Tim Tebow Trademarks ?Tebowing!? ? NOW 100.5 FM

Eonline.com?says that Tim Tebow is NOW the legal owner of the word ?Tebowing!?

The phrase became a pop culture?phenomenon?after Tebow was spotted on the football field, kneeling in prayer.

Tebow took out the trademark not because he wanted to make money off ?Tebowing,? but rather because he wanted to prevent others from profiting off of his good name.

Get the whole story HERE

Source: http://now100fm.cbslocal.com/2012/10/19/tim-tebow-trademarks-tebowing/

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Tom Hanks lets obscenity slip on ABC's 'GMA'

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/tom-hanks-lets-obscenity-slip-abcs-gma-161048043.html

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Search for alien life about to step up a gear

LONDON | Thu Oct 18, 2012 1:09pm EDT

LONDON

(Reuters) - It remains in the realm of science fiction for now but the discovery of a new planet just four light years away will reignite a race to find a twin of planet Earth that may host extraterrestrial life.

The step change comes as the most powerful telescopes ever built are about to enter into service and as ideas about where life could exist are being turned on their head. At the same time, scientific discussion about the possible existence of alien life is becoming more mainstream.

"I think scientists are very happy having a rational conversation about the likelihood of life out there," said Bob Nichol, an astronomer at Portsmouth University in Britain.

Nichol said this was partly driven by the discovery of new planets such as one identified this week in the Alpha Centauri star system, the closest yet outside our solar system.

Over 800 of these so-called exoplanets have been discovered since the early 1990s.

"An explosion in the number of planets makes it so much more likely," said Nichol, adding that the many formats in which life appears on Earth is indirect evidence, though not proof, that life is out there.

Researchers from the Geneva Observatory said the newest planet to be found was too close to its own sun to support life. But previous studies have suggested that when one planet is discovered orbiting a sun there are usually others in the same system.

Rival astronomers are now likely to start scouring Alpha Centauri for more planets, possibly in the habitable zone around its stars.

NEW EYES AND EARS

The technological eyes and ears that scientists have at their disposal are about to take a leap forward too, broadening and deepening their search.

Barring a surprise discovery of microbes on Mars, we will see alien life long before we are ever able to touch it.

"I think it is realistic to expect to be able to infer within a few decades whether a planet like Earth has oxygen/ozone in its atmosphere, and if it is covered with vegetation," Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal, told Reuters.

The next decade will see two record-breaking telescopes come on line; the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), a huge radio telescope sited in South Africa and Australia, and Europe's Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) that will sit on a mountain top in Chile's Atacama desert and be the largest optical telescope ever built.

Their main task will be to probe the origins and nature of galaxies, but they will also look for signs of life on planets that can now only be seen in the roughest detail.

"I think the capabilities of new telescopes means that the detection of an ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) is more likely in the next few decades, than it was in the last," said Mike Garrett, general director of Astron, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy.

With a mirror almost 40 meters in diameter, The E-ELT will be able to reveal planets orbiting other stars and will produce images that are 16 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope.

When completed in 2024, the SKA radio scope will comprise 3,000 dishes, each 15 meters (50 feet) wide, together with many more antennae that together will be able to see 10 times further into the universe and detect signals that are 10 times older.

Among those signals could be radiation given off by military radar from the nearest million or so stars. "So," said Nichol, "if there are advanced civilizations on planets around those stars, we could see them".

Isobel Hook, an Oxford University astrophysicist who is working on the E-ELT, said the new telescope will boost the search for life elsewhere.

"The ELT should also allow us to study the atmospheres of extra-solar planets and look for ?bio-markers' such as water, carbon dioxide and oxygen molecules in their spectra," she said.

With the right equipment, Hook said the ELT may be able to use spectroscopy, the study of the particular wavelengths of light reflected by an object, to detect signs of vegetation on distant planets.

NEW THEORY

The search for alien life has long been framed by the dogma of a ?goldilocks zone' around faraway suns that is just the right temperature - neither too hot nor too cold - to allow liquid water, essential for life as we know it.

That theory is now being challenged, expanding the potential area in which life could exist.

Other sources of heat have been identified and scientists have come up with radically new ideas about the forms life could take after studying organisms that live in some of the most inhospitable places on Earth.

Earlier this year, Xavier Bon?ls of the Institute of Planetology and Astrophysics in Grenoble estimated there could be tens of billions of rocky planets in our galaxy alone with the right temperature to support life.

Meanwhile, researchers at Aberdeen University in Scotland are working on a computer model which suggests astronomers should sharply increase the number of planets they regard as capable of hosting life.

Although scientists would expect water on the surface of a planet outside a habitable zone to be frozen, researcher Sean McMahon has argued the heat generated from inside a planet could be enough for large underground reservoirs of liquid water.

The study of pockets of life on Earth in places not dissimilar to an area being probed on Mars by NASA's rover Curiosity has also altered conventional wisdom.

A team from Centro de Astrobiolog?a in Madrid led by Felipe Gomez studied organisms in the sun-baked Chott el Jerid salt pan in Tunisia, the acidic Rio Tinto in Southern Spain and the permafrost on Deception Island in Antarctica.

Another team from North Carolina State University recently published research on a single-celled organism that lives in a hot spring near Mount Vesuvius in Italy and is able to eat uranium and draw energy from it.

The research suggests that planets hostile to human life might nevertheless suit these so-called extremophiles, leading to what Duncan Forgan at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh calls "a much more complicated and richer concept of the habitable zone."

But at roughly 100,000 light years across, the universe is a big place and even if there is intelligent life elsewhere sending out signals astronomers say the chances of not hearing them are still considerable.

(Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Source: http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/scienceNews/~3/VckmF99DRLA/us-science-newplanet-aliens-idUSBRE89H16H20121018

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Minn. man convicted of aiding Somalia terror group

FILE - In this undated file family photo made available by his family in Minneapolis, Mahamud Said Omar is seen. Omar is on trial in Minneapolis on five terror-related counts including helping recruit about 20 young men to travel to Somalia and fight with the terror group al-Shabab. (AP Photo/Family of Mahamud Said Omar,File)

FILE - In this undated file family photo made available by his family in Minneapolis, Mahamud Said Omar is seen. Omar is on trial in Minneapolis on five terror-related counts including helping recruit about 20 young men to travel to Somalia and fight with the terror group al-Shabab. (AP Photo/Family of Mahamud Said Omar,File)

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) ? A Minneapolis man accused of helping send young men through a terrorist pipeline from Minnesota to Somalia was convicted Thursday on all five terrorism-related charges he faced, including one that could land him in prison for life.

The jury returned its verdict against Mahamud Said Omar after deliberating for about eight hours over two days. Chief U.S. District Judge Michael Davis did not set a sentencing date.

Omar, 46, nodded quietly as an interpreter gave him the bad news. As he was being led from the courtroom, he held up his hands and smiled at his brothers and other supporters of his in the courtroom gallery.

One of his defense attorneys, Jon Hopeman, said outside of court afterward that Omar will appeal the verdict. He said he plans to scrutinize secretly recorded wiretaps of conversations involving Omar that weren't made available to the defense team.

Omar, a mosque janitor, was the first man to stand trial in the government's investigation into what it says was the recruitment of more than 20 men who have left Minnesota since 2007 to join al-Shabab, a U.S.-designated terrorist group linked to al-Qaida that's blamed for much of the violence that has plagued the East African country.

Prosecutors say Omar helped some recruits from Minnesota's Somali community, which is the largest in the U.S., buy plane tickets to Somalia, and gave others $1,000 to buy weapons while they were staying in an al-Shabab safe house.

Assistant U.S. Attorney John Docherty told jurors in closing arguments Wednesday that Omar moved the young men as "cannon fodder" through a pipeline to al-Shabab.

The FBI agent overseeing Omar's case, Kiann VanDenover, testified that at one point in questioning, Omar claimed to be a "team leader" for al-Shabab.

Omar has denied ever helping al-Shabab. His attorney, Andrew Birrell, portrayed him as a "frightened, little man" who has struggled to adapt to life in the U.S. and who lacks the skills and know-how to organize anything. Birrell says the government's case is based on the corrupt testimony of al-Shabab recruits who repeatedly lied and who testified only because their plea deals required it.

The trial testimony provided insights into the long-running investigation, including how the young men were recruited and what happened when they got to Somalia to join al-Shabab's fight against the fledgling U.N.-backed government in Somalia, which was backed by troops from neighboring Ethiopia, who were seen by some Somalis as an invading force.

Omar was one of 18 men charged in the Minnesota case. Seven have pleaded guilty, while others are presumed to be out of the country. At least six of the men who traveled to Somalia from Minnesota have died, and others are presumed dead, according to family members and the FBI

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-10-18-Missing%20Somalis/id-82e5c4ae5e3e484e8593db1f8cf0a71d

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Modeling feat sheds light on protein channel's function

ScienceDaily (Oct. 18, 2012) ? Chemists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have managed, for the first time, to simulate the biological function of a channel called the Sec translocon, which allows specific proteins to pass through membranes. The feat required bridging timescales from the realm of nanoseconds all the way up to full minutes, exceeding the scope of earlier simulation efforts by more than six orders of magnitude. The result is a detailed molecular understanding of how the translocon works.

Modeling behavior across very different timescales is a major challenge in modern simulation research. "Computer simulations often provide almost uselessly detailed information on a timescale that is way too short, from which you get a cartoon, or something that might raise as many questions as it answers," says Thomas Miller, an assistant professor of chemistry at Caltech. "We've managed to go significantly beyond that, to create a tool that can actually be compared against experiments and even push experiments -- to predict things that they haven't been able to see."

The new computational model and the findings based on its results are described by Miller and graduate student Bin Zhang in the current issue of the journal Cell Reports.

The Sec translocon is a channel in cellular membranes involved in the targeting and delivery of newly made proteins. Such channels are needed because the proteins that are synthesized at ribosomes must travel to other regions of the cell or outside the cell in order to perform their functions; however, the cellular membranes prevent even the smallest of molecules, including water, from passing through them willy-nilly. In many ways, channels such as the Sec translocon serve as gatekeepers -- once the Sec translocon determines that a given protein should be allowed to pass through, it opens up and allows the protein to do one of two things: to be integrated into the membrane, or to be secreted completely out of the cell.

Scientists have disagreed about how the fate of a given protein entering the translocon is determined. Based on experimental evidence, some have argued that a protein's amino-acid sequence is what matters -- that is, how many of its amino acids interact favorably with water and how many clash. This argument treats the process as one in equilibrium, where the extremely slow rate at which a ribosome adds proteins to the channel can be considered infinitely slow. Other researchers have shown that slowing down the rate of protein insertion into the channel actually changes the outcome, suggesting that kinetic effects can also play a role.

"There was this equilibrium picture, suggesting that only the protein sequence is really important. And then there was an alternative picture, suggesting that kinetic effects are critical to understanding the translocon," Miller says. "So we wondered, could both pictures, in some sense, be right? And that turns out to be the case."

In 2010 and earlier this year, Miller and Zhang published papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the Journal of the American Chemical Society describing atomistic simulations of the Sec translocon. These computer simulations attempt to account for every motion of every single atom in a system -- and typically require so much computing time that they can only model millionths of seconds of activity, at most. Meanwhile, actual biological processes involving proteins in the translocon last many seconds or minutes.

Miller and Zhang were able to use their atomistic simulations to determine which parts of the translocon are most important and to calculate how much energy it costs those parts to move in ways that allow proteins to pass through. In this way, they were able to build a simpler version of the simulation that modeled important groupings of atoms, rather than each individual atom. Using the simplified simulation, they could simulate the translocon's activity over the course of more than a minute.

The researchers ran that simplified model tens of thousands of times and observed the different ways in which proteins move through the channel. In the simulation, any number of variables could be changed -- including the protein's amino-acid sequence, its electronic charge, the rate at which it is inserted into the translocon, the length of its tail, and more. The effect of these alterations on the protein's fate was then studied, revealing that proteins move so slowly within the tightly confined environment of the translocon that the pace at which they are added to the channel during translation -- a process that might seem infinitely slow -- can become important. At the same time, Miller and Zhang saw that other relatively fast processes give rise to the results associated with the equilibrium behavior.

"In fact, both equilibrium and kinetically controlled processes are happening -- but in a way that was not obvious until we could actually see everything working together," Miller says.

Beyond elucidating how the translocon works and reconciling seemingly disparate experimental results, the new simulation also lets the researchers perform experiments computationally that have yet to be tried in the lab. For example, they have run simulations with longer proteins and observed that at such lengths -- unlike what has been seen with shorter proteins -- the equilibrium picture begins to be affected by kinetic effects. "This could bring the two experimental camps together, and to have led that would be kind of exciting," Miller says.

The new Cell Reports paper is titled "Long-timescale dynamics and regulation of Sec-facilitated protein translocation." The work was supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, with computational resources provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by California Institute of Technology. The original article was written by Kimm Fesenmaier.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Bin Zhang, and Thomas F. Miller. Long-Timescale Dynamics and Regulation of Sec-Facilitated Protein Translocation. Cell Reports, 2012; DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2012.08.039

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/3ItHmbROhjA/121018141848.htm

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Explore Your Family's Dark Past With Family Village | Kotaku Australia

Did you know October is National Family History Month? I did not, at least not until the makers of the social genealogy game Family Village tipped me off. Sounds like a good time to build a village and learn about your past.

Developed by Funium, Family Village (Zynga probably wouldn?t let them call it FamilyVille) allows players to create a virtual village that houses their entire family tree. Family members and ancestors migrating to the village arrive in garb appropriate to their era of origin. Once they arrive you can give them homes and jobs, which is more than most of us could do for our family members in real life.

As the family tree in the game grows players will uncover fun facts about their family members, while learning a little something about themselves in the process. For instance, I am never giving my mother a home. She can stand there with her bindle and look forlorn all she wants. It?s not working, mum.

Family Village [Facebook]

Source: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/10/explore-your-familys-dark-past-with-family-village/

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Britney Spears Purchases An $8.5 Million Home Outside Hollywood (Photos)

The farm on top of the city - Canada, Rethink - Macleans.ca

Here at Maclean's, we appreciate the written word. And we appreciate you, the reader. We are always looking for ways to create a better user experience for you and wanted to try out a new functionality that provides you with a reading experience in which the words and fonts take centre stage. We believe you'll appreciate the clean, white layout as you read our feature articles. But we don't want to force it on you and it's completely optional. Click "View in Clean Reading Mode" on any article if you want to try it out. Once there, you can click "Go back to regular view" at the top or bottom of the article to return to the regular layout.

Cyrus Dowlatshahi

On a rooftop farm in Brooklyn one sunny afternoon, dozens of tomato plants heavy with fruit swayed in the wind, a farmer stooped over rows of dandelion greens and the customers kept coming. They climbed through the door to the 65,000-sq.-foot roof of the Brooklyn Grange Farm, in the city?s navy yards, across the water from Manhattan, and without fail they exclaimed with delight. ?I love it. This is beautiful!? said Giovanni Cipolla, a grey-haired man who bought a bunch of dandelion and remarked that the only other place he could buy greens this fresh was Italy.

At the vegetable stand set up in the middle of the roof, with the Manhattan Bridge visible in the distance, another man bought eggplants priced at $4 a pint. ?My 99-year-old mother is going to slice them, fry them and make eggplant parmesan,? he said.

Unlike many large city vegetable gardens, this rooftop farm is not a social project or a community garden. Rather, it is a working farm whose owners are trying to achieve economies of scale and turn a profit. Like any rural family farm, the Grange has paid employees (five in this case), sells what it grows at farmers? markets as well as to restaurants and runs a community-supported agriculture program. What makes it different is its urban setting?and that it?s an example of a new crop of urban farming businesses growing as numerous as early summer radishes across the continent, which are trying to prove that you can produce food and profits in a big city.

There are small ventures such as Red Pocket Farm in Toronto, where on about 2,700 sq. feet of land, Amy Cheng produces organic Asian vegetables such as bok choy and choy sum to capture part of the $21 million that Canadian consumers spend on imported Chinese vegetables each month. In the Vancouver area there are 10 mid-sized urban farms that typically use a few patches of land to grow enough food to meet customer demand, says Emi Do, who started Yummy Yards last year and now produces a range of vegetables on seven different plots. She generates enough farm income to invest in her business; she bought a cargo van and put in an irrigation system last summer.

There are larger operations too, and even big-ticket investors are showing an interest. Montreal?s Lufa Farms Inc. has been growing dozens of varieties of vegetables year round in its 31,000-sq.-foot hydroponic greenhouse, built on top of an office building with a?$2-million investment by?president Mohamed Hage. The business has been so successful?selling a weekly food box to a subscriber base of about 1,000 people that it has recently secured $4 million in equity investments led by a venture capital fund and is not only building two more projects in Montreal but looking to expand into Toronto and the United States. In New York City, the Brooklyn Grange operates another rooftop farm in addition to the one in the navy yards, as well as an apiary. The two roofs together required investment of more than $1 million in private funds and grant money. And in Vancouver, a company called Alterrus that uses the VertiCrop system is constructing a 6,000-sq.-foot greenhouse in a downtown parking garage where it plans to grow salad greens and herbs.

These businesses all hope to tap into the growing consumer demand for locally produced food. While the size of this market is not tracked in Canada, Ontario?s Vineland Research and Innovation Centre found, when it conducted consumer research with grocery shoppers, that more than a quarter of the province?s consumers are considered to be ?socially responsible locavores.? And a recent BMO study found Canadians are typically willing to pay anywhere from 16 to 19 per cent extra for produce and meat that?s local.

?I really do believe rooftop farming is the wave of the future,? says Sari Gonzalez, who volunteers at the Grange and runs a catering company while studying at Farm School NYC, a program that trains urban farmers, run by the non-profit Just Food. ?Part of that is learning to make money out of it.?

Of course, equally important to these enterprises is a commitment to environmental sustainability and local communities. ?It?s a triple bottom line,? says Michael Meier, the farm manager at the Brooklyn Grange, referring to the mantra ?people, planet, profits.? ?We won?t necessarily be making millions of dollars, but we are making money.?

Urban agriculture in North America has long been the domain of not-for-profits, such as the much-celebrated Growing Power, an astoundingly productive city farm headquartered in Milwaukee that was founded by Will Allen, a former professional basketball player turned Procter & Gamble executive whose expertise and star power has been sought out by many, including Michelle Obama. Allen has received a ?genius grant? from the MacArthur Foundation and $5 million from the Kellogg Foundation to train what he calls community farmers, who provide their neighbours with access to healthy food. Allen?s farms grow enough produce and raise enough meat and fish to feed 10,000 people, and his model of city farming is promoted for its capacity to help improve quality of life in impoverished urban areas.

In some ways, this social aspect is easier to understand. ?One of the big challenges is convincing people that this is truly a business,? says Hage of Lufa Farms. ?This model isn?t just a feel-good model but potentially a very big enterprise.?

Making a profit while producing food in the city is not new. Many cities in the developing world, such as Nairobi, have vibrant urban agriculture sectors. In these dense, often poor cities, farmers find ways to grow food in any space they can?even at the roadside, using plastic sacks. But even in the developing world, urban agriculture is not solely the domain of impoverished people looking to make money. Middle-class entrepreneurs are also producing food for profit, because of the business potential. When you grow food in the city, you locate your business in the midst of your market?a large market that needs to eat at least three times every day.

In North America, the urban-market advantage is similarly helping to fuel interest. Courses have sprung up at universities and colleges to train the new urban farming class. And in August in Toronto, an urban agriculture summit brought people together from the United States, Canada and Cuba to talk about issues such as zoning regulations and to share experiences and techniques.

Governments, too, are becoming supportive by changing by-laws to make it legal for people to sell what they grow in the city. (It continues to be against the law in some jurisdictions, such as Vancouver, where you can?t sell food grown on land that isn?t designated agricultural.) Responding to requests for information from both municipalities and private citizens, Ontario?s ministry of agriculture, food and rural affairs has created the online Urban Agriculture Business Information Bundle to provide resources about topics like food handling and business development for city farm entrepreneurs.

Being a farmer ?is not an easy living,? says Cathy Holtslander, director of research and policy for the National Farmers Union. For decades in Canada, according to her organization, the traditional family farmer has been struggling to earn a living wage. Most farmers must find other kinds of employment because they can?t support their families without the extra income. Even organic farms that are tapping into the same local-food movement as these urban farms are struggling. It remains true that the best way for farmers to make a lot of money in Canada is by selling their land for development.

But farming in the city isn?t the same as growing food in the countryside. There are many advantages in addition to the ever-present consumer base. Urban farms such as Vancouver?s Yummy Yards don?t need expensive tractors and can use hand tools instead. Small backyard-based businesses can turn on a garden hose to water their crops, rather than invest in irrigation. The larger operations with more costly greenhouses such as Lufa Farms benefit from growing specialty crops, rather than the low-value cash crops that so many rural farms produce, says Rod MacRae, an associate professor at York University who is a co-author of a Metcalf Foundation report on scaling up urban agriculture. A bushel of wheat was listed on the commodity exchanges recently for $9.60, whereas, at the Brooklyn Grange, that would buy you a pint of fairy tale eggplants, a small bunch of carrots and a few habaneros.

Whether or not these differences will mean that city farming businesses can succeed is an open question. ?We are in this flux mode where new things are emerging that will hopefully get us on a more sustainable track,? says MacRae. ?Exactly which of these things has legs is yet to be seen. You can?t really predict what?s going to play.?

Source: http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/10/18/the-farm-on-top-of-the-city/

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Candidates fan out after combative debate

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama spar during the second presidential debate at Hofstra University, Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012, in Hempstead, N.Y. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama spar during the second presidential debate at Hofstra University, Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012, in Hempstead, N.Y. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, left, addresses President Barack Obama during the second presidential debate at Hofstra University, Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012, in Hempstead, N.Y. (AP Photo/Pool-Shannon Stapleton)

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama speak during the second presidential debate at Hofstra University, Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012, in Hempstead, N.Y. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney listens as President Barack Obama speaks during the second presidential debate at Hofstra University, Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012, in Hempstead, N.Y. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama spar over energy policy during the second presidential debate at Hofstra University, Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012, in Hempstead, N.Y. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

(AP) ? Fresh off an intently combative debate, President Barack Obama, Republican Mitt Romney and their running mates are taking their tuned-up fight to the precious few battleground states where the election is still up for grabs with just 20 days to go.

In the sprint to the Nov. 6 Election Day, every aspect of the campaign seems to be taking on a fresh sense of urgency ? the ads, the fundraising, the grass-roots mobilizing and the outreach to key voting blocs, particularly women. Romney quietly began airing a new TV ad suggesting he believes abortion "should be an option" in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is at stake.

The ad is an appeal to women voters, who polls show have favored Obama throughout the race although Romney has been making gains among them. Romney supported abortion rights as Massachusetts governor but now says he opposes abortion with limited exceptions. His campaign didn't announce the ad, but it began running on the debate night on stations that reach Virginia, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Romney was heading to Virginia and sending running mate Paul Ryan to Ohio ? two states that Obama won four years ago where the GOP ticket has been making its most aggressive run. Obama was headed to Iowa, while Vice President Joe Biden was westward bound for Colorado and Nevada.

Obama appears to have 237 of the 270 electoral votes needed for victory comfortably in hand, and Romney is confident of 191. That leaves 110 electoral votes up for grabs in nine battleground states: Florida (29), Ohio (18), North Carolina (15), Virginia (13), Wisconsin (10), Colorado (9), Iowa (6), Nevada (6) and New Hampshire (4).

The two candidates debated Tuesday night as if their political lives depended on it, because they do. It was a re-energized Obama who showed up at Hofstra University, lifting the spirits of Democrats who felt let down by the president's limp performance in the candidates' first encounter two weeks ago.

But Romney knew what was coming and didn't give an inch, pressing his case even when the arguments deteriorated into did-not, did-too rejoinders that couldn't have done much to clarify the choice for undecided voters.

Tuesday's debate was the third installment in what amounts to a four-week-long reality TV series for Campaign 2012. Romney was the clear victor in the series debut, Biden aggressively counterpunched in the next-up vice presidential debate, and the latest faceoff featured two competitors determined to give no quarter.

It was a pushy, interruption-filled encounter filled with charges and countercharges that the other guy wasn't telling the truth. The two candidates were both verbally and physically at odds in the town hall-style format, at one point circling each other center stage like boxers in a prize fight.

"I thought it was a real moment," Biden told NBC's "Today" show in an interview that aired Wednesday morning. "When they were kind of circling each other, it was like, 'Hey, come on man, let's level with each other here.'"

One of the debate's tensest moments was when Romney suggested Obama's administration may have misled Americans over what caused the attack at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last month that killed four Americans. The issue is sure to continue to be debated next week, with the third and closing debate focused on foreign policy scheduled Monday at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla.

"As the facts come out about the Benghazi attack we learn more troubling facts by the day," Ryan told "This Morning" on CBS. "So that's why need to get to the bottom of this to get answers so that we can prevent something like this from ever happening again."

Romney, brimming with confidence, distilled the essence of his campaign message early in Tuesday's 90-minute debate and repeated it often.

"I know what it takes to get this economy going," he said over and over. And this: "We can do better." And this: "We don't have to settle for what we're going through."

Obama, with both the benefit and the burden of a record to run on, had a more nuanced message.

"The commitments I've made, I've kept," he said. "And those that I haven't been able to keep, it's not for lack of trying and we're going to get it done in a second term."

Obama also was relentless in dismissing the merits of Romney's policies and rejecting his characterizations of the president's record.

"Governor Romney doesn't have a five-point plan," the president argued. "He has a one-point plan. And that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules."

The candidates were in each other's faces ? sometimes literally ? before an audience of 82 uncommitted voters from New York. It's a state that's already a sure bet for Obama, but the voters there stood as proxy for millions of Americans across the nation still settling on a candidate.

"They spent a lot of time cutting down the other person," said 22-year-old Joe Blizzard, who watched with a crowd of 500 students at the University of Cincinnati. "As someone who is undecided, it was a little disappointing."

Fellow student Karim Aladmi, 21, was more forgiving. "It goes without saying that the knives were out," he said. "I thought Obama had a strong performance, but Romney made him work for it. I was actually impressed by both sides."

With just 20 days left until the election, polls show an extremely tight race nationally. While Republicans have made clear gains in recent days, the president leads in several polls of Wisconsin and Ohio. No Republican has won the White House without winning Ohio.

As the debates unfold, early voting is already under way in many states, and the push to bank as many early ballots as possible is in overdrive.

Democrats cheered when the Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for Ohio voters to cast ballots on the three days before Election Day, rejecting a request by the state's Republican elections chief and attorney general to get involved in a rancorous battle over early voting. Obama's campaign and Ohio Democrats had sued state officials over changes in state law that took away the three days of voting for most people.

All of the political maneuvering was little more than noise for more than 1.3 million Americans: They've already voted.

___

Pickler reported from Washington. AP writers Nancy Benac and Alicia Caldwell in Washington, James Fitzgerald and Steve Peoples in Hempstead, N.Y., Beth Fouhy in New York City and Dan Sewell in Cincinnati, Ohio, contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-10-17-Presidential%20Campaign/id-9e688a5a5102480aadf71f42b9cc71a7

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Israel urged to protect West Bank olive trees after settler attacks (Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian)

Olives in the West Bank

A Palestinian security officer helps farmers pick olives in the northern West Bank village of Maythaloon. Photograph: Mohammed Ballas/AP

Hundreds of olive trees have been uprooted, burned or cut down by extremist settlers since the annual harvest got under way in the West Bank this month, prompting calls for the Israeli authorities to protect Palestinian farmers and their property.

According to the United Nations, more than 870 trees were vandalised in the first week of the harvest, which began in most places on or after 5 October. A coalition of four Israeli human rights organisations said more than 450 trees had been damaged over the past week.

The damage is usually discovered when Palestinian families arrive at their groves to gather the fruit. Sometimes Palestinians are attacked during the harvest itself.

Settler attacks on olive groves have increased over recent years. Since the beginning of this year, a total of 7,180 Palestinian-owned trees have been vandalised by settlers, according to the UN's office for the co-ordination of humanitarian affairs. Last year about 10,000 trees were uprooted or vandalised.

Robert Serry, the UN's special co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process, said the damage and destruction of trees was reprehensible. "Israel must live up to its commitments under international law to protect Palestinians and their property in the occupied territory so that the olive harvest ? a crucial component of Palestinian livelihoods and the Palestinian economy ? can proceed unhindered," he said.

Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's executive committee, said settlers were launching attacks under the protection of the Israeli military.

In a letter to diplomats, she appealed to international missions to send observers to at-risk olive-picking areas to monitor abuses by settlers and soldiers.

"In the past month alone, Israeli settlers uprooted 300 trees in al-Mughir and Turmusaya villages, cut down 120 trees in Nablus, destroyed 100 olive saplings and 60 vine trees in al-Khader village, uprooted 40 trees in Ras Karkar, and assaulted and hospitalised three Palestinian farmer and injured one other," she wrote. According to Oxfam, there are about 9.5m olive trees in the West Bank.

On a visit to the West Bank village of Aboud on Monday, Waleed Assaf, the Palestinian agriculture minister, said the proportion of GDP earned from agriculture had fallen from 28% to 5.6% over the past 20 years. This decline, he said, was mainly due to the confiscation of land for Israeli settlements, bypass roads and the security barrier, as well as the difficulties faced by Palestinian farmers in accessing their land. Serious water shortages were also hampering agricultural output, he said.

"We have lost half a million trees," Assaf said. "We are planting more but it takes 10 years for a young olive tree to start producing fruit."

On the edge of the village, Eid Khalil, 41, was harvesting his fruit. He said Aboud had lost 18 dunams (4.5 acres) of olive trees when land was confiscated to build the nearby settlement of Bet Arye. "It used to take until Christmas to pick the village olives. Now it takes a month," he said.

Aboud's population of 2,200 is evenly divided between Muslims and Christians. "The majority of people work in agriculture," said the Greek Orthodox parish priest Emmanuel Awwad. "The oil is the only income for most of the families."

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/imeu/~3/aeqXA_4aRAM/israel-oliver-trees-settler-attacks

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