Jordan's king receives Hamas leader (AP)

AMMAN, Jordan ? A senior Jordanian official says the country's king has received Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, who is on his first official visit to the kingdom since his expulsion 13 years ago.

The official says talks with King Abdullah II opened in the presence of Qatar's crown prince, who mediated Mashaal's visit. He says the visit is meant to "break the ice" with the militant group banned in Jordan, Israel's closest Arab peace partner.

The official ? who spoke on condition of anonymity citing the visit's sensitivity ? said Sunday that Jordan will not allow Hamas to reopen offices in the kingdom.

Jordan is trying to engage with previously shunned Islamists, who have been gaining ground across the region amid the Arab Spring uprisings that toppled pro-Western dictators in Egypt and Tunisia.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120129/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_jordan_hamas

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D.R. Horton profit beats on higher home orders (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? D.R. Horton Inc (DHI.N), the top U.S. homebuilder, posted a first-quarter profit that beat market expectations, helped by a surge in orders indicating a stabilizing housing market, and said it was looking at spring selling season with "cautious optimism."

The meltdown in the U.S. housing market triggered the 2007-09 recession, but home building has seen growth in the last few quarters and building permits jumped to a 1- year high in November.

Horton, which focuses on lower-end homes for first-time homebuyers, had been hurt as a massive overhang of used and foreclosed homes have resulted in lower pricing power for builders of new houses.

Evidence is mounting that a recovery is building, though the improvement has been erratic.

Earlier in the day, Canadian wood panels maker Norbord Inc (NBD.TO) said the U.S. housing sector is at an inflection point and is now in the early phase of a more gradual rebound.

Horton, which competes with Lennar Corp (LEN.N) and PulteGroup (PHM.N), said net sales orders rose 17 percent to $705.6 million. Orders are a leading indicator for builders, which do not recognize revenue until they close on a home.

Lennar, which also posted a sharp jump in quarterly orders, said high rental rates were driving customers to buy new homes, and low home prices and low interest rates were helping.

Horton's October-December net income was $27.7 million, or 9 cents a share, compared with a net loss of $20.4 million, or 6 cents a share, a year ago. Revenue rose 15 percent to $885.6 million.

Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of 4 cents a share, on revenue of $896.9 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Shares of the company closed at $14.12 on Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Megha Mandavia in Bangalore; Editing by Don Sebastian and Gopakumar Warrier)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/earnings/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120127/bs_nm/us_drhorton

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Hit me: Gingrich spokesman calls the CNN debate a blackjack ?push? (The Ticket)

Newt Gingrich disembarks from his campaign plane in Miami, Fla. (Matt Rourke/AP)

JACKSONVILLE, Fla.--Even Newt Gingrich's top aides agree: Thursday's debate? wasn't their boss's hottest night.

Mitt Romney showed up armed with the safety turned off. When the other candidates tried to return fire, Romney ducked, dodged and fired right back.

Tensions were already high between Romney and Gingrich before they entered the debate hall. The night was a culmination of a 48-hour media blitz against the former House Speaker on the Florida airwaves. Romney and his surrogates pounded Gingrich all week: Bob Dole released a scathing statement against him; former Reagan aides questioned his commitment to conservatism; and others derided his?discussions of?building a colony on the moon before the end of his second term.

After the debate, Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond huddled with reporters who were waiting to fly with the candidate 350 miles south to Miami.? "Right now he's taking every axe, arrow, rock, pin, piece of poison, something you can choke a child on, and throwing it at us," Hammond said of Romney.

A few feet away, a photographer for a magazine played a harmonica. As Hammond spun the debate, another reporter belched.

"In 2008, this is where Romney's ticket ended," Hammond went on to say. "And he knows that if he does not make it out with a big margin out of Florida, then his campaign is over."

A reporter tried to interject with a question.

"I'm not done!" Hammond shouted. "Every single time he steps out on the podium to forward that positive vision, when you have an agitating force in the power of Mitt Romney next to you, who is going out and misleading and abusing the truth in the way that he does, you end up getting in a bit of a nit-nat fight every once and a while."

"You both are stretching the truth," a reporter shot back.

Hammond ignored her. The photographer continued to play his harmonica.

"Romney knows that if he doesn't win Florida really big, then his ticket's over," Hammond said.

Another reporter asked about Gingrich's weak debate performance.

"Nineteen debates, I'd call this one a push," Hammond said.

"A push?" a reporter asked.

"What's a push mean?" another said.

"A push," Hammond said. "A draw."

"You had a push with who?"

Hammond sighed.

"So, in blackjack, when you tie the dealer, when you don't get the break either way, it's a push," he said. "So that's what I'm calling tonight's debate."

Sheldon Adelson would approve.

Correction, Jan. 27, 12:03 p.m.: This story has been updated to indicate that the harmonica player was a photographer, not a writer.

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Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theticket/20120127/el_yblog_theticket/hit-me-gingrich-spokesman-calls-the-cnn-debate-a-blackjack-push

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Rihanna's 'Thug Life' Joins List Of Hip-Hop Tattoo Tributes

Nas, Snoop and Game have all paid homage to other MCs with body art.
By Gil Kaufman


Rihanna
Photo: Rihanna/Twitter

Rihanna has raised a lot of eyebrows this week with her latest body modification: a tattoo that reads "Thug Life", in honor of late hip-hop icon Tupac Shakur. While 'Pac had the words emblazoned across his abdomen, Rihanna opted to write them across her knuckles in what appears to be glow-in-the-dark ink.

Say what you will about whether the pop princess is living the kind of rising-up-from-the-streets life Shakur was honoring by splashing the name of his crew across his stomach, but she joins a long list of musicians who've used body art to pay homage to fallen homeys or musical inspirations.

When hip-hip hookmaster Nate Dogg died last year, his old friend and collaborator Snoop Dogg had an image of Nate's face with the legend "All Doggs Go to Heaven" written on his arm as a remembrance of the G-funk singer. And while Faith Evans once proudly bore a heart-shaped tattoo that read "B.I.G." in honor of her then-husband Biggie Smalls. (After the couple split, however, she added some ink so it read "B.I.G. FAYE.")

After his best friend and fellow D12 member was shot and killed in 2006, Eminem filled the space on his left forearm with a giant "Proof" tat encircled with flames. Fellow Detroit MC Kid Rock has the name of his former bandmate, Joe C., on his body as well, in honor of the hype man who passed away in 2000.

Drake got in the game last year when he reportedly added a portrait of late singer Aaliyah to his collection of back ink. Well before that, Nas paid a sideways tribute to Tupac with his "God's Son" stomach piece, which paid homage to both the fallen MC and to Nasty Nas' nickname.

But an artist doesn't need to have passed on to get the tribute treatment, as evidenced by D12 member Bizarre's love letter to Nicki Minaj, which he added to his collection last year in the form of a head shot of the female MC rocking blue hair. And while Game is no stranger to face-to-toe ink, he made a serious commitment in 2009 when he got the logo from producer/rapper Pharrell's Star Trak label on his arm while he worked with Williams on his The R.E.D. Album.

What do you think of Rihanna's knuckle tattoo? Sound off on our Facebook page!

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Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1677979/rihanna-thug-life-tattoo-hip-hop-tribute.jhtml

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ZTE Optik Honeycomb tablet coming to Sprint with a $99 price tag

ZTE Optik

The ZTE Optik just made an appearance in the latest issue of the Sprint Playbook, and it's coming in at the right price.  Because Sprint is dropping their Wimax support and building out their new LTE network, this one is going to be a 3G-only device, and at $99 with a new agreement, of course, it's bound to turn a few heads.  (Or not, we suppose. We'll see.) Its specs fall in line with any current generation 7-inch tablet:

  • 1.2 GHz dual-core CPU
  • 16 GB internal memory
  • 1 GB RAM
  • 7-inch display
  • microSD card support
  • 4000 mAh battery
  • Android 3.2 (Honeycomb)

Of course, with the new generation of tablets already showing up, this one isn't going to sit atop the heap.  But for 99 bucks, it really doesn't have to.  The Optik looks like a solid performer and a decent mid-range buy on first impression.  ZTE has had some success with Android in Europe, where the Blade is a pretty popular budget handset, and we're glad to see them bringing their wares to this side of the pond.

You'll be able to grab the ZTE Optik online on February 5, and expect to see it in stores on March 11.  We'll be sure to get our hands on one ourselves and take it for a test-drive.  See the full page from the Playbook after the break.

Thanks, Anon!

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/4FJD7sUebMY/story01.htm

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Video: Winged dinosaur Archaeopteryx dressed for flight

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Since its discovery 150 years ago, scientists have puzzled over whether the winged dinosaur Archaeopteryx represents the missing link in birds' evolution to powered flight. Much of the debate has focused on the iconic creature's wings and the mystery of whether ? and how well ? it could fly.

Some secrets have been revealed by an international team of researchers led by Brown University. Through a novel analytic approach, the researchers have determined that a well-preserved feather on the raven-sized dinosaur's wing was black. The color and parts of cells that would have supplied pigment are evidence the wing feathers were rigid and durable, traits that would have helped Archaeopteryx to fly.

The team also learned from its examination that Archaeopteryx's feather structure is identical to that of living birds, a discovery that shows modern wing feathers had evolved as early as 150 million years ago in the Jurassic period. The study, which appears in Nature Communications, was funded by the National Geographic Society and the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

"If Archaeopteryx was flapping or gliding, the presence of melanosomes [pigment-producing parts of a cell] would have given the feathers additional structural support," said Ryan Carney, an evolutionary biologist at Brown and the paper's lead author. "This would have been advantageous during this early evolutionary stage of dinosaur flight."

The Archaeopteryx feather was discovered in a limestone deposit in Germany in 1861, a few years after the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Paleontologists have long been excited about the fossil and other Archaeopteryx specimens, thinking they place the dinosaur at the base of the bird evolutionary tree. The traits that make Archaeopteryx an evolutionary intermediate between dinosaurs and birds, scientists say, are the combination of reptilian features (teeth, clawed fingers, and a bony tail) and avian features (feathered wings and a wishbone).

The lack of knowledge of Archaeopteryx's feather structure and color bedeviled scientists. Carney, with researchers from Yale University, the University of Akron, and the Carl Zeiss laboratory in Germany, analyzed the feather and discovered that it is a covert, so named because these feathers cover the primary and secondary wing feathers birds use in flight. After two unsuccessful attempts to image the melanosomes, the group tried a more powerful type of scanning electron microscope at Zeiss, where the group located patches of hundreds of the structures still encased in the fossilized feather.

"The third time was the charm, and we finally found the keys to unlocking the feather's original color, hidden in the rock for the past 150 million years," said Carney, a graduate student in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, studying with Stephen Gatesy.

Melanosomes had long been known to be present in other fossil feathers, but had been misidentified as bacteria. In 2006, coauthor Jakob Vinther, then a graduate student at Yale, discovered melanin preserved in the ink sac of a fossilized squid. "This made me think that melanin could be fossilized in many other fossils such as feathers," said Vinther, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas?Austin. "I realized that I had opened a whole new chapter of what we can do to understand the nature of extinct feathered dinosaurs and birds."

The team measured the length and width of the sausage-shaped melanosomes, roughly 1 micron long and 250 nanometers wide. To determine the melanosome's color, Akron researchers Matthew Shawkey and Liliana D'Alba statistically compared Archaeopteryx's melanosomes with those found in 87 species of living birds, representing four feather classes: black, gray, brown, and a type found in penguins. "What we found was that the feather was predicted to be black with 95 percent certainty," Carney said.

Next, the team sought to better define the melanosomes' structure. For that, they examined the fossilized barbules ? tiny, rib-like appendages that overlap and interlock like zippers to give a feather rigidity and strength. The barbules and the alignment of melanosomes within them, Carney said, are identical to those found in modern birds.

What the pigment was used for is less clear. The black color of the Archaeopteryx wing feather may have served to regulate body temperature, act as camouflage or be employed for display. But it could have been for flight, too.

"We can't say it's proof that Archaeopteryx was a flier. But what we can say is that in modern bird feathers, these melanosomes provide additional strength and resistance to abrasion from flight, which is why wing feathers and their tips are the most likely areas to be pigmented," Carney said. "With Archaeopteryx, as with birds today, the melanosomes we found would have provided similar structural advantages, regardless of whether the pigmentation initially evolved for another purpose."

###

Brown University: http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau

Thanks to Brown University for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116999/Video__Winged_dinosaur_Archaeopteryx_dressed_for_flight

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Contest: Win one of five Androidified TPU cases for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Androidified TPU Skin Case

OK, OK. We couldn't wait any longer. We picked up five of these "Androidified" TPU Skin Cases from Cruzerlite -- and these are for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus -- just to give away to you fine, upstanding readers of Android Central. Not a fine, upstanding reader of Android Central? Well, you should be. Just saying.

Anyhoo. What you see here is your basic TPU skin case, meaning it feels like a cross between rubber and plastic and fits snugly around your phone. This one's got some nice ribbing along the edges, to help with grip, and there are cutouts for all of the buttons and ports, as well as the secondary microphone. (That's important.) It fits our GSM Galaxy Nexus just fine, as well as Verizon's LTE version.

And we're giving away five of them. In fact, we're giving away the five you see here. How to enter? Just hit the link below for all the deets. Good luck!

Enter to win an "Androidified" TPU skin case for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus!

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/6LiNBQ7N3k0/story01.htm

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Bachmann to seek 4th term (Politico)

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann said Wednesday that she will be seeking a fourth term in Congress after a disappointing presidential bid, POLITICO has confirmed.

Bachmann started off her presidential campaign with promise, winning the Iowa straw poll, but finishing a disappointing sixth in the Iowa Republican Caucus before dropping out.

Continue Reading

The Minnesota representative hinted earlier Wednesday morning that she would be considering a fourth bid for her Congressional seat.

?I?m very seriously looking at coming back for a fourth term,? she said on FOX. ?It?s very important right now that we have a Congress and a president who understands the depth of the spending trouble that we have, the debt problem that we have. We need people who are committed to repealing Obamacare and Dodd-Frank.?

Bachmann?s path to reelection seems relatively obstacle-free.

No major candidates from either party have declared their intention to challenge her, and she remains a powerful fundraising force in the national conservative movement, reports POLITICO?s Alex Isenstadt.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/politico_rss/rss_politico_mostpop/http___www_politico_com_news_stories0112_71947_html/44300434/SIG=11mgilk21/*http%3A//www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71947.html

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AP IMPACT: Meth fills hospitals with burn patients

(AP) ? A crude new method of making methamphetamine poses a risk even to Americans who never get anywhere near the drug: It is filling hospitals with thousands of uninsured burn patients requiring millions of dollars in advanced treatment ? a burden so costly that it's contributing to the closure of some burn units.

So-called shake-and-bake meth is produced by combining unstable ingredients in a 2-liter soda bottle. The slightest error can cause an explosion resulting in disfigurement, blindness, even death.

An Associated Press survey of key hospitals in the nation's most active meth states showed that up to a third of patients in some burn units were hurt while making meth, and most were uninsured. One study found that the average meth patient runs up medical bills of $130,000.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-01-23-Meth-Severe%20Burns/id-d44db40cff88496997cce91dc1764a81

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