Russian President Vladimir Putin (Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images)
Russian President Vladimir Putin should be glad he didn't mess with Texas, according to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.
Last week, Putin denied an accusation that he had stolen a Super Bowl ring from New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. On Tuesday, Cruz said a heist like that wouldn't have gone over so well had it happened to his beloved Dallas Cowboys.
During an interview on the Andrea Tantaros radio show, Cruz said he would "absolutely" have gotten a stolen Cowboys ring back from Putin by now?with a little help from some fellow Texans in high places.
"I have a feeling that if Vladimir Putin had stolen a Dallas Cowboys ring instead of a Patriots ring, you and Sen. [John] Cornyn, [Texas Gov.] Rick Perry and [Cowboys owner] Jerry Jones would've gotten that ring back by now," Tantaros told Cruz.
"That's absolutely right," Cruz replied.
The last time the Cowboys won a Super Bowl was 1995.
Look up in the sky for a super sight: the biggest and brightest full moon of the year.
The so-called supermoon will appear 14 percent larger than normal early Sunday as our celestial neighbor swings closer to Earth. Some may think the supermoon looks more dazzling, but it's actually an optical illusion. The moon looms larger on the horizon next to trees and buildings.
The moon will come within 222,000 miles of Earth and turn full around 7:30 a.m. EDT, making it the best time to view.
In this image taken from video, a police officer photographs a car outside the home of New England Patriots football player Aaron Hernandez, Saturday, June 22, 2013, in North Attleboro, Mass. State police officers and dogs searched Hernandez's home as they investigate the killing of Odin Lloyd, a semi-pro football player whose body was found nearby. (AP Photo/ESPN)
In this image taken from video, a police officer photographs a car outside the home of New England Patriots football player Aaron Hernandez, Saturday, June 22, 2013, in North Attleboro, Mass. State police officers and dogs searched Hernandez's home as they investigate the killing of Odin Lloyd, a semi-pro football player whose body was found nearby. (AP Photo/ESPN)
Aaron Hernandez returns to his home at Friday, June 21, 2013 in North Attleboro, Mass. At least one company yanked an endorsement deal from New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez on Friday as puzzled family members of a friend found slain a mile from Hernandez's home sought answers about how he died. (AP Photo/The Boston Herald, Ted Fitzgerald) BOSTON GLOBE OUT; METRO BOSTON OUT; MAGS OUT; ONLINE OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT
This Dec. 25, 2012 photo taken by a sister and provided by the Boston Bandits football team shows Odin Lloyd, 27, whose body was found Monday, June 17, 2013 in an industrial park in North Attleborough, Mass., about a mile from the house of New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez. (AP Photo/Lloyd family via the Boston Bandits )
FILE - In this May 29, 2013, file photo, New England Patriots' Aaron Hernandez kneels on the field during NFL football practice in Foxborough, Mass. Hernandez is being sued in South Florida by a man claiming Hernandez shot him in the face after an argument at a strip club. The lawsuit comes as police in New England investigate Hernandez's possible connection to the death of a semipro player. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)
NORTH ATTLEBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) ? Police are again searching the area near the home of New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, a week after his friend's body was found about a mile away.
Some law enforcement officers wore wetsuits Monday while searching near both Hernandez's home and the industrial park where Odin Lloyd's body was found.
Lloyd was a 27-year-old semi-pro football player for the Boston Bandits who was found slain June 17.
His family says he was dating the sister of Hernandez's fiancee. They say the two men were friends and were out together on the last night of Lloyd's life.
An Attleboro District Court official said no new documents were available in connection with the case Monday morning.
It is a common scene for parents to get excessively worried about their teenage sons as boys become most vulnerable physically and emotionally during this time. Most parents often complain about difficulties in connecting with their teenage sons because of their sudden behavior change, social withdrawal and increase in their impulsive attitude. Therefore, this is the time when they require proper parental attention and guidance but find hard to admit it on their part. Therefore, here are some important steps for parents to deal with their teenage sons in order to help them face the challenges of becoming a man and prevent them from self-destructive behavior:
When boys go through the adolescence phase, they sometimes become overwhelmed by the responsibilities thrown over their shoulders and by the knowledge of the adult world. Therefore, they often try to cope with their physical and emotional development by going against their parents or by withdrawing themselves completely from the social circle. However, this transformation in their behavior should not discourage the parents to set limits to their freedom because these limits will eventually prevent them from choosing the wrong way.
Avoid giving them long lectures
Nobody likes to hear lectures and bring a teenage boy in the scene; it will probably drive him crazy in a matter of minutes. So, instead of giving your son lectures about what is good and bad for them, try making short and frank conversations with them. This is the time when they want to be treated more like adults and less like kids and so, try to give them what they want in small doses. This technique will not only help you to connect with your son but will also make them comfortable enough to share their problems with you.
Find a mentor for your son
In case you are failing to handle your teenage son very badly then it?s time for you to find a mentor for him. It can be anyone from your family like an uncle who is fun-loving and smart and is also admired by your son or any teacher from the school who is great with your son. Most of the time, boys find it very hard to discuss their problems or take advice from their parents but instead like to share it with someone else who is not their immediate family. So, finding a mentor can immensely benefit your teenage son.
Make mandatory family time
Make it mandatory for your teenage son to spend time with all the family members at least once a week like going to a family picnic, outing, movies, or even visiting other family members. Do not allow them to say no to it saying that it?s mandatory because if given the chance, they will always avoid it. Spending time with the family will make them realize the importance of having a family and will also make them feel lucky to have parents who likes their presence in family events and takes care of them.
Make them participate in group activities
Becoming a man also involves many social responsibilities and in order to make them realize it encourage your teenage son to volunteer in small group activities involving social cause. This will allow them to have a glimpse of the real world of the grown-ups and will make them socially and morally responsible in the future.
The switch from doing jobs to starting startups: will we even notice?Written by Grzegorz Pietruczuk
Could our increasingly online lifestyles morph smoothly into self-employment if today?s culture of ?employee-based careers for all? gradually fades into oblivion?
Something important has happened without us really noticing.
Could the Lean Startup model play a role in a switch to a startup-dominated occupational culture?
The ?employee turned startup founder??will quite possibly start their venture without having any investment money to ?waste? in a non-Lean way.
However, Lean Startup?s principle of rapidly determining the size of potential markets for novel solutions can certainly these days at least be started without having to spend any money on development.
A penniless individual operating on a Lean Startup model ?is essentially someone conducting a market research exercise for products and services that don?t yet exist.
Market research exercises of this sort involve starting conversations with prospective users about requirements to solve a problem, in the context of a speculative solution to that problem that the startup founder has dreamed up.
Starting conversations that might turn into opportunities to provide new things that people want and are prepared to pay for (and learning how to do this well) may just turn out to be the activity which replaces today?s job seeking, either because mastery of it becomes culturally encouraged or because job seeking itself switches to becoming much more of a minority sport than it is today.
People of all ages and backgrounds are starting to make a point of not making much of a fuss about instantly embracing technological change, even though (and more than likely because) they are encountering fresh changes on an almost daily basis.
It is becoming increasingly tiresome to seem too awed when discovering that you are able to do yet another thing online that you previously could only do offline.
?Wow fatigue?: we very quickly stop raving about it, we just use it and pass it on
Yes, we might initially be expected to find ourselves still saying ?wow!? or ?amazing!? when someone shows us one more thing that we currently do offline that?s suddenly been made easier, usually because of a new mobile app, but that?s about it: from that point onward, we?ll be expected to do three things: use it if we need to and, at a relevant moment, ask others whether they know about it, and if they don?t, then show them how to get it and use it.
If we do make too much fuss about these kinds of things on a regular basis, it is usually a sign to others that have stopped making such a fuss (which is rapidly becoming the majority) that we are not really adjusting to the culture.
Such ?technologically maladjusted behaviour? is becoming beyond uncool, it is antisocial: you are going to be seriously annoying people by regularly obliging them to justify spontaneous and uninhibited technology adoption behaviour that seems to them to be straightforward common sense and which is also ?no big deal?.
And yet, despite all this ?labour-saving?, we still expect to need to work
However much we might still fantasize about a future where all the work is done by robots and a life where the need to have a job has been eliminated, our current experience of ?things going digital in our lives? doesn?t seem to have left most of us feeling that it?s all getting to the point where we probably won?t need to work?for a living any time soon.
Even though a lot of things are free online (usually paid for by advertising) things like food and clothing, transport and accommodation still tend to need money and to most people that means needing a job.
Something else hasn?t changed: jobs are still looking easier than starting startups?
Things going online also don?t change the fact that, in a job, as an employee, you are usually just involved in doing something which is just a relatively small part of a bigger operation, rather than being responsible for running the whole thing.
You apply for jobs (maybe online) and if things work out, you get one.
Things going online therefore don?t seem to have changed the fact that ?being an employee? still looks to most of us as if it is a much simpler thing to make happen, as well as imposing a less demanding lifestyle and offering a much less risky way of earning a living than starting a business.
But could ?employment as the default career of the masses? come to an end long?before all the work will be being done by robots?
As someone who is really interested in the future of startups, this recent change in attitudes to embracing technological change raises an important question in my mind about the future of work:
Is the re-shaping of our lives, changing from a (comparatively recent) state of affairs where there was just an ?online option? to one where for many things there is now only an ?online imperative? (where doing things offline is not just harder, but actually impossible: official ?paperwork elimination? for example) also going to result in a similar kind of change from a ?startup option? to a ?startup imperative? (jobs becoming much scarcer, even for those professionally qualified, by contrast with startups which might just be becoming much easier to start and sustain)?
What would need to change before the option of founding a startup overtook that of becoming an employee?
are the attractions of starting a startup getting stronger?
?Ok, so I get this ?switch to startups thing?, but are you saying that everyone who gets into startups instead of being an employee will be a startup founder??
If a switch from employment to startups happens, the initial economic impact might just be manifested by significant numbers of those ?outside the employment system? who may suddenly have a bit more money to spend if the startup they are working on quickly ?monetizes itself into substantial revenue?. These individuals may be startup founders, but they may also be ?early hires? of other founder?s startups.
Eventually, early startup hires may become conventional paid employees, but in such cases they would be employees working at a startup, and as such, represent a significant component of what it might be that would make the switch to a predominantly startup-centric career model look different to what we have now.?
Nonetheless, if a big switch from employees to startups manifests itself, it would be reasonable to expect that a significant proportion of early hires of startups might also be contemplating starting their own venture.
The switch from employment to startups is not likely to mean an end to employment, but more likely an end to the current predisposition toward ?just being an employee? (and not also being a startup founder).
are the risks seeming less daunting?
does the on-ramp to starting a startup ?subliminally permeate? more of our lives (perhaps because so many of the new online resources that we encounter and use every day are being provided by startups)?
will the escalating cost effectiveness of ?doing online business as a secondary, non-occupational activity? morph hitherto permanent employees into full time entrepreneurs?
At first sight, it seems like quite a stretch: although something as small-time as selling unwanted household items on eBay might in some sense be deemed to constitute ?doing business?, to imagine that anybody would treat the fact that they had ever done this as a basis for seriously committing to ditching their day job and replacing it with being a full-time online vendor, would probably be to go just a bit too far for most of us (although a significant minority have indeed made this switch).
The main problem with being too cavalier about projecting the ?job to startup switch? based upon such a simplistic model, is that it doesn?t take into account of the fact that this is one option which has already existed for quite some time and although it has indeed spawned a significant number of new businesses, it has not resulted on a decisive shift in the balance between the self-employed versus employees.
So the next logical question would seem to be:
Is anything ?waiting in the wings??
Has anything else changed since the advent of such simplicity of doing something like setting up an online shop, but which has yet to make its impact in terms of shifting that balance?
Would the thing that would make startups start to replace jobs on a much bigger scale be:
a wider diversity of other types of business that are as easy to start as an online shop?
something which would enable a business which was ?too small to replace the need for paid employment? to grow into a business which was big enough to do just that?
something which reduced the real and perceived career risks and other inhibitions that would deter someone from starting a business?
something which reduced the up-front costs and financial commitments associated with starting certain kinds of business?
something which made it cheaper, easier and more effective to promote a business than ever before (so that smaller businesses could reach much larger markets)
something which made it quicker, more painless and practical to test out an untried new business idea than ever before
something which reduced the amount of time and effort that you needed to devote to running certain kinds of business, just so that you could get one started without having to ditch your day job, where previously that kind of business would have required full time commitment, even at the very start?
At the moment, because there is no sign of a widely recognised shift in the balance, I would say that if any of the factors above are currently increasing in prevalence or impact, they have not yet reached critical mass.
But if you coupled a steady increase in the widespread prevalence of these ?startup facilitation factors? (an increase which I do believe is actually under way) with a significant and sustained drop in the job market (resulting from a discernible long-term trend, such as the automation-driven effects discussed by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee?in their book Race against the machine) then perhaps you could expect a sudden and unprecedentedly large surge in the number of people who would be starting startups.
However, because most ?casually initiated startups? are not ?registered? in any formal sense, a sudden upsurge of such activity would probably become apparent in an indirect way.
The way that this might be expected to manifest itself ?at the macroeconomic level? would be a very significant drop in the numbers of people in paid employment (bought about by layoffs triggered by any one or combination of: market shrinkage, cuts in public services, or massive productivity improvements brought on by automation) which was not accompanied very soon after by the anticipated associated drop in consumer spending.
If there had been a preceding serious drop in employment, an uptick in startups would perhaps be expected to come from some of the laid off employees spending their redundancy/severance money on starting new businesses.
In such circumstances, the usual questions regarding ?flash in the pan?, unsustainable, hastily and poorly thought through no-hope ventures inevitably come to mind. In other words, most expectations at that point would be that any perceived switch from from employment to startups was really just the first step on an ex-employee?s journey to unemployment.
But what if something new is beginning to happen to the ?job versus startup equation?, and it turned out that the ?digital imperative lifestyle? was playing no small part in it?
Even a worst-case scenario may not stop startup takeup
What if, even with no redundancy money (either all spent or never given) and with just dole money (and being confined to living what startups call a ?ramen lifestyle?) or maybe even with ?normal working hours? having to be spent stacking shelves just in order to be able to afford ramen, the online world will start to make starting a startup as natural and culturally accepted as a sensible way of spending your time and trying to earn a living as the old ?jobs for life? ethos that society has recently replaced with a (perhaps soon to be also discarded) ?portfolio employment career??
If this happened, starting a startup would become just a little bit more like buying a lottery ticket: from a social perspective, nobody would expect you to pin all your hopes on it solving all your problems, but nobody would think that doing it was out of the ordinary, or unreasonably foolish or impractical either.
This ticket is getting cheaper, the effort to get it is getting smaller, the prize is more than just ?earning a living? and buying a ticket doesn?t really stop you doing anything else afterwards (including getting another ticket).
In such circumstances, starting a startup would be a totally normal thing for just about anyone to be contemplating, and if you weren?t?doing it, or you questioned why anyone else was doing it, you might even be expected to explain why you were even asking.
If the path to starting and succeeding in startups becomes gentle enough and the current preferred route to a earning a living begins to disappear, then one day, who knows, it is just possible that telling anyone that you?re thinking of embarking upon a non-startup career will sound just as weird and amusingly impractical as saying ?I?m seriously contemplating just doing everything offline?.
Take away:
If startup facilitation factors become much more pervasive and productive than they are today and the job market starts to shrink dramatically and systemically as some suspect it might, then the number of employable individuals starting work in startups may overtake the number of new (non-startup) job positions filled.
The next question will be: but will ?working on startups? make enough money to feed us as well as non-startup jobs used to?
This may be an academic question if the ?conventional? jobs that we?d like to be able to go back to (?as a backup option?) are simply no longer there.
Speaking as a former hiring manager, I dislike ?Dear Hiring Manager? since that?s not my title. My preference is for ?Dear Sir or Madam.?
What I?m writing for, though, is to emphasize that if a name is given in the advertisement, ALWAYS address the letter to that person.
I once received a letter that was obviously copied from a book. For the date, the writer typed ?Date: ______? and handwrote the date. The ad said ?reply to Dave,? and the salutation was ?Dear Hiring Manager:? (at least he properly used a colon. The first sentence was ?In response to your advertisement in the Newspaper A/Newspaper B/Newspaper C, I am applying for a position as Position A/Position B/Position C?? (newspaper names and positions not revealed hear, to help protect the ignorant; this was 20 years ago, after all). The applicant had CIRCLED the newspaper name and position title.
Needless to say, he was not considered any further. The only reason the letter didn?t go into the shredder immediately is that I kept it, without identifying information, as an example of how NOT to write a cover letter.
Just a last point for applicants to consider: if the advertisement or job posting doesn?t specifically say ?no cover letter,? write one. That was my first cut ? if I couldn?t read the letter, I didn?t care what the applicant?s technical abilities were. Whether or not it?s stated in the job description EVERY job requires communications skills.
It looks like the battle for affordable smartphone flagships is heating up. Hot on the heels of TCL / Alcatel's tasty $280 Idol X comes word of Gionee's ELIFE E6, also boasting a 5-inch 1080p display, 1.5GHz quad-core processor (MediaTek MT6589T) with 2GB RAM and 13-megapixel BSI camera with flash. In addition to these main specs, the Chinese handset allegedly packs a 5MP front-facing shooter and 2000mAh+ battery, runs Android 4.2.1 (Jellybean) and features a svelte 8mm profile. Gionee is officially expected to launch the ELIFE E6 in Beijing on July 10th for somewhere between $320 and $360. Availability is unknown, but with MediaTek's SoC supporting both 42Mbps HSPA+ and TD-SCDMA (no LTE here, folks), this phone is likely destined to China, India and other APAC nations.
Instagram's new video feature may have been the most hyped app to hit the market this week, but that doesn't mean there's not a whole world of awesome iOS just waiting to be downloaded. And this week's set all do a little something to make your life easier?now doesn't that sound nice?
Exbel: Video for Instagram may have been the talk of the photo app world this week, but let's not forget the smaller guys doing some incredible work. And Exbel from indie developer Yaser Almajed is one of them. Lets you combine two different photos, one you've taken and one of Exbel's extensive collections of "masks," which you paint over any part of the photo you'd like in varying intensities. The masks are essentially just various textures and backgrounds that you'll find nearly every day, but combined with your own photo, they can turn into a fantastical unique creation. You can then use a filter over your combined image, meaning you'll never run out of various combinations. [$1]
Video for Instagram: Although not an entirely new app, Facebook did finally unveil their Vine-like competitor this week by adding video to the phenomenally popular Instagram. Essentially, you have a maximum of 15 seconds to work with, and the shortest your clips can be is three seconds. The video plays once and then pauses itself; it autoplays when you pause to look at it in the stream, and can be replayed by tapping on it. Audio is on by default. Instagram for Video seems pretty smart. Photos and videos built into the same feed mean you don't have to remember to look at another app. Fifteen seconds is just long enough to sing happy birthday. And filters? Who doesn't like filters! [Free]
Three: Ugh, you'll say, another beautiful, gradient-hued, minimalist iOS weather app. Thanks?I've already got five. But Three is different, we promise. Sure you get just the basic weather info without tons of bells and whistles, but the one bell and/or whistle you do have is a phenomenal one. Three has made it so you'll never be caught chilly at night without the proper layers, because it tells you exactly what to wear. [$2]
Simple: Existing Simple users will grasp the concept of Goals pretty seamlessly but for the uninitiated Goals is basically a digital version of stashing cash in the fridge or in envelopes for specific things you want. Couple that with "Safe-to-Spend" and you'll always have an accurate and up to date dollar figure of what you can actually spend that hasn't already been allocated towards bills or Goals. [Free]
HONG KONG (AP) ? Hong Kong legislators said Saturday that the Chinese government should make the final decision on whether former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden should be extradited to the United States now that the Justice Department has charged him with espionage and theft of government property.
Snowden, believed to be holed up in Hong Kong, has admitted providing information to the news media about two highly classified NSA surveillance programs.
It is not known if the U.S. government has made a formal extradition request to Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong government had no immediate reaction to the charges against Snowden. Police Commissioner, Andy Tsang, when was asked about the development, told reporters only that the case would be dealt with according to the law.
When China regained control of Hong Kong in 1997, the former British colony was granted a high degree of autonomy and granted rights and freedoms not seen on mainland china. However, under the city's mini constitution Beijing is allowed to intervene in matters involving defense and diplomatic affairs.
Outspoken legislator Leung Kwok-hung said Beijing should instruct Hong Kong to protect Snowden from extradition before his case gets dragged through the court system. Leung also urged the people of Hong Kong to "take to the streets to protect Snowden."
Another legislator, Cyd Ho, vice-chairwoman of the pro-democracy Labour Party, said China "should now make its stance clear to the Hong Kong SAR (Special Administrative Region) government" before the case goes before a court.
China has urged Washington to provide explanations following the disclosures of National Security Agency programs which collect millions of telephone records and track foreign Internet activity on U.S. networks, but it has not commented on Snowden's status in Hong Kong.
His whereabouts have not been publicly known since he checked out of a Hong Kong hotel on June 10. He said in an interview with the South China Morning Post that he hoped to stay in the autonomous region of China because he has faith in "the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate."
He and his supporters have also spoken of his seeking asylum from Iceland.
A prominent former politician in Hong Kong, Martin Lee, the founding chairman of the Democratic Party, said he doubted whether Beijing would intervene at this stage.
"Beijing would only intervene according to my understanding at the last stage. If the magistrate said there is enough to extradite, then Mr. Snowden can then appeal," he said.
Lee said Beijing could then decide at the end of the appeal process if it wanted Snowden extradited or not.
A one-page criminal complaint unsealed Friday in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, said Snowden engaged in unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information. Both are charges under the Espionage Act. Snowden also is charged with theft of government property. All three crimes carry a maximum 10-year prison penalty.
The complaint will be an integral part of the U.S. government's effort to have Snowden extradited from Hong Kong, a process that could become a prolonged legal battle. Snowden could contest extradition on grounds of political persecution.
Hong Kong lawyer Mark Sutherland said that the filing of a refugee, torture or inhuman punishment claim acts as an automatic bar on any extradition proceedings until those claims can be assessed.
"Some asylum seekers came to Hong Kong 10 years ago and still haven't had their protection claims assessed," Sutherland said.
Organizers of a public protest in support of Snowden last week said Saturday there were no plans for similar demonstrations this weekend.
TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index ended higher on Friday on gains in banks and gold miners, but recorded its third straight week of heavy losses as the U.S. Federal Reserve's signal of a coming pullback of its easy money policy spooked investors.
The change in Fed direction outlined on Wednesday sent shockwaves through the financial system, with bond yields spiking and global stock markets suffering a two-day plunge.
Trading on Friday swung widely as markets sought to stabilize. The Toronto index rose as high as 12,067.54 and at one point fell to 11,935.72.
"We've been used to (the volatility). A fact of life for markets today. We're going into a new environment and no one likes uncertainty," said John Ing, president of Maison Placements Canada.
"The reality has set in that tighter money, higher rates are in the offing. Unfortunately, we've not been able to address some of the problems which prompted the easing, therefore, the volatility," Ing said.
The index's financial group edged up 0.1 percent on a rebound in bank shares, but weakness among insurance companies offset gains.
Sun Life Financial slid 2.2 percent to C$30.19, while Manulife Financial Corp declined 0.5 percent to C$16.72. Among the banks, Toronto-Dominion Bank gained 0.8 percent to C$81.30, and Bank of Nova Scotia added 0.8 percent to C$55.83.
The materials sector rose 1.3 percent as heavyweight gold mining stocks Goldcorp Inc. and Barrick Gold Corp. both gained even though bullion had its sharpest weekly drop in nearly two years.
"Our sense is the market is very jittery, very skittish, and as a consequence they're looking more toward the short term," said Irwin Michael, a portfolio manager at ABC Funds. "On balance our sense is that our market is a little oversold. The latter part of yesterday was just pandemonium."
The Toronto Stock Exchange's S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> ended up 27.09 points, or 0.23 percent, at 11,995.66. Six of the index's 10 main groups were positive.
Energy stocks dipped 0.03 percent on weaker oil prices, led lower by TransCanada Corp's 's 2.2 percent fall to C$46.00, and by Canadian Natural Resources , which fell 0.8 percent to C$29.37. Cenovus Energy Inc lost 0.9 percent to trade at C$29.58.
Telecoms companies were well-represented at the top of the table, with Rogers Communications Inc up 3.7 percent at C$46.45 and BCE Inc up 1 percent at C$43.60.
Canadian stocks, heavily weighted with resource companies that depend on a growing world economy, might not bounce back quickly from this week's Fed shock, some analysts said.
"I don't think, when people look at the Toronto market and they look at what drives it, that they are going to rush back in" as the Chinese economy splutters and the greenback rises, said Gareth Watson, vice president of investment management and research at Richardson GMP.
"It has to do with that composition of the TSX index," he said. The energy sector and the mining-heavy materials sector together account for more than 38 percent of the index.
PARIS ? A startup Swiss spaceflight company is planning to upgrade its proposed private satellite launch system into a manned suborbital space shuttle for science missions, the company announced Monday (June 17).
The company Swiss Space Systems (S3) has no immediate plans to enter the space tourism market, but does see a market for low-cost microgravity research flights that may be more attractive to researchers than launching experiments on satellites or to the International Space Station, the company's founder and CEO Pascal Jaussi said.
Swiss Space Systems officially formed in March, when it unveiled a concept to deploy small satellites from an air-launched ? but unmanned ? Suborbital Aircraft Reusable shuttle (SOAR) designed to launch from the top of a modified Airbus A300 jumbo jet. [How S3's SOAR Rocket Plane Will Fly (Photos)]
On Monday, the Payerne, Switzerland-based company unveiled an expansion of those space plane plans at the Paris Air Show here. The announcement included an agreement with veteran aerospace company Thales Alenia Space to begin work on a pressurized compartment on the SOAR shuttle to house experiments and crewmembers on future flights.
"Thanks to this, we will be able to enhance our system by replacing the satellite cargo with a similarly developed pressurized module inside the SOAR, allowing S3 to perform microgravity research flights," Jaussi said.
According to Jaussi, test flights of an unmanned version of the SOAR shuttle could begin by 2017, with the first commercial satellite launches to commence in 2018. Swiss Space Systems did not provide a timetable for manned missions, but officials said they were committed to the effort.
Private rocket plane to SOAR
The SOAR concept calls for the rocket plane to ride piggyback atop an A300 jetliner to an altitude of about 33,000 feet (10,000 meters), then light a liquid-fueled engine to boost the craft higher than 50 miles, just shy of the internationally-recognized boundary of space. The traditional edge of space is an altitude of about 62 miles (100 km).
A satellite would then deploy from SOAR's cargo pod and ignite its own rocket motor to reach Earth orbit. Swiss Space Systems claims SOAR can inject a 551-pound (250 kilograms) satellite into an orbit 434 miles (700 kilometers) above Earth.
The company, which is sponsored by the Swiss watchmaker Breitling, has a budget of about $270 million, according to its website. Jaussi said Swiss Space Systems now has about 40 employees developing the SOAR space vehicle, support infrastructure and planning certification with European regulatory authorities.
The memorandum of understanding with Thales covers the initial design of a cabin, which can be configured to carry research payloads or passengers, depending on the requirements of each flight.
According to a Thales press statement, the two companies will negotiate a contract later this summer to finalize the agreement.
Thales constructed pressurized modules for the International Space Station, including the Columbus laboratory and the Harmony and Tranquility connecting modules. The contractor's Italian business unit also builds cargo modules for Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle and the Orbital Sciences Corp. Cygnus vehicles for space station resupply missions.
A European space plane
The SOAR design backed by Swiss Space Systems is one of a few European concepts aimed at serving the suborbital transportation market, but none of the European companies are as far along as U.S.-based Virgin Galactic, which completed the first rocket-powered flight of its SpaceShipTwo space plane in April.
XCOR Aerospace, based at the same Mojave, Calif., airport as Virgin Galactic, hopes to begin test flights of its Lynx vehicle before the end of 2013, followed by commercial flights in 2014.
Jaussi said Swiss Space Systems is working with the European Space Agency on computer modeling and trajectory analysis. SOAR traces much of its design heritage to Europe's Hermes program, a mini-shuttle scrapped by ESA in the early 1990s.
ESA has not provided any funding to the SOAR project and has not signed up to be a customer.
Company officials have participated in working groups with the European Aviation Safety Agency, a pan-European regulatory agency which monitors compliance with safety rules, Jaussi said.
Swiss Space Systems hopes technology for the SOAR vehicle will revolutionize point-to-point travel, allowing intercontinental flights to race around the globe at three times the speed of sound.
The firm has signed an agreement to potentially operate from a spaceport in Malaysia, and "advanced discussions" are underway with sites in Morocco, Canada and Ecuador, Jaussi said.
"Far from wishing to launch into the space tourism market, we want rather to establish a new mode of air travel based on our satellite launch model that will allow spaceports on different continents to be reached in an hour," Jaussi said in a statement.
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June 20, 2013 ? Changing ocean water temperatures and circulation patterns have profoundly affected key Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf zooplankton species in recent decades, and may be influencing the recovery of Atlantic cod and other fish stocks in the region.
NOAA researcher Kevin Friedland and colleagues looked at the distribution and abundance of important zooplankton species, sea surface water temperatures, and cod abundance. They found that zooplankton species critical for the survival of Atlantic cod larvae have declined in abundance in the same areas where Atlantic cod stocks have struggled to rebuild after an extended period of overfishing.
"Temperature is a governing factor in the growth, reproduction and distribution of marine organisms. Shifting temperature distributions, whether triggered by natural or human factors, can cause the redistribution of plankton communities on regional and basin-wide scales," said Friedland, lead author on the study and a scientist at NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC).
The change in thermal habitats has had biological consequences on multiple levels in the food chain, according to the study in press in the journal Progress in Oceanography.
"The geographic and depth distributions of fish and shellfish populations can also change based on their preferred thermal habitats. Future changes in thermal conditions are expected to lead to further shifts in the distributional ranges of species by, in many cases, the loss and gain of local populations," said Friedland.
Friedland and his colleagues found that ocean water temperatures of the Northeast Continental Shelf have increased in recent decades, but these changes have not been uniform over the entire ecosystem. Warm water habitats (16 to 27 C, 60 to 80 F) have increased and cool water habitats (5 to 15 C, 41 to 59 F), historically the core habitats in the ecosystem, have declined; however, the coldest habitats in the ecosystem (1-4 C, 34-39 F) have either stayed the same or increased slightly during the study period 1982-2011. This discontinuity is attributed to changes in circulation in the northern Gulf of Maine associated with the Labrador Current.
Atlantic cod off the Northeast U.S. are managed as two stock units, the more northerly in the Gulf of Maine and the more southerly on and around Georges Bank. There are upward of ten known spawning populations within these two stocks, and the very young fish that they produce are found in specific larval development areas. Two zooplankton species that serve as food for Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) larvae are Pseudocalanus spp, and Centropages typicus. The former is associated with winter-spawning cod, and the latter with spring-spawning cod.
The researchers developed indices of zooplankton and cod abundance in six index areas, relating larval feeding and development areas to associated areas where adults reside. They found that Pseudocalanus spp has declined in abundance on parts of Georges Bank and in the eastern Gulf of Maine, areas where cod have been less abundant in recent years. Centropages typicus declined in abundance in the eastern Gulf of Maine as well. The areas where these zooplankton species have declined are spatially discrete and are related to the change in core thermal habitat of the ecosystem.
The abundance of zooplankton species is measured by the NEFSC's Ecosystem Monitoring Program (EcoMon), which conducts shelf-wide bimonthly surveys of the ecosystem. Data and observations from the NEFSC's spring bottom trawl surveys were also analyzed.
Although the researchers concentrated on Atlantic cod recruitment success and population trends, many of the zooplankton species examined are important as prey for early life stages of other fish species and marine mammals. These zooplankton species are important within the Northeast Shelf ecosystem, and can serve as model organisms to test the effect of thermal habitat on changes within the food web.
An Ecosystem Advisory issued by the NEFSC on April 25, 2013 provides additional information related to the Northeast Shelf ecosystem, notably a description of the extreme warming that occurred on the Shelf during 2012 and the associated shifts in thermal habitat.
After a dribble of leaks, including one that was entirely accurate, HTC has thrown the Desire 200 live on its website. We're still missing some key info on pricing and availability, but the specs have been laid out in full: a neat form factor housing a 3.5-inch, 320 x 480 LCD display; an aging Snapdragon S1 1GHz processor running an unidentified version of Android (likely 4.0) and HTC's Sense skin; 4GB of expandable storage and 512MB RAM; a 3G modem for HSDPA speeds of up to 7.2Mbps; 5-megapixel camera; and, finally, a pair of "high quality" Beats Audio in-ears (although the webpage depicts a pair of Solos). If anything lifts it above other budget Androids, it'll be the decent-looking build quality and styling, coupled with the small size, which we hope will come for a very functional price tag.
Update: We have a price, courtesy of Engadget Chinese, but it only applies to Taiwan: NT$4990, which equates to around $165.
ISTANBUL (AP) ? Turkish labor groups fanned a wave of defiance against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's authority, leading rallies and a one-day strike to support activists whose two-week standoff with the government has shaken the country's secular democracy.
Riot police again deployed in Turkey's two main cities, and authorities kept up their unyielding stance against the street demonstrations centering on Istanbul's Taksim Square. But Monday's police sweep was less forceful than in recent days, with only scattered firing of tear gas and water cannon on pockets of protesters.
After activists were ousted from their sit-in in adjacent Gezi Park over the weekend, two labor confederations that represent some 330,000 workers picked up the slack Monday by calling a strike and demonstrations nationwide. Unionists turned up by the thousands in Ankara, Istanbul, coastal Izmir and elsewhere.
The turnout defied Turkey's interior minister, Muammer Guler, who warned that anyone taking part in unlawful demonstrations would "bear the legal consequences." But one analyst called the rallies a "legitimate and a lawful expression of constitutional rights."
"People are raising their voices against the excessive use of police force," said Koray Caliskan, a political science professor at Istanbul's Bosphorus University. Demonstrators, he said, were showing they were no longer cowed by authorities, and "the fear threshold has been broken."
In a sign that authorities were increasingly impatient, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc floated the prospect that authorities could call in troops to quash the protests.
Erdogan's opponents have grown increasingly suspicious about what they call a gradual erosion of freedoms and secular values under his Islamic-rooted ruling party. It has passed new curbs on alcohol and tried, but later abandoned its plans, to limit women's access to abortion.
The government set off protests nationwide and drew criticism abroad over a police crackdown that began May 31 against environmentalists and other activists in Taksim Square who were protesting against plans to tear down trees and re-develop Gezi Park. Thousands have flooded the streets nightly since then, many honking car horns and waving Turkish flags.
Erdogan, who has held power for 10 years and was re-elected in 2011, mobilized his supporters over the weekend in two huge rallies ? insisting his duty was to keep order, railing against media coverage of the protests and lashing out at unspecified foreigners whom he said want to hurt Turkey.
TV images Monday showed crowds of government supporters in Istanbul facing down some protesters and chanting "the hands targeting the police should be broken." On Twitter, a trending topic urged protesters to stay home ? some expressing concern that pro-government mobs might attack them.
But overnight, for hours, a lone man stood silently on Taksim Square, eventually joined by about 20 other people who did likewise before police escorted them away. The group put up no resistance. Pockets of unrest erupted elsewhere in Istanbul, with police resorting to water cannon and tear gas at times.
The labor rallies had a more structured feel than the counterculture-style sit-in at Gezi Park's tent city, and the work stoppage involved many professionals who make up a liberal, urban class that mostly backs the anti-Erdogan protesters. But labor strikes often have little visible impact on daily life in Turkey, a country of about 75 million, and Monday's rallies were no different.
Feride Aksu Tanik, of the Turkish Doctors Union, said it had called its work stoppage "to protest against the police force that attacks children, youngsters and everyone violently, and to the detentions of doctors who provide voluntary services to the injured."
Turkey's doctors association said Monday that four people, including a police officer, had died in violence linked to the crackdown, and an investigation was ongoing into the death of a fifth person who was exposed to tear gas. More than 7,800 people have been injured; six remained in critical condition and 11 people lost their eyesight.
The tough tactics used by the government to disperse protesters during the past two weeks have drawn international criticism.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany ? home to some 3 million Turks ? told German broadcaster RTL she was "appalled" to see footage of police forces moving in to clear Gezi Park over the weekend. She criticized the crackdown by Turkish police as "much too strong."
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Keaten reported from Ankara, Turkey. Ezgi Akin in Ankara, Burak Sayin and Sophiko Megrelidze in Istanbul, and Juergen Baetz in Berlin contributed.
ARDMORE, Pa. (AP) ? This isn't the kind of record Tiger Woods had in mind at the U.S. Open.
Woods went out-of-bounds on his second tee shot of the final round at Merion and closed with a 4-over 74. That gave him his worst 72-hole score as a pro in the U.S. Open, and it tied for his high score in any major.
"I did a lot of things right," Woods said. "Unfortunately, I did a few things wrong, as well."
Woods finished at 13-over 293.
His previous high score in a U.S. Open was 290 at The Olympic Club in 1998 and Shinnecock Hills in 2004. Woods shot 294 at Oakland Hills in 1996 as an amateur.
Just two days ago, Woods was four shots out of the lead and very much in the hunt to end his five-year drought in the majors. Then, he went 76-74 for his worst weekend in a major championship. Just over two weeks ago, the world's No. 1 player had won three of his last four events on the PGA Tour and was starting to establish his dominance.
But he looked ordinary at Merion.
Starting the final round 10 shots behind, Woods made a birdie putt on the opening hole. Instead of a fist pump, he offered only a mild wave. Whatever hopes he had of at least getting his name on the leaderboard ended quickly. Woods pushed his tee shot to the right on the par-5 second hole, over the trees and out-of-bounds. His next tee shot was close to going out-of-bounds, stopping a few yards away in front of a tree. He wound up with a triple bogey.
It was his only big number of the week, though his 20 bogeys were startling.
"I struggled with the speed all week," Woods said. "These greens are grainy. It's one of the older bent grasses ? creeping bent. I struggled with the speed, especially right around the hole. Putts were breaking a lot more. I gave it a little more break and then it would hang. That's kind of the way it was this week."
The 293 matched his high score at any major, last year at the Masters when he tied for 40th.
Woods did not mention any pain in his left elbow, though he kept that a mystery throughout the week. He was flexing and shaking his left hand on shots out of the rough early in the week, saying only that it was painful. He later revealed that he first hurt it at The Players Championship last month, which he won. But he didn't mention the shot or even which round it happened.
Merion remained a mystery for Woods throughout the week. For the first time since Olympic in 1998 ? the year he was rebuilding his swing ? he failed to break par in any of the four rounds at a U.S. Open.
"It played tricky. The rough was up," Woods said. "They were raking the rough up every morning into the grain, and the pins were really tough."
Woods plays again in two weeks at the AT&T National at Congressional, where he is the defending champion. His next major is the British Open at Muirfield, where in 2002 he was going for the calendar Grand Slam until he got caught in a vicious weather pattern of a cold, sideways rain and shot 81 to fall from contention. The final major of the year is at Oak Hill for the PGA Championship, where 10 years ago Woods never shot better than 72 and wound up at 12-over 292.
"There's always a lesson to be learned in every tournament, whether you win or lose," Woods said. "I'll look back at the things I did right and the things I did wrong."
June 17, 2013 ? Postmenopausal women had better improvement in verbal learning and memory after receiving treatment with testosterone gel, compared with women who received sham treatment with a placebo, a new study found.
Results were presented Monday at The Endocrine Society's 95th Annual Meeting in San Francisco.
"This is the first large, placebo-controlled study of the effects of testosterone on mental skills in postmenopausal women who are not on estrogen therapy," said principal investigator Susan Davis, MBBS (MD), PhD, of Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. "Our study has confirmed our similar findings from two smaller studies in postmenopausal women and suggests that testosterone therapy may protect women against cognitive decline after menopause."
Menopause has been linked with memory decline because of a decrease in levels of the protective hormone estrogen. Yet testosterone also is an important hormone in women because it has a role in sexual desire, bone density and energy while improving mood. In men, studies have shown that testosterone replacement has favorable effects on brain function.
In this new, investigator-initiated study, the Australian researchers randomly assigned 92 healthy postmenopausal women, ages 55 to 65, who were not receiving estrogen therapy, to receive one of two treatments for 26 weeks. The treatments were a testosterone gel (LibiGel, BioSante Pharmaceuticals) applied daily to the upper arm, or a placebo, an identical-appearing gel containing none of the medication. Neither the study participants nor the investigators were aware of which gel the women received.
Before treatment and at 12 and 26 weeks of treatment, subjects underwent comprehensive testing of their cognitive function (mental skills) using a computer-based battery of tests designed for people with normal brain function (CogState). Ninety women completed the study. The investigators found no cognitive differences between groups before the start of treatment.
After 26 weeks, the women who received testosterone therapy had a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in verbal learning and memory -- how well they recalled words from a list, Davis reported. The average test score for the testosterone-treated group was 1.6 points greater than that of the placebo group. No differences between the groups were evident for any other cognitive test.
Women receiving testosterone therapy reported no major side effects related to the gel. Their testosterone levels increased with treatment but remained in the normal female range.
Although further study is needed in more women, Davis said the results are important. "There is no effective treatment to date to prevent memory decline in women, who are higher risk of dementia than men," she said.
No testosterone-only product has yet received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for use in women. BioSante provided the study drug and partial funding for this study but had no control over study design or data analysis. CogState Australia provided computation of the cognitive testing, which the researchers then analyzed. Davis reported receiving funding from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council as a principal research fellow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images)
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