Orders top $100 billion as Ryanair gives Boeing a boost

By Alwyn Scott and Maria Sheahan

PARIS (Reuters) - Orders at the Paris Airshow surpassed $100 billion on Wednesday, as planemakers Boeing and Airbus cashed in on demand for fuel-efficient jets and growth in both budget carriers and emerging markets.

Ryanair, Europe's biggest low-cost airline, finalized an order for 175 Boeing 737-800 aircraft worth around $15.6 billion at list prices on day three of the aerospace industry's showcase event, the largest single order ever placed by a European airline with the U.S. group.

Ryanair Chief Executive Michael O'Leary said he was also working on an order for 200 or more of Boeing's next-generation 737 MAX planes that could be concluded this year, potentially worth around $20 billion at list prices.

Not to be overshadowed, Airbus sealed a long-awaited order for 25 of its lightweight, wide-body A350 planes from Air France-KLM worth $7.2 billion at list prices, as previously reported by Reuters.

It also firmed up a deal worth $8.6 billion for 30 more A350-900s from Singapore Airlines, taking the total on order from the carrier to 70.

The A350, which made its maiden flight on Friday, is Airbus' answer to Boeing's popular carbon-composite 787 Dreamliner, and the battle between the two models has been a key feature of the Paris show as the planemakers jostle to meet soaring demand for air travel in emerging markets, especially Asia and the Middle East.

"This show is about wide-bodies," said Kelly Ortberg, president of Rockwell Collins, which supplies major systems to the 787 and A350. "And really good news for wide-bodies."

Boeing bagged nearly $30 billion in orders as it launched the 787-10 on Tuesday, a stretched variant of its high-tech Dreamliner.

Wednesday's dealmaking took the order count for the show so far to more than $100 billion at list prices, although many of the agreements were provisional and most sizable deals are struck at a significant discount.

Nonetheless, the activity confirmed plenty of work for civil aircraft manufacturers for years to come.

AHEAD OF SCHEDULE

Ryanair's O'Leary said the planned purchase of Boeing 737 MAX jets later this year would be "all growth" and not replacements for aircraft currently in its all-Boeing fleet.

If the order was not at least 200 planes, "it wouldn't be worth doing," he added, in typically forthright style.

But some analysts took this with a pinch of salt. While Ryanair could afford to use a large MAX order to expand, it is not under pressure to buy next-generation jets, said Espirito Santo analyst Gerald Khoo, and will likely wait until prices are at a cyclical bottom to get the best deal.

The 737 MAX is Boeing's answer to the Airbus A320neo, a new version of the European planemaker's best-selling model.

Boeing earlier on Wednesday moved forward by six months the date of the plane's planned entry into service, saying it would be in the third quarter of 2017, almost two years after the A320neo.

O'Leary said a senior team from Boeing and Ryanair was working on a 737 MAX order and that the airline was giving serious consideration to rival Airbus' A320neo jet, though Ryanair has not purchased any Airbus jets and the European planemaker has repeatedly dampened the idea.

"We're hopeful that we can reach agreement on price of a MAX order sometime before the end of the year," O'Leary said, adding that the 737 MAX offered better fuel economy than the A320neo and room for nine extra seats.

O'Leary said he was interested in launching a transatlantic, low-cost airline, but that there was no opportunity for a significantly sized operation until Boeing and Airbus had worked through their delivery backlog for wide-body jets.

Airbus also clinched an order for six A330-300 aircraft and commitments to buy four A350-900s from SriLankan Airlines on Wednesday in a deal worth $2.6 billion at list prices.

(Additional reporting by Tim Hepher, Siva Govindasamy and Brenda Goh in Paris, and Conor Humphries in Dublin; Editing by James Regan and Mark Potter)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/orders-top-100-billion-ryanair-gives-boeing-boost-130920243.html

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Starbucks to post calories, ruin illusions

Starbucks announced Tuesday that will post the calorie content for all its food and beverages.

By Elizabeth Barber,?Contributor / June 18, 2013

In this June 2013 photo, a menu board showing calorie counts hangs at a Starbucks in New York. The Seattle-based coffee chain says it will start posting calorie counts on menu boards nationwide next week, ahead of a federal regulation that would require it to do so.

Candice Choi/AP

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Starbucks will soon clear up any doubt ? most of its drinks and food are loaded with calories.?

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Starbucks announced on Tuesday that it would post the calorie content of its beverages and pastries at all its stores beginning June 25, amidst mounting calls nationwide for greater transparency about nutritional information from major food retailors.

The new calorie postings, to be put on the beverages menu boards as well as in the pastry cases, will show that a grande carmel macchiato delivers about 240 calories, while a cinnamon chip scone packs some 480 calories.

?Menu labeling is yet another step to extend our commitment to wellness, ensuring our customers and partners (employees) have the information they need to make informed decisions and understand all the ways that they can customize their Starbucks beverages to be within their desired calorie range,? said Mary Wagner, senior vice president, Global Research & Development at Starbucks, in a press release.

Starbucks already offers the calorie content for all its products on its website, where it also suggests drink options under 200 calories and food choices under 350 calories. The press release also noted tat Starbucks has offered sugar-free syrup since 1997 and adopted 2 percent milk as the standard for its line of drinks in 2007. It also introduced a selection of salad bowls under 450 calories earlier this summer, the release said.

The federal government currently makes no demands on major food establishments to post their calorie information, but a proposed health mandate due to take in effect in 2014 would require food companies with more than 20 outlets to post those facts.

Still, some companies have already begun ahead of the measure to post calories, in a bid to win health-conscious fans. Starbucks joins chain food establishments McDonald's, Panera Bread, and Au Bon Pain in posting calorie information in its stores.

Some US localities have their own regulations that mandate calorie posting. In New York City, for example, food chains with more than 15 stores are required to post calorie counts on their menu boards. When burger chain Shake Shack opened its 15th?US outlet in Connecticut last fall, it began posting the calories in its burgers and shakes ? a meal there, including a burger, fries, and a chocolate shake, has just under 2,000 calories ? at its seven locations in the city.?Under that local regulation, Starbucks also posts its calories there.

After recovering from tough times in 2009, business is booming for the Seattle-based Starbucks, which operates about 11,000 stores in the United States and another 6,000 or so outside America. In the second quarter of the 2013 fiscal year, the company reported 7 percent national sales growth, as well as a record revenue of $3.6 billion.

But the company has also received criticism for at times opaque practices. In March, it was discovered that the fluorescent pink coloring used in its?Strawberry Frappuccinos contained?cochineal extract, a dye?made from crushed insects.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/Lc96LSsUFvc/Starbucks-to-post-calories-ruin-illusions

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Catholic religious order opens abuse files

NEW YORK (AP) ? A Roman Catholic religious order based in the Midwest is releasing an unusually candid report admitting it failed victims of clergy sex abuse.

The Capuchin Franciscan Province of St. Joseph opened its files going back decades to outside experts. The report released Tuesday found the friars treated many victims with hostility. Until 2004, most of the money the religious order spent on responding to abuse was on defense attorneys, not on help for victims.

The Province of St. Joseph has offices in Detroit and runs a Wisconsin boys' boarding school called St. Lawrence Seminary High School. Abuse at the school became known in the 1990s through reports by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The investigation released Tuesday found more student victims, raising the total from 14 to 28.

Associated Press

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Pretty Soon Your Vanilla Flavoring Will Come From... Sawdust

It's not uncommon to hear bibliophiles and pedants waxing poetic about the wonderful and incomparable "old book smell," but tiresome as these tirades may be, it turns out they might actually be on to something. Thanks to a recent scientific study, that same, vanilla-tinged aroma wafting off the pages of old tomes is now the most efficient way to flavor our ice cream.

Scientists have long known that lignin, a biopolymer found in wood pulp (think sawdust), produces vanillin when it oxidizes?unfortunately the only previously known process, though cheap, used sodium hydroxide and sodium sulphide, both highly corrosive mixtures. Plus, the non-vanillin byproducts of this method have to be neutralized with strong acids before they can be properly disposed of. In other words, that method sucks and is consequently rarely used.

The way we do synthesize vanillin currently uses the petrochemical guaiacolis, which is less environmentally damaging?but pricey.

But thanks to ionic liquids, which are salts in liquid form, Ahmad Shamsuir and DK Abdullah of the University Putra Malaysia may have finally settled on the best of both worlds. Although most ionic liquids are hugely toxic?a quality generally not ideal for things we stuff in our mouths?by playing around with the cations and anions, the scientists were able to majorly reduce its reactivity and make it safer. By dissolving lignin from a nearby saw mill and bubbling oxygen up through it, they were able to identify the vanillin using infrared analysis and separate it from its (relatively harmless) co-oxidation byproducts.

Easy, environmentally-friendly, and equally importantly, cheap. Vanillin flavoring is ten times more in demand than its natural counterpart, so if we want to keep the artificially flavored vanilla products flowing freely, a process that cuts down on dangerous waste and saves money is huge. So the next time you're enjoying vanilla-anything, just remember, that wonderful vanilla taste is probably all thanks to delicious, delicious sawdust. [MIT Tech Review]

Image: Shutterstock/Virunja

Source: http://gizmodo.com/pretty-soon-your-vanilla-flavoring-will-come-from-sa-514027777

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Search for Okla. survivors winding down

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Brain can be trained in compassion, study shows

May 22, 2013 ? Until now, little was scientifically known about the human potential to cultivate compassion -- the emotional state of caring for people who are suffering in a way that motivates altruistic behavior.

A new study by researchers at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows that adults can be trained to be more compassionate. The report, published Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, investigates whether training adults in compassion can result in greater altruistic behavior and related changes in neural systems underlying compassion.

"Our fundamental question was, 'Can compassion be trained and learned in adults? Can we become more caring if we practice that mindset?'" says Helen Weng, lead author of the study and a graduate student in clinical psychology. "Our evidence points to yes."

In the study, the investigators trained young adults to engage in compassion meditation, an ancient Buddhist technique to increase caring feelings for people who are suffering. In the meditation, participants envisioned a time when someone has suffered and then practiced wishing that his or her suffering was relieved. They repeated phrases to help them focus on compassion such as, "May you be free from suffering. May you have joy and ease."

Participants practiced with different categories of people, first starting with a loved one, someone whom they easily felt compassion for, like a friend or family member. Then, they practiced compassion for themselves and, then, a stranger. Finally, they practiced compassion for someone they actively had conflict with called the "difficult person," such as a troublesome coworker or roommate.

"It's kind of like weight training," Weng says. "Using this systematic approach, we found that people can actually build up their compassion 'muscle' and respond to others' suffering with care and a desire to help."

Compassion training was compared to a control group that learned cognitive reappraisal, a technique where people learn to reframe their thoughts to feel less negative. Both groups listened to guided audio instructions over the Internet for 30 minutes per day for two weeks. "We wanted to investigate whether people could begin to change their emotional habits in a relatively short period of time," says Weng.

The real test of whether compassion could be trained was to see if people would be willing to be more altruistic -- even helping people they had never met. The research tested this by asking the participants to play a game in which they were given the opportunity to spend their own money to respond to someone in need (called the "Redistribution Game"). They played the game over the Internet with two anonymous players, the "Dictator" and the "Victim." They watched as the Dictator shared an unfair amount of money (only $1 out of $10) with the Victim. They then decided how much of their own money to spend (out of $5) in order to equalize the unfair split and redistribute funds from the Dictator to the Victim.

"We found that people trained in compassion were more likely to spend their own money altruistically to help someone who was treated unfairly than those who were trained in cognitive reappraisal," Weng says.

"We wanted to see what changed inside the brains of people who gave more to someone in need. How are they responding to suffering differently now?" asks Weng. The study measured changes in brain responses using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before and after training. In the MRI scanner, participants viewed images depicting human suffering, such as a crying child or a burn victim, and generated feelings of compassion towards the people using their practiced skills. The control group was exposed to the same images, and asked to recast them in a more positive light as in reappraisal.

The researchers measured how much brain activity had changed from the beginning to the end of the training, and found that the people who were the most altruistic after compassion training were the ones who showed the most brain changes when viewing human suffering. They found that activity was increased in the inferior parietal cortex, a region involved in empathy and understanding others. Compassion training also increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the extent to which it communicated with the nucleus accumbens, brain regions involved in emotion regulation and positive emotions.

"People seem to become more sensitive to other people's suffering, but this is challenging emotionally. They learn to regulate their emotions so that they approach people's suffering with caring and wanting to help rather than turning away," explains Weng.

Compassion, like physical and academic skills, appears to be something that is not fixed, but rather can be enhanced with training and practice. "The fact that alterations in brain function were observed after just a total of seven hours of training is remarkable," explains UW-Madison psychology and psychiatry professor Richard J. Davidson, founder and chair of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and senior author of the article.

"There are many possible applications of this type of training," Davidson says. "Compassion and kindness training in schools can help children learn to be attuned to their own emotions as well as those of others, which may decrease bullying. Compassion training also may benefit people who have social challenges such as social anxiety or antisocial behavior."

Weng is also excited about how compassion training can help the general population. "We studied the effects of this training with healthy participants, which demonstrated that this can help the average person. I would love for more people to access the training and try it for a week or two -- what changes do they see in their own lives?"

Both compassion and reappraisal trainings are available on the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds' website. "I think we are only scratching the surface of how compassion can transform people's lives," says Weng.

Other authors on the paper were Andrew S. Fox, Alexander J. Shackman, Diane E. Stodola, Jessica Z. K. Caldwell, Matthew C. Olson, and Gregory M. Rogers.

The work was supported by funds from the National Institutes of Health; a Hertz Award to the UW-Madison Department of Psychology; the Fetzer Institute; The John Templeton Foundation; the Impact Foundation; the J. W. Kluge Foundation; the Mental Insight Foundation; the Mind and Life Institute; and gifts from Bryant Wanguard, Ralph Robinson, and Keith and Arlene Bronstein.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/CY2vql1AGYE/130522160352.htm

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Kellie Pickler Wins 'Dancing with the Stars'!

The singer takes home the mirrorball trophy! Plus, check out more pics of your favorite stars on the scene!

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You Can Use Google Maps to Find Faces Hidden in the Earth

It's nearly impossible to gaze up during the day without spotting sort of cloudy, billowing face staring back at us. But rarely do we get the opportunity to see the faces we so casually trample right beneath our feet. Now, a new program by Onformative is giving us a bird's eye's view of every facial landform on Earth.

Read more...

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Study Drugs: Most Parents Unaware When Teens Take Stimulants Without Prescription

By: Rachael Rettner, LiveScience Senior Writer
Published: 05/20/2013 12:47 PM EDT on LiveScience

Many parents are not aware that their teenage children abuse "study drugs," a new poll suggests.

In the poll, just 1 percent of parents said their teenage children had taken drugs such as Adderall or Ritalin without a prescription.

That is much lower than the percentage of teens that surveys suggest are using the drugs. For example, a 2012 study of high schoolers found that about 10 percent of sophomores and 12 percent of seniors said they had used the drugs without a prescription.

The new finding highlights the growing issue of stimulant drug abuse, or when teens take stimulant medication (or "study drugs") to help them study for a test or stay awake to do homework. Such medications are prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Teens without the condition may fake symptoms in order to get a prescription, or obtain the drugs from friends.

The new findings, from the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health, examined parents' awareness of the issue, surveying parents of U.S. children ages 13 to 17. About 11 percent of parents said their teens had been prescribed stimulant medication for ADHD.

Among parents of children who were not prescribed ADHD medications, 1 percent said their teens had used these drugs for study purposes. About 4 percent said they didn't know if their teen had abused these drugs, and 95 percent said their teens had never abused the drugs.

This disconnect between teen drug abuse and parents' awareness of drug abuse may be in part due to the fact that study drugs have more subtle effects than drugs such as heroin and cocaine, allowing teens to more easily hide their drug use, the researchers said.

About half of parents polled said they were very concerned about teens in their communities abusing study drugs. And more than three-quarters supported school policies aimed at stopping this type of drug abuse, such as rules that would require children with prescription ADHD medications to keep the pills in a secure place like the school nurse's office.

The findings "underscore the need for greater communication among public health officials, schools, parents, and teens regarding this issue," the researchers said.

Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on LiveScience.

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

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/21/study-drugs-parents-unaware_n_3314054.html

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Square Cash appears on invite-only site, lets you send money with an email

Square's been venturing beyond those tiny credit card swipers as of late. Last week, the company introduced its nifty $299 Stand POS system for iOS, and now it appears to be branching out to individuals, with a to-be-announced service called Square Cash. There's not much info to share at this point -- TechCrunch recently discovered a dedicated landing page for the new service, which looks to be invite only at this point. There does seem to be an option to request an invitation, but the button isn't properly linked, so we weren't able to make our way to the proper form in order to take a closer look.

A handful of help articles do shed some light on the service, though. To send money, you'll simply send an email to your recipient with the dollar amount in the subject line and "pay@square.com" in the cc field. Once your friend or associate receives the email, they'll type in the debit card account number of their choosing and Square will fund the associated checking account within 48 hours. Each payment costs just 50 cents to send, and there's no cost to receive -- it's not quite clear whether or not you can use a credit card to fund the transfer, but with fees of less than $1, we imagine you'll need to use a checking account. Square has yet to formally introduce the service, but we're guessing an announcement will be coming soon.

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Ireland rejects blame for Apple's low tax rate

By Conor Humphries and Padraic Halpin

CORK/DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland said on Tuesday it was not to blame for Apple Inc's low global tax payments and had no special rate deal with the company after the U.S. Senate said it paid little or no tax on tens of billions of dollars in profits stashed in Irish subsidiaries.

The Irish government, which has seen the luring of U.S. multinationals with low taxes as a key part of its economic policy since the 1960s, said its system was transparent and other countries were responsible if the tax rate paid by Apple was too low.

"They are issues that arise from the taxation systems in other jurisdictions, and that is an issue that has to be addressed first of all in those jurisdictions," deputy prime minister Eamon Gilmore told national broadcaster RTE on Tuesday.

In a 40-page memorandum released ahead of an appearance by Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook before Congress on Tuesday, a Senate subcommittee identified three subsidiaries that have no tax residency either in Ireland, where they are incorporated, or in the United States, where those companies are managed.

The main subsidiary, a holding company that includes Apple's retail stores throughout Europe, has not paid any corporate income tax in the last five years, the report said.

Apple's arrangement has allowed it to pay just 1.9 percent tax on its $37 billion in overseas profits in 2012, despite the fact that the average tax rate in the countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), its main markets, was 24 percent in 2012.

The report said "Ireland has essentially functioned as a tax haven for Apple".

Gilmore said Ireland was pursuing the issue of international tax avoidance "very strongly" at the European Union and the OECD, which is spearheading initiatives.

The issue will be discussed at a meeting of European Union officials on Tuesday, he said.

The Senate report said a subsidiary with a mailing address in Cork, Ireland's second-largest city, received $29.9 billion in dividends from lower-tiered offshore affiliates from 2009 to 2012, comprising 30 percent of Apple's global net profits.

It said it exploited a difference between Irish and U.S. tax residency rules.

"NO SPECIAL RATES"

Apple said in a comment posted online on Monday it did not use "tax gimmicks". It said the existence of its subsidiary Apple Operations International in Ireland did not reduce Apple's U.S. tax liability, and the company would pay more than $7 billion in U.S. taxes in fiscal 2013.

Apple shares were down 0.7 percent in early trading, underperforming the Nasdaq index.

A number of U.S. multinationals including web search leader Google, online retailer Amazon.com and coffee chain Starbucks have come under criticism for arranging their affairs in a way that leaves them liable to low rates of tax on billions of dollars of overseas sales.

Apple's auditor, Ernst & Young, which also audits Google and Amazon.com, declined immediate comment.

According to the congressional report, Apple's Tax Operations Head Phillip Bullock told the subcommittee that the company had obtained a special low tax rate through negotiations with the Irish government below the already low standard rate of 12.5 percent. Apple said this had been 2 percent or less for the last 10 years.

Ireland's European Affairs minister Lucinda Creighton denied any special rate agreement.

"There is no such deal. There is no deal for any company to pay 2 percent corporate tax in Ireland - that is erroneous," said Creighton, a barrister by profession.

A spokesman for Ireland's finance department said Ireland's tax system was statute based, so there was "no possibility of individual special tax rate deals for companies".

A spokeswoman for the Office of the Revenue Commissioners said she could not comment on individual cases as that would breach taxpayer confidentiality, but she also denied that the tax authority agreed special low tax rates with multinationals.

"All companies in Ireland pay the standard 12.5 percent rate on their trading profits arising in Ireland, and they pay a corporation tax rate of 25 percent on their Irish non-trading income," she said.

Unemployed Cork local Tom Falvey, 55, who got 10 weeks' work attaching cladding to the exterior of Apple's three-storey headquarters in the early 1990s, said Ireland's jobless would pay the price for any rise in taxes.

"The companies will just say 'take a jump' and move somewhere else more obliging. Our unemployment is high enough as it is," he said, as he walked his dog past the sprawling complex 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the city center.

A dozen or so casually dressed Apple workers, most in their 20s and 30s, who were smoking cigarettes outside the 1990s office building, said they could not talk to the press.

Alongside, builders are working on a sleek new glass and concrete extension. Michael Ambrose, a 58-year-old former construction worker walking by, said the government was powerless to get more tax out of Apple.

"We're a small country and feel we can't say no. We know they'll just go off to one of these Asian countries ... They're a law unto themselves."

FISCAL ATTRACTION

Apple said last year it would add 500 more people to its Cork workforce of 2,800.

Ireland's pro-business tax structures have attracted U.S. multinationals including Google, Microsoft and Facebook, big employers who have helped offset an unemployment rate stuck above 14 percent, but its low corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent has drawn criticism elsewhere in Europe.

The government regularly touts its success in attracting international investment as one of its main achievements, and multinationals, which account for almost 10 percent of Ireland's workforce, have taken the sting out of austerity measures prescribed under an EU/IMF bailout by creating jobs.

U.S. firms invested $30 billion in Ireland last year, more than in China and the rest of emerging Asia combined, according to the American Chamber of Commerce.

In the 1960s Ireland turned around its economy by attracting foreign businesses with tax holidays. After joining what later became the European Union, it was no longer able to do this and instead shifted to a system of low tax rates - currently 12.5 percent - and a light touch approach to tax administration that allows companies to reduce their effective rate much lower.

A raft of mainly U.S. companies have taken advantage of Ireland's tax regime to minimize their tax bills.

Microsoft's Irish base, along with another operation in low-tax Singapore, helped the company pay tax of just 9.4 percent on $21 billion of non-U.S. earnings last year. Google channels most of its overseas profits through Ireland, a practice that allowed it to pay tax at a rate of just 2.6 percent on $6 billion of foreign profits in 2012.

Patrick Coveney, the chief executive of Greencore, one of Ireland largest companies, told RTE radio that it was politicians across the world who were responsible for these tax treaties and tax structures.

"I find it frankly a little frustrating that it is them who are piling in and criticizing international traded businesses who are merely availing of the tax environment that they have put in place," said Coveney, a former president of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce.

(Additional reporting by Tom Bergin; Editing by Will Waterman)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ireland-says-not-blame-apples-low-tax-rate-124115687.html

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Google+ app update for Android adds auto-backup and enhancement tools for photos

Google (and especially the Google+ team) are keeping very busy. While I/O 2013 may have wrapped up last week, the company's just unveiled a new update for its social network on Android devices. Packing some familiar new photo features (like auto-backup and auto-highlights), the refresh includes even more Snapseed filters and tools. Location sharing can now tap into your circle arrangements, and you'll be able to share geo-locations with specific sets of people. Related hashtags will now function within the app, like we've already seen on the web-based version, while (perhaps predictably) there's now one-tap access to Mountain View's Hangouts app too. Gotta keep 'em all connected, right?

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Here's Your First (Blurry) Look at the PS4

We didn't get to see the PS4 at Sony's big reveal event a few months ago, but with the NextBox announcement right around the corner (read: tomorrow), Sony's showing off a sneak peek to get us all riled. It's hard to make out much of anything other than the vague shape of the thing, but it's better than nothing. Can you make out anything cool?

Read more...

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/VPlBI3MELqU/heres-your-first-blurry-look-at-the-ps4-508870766

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The Plural of ?Noonan? Is Not ?Data? (Balloon Juice)

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AT&T Will Begin Enabling Pre-Loaded Video Chat Apps, Like Hangouts, For Those On Any Data Plan Later This Year

As AT&T comes under the gun for blocking Google's new video chat app Hangouts on its cellular network, the company is today hoping to put a better spin on the news by offering a new statement detailing its changing position on support for pre-loaded video chat apps. During the second half of 2013, AT&T says it will begin to enable pre-loaded video chat applications over cellular for all its customers, regardless of the customer's data plan.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/9JLW9OlpjGk/

Penta-lingual dictionary--English-Norwegian-french-spanish-arabic ...

Tax Type Tax Rate Tax ID or Company no.

eg. VAT, GST ? Registration no.

Source: http://www.freelancer.com/projects/Copywriting-Translation/Penta-lingual-dictionary-English.html