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Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Poll: Mitt, Obama tied in swing states (Politico)
In key swing states across the country, voters are evenly split in their preference between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, while they prefer the president over the other Republican candidates, according to a new USA Today/Gallup poll Monday.
In 12 swing states, Obama and Romney are neck and neck in a general election match-up, 47 to 48 percent, the poll found. Meanwhile, the president leads Newt Gingrich by 14-percentage points, 54 to 40 percent; Ron Paul by 7-percentage points, 50 to 43 percent; and Rick Santorum also by 7-percentage points, 51 to 44 percent.
Continue ReadingThe list of the swing states include Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
The swing state match-ups are generally similar to national preferences ? Obama and Romney are tied at 48 percent, whereas Obama leads Gingrich 53 to 41 percent and Santorum 51 to 43 percent. Paul does slightly better nationally than in the swing states against the president, with Obama leading slightly 49 to 46 percent.
Obama and Romney were closely matched in the previous two swing state polls. In the last survey taken in late November and early December, the president trailed the GOP candidate by 5-percentage points, 43 to 48 percent; in an October poll, the two were virtually tied, 46 to 47 percent.
The USA Today/Gallup poll was conducted Jan. 24-28 among 737 registered voters living in the 12 states listed above, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
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Giveaway: A Pre-Golden Globes Lounge Baby Gift Bag (a $2,400 Value!)
Make sure to enter for your chance to win a luxe baby gift package from the Golden Globes gift lounge.
Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/t8jCXhTW4xM/
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Sunday, January 29, 2012
An exquisite Mexico beach, cursed by plastic
Reporting from Mahahual, Mexico?
Just off a rutted dirt road, a beach as white as flour pops into view from behind a wall of sea grape and rustling palms. Pelicans slice over turquoise waters, and not a single person stirs the quiet.The tableau, along a little-developed segment of Mexico's Caribbean coast, is a beachgoer's fantasy of unspoiled seaside splendor. Until you look down.
For as far as the eye can see, the sand glitters with bits of bright color: fragments of trash, thousands and thousands of them, strung like a vast, foul necklace.
Even a quick inventory finds discarded motor-oil cans, hair-gel containers, juice bottles, hub caps, buckets, a soccer ball, flip-flops. Here's a margarine container from the Dominican Republic, there a butter tub from Haiti. The label on a washed-up glue bottle says it's from Central America.
The trashy scene is repeated for miles along this stretch of the southern Yucatan Peninsula, except in spots where the beach is tended by the owners of small hotels and oceanfront houses. Most of the refuse is plastic; many fragments are too small or faded to identify.
Finding garbage on the beach is hardly new to Mexico, or anywhere sea meets land. But this ecologically rich region of remote beaches, coral reef and mangrove forests ? a world apart from the Cancun resort complexes 150 miles to the north ? is especially cursed by seaborne rubbish that's on the rise the world over.
The peninsula happens to sit along the path of regional currents that act like an aquatic conveyor, carrying a steady stream of plastic garbage from the Caribbean and Central and South America. Much of the flotsam washes ashore in and around Mahahual, a small but growing beach town about 40 miles north of the Belize border.
Mahahual's trash woes are part of a much larger floating-junk crisis around the world's oceans as the popularity of plastic containers has soared, including in many developing nations without proper disposal or recycling.
By some estimates, 46,000 pieces of plastic trash float in every square mile of ocean. Massive quantities of the waste, often tinier than salt grains, have created huge "garbage patches" in ocean gyres, giant dead spots formed by currents and winds that push trash toward the becalmed centers. One of those, the Eastern Garbage Patch, midway between Hawaii and California, is estimated to be twice the size of Texas.
Conservationists say the worsening onslaught threatens one of the few corners of maritime Mexico that remain largely untouched.
The area is home to the Banco Chinchorro, a large coral reef that is a diver's paradise, and the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve, a sprawling, government-protected zone populated by egrets, cormorants and other waterfowl. Tourism tends to be on a small scale, with the exception of cruise ships that pull up to a pier in Mahahual that was rebuilt in 2008, after Hurricane Dean.
"It has so much in terms of biodiversity. It's the last bastion of the Caribbean, in terms of conservation" in Mexico, said Manolo Ruiz, sales director of a green-marketing firm in Mexico City called Sustenta.com, which has organized cleanups at Mahahual. "We really need to protect this place."
Plastics pollution is so extensive that all the world's oceans are touched by the waste, said Seattle oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an expert on how currents push debris around Earth and author of "Flotsametrics and the Floating World."
"It makes global warming seem easy," Ebbesmeyer said. "The whole ocean is now infected with plastic. It's impossible to get it out."
Ebbesmeyer recalled traveling to Mahahual several years ago and collecting numerous washed-up plastic piggy banks and parts of Barbie dolls. Mahahual, thousands of miles from the nearest trash gyre, isn't the victim of a garbage patch, he said, but rather appears to be a "collection spot" for refuse carried on local currents.
Some residents say most of the waste ending up in Mahahual appears to originate in Central and South America. But some has come from much farther away: Morocco, China, India.
Marcia Bales, a U.S. transplant who co-owns a small beach-side hotel a half-hour's drive north of town, said that when she and her husband began building in 2001, the worst they faced was washed-up seaweed. Now they pick up six or seven large bags' worth of plastic trash per week.
Two years ago, Bales recalled, she and guests went scrambling to collect a mass of seaborne trash that was 2 feet thick. "We all went out with garbage bags and in two hours had 30 bags of garbage," she said.
The plastics on Mahahual's picturesque beaches are more than an eyesore. They may threaten the fragile coral reef and mangrove ecosystems of the Yucatan Peninsula, said H. Bruce Rinker, an ecologist at the Maine-based Biodiversity Research Institute and science advisor to Sustenta.com.
"If we turn our backs, we risk harming the integrity of those systems," Rinker said.
Next month, Sustenta.com is spearheading a cleanup in Mahahual that it hopes will draw 500 volunteers and boost longer-term plans to recycle plastics that wash ashore. Activists are also seeking money to build an environmental-educational center there that could include a workshop for turning trash into handicrafts and other projects to encourage green businesses.
Meantime, the best remedy may be to clean Mahahual's beaches, bit by plastic bit. Then do it again.
"You can't solve the whole thing," said Bales, the hotelier. "You just have to tell yourself, I'm going to save a bird or a fish or a turtle. You can't tell yourself any other thing."
ken.ellingwood@latimes.com
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Saturday, January 28, 2012
Gingrich says he's in 'til GOP convention (AP)
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. ? On the weekend before the pivotal Florida primary, Newt Gingrich vowed Saturday to stay in the race for the Republican presidential nomination until the national convention this summer even if he loses Tuesday's vote. Front-runner Mitt Romney poured on the criticism of his rival in television ads airing across the state.
Gingrich's pledge, in a race defined by unpredictability, raised the prospect of an extended struggle inside the party as Republicans work to defeat President Barack Obama in the fall. "You just had two national polls that show me ahead," he said. "Why don't you ask Gov. Romney what he will do if he loses" in Florida.
The former Massachusetts governor countered a few hours later while in Panama City. "I think we are going to win here, I sure hope so," he said.
As the two rivals made their appeals to Hispanic, Jewish and tea party voters, veterans of the armed forces and others, all known indicators pointed to a good day for Romney in the primary.
He and his allies held a 3-1 advantage in money spent on television advertising in the race's final days. Robust early vote and absentee ballot totals followed a pre-primary turnout operation by his campaign. Even the schedules the two men kept underscored the shape of the race ? moderate for Romney, heavy for Gingrich.
Campaigning like a front-runner, Romney made few references to Gingrich. Instead, he criticized Obama's plans to cut the size of the armed forces. "He's detached from reality," the former Massachusetts governor said.
"The foreign policy of `pretty please' is not working terribly well," he added. Romney said he wants to add 100,000 troops, not cut them.
If his personal rhetoric was directed Obama's way, the television commercials were trained on Gingrich, whose victory in last Saturday's South Carolina primary upended the race for the nomination. A new ad released as the weekend began is devoted to the day in 1997 when Gingrich received an ethics reprimand from the House while serving as speaker and was ordered to pay a $300,000 fine.
Nearly the entire 30-second ad consists of NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw's nationally broadcast description of the events on the evening news. "By an overwhelming vote, they found him guilty of ethics violations; they charged him a very large financial penalty, and they raised ? several of them ? raised serious questions about his future effectiveness," Brokaw said that night, and now again on televisions across Florida.
Both NBC and the former newsman registered objections. The network called on the campaign to stop using the footage and Brokaw said in a statement, "I do not want my role as a journalist compromised for political gain by any campaign."
A Romney adviser, Eric Fehrnstrom, said the campaign wasn't likely to stop running the ad. "We believe it falls within fair use," he said. "We didn't take the entire broadcast; we just took the first 30 seconds."
Whatever its impact, the ad represented part of a barrage that Gingrich could not match.
A second Romney ad said Gingrich had "cashed in" as a Washington insider while the housing crisis was hitting Florida particularly hard.
Figures made available to The Associated Press showed Romney was spending $2.8 million to air television commercials in the final week of the Florida campaign. In addition, a group supporting him, Restore Our Future, was spending $4 million more, for a combined total of $6.8 million.
By contrast, Gingrich was spending about $700,000, and Winning Our Future, a group backing him, an additional $1.5 million. That was about one-third the amount for the pro-Romney tandem.
Officials said the total of absentee and early vote cast approached 500,000, about 200,000 of them before Gingrich won in South Carolina last weekend.
Gingrich seemed in good humor during the day, despite the obstacles in his way. He joked with reporters that they had missed an example of his grandiosity ? a charge that one rival, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, had used in a recent debate ? when they didn't see him hold a golf trophy on display at the PGA Library.
Gingrich also turned aside one opportunity to criticize Romney, answering a question by saying, `I want to talk about defeating Obama."
But his tone seemed to change after he said he wasn't happy with his performances in a pair of debates during the week, and was asked to explain.
"You cannot debate somebody who is dishonest. You just can't," he said, referring to Romney.
Referring to one answer the former Massachusetts governor had given, Gingrich said it was not true that Romney had always voted for a Republican when one was on the ballot.
"That in fact he could have voted for George H.W. Bush or Pat Buchanan the same day and he chose the Democratic primary, he voted Paul Tsongas, the most liberal candidate. The same year he gave money to three Democrats for Congress," he added, referring to the 1992 campaign.
"Now there's no practical way in a civil debate to deal with somebody who is that willing to say something that is just totally dishonest."
Romney poked fun at Gingrich's debate performances.
"This last one Speaker Gingrich said he didn't do so well because the audience was so loud. The one before he said he didn't do so well because the audience was too quiet. This is like Goldilocks, you know, you've got to have it just right.
"When I debate the president, I'm not going to worry about the audience, I'm going to make sure that we take down Barack Obama and take back the White House."
The two other contenders, Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, have conceded Florida and did not campaign in the state during the day.
___
Associated Press reporter Steve Peoples in Panama City contributed to this report.
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Bucs name Rutgers' Schiano as head coach (Reuters)
(Reuters) ? The Tampa Bay Buccaneers named Greg Schiano as their new head coach on Thursday, hoping the former U.S. college football coach can turn around a National Football League (NFL) team that has not made the playoffs in four seasons.
The team said the deal was for five years and that Schiano, 45, will be formally introduced during a news conference on Friday at 1 p.m. ET (1800 GMT).
Schiano, who spent the last 11 seasons as coach at Rutgers University in New Jersey and compiled a 68-67 record, replaces Raheem Morris, who was fired after a 4-12 campaign that left the Buccaneers in last place in the NFC South division.
"Coach Schiano is a bright, meticulous teacher who knows how to get the most out of his players," Buccaneers General Manager Mark Dominik said in a statement.
"He built and ran a pro-style program at Rutgers, and he's a defensive-minded coach whose teams have always been characterized by toughness and a physical style of play."
The defensive-minded Schiano will be expected to help a Buccaneers team that ended the 2011 NFL season with a league-worst 494 points allowed.
He spent six seasons under the late Joe Paterno at Penn State as a graduate assistant and defensive backfield coach before being hired by the NFL's Chicago Bears, where he was a defensive assistant and defensive backfield coach from 1996-98.
At Rutgers, Schiano guided the Scarlet Knights to six Bowl game appearances and earned a reputation for developing NFL-caliber players.
In the last five NFL Drafts, 13 Rutgers players have been selected, including three first round picks.
"During our thorough search, we met with numerous impressive candidates, but coach Schiano surely distinguished himself," said Buccaneers co-chairman Joel Glazer. "From his leadership skills to his considerable track record, he is, simply put, the right man for the job."
(Reporting by Steve Keating in Toronto, Editing by Frank Pingue)
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Friday, January 27, 2012
Obama pitches tax, jobs ideas on campaign-style tour (Reuters)
CHANDLER, Arizona (Reuters) ? President Barack Obama took his State of the Union tax and job ideas on the road on Wednesday, striking a populist tone in the 2012 swing states Iowa and Arizona to make his case for a second White House term.
Starting a three-day tour that will also take him to Nevada, Colorado and Michigan, all crucial to his re-election chances, Obama amplified his proposals to help companies that keep jobs at home and eliminate tax breaks for those that outsource.
"Let's stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas," he said outside an Intel computer chip facility under construction in Arizona, standing in front of a giant crane.
"What we should do is subsidize and give help and tax breaks to companies that are investing here, that are bringing jobs back to the United States," the president said, also pressing his argument for higher taxes on the rich as a way to heal the U.S. economy and reduce the deficit.
On Tuesday night, Obama used his last State of the Union speech before November's election to cast himself as a champion of the middle class. But with most Americans unhappy with his economic leadership, he faces a tough re-election challenge.
In Iowa, the president defended his record and sought to turn up the heat on Republicans in Congress he has accused of obstructing his economic recovery efforts, especially moves to close tax loopholes on big companies and the very wealthy.
"There are people in Washington who seem to have collective amnesia. They seem to have forgotten how we got into this mess," Obama told workers at a conveyor belt factory there. "They want to go back to the very same policies ... that have stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for years."
Republicans have accused Obama of promoting the "politics of envy" and pursuing policies that kill jobs and hinder growth. They argue tax hikes would hurt small businesses and suppress job creation, a top concern of voters this year.
ON THE BIG STAGE
In his Tuesday night address that afforded him one of his biggest political stages of the year, Obama set as a central campaign theme a populist call for greater economic fairness.
He mentioned taxes 34 times and jobs 32 times during his hourlong speech, emphasizing the two issues at the heart of this year's presidential campaign. But Obama seemed to put no blame on himself for a fragile economic recovery and high unemployment that could trip up his re-election bid.
A highlight of the State of the Union was a call to set a 30 percent minimum tax on millionaires, known as the "Buffet rule" because it is favored by billionaire investor Warren Buffett.
While the principal proposals in the speech were considered unlikely to gain traction in a divided Congress, the White House believes the ideas can appeal to voters who are frustrated with Wall Street excesses and dysfunction in Washington.
Obama's tax message got extra legs from the release of tax records by Mitt Romney, a Republican presidential contender who is one of the richest men ever to run for the White House. He pays a lower effective tax rate than many top wage-earners.
Romney, campaigning in Florida for next Tuesday's party primary, accused the Democratic president of being "detached from reality" in his appeals to voters who have suffered economic hardship under his tenure.
The U.S. unemployment rate was 8.5 percent in December, several percentage points higher than the normal rate for the United States. No president in the modern era has won re-election with the jobless rate that high.
(Additional reporting by Alister Bull and Steve Holland; Writing by Laura MacInnis and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Eric Walsh)
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Red Crescent official shot dead in Syria (AP)
BEIRUT ? The head of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent branch in the northern town of Idlib was shot dead Wednesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said, and activists reported deadly clashes elsewhere between government forces and army defectors.
Abdulrazak Jbero was on his way by from Damascus to Idlib when he was shot, said Hicham Hassan, an ICRC spokesman in Geneva. Officials were still gathering details of his death, including whether he was riding in a Red Crescent vehicle.
Syria's state-run media blamed "terrorists" for the killing.
President Bashar Assad's regime claims terrorists acting out a foreign conspiracy are behind the country's 10-month-old uprising, not protesters seeking change in one of the region's most autocratic states.
The Syrian revolt, which began 10 months ago with largely peaceful protests, has grown increasingly militarized in recent months, as frustrated regime opponents and army defectors arm themselves and fight back against government forces.
On Wednesday, government forces clashed with army defectors and stormed rebellious districts in central Syria, firing mortars and deploying snipers in violence that killed at least seven people, including a mother and her 5-year-old child, activists said.
Pressure on Syria to end 10 months of bloodshed has so far produced few results. Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia have pulled out of the Arab League's observers mission, asking the U.N. Security Council to intervene. Decisive action from the U.N. appeared unlikely, however, as Russia, a strong Syrian ally, has opposed moves like sanctions.
While Syria has approved extension of the observers' presence for another month, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem signaled on Tuesday that the crackdown on protests will continue, insisting that Syria will solve its own problems.
A Syrian military assault near Hama began Tuesday night, according to the Local Coordination Committees, an umbrella group of activists and opposition members. Shells slammed into several districts around Hama's Bab Qebli area, the LCC said.
"It was impossible to rescue the wounded due to the ongoing arbitrary shelling," the group said in a statement.
Two people were killed by sniper fire, according to the LCC and another opposition group, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
In the town of Qusair near the central city of Homs, a woman and her 5-year-old child were killed when a shell struck their home during clashes between government troops and gunmen believed to be army defectors, both groups said.
Three other people were killed during raids in a Damascus suburbs.
The Arab strategy to solve the crisis appears to be collapsing. After announcing their pullout from the observers mission, Gulf Arab countries urged the U.N. Security Council to take all "necessary measures" to force the country to implement a League peace plan announced Sunday to create a national unity government in two months.
Damascus has rejected the plan as a violation of national sovereignty.
The U.S., the European Union, the Arab League and Turkey all have introduced sanctions against Damascus in response to Assad's crackdown, but Russia threatens to veto such measures.
Syria informed the Arab League Wednesday that it had agreed to extend the observer mission one month, until Feb. 24, said Adnan al-Khudeir, head of Cairo operations room that handles reports by the monitors.
He also said the League has put together a new group of observers to replace the 55 GCC monitors, who were leaving Wednesday. They consist of 15 Mauritanians, 10 Palestinians and six Egyptians, and they will head to Syria within a week, he said.
Defectors clashed with government soldiers Wednesday in northern Syria's Idlib province, activists said.
Soldiers siding with a group of anti-regime army defectors known as the Free Syrian Army are also known to be active in Hama, and some in the city said they were the target of the current government assault.
Residents near Hama reported hearing loud explosions throughout the night and on Wednesday and said phone lines to the targeted areas were down.
"They are trying to storm the Bab Qebli, Hamidiyeh and Malaab districts because defectors are there," said Ahmad al-Jimejmi, an activist who spoke by telephone from a town several miles away.
A Jordanian man of Palestinian origin accused pro-regime forces of kidnapping and killing his 27-year old son in Hama.
Hafez Abu Osbeh said his son, Ahmed, 27, was kidnapped last Friday, and his body was left outside his mother's residence three days later with gunshot wounds to his head. He said a description of the kidnappers' vehicle pointed to government loyalists.
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Thursday, January 26, 2012
Intel Science Talent Search names top 40 finalists
Forty science-minded teens have made it to the final round of the nation?s longest-running precollege science competition. As finalists in this year?s Intel Science Talent Search, a program of Society for Science & the Public, the students are now vying for $630,000 in awards, including a top award of $100,000 from the Intel Foundation.
In March, the young researchers will travel to Washington, D.C., to meet with respected scientists and present their research projects to the public and a group of judges. One finalist developed a needle-free diabetes monitoring system. Others created flame retardants made of biodegradable plastic, studied how children with Down syndrome perceive themselves and worked on new ways to protect satellite communications.
?Tackling real-world challenges from cancer to Internet security to alternative energy solutions, this year?s finalists are a true inspiration,? says Elizabeth Marincola, publisher of Science News and president of Society for Science & the Public. ?We join with Intel in congratulating them on this tremendous honor and commend the mentors, teachers, schools, parents and communities that have contributed to their success.?
Each project was chosen from a pool of 1,839 entries submitted from across the country. The 2012 top winner will be announced March 13 at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. Last year, Evan O?Dorney, 17, of Danville, Calif., took first place for comparing two mathematical approaches to estimating the square root of an integer.
Many previous competitors have gone on to illustrious careers in science. Seven Science Talent Search finalists have won Nobel Prizes, and four have received the National Medal of Science. The competition, which started in 1942, was originally sponsored by the Westinghouse Foundation. Seventy years later, the competition?s goal of supporting students with a talent for science, engineering and math hasn?t changed.
?We must encourage science innovation by our youth to help their generation solve problems of today and tomorrow,? Marincola says.
2012 Intel STS Finalists (listed by state, name, city and high school)
CALIFORNIA?- Jiacheng Li, Arcadia, Arcadia High School; Sayoni Saha, Cerritos, Gretchen Whitney High School; Clara Fannjiang, Davis, Davis Senior High School; Jack Li, El Segundo, El Segundo High School; Leon Yao, Fullerton, Troy High School; Meredith Lehmann, La Jolla, La Jolla High School; Jin Pan, Palo Alto, Henry M. Gunn High School; Saurabh Sharan, San Jos?, Bellarmine College Preparatory School; Alissa Zhang, Saratoga, Saratoga High School
CONNECTICUT -?Zizi Yu, Woodbridge, Amity Regional High School
FLORIDA -?Neel Patel, Oviedo, Oviedo High School
GEORGIA - Sitan Chen, Duluth, Northview High School
ILLINOIS?- Adam Kalinich, Aurora, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy; Jordan Cotler, Northbrook, Glenbrook North High School
INDIANA?- Eric Fein, South Bend, John Adams High School; Anirudh Prabhu, West Lafayette, West Lafayette Junior-Senior High School
MASSACHUSETTS -? Xiaoyu He, Acton, Acton-Boxborough Regional High School; Fengning Ding, Andover, Phillips Academy
MARYLAND - Frederic Koehler, Silver Spring, Montgomery Blair High School
MICHIGAN - Siddhartha Jena, Bloomfield Hills, International Academy; Philip He, Okemos, Okemos High School; Nithin Tumma, Port Huron, Port Huron Northern High School
MINNESOTA - Evan Chen, Plymouth, Wayzata High School
NEW JERSEY?- EunBe Kim, Hackensack, Academy for Medical Science Technology
NEW YORK?- Danielle Goldman, Bronx, Bronx High School of Science; Savina Kim, Commack, Commack High School; Anna Sato, East Setauket, Ward Melville High School; Juliana Coraor, Huntington, Huntington High School; Neil Mehta, Jericho, Jericho Senior High School; Angela Wang, Latham, Shaker High School; Huihui Fan, New York, Stuyvesant High School; Mimi Yen, New York, Stuyvesant High School; Rachel Davis, St. James, Smithtown High School East; Benjamin Van Doren, White Plains, White Plains High School
PENNSYLVANIA?- Marian Bechtel, Landisville, Hempfield High School
TEXAS?- Kurtis Carsch, Denton, Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science; Amy Chyao, Plano, Plano East Senior High School; Oliver Quintero, The Woodlands, The John Cooper School
VIRGINIA?- Ari Dyckovsky, Sterling, Loudoun County Academy of Science
WASHINGTON?- Andrey Sushko, Richland, Hanford High School
Found in: Science & Society
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Major Tropical Cyclone Funso analyzed by 2 NASA satellites
ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2012) ? Tropical Cyclone Funso is now a dangerous Category 4 cyclone in the Mozambique Channel, moving southward between Mozambique on the African mainland and the island nation of Madagascar. As Funso became a major cyclone two NASA satellites were providing forecasters with valuable storm information.
Two instruments aboard NASA's Aqua satellite and instruments aboard NASA and JAXA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite provided cloud extent, cloud temperature, rainfall rates, and a look at the eye of the storm.
On Jan. 25 at 7:40 UTC (2:40 a.m. EST), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Cyclone Funso. The image revealed the cloud cover extends from Mozambique on the African mainland, east to the coast of the island nation of Madagascar. MODIS imagery also revealed a clear 11 mile-wide eye.
When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Cyclone Funso the day before, January 24 at 11:17 UTC (6:17 a.m. EST) the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument measured the cloud top temperatures. Thunderstorm cloud tops around the entire center of circulation colder than -63 Fahrenheit (-52.7 Celsius) indicating strong storms, dropping heavy rainfall.
The TRMM satellite also had a good view of powerful tropical cyclone Funso battering the Mozambique coast when it flew over on January 24, 2012 at 2204 UTC (5:04 p.m. EST). TRMM data showed that Funso was dropping moderate to heavy rainfall in bands covering the Mozambique Channel from eastern Mozambique to western Madagascar.
On January 25, 2012 at 0900 UTC (4 a.m. EST), Major Tropical Cyclone Funso had maximum sustained winds of 120 knots (138 mph/222 kph). Hurricane-force winds extend out 40 miles (64 km) from the center. It was located near 22.7 South and 38.7 East, about 400 nautical miles (460 miles/741 kmh) northeast of Maputo, Mozambique. It was moving to the south-southwest at 4 knots (~4.6 mph/7.4 kph). Funso is generating maximum significant waves 32 feet (9.7 meters) high.
Cyclone Funso continues to track the over open waters of the southern Mozambique Channel and forecasts take it out into the Southern Indian Ocean over the next three days without any danger of a direct landfall.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. The original article was written by Rob Gutro.
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Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Alan Singer: The School-to-Prison Pipeline
Rethinking Schools is a magazine written for teachers by teachers. It is based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and covers local issues, but really its concerns are national in scope. Its Winter 2011-2012 issue was a special on what they call "the school-to-prison pipeline." An opening editorial made clear their point of view. Too often schools where student populations are overwhelming black, Latino and poor are becoming "pathways to incarceration rather than opportunity." As teachers they are outraged because "we cannot build safe, creative, nurturing schools and criminalize our children at the same time."
According to Rethinking Schools, "zero tolerance" disciplinary policies in schools are responsible for transforming minor transgressions of school rules that could be handled as educational opportunities into disciplinary matters where students are subject to suspension and often even into legal issues involving the police and courts. The editors of Rethinking Schools blame federal "No Child Left Behind" and "Race to the Top" programs that focus what takes place in schools on control and test scores rather than meeting student needs for accelerating the trend toward increasing severe punishment.
Punishment in school and in American society often has a racial dimension. The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of Apartheid. In Washington, D.C., three-fourths of the young African American men are arrested at some point in their lives. Since 1970, the U.S. prison population has grown from about 300,000 people to over two million, even while crime rates have dropped. More than seven million children have a family member who has passed through the prison system.
The connection between prisons and schools dates to the Reagan and Clinton administrations. The term "zero tolerance" came into popular usage during the Reagan presidency when Congress passed the Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act. During the Clinton years, the Safe and Gun-Free Schools Act mandated expulsion for any student, no matter how young, who brought a gun to school. Public fear of school violence was ignited by the Columbine shootings in 1999. Although the perpetrators were white and the incident had nothing to do with race, black and Latino students in inner-city schools increasingly became the target of the anti-crime, anti-violence programs.
State policies, not the students, are often the actual criminals. According to a 2011 study "Breaking Schools' Rules," in Texas, with a school population of 4.7 million students, there were 1.6 million student suspensions during the 2009-2010 school year. Fifty-four percent of the students in Texas were suspended or expelled at least once while in secondary school. Overwhelmingly, 97 percent of the suspensions were for minor infractions that could have been treated as educational rather than disciplinary problems.
A major focus of the Rethinking Schools theme issue was discussion of a book by Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness. In an interview with a Rethinking Schools editor, Alexander, a legal school and civil rights activist who is also African American, explained that the explosion in the prison population and increasingly harsh punishment in schools has had a devastating impact on black children and the black community. Families are separated, lives are uncertain, older siblings are stopped and frisked by police, and children experience harassment starting at a young age and become resentful of authority figures, whether they are teachers or police officers.
Alexander believes school discipline policies were shaped by the war on drugs and the "get tough" movement. She charges that zero tolerance language in school disciplinary codes was taken from a Drug Enforcement Administration manual. She feels that students, parents and teachers need to resist these policies and promote programs that will actually improve the quality of education and community life. "We're foolish if we think we're going to end mass incarceration unless we are willing to deal with the reality that huge percentages of poor people are going to remain jobless, locked out of the mainstream economy, unless and until they have a quality education that prepares them well for the new economy."
Courts, including the United States Supreme Court, have ruled on student rights on a number of occasions. The best-known case is Tinker v. Des Moines (1969). In this case, the United States Supreme Court decided that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." However in Ginsberg v. New York (1968) the Supreme Court recognized that states must exercise greater authority over children than over adults, partly because they are responsible for ensuring an environment that is safe and conducive to learning.
In Safford Unified School District v. Redding (2009), Associate Justice Clarence Thomas argued:
"For nearly 25 years this Court has understood that maintaining order in the classroom has never been easy, but in more recent years, school disorder has often taken particularly ugly forms: drug use and violent crime in the schools have become major social problems... For this reason, school officials retain broad authority to protect students and preserve order and a proper educational environment under the Fourth Amendment. This authority requires that school officials be able to engage in the close supervision of school children, as well as enforce rules against conduct that would be perfectly permissible if undertaken by an adult."
Unfortunately, if Thomas' views become the law of the land, and they well might in a country that has already suspended fourth amendment due process rights for people accused of ties to terrorism, students may effectively lose all legal protection against abusive authority. Schools will become more like prisons and young people will be one step closer to incarceration.
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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/school-to-prison-pipeline_b_1219950.html
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Fed to Introduce Game Changing Communications Policies ...
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The Federal Reserve plans to introduce changes to its communications policies to the public on Wednesday, making it easier for the central bank to move ahead with another round of asset purchases later this year by helping to explain the need for additional stimulus.
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However, officials have said that it has no plans for further easing so long as the economy continues to recover. The Fed has lately been able to focus on communication in large part because it no longer must devote all of its energy to crisis management. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has waited five years to make these improvements.
Central to the new policies is the plan to publish the predictions of senior Fed officials about the level at which they intend to set short-term interest rates over the next three years, including when they expect to end their commitment to keep rates near zero.? The Fed also will describe the expectations for the management of the central bank?s investment portfolio.
After a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, which will begin Tuesday, the Fed will publish the first forecast, and may also publish a statement describing the its goals for the pace of inflation and level of unemployment, neither of which has ever been formalized.
By being more transparent, the Fed hopes to garner more public support for its policies. But several Fed officials have said they are hesitant to support new efforts to improve growth because they think monetary policy has exhausted most of its power since the last recession began. They have also expressed concern about inflation.
?Steady even if unspectacular growth accompanied by inflation in the neighborhood of 2 percent justifies some reluctance to change, in either direction, the F.O.M.C.?s accommodative policy,? said Dennis P. Lockhart, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
However, the persistence of high unemployment requires that the Fed keep thinking about doing more, added Lockhart, though Fed officials have made clear that high unemployment in itself is insufficient cause for additional action, at least as long as inflation remains near 2 percent.
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Source: http://wallstcheatsheet.com/economy/fed-to-introduce-game-changing-communications-policies.html/
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Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Hibbert leads Pacers past Lakers, 98-96 (AP)
LOS ANGELES ? Roy Hibbert scored eight of his 18 points in the fourth quarter playing with a broken nose, and five of his teammates also scored in double figures to help the Indiana Pacers beat the Los Angeles Lakers 98-96 on Sunday night.
Kobe Bryant scored 33 points for the Lakers, but missed what would have been a tying 3-pointer from 30 feet from the top of the key with 3.5 seconds to play and the Pacers clinched it at the free throw line.
The Pacers (11-5) are off to their best start since 2003-04, when they won 14 of their first 16, finished the regular season 61-21 and came within two wins of getting to the NBA finals.
The Lakers, coming off road losses to Miami and Orlando, failed to reach 100 points for the 11th straight game ? their longest streak since a 12-game stretch in 2003-04.
Hibbert, the Pacers' second-leading scorer, left the court with the broken nose after fouling Bryant with 6:46 left in the first quarter. Tyler Hansbrough replaced Hibbert and missed all five shots during Hibbert's brief absence, but grabbed seven rebounds.
Hibbert reported back in with 5:12 left in the second quarter after a trainer stuffed cotton up his nose, but he had difficulty keeping it in at times. He also had eight rebounds in 27 minutes.
Bryant beat the third-quarter buzzer with a 16-footer from the right of the key to give the Lakers a 78-77 lead, and former Pacers forward Troy Murphy got his first points of the game on a 3 that made it 82-77.
Hibbert, more than willing to get his nose dirty, scored six consecutive points in the paint to cut the margin to one with 6:15 left, and former UCLA guard Darren Collison's 3-pointer tied it at 86 with 5:32 left.
West ended the first half with a buzzer-beating 3-pointer from the top of the key, capping a 15-6 run and slicing the Lakers' 13-point lead to three at 52-49. He finished the half with 15 points, helping offset 17 by Bryant. Danny Granger's 3-pointer 1:37 into the third quarter gave Indiana a 55-54 lead, its first since Paul George's game-opening dunk.
Notes: The National Anthem was sung by Kareem Rush, whose seven-year NBA career included stints with the Lakers and Pacers. ... Bryant is 180 points away from overtaking Shaquille O'Neal (28,596) for fifth place on the career scoring list. The two-time NBA scoring champ also is 20 field goals shy of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Lakers career record of 9,935 and needs to make 11 more free throws to eclipse Jerry West's Lakers career record of 7,160. ... Pacers associate coach Brian Shaw, who won three NBA championship rings playing for the Lakers and two more as an assistant coach under Phil Jackson, made his first trip to Staples Center since leaving Los Angeles. He and most of the Lakers players ? particularly Bryant ? were hoping he'd be hired to replace Jackson as head coach instead of Mike Brown, and Shaw was upset that he had to learn about Brown's hiring from media reports instead of from general manager Mitch Kupchak. ... The last time the Pacers faced the Lakers at Staples Center, they won 95-92 to snap a 14-game road losing streak against them ? including three losses in the 2000 NBA finals. ... The Lakers have a rematch with the Clippers on Wednesday night, trying to even the season series after a 102-94 loss Jan. 14. ... Lakers F Josh McRoberts, who spent the previous three seasons with the Pacers, played 20 scoreless minutes and took two shots in his first game against them.
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Watch What Happens When You Leave a Bicycle Outside for a Year [Video]
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Monday, January 23, 2012
PFT: Roethlisberger settles suit alleging '08 rape
ReutersA few East-West Shrine Game participants that could fit with the Bills.
An analysis of the Dolphins? choice to hire Joe Philbin as their head coach.
Patriots CB Devin McCourty is looking forward to facing off with Ravens RB Ray Rice, his teammate at Rutgers.
The Jets signed G Trevor Canfield to a futures contract.
The Ravens defense knows that they need to make Tom Brady uncomfortable on Sunday.
Some reaction to the Bengals? decision to hold training camp at Paul Brown Stadium.
The healthy return of G Eric Steinbach will give the Browns needed depth on the offensive line.
The Steelers may buck their tradition of promoting from within when it comes to hiring a new offensive coordinator.
Texans C Chris Myers and DE Antonio Smith are fired up for their first trip to the Pro Bowl.
Peter King of SI.com believes Peyton Manning?s status will have nothing to do with the Colts? search for a new coach.
The Jaguars signed four more assistant coaches for Mike Mularkey?s staff.
Titans CB Cortland Finnegan doesn?t think shuffling the front office will change much about the organization.
The Broncos will spend some time evaluating QB Adam Weber this offseason.
The New Yorker checks in on the phone tapping allegations hurled at the Chiefs last week.
Paul Gutierrez of CSNBayArea.com thinks the Dolphins making a coaching hire puts the pressure on the Raiders.
Ron Meeks is the leading candidate for the job as Chargers? defensive backs coach.
Cowboys LB Keith Brooking hopes that WR Dez Bryant doesn?t waste his talent.
Giants defensive backs credit group meetings for their improved play.
More questions about where the Eagles defense is going this offseason.
A trial date has been set for the man accused of shooting and killing Redskins S Sean Taylor.
A look at what Phil Emery might bring to the table as Bears general manager.
Does RB Kevin Smith have a future with the Lions?
Packers S Nick Collins will learn more about his future after a meeting with doctors in March.
USC T Ryan Kalil and Oklahoma State WR Justin Blackmon are both candidates for the Vikings in the first round.
The Falcons signed RB Dimitri Nance to a futures contract.
It isn?t guaranteed that the Panthers will opt for a defensive player in the first round of the draft.
Looking back at Gregg Williams? run as defensive coordinator of the Saints.
Five players the Buccaneers should be watching at the Senior Bowl.
The Cardinals lost painful games to the Ravens and Giants, but managed a split with the 49ers.
Said Rams executive vice president of football operations Kevin Demoff of the team?s plans to play games in London the next three years, ?And our fans are going to have conspiracy theories and be skeptics of our intentions. But hopefully throughout this process, our actions about wanting to be here will speak for us.?
49ers coach Jim Harbaugh didn?t get a chance to hold a practice in rainy conditions.
The Seahawks did well in sudden change situations this season.
Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/01/20/big-ben-settles-lake-tahoe-lawsuit/related/
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Newt Gingrich Shakes Up Things With South Carolina Win (ContributorNetwork)
COMMENTARY | What a day for South Carolina. Every four years presidential hopefuls try their hardest to win the first in the South primary because every Republican candidate that has gone on to win the White House has won the South Carolina primary initially. If you find yourself in South Carolina during this time you will hear one phrase repeatedly: South Carolina picks presidents.
Armed with an array of television ads, various endorsements and thousands of miles traveled, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul fought for the endorsement and delegates of the Palmetto State. While the candidates strategy included a few jabs at each other, they were unified in the belief that President Barack Obama needed to lose his job and that push would be reaffirmed in a state suffering from a 9.9 percent unemployment rate. In a complete rebuttal of the Republican establishment, Gingrich won the Palmetto State, according to the New York Times.
While pundits and media hosts responded to his win as a surprise, voters contributed Gingrich's win to his debate performance, winability and being the conservative alternative to Romney. What is remarkable is Gingrich won the counties where he was projected to come in second and third -- mainly on the coast. He carried the powerful Evangelical, military and Catholic vote.
Romney's loss is contributed to voters' concerns about Romneycare and his moderate-leaning record. Rick Santorum came in third and Ron Paul at a distant fourth. For Santorum and Paul, their respective placing is not as big of a blow as it is to the Romney camp.
South Carolina's primary has added a new dimension to the candidates campaign. This primary shows there is no clear Republican nominee and that we are in for a long primary season.
In Romney's own words, "This debate is getting even more interesting." Gingrich's win is a forthright message to the GOP establishment. Conservatives aren't happy and the GOP needs to stop bending to the whims of the fringe elite concerning social issues, immigration and fiscal policy.
The Republicans have work to do, but the Obama campaign will now have to work even harder. Instead of having time to prepare for one front-runner candidate, President Barack Obama will have to prepare for two polar opposite candidates. I close with my favorite quote of the night. After the primary Santorum said, "Three states, three winners, what a great country."
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Sunday, January 22, 2012
PFT: Saints to have Spagnuolo run defense
APTom Brady and Bill Belichick are the constants. ?But what makes this 2011 Patriots go as opposed to teams in the past? What defines them?
We?d argue this era of Patriots football started the day they drafted Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez. Wes Welker is a great piece to the puzzle, but the tight ends make the offense unique.
While Gronk Nation and Hernandez represent a very modern way of attacking defenses, Belichick in some ways has been working with this approach since the 1970?s. As a member of the Lions coaching staff, Belichick helped pair Charlie Sanders and David Hill in a two tight end attack that was the first of its era.
?Yeah, that was really the first ? I mean, honestly there wasn?t a lot of two tight ends in the mid-70s, there really wasn?t,? Belichick told Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports this week.
We highly recommend checking out Cole?s piece on the evolution of the two tight end attack. Hill and Sanders combined for half of the Lions? touchdowns in Hill?s rookie year of 1976. In the past, two tight ends would only be used together in short yardage situations. Sanders, a Hall of Famer, thanks Belichick every time he sees him.
?Bill always says back to me, ?No, thank you and David [Hill] for all you did,? Sanders told Cole. ?Without you guys, none of this would have happened.???
Falcons coach Mike Smith explains the matchup problems that Gronkowski and Hernandez create, calling them ?queens on the chessboard.?
?If you want to play standard personnel on defense, they flex one or both of those guys out and force you to cover them with linebackers. If you put extra defensive backs in, they line up in double-[tight end] and maul you. You never have the right personnel on the field,? Smith said.
That becomes an even bigger problem when the Patriots use their hurry up offense. Defenses can?t substitute to get the right matchups on the field.
We expect to see the Patriots play plenty of hurry up offense Sunday against Baltimore, with Gronkowski and Hernandez at the center of it all.
Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/01/19/saints-hire-steve-spagnuolo/related/
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Obama: State of the Union an economic blueprint (AP)
WASHINGTON ? Vilified by the Republicans who want his job, President Barack Obama will stand before the nation Tuesday night determined to frame the election-year debate on his terms, promising his State of the Union address will offer an economic blueprint that will "work for everyone, not just a wealthy few."
In a video released Saturday to millions of campaign supporters, Obama said he will concentrate on four areas designed to restore economic security for the long term: manufacturing, energy, education, job training and a "return to American values." The release came the same day as the South Carolina primary, where four candidates competed in the latest contest to determine Obama's general election rival.
The prime-time speech will be not just a traditional pitch about the year ahead. It will be perhaps Obama's biggest stage to make a sweeping case for a second term.
"We can go in two directions," the president said in the video. "One is toward less opportunity and less fairness. Or we can fight for where I think we need to go: building an economy that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few."
That line of argument about income equality is emerging as a defining theme of the presidential race, as Republicans are in their own fierce battle to pick a nominee to challenge Obama in the fall.
By notifying the millions of supporters on his email list, Obama gave advance notice to his Democratic base and trying to generate an even larger audience for Tuesday's address.
Obama's preview did not mention national security. He is not expected to announce new policy on that front in a speech dominated by the economy ? the top concern of voters.
Obama is expected to offer new proposals to make college more affordable and to ease the housing crisis still slowing the economy, according to people familiar with the speech. He will also promote unfinished parts of his jobs plan, including the extension of a payroll tax cut soon to expire.
His policy proposals will be less important than what he hopes they all add up to: a narrative of renewed American security. Obama will try to politically position himself as the one leading that fight for the middle class, with an overt call for help from Congress, and an implicit request for a second term from the public.
The timing comes as the nation is split about Obama's overall job performance. More people than not disapprove of his handling of the economy, he is showing real vulnerability among the independent voters who could swing the election, and most Americans think the country is on the wrong track.
So his mission will be to show leadership and ideas on topics that matter to people: jobs, housing, college, retirement security.
The foundation of Obama's speech is the one he gave in Kansas last month, when he declared that the middle class was a make-or-break moment and railed against "you're on your own" economics of the Republican Party. His theme then was about a government that ensures people get a fair shot to succeed.
That speech spelled out the values of Obama's election-year agenda. The State of the Union will be the details.
The White House sees the speech as a clear chance to outline a vision for re-election, yet carefully, without turning a national tradition into an overt campaign event.
On national security, Obama will ask the nation to reflect with him on a momentous year of change, including the end of the war in Iraq, the killing of al-Qaida terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and the Arab Spring protests of peoples clamoring for freedom.
But it will all be secondary to jobs at home.
In a winter season of politics dominated by his Republican competition, Obama will have a grand stage to himself, in a window between Republican primaries. He will try to use the moment to refocus the debate as he sees it: where the country has come, and where he wants to take it.
In doing so, Obama will come before a divided Congress with a burst of hope because the economy ? by far the most important issue to voters ? is showing life.
The unemployment rate is still at a troubling 8.5 percent, but at its lowest rate in nearly three years. Consumer confidence is up. Obama will use that as a springboard.
The president will try to draw a contrast of economic visions with Republicans, both his antagonists in Congress and the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination.
Despite low expectations for legislation this year, Obama will offer short-term ideas that would require action from Congress.
His travel schedule following his speech, to politically important regions, offers clues to the policies he was expected to unveil.
Both Phoenix and Las Vegas have been hard hit by foreclosures. Denver is where Obama outlined ways of helping college students deal with mounting school loan debt. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Detroit are home to a number of manufacturers. And Michigan was a major beneficiary of the president's decision to provide billions in federal loans to rescue General Motors and Chrysler in 2009.
For now, the main looming to-do item is an extension of a payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits, both due to expire by March. An Obama spokesman called that the "last must-do item of business" on Obama's congressional agenda, but the White House insists the president will make the case for more this year.
If anything, Republicans say Obama has made the chances of cooperation even dimmer just over the last several days. He enraged Republicans by installing a consumer watchdog chief by going around the Senate, which had blocked him, and then rejected a major oil pipeline project the GOP has embraced.
Obama is likely, once again, to offer ways in which a broken Washington must work together. Yet that theme seems but a dream given the gridlock he has been unable to change.
The State of the Union atmosphere offered a bit of comity last year, following the assassination attempt against Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. And yet 2011 was a year of utter dysfunction in Washington, with the partisanship getting so bad that the government nearly defaulted as the world watched in embarrassment.
The address remains an old-fashioned moment of national attention; 43 million people watched it on TV last year. The White House website will offer a live stream of the speech, promising graphics and other bonuses for people who watch it there, plus a panel of administration officials afterward with questions coming in through Twitter and Facebook.
__
AP deputy director of polling Jennifer Agiesta and Associated Press writer Ken Thomas contributed to this report.
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Saturday, January 21, 2012
Many teen moms surprised they got pregnant
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Friday, January 20, 2012
Obama, Republicans tussle over oil pipeline
House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, center, accompanied by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Va., right, and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, gestures during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012, to discuss President Barack Obama's decision to halt the Keystone XL pipeline. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, center, accompanied by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Va., right, and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, gestures during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012, to discuss President Barack Obama's decision to halt the Keystone XL pipeline. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney speaks during the daily briefing at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress are back where they were before Christmas, locked in an election-season tussle over a proposed 1,700-mile oil pipeline from Canada to Texas.
Republicans hope to again force Obama to make a politically risky decision, while he is seeking to put it off until after the November election.
Obama blocked the $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline on Wednesday, at least temporarily, but Republicans signaled their intention to again to force the issue.
Rep. Fred Upton, a Republican from Michigan and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said he will call Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who recommended Obama's rejection, to testify at a hearing as early as next Wednesday. That's the day after Obama gives his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress.
"This is not the end of the fight. Republicans in Congress will continue to push this because it's good for our country and it's good for our economy and it's good for the American people," especially those who are out of work, said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
Republicans are looking to drive a wedge between Obama and two key Democratic constituencies. Some labor unions support the pipeline as a job creator, while environmentalists fear it could lead to an oil spill disaster.
The plan by Calgary-based TransCanada Corp. would carry tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, through a 1,700-mile pipeline across six U.S. states to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast.
Obama was already on record as saying no, for now, until his administration could review an alternate route that avoided environmentally sensitive areas of Nebraska ? a route that still has not been proposed. But in an unrelated tax deal he cut with congressional Republicans, Obama had been boxed into making a decision by Feb. 21.
The deal required that the project would go forward unless Obama declared by that date that it was not in the national interest. The president did just that Wednesday, generating intense reaction from all sides.
"This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people," Obama said in a written statement. "I'm disappointed that Republicans in Congress forced this decision."
Newt Gingrich, campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in South Carolina, called Obama's decision "stunningly stupid," adding, "What Obama has done is kill jobs, weaken American security and drive Canada into the arms of China out of just sheer stupidity."
Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney said the decision was "as shocking as it is revealing. It shows a president who once again has put politics ahead of sound policy."
Project supporters say U.S. rejection of the pipeline would not stop one from being built. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said Canada is serious about building a pipeline to its West Coast, where oil could be shipped to China and other Asian markets.
TransCanada said it would submit a new application once an alternative route for the pipeline is established. Company chief Russ Girling said if approved, the pipeline could begin operation as soon as 2014. He said TransCanada will continue to work with Nebraska officials to determine the safest route for Keystone XL that avoids the environmentally sensitive Sandhills area, which he said should be completed this fall.
But Assistant Secretary of State Kerri-Ann Jones told reporters that if TransCanada submits a new application for a different pipeline path, it would trigger a new review process.
"We cannot state that anything will be expedited at this time," she said. "We would look to information that is out there to extent we can. It is a new permit application so the process would have to be started over again."
The proposed $7 billion pipeline would pass through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma en route to Texas. It is a dicey proposition for Obama, who enjoyed strong support from both organized labor and environmentalists in his winning 2008 campaign for the White House.
Environmental advocates have made it clear that approval of the pipeline would dampen their enthusiasm for Obama in November. Some liberal donors even threatened to cut off funds to Obama's re-election campaign to protest the project, which opponents say would transport "dirty oil" that requires huge amounts of energy to extract.
But by rejecting the pipeline, Obama risks losing support from organized labor, a key part of the Democratic base, for thwarting thousands of jobs.
"The score is job-killers two, American workers zero," said Terry O'Sullivan, general president of the Laborers' International Union of North America. O'Sullivan called the decision "politics at its worst" and said, "Blue-collar construction workers across the U.S. will not forget this."
Yet some unions that back Obama oppose the pipeline, including the United Auto Workers, Service Employees International Union and Communications Workers of America.
TransCanada says the pipeline could create as many as 20,000 jobs, a figure opponents say is inflated. A State Department report last summer said the pipeline would create up to 6,000 jobs during construction.
Obama appeared to have skirted what some dubbed the "Keystone conundrum" in November when the State Department announced it was postponing a decision on the pipeline until after this year's election. Officials said they needed extra time to study routes that avoid a 65-mile stretch through the Sandhills area, which supplies water to eight states.
The concerns were serious enough that the state's governor and senators opposed the project unless the pipeline was moved. Any new route would have to be approved by Nebraska environmental officials and the State Department, which has authority because the pipeline would cross an international border.
Obama said his decision does not "change my administration's commitment to American-made energy that creates jobs and reduces our dependence on oil."
To underscore the point, Obama signaled that he would not oppose development of an oil pipeline from Oklahoma to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico. TransCanada already operates a pipeline from Canada to Cushing, Oklahoma. Refineries in Houston and along the Texas Gulf Coast can handle heavy crude such as that extracted from Canadian tar sands ? the type of oil that would flow through the Keystone XL pipeline.
___
Associated Press writers Ben Feller, Dina Cappiello, Laurie Kellman and Sam Hananel in Washington, Shannon McCaffrey in Warrenville, S.C., Ramit Plushnick-Masti in Houston and James MacPherson in Bismarck, N.D., contributed to this story.
___
Follow Matthew Daly on Twitter: (at)MatthewDalyWDC.
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