MUMBAI?? First, Lady Gaga wore a dress made of meat. Now, how about one made of lettuce?
Indian animal rights activists have asked pop star Lady Gaga to pose in a lettuce dress and embrace vegetarianism during her visit to India this weekend, where she will be part of the star-studded unveiling of the country's first Formula 1 race.
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Lady Gaga, who famously wore a meat dress at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, will be performing at an invitation-only show in a five-star hotel in New Delhi after the race on Sunday.
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In a letter to the singer's publicist, PETA India said it hoped she would honor India's reverence for animals by turning vegetarian for the duration of her visit and posing for photos in a lettuce gown to promote the importance of not eating meat.
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"If she agrees, we'll make her a dress entirely of lettuce and held together by pins and threads. It will be a full length gown, and we'll make sure it looks sexy," said Sachin Bangera of PETA India.
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The dress would be constructed leaf by leaf on the singer's body, taking some five to six hours.
"Someone will be on hand to spray the lettuce with water so that it doesn't wilt," Bangera added.
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Earlier this year, in an interview with Indian chat show host Simi Garewal, Lady Gaga said she would like to soak up the local culture by taking an Indian cooking class.
Excitement has been bubbling all week about the country's first Formula 1 Grand Prix, which is seen as a symbol of India's growing global clout while also highlighting its enormous disparities in wealth.
Which would you rather wear -- a meat dress, or a lettuce dress? Tell us on Facebook.
Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
The Obama administration has ordered an independent review of loans made by the Energy Department to energy companies ? a clear response to the controversial and now-bankrupt Solyndra Inc. solar energy company.
It?s the latest step in the face of growing criticism over the $528 million government loan to Solyndra, which was part of the administration?s economic stimulus package meant to advance green energy. Last month, FBI agents and investigators from the Department of Energy's Office of Inspector General searched Solyndra headquarters in California for documents and other information.
Heading the review announced Friday is former Treasury official Herbert Allison, who oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program, part of the 2008 Wall Street bailout.
"Today we are directing that an independent analysis be conducted of the current state of the Department of Energy loan portfolio, focusing on future loan monitoring and management," White House chief of staff Bill Daley said Friday afternoon ? the traditional time for burying announcements. "While we continue to take steps to make sure the United States remains competitive in the 21st century energy economy, we must also ensure that we are strong stewards of taxpayer dollars."
Announcement of the internal review of procedures dealing with Solyndra was not enough to satisfy congressional critics.
Leaders of the Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittee on oversight and investigations say they?ll meet this coming week to consider a resolution authorizing the issuance of a subpoena for internal White House communications relating to the Solyndra loan guarantee.
?Subpoenaing the White House is a serious step that, unfortunately, appears necessary in light of the Obama administration?s stonewall on Solyndra,? Fred Upton (R) of Michigan and Cliff Stearns (R) of Florida said in a statement. ?Since we launched the Solyndra investigation over eight months ago, the Obama administration has unfortunately fought us every step of the way, even forcing us to subpoena documents from [the White House Office of Management and Budget].?
Apparently, White House officials weren?t the only ones pushing special consideration for green energy.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) of Utah, who has criticized the Obama administration?s backing of Energy Department loan guarantees to Solyndra, pushed for more than $20 million in government funding for a clean energy firm in his home state, reports USA Today.
?Hatch aides [said] earlier this month that the Republican lawmaker had never pushed for taxpayer money to be used for Raser Technologies, which operated a geothermal power plant in southern Utah and also developed hybrid plug-in vehicles,? the newspaper reported Friday. ?But on Friday, Hatch spokesman Matthew Harakal said that after an internal audit following publication of the USA Today story on Hatch's support for Raser, the Utah senator's office found that Hatch actually requested seven earmarks for more than $20 million from 2006 to 2008 to help fund research and development projects for the automotive wing of the company.?
None of the requests were funded, and Raser Technologies filed for bankruptcy in April.
Meanwhile, the Solyndra scandal ? if that?s what it is ? has indirectly touched at least one Republican presidential hopeful.
?Mitt Romney is facing scrutiny this week for associating himself with a lobbyist whose firm worked for failed California solar panel company Solyndra,? The Hill newspaper in Washington reported this week. ?Lobbyist Alex Mistri co-hosted a Romney fundraiser Wednesday that included a number of lobbyists and members of Congress, held at the American Trucking Association near Capitol Hill.?
Also attending the Romney fundraiser co-hosted by lobbyist Mistri was Rep. Darrell Issa (R) of California, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform investigating Solyndra.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Regal rap titans bounced through Watch the Throne cuts and solo smashes in a set marked by a gaudy display of hits. By Rob Markman
Jay-Z and Kanye West kick off "Watch The Throne" tour in Atlanta Photo: Rob Markman/MTV News
ATLANTA, Georgia — Not even a stormy night could stop the regal reign of the Throne. On Friday, Jay-Z and Kanye West opened up their Watch the Throne Tour in Atlanta. While the WTT album has been noted for its opulent displays of wealth, Hov and Yeezy's show will be marked by the duo's overabundance of hit records.
The doors to the Philips Arena opened at 7:30 p.m. ET and, with no scheduled show opener, the house DJ played old slow jams like the Isley Brothers' "Between the Sheets," Little Beaver's "Get into the Party Life" and Hank Crawford's "Wildflower" — all songs that have been sampled by Kanye and Jay at one time or another. Still, the subtle measure wasn't nearly enough to keep fans satisfied. By 9 p.m. ET, the crunked-up crowd was restless and salivating for the night's stars.
With the house lights low and fans pumped, the multilayered instrumental from "H.A.M." came blaring through the sound system. The initial WTT track has been criticized by some as too over-the-top and too much unlike anything in Jay and 'Ye's respective catalogs, but the helter-skelter mix of crashing symbals, bleeps, beeps and bombastic bass was clearly built specifically for sports stadiums and grand auditoriums.
The build was perfect, even if the execution wasn't. Kanye commandeered a rising platform at the front of the stage, while Jay simultaneously occupied a similar lift that was situated on the floor in the middle of the crowd. Within moments, the duo were elevated in unison towering above the audience, volleying verses from one side of the arena to the other. Jay stumbled vocally, though: His ear piece short-circuited and failed failed to properly feed him the music and his timing was clearly affected. For a time, Hov's raps were badly off-beat.
But there were no fits, and no cursing at the sound man. Instead, Jay fought through the malfunction, which lasted through the next song. While mid-verse on the dubstep-laced "Who Gon Stop Me," Jigga cued to have the music cut, then finished his bars a capella, buying time until the technical mistake was corrected. From there, perfection ensued.
"Otis" came early in the set. With a Givenchy-designed American flag flashing on the stage's main screens, the Throne bounced through their fan-fave with a youthful glee. Surprisingly, the Roc Boys performed a number of hyped-up Watch the Throne cuts in the first quarter of the show.
With the Throne tone set, Kanye disappeared from the stage while Jay got his rocks off spitting his 1997 street banger "Where I'm From." Throughout the night, Hov and Yeezy would trade off, rocking a few solo songs a piece, before coming together for something collaborative. 'Ye tore through "Can't Tell Me Nothing" and "Jesus Walks" all by himself, before Jigga reappeared for Yeezy's "Diamonds from Sierra Leone (Remix)."
Jay's "Public Service Announcement" and "You Don't Know" were played against Kanye's "Good Life" and "Power" in a sound clash of sorts. By the time the Louis Vuitton Don launched into the gut-wrenching "Runaway," he had hit his stride. He even remixed "Runaway," pleading with the crowd to hold on to their loved ones as he sang, "If you love somebody tonight, hold on real tight." It was effective as couples in the crowd, hugged, danced and two lovebirds even made out.
In a comical section of the set, Jay-Z and the College Dropout weaved a funny story line where their hits "Big Pimpin'," "Gold Digger" and "99 Problems" became a narrative for Jay to school his "little brother" on the opposite sex.
Kanye owned the outfit of the night. After one particular wardrobe change, he marched out to "Touch the Sky" sporting a tribal-type jacket, leather kilt, leather pants underneath and his glow-in-the-dark Air Yeezys. Hov's black Yankee snapback and matching hoodie were no match.
Every time the crowd thought the two-hour-plus show was over, it wasn't. First there was "N---as in Paris." The track's Will Farrell intro ("We're gonna skate to one song and one song only") brought on the moment that everyone was waiting for. As the Atlanta crowd bounced feverishly to the Hit Boy-produced single, Jay halted the proceedings midway: "Start that sh-- over," he barked and the Throne's most-energetic selection of the night brought the crowd to an apex.
Next was Jay's "Encore," followed by an inspirational rendition of "Made in America," complete with images of Martin Luther King Jr. and "sweet brother" Malcolm X flashing on the big screen. Finally, the Throne closed with the rocked-out "Why I Love You," saluting the crowd as they moseyed offstage. "Peace ATL, thanks for all the love. Goodnight," Jay-Z said.
On a night where the two kings put their wealth on full display, lucky for Atlanta, Jay and Kanye West were willing to share.
Share your thoughts on the Throne's Atlanta tour kickoff in the comments below!
FILE - In this file photo taken Sept, 29, 2011, Elsy Santiago, left, and her sister Betsy shop at a store in Hialeah, Fla. Consumers boosted their spending in September at three times the pace of the previous month but their incomes barely budged. They financed the gains from savings, sending the savings rate to the lowest level since the start of the Great Recession. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz, File)
FILE - In this file photo taken Sept, 29, 2011, Elsy Santiago, left, and her sister Betsy shop at a store in Hialeah, Fla. Consumers boosted their spending in September at three times the pace of the previous month but their incomes barely budged. They financed the gains from savings, sending the savings rate to the lowest level since the start of the Great Recession. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz, File)
FILE - In this Sept. 29, 2011 file photo, unidentified shoppers unload their shopping cart at a Pembroke Pines, Fla., Costco store. Consumers boosted their spending in September at three times the pace of the previous month but their incomes barely budged. They financed the gains from savings, sending the savings rate to the lowest level since the start of the Great Recession. (AP Photo/J Pat Carter, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Americans are making a little more money and spending a lot more.
Under normal circumstances, that would be a troubling sign for the economy. But a closer look at some new government figures suggests another possibility: People are saving less money because they're earning next to nothing in interest.
Saving is already difficult because of more expensive gas and food. It's even tougher because of the lower returns ? the flip side of super-low interest rates that the Federal Reserve has kept in place since 2008 to help the economy.
Critics say the Fed is punishing those who play by the rules ? those careful enough to set aside money for savings or people who built up a nest egg and are living on fixed incomes that depend on interest.
Americans spent 0.6 percent more in September, three times the increase from the previous month, the government said Friday. Spending was especially strong on durable goods ? things like cars, appliances and electronics.
At the same time, what they earned was mostly flat. Pay increased 0.3 percent, and overall income just 0.1 percent. After deducting taxes and adjusting for inflation, income fell for a third straight month.
So to make up the difference, many have cut back on savings. The savings rate fell to its lowest level since December 2007, the first month of the recession ? and right about the time the Fed started its dramatic series of interest-rate cuts.
Considering how little you can get for parking your money at a bank, it hasn't been a tough choice.
"Consumers have hit a level of saturation in their savings," said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst with market research firm The NPD Group. "The propensity is to spend."
The annual yield on six-month certificates of deposit was unchanged this week at 0.23 percent, according to Bankrate.com. Five years ago, it was 3.62 percent. If you put your money in the six-month CD today, you'd make about enough to buy a burger.
Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics, said the trend could mean more spending by Americans. But it will take robust personal spending ? along with improvement in the depressed housing market ? to get the economy going again.
Ashworth said his firm is not too concerned with the decline in savings because it partly represents "a sharp decline in debt servicing costs." In other words, low interest rates mean it's cheaper to borrow money.
The Fed began cutting interest rates four years ago at the start of the financial crisis. The rate cuts took the federal funds rate, the key for short-term interest rates, from 5.25 percent down to near zero, where they have stayed since December 2008.
The central bank has said it will keep rates super-low into 2013 as long as the economy stays weak. While that means low returns for savers, it is designed to encourage people and businesses to borrow more.
Many borrowers tend to be young families who are spending most of their income anyway. The loss in interest income tends to hit older households, which are saving for retirement and counting more on bonds and other fixed-income securities.
Consumer spending is closely watched because it accounts for about 70 percent of economic activity. A sharp rise in spending over the summer helped the overall economy grow in July, August and September at the fastest pace in a year.
Still, the economy would have to grow twice as fast to put a dent in the unemployment rate, which has stayed near 9 percent since the recession officially ended more than two years ago.
At the same time savings accounts and other fixed-income investments are paying less, the cost of food and gas has gone up.
Elizabeth Smith, who works in teacher education at the University of Arkansas, has cut her monthly contribution to her retirement savings in half to meet necessities.
"Every time I go to the store, butter, cheese and milk are more expensive," she said. Child care costs for her two children have also risen this year.
On the other hand, Smith has benefited from lower interest rates. She and her husband refinanced the mortgage on her home a year ago, which lowered their monthly payments by $200, freeing up more cash.
The Fed's policies are "designed to reward spending and effectively punish savers," said Eric Green, chief U.S. economist at TD Securities.
___
AP Business Writers Anne D'Innocenzio in New York and David Pitt in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.
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If you think the cell phone explosion of recent years has somehow been kept at bay by prison walls, you would be greatly mistaken. Technology, like water, permeates every crack. Today on Lockdown, we're talking phones in jail. More »
FILE - In this July 7, 2011 file photo, Casey Anthony smiles before the start of her sentencing hearing in Orlando, Fla. On Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2011, the names of the jurors in the Casey Anthony trial were made public for the first time since they acquitted the Florida mother on charges of murdering her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. (AP Photo/Joe Burbank, File)
FILE - In this July 7, 2011 file photo, Casey Anthony smiles before the start of her sentencing hearing in Orlando, Fla. On Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2011, the names of the jurors in the Casey Anthony trial were made public for the first time since they acquitted the Florida mother on charges of murdering her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. (AP Photo/Joe Burbank, File)
FILE - In this July 5, 2011 file photo, the juror chairs sit empty in the media room at the Orange County Courthouse in Orlando, Fla., after the jury found Casey Anthony not guilty in her murder trial. On Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2011, the names of the jurors in the Casey Anthony trial were made public for the first time since they acquitted the Florida mother on charges of murdering her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. (AP Photo/Joe Burbank, Pool, File)
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) ? A court released the names of the jurors in the Casey Anthony trial for the first time Tuesday since they acquitted the Florida woman of murdering her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee.
The "cooling off" period a judge cited in delaying the release for three months ended Tuesday, and the names of 12 jurors and three alternates were released by the Pinellas County Clerk of Court.
After the trial ended in July, Judge Belvin Perry said he wanted time to pass before the names were made public because some of the jurors had received death threats.
Jurors were selected from Pinellas County, along Florida's Gulf Coast, because of concerns about pretrial publicity in Orlando. The jurors were sequestered until the verdict was announced.
Associated Press reporters knocked on doors Tuesday at homes where the jurors were thought to live. In most cases, the blinds or drapes were closed shut and no one answered. Dogs could be heard barking inside some of the homes.
At another home, a woman who answered the door said the juror doesn't live there.
Anthony was acquitted of killing Caylee and released from jail a couple of weeks after the trial ended. She is now serving probation on an unrelated check fraud charge at an undisclosed location in Florida.
She was deposed earlier in October for a civil lawsuit that accuses her of ruining another woman's reputation. Anthony told detectives in 2008 that her daughter had been kidnapped by a nanny named Zenaida Gonzalez. The child's body was later found in a wooded area not from the Anthony's home in Orlando.
Detectives have said no such baby sitter existed. But there is an Orlando woman named Zenaida Gonzalez and she sued Anthony over the name confusion.
ERCIS, Turkey?? Rescuers clawed through rubble on Monday to free people trapped by a powerful earthquake that killed at least 264 people and wounded more than 1,000 in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey.
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Hundreds more were feared dead, as Turkey's most powerful quake in a decade toppled remote villages of mud brick houses.
As some desperate survivors cried for help from beneath mounds of smashed concrete and twisted metal, earthmoving machines and soldiers joined the search after Sunday's 7.2 magnitude quake struck the city of Van and the town of Ercis, some 60 miles to the north.
"Be patient, be patient," rescuers told a whimpering boy, pinned under a concrete slab with the lifeless hand of an adult, with a wedding ring, visible just in front of his face.
A Reuters photographer saw a woman and her daughter being freed from beneath a concrete slab in the wreckage of a building that had once been six stories tall.
"I'm here, I'm here," the woman, named Fidan, called out in a hoarse voice. Talking to her regularly while working for more than two hours to find a way through, rescuers cut through the slab, first sighting the daughter's foot, before freeing them.
Standing by a wrecked four-story building one woman told a rescue worker she had spoken to her friend, Hatice Hasimoglu, on her mobile phone six hours after the quake trapped her inside.
"She's my friend and she called me to say that she's alive and she's stuck in the rubble near the stairs of the building," said her friend, a fellow teacher. "She told me she was wearing red pajamas," she said, standing with distraught relatives begging the rescue workers to hurry.
In Van, an ancient city of one million on a lake ringed by snow-capped mountains, cranes shifted rubble from a collapsed six-story apartment block where 70 people were feared trapped.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan flew swiftly to Van to assess the scale of the disaster in a quake-prone area that is a hotbed of activity for Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants.
Erdogan said he feared for the fate of villages which rescue teams had yet to reach. "Because the buildings are made of mud brick, they are more vulnerable to quakes. I must say that almost all buildings in such villages are destroyed," he told an overnight news conference in Van.
Story: Fiance saves woman from beneath quake's rubble
NTV broadcaster quoted Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin as saying the death toll had reached 264. Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay, speaking in Van, said more than 1,300 were injured. The interior minister said hundreds more were unaccounted for, many believed buried under rubble.
Newspapers said trauma had been piled on trauma in the southeast, where a PKK attack killed 24 Turkish soldiers in Hakkari, south of Van, last week. "Homeland of Pain. Yesterday terrorism, today earthquake," said Radikal newspaper.
Erdogan earlier flew by helicopter to Ercis, a town of 100,000 that was harder hit than Van, with 55 buildings flattened, including a student dormitory. "We don't know how many people are in the ruins of collapsed buildings," he said.
At one crumpled four-story building in Ercis, firemen from the major southeastern city of Diyarbakir tried to reach four missing children. Aid workers carried two black body bags, one apparently containing a child, to an ambulance. An old woman wrapped in a headscarf walked alongside sobbing.
PhotoBlog: Rescue workers find survivors in collapsed buildings
A distressed man paced back and forth before running toward the rescue workers on top of the rubble. "That's my nephew's house," he sobbed as workers tried to hold him back.
A group of women, some with faces covered by headscarves, wept as they looked on under a chilly blue sky.
Cold night in the open Nearby, aid teams handed out parcels of bread and food, while people wrapped in blankets huddled around open fires after spending a cold night on the streets.
Rescue efforts were hampered by power outages after the quake toppled electricity cables to towns and villages across much of the barren Anatolian steppe near the Iranian border. It also damaged the main Van-Ercis road, CNN Turk reported.
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More than 200 aftershocks have jolted the region since the quake struck for around 25 seconds at 1041 GMT (6:41 a.m. EDT) on Sunday.
"I just felt the whole earth moving and I was petrified. It went on for ages. And the noise, you could hear this loud, loud noise," said Hakan Demirtas, 32, a builder who was working on construction site in Van at the time.
"My house is ruined," he said, sitting on a low wall after spending the night in the open. "I am still afraid, I'm in shock. I have no future, there is nothing I can do."
The Red Crescent said about 100 experts had reached the earthquake zone to coordinate rescue and relief operations. Some 5,000 tents and 11,000 blankets, stoves and food were being distributed and mobile kitchens were set up to feed those made homeless. Sniffer dogs had joined the quest for survivors.
At Van airport, a Turkish Airlines cargo plane unloaded aid materials onto waiting military vehicles for distribution.
Workers set up a tent city in the Ercis sports stadium, as ambulances, sirens wailing, ferried the injured to hospital.
Dogan news agency reported that 24 people were pulled from the rubble alive in the two hours after midnight.
Erdogan later returned to Ankara for a cabinet meeting to discuss the response to the disaster. He said Turkey could cope by itself, but thanked nations offering help, including Armenia and Israel, which both have strained relations with Ankara.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was deeply saddened by the loss of life and devastation. "He expresses his heartfelt sympathies to the government and people of Turkey at this time of loss and suffering," a U.N. statement said.
Major geological fault lines cross Turkey, where small tremors occur almost daily. Two large quakes in 1999 killed more than 20,000 people in the northwest.
The quake had no impact on Turkish financial markets as they opened on Monday. Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek said Van benefit from tax exemptions.
In Van, construction worker Sulhattin Secen, 27, said he had first mistaken the quake's rumble for a car crash.
"Then the ground beneath me started moving up and down as if I was standing in water. May God help us. It's like life has stopped. What are people going to do?"
Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
Adobe Lightroom 3.5 is the gold standard among workflow apps for professional photographers. Anyone who shoots lots of digital photos with a high-megapixel DSLR should consider an app like this, which lets them manage, adjust, and output all those large image files. Lightroom 3.0 was a major upgrade, bringing lots of new goodies to the table, including much faster operation, better noise reduction, a new import dialog, new RAW processing engine, and more online publishing options.
Version increments up to and including Lightroom 3.5 have added support for more cameras and lenses, integrated Flickr (Free, 4 stars) and Facebook publishers, and the ability to correct based on specific lens characteristics, including geometry distortion. Lightroom is the only pro photo software that can make this last claim, and it's a significant one. Mac users have an excellent and low-cost option with Aperture 3 ($79, 4.5 stars), but for Windows users or those who want to switch back and forth between the two platforms, the newly polished Lightroom 3.5 is our app of choice, fending off the challenge of also-impressive ACDSee Pro ($239.99 direct, 4 stars).
Interface Lightroom 3.5 maintains the program's modal operation, via an interface with five modes accessible by tabs: Library (for viewing and organizing collections), Develop (for image adjustment), Slideshow, Print, and Web. This seems a bit much; the last three should be collapsed into an Output tab. ACDSee narrows the modes to four, but I prefer Aperture's approach, which lets you do anything from a single Inspector pane, via Library, Metadata, and Adjustments tabs.
I prefer Aperture's Library Inspector (which clearly displays projects, albums, slideshows, and websites) to Lightroom 3.5's Catalog, Folders Collections, and Publish Services groups. Accessing Lightroom 3.5's slideshows and Web projects requires you to switch modes. If you like to compartmentalize, however, you might prefer Lightroom's approach. ACDSee's is the only one of the three that lets you detach any control panels, as you can with the image-editor extraordinaire Adobe Photoshop ($699, 5 stars).
Importing and Organizing Photos Lightroom 3.5 has an improved import function; It lets you choose all your import options in one step?whether you want to add or move the files to the LR library, apply adjustment presets during import, and so on. On subsequent imports, all setting, tag, and file-name choices are automatically remembered. This tripped me up at first, as each import has different needs, but I soon got used to the idea. If you're a serious high-volume user, you'll definitely appreciate the automation.
Lightroom lets you see thumbnails and full size images on memory cards before importing. That's a big improvement from Lightroom 2, but Aperture can do all this, too. Lightroom 3.5's import is much faster than Aperture's, but Aperture handles imports differently, letting you start work on any photo in the set before all the import processing is done. ACDSee let me start processing while an import was still in progress, too, but it couldn't automatically apply adjustments aside from rotation on import, and it was much slower than Lightroom.
Like Aperture, Lightroom imports pictures into its own database, aka "catalog," where other programs and the files system can't access to them (unless you change that option or export the pictures later). The database approach makes sense for photographers with huge collections of large images. In Aperture, you can start an import no matter what you're doing in the program; in Lightroom you can import only in Library mode.
Another way to get photos onto your computer is to tether. Mostly of use to studio or sports photographers, tethering lets you connect your camera with a USB or FireWire cable and actually control the shutter release from the computer. When I tried this with my Canon T1i ($899.99 List, ), which was listed as a supported camera for tethering in Aperture, I got messages stating that there was an error, or that the camera wasn't recognized in the software. Lightroom 3.5, on the other hand, let me shoot from my laptop with more elegant UI than Aperture's bare-bones tethering box. That's one area, at least, where Adobe beats Apple on interface. ACDSee, by comparison, offers no tethering capability.
In Library mode, double-clicking takes you between thumbnail and screen fit view, and another click zooms in to 100 percent, but Aperture's browser, viewer, and filmstrip buttons at top are clearer. Lightroom not only gives you thumbnail and full views of your images and the ability to star rate, pick, or color-code images, but it also lets you group pictures into Quick Collections of thumbnails you select and Smart Collections of photos that meet rating or other criteria.
Star rating, flagging, and rotating can be done from within the thumbnails. And from Library Mode you can also use Quick Develop, which may be all you need if your pictures just need a lighting fix. You can also apply saved or included creative presets (such as "Antique") in Quick Develop.
Another neat tool in Library mode is the spray-paint-can button, which lets you click on thumbs to apply either metadata or adjustment presets. The program also does a good job of making it easy to compare images side by side. Finally, a Survey mode lets you select several images for larger comparison views.
MESA, Ariz. (AP) ? Like just about everyone in the Phoenix area, Jen Pollock has lost several neighbors to foreclosure and short sales. And, like hundreds of thousands of others in Arizona, Pollock and her husband are upside down on their mortgage, owing about twice as much as their suburban house is now worth.
They don't want to walk away from it. They just wish someone would let them renegotiate their mortgage.
"The banks keep telling us they won't talk to us unless we miss some payments. But that would ruin our credit," said the 36-year-old mom as her son climbed around a north Phoenix playground.
Asked if she was upset by the lack of solutions being offered by presidential candidates for the housing crisis, she said she doesn't pay much attention to politics.
Across America, despite the hundreds protesting for limited government or more government action, a broad swath of the middle class hit hard by the crash in housing prices is quietly resigned, given up on seeing any relief ? particularly from politicians.
"No one's come up with the answer," said Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, who hosted President Barack Obama in 2009 when the president launched his first foreclosure relief plan.
"People are just holding on and thinking that as life generally is, somehow this thing will work its way out. I think they have zero confidence in the politicians' ability to work it out for them," said Smith, a Republican leading a Republican-dominated suburb.
Obama unveiled another relief plan Monday in Las Vegas, the nation's foreclosure capital. The new plan eases eligibility for people like Pollock to qualify for new loan terms. But banks are not required to participate, leaving many questions about whether the plan will be any more effective than the other measures that have been offered up over the past four years.
"Most of the programs have been based on ideas of reducing your monthly payments for a period of time," said Jay Butler, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business who has closely tracked the housing and foreclosure crisis in Arizona. "I think a lot of these ideas started in the Bush administration with the idea that was going to be relatively short-lived, one or two years, and things would get back to great and glorious. And none of that has happened."
And many of those programs, Butler said, are not being used by the people who really need them.
"It's difficult to understand programs," he said. "Who do you contact? The loan servicer? The lender? They might not even have the mortgage anymore. Then you have all these scams going on. ... It's sort of like this snowball running down the crest. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger and sooner or later it just runs you over."
Housing, Butler said, is just part of the issue.
"Food and energy prices went up. People are not getting pay raises. A lot of people who have jobs find health care and pension costs going up, so net take-home pay is going down," he said. "So it's just sort of like you are getting hammered."
And that makes it far too complex for politicians to put their arms around.
At the Republican presidential candidates' debate in Las Vegas last week, a property owner asked the candidates what specifically they would do to fix the housing crisis. The discussion on the stage quickly dissolved into bickering about who supported Obama's economic stimulus package.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has released an Internet ad chastising Obama for the housing crisis in Nevada, said government programs to fix the crisis haven't worked. A day earlier, he told a local newspaper the crisis needs to run its course and hit bottom.
Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann sympathized with mothers who are in a foreclosure crisis, but none of the candidates offered an answer.
The Democratic National Committee unveiled a television ad Monday, set to run in Arizona, attacking Romney's statements to the Las Vegas newspaper. And Arizona Democratic Chairman Andrei Cherny said that while voters are resigned, he expects Obama to make more announcements on the housing issue in coming months.
But Butler says there is not much more they can do.
"Politicians get too much credit when it's good and too much blame when it's bad," he said.
One of his colleagues, real estate professor Mark Strapp, said that while Obama seems to be trying to fix past wrongs that sent the help to the wrong people, Republicans will probably continue to ignore the issue because they don't want to alienate Wall Street.
"They don't want to deal with it because there is not an easy solution," Strapp said.
When the housing crisis first hit his city, Smith said about 8 percent of the housing stock in Mesa was empty ? about 12,000 homes. While fewer for-sale and foreclosure signs dot the landscape now, he those numbers have held steady for about four years now.
A former builder, Smith says most of his friends from that business have been out of work for three years. Most have lost their homes and spent all their savings. Now they are just scraping by.
Are they even talking about presidential politics?
"Not really. Maybe some are," Smith said. "But they've lost so much hope in what Washington can do. They are so turned off by the posturing, the bickering, the partisanship, that it's not even worth talking about."
SANAA (Reuters) ? Gunfire and shelling in the Yemeni capital Sanaa killed two people on Sunday, medics said, two days after the United Nations issued a resolution condemning the violence and urging President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down.
A third person was killed in the southern city of Taiz during protests demanding an end to Saleh's 33-year rule, while street fighting between state troops and soldiers and tribesmen siding with the opposition showed no sign of slowing.
At least 14 soldiers were injured on Sunday, including five aligned with top general Ali Mohsen, who defected from Saleh in March and threw his weight behind the protesters. Demonstrators accused government snipers of shooting at their camp in Sanaa.
"There are one dead and six injured due to firing in the south of Change Square at dawn," said Dr Mohammed al-Qubati, the head of a field hospital in the camp, earlier on Sunday.
Government and opposition traded blame for the death of a young girl who was killed when a shell landed on her family's house, also injuring her mother, witnesses said.
A nine-month confrontation between Saleh and a fractured opposition of student protesters, tribal leaders and dissident army factions has escalated in recent weeks after a three-month lull.
Saleh has thrice backed out of signing a Gulf-brokered transition plan that would see him leave office and says he will only transfer power to "safe hands."
On Friday the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution condemning the crackdown on protesters and urging the veteran leader to sign a deal proposed by Gulf states which would see him step down in return for immunity from prosecution.
The Arab League in a statement on Sunday welcomed the resolution, calling on Saleh to quickly sign the Gulf intiative and allow its implementation to begin.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators set off on a protest march on Sunday from Change Square, the street intersection next to Sanaa University on the capital's ring-road where the opposition has set up camp.
In Saturday's clashes, five soldiers loyal to the opposition and five civilians were killed, witnesses and Sanaa residents said.
State news channels said five soldiers and three civilians had been killed, blaming the violence on non-government militias.
Rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and automatic weapons were used in the al-Hasaba, Soufan and al-Nahda districts of northern Sanaa, where soldiers loyal to the opposition are based.
(Reporting by Mohamed Sudam; Writing by Angus McDowall and Isabel Coles; Editing by Andrew Roche)
No simultaneous warming of Northern and Southern hemispheres as a result of climate change for 20,000 yearsPublic release date: 21-Oct-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Svante Bjorck Svante.Bjorck@geol.lu.se 46-703-352-494 Lund University
However, Svante Bjrck, a climate researcher at Lund University in Sweden, has now shown that global warming, i.e. simultaneous warming events in the northern and southern hemispheres, have not occurred in the past 20 000 years, which is as far back as it is possible to analyse with sufficient precision to compare with modern developments.
Svante Bjrck's study thus goes 14 000 years further back in time than previous studies have done.
"What is happening today is unique from a historical geological perspective", he says.
Svante Bjrck has gone through the global climate archives, which are presented in a large number of research publications, and looked for evidence that any of the climate events that have occurred since the end of the last Ice Age 20 000 years ago could have generated similar effects on both the northern and southern hemispheres simultaneously.
It has not, however, been possible to verify this. Instead, he has found that when, for example, the temperature rises in one hemisphere, it falls or remains unchanged in the other.
"My study shows that, apart from the larger-scale developments, such as the general change into warm periods and ice ages, climate change has previously only produced similar effects on local or regional level", says Svante Bjrck.
As an example, let us take the last clear climate change, which took place between the years 1600 and 1900 and which many know as the Little Ice Age. Europe experienced some of its coldest centuries. While the extreme cold had serious consequences for agriculture, state economies and transport in the north, there is no evidence of corresponding simultaneous temperature changes and effects in the southern hemisphere.
The climate archives, in the form of core samples taken from marine and lake sediments and glacier ice, serve as a record of how temperature, precipitation and concentration of atmospheric gases and particles have varied over the course of history, and are full of similar examples.
Instead it is during 'calmer' climatic periods, when the climate system is influenced by external processes, that the researchers can see that the climate signals in the archives show similar trends in both the northern and southern hemispheres.
"This could be, for example, at the time of a meteorite crash, when an asteroid hits the earth or after a violent volcanic eruption when ash is spread across the globe. In these cases we can see similar effects around the world simultaneously", says Svante Bjrck.
Professor Bjrck draws parallels to today's situation. The levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are currently changing very rapidly. At the same time, global warming is occurring.
"As long as we don't find any evidence for earlier climate changes leading to similar simultaneous effects on a global scale, we must see today's global warming as an exception caused by human influence on the earth's carbon cycle", says Svante Bjrck, continuing:
"this is a good example of how geological knowledge can be used to understand our world. It offers perspectives on how the earth functions without our direct influence and thus how and to what extent human activity affects the system."
Svante Bjrck's results were published this summer in the scientific journal Climate Research.
###
For more information, please contact Professor Svante Bjrck, Department of Earth and Ecosystem Sciences, Lund University, tel.: +46 46 222 7882, mobile: +46 703 352494, email: Svante.Bjorck@geol.lu.se
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
No simultaneous warming of Northern and Southern hemispheres as a result of climate change for 20,000 yearsPublic release date: 21-Oct-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Svante Bjorck Svante.Bjorck@geol.lu.se 46-703-352-494 Lund University
However, Svante Bjrck, a climate researcher at Lund University in Sweden, has now shown that global warming, i.e. simultaneous warming events in the northern and southern hemispheres, have not occurred in the past 20 000 years, which is as far back as it is possible to analyse with sufficient precision to compare with modern developments.
Svante Bjrck's study thus goes 14 000 years further back in time than previous studies have done.
"What is happening today is unique from a historical geological perspective", he says.
Svante Bjrck has gone through the global climate archives, which are presented in a large number of research publications, and looked for evidence that any of the climate events that have occurred since the end of the last Ice Age 20 000 years ago could have generated similar effects on both the northern and southern hemispheres simultaneously.
It has not, however, been possible to verify this. Instead, he has found that when, for example, the temperature rises in one hemisphere, it falls or remains unchanged in the other.
"My study shows that, apart from the larger-scale developments, such as the general change into warm periods and ice ages, climate change has previously only produced similar effects on local or regional level", says Svante Bjrck.
As an example, let us take the last clear climate change, which took place between the years 1600 and 1900 and which many know as the Little Ice Age. Europe experienced some of its coldest centuries. While the extreme cold had serious consequences for agriculture, state economies and transport in the north, there is no evidence of corresponding simultaneous temperature changes and effects in the southern hemisphere.
The climate archives, in the form of core samples taken from marine and lake sediments and glacier ice, serve as a record of how temperature, precipitation and concentration of atmospheric gases and particles have varied over the course of history, and are full of similar examples.
Instead it is during 'calmer' climatic periods, when the climate system is influenced by external processes, that the researchers can see that the climate signals in the archives show similar trends in both the northern and southern hemispheres.
"This could be, for example, at the time of a meteorite crash, when an asteroid hits the earth or after a violent volcanic eruption when ash is spread across the globe. In these cases we can see similar effects around the world simultaneously", says Svante Bjrck.
Professor Bjrck draws parallels to today's situation. The levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are currently changing very rapidly. At the same time, global warming is occurring.
"As long as we don't find any evidence for earlier climate changes leading to similar simultaneous effects on a global scale, we must see today's global warming as an exception caused by human influence on the earth's carbon cycle", says Svante Bjrck, continuing:
"this is a good example of how geological knowledge can be used to understand our world. It offers perspectives on how the earth functions without our direct influence and thus how and to what extent human activity affects the system."
Svante Bjrck's results were published this summer in the scientific journal Climate Research.
###
For more information, please contact Professor Svante Bjrck, Department of Earth and Ecosystem Sciences, Lund University, tel.: +46 46 222 7882, mobile: +46 703 352494, email: Svante.Bjorck@geol.lu.se
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
UPHAM, N.M. ? Few people know British billionaire Richard Branson better than his mother. After all, some say she instilled in him much of his resourcefulness and thirst for adventure.
From flying around the world in a balloon to swimming with sharks, the 87-year-old Eve Branson says her baby ? as she calls him ? has been in plenty of difficult and dangerous situations. All of his adventures have turned out fine, and she expects it will be no different with his efforts to get paying customers to the edge of the Earth on his Virgin Galactic spaceline.
"Everything he does is usually done pretty thoroughly," she says. "He tries very hard, my little baby."
Eve Branson acknowledges that her family is anxious to see the day when the first mothership and rocket take off from Virgin Galactic's remote desert base at Spaceport America in southern New Mexico. But this adventure goes way beyond Richard Branson and his usual stuntman antics.
The aim, the daring businessman says, is to one day make traveling to space safe and affordable for the masses, not just those who can afford a $200,000 ticket.
While some might think the venture is dangerous, the thoroughness Branson's mother brags about has left hundreds of prospective space tourists with no second thoughts about flying with Virgin Galactic. More than 450 people from 46 different countries have already plunked down deposits.
The futuristic Spaceport America and the nearly 2-mile concrete runway are complete, and the spacecraft being developed for Virgin Galactic are done. All that's lacking are more rocket tests and powered test flights.
Branson said in an interview following Monday's dedication ceremony at Spaceport America that he expects enough tests to be done by Christmas 2012 so commercial flights can begin soon after. He and his children plan to be among the first to fly.
The hard part is waiting.
But Branson didn't waste an opportunity during his visit to share his excitement with some 150 space tourists.
"Are you all pinching yourselves? Because I know I am," he told them while inside the spacious hangar.
Sonja Rohde of Hagen, Germany, was among those listening. She was one of the first 100 people to sign up after bumping into Branson while on safari in Africa and learning about his plan.
Rohde, who is in her early 30s, had dreamed of becoming an astronaut when she was young. The more practical desires of her parents won out, but she didn't give up the dream of one day making it to space.
"I saw a documentary that said space travel would be possible for private individuals from 2050 on. I said `OK, I'll do it even as a toothless grandmother, but I will do it,'" she said.
She met Branson in 2005, as he and New Mexico officials were negotiating details of the spaceport venture. It was then she realized that becoming the first German woman to reach space could happen a lot sooner.
Rohde said it was a magical moment ? the right time, the right place and a chance meeting with the right person.
Now, she says it's like waiting for Christmas.
"You can hardly wait to finally take off," she said.
Rohde has attended every milestone since Virgin Galactic began its venture. She has also done some weightlessness training and has grand visions of what it will be like when she's finally aboard SpaceShipTwo.
G-forces pressing her into the seat. The sensation of traveling at four times the speed of sound. The sky changing from light to dark blue to purple and then finally black.
"I think it will fulfill everything I envision in a perfect space adventure because we will be able to see 1,000 miles in every direction," she said. "I think it will be overwhelming and breathtaking to see our fragile Earth from above, and I think it will provide a deeper appreciation, a deeper understanding of the Earth."
The prospect of suborbital flights and someday traveling further into space also holds promise for New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, who made her first visit to the spaceport for the dedication since taking office in January.
Martinez spoke to all the spaceport's practical benefits ? jobs, educational opportunities for New Mexico students, international recognition and partnerships that could spur more economic development.
But seeing Virgin Galactic's mothership WhiteKnightTwo taxi down the runway, lift off and fly over the spaceport as the moon was overhead evoked something more for the governor.
"I might have to add it to my bucket list," she said, noting later that it would have to become more affordable.
Branson boasted this week that it will be at least five years before Virgin Galactic has serious rivals in the commercial space tourism race. Until then, he might have to continue pinching himself.
"The aim is not just to make dreams come true for the people who can afford $200,000," he said. "The aim is make dreams come true for hundreds of thousands of people. ... That's a dream I think that we will make a reality one day."
When Branson first proposed the spaceline, his mother's response was, "Oh God, here we go again."
Standing on the tarmac with the spaceport looming large behind her and Virgin Galactic's sleek spacecraft sitting to the side, she said she never dreamed it would get to this point.
"We are making a little bit of history, aren't we? It's wonderful," she said. "We can't wish for any more, really."
____
Follow Susan Montoya Bryan on Twitter at http://www.susanmbryanNM
Visual.ly, the team built from the infographics team behind Mint's spectacular infographics, has raised $2 million in seed funding, led by Crosslink Capital, SoftTech and 500 Startups as well as angels Kapor Capital, Giza Ventures, Naval Ravikant, Mark Goines, Josh James and others. According to its financing release, Visual.ly has had 26K users sign up to be a part its beta (coming soon), over 300K infographics created, received over one million pageviews monthly to its website?and has doubled the number of indexed infographics it hosts since it demoed in April.
ScienceDaily (Oct. 17, 2011) ? When a new drug is developed, the manufacturer must be able to show that it reaches its intended goal in the body's tissue, and only that goal. Such studies could be made easier with a new method now established at Lund University in Sweden.
The method is a special type of mass spectrometry which can be used on drugs 'off the shelf', i.e. without any radioactive labelling which may change the behaviour of the drug. With this method, researchers Gy?rgy Marko-Varga and Thomas Fehniger have managed to create a molecular image of the drug in the tissue.
The tissue examined comes from biopsies from the lungs of patients with lung cancer and chronic obstructive lung disease (COPD), who have inhaled a drug to dilate the airways. The examination showed the precise spatial distribution of the drug within the tissue. The results are based on an analysis of 3 000 measurement points of 0.01 mm2 in each biopsy sample.
"When you want to register a new drug, you must be able to both explain its exact mechanisms of action and show that it is effective and safe. In order to avoid side-effects, the drug should reach only the cells for which it is intended. Our new technical platform makes it easier to show this," says Gy?rgy Marko-Varga.
He believes it will be possible to use the new technology to develop safer and more effective drug candidates. In the future it could also be used in clinical treatment, to help doctors select the right drug for a specific patient.
The researchers first conducted animal experiments, using drug doses 100 times higher than those now measured in patients. The group then optimised and refined the technology to achieve the sensitivity needed for measuring doses of drugs normally administered to patients.
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The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Lund University.
Journal Reference:
Thomas E. Fehniger, ?kos V?gv?ri, Melinda Rezeli, Kaiu Prikk, Peeter Ross, Magnus Dahlb?ck, Goutham Edula, Ruth Sepper, Gy?rgy Marko-Varga. Direct Demonstration of Tissue Uptake of an Inhaled Drug: Proof-of-Principle Study Using Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization Mass Spectrometry Imaging. Analytical Chemistry, 2011; : 111007105441003 DOI: 10.1021/ac2014349
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
BEIJING ? China says the Dalai Lama's support for Buddhist clerics who set themselves on fire to protest Chinese rule is a type of terrorism in disguise.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu on Wednesday condemned the recent immolations by Tibetans in western China and said that the Dalai Lama is glorifying the cases, inciting more people to commit suicide.
Nine clerics ? eight monks and a nun ? have set themselves on fire since March over tightening restrictions on religious practice and heavy-handed policing in Aba, a traditionally Tibetan region under Chinese control.
To honor the clerics, the Dalai Lama fasted and led prayers Wednesday in the Indian town where he lives in exile.
JERUSALEM ? The elaborate machinery of a prisoner swap deal between two bitter enemies swung into motion early Tuesday, as hundreds of Palestinians and one Israeli soldier prepared to return home in one of the most dramatic recent developments in the otherwise deadlocked Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Before dawn, convoys of Israeli Prisons Service vehicles began ferrying Palestinian inmates from prisons in Israel to one in the West Bank and to a crossing into Gaza, where they are to be freed once the exchange begins.
The Israel-Hamas deal is going ahead despite criticism and court appeals in Israel against the release of 1,027 Palestinians for a single captured Armored Corps sergeant, Gilad Schalit, held by militants in Gaza since 2006.
The exchange, negotiated through mediators because Israel and Hamas will not talk directly to each other, involves a delicate series of staged releases, each one triggering the next.
When it is over, Schalit ? 19 years old at the time of his capture, and 25 now ? will be free, ending what for Israel has been a prolonged and painful saga. Israel was forced to acknowledge that it had no way of rescuing Schalit in a military operation, though the soldier was held no more than a few miles (kilometers) from its border.
Instead, Israel agreed to a lopsided prisoner exchange that Hamas officials have openly said will encourage them to capture more soldiers, and which will free Palestinians convicted of some of the deadliest attacks against Israeli civilians in recent memory.
Numerically uneven swaps for captured or dead Israeli soldiers held by armed Arab groups have taken place a number of times since the 1980s. The last one, in 2008, saw the release of five militants in return for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers held by the Lebanese group Hezbollah. In a deal with Hezbollah in 2004, Israel freed about 400 prisoners in return for a former army colonel and the bodies of three soldiers.
When Tuesday's exchange is complete, 477 Palestinians held in Israeli jails will have been released, several of them after decades behind bars. Another 550 are set to be released in two months.
Palestinians slated to be part of the initial part of the exchange have already been moved from their original prisons to other Israeli penal installations in preparation for their release. The very first group, 27 women, are to walk free sometime after dawn Tuesday.
After that, Hamas is supposed to move Schalit from Gaza through the Rafah border terminal into Egypt, where he will be met by Israeli medical personnel, according to Israeli defense officials.
Once the soldier is in Egypt, the officials said, the rest of the prisoners will be released under the terms of the exchange agreement. About 100 will be sent to the West Bank, and roughly 30 are to be deported to Jordan, Turkey, Qatar and Syria, which agreed to take prisoners who Israel insisted not be allowed to return home, according to Hamas officials. The rest will be freed in Gaza.
Schalit will be brought to an Israeli military base along the Egypt border, where he will be issued a new military uniform and given another medical examination, according to the Israeli military. Although he appeared healthy the last time he was seen ? in a brief and scripted 2009 video released by Hamas ? he was denied all visits, including by the Red Cross, and the state of his mental and physical health is unclear.
Schalit will then be flown by helicopter to an air force base in central Israel, where he will meet his parents, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the defense minister and military chief of staff.
From there, he will be flown to his family's home in northern Israel.
The swap drew an emotional response from some in Israel because of the number and identities of the prisoners.
Among those being released are militants involved in planning and executing suicide bombings in restaurants and on buses during the years of the second Palestinian uprising, which began in 2000.
One woman, Amna Muna, was convicted of luring an Israeli teenager over the Internet onto Palestinian territory, where another Palestinian killed him. Another prisoner, Nasser Yateima, was convicted of masterminding a hotel bombing that killed 30 people celebrating the Passover holiday in 2002.
Also among those being released were two Gaza militants convicted of playing minor roles in capturing Schalit. One filmed the operation on behalf of Hamas, and the second transported some of the militants who crossed into Israel, seized the soldier and killed two of his comrades.
Palestinians see the prisoners as freedom fighters whose actions were justified in the context of their struggle against Israel. In the violence of the second Palestinian uprising, which was eventually put down by Israel's military, more people were killed on the Palestinian side.
The planned celebrations for their release were to be attended both by officials from Hamas, the Islamic group that captured Schalit and negotiated the deal, and from the Palestinian Authority, the Western-backed government that wields partial control in the West Bank.
Among Palestinians, the exchange appeared likely to strengthen Hamas, which is dedicated to Israel's destruction, at the expense of the rival Fatah movement, which dominates the Palestinian Authority and says it wants to peacefully create a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
In Israel, public pressure for a deal was intense. Thanks in part to a vocal campaign led by his parents, Schalit had become a symbol of national solidarity in a country where military service is mandatory for Jewish citizens and where the government is seen as responsible for bringing soldiers home.
In Israel, relatives of victims of Palestinian attacks filed court appeals aimed at stopping the deal. One was filed by the surviving members of the Schijveschuurder family, whose parents and three siblings were killed when a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a Jerusalem pizzeria in 2001, killing 15.
At an emotionally charged Supreme Court hearing Monday, Noam Schalit, the soldier's father, urged the judges not to delay the exchange. Late Monday, the court decided not to intervene, removing the last hurdle for the deal to go through.
A poll published Monday showed an overwhelming majority of Israelis ? 79 percent ? supporting the deal. Only 14 percent were opposed.
The poll was carried out by the Dahaf Institute and published in the daily Yediot Ahronot. Pollsters interviewed 500 respondents, and the margin of error was 4.4 percentage points.
An Egyptian security official said that an American-Israeli dual national held since June in Egypt on suspicions of espionage would also be released shortly after the swap. Ilan Grapel will be released by Egypt in return for about 70 Egyptian prisoners, most serving sentences in Israel on charges of smuggling or illegal entry, the official said.
Israel has denied that Grapel, a law student who was traveling under his own name and whose connections to Israel were easily apparent on his Facebook page, was a spy.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media on the matter. He would not give a precise time for Grapel's release, and Israeli officials would not comment.
___
Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, and Sarah El Deeb in Cairo, Egypt, contributed to this story.
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