials; in the new system the waves operate at terahertz frequencies. Such frequencies lie between those of far-infrared light and microwave radio transmissions, and are considered ideal for next-generation computing devices.

The findings were reported in a paper in Applied Physics Letters by associate professor of mechanical engineering Nicholas Fang, postdoc Dafei Jin and three others.

The system would provide a new way to construct interconnected devices that use light waves, such as fiber-optic cables and photonic chips, with electronic wires and devices. Currently, such interconnection points often form a bottleneck that slows the transfer of data and adds to the number of components needed.

The team's new system allows waves to be concentrated at much smaller length scales, which could lead to a tenfold gain in the density of components that could be placed in a given area of a chip, Fang says.

The team's initial proof-of-concept device uses a small piece of graphene sandwiched between two layers of the ferroelectric material to make simple, switchable plasmonic waveguides. This work used lithium niobate, but many other such materials could be used, the researchers say.

Light can be confined in these waveguides down to one part in a few hundreds of the free-space wavelength, Jin says, which represents an order-of-magnitude improvement over any comparable waveguide system. "This opens up exciting areas for transmitting and processing optical signals," he says.

Moreover, the work may provide a new way to read and write electronic data into ferroelectric memory devices at very high speed, the MIT researchers say.

Dimitri Basov, a professor of physics at the University of California at San Diego who was not connected with this research, says the MIT team "proposed a very interesting plasmonic structure, suitable for operation in the technologically significant [terahertz] range. ? I am confident that many research groups will try to implement these devices."

Basov cautions, however, "The key issue, as in all of plasmonics, is losses. Losses need to be thoroughly explored and understood."

In addition to Fang and Jin, the research was carried out by graduate student Anshuman Kumar, former postdoc Kin Hung Fung (now at Hong Kong Polytechnic University), and research scientist Jun Xu. It was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/4eQl1-5Fu_M/130621095620.htm

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Jamhub TourBus: Rocking Out With the Volume Down

Price: $699

Give even the head-bangiest metal band the 85-knobbed Jamhub TourBus and it can quiet down. The semicircular $700 device acts as a studio?complete with effects and personal monitor controls?and one that's silent to anyone who's not plugged in. Seven people, each with his or her own settings, can connect to the device and listen to the group through headphones, each adjusting his or her own settings to duplicate those of on-stage playing or to avoid volume-related arguments.

Each person gets an instrument in, mic in, and headphones jack, along with controls for effects levels, input and output volumes, stage pan (to mimic physical location on a stage), and, most importantly, levels controls for everyone else in the band. So, if you're shredding away on lead guitar at turned-to-11 volume, that's fine?everyone else can turn down your levels to something they can live with. This setup would work nearly perfectly if it weren't for the fact that turning down one player's levels turns down both the instrument and vocal inputs for that person?you can't turn down someone's unsavory singing without turning down their possibly pleasant instrument playing too. Still, it's a tiny price to pay for the convenience of rehearsing as loudly as you want, anywhere.

Learning the Jamhub interface isn't as daunting as all the knobs and inputs would suggest. The inner ring of each player's left knob controls the instrument input level, while the outer ring of that knob controls the mic. On the right are the levels controls for effects (which affect vocals only) on the outside and headphones volume on the inside. The virtual stage is adjusted with the pan knob in the center. The rest of each player's controls are for limiting or boosting everyone else's volumes in that player's headphones.

Jamhub intends players to use the back row of knobs for recording. It allows them to adjust the levels of each input for well-calibrated output to a computer, but they can also be used for an eighth musician. Or you can use the rear inputs to play along with a recording; each player treats the recording as if it's just another musician, adjusting the volume of the song to the level he or she wants to hear.

As with all the inputs, the rear ones accept stereo plugs only; mono plugs will send sound to only one side of the headphones. The Jamhub comes with two mono-to-stereo adapters, which should be enough as long as you have only two guitarists (most guitars are mono). The only other accessories you absolutely need are 1/8-to-1/4 headphone adapters, a bunch of cables, and, if you want to record straight to a computer, a USB cable. The device comes with an SD card for recording and two remote units, so that drummers and other players who tend to sit out of reach of the Jamhub can make adjustments without leaving their instruments.

The Pop Mech office is heavy on guitarists, so we tried the Jamhub with a couple of guitars, including the Fender Modern Player Telecaster bass and classic Telecaster guitar above. It takes just a few minutes to set up?something you should do before you start playing to keep interruptions to a minimum. Then you can jam away, as we did to the envy of passersby gawking through the glass walls of our conference room-turned-recording studio.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/tech-news/jamhub-tourbus-rocking-out-with-the-volume-down-15608282?src=rss

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Katy Perry: Russell Brand dumped her via text

Celebs

Ashley Majeski TODAY contributor

13 hours ago

Vogue

Katy Perry graces the cover of the July issue of Vogue.

In the past, Katy Perry has shied away from publicly discussing her divorce from comedian Russell Brand, but in a new interview with Vogue, the singer reveals that their relationship -- and their split -- was hardly a "Teenage Dream."

"He's a very smart man, a magical man and I was in love with him when I married him," Perry said.

However, things with Brand, who Perry said was controlling, are anything but "magical" these days.

"Let's just say I haven't heard from him since he texted me saying he was divorcing me December 31, 2011."

Dumped by a text message on New Years Eve?! Ouch! The pop star continued to dish on life after Brand, stating that she once caught him making fun of her during a performance post-split.

"[He's] hysterical in some ways," she said. "Until he started making jokes about me and he didn?t know I was in the audience, because I had come to surprise him at one of his shows. So. Hysterical to a point."

Lucas Jackson / Reuters file

Katy Perry and Russell Brand married on Oct. 23, 2010.

While Perry admitted that her constant touring played a major role in the relationship's demise, she hints of a bigger underlying reason for the divorce, but declined to elaborate.

"I felt a lot of responsibility for it ending, but then I found out the real truth, which I can?t necessarily disclose because I keep it locked in my safe for a rainy day," she said.

Perry also revealed the real truth about her much-publicized on-and-off relationship with singer John Mayer, refuting claims that she only dated Mayer to get revenge on Brand.

"No, I was madly in love with him. I still am madly in love with him," she said. "All I can say about that relationship is that he?s got a beautiful mind. Beautiful mind, tortured soul. I do have to figure out why I am attracted to these broken birds."

While Perry and Mayer were "off" when she gave the Vogue interview (they most recently split in March), they've been spotted out together in recent weeks. Still, Perry insists that she's coming to terms with being single.

"I have to be happy being alone, and I am happy," she said. "I believe that I will be loved again, in the right way. I know I?m worth it."

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/katy-perry-claims-russell-brand-dumped-her-text-message-6C10368482

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Listen to the Engadget Mobile Podcast, live at 4PM ET!

Myriam and Brad are behind the mics once again, ready to tackle the latest topics from this past week. What's on the agenda? We'll be chatting about the HTC Butterfly s, Sony Xperia ZU, the upcoming Nokia EOS (which is quickly becoming the world's worst-kept secret) and plenty more. Also, we won't be covering this on the podcast, but you should probably check it out anyway. Join us in 45 minutes!

June 19, 2013 4:00:00 PM EDT

Filed under: Announcements, Mobile

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/19/engadget-mobile-podcast/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Cuban dissident: Repression forced family to flee

MIAMI (AP) ? One of several Cuban dissidents recently allowed to visit Europe and the U.S. after Cuba changed its travel laws said Tuesday she decided to seek refuge in Miami after facing continued repression on the island.

Rosa Maria Paya said she and her family have been the subject of threats, harassment and increased vigilance since her father's death last year and following her return to Cuba in April.

"We wanted to rest a bit from the persecution we faced in Cuba," Paya said, "and continue working on the opposition's proposals for change and transition to democracy."

Paya, 24, is the daughter of the late Oswaldo Paya, the lead organizer of the Varela Project, a signature-gathering drive regarded as the largest nonviolent campaign to change the system Fidel Castro established in 1959. The petition asked authorities for a referendum on guaranteeing rights such as freedom of speech and assembly in Cuba.

In July 2012, Paya and youth activist Harold Cepero died in a car crash in Bayamo, Cuba. The two men and another passenger were in a car driven by Spaniard Angel Carromero, who lost control and struck a tree, according to government authorities. Carromero was convicted of vehicular homicide and sent to Spain to serve a four-year sentence.

Paya's daughter, wife and others have insisted the crash was not an accident. They assert that witness accounts, text messages and statements made after the crash raise questions about the Cuban government's account. Rosa Maria Paya spoke with government officials in the U.S. and Europe to press for an international investigation.

Rosa Maria Paya was allowed to leave in April after Cuba eliminated the exit permit that had been required of islanders for five decades. She was one of several prominent Cuban dissidents to visit the U.S. and appears to be the first to have returned to Cuba and then sought status as a political refugee in the U.S.

She said that when she returned to Cuba, immigration officials at the airport told her, "Welcome."

But the threats, vigilance and oppression against her family and others involved in the movement her father started intensified, she said.

The decision of the Paya family ? six members in all ? to leave the island is likely to be seen as a black eye to the Cuban government, which has been trying to portray itself as a more open society since enacting a slate of social and economic reforms in recent years, said Jaime Suchlicki, a professor at the University of Miami.

"It makes it look like the Cuban government is oppressive, which it is," Suchlicki said. On the other hand, with one less dissident on the island, "I don't think the Cuban government is going to be too upset."

Ofelia Acevedo, Oswaldo Paya's wife and Rosa Maria's mother, said she and other family members are residing in the U.S. as political refugees, not exiles, and do not plan to ask for political asylum. Under the Cuban migratory changes enacted in January, Cubans can stay abroad for two years before forfeiting full citizenship rights.

The U.S. State Department declined to provide any specific information about the family's case.

Acevedo said her family's stay in Miami was of a "temporary nature." But she also declined to provide any specifics on when they would return.

"We will continue fighting until real change is a reality in Cuba," Acevedo said. "The amount of time it will take, we don't know. When we are going to return we don't know either."

The family vowed to continue the work of Oswaldo Paya from Miami in conjunction with activists on the island. But Suchlicki said their departure was a setback for the Christian Liberation movement Paya started.

"They're going to continue, but it's one of many groups in exile," Suchlicki said. "It's a limited impact that they will have in Miami. Internally they would have more impact."

_

Follow Christine Armario on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/cearmario

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cuban-dissident-repression-forced-family-flee-204647949.html

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Nokia Lumia 925 review: lots of changes, but not much difference

More Info

• Nokia Lumia 925 announced
• Nokia Lumia 928 for Verizon hands-on
• Nokia Lumia 920 review

It's been just half a year since Nokia revealed its first Windows Phone 8 device, and we've already got another flagship to review. The Lumia 925 marks a departure in design for Nokia -- it looks nothing like its predecessors, barring an expanse of screen and some capacitive Windows buttons. This time around, the phone is housed in an aluminum frame, making it Nokia's first metal smartphone since those heady Symbian days. This, alongside some hardware repositioning and (minor) specification changes has been enough for the Lumia 925 to weigh notably less than its 920 forebear -- and we think it's enough to feel in your hand. As we juggled the two Windows Phones ahead of this review, our first impressions were that the 925 was also much easier to hold, despite only a negligible difference in thickness.

This, alongside some hardware repositioning and (minor) specification changes has been enough for the Lumia 925 to weigh notably less than its 920 forebear

Arriving in three comparatively restrained monochrome hues (white, black and grey), Nokia's returned to OLED for its display tech, although it's the same 1,280 x 768 resolution as the rest of the 920 series and includes the company's anti-reflective screen technology for good measure. Its new Smart Camera app debuts on the Lumia 925, standing alongside the stock app and offering up some interesting new picture-taking options.

Otherwise, it's an awful lot like the Lumia 920, at least on paper: there's the same lauded 8.7-megapixel camera sensor, the same dual-core 1.5GHz processor and the same OS (albeit with some beta goodies). Nokia reckons that the phone is geared towards a different buyer than those who bought the Lumia 920, but alongside Verizon's recent US-only Lumia 928, is there enough to get fans that skipped on last year's model to buy this time around? And is there enough to persuade you not to hold out for what's on the horizon?

Gallery: Nokia Lumia 925 review

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Nokia

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/15/nokia-lumia-925-review/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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Parade marks Queen Elizabeth II's birthday

LONDON (AP) ? Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her birthday Saturday with traditional pomp and circumstance, followed by a visit to her husband in the hospital.

More than 1,000 soldiers, horses and musicians took part in the parade known as "Trooping the Color," an annual ceremony marking the queen's official birthday.

With Prince Philip unable to attend the celebration as he is recovering from abdominal surgery, the queen invited her cousin, the Duke of Kent, to accompany her in a vintage carriage.

The monarch's actual birthday was on April 21, when she turned 87.

The "Trooping the Color" ceremony originates from traditional battle preparations, when "colors," which refer to military flags, were carried down the rank to be seen by soldiers.

Other royals ? including Prince Harry, Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge ? also were on hand to celebrate on Saturday.

After the parade, the queen visited Philip at a private London hospital.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/parade-marks-queen-elizabeth-iis-birthday-101929879.html

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Ideas for keeping your data safe from spying

LONDON (AP) ? Phone call logs, credit card records, emails, Skype chats, Facebook message, and more: The precise nature of the NSA's sweeping surveillance apparatus has yet to be confirmed.

But given the revelations spilling out into the media recently, there hardly seems a single aspect of daily life that isn't somehow subject to spying or surveillance by someone.

Experts say there are steps anyone can take to improve privacy, but they only go so far.

Using anonymity services and encryption "simply make it harder, but not impossible," said Ashkan Soltani, an independent privacy and security researcher. "Someone can always find you __ just depends on how motivated they are."

With that caveat, here are some basic tips to enhance your privacy:

___

ENCRYPT YOUR EMAILS

Emails sent across the Web are like postcards. In some cases, they're readable by anyone standing between you and its recipient. That can include your webmail company, your Internet service provider and whoever is tapped into the fiber optic cable passing your message around the globe ? not to mention a parallel set of observers on the recipient's side of the world.

Experts recommend encryption, which scrambles messages in transit, so they're unreadable to anyone trying to intercept them. Techniques vary, but a popular one is called PGP, short for "Pretty Good Privacy." PGP is effective enough that the U.S. government tried to block its export in the mid-1990s, arguing that it was so powerful it should be classed as a weapon.

Disadvantages: Encryption can be clunky. And to work, both parties have to be using it.

___

USE TOR

Like emails, your travels around the Internet can easily be tracked by anyone standing between you and the site you're trying to reach. TOR, short for "The Onion Router," helps make your traffic anonymous by bouncing it through a network of routers before spitting it back out on the other side. Each trip through a router provides another layer of protection, thus the onion reference.

Originally developed by the U.S. military, TOR is believed to work pretty well if you want to hide your traffic from, let's say, eavesdropping by your local Internet service provider. And criminals' use of TOR has so frustrated Japanese police that experts there recently recommended restricting its use. But it's worth noting that TOR may be ineffective against governments equipped with the powers of global surveillance.

Disadvantages: Browsing the web with TOR can be painfully slow. And some services ? like file swapping protocols used by many Internet users to share videos and music ? aren't compatible.

___

DITCH THE PHONE

Your everyday cellphone has all kinds of privacy problems. In Britain, cellphone safety was so poor that crooked journalists made a cottage industry out of eavesdropping on their victims' voicemails. In general, proprietary software, lousy encryption, hard-to-delete data and other security issues make a cellphone a bad bet for storing information you'd rather not share.

An even bigger issue is that cellphones almost always follow their owners around, carefully logging the location of every call, something which could effectively give governments a daily digest of your everyday life. Security researcher Jacob Appelbaum has described cellphones as tracking devices that also happen to make phone calls. If you're not happy with the idea of an intelligence agency following your footsteps across town, leave the phone at home.

Disadvantages: Not having a cellphone handy when you really need it. Other alternatives, like using "burner" phones paid for anonymously and discarded after use, rapidly become expensive.

___

CUT UP YOUR CREDIT CARDS

The Wall Street Journal says the NSA is monitoring American credit card records in addition to phone calls. Some cybercriminals can use the same methods. So stick to cash, or, if you're more adventurous, use electronic currencies to move your money around if you want total privacy.

Disadvantages: Credit cards are a mainstay of the world payment system, so washing your hands of plastic money is among the most difficult moves you can make. In any case, some cybercurrency systems offer only limited protection from government snooping and many carry significant risks. The value of Bitcoin, one of the better-known forms of electronic cash, has oscillated wildly, while users of another popular online currency, Liberty Reserve, were left out of pocket after the company behind it was busted by international law enforcement.

___

DON'T KEEP YOUR DATA IN AMERICA OR WITH AMERICAN COMPANIES

U.S. companies are subject to U.S. law, including the Patriot Act, whose interpretations are classified. Although the exact parameters of the PRISM data mining program revealed by the Guardian and The Washington Post remain up for debate, what we do know is that a variety of law enforcement officials ? not just at the NSA ? can secretly demand your electronic records without a warrant through an instrument known as a National Security Letter. Such silent requests are made by the thousands every year.

If you don't like the sound of that, your best bet is to park your data in a European country, where privacy protections tend to be stronger.

Disadvantages: Silicon Valley's Internet service providers tend to be better and cheaper than their foreign counterparts. What's more, there's no guarantee that European spy agencies don't have NSA-like surveillance arrangements with their own companies. When hunting for a safe place to stash your data, look for smaller countries with robust human rights records. Iceland, long a hangout for WikiLeaks activists, might be a good bet.

___

STEER CLEAR OF MALICIOUS SOFTWARE

If they can't track it, record it, or intercept it, an increasing number of spies aren't shy about hacking their way in to steal your data outright. Edward Snowden, the NSA leaker, warned the Guardian that his agency had been on a worldwide binge of cyberattacks.

"We hack everyone everywhere," he said.

Former officials don't appear to contradict him. Ex-NSA chief Michael Hayden described it as "commuting to where the information is stored and extracting the information from the adversaries' network." In a recent interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, he boasted that "we are the best at doing it. Period."

Malicious software used by hackers can be extremely hard to spot. But installing an antivirus program, avoiding attachments, frequently changing passwords, dodging suspicious websites, creating a firewall, and always making sure your software is up to date is a good start.

Disadvantages: Keeping abreast of all the latest updates and warily scanning emails for viruses can be exhausting.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ideas-keeping-data-safe-spying-155424146.html

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US transplant network resists lung rule changes

PITTSBURGH (AP) ? The national organization that manages organ transplants on Monday resisted making emergency rule changes for children under 12 who are waiting on lungs but created a special appeal and review system to hear such cases.

The executive committee of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network held a teleconference to consider children who seek to qualify for adult lungs, and many members voiced serious ethical and medical concerns about a recent federal judge's ruling that questioned the existing system.

The meeting was prompted by the cases of two terminally ill children, 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan, of Newtown Square, and 11-year-old Javier Acosta, of New York City, who are awaiting transplants at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Last week, federal Judge Michael Baylson ruled that they should be eligible for adult lungs after U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius declined to intervene in such cases. Both children have end-stage cystic fibrosis, and Javier's brother died two years ago while on the waiting list.

The families challenged transplant policy making children under 12 wait for pediatric lungs to become available or be offered lungs donated by adults after adolescents and adults on the waiting list had been considered. They said pediatric lungs are rarely donated.

One expert on transplant ethics said the network is trying to acknowledge the concerns the judge raised but also issue a warning.

"I think what they're trying to tell the judge is, 'We have a system. It's working. Let us decide, not you,'" said Dr. Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University Langone Medical Center.

He said the judge's ruling "did hit a moral nerve" because the network recognizes the need to examine the claim that the 12-year-old distinction for lung transplants is arbitrary but the network also tried to "preserve the integrity of the system by not changing the rule" based on court intervention.

The Murnaghans' said in a statement that they consider the creation of the appeals process "a tremendous win for Sarah" and all other children waiting for lungs, but they added that the biggest issue is finding enough donors to help people who need transplants.

"We hope Sarah's story moves people to become organ donors," they said.

The Murnaghans' attorney, Steve Harvey, said the vote creates "a little appeals process" and Sarah's case may go back before the new network review board. But he added that they plan to ask Sebelius to keep Sarah eligible for adult lungs, as the judge instructed, until such a review is over.

The family has said that Sarah may have only a few weeks to live and that no suitable lungs have been found for her, even with the emergency exemption.

Committee member Alexandra Glazier, who's with the New England Organ Bank, said during the call that while she can't comment on specific transplant cases, judicial intervention is "not an appropriate approach" to managing organ donation. Glazier said that while an order by any judge might be well-intentioned, it would "inevitably fail" to take into account the many complex medical and ethical issues that go into crafting broad national rules.

"The message that lawsuits are a mechanism" to deal with complex medical or ethical issues is a dangerous one, Glazier said.

Dr. Steven A. Webber, of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said the network's pediatric committee voted 14-0 not to recommend emergency changes to existing rules.

"We did not feel that there was overwhelming compelling evidence" to make changes, Webber said.

While members of the network's executive committee voiced sympathy for anyone who is waiting for a transplant, they noted that making any sudden change to the system to help one group risks harming some other group. The existing system was created after years of reviews by numerous medical professionals and members of the public.

The network said in a statement after the teleconference that there are 1,659 candidates nationwide waiting for lung transplants, of whom 30 are age 10 or younger. The group said it was not immediately clear how many children may consider the option of a review under the new appeals process.

The network said that since 2007, only one lung transplant in the United States has occurred from a donor older than age 18 into a recipient younger than 12.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-06-11-Transplant%20Rules/id-0362be2963f84a438122a919d4500ead

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After sour years, is French influence on the rise in West Africa?

From the French intervention in Mali, to French special forces in Niger, to commercial interests and military bases in the region ??Paris is flexing its muscles. Ivory Coast is the top relationship.?

By Chris Stein,?Correspondent / June 6, 2013

French President Francois Hollande (l.) receives the Felix Houphouet-Boigny Peace Prize from Director-General Irina Bokova at UNESCO in Paris June 5, 2013. President Hollande receives the prize for his contribution to peace and stability in Africa.

Etienne Laurent/REUTERS

Enlarge

When Jonathan Valette tells his French friends he?s from Ivory Coast, someone usually asks him if there are any elephants near his home. When he tells his fellow Ivorians about a shared French-Ivorian identity, they don?t quite know what to make of this white fellow.?

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But Mr. Valette is Ivorian, just like his father and before that his grandfather, a French immigrant who moved to the country for military service and ended up becoming a close associate of the country?s post-independence leader, F?lix Houphou?t-Boigny.

After over a decade abroad, Valette, who is also a French citizen, recently returned to the country?s main city Abidjan, which is still recovering from a brief war in 2011.

?I had many, many countries [to work in] but I chose Ivory Coast because I?m Ivorian,? Valette says.

Perhaps no former French colony has been so closely tied to its former colonial ruler as Ivory Coast. And that?s not something all Ivorians are comfortable with. The reign of Laurent Gbagbo, who was ousted in 2011 partly with French special forces help, saw a protracted and occasionally violent push against French influence in the country.

But after a decade of souring relations, Ivory Coast?s new President Alassane Ouattara is rekindling the country?s relationship with France, putting itself at the center of the European power?s African strategy once again.

Fran?afrique policy

For France, West Africa remains as vital as it has?always?been. Ivory Coast relies on the region's natural resources and fears the Islamist terrorists that lurk in the Sahel on the region's northern flank.?

French President Fran?ois Hollande has continued much of what is known as the "Fran?afrique" policy of his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy. That means Paris has pushed its nexus of interests directly into the business of its former African colonies, despite their independence.

From the French intervention in Mali, to the special forces that respond to suicide bombings in Niger, to the military bases around west and central Africa ??the French are willing to openly flex their muscles in the former colonies.

At the center of this is Ivory Coast, its economy reinvigorated, its president friendly, and its streets mostly pacified.

Whether Ivorians cotton to France's newfound boldness is another question.

?The way that France sees Ivory Coast is as a country where it is losing influence and where it wants to keep influence,? says Douglas Yates, a professor at the American University of Paris. ?When Gbagbo took over, he harnessed an anti-French sentiment to build popularity.?

Le petit Paris

The echoes of ?le petit Paris,? Abidjan?s moniker during the city?s salad days in the 1970s, can still be seen. There?s the baguette-toting commuters, the ubiquitous espresso machines in restaurants and cafes, the billboards for French businesses that greet commuters passing over the Charles de Gaulle Bridge, not to mention a shared language, and the influence of 14,000 French expatriates now residing in the country.

But most Ivorians are young, Mr. Yates says. They didn?t experience the booming economy and rapid development of Mr. Houphou?t-Boigny?s time. In those days, some 60,000 French expatriates lived in the former colony. To the younger generation, France is something between a job-creating patron and a neocolonial bogeyman intent on keeping Ivory Coast in its pocket.

?It?s all about their way of integrating. If the French come to do business, there won?t be any problem,? says Dimitri Bakou, a bar owner in the posh Riviera district of Abidjan. ?The thing is, when they try to interfere in the politics of the country, there?s a problem.?

The events of 2004 galvanized opinion against the French, particularly in the country?s south, home to Gbagbo?s core supporters. When an Ivorian airstrike killed eight French troops during the country?s civil war, France retaliated by destroying the country?s entire air force.

What happened next is seared into the minds of French expatriates in the country: Mobs descending on French homes and businesses, forcing families to flee to their rooftops as French helicopters ferried them to a military base on the edge of town.

Meanwhile, shootouts between the French military and rioting Ivorians killed scores, deepening the disgust many Ivorians felt of the Europeans.

?From the Ivorian perspective it probably was a turning point because that?s when French military presence and intervention became more present,? says Penelope Chester, an analyst who studies Ivory Coast.

Ivorians tried to diversify

It was the start of a downward spiral for France and Gbagbo, and so the former president went looking for other investors ??and mostly came up short, Yates said.

?It?s not really a country that is like Angola, which China is going to give priority to,? he adds. ?They?ll [the Chinese will] come in, there?ll be commercial interests, but everyone recognizes that this is France?s Africa.?

And even Gbagbo wasn?t that successful in divesting the French from Ivory Coast. French logistics company Bollor? picked up a contract to manage Abidjan?s port during Gbagbo?s rule.

Bouygues, a prominent French firm, got a deal to manage the country?s electricity supply in 2005. And in 2010 ??when Gbagbo was still in power ??31 percent of its imports were still coming from France, according to data compiled by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

And now Gbagbo is gone, the result of a disputed presidential election in 2010, a rebel offensive the next year, and finally French firepower to hasten the rebels? capture of Abidjan. With Ouattara safely in power, there?s a feeling among many expatriates that Ivory Coast is open for business again.

Himself a former International Monetary Fund official, President Ouattara has made overtures to European investors since taking power in 2011. France?s Hollande has been receptive. Ivory Coast received more than $400 million in aid from France in 2013, a rarity these days for France?s government.

Also, when French troops deployed to Mali early this year to stem an offensive by Islamists, French troops drove overland from Ivory Coast to reach the neighboring country.

?The French bet heavily on the side [of Ouattara] and they won,? Yates says.

How much they won remains to be seen: Ouattara is up for reelection in the 2015 presidential election, and the country is still wracked by insecurity in the country?s west. And many Ivorians remain suspicious of Ouattara?s ascension, seeing him as a French-backed usurper, and Gbagbo as the rightful president.

For Mr. Valette, coming back to the city of his birth was a choice: He wanted to work in insurance, just like his father did. But for other Franco-Ivorians, the choice isn?t so easy.

?Some people have nowhere else to go,? Mr. Valette said. ?Their home is Africa."

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/8k9DPFRN1x8/After-sour-years-is-French-influence-on-the-rise-in-West-Africa

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'Lizard King' fossil shows giant reptiles coexisted with mammals during globally warm past

June 5, 2013 ? Some 40 million years before rock singer Jim Morrison's lyrics earned him the moniker "the Lizard King," an actual king lizard roamed the hot tropical forests of Southeast Asia, competing with mammals for food and other resources.

A team of U.S. paleontologists, led by Jason Head of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, describes fossils of the giant lizard from Myanmar this week in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Their analysis shows that it is one of the biggest known lizards ever to have lived on land.

The creature's scientific name is Barbaturex morrisoni -- which means "Lizard King," in honor of the aforementioned Doors singer.

At almost six feet long and weighing upwards of 60 pounds, the lizard provides new and important clues on the evolution of plant-eating reptiles and their relationship to global climate and competition with mammals.

In today's world, plant-eating lizards like iguanas and agamids are much smaller than large mammal herbivores. The largest lizards, like the giant, carnivorous Komodo dragon, are limited to islands that are light on mammal predators. It is not known, however, if lizards are limited in size by competition with mammals, or by temperatures of modern climates, Head said.

But B. morrisoni lived in an ecosystem with a diversity of both herbivorous and carnivorous mammals during a warm age in Earth's history -- 36 to 40 million years ago -- when there was no ice at the poles and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were very high. The creature was larger than most of the mammals with which it lived, suggesting that competition or predation by mammals did not restrict its evolution into a giant.

"We think the warm climate during that period of time allowed the evolution of a large body size and the ability of plant-eating lizards to successfully compete in mammal faunas," Head said.

"You can't fully understand the evolution of ecosystems in the modern world without looking at the ones that preceded them. We would've never known this by looking at lizards today. By going back in time using the fossil record, we can find unique information on the origin of modern ecosystems."

Head worked with Patricia Holroyd of University of California, Berkeley, Gregg Gunnell of Duke University, and Russell Ciochon of the University of Iowa on identifying and analyzing B. morrisoni.

It was a discovery millions of years and then a few extra decades in the making. Fossils of the giant lizard were discovered by Ciochon and colleagues in the 1970s in Myanmar, but were unstudied in the University of California Museum of Paleontology until a few years ago, when Head and Holroyd began looking into them.

When Head first examined the fossils, he noticed the creature's bones were characteristic of a group of modern lizards that includes bearded dragons, chameleons and plant eaters like spiny-tailed lizards.

"I thought, 'That's neat. Based on its teeth, it's a plant-eating lizard from a time period and a place from which we don't have a lot of information.' But when I started studying its modern relatives, I realized just how big this lizard was. It struck me that we had something here that was quite large -- and unique," said Head, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at UNL and a curator in the University of Nebraska State Museum of Natural History's Division of Vertebrate Paleontology.

He noticed another telltale sign -- ridges on the underside of the jaw that strongly suggested it supported soft tissues, much like the multicolored chin flaps and dewlaps that give some modern lizards a bearded appearance. The giant lizard's genus name, Barbaturex, means "bearded king."

"I was listening to The Doors quite a bit during the research," Head said. "Some of their musical imagery includes reptiles and ancient places, and Jim Morrison was of course 'The Lizard King,' so it all kind of came together."

Head said the discovery of B. morrisoni now leads to other big questions: For how long do these giant lizards persist in the fossil record? How far and wide did they disperse across the planet? What are the relationships of the evolution of reptile body sizes to changes in global temperature throughout history? And the obvious question -- does a warming climate mean giant reptiles will someday return?

He said if we were to raise global temperatures at a natural pace and preserve natural, healthy habitats, we could end up with the evolution of giant lizards, turtles, snakes and crocodiles.

"But we're changing the atmosphere so fast that the rate of climate change is probably faster than most biological systems can adapt to. So instead of seeing the growth and spread of giant reptiles, what you might see is extinction," he said.

Meanwhile, the researchers will consider how the clues provided by B. morrisoni can be used to reconstruct global temperature over geologic time periods.

"That becomes very important in modeling what temperature change will be like across the surface of the planet in the future," Head said. "And that, obviously, bears directly on our own health."

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/jaWyenBKGhU/130605090421.htm

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