US eyes Cairo embassy security amid Egypt unrest

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The United States is working to ensure its embassy and diplomats in Egypt are safe, President Barack Obama said Saturday after one American was killed and opposition groups vowed millions would march on Cairo in an effort to oust Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi.

The U.S. government was warning Americans to steer clear of Egypt if possible as violence continued unabated. The State Department confirmed a 21-year-old college student ? Andrew Pochter of Chevy Chase, Md. ? died a day while photographing battles between supporters and foes of the Islamist president.

Obama said the U.S. was in direct contact with the Egyptian government about security arrangements and was planning ahead for larger protests over the weekend.

"We're all looking at the situation there with concern," Obama said. "Our most immediate concern with respect to protests this weekend has to do with our embassy and consulates."

Rage in the streets as protesters stormed political offices in Egyptian cities has unnerved American diplomats, still reeling from the attack last year on a U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans ? including the ambassador. The Obama administration appeared eager to show it was leaving nothing to chance as Egypt braced for the one-year anniversary of Morsi's taking power as the country's first freely elected leader.

The Benghazi attacks had followed demonstrations hours earlier outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, initially claimed the Benghazi incident was a copycat of the Cairo demonstrations ? a claim that became a major political headache for Obama when it was later debunked.

Citing the challenges in fostering democracy in Egypt given its authoritarian past, Obama said the U.S. supports freedom of speech in Egypt and the right of protesters to peacefully assemble.

"We would urge all parties to make sure they're not engaging in violence (and) police and military are showing appropriate restraint," Obama said in Pretoria, South Africa, while on a weeklong trip through sub-Saharan Africa.

At least seven Egyptians have been killed and hundreds injured in days of clashes that have fed an impending sense of doom in Egypt. Thousands of Morsi's supporters and opponents held rival sit-ins in separate parts of Cairo Saturday on the eve of planned, nationwide protests Sunday demanding he leave office.

The violence took a personal toll for the U.S. when Pochter, a student at Ohio's Kenyon College with a keen interest in the Middle East, was killed Friday in Alexandria.

The college said Pochter was a religious studies major working in Egypt as an intern for a nonprofit education organization. An organizer for the school's Middle Eastern Students Association, Pochter had hoped to learn fluent Arabic in the spring during a study-abroad program in Amman, Jordan.

Pochter's family said in a statement that he had gone to Egypt for the summer to teach English to 7- and 8-year-olds and to improve his Arabic.

"As we understand it, he was witnessing a protest as a bystander and was stabbed by a protester. He went to Egypt because he cared profoundly about the Middle East. He had studied in the region, loved the culture, and planned to live and work there in the pursuit of peace and understanding," the family said.

The State Department urged Americans on Friday to forego all but essential travel to Egypt and moved to reduce the official U.S. presence in the country. Officials said they would allow some nonessential staff and the families of personnel at the embassy to leave the country until conditions improve.

___

Associated Press writer Deb Reichmann in Jerusalem and AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace in Pretoria, South Africa, contributed to this report.

___

Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter at http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-eyes-cairo-embassy-security-amid-egypt-unrest-124535112.html

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The Weirdest Thing on the Internet Tonight: All Circles (NSFW)

Jeez, sink a spear into one alegorical elephant-man's chest cavity and the whole of human history is doomed to strife and pestillence. Great aim cro-moron.

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Lawmaker Seeks to Regulate Men's Reproductive Health (Taegan Goddard's Political Wire)

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Obama yet to have African legacy like predecessors

U.S. President Barack Obama, left, makes a toast during an official dinner with Senegalese President Macky Sall at the Presidential Palace on Thursday, June 27, 2013, in Dakar, Senegal. Obama is visiting Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania on a week long trip. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

U.S. President Barack Obama, left, makes a toast during an official dinner with Senegalese President Macky Sall at the Presidential Palace on Thursday, June 27, 2013, in Dakar, Senegal. Obama is visiting Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania on a week long trip. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

U.S. President Barack Obama looks out to sea through the 'Door of No Return,' at the slave house on Goree Island, in Dakar, Senegal, Thursday, June 27, 2013. Obama is calling his visit to a Senegalese island from which Africans were said to have been shipped across the Atlantic Ocean into slavery, a 'very powerful moment.' President Obama was in Dakar Thursday as part of a weeklong trip to Africa, a three-country visit aimed at overcoming disappointment on the continent over the first black U.S. president's lack of personal engagement during his first term. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

President Barack Obama meets with a group of drummers that were playing music on his departure after taking a tour of Goree Island, Thursday, June 27, 2013, in Goree Island, Senegal. Goree Island is the site of the former slave house and embarkation point built by the Dutch in 1776, from which slaves were brought to the Americas. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Barack Obama meets with a group of drummers that were playing music on his departure after taking a tour of Goree Island, Thursday, June 27, 2013, in Goree Island, Senegal. Goree Island is the site of the former slave house and embarkation point built by the Dutch in 1776, from which slaves were brought to the Americas. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a joint press conference with his Senegalese counterpart Macky Sall, at the presidential palace in Dakar, Senegal, Thursday, June 27, 2013. Obama was in Dakar Thursday as part of a weeklong trip to Africa, a three-country visit aimed at overcoming disappointment on the continent over the first black U.S. president's lack of personal engagement during his first term.(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) ? President Barack Obama is receiving the embrace you might expect for a long-lost son on his return to his father's home continent, even as he has yet to leave a lasting policy legacy for Africa on the scale of his two predecessors.

Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush passed innovative Africa initiatives while in the White House and passionately continue their development work in the region in their presidential afterlife. Obama's efforts here have not been so ambitious, despite his personal ties to the continent.

His first major tour of Africa as president is coming just now, in his fifth year, while Bush and Clinton are frequent fliers to Africa. Bush even will be in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, next week at the same time as Obama, although they have no plans to meet. Instead, their wives plan to appear together at a summit on empowering African women organized by the George W. Bush Institute, with the former president in attendance.

Spirited crowds greeted Obama on his visit to French-speaking Senegal, Africa's westernmost country, with revelers frequently breaking into song and dance at the sight of the first African-American president. However thrilled they were to see him, many said they wish his visits weren't so rare.

"Two visits in five years, it's not enough," said Faye Mbissine, a 30-year-old nanny who took an early morning bus to come see Obama on Thursday outside the presidential palace. "We hope that he can come more."

Manougou Nbodj, a 21-year-old student, said he hopes Obama will bring American resources like jobs and health care. "If Obama can work with Macky Sall the way that George Bush worked with Africa before him, then we will be happy," he said, referring to the Senegalese president.

One of Bush's chief foreign policy successes was his aid to Africa, including AIDS relief credited with saving millions of lives and grants to reward developing countries for good governance. Bush followed on momentum on African policy that began under Clinton, who allowed several dozen sub-Saharan countries to export to the U.S. duty-free.

Obama has continued the Bush and Clinton programs during tough economic times. But his signature Africa policy thus far has been food security, through less prominent programs designed to address hunger through policy reform and private investment in agriculture.

Obama's mantra on Africa is it doesn't need handouts, but investment to spur self-sufficient economic growth. He plans to announce Friday that Senegal is joining his New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition and will receive $134 million in investments from private companies and $47 million from the United States.

Witney Schneidman, former deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said Obama's efforts are not like Bush's AIDS initiative "where you put people on a medicine to save their lives ? very, extremely important. This is more of a structural change, and I think that's going to take time."

Under Clinton and Bush "you had this major funding, major attention, major initiatives going to Africa, and then President Obama came in, and there was a sense of stall, in a way," said Jennifer Cooke, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She said that's understandable as he grappled with wars and an economic crisis, and she gave Obama credit for working diplomatically with African governments in his first term.

But, she said, "they weren't big, splashy initiatives that got peoples' attention either in Africa or here at home, and no big money and no big ideas that really helped define what Obama was about in Africa."

That's a disappointed those who were expecting more from the first African-American president, especially after his speech during a brief stopover in Ghana his first summer in office, in which he spoke personally of his father's life in Kenya and declared "a new moment of great promise" in Africa. "I have the blood of Africa within me," Obama said.

Schneidman argued that Obama's personal connection may also have been an impediment to deeper engagement in his first term. "The whole birther movement here in the U.S. that was sort of questioning his place of birth to begin with ... I think it was a real constraint on dealing with Africa," Schneidman said.

Mwangi Kimenyi, a Kenyan who directs the Brookings Institutions' Africa Growth Initiative, said Obama may be a victim of misplaced sky-high expectations on the continent when he was first elected.

"Africans still consider Clinton their president," Kimenyi said. "If you go to Africa and mention Clinton ? I mean, he is a hero, even today. I don't think President Obama is going to approach the level of President Clinton at all, in terms of respect, in terms of what they feel, and it's partly because, as one whose family is from Africa, the expectations were rather high. I mean, they expected him to do more, to do more visits, to actually relate better with Africans, to understand the continent better."

"There is not that feeling that, you know, we have our son there," Kimenyi said. "There's probably more reference of a prodigal son than a, you know, son."

Clinton first drew extensive attention to Africa in 1998 when he made the longest trip ever by a U.S. president, with stops in six countries that had never before been visited by any occupant of the Oval Office. He's scheduled to come back this summer for what has become an annual visit, with his Clinton Foundation investing in myriad wide-ranging projects in Africa on health, agriculture and climate change.

Bush's trip this week is his third in 19 months to promote his Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon partnership to combat breast and cervical cancer in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. On this visit, he and his wife, Laura, plan to help renovate a cervical cancer screening and treatment clinic in Zambia before heading to Tanzania for the African First Ladies Summit advocating investment in programs for women and girls.

Obama foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes said the president is signaling increased engagement with the current trip and hopes it will prove to be a "pivotal moment" of Africa's growth taking off.

"Frankly, Africa is a place that we had not yet been able to devote significant presidential time and attention to," Rhodes said. "And there's nothing that can make an impact more in terms of our foreign policy and our economic and security interests than the president of the United States coming and demonstrating the importance of our commitment to this region."

___

Associated Press writer Robbie Corey-Boulet contributed to this report.

___

Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nedrapickler

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-06-28-Obama/id-6ff1f53bc3bd412caee9cedc3761d770

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Windows Store recommendations could one day reflect your usage patterns

Yesterday was the day Microsoft made Windows 8.1 available as a public download; today's the day we ask "what's next?" Here at the company's annual Build developer conference, we sat down with Ted Dworkin, the man who oversees the Windows Store, to do a deeper dive on the store's latest redesign. In particular, we were curious about that new Bing-powered recommendation engine, and how it might become smarter over time. What ensued was a Pandora's box of a brainstorming session. Naturally, Dworkin wouldn't make any promises about what we'll see in future updates, but he did offer some compelling ideas about how Microsoft could take people's usage patterns into account when recommending apps. For instance, while Windows already knows which applications you've downloaded, a future version of the store might also be aware of which apps you use most frequently, which ones you've uninstalled, which ones you've shared, which ones you've pinned, which ones you've unpinned, et cetera. On a privacy note, the recommendation engine is already optional, so there's no reason why you couldn't disable this kind of data collection too.

For starters, this an interesting idea for the developers attending Build this week -- there are definitely people out there who download apps because they're testing them (or reviewing them) and not because they plan on using them every day. Even more broadly, though, who among us hasn't gone on a downloading spree, just to see what they liked? With usage patterns taken into account, you might get more useful picks, ones that ignore that random Twitter client or Angry Birds game you installed. Again, Dworkin wouldn't say for sure if Microsoft plans on implementing any of this, but our vote would be "yes" if it leads to more recommendations we'd actually use.

Filed under: Software, Microsoft

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/Nme85mSZdhs/

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Afghan museum on the mend but long way to go

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? Looters stole tens of thousands of artifacts from the National Museum of Afghanistan during the country's civil war in the 1990s, and then thousands more were destroyed by the Taliban when they took power.

Now the museum is slowly coming back to life, helped by millions of dollars in U.S. and other foreign aid. Every day 300 to 400 visitors a day come to see the collections of sculptures, jewelry, coins and other artifacts dating from the Stone Age through the 20th century.

A new exhibit, "The 1,000 cities of Bactria," focuses on a northern region of Afghanistan that accumulated great wealth, thanks to its location along the Silk Road and several other important trade routes from China and India.

But the exhibit won't include any of the legendary "Bactrian gold," a collection of tens of thousands of gold and silver coins, crowns and jewelry more than 2,000 years old ? because the museum lacks the security measures to keep it safe. Instead the collection travels the world, already displayed at the British Museum in London, the National Gallery of Art in Washington and other institutions. It is now at the Melbourne Museum in Australia.

"There were a lot of problems, but year by year we're trying to solve these," director Omra Khan Masoudi said on a tour of the museum on Friday. "Now it's starting to look like a museum."

The two-floor museum is across the street from Kabul's famous Darul Aman Palace, which still lies in ruins from fierce fighting in the area in the early 1990s during the civil war. The museum was also badly damaged in the fighting, and in the chaos some 70 percent of its collection ? about 70,000 pieces ? was lost to looting.

With the help of foreign governments, some 9,000 of those artifacts have been recovered so far from the U.S., Britain, Germany and elsewhere.

Despite the losses, the collection is still impressive.

At the front door, a second century limestone statue of a Kushan Empire prince greets visitors ? missing its head from devastation wrought under the Taliban in 2001 when they embarked on a campaign to destroy pre-Islamic art.

Five wooden sculptures from Nuristan dating to the 18th century, each about two meters (five to six feet) tall, loom over the end of the museum's great hall, and a special exhibit on Buddhism in Afghanistan contains some of the first examples of sculptures depicting Buddha.

"I believe the National Museum of Afghanistan can be one of the richest museums in the region, or in the world," Masoudi said.

Some $3 million from the Afghan government and another $5 million from the U.S. Embassy, as well as donations from Italy, Japan and the Netherlands, have helped bring the museum to the state it is in today.

Another $3 million project funded by the U.S. State Department involves experts from the University of Chicago helping to catalog and document all of the museum's inventory, after some 90 percent of object records were lost during the years of turmoil.

But restoration can only go so far. Frequent power cuts, issues with heating and lighting and ? above all else ? insufficient security mean the museum needs a new building, Masoudi said.

Plans are already drawn up, and the museum is planning on embarking next year on a capital campaign to raise the $30 million needed for the construction.

That's why the Bactrian gold, which had been hidden and thought lost until resurfacing in 2003, is currently more valuable abroad than at home, because it raises interest in the museum.

"This exhibits shows the other face of Afghanistan," Masoudi said. "It is an ancient civilization with its own unique art ? it opens a window for us to the other nations."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/afghan-museum-mend-long-way-105952682.html

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Thousands of fans fete victorious Blackhawks

Chicago Blackhawks' Jonathan Toews holds up the 2013 Stanley Cup during a victory parade down Washington Street Friday, June 28, 2013 in Chicago. The Blackhawks celebrate the team's second championship in four years. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Chicago Blackhawks' Jonathan Toews holds up the 2013 Stanley Cup during a victory parade down Washington Street Friday, June 28, 2013 in Chicago. The Blackhawks celebrate the team's second championship in four years. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Chicago Blackhawks' Jonathan Toews holds up the 2013 Stanley Cup during a victory parade down Washington Street Friday, June 28, 2013 in Chicago. The Blackhawks celebrate the team's second championship in four years. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Chicago Blackhawks' Jonathan Toews holds up the 2013 Stanley Cup during a victory parade down Washington Street Friday, June 28, 2013 in Chicago. The Blackhawks celebrate the team's second championship in four years. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

The 2013 Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks ride in a victory parade down Washington Street as an elevated train passes by Friday, June 28, 2013 in Chicago. The Blackhawks celebrate the team's second championship in four years. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

CHICAGO (AP) ? Showered with confetti and cheered by screaming fans, the Blackhawks wound their way through downtown Chicago on open-topped buses Friday to celebrate the team's stunning Stanley Cup victory.

Thousands of fans who ditched work and painted their faces red and black roared as the buses moved past carrying waving players in red jerseys including forward Jonathan Toews who cradled the bar-hopping silver trophy.

Before dawn, crowds jammed entrances to the rally site in Grant Park along Lake Michigan where the parade was headed. Some die-hard fans camped out overnight, ready to sprint to the big stage at the front of the park the minute police swung barriers aside.

Some fans hauled homemade versions of the silver Stanley Cup, including one fashioned from an empty beer keg.

One supporter along the parade route held a sign that said, "Thank you, guys." Another said, "Best 17 seconds of my life," referring to the pair of goals scored just seconds apart in the final minutes of the Hawks' 3-2 victory over the Boston Bruins on Monday night.

Twenty-somethings Courtney Baldwin and Meghan O'Kane, from the city's suburbs, slapped together a homemade Stanley Cup out of a jumble of jugs and plastic bowls painted grey. Early in the morning, it was not yet full of frothy beverage.

"It will be this afternoon," Baldwin said.

The Blackhawks gave the city something to celebrate as the Cubs and White Sox grind through another lost summer and after the Bears failed to make the playoffs in each of the last two seasons.

And fans took note.

"We love the Blackhawks. This is history and this is a championship, unlike the Cubs," O'Kane said, taking a shot at a team that hasn't won a World Series since 1908.

For the Blackhawks, it was the second time they have brought the Stanley Cup home in three years.

This season's victory was dramatic. Trailing Boston until the final minutes, Chicago scored twice in 17 seconds. Delirious fans bolted from bars to celebrate in the streets. Car horns blared.

The party roared overnight and into the next day as the team returned from Boston and, making good on an NHL tradition, toted the Cup around bars and restaurants to the delight of onlookers and fans who tried to keep up.

Sarah Schmidt, 22, who grew up in Chicago and made the pilgrimage to Friday's celebrations from Milwaukee, telling her boss she was taking the day off no matter what ? and hoping she would still have her bar tending job when the party was over.

"I can't miss this," she said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-06-28-Blackhawks%20Parade/id-5240ffeed2594bce871151a54be84dd1

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DOMA, Voting Rights, And The Bigot?s Last Gasp (OliverWillisLikeKryptoniteToStupid)

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Britain hesitant on breakthrough EU budget deal

BRUSSELS (AP) ? A European Union summit pushing to end the region's economic turmoil and fight youth unemployment got distracted from its aim Thursday as Britain refused to sign off on a hard-fought deal for the bloc's future budget.

Two big agreements announced ahead of the meeting in Brussels ? on the multi-annual 960 billion euro ($1.3 trillion) budget and a deal on the shape of future bank bailouts ? had injected fresh credibility into leaders' efforts to control the region's economic problem.

But the deals didn't erase deep divisions among the leaders of the 27 EU nations over whether to spend or cut their way out of crisis, with the UK seeking reassurances that it won't have contribute too much at a time of belt-squeezing across the continent.

The 2014-2020 budget, which includes the first cuts to EU spending in its history, determines what the bloc can spend on common infrastructure like railway or road projects, farming subsidies and aid to poor countries. It's separate from national budgets, and much smaller, but the source of difficult and passionate debate.

Most key players hailed Thursday's budget deal that will finance EU projects through 2020. But British Prime Minister David Cameron sounded a different note, calling it "absolutely essential" that the EU stick to parts of an earlier agreement reached in February.

He insisted that Europe must do what "we're doing in Britain, which is getting control of spending, making sure we live within our means and then making ourselves more competitive."

EU leaders sought to allay the British concerns at their talks Thursday night, according to diplomats. Those talks were meant to focus on finding ways to get more young people employed, and calmly taking stock of EU efforts to stabilize the world's biggest economic bloc now that its deep debt troubles have subsided.

The EU countries have been trying since last fall to cobble the budget together. Some countries wanted to increase or maintain spending levels while others firmly insisted it made no sense to increase the budget while individual governments were imposing tough austerity policies at home.

The European Parliament, which must approve the budget, rejected the compromise reached by EU leaders in February. It asked for more flexibility, a greater say in the way the budget allocates spending and the ability to renegotiate the overall spending level once the economy picked up and the EU took over more responsibilities from member states. Finally, lawmakers asked for money to be spent to boost employment.

Crucially, the EU budget also includes money for the employment measures that EU leaders are debating at this week's summit. No budget agreement would mean no money for those projects.

After months of arguments, European Parliament President Martin Schulz triumphantly announced a budget agreement with the European Commission on Thursday morning.

Thursday evening, he said he was "quite surprised" that the EU leaders didn't sign on. "I had thought ... that things were almost wrapped up. That is not the case," he told reporters.

"If it fails here (among EU leaders) ... that is certainly not the best way of regaining confidence in Europe."

The EU's 27 leaders are at odds over how to step up the fight against unemployment, with a German-led group calling for structural reforms and others saying more spending was needed to kick-start growth.

Unemployment is at a record high of 11 percent for the EU and 12.2 percent for the 17 member countries that use the euro.

It is far worse for the young who have been disproportionately punished by years of crisis and recession. Latest figures show almost one in four people aged under 25 in the EU are unemployed. In Greece and Spain, that rate has it hit more than 50 percent.

"It is simply unacceptable that young people should be paying with their life chances for a crisis for which they are entirely blameless," Schulz told the leaders.

But Germany, Europe's reluctant paymaster, again dashed hopes of investing any new money to ease the problem.

"The German government insists that the problems of Europe and the eurozone have to be tackled at the root and solved step by step," Chancellor Angela Merkel said ahead of the summit. Spending more won't solve the problems, she insisted.

The leaders' flagship unemployment policy is a pledge made last year to spend 6 billion euros getting young people back to work, starting in 2014. Half of that money, however, is only being repackaged from other existing budget projects.

Thursday's deal on the budget came only hours after EU finance ministers reached a landmark deal determining that banks' shareholders, creditors and holders of large deposits will have to bear the brunt of future bank failures, so that taxpayers don't have to. The joint rules on how to restructure or wind down banks are a key step toward establishing a so-called banking union for Europe, aimed at restoring stability after a tumultuous few years that have dragged down the global economy.

___

Angela Charlton and Sylvain Plazy in Brussels and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

___

Follow Juergen Baetz on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jbaetz

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/britain-hesitant-breakthrough-eu-budget-deal-203606046.html

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Evan Goldberg Teases This Is the End Sequel

EXCLUSIVE: Director Evan Goldberg tells Screen he is up for a sequel - but Seth Rogen might need some convincing.

Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, the duo behind Superbad and Pineapple Express, were in London this week to promote their new comedy, which is released in the UK by Sony this weekend.

With the $31m-budgeted spoof about six friends facing the apocalypse having grossed $57.8m after two weeks in the US, Screen asked Goldberg about the prospect of a sequel.

?If you ask me, I?d say there?s a good chance of sequel,? said Goldberg, who co-directed the comedy with Rogan. ?If you ask Seth, he?d say no. So, we?ll see.?

Real-life friends James Franco, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride and Craig Robinson star as the six friends fending off the apocalypse, while there are cameos from the likes of Rihanna, Emma Watson, the Backstreet Boys, Channing Tatum and Paul Rudd.

Corralling that level of talent for a follow-up film would pose a challenge, according to Goldberg, who said: ?We lucked out that they were all available. I honestly don?t know if we could get the guys together.?

That hasn?t stopped Goldberg, Rogen and their Point Grey Pictures outfit from brainstorming possible plotlines.

?We actually talked about doing a sequel where it starts at the premiere of This is the End,? Goldberg revealed. ?Seth?s a cokehead in this version, Michael Cera is a calm dude with a boyfriend, Rihanna and The Backstreet Boys are back.

?We have a lot of ideas: a heaven and hell, for example, and a garden of Eden version where Danny [McBride] is Adam.?

Next up on the directorial slate for Goldberg and Rogen is comedy The Interview, in which James Franco and Rogen will respectively play a talk show host and his producer who unwittingly get caught up in an assassination plot against Korean dictator Kim Jung-un.

Sony is backing again, with shoot due in October.

Goldberg and Rogen recently produced comedy Townies, starring Franco, Rogen, Rose Byrne and Zac Efron, while in development are Jamaica, written by 50/50?s Will Reiser, in which a teenager travels to Jamaica with his grandmother, and a sequel to hockey comedy Goon.

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1927743/news/1927743/

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Torrential rains prompt flood warnings in Midwest

By Mary Wisniewski

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Torrential rains slammed Illinois and other Midwest states on Wednesday, triggering flash flood warnings and causing flight cancellations, commuter train delays and road closings.

Up to 5 inches of rain fell in some places and the National Weather Service warned residents in the region to brace for more downpours and possibly severe thunderstorms Wednesday night.

The weather service issued multiple flash flood and flood warnings for counties in northern Illinois, northwestern Indiana and southeastern Wisconsin.

The storms, which threatened eastern Illinois, Indiana, and parts of Kentucky and Ohio, could include large hail, flash flooding and damaging winds of more than 60 mph, AccuWeather.com said.

At O'Hare International Airport, one of the nation's busiest, 403 inbound and outbound flights had been canceled by Wednesday evening, according to the site FlightAware.com which tracks delays and cancellations.

The heavy rain also caused hour-plus delays for other flights, according to the city's aviation department.

Metra, the Chicago area's commuter rail service, also reported delays of more than an hour on one of its lines. Part of one line north of the city was shut due to flooding.

Parts of some arterial roads were closed on Wednesday morning due to flooding, according to the Illinois State Police.

In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker declared a state of emergency in seven southwestern counties after touring flood damaged areas on Wednesday.

Several communities in northeastern Iowa on the Wapsipinicon River were also dealing with flooding. In Independence, volunteers filled sandbags to avert flooding and local officials closed several roads.

Grandstand and grounds events were canceled on Wednesday at the Linn County Fair due to possible flooding along the Wapsipinicon River.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee and Mary Wisniewski in Chicago; Editing by Carol Bishopric and Cynthia Osterman)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/torrential-rains-prompt-flood-warnings-midwest-235331437.html

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Refinancing Driving The Mortgage Market - Business Insider

Average rates on 30-year mortgages have risen about a point in the last month?though that still means they're very low compared with historical averages.

I sat down with Jed Kolko, chief economist at Trulia, to discuss how this will affect the ongoing recovery in housing. We also talked about which parts of the country have the best values for buying a home.

Watch below.

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Produced by Justin Gmoser

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/refinancing-mortgage-rates-rising-trulia-jed-kolko-2013-6

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Stanley Cup Final: Nail-biter finish brings triumph to Chicago

With two goals just 17 seconds apart in the final moments of Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final, the Chicago Blackhawks win 3-2 for their second NHL championship in four seasons.

By Jimmy Golen,?AP Sports Writer / June 24, 2013

Chicago Blackhawks defenseman Johnny Oduya (27), of Sweden, hugs Chicago Blackhawks goalie Corey Crawford (50) after winning Game 6 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup Finals 3-2 against the Boston Bruins, Monday, June 24, 2013, in Boston.

Charles Krupa / AP

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An NHL-record unbeaten streak to start the lockout-shortened season.

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Three straight victories to clinch the title.

From beginning to end, the Chicago Blackhawks skated away from the rest of the league.

Bryan Bickell and Dave Bolland scored 17 seconds apart in the final 1:16 and the Blackhawks staged a stunning rally to win Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final 3-2 on Monday night for their second NHL championship in four seasons.

Jonathan Toews returned from injury to add a goal, and Corey Crawford made 23 saves for Chicago in the first final round between Original Six teams since 1979.

"I still can't believe that finish," Crawford said. "Oh my God, we never quit."

Patrick Kane, whose overtime goal in Game 6 beat Philadelphia to win the 2010 championship, was voted the Conn Smythe Trophy winner as playoffs MVP.

"It was the best year of my life, just playing with these guys," Kane said.

Toews scored his third goal of the playoffs to tie it for the Blackawks at 4:24 of the second of Game 6 ? exactly two minutes after teammate Andrew Shaw was penalized for roughing.

"In 2010, we didn't really know what we were doing," Toews said. "We just, we played great hockey and we were kind of oblivious to how good we were playing.

" This time around, we know definitely how much work it takes and how much sacrifice it takes to get back here and this is an unbelievable group. We've been through a lot together this year and this is a sweet way to finish it off."

Boston, needing a win to extend the series to a deciding Game 7, came out aggressively and led 1-0 after one period on Chris Kelly's second goal of the playoffs. The Bruins outshot the Blackhawks 12-6 in the first period but the margin dropped to 18-15 through 40 minutes.

Each team got one of its best players back when Toews and Boston alternate captain Patrice Bergeron returned to the lineup after leaving the Blackhawks' 3-1 win with injuries on Saturday.

Toews scored when he got past Boston defenseman Zdeno Chara along the boards in the neutral zone. Chicago's captain skated up the right side and fired a hard shot from the right faceoff dot that beat goalie Tuukka Rask between his pads.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/30H-qUVP6uw/Stanley-Cup-Final-Nail-biter-finish-brings-triumph-to-Chicago

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The Man With A 'Battery Operated Brain'

He calls himself the "human with the battery operated brain" because he does, in fact, have electrodes in his head, put there by his New Zealand doctors.

Andrew Johnson (also known as "Cyber AJ") a few months ago was a young, 39 year old, early-onset Parkinsonian who tremored constantly. His hands shook. His neck crimped. His body was stiff. He had balance problems, voice problems, trouble speaking. He can make those problems disappear now by hitting a switch. It's amazing to see. This video begins with him looking totally normal; he talks a bit, then, when he's ready, he pushes the "off" button, and the disease comes roaring back. Instantly.

This procedure, called "deep brain stimulation" is now used all over the world. When neurons in the brain start firing in ways that cause shakes and tics, it is sometimes possible, says neurosurgeon Andres Lozano, to control those tics by adding or subtracting electricity.

So what we've been able to do is to pinpoint where these disturbances are in the brain and we've been able to intervene within the circuits in the brain ... We do that with electricity. We use electricity to dictate how they fire and we try to block their behavior using electricity.

Over the years, these implants can pinpoint the errant neurons with increasing accuracy adding or subtracting electricity as needed. In Andrew's case, the implants turned him from a "39 year old trapped in an 89 year old body" to what passes for normal guy ? at least when the current is on. As he says on his blog, youngandshaky.com, the surgery went fast.

I only had a small patch of hair removed from my head and chest and the wires pulled down and plugged into the neuro-stimulator which was implanted in my chest. Straight after the surgery I was in obscene amounts of pain (in my head) but double the normal dose of morphine soon put paid to that. While I was in recovery (incidentally longer than the time it took to do the surgery) there were lots of people milling around talking and getting ready to go to lunch etc. I am sure they were talking quietly but to me the slightest whisper was like a dagger to the skull and I remember thinking they better be quiet soon or I was going to get out of that bed and make them. That's if moving without falling to the floor in a crumpled heap was a possibility. The effects of the morphine soon kicked in and I started to feel halfway human again, albeit now a human with a battery operated brain. Cyber-AJ on the loose!

A few days later, after the staff had adjusted his monitor to compensate for his brain dysfunction, so that his body could move without shaking, (those settings will change; Parkinson's is a progressive disease), Andrew Johnson was released.

[T]he effects of being powered up are almost instantaneous. I have required several tweaks and medication adjustments but that is to be expected. I do feel a great deal better, certainly not to the point I was pre-Parkinson's but 100% better than I have felt in recent years. So from that perspective it has been a dream come true as I explained to a good friend Andy McDowell who came to visit me in hospital.

Andy McDowell also has Parkinson's, and he's written a poem about it to explain the disease to his children. "The only positive thing about this [expletive deleted] disease is meeting fantastic people like Andy and his wife Kate," says AJ. Here's the poem, "Smaller, A Poem About Parkinson's Disease", read by Andy's daughter Lily.

Thanks to blogger Jason Kottke for pointing me to AJ's story.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/06/25/195521917/the-man-with-a-battery-operated-brain?ft=1&f=1007

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Obama 'disappointed' over court's ruling

Holding signs with images of murdered civil rights workers, demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court??

President Barack Obama and his attorney general said they were "deeply disappointed" with the Supreme Court's decision to strike down a key part of the Voting Rights Act, a cornerstone of the civil rights movement that helped dismantle decades of discriminatory voting restrictions in the South when it passed 60 years ago. The vote was split 5-4, with the court's liberal justices dissenting.

The decision drastically scales back the federal government's power to reject state laws it believes discriminate against minority voters, which include some efforts to tighten identification requirements and limit early voting hours at the ballot box. A wave of such laws swept 30 states over the past few years, and the Obama administration has aggressively fought them in court.

The president said he was "deeply disappointed" with the decision in a statement Tuesday. "While today?s decision is a setback, it doesn?t represent the end of our efforts to end voting discrimination," Obama said. "I am calling on Congress to pass legislation to ensure every American has equal access to the polls."

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act?reauthorized by Congress for an additional 25 years in 2006?gives the federal government the ability to pre-emptively reject changes to election law in states and counties that have a history of discriminating against minority voters. The law covers nine states and portions of seven more, most of them in the South. The formula used to decide which states are subject to this special scrutiny (set out in Section 4 of the law) is based on decades-old voter turnout and registration data, the justices ruled, which is unfair to the states covered under it. States that had a discriminatory poll test in the 1960s and low turnout among minority voters must seek special permission from the federal government to change their election laws, even though many of these states now have near-equal voter turnout rates between minorities and whites.

"The coverage formula that Congress reauthorized in 2006 ignores these developments, keeping the focus on decades-old data relevant to decades-old problems," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion. "Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions."

The Justice Department used Section 5 of the law to block voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina last year, and it also struck down early voting restrictions in five counties in Florida. (Minority voters are more likely than white voters to vote early in person, and they are less likely than whites to have a government-issued photo ID.) Some Democrats argued that these laws were intentionally trying to suppress minority turnout in order to benefit Republicans.

The court has effectively now put the ball back in Congress' court, writing in its decision that it is up to Congress to write a new formula that is based on current data. States or counties that fit the new formula could still be subject to federal "preclearance" of changes to their elections procedures. It remains to be seen whether Congress, which is now more partisanly divided than in 2006, would tackle the challenge of creating a new rubric to find and eradicate racial discrimination at the polls. The president called on Congress to pass legislation addressing the ruling in a statement Tuesday.

In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg writes the "sad irony" of Roberts' decision is that it strikes down the key part of the Voting Rights Act because it has been so successful at preventing racial discrimination. "Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet," she writes. Ginsburg also slams the court's majority for relying on turnout and registration rates "as if that were the whole story" and ignoring so-called second-generation laws and regulations designed to make it harder for minorities to vote. (One such Mississippi regulation sought to cancel a local election in 2001 because black candidates announced their intention to run.)

Civil rights groups warned that the decision will negatively affect minority voters who live in the covered jurisdictions. "This is a sad day for democracy," said Myrna Perez, deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice advocacy center. "The Voting Rights Act is a needed and instrumental tool in our fight to eradicate racial discrimination, and the Supreme Court's decision today has made it much harder to utilize this tool effectively." Wade Henderson, the President of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement that Congress should act to draft another coverage formula. "We urge Congress to act with urgency and on a bipartisan basis to protect voting rights for minorities," Henderson said. Brennan Center President Michael Waldman said Congress had a "duty" to update the formula. It's unclear what factors would go into a new formula, however, since voter registration and turnout data would not work.

"This decision represents a serious setback for voting rights?and has the potential to negatively affect millions of Americans across the country," Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday afternoon. "I am hopeful that new protections can and will pass in this session of Congress."

Sen. Chuck Schumer, Democrat from New York, said in a statement that "as long as Republicans have a majority in the House and Democrats don't have 60 votes in the Senate, there will be no preclearance."

Court watchers predicted the decision, given the conservative justices' comments on the law during oral arguments and in other cases. Justices in the conservative wing of the Supreme Court, including Roberts, expressed reservations that the nine Southern states covered by the law still required the same degree of federal oversight that they did 60 years ago. "Voter turnout and registration rates [between blacks and whites] now approach parity," Roberts wrote in a decision in 2009. "Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels."

Another argument against Section 4's constitutionality was that it's unclear whether minority voters in Southern states are more likely to face discrimination at the polls than they are in other states. Voter ID laws, for example, have passed in states such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Indiana. Because those states do not have a history of voter discrimination?and are not covered by the act?their voter ID laws did not have to first pass federal inspection. That said, Southern states covered under the act were much more likely to pass a voter ID law than other states. Seven of the nine states covered in full under the act adopted such a law, compared with 12 noncovered states.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/news/supreme-court-strikes-down-key-part-voting-rights-141205218.html

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Rihanna Lashes Out At British Columnist Liz Jones

Rihanna Lashes Out At British Columnist Liz Jones

Rihanna may be a “poisonous pop princess” and “toxic” role model for fans, but don’t you dare put that shiz in print! RiRi is reportedly fuming over the article that takes aim at Rihanna for glorifying drugs. Rihanna obviously read the article by Liz Jones in Britain’s Daily Mail on Tuesday, where the columnist accused ...

Rihanna Lashes Out At British Columnist Liz Jones Stupid Celebrities Gossip Stupid Celebrities Gossip News

Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/06/rihanna-lashes-out-at-british-columnist-liz-jones/

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98% A Hijacking

All Critics (53) | Top Critics (15) | Fresh (52) | Rotten (1)

Lindholm doesn't present the film as a procedural for hostage negotiations because he knows too well that there are too many movable parts, too many things that can go wrong.

Methodical and tense ... has the feel of something based on real-life events ... boils down to an arresting portrait of two men, with different backgrounds and abilities, doing everything they can not to break.

We're impatient for action, any kind of action - but preferably the sort that involves a team of Navy SEALs, maybe led by Dwayne Johnson. Instead, we get something like a merger meeting.

Hand-held camerawork, so often a confounded nuisance, here makes the conditions on board the Rozen feel nauseatingly urgent.

No mainstream American thriller could ever be made about this subject that resisted simple-minded narrative clich?s the way "A Hijacking" does, or that refused to depict its characters as either heroes or villains.

Lindholm turns tedium and frustration into agonizing suspense.

Lindholm's you-are-there docudrama works as a tense thriller, but themes of negotiation and the ability to empathize provide a rich subtext.

...slow, mostly talk, but tense and realistic...

The level of suspense in this riveting Danish thriller doesn't build in sweeping melodramatic fashion, but rather at a low-key simmer that emphasizes authentic character dynamics.

A Hijacking accomplishes a tricky task, generating tension through talk rather than action.

This absorbing chronicle of a hijacking in the Indian Ocean has the strengths of the best procedural dramas -- it assumes a distanced and objective tone and packs an emotional wallop.

Moment by moment we find ourselves wondering what will happen next...

Auteur Tobias Lindholm does a striking job in grabbing your attention and running with it as he succinctly tells the story of "A Hijacking."

A Hijacking is an absorbing, highly moving film that's lingered heavily on the mind for a couple of days now.

A compact, meticulously researched drama about the business end of maritime piracy.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/a_hijacking/

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Religious advice should not involve political interest ... - Minivan News

The Maldivian public are often misinformed of authentic Hadiths (sayings of the Prophet) because some local scholars offer religious advice with the intention of serving their political interests, former President Mohamed Nasheed said last night (June 23).

Speaking at a ceremony at the Male? City Hall to launch a second volume of Dhivehi translation and interpretations of Sahih Muslim?s Hadiths by former State Minister for Islamic Affairs, Sheikh Hussain Rasheed Ahmed, Nasheed said genuine religious advice should not involve personal interest or a political ?agenda.?

While a politician might present statistics in a way that would favour his party, ?religious advice should not be given in a way that would benefit a political ideology.?

One of the biggest problems facing the country today was the ?mixing up? of politicians and religious scholars, Nasheed added.

The Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) presidential candidate said Sheikh Hussain Rasheed?s book should be made widely available for the public so that Maldivians could distinguish between inauthentic and authentic Hadiths.

The Hadiths were compiled by Imam Bukhari and Muslim during the Abbasid caliphate, Nasheed observed, which was a ?golden age? for Islam and the pursuit of knowledge.

?It is said that there were 700 libraries in Baghdad during that period,? he said.

Sheikh Rasheed?s second volume of Hadith translations are available for MVR 250 (US$16).

The former Adhaalath Party President?explained at last night?s ceremony that the complete translations of the 5,263 sayings would be published in a planned 12 volumes.

Parts two and three of Sheikh Rasheed?s books on prayer instructions were also released last night by former Islamic Minister Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari and Speaker of Parliament Abdulla Shahid.?

Source: http://minivannews.com/society/religious-advice-should-not-involve-political-interest-says-nasheed-60131

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Bullied bus monitor: Generosity funded her anti-bullying foundation

Bullied bus monitor: The woman who achieved inadvertent internet fame as the 'bullied bus monitor' was given over $700,000. She has now retired and created a foundation to teach about kindness.

By Carolyn Thompson,?Associated Press / June 24, 2013

Former school bus monitor Karen Klein talks with a reporter at her home in Greece, N.Y., last week. Now retired, Klein says she used $100,000 to seed the Karen Klein Anti-Bullying Foundation to promote kindness.

David Duprey / AP

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No new carpet or furniture for the home she's lived in for 46 years. No fancy car in the driveway.

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After being gifted a life-changing sum following a school?bus?bullying episode seen around the world a year ago, former?bus?monitor?Karen Klein says she really hasn't changed all that much.

Sure, the "Today" show mug she drinks coffee from reminds her of the widespread media attention her story brought, and the occasional stranger wants to snap her picture. She's also retired, something the 69-year-old widow couldn't afford before.

But Klein, who drove a school?bus?for 20 years before spending three years as a?monitor, remains as unassuming as she was before learning firsthand how the kindness of strangers can trump the cruelty of four adolescent boys.

"It's really amazing," Klein said at her suburban Rochester home, still perplexed at the outpouring unleashed by a 10-minute cellphone video of her being ridiculed, sworn at and threatened by a group of seventh-graders last June. They poke at her hearing aid and call her names as she tries to ignore them.

"Unless you have something nice to say, don't say anything at all," Klein says calmly a few minutes in.

One boy taunts: "You don't have a family because they all killed themselves because they don't want to be near you." Klein's oldest son committed suicide more than a decade ago.

The video, recorded by a fellow student, was posted online and viewed more than 1.4 million times on YouTube.

When 25-year-old Canadian Max Sidorov was moved to take up an online collection to send her on vacation, more than 32,000 people from 84 countries responded ? pledging $703,873 in donations.

"It's just the way it hits them, I guess. I don't know. I don't know," Klein said, still unsure of why it all happened.

Sidorov has called it "ridiculously more than I expected."

Klein used $100,000 as seed money for the Karen Klein Anti-Bullying Foundation, which has promoted its message of kindness at concerts and through books. Most recently, the foundation partnered with the Moscow Ballet to raise awareness of cyberbullying as the dance company tours the United States and Canada.

"There's a lot I wish I could be doing, but I don't know how to do it," Klein said.

"I'm just a regular old lady," she added with a laugh.

She has spent some helping family members and friends, and "the rest is under lock and key" for retirement, and maybe a motor home to do some traveling, she said. She wants to get back to her crafts, fix some things around the house, maybe get new carpet and furniture, and take it easy, especially since having a pacemaker implanted in March.

"There are other people who it would probably change dramatically," said Klein's daughter, Amanda Klein-Romig. "But for her, no, everything's the same pretty much. It's not like she's jaunting every weekend to a different place."

Klein has been to Boston, Toronto and other cities to promote her foundation. She participated in a WNBA anti-bullying event with the New York Liberty in Newark, N.J., and has been invited to appear on "Raising McCain," a cable television series launching this summer starring Arizona Sen. John McCain's daughter, Meghan.

"There's a lot of nice people out there, I have learned that," Klein said. "And to ignore the negative people."

Klein has been criticized by those who say she didn't do her job that June 2012 afternoon and by others who think she sought out fame and fortune.

"They make it sound like I did this on purpose," Klein said. She didn't even know the incident had been recorded until being called in to school by administrators and the police.

"She didn't ask for this," Klein-Romig said.

Klein has met with one of the boys who bullied her. He and his parents came to her home to apologize. The other three sent typed apologies, which she said struck her as less sincere.

"I hope they learned a lesson; they probably didn't," Klein says, shrugging. "It might have been a big joke to them."

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/ls108giZ_9Y/Bullied-bus-monitor-Generosity-funded-her-anti-bullying-foundation

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Courtney Stodden Boob Job: Incredible! Sexy! On Video!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/06/courtney-stodden-boob-job-incredible-sexy-on-video/

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Titan Unmasked: 1st Map of Saturn Moon's Topography Revealed

Scientists have pieced together the first-ever global topographic map of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, using radar observations from veteran NASA spacecraft.

The new map of Titan was stitched together from radar observations of the moon by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. It reveals an unprecedented look at Titan's surface and should help scientists learn more about one of the most Earth-like bodies in the solar system, members of the mapping team said.

"Titan has so much interesting activity ? like flowing liquids and moving sand dunes ? but to understand these processes it's useful to know how the terrain slopes," Ralph Lorenz, a member of the Cassini spacecraft's radar team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., who led the map design effort, said in a statement. "It's especially helpful to those studying hydrology and modeling Titan's climate and weather, who need to know whether there is high ground or low ground driving their models." [Amazing Photos: Titan, Saturn's Largest Moon]

Titan is the second largest moon in the solar system, and the only one known to have clouds and a dense atmosphere. Scientists have been keen to study the cloud-covered world because of its Earth-like qualities. Titan's atmosphere, like Earth, is primarily composed of nitrogen, but instead of water, Titan's rain, clouds and?lakes are made of methane.

Titan's nitrogen-rich atmosphere also contains organic chemicals that are derived from methane, which may hold clues to the building blocks of life as we know it, the researchers said.

Seeing through the clouds

Typically, NASA maps the topography of planetary bodies using remote cameras to observe the shapes and shadows of the landscape.?Titan's thick atmosphere, however, makes this difficult, the researchers explained.

NASA's?Cassini probe has flown by Titan nearly 100 times since it arrived at Saturn in 2004. As the spacecraft swings past the hazy moon, it uses a radar imager to pierce through the clouds. These radar measurements can then be used to estimate the heights of topographical features on the moon.

But, since Cassini is only able to observe Titan on flybys, putting together a complete map of its surface is challenging.

"We have only imaged about half of Titan's surface, and multiple 'looks' or special observations are needed to estimate the surface heights," Lorenz said. "If you divided Titan into 1-degree by 1-degree [latitude and longitude] squares, only 11 percent of those squares have topography data in them."

To create a global map, Lorenz and his colleagues used a mathematical process called "splining," which uses smooth, curved surfaces to stitch together grids of existing data.

"You can take a spot where there is no data, look how close it is to the nearest data, and use various approaches of averaging and estimating to calculate your best guess," Lorenz said. "If you pick a point, and all the nearby points are high altitude, you'd need a special reason for thinking that point would be lower. We're mathematically papering over the gaps in our coverage."

Piecing together the puzzle

Scientists already knew that Titan's polar regions are lower in altitude than regions around the equator, but the new topographic map fills in details that will enable researchers to make more accurate models of how and where Titan's rivers flow, and seasonal distribution of the moon's?methane rainfall.

"The movement of sands and the flow of liquids are influenced by slopes, and mountains can trigger cloud formation and therefore rainfall," Lorenz said. "This global product now gives modelers a convenient description of this key factor in Titan's dynamic climate system."

The map was compiled using data from 2012, but Lorenz said it may be updated when the Cassini spacecraft's mission ends in 2017. In the meantime, the scientists are hoping the newly compiled topographical information will spur new research on Titan.

"With this new topographic map, one of the most fascinating and dynamic worlds in our solar system now pops out in 3D," Steve Wall, deputy team leader of Cassini's radar team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "On Earth, rivers, volcanoes and even weather are closely related to heights of surfaces ? we're now eager to see what we can learn from them on Titan."

The map was published in the July 2013 issue of the journal Icarus.

Follow Denise Chow on Twitter?@denisechow. Follow us?@Spacedotcom,?Facebook?or?Google+. Originally published on?SPACE.com.

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/titan-unmasked-1st-map-saturn-moons-topography-revealed-143046055.html

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