Obama briefed on deadly storms while in Europe

DUBLIN – President Barack Obama is being kept up to date on deadly tornadoes in the Midwest as he travels through Europe, the White House said Monday.
Obama aides said the president was briefed several times during his overnight flight from Washington to Dublin, the first stop on a six-day trip. Shortly after arriving in Ireland, Obama called Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon to express his condolences for the loss of life and to offer this thoughts and prayers to those who have been affected.
At least 89 people were killed in the southwestern Missouri town of Joplin, which took a direct hit from Sunday's storm. Local officials said the twister cut a path nearly 6 miles long and more than a half-mile wide through the center of town.
The storm system spawned tornadoes from Oklahoma to Wisconsin. At least one person was killed in Minneapolis.
The White House said Obama is sending Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to Missouri to help coordinate disaster response and recovery efforts. Obama also asked his staff back in Washington to stay in touch with state and local officials in the affected states.

Strauss-Kahn becomes Madoff-style cyber prisoner

NEW YORK (AFP) – Dominique Strauss-Kahn is getting a taste of the Bernard Madoff treatment as he adjusts his lifestyle from champagne socialism to battling sex crime charges.
The fallen IMF leader had to agree to become a cyber-prisoner of the same security-intelligence company which guarded notorious financier Madoff to convince a New York judge to give him a chance to plot a defense on bail.
The security firm Stroz Friedberg used one of its apartments at the Empire Building on Broadway as a temporary bolt-hole for Strauss-Kahn, when residents blocked him from moving to one his wife Anne Sinclair had found.
The armed guard at the door of his temporary apartment, the video cameras and other monitoring equipment that will be added when he finds a more permanent refuge, the GPS bracelet he is wearing. All come from Stroz Friedberg.
The 62-year-old Strauss-Kahn, whose hopes of being Socialist Party candidate in France's 2012 presidential election disappeared with the attempted rape charges against him, has even been signed into the custody of Stroz Friedberg, rather than his wife.
The case is being handled by Stroz Frieberg managing director Anthony Valenti -- a former Citigroup bank vice president and before that a top investigator for the US Attorney's office -- who also handled the Madoff case.
The company has refused requests for interviews about its work. But it is publicly proud of the way it handled Madoff's house arrest at his Upper East Side home.
Because of the "far-reaching implications" of Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme, there was "an unusually high level of risk, involving death threats against the confessed schemer, potentially dangerous interfaces with the public, and a circus-like atmosphere of media attention," Stroz Frieberg said in a case study on its website.
The round-the-clock monitoring of Madoff was conducted by "retired supervisory federal agents and high ranking New York City police officers" who detailed every entry and exit to the residence.
Stroz Friedberg said it "created a dedicated, secure wireless network to ensure that Mr. Madoff did not exit except for authorized purposes."
The company said it brought its engagement "to a successful conclusion, without incident, when it escorted Mr. Madoff to his plea hearing from which he was remanded to federal prison on March 12, 2009."
Strauss-Kahn can expect the same attention and he has to pay the company's fees which prosecutors estimated at more than $200,000 a month.
The former managing director of the International Monetary Fund faces a major change from the high finance dinners at his $4 million home in the elite Georgetown district of Washington.
He can only leave the temporary apartment for a medical emergency and after relocating can only go to the offices of his lawyer Benjamin Brafman, to see a doctor, the court or to a synagogue.
Strauss-Kahn is under curfew from 10:00 pm to 6:00 am will only be allowed a maximum of four non-family visitors at any one time.
Despite being a man with an admitted love of the high life, Strauss-Kahn lived a fairly discreet life in Washington, where he had run the IMF since 2007, working long days before his chauffeur took him home, according to journalists who cover the institution.
Strauss-Kahn liked Georgetown restaurants however and the couple often invited friends to their home. Fifteen people stayed there for Barack Obama's inauguration as US president in January 2009.
The Georgetown mansion, the two family apartments in Paris and their hideaway in the Moroccan resort of Marrakesh are now a long way away.
While out of the Rikers island prison, Strauss-Kahn is also getting the Madoff treatment from the New York media. The New York Post called Madoff "Ponzi king" and "arch-swindler." Strauss-Kahn has been dubbed "Pepe le Pew" after the Warner Brothers cartoon skunk.

IBM Watson supercomputer turns to medicine

IBM's Watson supercomputer being groomed for medicine after faring well on "Jeopardy!"

(Credit: AP Photo)

(CBS/AP) After battling the flesh-and-blood know-it-alls on "Jeopardy!," IBM supercomputer Watson is getting ready for its next big challenge - helping doctors navigate the increasingly complex world of medicine.
Watson is being groomed to be a bedside medical tool - digesting medical textbooks, journals, treatment guidelines as well as information from patients' blogs to diagnose illnesses quickly and accurately.
IBM says Watson, with its ability to understand language, can absorb questions about a patient's symptoms and medical history and quickly suggest diagnoses and treatments. They envision several uses, including a doctor speaking into a handheld device to get answers at a patient's bedside or to serve as a second opinion. Watson could also link to electronic health records that the federal government wants hospitals to maintain.
At a recent demonstration, Watson was fed information about a fictional patient with an eye problem. As more clues were unveiled - blurred vision, family history of arthritis, Connecticut residence - Watson's diagnoses evolved from uveitis to Behcet's disease to being 73 percent sure the cause was Lyme disease. Watson suggested the antibiotic doxycycline for treating Lyme disease, then switched to cefuroxime when told the patient was pregnant and allergic to penicillin.
"You do get eye problems in Lyme disease, but it's not common," Dr. Herbert Chase, a professor of Medicine at Columbia University, said. "You can't fool Watson."
Chase thinks patients' blogs would give Watson a more complete picture of disease states.
"What people say about their treatment ... it's not to be ignored just because it's anecdotal," Chase said. "We certainly listen when our patients talk to us, and that's anecdotal."
Robots aren't yet ready to replace doctors. But with all the medical information out there, a resource like Watson could be a boon to medical care.
"Advances in medicine are increasing rapidly - genomics, specialized drugs, off-label uses, increasingly finer-grained classifications of disease," Dr. Carl Kesselman, director of the Health Informatics Center at the University of Southern California, said. "The ability to ask 'Jeopardy!'-style questions and get that kind of information retrieval, to sort through all the stuff out there and point you to the latest literature, would be of potentially huge value."
On "Jeopardy!," Watson gave one answer to each question and rated its confidence in the answer. For medical use, Watson offers several possible diagnoses, ranked in order of its confidence.
"In medicine, we don't want one answer, we want a list of options," Chase said. He also thinks seeing more than one choice might also help doctors move away from what he called "anchoring," or getting too attached to a diagnosis.
"If a person has a 95 percent chance of having disease X, there's still a one-in-20 chance that they have something else," he said. "We often forget what's in that 5 percent. But Watson won't."
As on "Jeopardy!" - where Watson infamously identified Toronto as a U.S. city and Picasso as an art period - the computer occasionally botches a medical question.
"I think once we were asking what type of drug we should use and the answer was a person's name," Chase said. And of course there are things Watson cannot do. It won't know a patient's appetite for risk, for example, or feelings about end-of-life treatment.
"That's why you have to emphasize that the decisions aren't coming from the computer, they're coming from the patient," Chase said.

Toyota trying to make cars part of your social network

By Chris Woodyard, USA TODAY

Hello? This is your car calling. Do you mind if I turn start the engine and turn on the heat five minutes before you get in to go to work tomorrow?
That idea isn't too far fetched, given Toyota's latest initiative.
Toyota, Salesforce.com and Microsoft are funding a project to create a social-networking service so drivers can interact with their cars in ways similar to Twitter and Facebook, the Associated Press reports.
Toyota and Salesforce.com set up an alliance called "Toyota Friend." It's a private social network for Toyota owners that works similar to tweets on Twitter. Together with Microsoft, the three companies are spending more than $10 million on the project combined.
The AP describes it like this:
In a demonstration at a Tokyo showroom, an owner of a plug-in Prius hybrid found out through a cellphone message from his Prius that he should remember to recharge his car overnight. When the owner plugged in his car to recharge it, the car replied, "The charge will be completed by 2:15 a.m. Is that OK? See you tomorrow."
The exchanges can be kept private, or be shared with other "Toyota Friend" users, as well as made public on Facebook, Twitter and other services, the company said.
The companies did not give details of how the technology, such as the content of the talking car's dialogs, will be managed. But officials said the answers will be automated through sensors in the car.

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DISNEY’S new Star Wars attraction to use ‘thermal body scan’

Mark Goldhaber
Mouse Planet
May 23, 2011
Last Friday night, cast members were among the first to preview the revised Star Tours—The Adventures Continue at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. After the conclusion of the next morning’s cast previews, the ride went into a soft-opening status to the general public, and has been open for previews since that time. It is expected to remain in soft-open status until final preparations are under way for the Thursday night media preview (7-9:30 p.m.) and Disney Parks Blog Tweet-Up (midnight to 2 a.m.), and Friday morning’s Grand Opening Moment (10:15-10:40 a.m.). We’ll try to fill you in a bit about the attraction without giving too much away.
The second room of the queue is now a security check area, similar to a TSA checkpoint. The two G-series droids are still there, G2-9T scanning luggage and G2-4T scanning passengers. For those attraction junkies, you’ll remember that the G-series droids are so named because in the original Disneyland Park version of the ride, they were created by removing the “skins” from two of the goose animatronics from the soon-to-close America Sings attraction (Goose = “G” series). While we won’t tell you why, you’ll enjoy paying a lot of attention to what the scans of the luggage show is inside. When it’s your turn to go through the passenger scan (a thermal body scan), you may be verbally accosted by a security droid. Also, keep an eye out in the queue for an earlier version of RX-24 (“Captain Rex”) from the original Star Tours; he’s labeled “defective” and has some familiar dialogue.
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The new pre-boarding video no longer shows park guests as being among the passengers, as this is now the first time that departures are leaving from the new Earth station. You’ll want to watch this video closely for maximum enjoyment. The new 3-D glasses are different from those used in the other four theme park 3-D movies, and are reportedly more comfortable and provide more complete 3-D viewing.
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Geography According to Obama: Palestine 1967 Borders Not 1967 Borders

Washington/Jerusalem/Gaza - US President Barack Obama said Sunday his framework for establishing Israeli-Palestinian borders based on 1967 lines would have to account for demographic changes that have taken place since Israel seized control of the West Bank.

Speaking to the annual gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Obama said the proposal 'allows the parties themselves to take account of the changes, the demographic realities on the ground and the needs of both sides.'

The remarks came after his speech Thursday on the Middle East that the final borders for a Palestinian state should be based on the lines prior to the June 1967 Middle East war, but adjusted by land swaps to take into consideration the changes that have taken place since then.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who flatly rejected the proposal on Thursday, on Sunday expressed 'appreciation' for Obama's remarks and said he was ready to work with the US administration toward a peace agreement with Palestinians.

'I share the president's desire to advance in peace,' Netanyahu said in a statement sent by his office to reporters. 'I am determined to work together with President Obama in order to find ways of renewing peace negotiations. Peace is a vital need for all of us.'

The Islamist group Hamas slammed Obama and warned that the United States will fail in its efforts to get Palestinians to recognize Israel's legitimacy.

'Obama's statements are completely biased to the behalf of the Israeli occupation on the expense of the Palestinian people's freedom and self-determination,' Sami Abu Zuhri, Hamas' spokesman in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas has de facto control, said in a statement.

He said that Obama's statement was proof that the US administration is not a fair mediator.

Obama's speech on Thursday seemed to widen the gap between the US and Israel.

During a meeting with Obama on Friday, Netanyahu said the 1967 borders are 'indefensible' and that Israel 'cannot go back' to those boundaries. Both leaders showed disagreement over how to proceed with the peace process, but Obama on Sunday played down what he called the 'controversy' over his remarks.

'What I did on Thursday was to say publicly what has long been acknowledged privately,' Obama said.

Obama explained his position as long-standing US policy to base the borders on the 1967 lines with adjustments.

'It means that the parties themselves, Israelis and Palestinians, will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967,' he said.

Obama urged both sides to move quickly toward a final settlement, warning that delays could harm Israel's long-term security given the rapid changes in the Middle East.

He said that, as democracy emerges in countries like Egypt and Tunisia following the mass uprisings against authoritarian regimes, it becomes urgent to move more quickly toward peace.

'A failure to try is not an option,' Obama said. 'The status quo is unsustainable.'

'The world is moving too fast,' Obama said, before adding: 'Delay will undermine Israel's security.'

More Nanny State: Democrat Wants Panic Button for Housekeepers

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Queens Lawmaker Proposes "Panic Button" for Hotel Housekeepers

Monday, May 23, 2011 | Updated 10:43 AM EDT

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A New York assemblyman says he wants the state to require hotels to provide their housekeepers with an emergency "panic button" that would help protect them from sexual assaults on the job.

Assemblyman Rory Lancman, a Democrat from Queens, said he will introduce the bill Monday. The move comes a week after former International Monetary Fund Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was charged with sexually assaulting a Manhattan hotel maid.

"We send hotel workers, housekeepers into rooms by themselves without any other staff, without any other security," Lancman said at a news conference Sunday outside the Sofitel Hotel, the site of Strauss-Kahn's alleged sexual assault of a hotel maid last week.

Lancman said attacks on hotel housekeepers are common, and though the incidents "may not be as brutal or as sensational" as the allegations in the Strauss-Kahn case, housekeepers are often inappropriately groped or propositioned.

Lancman referred to a New York Times article on Saturday highlighting the sexual affronts hotel housekeepers have long had to face.

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The proposed legislation calls for hotels to provide a small device for housekeepers that would, at the touch of a button, trigger an audible alarm or alert hotel security.

He estimated a cost of $20 to $40 per device, though he said it would cost "significantly less" for hotels to buy in bulk.

The Associated Press said a review of court documents and news reports found at least 10 other hotel housekeepers who say they've been attacked in the U.S. in the last three years.

Labor groups said other cases are kept quiet because the victims are illegal immigrants or because hotels are wary of scaring off guests.

Donald Rumsfeld confronted on Aspartame and Iraq War

Saad Ali and Anthony
WeAreChange Chicago
May 23, 2011
CHICAGO, IL- Former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, strolled into Chicago on May 17, 2011, for a speech at the globalist think tank, Chicago Council on Global Affairs. The audience was mainly comprised of your average “Coke drinking, McDonald’s eating” yuppie, ready to bow down to Mr. Rumsfeld. They clapped and cheered as he approached the podium and delivered his globalist speech. The praising of such a criminal was mind blowing, and something had to be done. Mr. Rumsfeld’s “accomplishments” have caused humanitarian suffering worldwide.


To start off, Rumsfeld is responsible for contributing to the approval of the artificial sweetener Aspartame. The known carcinogen has caused millions of people suffering around the world. Headaches, dizziness, neurological degeneration, macular degeneration, optic neuritis, insomnia, seizures, irregular heart rhythm, multiple sclerosis, lupus, Alzheimer’s disease, autism, Tourettes syndrome, birth defects, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, leukemia, low blood platelet, and diabetes are a few of the illnesses and disease caused by this poisonous drug. Think about how much better our health could be had Mr. Rumsfeld not pushed Aspartame into the market for human consumption. (Visit Natural News for more information)

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Furthermore, Rumsfeld is highly responsible for the destruction of Iraq, the death of one million Iraqi’s, and thousands of US soldiers. Based on the false claim that Saddam Hussein had WMD’s, they took the initiative and bombed Iraq. Extensive evidence proves that 9/11 was absolutely an inside job. Recently on the Mancow Show, Rumsfeld was asked what he tells people about building 7, and he replied by asking, “What is building 7?”… “I have no idea. I have never heard that.”
With all this in mind, how can people actually sit there and listen to this murdering terrorist praise his latest globalist, garbage, and worthless book? Saad Ali of We Are Change Chicago and Anthony from We Are Change Ohio attended the event. Fortunately, the heavily controlled Q&A session did not follow through as planned.
Saad was given a chance to ask a question, so he asked, “Some of your greatest accomplishments have been cause to some of the most horrible human suffering… One million dead in Iraq, thousands of dead Americans, legalizing Aspartame, How do you live with that sir?” Rumsfeld announced that he would take on the Aspartame part, and the audience chuckled.
He completely lied about the truth of what Aspartame can do to the human body, and in turn said that it was “the most studied food additive.” He said that it was “good” for the body and that people who believe that Aspartame causes various health issues, as it has been proven to do over and over, are “conspiracy theorists.”
Unsatisfied with his answer, Saad demanded a response for the one million innocent Iraqi’s who were murdered during the Iraq war. He stood up and asked, “What about the one million Iraqi’s?” Security immediately ran towards Saad and began grabbing his camera, while the globalist, shoe-licking mediator demanded Saad to sit down. He refused to sit down, and spoke his mind, hoping the audience would realize that this traitor had deceived America at the expense of the people of Iraq and our own US soldiers. Security grabbed Saad and dragged him out of the building.
Anthony of We Are Change Ohio walked in as Saad was kicked out, and security immediately grabbed him and escorted him out of the building. How or why they knew we were together is still unknown.
The audience members walking out of the building had mixed views on the confrontation. Some felt that it was necessary to scold and question him on such issues, and some were completely disgusted by the confrontation (The guy at the end.)
The wars have resulted in the death of millions of innocent men, women, and children. Their God given right of living, loving, and enjoying this life has been stripped by criminals like Rumsfeld. Billions of people have fallen victim to the poisonous chemical Aspartame, and their lives will never be the same.
These are crimes on humanity, and not on an individual race, religion, creed, nation, or people. A crime on humanity is a crime on us all. We are in this together, and we must fight for justice for one another. Please, take advantage of the few rights we still have, and get out there while you still can. Peacefully demand answers from these murderers and wake up your friends and family.