'Divergent' Hits Comic-Con! - Video-News - TDNPost.com

Just two days after filming wrapped on ?Divergent,? stars Shailene Woodley and Theo James hit Comic-Con to talk about the big screen adaption of the best-selling book series. (July 19)

Keywords: Shailene Woodley, Entertainment, Animation and comics, Entertainment, Arts and entertainment

The Daily News Post India (tdnpost)

Source: http://tdnpost.com/videos/divergent-hits-comic-con-340647.html

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Shocking! India ranks 119 in economic freedom

India?s economic development has been marred by corruption, says The Heritage Foundation.

The country's economic freedom score is 55.2, making its economy the 119th freest in the 2013 Index.?

Its score is 0.6 point higher than last year, with improvements in the management of public finance and monetary freedom offsetting a continuing decline in freedom from corruption, says The Heritage Foundation, in partnership with?The Wall Street Journal?which has tracked economic freedom of countries around the world.

?In the absence of a well-functioning legal and regulatory framework, corruption throughout the economy is becoming a more serious drag on the emergence of a more dynamic private sector, states the study.

Launched in 1995, the?Index?evaluates countries in four broad areas of economic freedom: rule of law; regulatory efficiency; limited government; and open markets.?

Take a look at the nations that score high on economic freedom?

A dancer in an traditional Indian dress poses in front of an elephant.

Source: http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-shocking-india-ranks-119-in-economic-freedom/20130719.htm

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Mursi supporters rally in Egypt, no signs of compromise

By Alexander Dziadosz and Ulf Laessing

CAIRO (Reuters) - Thousands of supporters of deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi gathered in Cairo on Friday for a rally to demand the restoration of the ousted Islamist, with his opponents also planning protests nearby.

More than two weeks after Egypt's powerful military shunted the contested Mursi from office, there was still no sign of a possible deal to defuse the crisis, which has divided the world's most populous Arab state and alarmed its Western allies.

The Muslim Brotherhood has called for demonstrations around the country, accusing the head of the armed forces, General Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, of staging a coup to sweep Egypt's first freely elected president from power.

The army said it had to intervene after mammoth street protests against Mursi, who was criticized as incompetent and partisan, and has installed an interim cabinet to prepare for elections. It includes no members of Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamist parties previously in government.

Mursi backers have set up a round-the-clock vigil outside a mosque in the Cairo suburb of Nasr City. Thousands of sympathizers flocked to the site on Friday to join protests that normally gather momentum after noon prayers.

"Tonight, tonight, tonight, Sisi is going down tonight," a man shouted out, leading the chants.

A huge banner showed a picture of the bearded Mursi against Egyptian flags and read: "Together to support legitimacy."

Egypt's closest Western ally, the United States, has tried to tread softly through the crisis, still undecided whether to brand the downfall of Mursi a military coup - a move that would force Washington to suspend its large aid programs for Cairo.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry telephoned Egypt's new foreign minister, Nabil Fahmy, expressing hopes that the transitional period of government would be successful, a spokesman for the Egyptian foreign ministry said on Friday.

CHAOS

In his first address since taking office, interim President Adli Mansour promised on Thursday night to fight people he said wanted to destabilize the nation.

"We are going through a critical stage and some want us to move towards chaos and we want to move towards stability. Some want a bloody path," he said in a televised address. "We will fight a battle for security until the end."

Tamarud, the youth movement which organized enormous anti-Mursi protests on June 30, is also planning rallies on Friday, including one close to the Muslim Brotherhood's Nasr City vigil.

It dubbed its protests as "the people against terrorism", blaming Mursi followers for recent violence.

Policing was intensified on Friday and 10 armored personnel carriers were parked on a Nile bridge in central Cairo, a route Islamist protesters would have to cross if they tried to reach Tahrir Square, a focal point for the anti-Mursi camp.

At least 99 people have died in violence since Mursi's removal, more than half of them when troops fired on Islamist protesters outside a Cairo barracks on July 8.

Muslim Brotherhood leaders say they will not resort to violence in their campaign to reinstate Mursi, held by the army incommunicado since July 3, and insist they will not back down.

"The goal of our peaceful mass rallies and peaceful sit-ins in squares across Egypt is to force the coup plotters to reverse their action and force the coup supporters to change their position," Essam el-Erian, a senior Brotherhood official, said on his Facebook page.

"Egypt will be free and independent," he wrote.

(Additional reporting by Maggie Fick and Yasmine Saleh; Writing by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-president-promises-fight-chaos-pro-mursi-rallies-061427456.html

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DEP study: Fracking chemicals didn't taint water

PITTSBURGH (AP) ? A landmark federal study on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process moved up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site, the Department of Energy told The Associated Press.

After a year of monitoring, the researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas trapped deep below the surface stayed thousands of feet below the shallower areas that supply drinking water, geologist Richard Hammack said.

Although the results are preliminary ? the study is still ongoing ? they are a boost to a natural gas industry that has fought complaints from environmental groups and property owners who call fracking dangerous.

Drilling fluids tagged with unique markers were injected more than 8,000 feet below the surface, but were not detected in a monitoring zone 3,000 feet higher. That means the potentially dangerous substances stayed about a mile away from drinking water supplies.

"This is good news," said Duke University scientist Rob Jackson, who was not involved with the study. He called it a "useful and important approach" to monitoring fracking, but cautioned that the single study doesn't prove that fracking can't pollute, since geology and industry practices vary widely in Pennsylvania and across the nation.

The boom in gas drilling has led to tens of thousands of new wells being drilled in recent years, many in the Marcellus Shale formation that lies under parts of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and West Virginia. That's led to major economic benefits but also fears that the chemicals used in the drilling process could spread to water supplies.

The mix of chemicals varies by company and region, and while some are openly listed the industry has complained that disclosing special formulas could violate trade secrets. Some of the chemicals are toxic and could cause health problems in significant doses, so the lack of full transparency has worried landowners and public health experts.

The study done by the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh marked the first time that a drilling company let government scientists inject special tracers into the fracking fluid and then continue regular monitoring to see whether it spread toward drinking water sources. The research is being done at a drilling site in Greene County, which is southwest of Pittsburgh and adjacent to West Virginia.

Eight new Marcellus Shale horizontal wells were monitored seismically and one was injected with four different man-made tracers at different stages of the fracking process, which involves setting off small explosions to break the rock apart. The scientists also monitored a separate series of older gas wells that are about 3,000 feet above the Marcellus to see if the fracking fluid reached up to them.

The industry and many state and federal regulators have long contended that fracking itself won't contaminate surface drinking water because of the extreme depth of the gas wells. Most are more than a mile underground, while drinking water aquifers are usually within 500 to 1000 feet of the surface.

Kathryn Klaber, the CEO of the industry-led Marcellus Shale Coalition, called the study "great news."

"It's important that we continue to seek partnerships that can study these issues, and inform the public of the findings," Klaber said.

While the lack of contamination is encouraging, Jackson said he wondered whether the unidentified drilling company might have consciously or unconsciously taken extra care with the research site, since it was being watched. He also noted that other aspects of the drilling process can cause pollution, such as poor well construction, surface spills of chemicals, and wastewater.

Jackson and his colleagues at Duke have done numerous studies over the last few years that looked at whether gas drilling is contaminating nearby drinking water, with mixed results. None of them have found chemical contamination but they did find evidence that natural gas escaped from some wells near the surface and polluted drinking water in northeastern Pennsylvania.

Scott Anderson, a drilling expert with the Environment Defense Fund, said the results sound very interesting.

"Very few people think that fracking at significant depths routinely leads to water contamination. But the jury is still out on what the odds are that this might happen in special situations," Anderson said.

One finding surprised the researchers: Seismic monitoring determined one hydraulic fracture traveled 1,800 feet out from the well bore; most traveled just a few hundred feet. That's significant because some environmental groups have questioned whether the fractures could go all the way to the surface.

The researchers believe that fracture may have hit naturally occurring faults, and that's something both industry and regulators don't want.

"We would like to be able to predict those areas" with natural faults and avoid them, Hammack said.

Jackson said the 1,800-foot fracture was very interesting, but also noted it is still a mile from the surface.

The DOE team will start to publish full results of the tests over the next few months, said Hammack, who called the large amount of field data from the study "the real deal."

"People probably will be looking at the data for years to come," he said.

___

Follow Kevin Begos at https://twitter.com/kbegos

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/dep-study-fracking-chemicals-didnt-taint-water-113723089.html

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Officials say new anti-leak measures set at NSA

ASPEN, Colo. (AP) ? The National Security Agency is implementing new security measures because of the disclosures by former NSA-systems-analyst-turned-fugitive Edward Snowden, top defense officials said Thursday.

NSA chief Keith Alexander said his agency had implemented a "two-man rule," under which any system administrator like Snowden could only access or move key information with another administrator present. With some 15,000 sites to fix, Alexander said, it would take time to spread across the whole agency.

"Some of your sites are small ... and you only have one system administrator, so you've got to address all of those, and we are working our way through it," he said after speaking to an audience at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

Alexander said that server rooms where such data is stored are now locked and require a two-man team to access them ? safeguards that he said would be implemented at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies after a pilot program at the NSA.

Snowden leaked to the media information revealing that the NSA was gathering millions of U.S. phone records and intercepting some U.S. Internet traffic.

"This was a failure to defend our own networks," Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said at the forum.

"In an effort for those in the intelligence community to be able to share with each other, there was an enormous amount of information concentrated in once place. That's a mistake," Carter said. "The loading of everything onto a server creates a risk."

Carter said they are also looking at how to better monitor individuals with access to that kind of information and suggested the Pentagon might monitor intelligence workers just as it monitors staff at nuclear installations.

"When it comes to nuclear weapons, you watch people's behavior in a special way. We don't let people all by themselves do anything," he said. "There is always some aberrant individual and you've got to recognize that."

Alexander said he hoped to more quickly implement a new intelligence sharing system in which all such information uploaded to a server was encrypted, such that only analysts that needed access to certain information would have the code to read it.

Alexander, Carter and National Counterterrorism Center director Matthew Olsen all said the Snowden leaks damaged national security. Olsen said during the forum that al-Qaida and related groups are seeking to change how they communicate to avoid U.S. detection and surveillance because of Snowden's leaks. Previously, U.S. officials have said anonymously that Snowden's leaks to the media have been damaging and prompting terrorists to change their ways.

"We have concrete proof that terrorist groups and others are taking action, making changes, and making our job tougher," Alexander said.

His comments and those of the other officials seemed at odds with testimony only a day earlier by John C. Inglis, the deputy director of the NSA. He told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that while the impact of Snowden's disclosures can be very harmful, "it's too soon to tell whether, in fact, adversaries will take great note of the things that he's disclosed."

Alexander defended the surveillance and data collection programs Snowden disclosed, one that gathers U.S. phone records and another that monitors U.S.-based Internet servers for foreign terrorist or espionage-related activity.

He told the Aspen audience that the secrecy about how the programs work was needed "not to hide it from you, it's to hide it from those who walk among you and are trying to kill you."

Alexander said the congressional intelligence committees were looking at whether it was feasible in terms of cost for the private companies to hold the data themselves instead of handing it over to the NSA. He said it would take an act of Congress to require them to hold the data, and added that he thought his agency could figure out how to process and analyze the information if that's what Congress deemed necessary.

In a separate development, Alexander and Carter both said the Pentagon is close to launching a 4,000-person cybersquad of both offensive and defensive teams that would both protect Defense Department systems and launch cyberattacks against enemy networks when the White House orders it.

___

Follow Dozier on Twitter: http://twitter.com/kimberlydozier

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/officials-anti-leak-measures-set-nsa-015038390.html

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Gawker: Money won't be used to buy mayor video

TORONTO --?

The website Gawker says money raised to buy a video purporting to show Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine will instead go to four Canadian community health organizations.

John Cook, editor of the U.S.-based website, said in May that he'd seen a video of Ford inhaling from what appeared to be a crack pipe. Cook said he'd been shown the video by a drug dealer who had been trying to sell it for a six-figure sum.

The website raised $192,000 through an online campaign but said it lost contact with the owner. Gawker said on its website Thursday the money will be split between the four organizations.

Ford has said the video does not exist, though he has never said he has never smoked crack.

Source: http://www.fortmilltimes.com/2013/07/18/2830257/gawker-money-wont-be-used-to-buy.html

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Detroit, cradle of U.S. auto industry, seeks ... - Automotive News

The Renaissance Center, left, GM's global headquarters, rises above Detroit, which became the biggest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy on Thursday. The Detroit 3 voiced support for the city after it sought court protection from creditors to eliminate a budget deficit and cut long-term debt. Photo credit: BLOOMBERG

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July 18, 2013 - 7:02 pm ET -- UPDATED: 7/18/13 7:44 pm ET - adds details

DETROIT -- Detroit, cradle of the U.S. auto industry, became the most populous American city to file for bankruptcy, seeking court protection from creditors while it tries to eliminate a budget deficit and cut long-term debt.

"I authorize this necessary step as a last resort to return this great city to financial and civic health for its residents and taxpayers," Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican, said in a letter Thursday authorizing Kevyn Orr, the city's emergency manager, to file the petition.

Michigan's largest city has seen its population decline to 707,000, down 7 percent since 2010, according to U.S. Census data. Median household income was less than $28,000, compared with $49,000 statewide, and more than 36 percent of residents lived in poverty as of 2011, Census data show. The median home value of $71,000 was barely half the $137,000 value statewide.

The city listed assets and debt of more than $1 billion in a Chapter 9 petition filed today in court in Detroit. Chapter 9 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code is reserved for municipalities and differs from the rules used by bankrupt companies in Chapter 11.

Orr warned in May that the city might run out of cash. His proposal to restructure more than $17 billion in debt and long-term obligations includes cutting pension payments for public employees, ending cost-of-living increases, removing some workers from the system and making the rest pay more.

"Significant restructuring"

"Without a significant restructuring of its debt, the city will be unable to break the cycle of damaging cutbacks in essential municipal services and investments," Orr said in a report.

William Nowling, spokesman for Orr, didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing.

A state court judge today temporarily barred Snyder and Orr from taking any action that would allow cuts in pension benefits for city retirees, while allowing the bankruptcy to proceed. The pension funds sued Wednesday to stop the filing.

Detroit joins Jefferson County, Alabama, and the California cities of San Bernardino and Stockton in bankruptcy.

The move was inevitable, said Steven Rattner, a New York financier who headed President Barack Obama?s auto-industry task force in 2009 that put the predecessors of General Motors and Chrysler Group into bankruptcy reorganizations.

?It?s analogous to the auto companies, in that you have too many stakeholders whose claims are too underwater to have realistically ever worked this out without some kind of bankruptcy,? Rattner said in an interview. ?I felt the same way about the auto companies as I did about Detroit from the first moment -- bankruptcy was the only option. Unfortunately, I think it was always inevitable.?

GM and Chrysler each emerged from Chapter 11 reorganizations in about six weeks and have since developed popular new models and returned to profitability. Detroit won?t be as easy to fix, Rattner said.

Much messier

?This will be much messier than the auto companies,? he said. ?This will go on for a long time.?

?You?re going to have much bigger haircuts for the workers and that?s going to mean much more pain than the workers for the auto companies were asked to bear,? Rattner said.

Years of job losses at U.S. automakers intensified a decline that began in the 1950s, when white homeowners began moving to the suburbs, Scott Martelle, author of "Detroit: A Biography," said in an e-mail before the filing.

"As the tax base eroded, basic city services eroded, too," he said. Detroit today "is too big geographically -- 140 square miles -- for its dwindling and impoverished tax base to support."

Detroit was once synonymous with U.S. manufacturing prowess. Its automotive giants switched production to planes, tanks and munitions during World War Two, earning the city the nickname of "Arsenal of Democracy."

GM, which has emerged from bankruptcy a healthier company with less debt and fewer brands, said it is hopeful Detroit can rebuild itself into a stronger city.

Proud home

The company, in a statement after the city's filing, said it does not expect the city's bankruptcy to impact its operations or business outlook.

"GM is proud to call Detroit home and today's bankruptcy declaration is a day that we and others hoped would not come," the automaker said. "We believe, however, that today also can mark a clean start for the city."

GM employs nearly 3,000 people in the city, mostly at its headquarters in the Renaissance Center downtown. It also has more than 1,000 employees at its Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant, which borders both Detroit and Hamtramck.

Chrysler employs more than 5,800 employees in the city.

The bulk of the company's Detroit work force staffs the company's Jefferson North assembly plant, home of the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango SUVs, on the city's east side.

Chrysler also employs about 75 employees at Chrysler House in downtown Detroit.

"We not only continue to invest in the city and its residents by adding to our presence in Detroit, we also are committed to playing a positive role in its revitalization," Chrysler said in a statement.

Ford Motor Co., based in nearby Dearborn, Mich., said it hopes Detroit's bankruptcy will help reinvent the community.

"The city has a difficult job ahead, and we are optimistic that governmental leaders will be successful in strengthening the community," Ford said in a statement.

Financial crisis

In February, a state report concluded the city was in the midst of a fiscal crisis, a finding required under Michigan law before the city could be eligible to seek court protection from creditors.

Chapter 9 will give Detroit an advantage over companies using Chapter 11 to reorganize. Unlike companies, municipalities don't need to ask the bankruptcy court for permission to pay any bills they ran up before filing for court protection, including wages, utility bills and rents.

That means creditors can't put as much pressure on a city over its spending habits, as sometimes happens in Chapter 11 cases. Chapter 9 creditors also can't offer their own reorganization plan and aren't entitled to form an official committee with legal fees paid by the municipality. Unsecured creditors typically have those rights under Chapter 11, which is used by companies to try to stay in business and reorganize.

Biggest drains

Among the biggest drains on the city's general fund, which pays for police, fire and other basic services, are health benefits paid to 18,500 retired city workers, mostly former police and firefighters, according to Orr's May report. Without changes, the city will pay $163 million for retiree health-care costs in the next fiscal year, which starts July 1, the report found.

The city has been operating under a financial stability agreement with the state. With the state's help, the city issued $130 million in new bonds, part of which was used to pay off short-term debt. To get access to the remaining proceeds, the city was forced to hire a restructuring firm and, in December, the law firm of Miller Canfield Paddock & Stone Plc to help formulate a recovery plan.

Detroit ran short of cash last year and was forced to borrow $92.2 million from other funds, including its solid waste, street and risk management funds. At the end of June, the city also owed its retirement funds $60.5 million, according to the audit.

Detroit's bond ratings were cut deeper into non-investment grade last year by Moody's Investors Service, which cited the possibility of bankruptcy or default within two years.

David Phillips of Automotive News, Bloomberg and Reuters contributed to this report.

Contact Automotive News

Source: http://www.autonews.com/article/20130718/OEM/130719844/detroit-cradle-of-u-s-auto-industry-seeks-bankruptcy-protection

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