Boston suspects' father postpones trip to US

MAKHACHKALA, Russia (AP) ? The father of the two Boston bombing suspects said Sunday that he has postponed a trip from Russia to the United States because of poor health.

"I am really sick," Anzor Tsarnaev, 46, told The Associated Press. He said his blood pressure had spiked to dangerous levels.

Tsarnaev said at a news conference Thursday that he planned to leave that day or the next for the U.S. with the hope of seeing his younger son, who is under arrest, and burying his elder son, who was killed. His family, however, indicated later Thursday that the trip could be pushed back because he was not feeling well.

Tsarnaev confirmed on Sunday that he is staying in Chechnya, a province in southern Russia, but did not specify whether he was hospitalized. He is an ethnic Chechen and has relatives in Chechnya, although he and his family spent little time in Chechnya or anywhere else in Russia before moving to the U.S. a decade ago.

He and the suspects' mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, returned to Russia last year and settled in Makhachkala, the capital of neighboring Dagestan, where Tsarnaeva's relatives live.

During the past week, they were both questioned extensively by U.S. investigators who had traveled to Makhachkala from Moscow. They also were besieged by journalists who staked out their home.

Tsarnaev's family said last week that he intended to get to the U.S. by flying from Grozny, the Chechen capital, to Moscow. He and Tsarnaeva left Dagestan on Friday, but their whereabouts were unclear.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/boston-suspects-father-postpones-trip-us-124041600.html

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Obama: Flight delay fix a 'Band-Aid'

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama says the congressional fix for widespread flight delays is an irresponsible way to govern, but he's prepared to sign the legislation that lawmakers fast-tracked.

He says the bipartisan bill to end furloughs of air traffic controllers is a "Band-Aid" solution rather than a lasting answer to this year's $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester.

The cuts have affected all federal agencies, and flight delays last week left thousands of travelers frustrated and furious and Congress feeling pressured to respond.

"Republicans claimed victory when the sequester first took effect, and now they've decided it was a bad idea all along," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address, aired Saturday.

He singled out the GOP even though the bill passed with overwhelming Democratic support in both the House and Senate.

The president scolded lawmakers for helping the Federal Aviation Administration while doing nothing to replace other cuts that he said harm federal employees, unemployed workers and preschoolers in Head Start.

"Maybe because they fly home each weekend, the members of Congress who insisted these cuts take hold finally realized that they actually apply to them, too," Obama said.

Rushed through Congress with remarkable speed, the bill marked a shift for Democrats who had hoped the impact of the cuts would increase pressure on Republicans to reverse the broad cuts.

Republicans have rejected Obama's proposal to replace the spending reductions with a mix of spending cuts and tax increases.

"There are some in the Obama administration who thought inflicting pain on the public would give the president more leverage to avoid making necessary spending cuts, and to impose more tax hikes on the American people," said Rep. Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania in the Republican address.

Shuster, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said the FAA could have averted the flight delays on its own by cutting costs elsewhere and rejiggering work schedules, but chose not to do so.

The bill signed by Obama would let the FAA use up to $253 million from an airport improvement program and other accounts to halt the furloughs through the Sept. 30 end of the government's fiscal year.

Faced with the prospect that emboldened Republicans will push to selectively undo other painful effects of the cuts, the White House said Friday that a piecemeal approach would be impractical, but wouldn't definitely rule out signing other fixes.

___

Online:

Obama address: www.whitehouse.gov

GOP address: www.youtube.com/HouseConference

___

Follow Josh Lederman at https://twitter.com/joshledermanAP

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-flight-delay-fix-band-aid-100306095.html

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Feminist author Mary Thom, 68, killed in NY motorcycle crash

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Renowned feminist and former women's magazine editor Mary Thom was killed in a motorcycle crash over the weekend in Yonkers, New York, friends and colleagues said.

Thom, 68, a former editor of Ms. Magazine, crashed her motorcycle on the Saw Mill Parkway on Friday evening, said Eleanor Smeal, publisher of Ms. Magazine and a close friend of Thom.

An accomplished author, editor and journalist, Thom devoted her career to giving voice to women's rights issues in books, magazine columns and through her work within the women's movement, which mourned the loss over the weekend.

"We, who are Mary's friends and family haven't absorbed her loss yet: it's too sudden,'' said actress Jane Fonda and feminist authors Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan, three co-founders of the Women's Media Center, in a statement.

"Ms. Magazine, the Women's Media Center, the women's movement and American journalism have suffered an enormous blow."

Thom, an Akron, Ohio, native, spent more than a quarter century at Ms. Magazine and wrote a book about working her way from an entry level research position to executive editor in "Inside Ms.: 25 Years of the Magazine and the Feminist Movement," according to Smeal.

Thom also edited a book of letters sent to the magazine during the publication's formative years between 1972-1987.

Smeal said she would sorely miss Thom's virtually constant presence at the heart of the movement over decades.

"She was always there,'' Smeal said on Sunday. "She was always there as a guiding hand to make sure that the spirit of feminism came through in everything we wrote at the Women's Media Center and at Ms. Magazine. She will truly be missed."

Thom was an avid motorcycle enthusiast who never owned a car and had been riding for four decades, her nephew Thom Loubet told the Journal News newspaper in Westchester, New York.

She was a top editor at the Women's Media Center at the time of her death, Smeal said.

(Reporting by Chris Francescani; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Jackie Frank)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/feminist-author-mary-thom-68-killed-ny-motorcycle-163549788.html

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Butler Joins Think Finance | peHUBpeHUB

Marcella Butler has joined Think Finance as Chief Human Resources Officer. Butler joins Think Finance from Google where she worked in a variety of directorate-level roles across corporate development, finance and people operations.

PRESS RELEASE

Think Finance, a company that develops online financial products that bridge the gap between payday loans and credit cards, today announced it has named Marcella Butler as its Chief Human Resources Officer.

Ms. Butler joins Think Finance from Google, where she spent five years in a variety of directorate-level roles across corporate development, finance and people operations. Prior to that, Ms. Butler was the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Compliance Officer for Pershing Square Capital Management and Chief Administration Officer for Sanford Bernstein, LLC. She has also held positions with Egon Zehner International, McKinsey & Company and Morgan Stanley & Co, Inc.
?We?re delighted to welcome Marcella to Think Finance,? said Think Finance Global Chief Executive Officer Ken Rees. ?Her impressive background and expertise will help us navigate the challenges of rapid growth and create a truly great place to work for all our employees.?
?I?m excited to work with the talented individuals at Think Finance,? said Ms. Butler. ?The Think Finance team is vibrant and growing with the business, and together, we will continue to lever the unique aspects of Think Finance?s culture as we build a great place to work and grow.?
Ms. Butler graduated with highest distinction from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill where she was a Morehead scholar and holds a Master of Public Policy from Harvard University?s Kennedy School of Government.
About Think Finance
Think Finance develops online financial products that bridge the gap between payday loans and credit cards. Using our technology and analytics platform, Think Finance and the lenders we work with have provided over $3.5 billion in credit to 1.5 million consumers in the U.S. and abroad and have saved customers over $1 billion compared to payday loans. Think Finance is privately held and is backed by some of Silicon Valley?s most respected venture capital firms including Sequoia Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures. The company was recently named No. 2 on Forbes? America?s Most Promising Companies list. Learn more at?www.ThinkFinance.com.

Source: http://www.pehub.com/198600/butler-joins-think-finance/

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Swype (for Android)

Most Android users are familiar with Swype's signature input method of dragging a finger over keys instead of tapping them, a feature that has been baked into several phones. The Swype app, now available on Google Play for 99 cents (limited time price), brings this familiar feature to any Android device, but also adds a slew of other clever input methods like dictation and handwriting. It also provides smart suggestions as you write, letting you quickly finish words and sentences.

With cloud-syncing dictionaries, support for more than 60 languages, and the ability to learn from your writing and social media, Swype is a powerful app that totally changes how you type.

Writing With Swype
The main way to interact with Swype is by "Swyping"?where you drag you finger from letter to letter to spell out words. Once you complete a word, it appears in place in the text. When you next begin swiping, the app automatically adds a space between the words (this can be toggled on and off in the settings).

The word the app believes you swiped is displayed on a ribbon above the keyboard on the far left. Other words which the app believes you may have been attempting to swipe or type appear to the right. The list is extensive, and can be explored by dragging the ribbon left and right.

Typing works as you expect. With each tap of a letter, the suggestions across the top change. Let's say I'm typing the word "best." By the time I'm through "be," the word "be" is on the left as the top suggestion. "Best" is the third suggestion, so I could just tap the word and keep typing.

Like SwiftKey, Swype also displays three suggested words above the keyboard before you begin Swyping or typing. For instance, after writing "I am enjoying the hams of my ancestors" several times, Swype suggested "enjoying," "the," and "hams" after I typed "I am." This makes spitting out frequently used phrases even faster. In other words, it's content-aware, so you could simply tap the suggestions to dash through sentences.

Suggested words are a smart feature, but sometimes Swype spits out strange utterances. During my testing, I tapped the middle of the three suggestions repeatedly and the app wrote "Is it possible to have a good time for the holidays [sic]," a question I am sure many of us have asked before. In general, SwiftKey does a better job of identifying the phrases I use a lot and was more consistent with its suggestions.

Moving between all three modes of text input makes for fast, accurate typing and is the best way to use the app. However, it's hard to get used to looking at suggestions instead of the keyboard while writing. Obviously there's a learning curve before you can take full advantage of everything the app has to offer.

Dead-On Dictation
Nuance Communication, the developer behind Swype, is also responsible for Dragon Dictate for Mac and Dragon NaturallySpeaking 12 Premium (Windows), desktop speech-to-text software that picked up our Editors' Choice award. It's not surprising that the company chose to include a dictation capability in Swype, which it calls Dragon. To activate this feature, simply tap the small flame-like logo on the bottom left of the Swype keyboard. Speak your sentence and then tap "done" when you're finished, although you can allow the app to end dictations automatically from the settings menu.

I was immediately impressed with Dragon on Swype, which requires no tedious set up or training. Out of the box it did a pretty good job transcribing my utterances, even when another speaker was close by.? It's definitely better suited for composing shorter messages, and I also noticed it took longer than expected to process the speech to text, which requires a data connection. The Google Now search bar on my Nexus 7 transcribed my speech much faster, but a little less accurately.

With dictation more than other aspects of Swype, you'll probably end up having to correct the app a fair amount which is thankfully simple. Just tap a word and Swype's suggestions will appear on the ribbon again.

Handwriting Recognition
I thought handwriting recognition fell out of favor around the time of the Newton, but Swype has a toggle-able option to let you write with your fingertip. As you shape letters?either in upper or lower case?the lines vanish quickly as Swype collects them. You can enter text letter by letter or in entire words.

Because English is my first language, my impulse was to move left to right as I wrote. This works fine, but you'll quickly run out of space for longer words. I found the app worked just as well when I wrote the letters over each other slowly.

Annoyingly, to handwrite numbers, you have to switch between letter and number entry modes. Between that and the time it takes to write letters out, it's obvious why this isn't a central feature of the app. In fact, it's not even enabled by default.

Surprisingly, handwriting input shines for entering long strings of numbers?like a phone number.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/yHDB0fDKGH0/0,2817,2418217,00.asp

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Texas inmate shouts 'Wow' during execution

By Michael Graczyk, The Associated Press

AP

This undated photo provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows Richard Cobb. Cobb is set for lethal injection Thursday evening, April 25, 2013 in Huntsville, Texas for the slaying of 37-year-old Kenneth Vandever.

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - A Texas inmate was executed Thursday evening for fatally shooting one of three people he and a partner abducted during a convenience store robbery nearly 11 years ago.

Richard Cobb, 29, didn't deny using a 20-gauge shotgun to kill Kenneth Vandever in an East Texas field where two women also were shot and one was raped. He was convicted of capital murder.

"Life is death, death is life. I hope that someday this absurdity that humanity has come to will come to an end," Cobb said when asked if he had any last words. "Life is too short. I hope anyone that has negative energy towards me will resolve that.

"Life is too short to harbor feelings of hatred and anger. That's it, warden."

---

But that wasn't it.

Just before the lethal drug took effect and at the conclusion of his statement, Cobb twisted his head back, raised it off a pillow placed on the gurney and then toward the warden standing behind him.

"Wow!" the inmate exclaimed in a loud voice. "That is great. That is awesome! Thank you, warden! Thank you (expletive) warden!"

His head fell back on the pillow, and his neck twisted at an odd angle, with his mouth and eyes open.

He remained that way for some 15 minutes before a physician entered the death chamber to examine him and pronounce him dead at 6:27 p.m. CDT. Sixteen minutes had passed since the drug had been injected.

The father, stepmother and stepbrother of the man shot and killed by Cobb were among the witnesses. Also in the viewing area was one of the women who was shot and attacked but survived to testify against Cobb.

"I think justice was served but it doesn't change anything to speak of," the slain man's father, Don Vandever, said after watching Cobb die. "I do think the justice system needs to be more of a deterrent.

"All he did was go to sleep. That's it."

Nikki Daniels, 29, who was raped and shot during the 2002 attack but survived to testify against Cobb, said, "I thought he was going to be remorseful, I thought he was going to be apologetic, was hoping that he was going to address me.

"I saw the same evil person I saw 11 years ago. ... He definitely showed his true colors."

The Associated Press generally does not name victims of sexual assault but Daniels agreed to be identified.

Daniels said Cobb's punishment in the end "was far too easy."

About two hours before the lethal injection, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for Cobb to be executed, rejecting a last-day appeal. It was Texas' fourth execution this year.

On Sept. 2, 2002, Kenneth Vandever and the two women were abducted from a store in Rusk, about 120 miles southeast of Dallas, and taken to a field about 10 miles away. All three were shot and left for dead. Vandever, 37, died, but the women managed to get help.

Cobb was 18 at the time of the attack, on probation for auto theft and a high school dropout. Cobb and his partner, Beunka Adams, were arrested in Jacksonville, about 25 miles away, the day after the crime. It was the latest in a series of robberies tied to them.

Cobb testified at his trial he began using drugs at age 12 and turned to robbery to pay off a drug debt.

Adams was executed a year ago this week for his participation in the slaying.

Vandever had frequented the store in Rusk and would do things like take out the trash. An auto accident had left him with the mental capacity of a child.

Cobb's trial attorneys unsuccessfully tried to show Adams forced Cobb to shoot Vandever by threatening Cobb. The survivors of the attack said they never heard such threats, but heard Vandever plead that he needed his medication and scream when he was shot.

"Basically, it was an act of compulsion," Cobb said of the abductions and shootings. He described himself to the AP shortly after arriving on death row in 2004 as "young, dumb and made a mistake."

"I'm guilty of the crime," he said.

He told the Jacksonville Daily Progress last month from prison he didn't want to die "but I'm ready for it."

At least 11 other Texas inmates have executions scheduled for the coming months, including three in May.

? 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653381/s/2b3a0a28/l/0Lusnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A40C260C179351130Etexas0Einmate0Eshouts0Ewow0Eduring0Eexecution0Dlite/story01.htm

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Gigabyte P2742G-CF1

Looking for an affordable gaming laptop? The Gigabyte P2742G-CF1 ($1,499.00 list) might fit the bill. In a category where prices regularly register in the thousands, it's nice to see a gaming rig that costs less than a used car. While the performance isn't quite as stunning as you'll find in other gaming laptops, the Gigabyte P2742G-CF1 does offer a longer lasting battery than more expensive competitors.

Design
As with most gaming laptops, Gigabyte didn't make this rig with portability in mind. When closed, it measures 1.92 by 16.3 by 10.9 inches (HWD)?roughly the same size as the Asus G75VW-DH72, and too big to fit into a standard laptop bag. The P2742G-CF1 also has a plastic chassis, but it's no lightweight, tipping the scales at just over 7 pounds (7.05), though it is lighter than the Asus G75VW-DH72 (8.7 pounds). Our review unit is all black?what Gigabyte confusingly calls "svelte black," though the laptop is by no means slim?but it's also available with an orange lid.

The full-size keyboard has the expected chiclet keys, with decent separation between individual keys, but no backlight and no real gap between the keyboard proper and the 10-key numeric pad. As a result, inattentive touch typists might find themselves drifting into the numeric pad with no discernible extra space to distinguish the two bodies of keys. The touchpad is decent sized?1.8 by 3.6 inches?but I did find myself wishing that it used separate right and left mouse buttons instead of a combined button bar.

The 17.3-inch display offers 1,920-by-1,080 resolution, with a matte coating to reduce glare. The resolution and color quality of the display is quite nice, and during benchmark tests and game testing I never saw any blurring or smearing. You may want to use two hands when opening and closing the lid, however, because the plastic lid and bezel flex quite a bit and the hinges are a little stiff.

A pair of two-watt speakers positioned above the keyboard provide decent sound, enhanced by THX TruStudio Pro. They won't equal a dedicated sound system, but they offer good volume and clear sound, with moderate bass. When tested with Silent Shout, by The Knife, the speakers offer richer low end than I had expected, but still can't top the integrated subwoofers found in the Asus G75VW-DH72 or the Maingear Nomad 17 Ultimate.

Features
On the right of the system you'll find two USB 3.0 ports, a combination USB 3.0/eSATA port, HDMI output, and a multiformat card reader (SD, MMS, MS Pro/Duo). On the left, a tray-loading Blu-ray drive lets you watch HD movies and burn DVDs, plus you'll find a single USB 2.0 port, and a trio of audio connections (headphone, mic, and S/PDIF). On the back is a VGA monitor connection and an AC power connector. Gigabit Ethernet will probably be your networking connection of choice, but 802.11n Wi-Fi does the trick without the cable, and Bluetooth 4.0 lets you wirelessly connect an array of devices.

For storage that balances speedy performance with affordable capacity, the Gigabyte P2742G-CF1 is outfitted with both a 128GB solid-state drive (SSD) and a 1TB 5,400 rpm hard drive. That combination provides more than enough space for a large library of installed games and locally stored media, while the SSD ensures snappy performance and rapid start up. With three slots for RAM, the system's 8GB of RAM can actually be bumped up to a whopping 24GB, so there is the opportunity for upgrading in the future.

Aside from Windows 8 and a few media utilities (for virtual surround sound, audio enhancement, and volume optimization) Gigabyte doesn't add any software to the Gigabyte P2742G-CF1. What it does add, however, is a two-year warranty covering the laptop against defect and a one-year warranty on the battery and power adapter.

Performance
The P2742G-CF1 is equipped with a 2.4GHz quad-core Intel Core i7-3630QM processor paired with 8GB of RAM. It's the same processor found in the MSI GT70 One-609US Dragon Edition and the Asus G75VW-DH72, but with half the RAM. The resulting performance is on par with other similarly equipped systems, as seen in PCMark 7, where it scored 4,564 points, falling between the Cyberpower Xplorer X6-9120 (4,446 points) and the MSI GT70 One-609US Dragon Edition (5,182 points).

The difference in RAM led to significant gaps in Cinebench, where the P2742G-CF1 scored a respectable 4.75 points, but fell well behind both the MSI GT70 One-609US Dragon Edition (6.41) and the Asus G75VW-DH72 (6.44), despite the fact that all three utilize the same model of processor. Similar differences were seen in multimedia tests, where the Gigabyte finished Handbrake in 40 seconds and Photoshop CS6 in 4 minutes 56 seconds, as compared to the MSI GT70 One-609US Dragon Edition and the Asus G75VW-DH72, which both completed Handbrake in 36 seconds and Photoshop in 3:32.

The Gigabyte P2742G-CF1 is outfitted with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M with 2GB of dedicated memory. The single GPU offers playable performance in our gaming tests, offering 50 frames per second (fps) in Alien vs. Predator and 38 fps in Heaven, but only with resolution dropped to 1366 by 768 and detail settings dialed down. Competing systems, however, offer better graphics thanks to higher-powered GPUs?the MSI GT70 One-609US Dragon Edition, for example pumped out 35 fps in Aliens vs. Predator and 58 fps in Heaven, but did so at full 1920 by 1080 resolution, with all the eye candy turned up. Bottom line: You'll be able to play all of your games, but the overall performance will take a hit. That's the compromise you'll have to accept for the lower price.

While the performance isn't earth-shattering, the battery life is better than competitors are offering, lasting 4 hours 22 minutes in our rundown test. That's 10 minutes longer than the longest lasting competitor, the MSI GT70 One-609US Dragon Edition, over an hour longer than the Asus G75VW-DH72 (3:02), and nearly four times as long as the Maingear Nomad 17 (1:06). Battery life is generally the Achilles heel of gaming laptops, but because the Gigabyte P2742G-CF1 backs off on performance, the 77Wh battery stretches farther than most.

Conclusion
Lower prices in gaming laptops are almost always accompanied by reduced performance, and the Gigabyte P2742G-CF1 is no exception. Aside from the lower performance scores, however, the P2742G-CF1 still offers playable performance at medium graphics settings, and lasts longer than more expensive gaming rigs, making it a good choice for the gamer that prizes affordability and portability over raw performance. While the slightly more expensive Asus G75VW-DH72 remains our Editors' Choice for mid-range gaming laptop due to its better graphics performance, the Gigabyte P2742G-CF1 is still worth a look.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/8zfPXV82fl4/0,2817,2418124,00.asp

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