Egypt: Arrest warrants issued for five activists

CAIRO (AP) ? Egypt's top prosecutor has issued arrest warrants for five rights activists on suspicion of inciting violence against members of the president's Muslim Brotherhood.

A statement posted Monday on the attorney general's official Facebook page said all five have also been banned from traveling abroad.

The warrants came one day after Islamist President Mohammed Morsi sternly warned his opponents, saying he may be close to taking unspecified measures to protect the nation.

They also followed the issuing of summons for a larger group of politicians and activists for questioning over clashes on Friday outside the Brotherhood's office, the worst between the group's members and opponents in three months.

The five activists are: Alaa Abdel-Fattah, Ahmed Douma, Karim El-Shaer, Hazem Abdel-Azim and Ahmed Ghoneimi.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egypt-arrest-warrants-issued-five-activists-171648158.html

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McDonald's Calls Chicken McWrap A 'Subway Buster' In Internal Memo

McDonald's latest addition to its core U.S. menu -- the Chicken McWrap -- comes as the chain works to boost sales. But an internal memo suggest that the product is intended to take on a particular competitor: Subway.

The memo, obtained by AdAge, refers to the new sandwich as a "Subway buster" and concedes that "McDonald's is currently not in the top 10 of millennials' (customers primarily ages 18-32) favorite restaurants."

In what is perhaps of even greater concern to the chain, the memo states that customers "have told us that if we did not offer McWrap, 22 percent of these incremental customers would have gone to Subway."

In recent years, Subway has surpassed McDonald's in number of locations worldwide. Earlier this year, the sandwich chain's president and co-founder, Fred DeLuca, told Bloomberg that he expected Subway would have 50,000 locations in operation by 2017, up from its current number of roughly 38,800 locations.

But do McDonald's troubles necessarily stem from competition with Subway, or from its classification as a burger chain? AdAge writes:

But hamburger chains have seen a 16% decline in traffic from millennials since 2007, NPD said. In the year ended November 2012, millennials made 3.6 billion visits to hamburger chains, down from 4.2 billion visits in the year ended November 2007. There was a 12% decline in quick-service restaurant visits by millennials in the same time period.

Higher-quality ingredients and more choices could help sway millennials back to McDonald's, AdAge suggests.

McDonald's has introduced other new products of late, including Fish McBites, which have done little to reinvigorate sales. Both Fish McBites and Chicken McWraps follow news in late 2012 that McDonald's experienced its first sales drop since 2003.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/25/mcdonalds-chicken-mcwrap-subway-buster_n_2950605.html

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Google Glass already facing driving ban as West Virginia preps law

Lawmakers in the US have proposed a bill outlawing operating a vehicle with head-mounted displays like Google Glass, even before the networked specs are commercially available.

West Virginia Legislature Republican Gary G Howell last week proposed a bill that would prohibit "using a wearable computer with head mounted display", preemptively bringing Google's technology in line with existing state bans on driving while texting or using a phone without a handsfree kit.

Howell told ZDNet's sister site CNET that he believes the government has a duty make sure citizens don't injure or kill someone else when they cross the road because they're reading a message.

"I actually like the idea of the product and I believe it is the future, but last legislature we worked long and hard on a no-texting-and-driving law," Howell told CNET.

"It is mostly the young that are the tech-savvy that try new things. They are also our most vulnerable and underskilled drivers. We heard of many crashes caused by texting and driving, most involving our youngest drivers. I see the Google Glass as an extension."

Howell's proposed ban on networked specs while driving would make an exception for law enforcement and other emergency services officers.

The lawmaker was not confident the bill will pass, however, but believes that other similar legislation will follow.

Earlier this month, the 5 Point Cafe in Seattle, Washington made headlines by also preemptively banning patrons from wearing Google Glass in the cafe to protect the privacy of other customers.

The bill comes as more US states pass laws permitting Google's Project X innovation on roads: Google's autonomous cars. California followed Nevada's lead by allowing Google to drive the cars ? as long as a human is behind the wheel ? on state roads.

Source: http://www.zdnet.com/google-glass-already-facing-driving-ban-as-west-virginia-preps-law-7000013059/

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'Amazing': Obama turns tourist in ancient city of Petra

Larry Downing / Reuters

U.S. President Barack Obama ended his Middle East trip with a visit to the ancient city of Petra, Jordan, Saturday.

By Steve Holland, Reuters

PETRA, Jordan -- President Barack Obama marveled at the sights of Jordan's ancient city of Petra on Saturday as he wrapped up a four-day Middle East tour by setting aside weighty diplomatic matters and playing tourist for a day.

The visit followed a trip to Israel and the Palestinian Territories that was capped by Obama's brokering of a rapprochement between Israel and Turkey, but which offered little more than symbolic gestures toward Middle East peacemaking.

Before heading to Petra, Obama used his stop in Jordan to ratchet up criticism of Syrian President Bashar Assad, but he stopped short of promising military aid to Syrian rebels to help end a two-year-old civil war that has claimed 70,000 lives.

President Obama receives applause from a crowd in Jerusalem Thursday by challenging groups that reject Israel.

U.S. officials privately voiced satisfaction with the results of Obama's first foreign trip of his second term, but the president's aides had set expectations so low that it was not hard to proclaim it a mission accomplished.

Shifting into sightseeing mode on Saturday, Obama flew by helicopter to Petra and took a walking tour of the restored ruins of a city more than 2,000 years old which is half-carved into sandstone cliffs.

Ordinary tourists had been cleared out for the president's visit, and guards with assault weapons dogged his every step.

"This is pretty spectacular," the president, wearing sunglasses, khaki trousers and a dark jacket, said as he craned his neck to look up at the Treasury, a towering rose-red fa?ade cut into a mountain. "It's amazing."

The U.S. president arrived in Jordan on Friday after an unexpected diplomatic triumph in Israel, where he announced a breakthrough in relations between Israel and Turkey after a telephone conversation between the countries' prime ministers.

President Barack Obama on Thursday urged the Israeli people to put themselves in the shoes of Palestinians and recognize their "right to self-determination, their right to justice." NBC's Chuck Todd reports.

Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu apologized on behalf of his country for the killing of nine Turkish citizens in a 2010 naval raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla, and the two feuding U.S. allies agreed to normalize ties.

The 30-minute call was made in a runway trailer at Tel Aviv airport, where Obama and Netanyahu huddled before the president boarded Air Force One for a flight to Jordan.

The rapprochement could help Washington marshal regional efforts to contain spillover from the Syrian civil war and ease Israel's diplomatic isolation in the Middle East as it faces challenges posed by Iran's nuclear program.

Larry Downing / Reuters

Obama, left, looks at the Treasury while he receives a tour of the ancient historic and archaeological site of Petra on Saturday.

During his visit, Obama appeared to have made some headway in easing Israelis' suspicions of him, calming their concerns about his commitment to confronting Iran and soothing his relationship with the hawkish Netanyahu.

Obama attempted to show Palestinians he had not forgotten their aspirations for statehood but he left many disappointed that he had backtracked from his previous demands for a halt to Israeli settlement building in the occupied West Bank.

The president offered no new peace proposals but he promised his administration would stay engaged while putting the onus on the two sides to set aside mutual distrust and restart long-dormant negotiations - a step the president failed to bring about in his first term.

Muhammad Hamed / Reuters

Members of the U.S. Secret Service Counter Assault Team survey a path after Obama walked through it during his tour of the ancient historic and archaeological site of Petra on Saturday.

After visiting both Israel and the West Bank, President Obama met with King Abdullah of Jordan, a country facing some very turbulent times of its own, post Arab Spring. But there may be no stronger Arab ally to the U.S. and Israel than Jordan. NBC's Chuck Todd reports.

As Obama's critics were complaining that his Middle East trip was heavy on symbolism and lacking in substance, the last-minute move toward Israeli-Turkish reconciliation gave his aides a chance to tout a tangible achievement.

On the last leg of his trip, Obama promised further humanitarian aid in talks with Jordan's King Abdullah, a close ally, as the economically strapped country grapples with a refugee crisis caused by Syria's civil war.

Obama also used the opportunity to underscore U.S. wariness about arming rebels fighting to overthrow Assad, despite pressure from Republican critics at home and from some European allies to do more.

He warned that a post-Assad Syria could become an "enclave" for Islamist extremism and insisted it was vital to help organize the Syrian opposition to avoid that, but he stopped short of announcing any new concrete steps.

Related:

Palestinian activists frustrated by lack of US action as Obama ends visit

Obama lays stone from MLK memorial on grave of Israeli PM slain for trying to make peace

Obama appeals to Israelis: Give justice to the Palestinians

Obama: 'Still time' for diplomatic solution to Iran nuke dispute

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

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Obamacare isn?t forever, but what?s next is worse (Powerlineblog)

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Genetic analysis saves major apple-producing region of Washington state

Mar. 22, 2013 ? In August 2011, researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture were presented with a serious, and potentially very costly, puzzle in Kennewick, Wash. Since Kennewick lies within a region near the heart of Washington state's $1.5 billion apple-growing region, an annual survey of fruit trees is performed by the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) to look for any invading insects. This time the surveyors discovered a crabapple tree that had been infested by a fruit fly that they couldn't identify.

It was possible that the fly's larvae, eating away inside the crabapples as they grew toward adulthood, belonged to a relatively harmless species that had simply expanded its traditional diet. In that case, they posed little threat to the surrounding apple orchards in central Washington.

But the real fear was that they represented an expansion in the range of the invasive apple maggot fly, known to biologists as Rhagoletis pomonella. If so, then this would trigger a costly quarantine process affecting three counties in the state.

"In one of the world's leading apple-growing regions, a great deal of produce and economic livelihood rested on quickly and accurately figuring out which one of the flies was in that tree," says Jeffrey Feder, professor of biological sciences and a member of the Advanced Diagnostics & Therapeutics initiative (AD&T) at the University of Notre Dame. "And for these flies, it can sometime turn out to be a difficult thing to do."

As Feder and his team, including graduate student Gilbert St. Jean and AD&T research assistant professor Scott Egan, discuss in a new study in the Journal of Economic Entomology, the WSDA sent larvae samples to Wee Yee, research entomologist at the USDA's Yakima Agricultural Research Laboratory in Wapato, Wash. One larva was sent to Notre Dame for genetic analysis. The study sought to compare Notre Dame's genetic analysis to Yee's visual identification after the larvae had developed into adults. Fortunately, the fly identified, Rhagoletis indifferens, is not known to infest apples. The Notre Dame group further demonstrated that it is possible to genetically identify the correct fly species within two days, compared to the four months required to raise and visually identify the fly.

A separate study led by the Feder lab details how the apple maggot fly was recently introduced into the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S., likely via larval-infested apples from the East. The flies have subsequently reached as far north as British Columbia, Canada, and as far south as northern California. So far, though, the apple maggot has not been reported infesting any commercial apple orchards in central Washington.

"The correct identification of the larvae infesting crabapple trees saved the local, state and federal agencies thousands of dollars in monitoring, inspection and control costs," Yee said. "The cost to growers if the apple maggot had been found to be established in the region would have been very substantial (easily over half a million dollars), but the rapid diagnostic test developed at Notre Dame suspended the need to proceed with the rulemaking process, saving staff and administrative costs."

The Feder team is continuing to refine the genetic assays to develop a portable test that would be valuable in apple-growing regions, as well as ports of entry where fruit infested by nonlocal insect species can be rapidly detected, to prevent the spread of the insect.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Notre Dame. The original article was written by Kirk Reinbold.

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Senate nears pre-dawn OK of Democratic budget

WASHINGTON (AP) ? An exhausted Senate neared approval early Saturday of a $3.7 trillion budget for next year that will let majority Democrats highlight their fiscal priorities, but won't resolve the deep differences the two parties have over deficits and the size of government.

Senators sorted through a final batch of amendments and were on course to approve the measure in the pre-dawn hours and leave town for a two-week spring recess. The non-binding plan would shrink annual federal shortfalls over the next decade to nearly $400 billion, raise taxes by nearly $1 trillion and cull modest savings from domestic programs.

In contrast, a rival budget approved by the GOP-run House balances the budget within 10 years without boosting taxes.

That plan ? by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., his party's vice presidential candidate last year ? claims $4 trillion more in savings over the period than Senate Democrats by imposing major cuts in Medicaid, food stamps and other safety net programs for the needy. It would also transform the Medicare health care program for seniors into a voucher-like system for future recipients.

"We have presented very different visions for how our country should work and who it should work for," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who chairs the Senate Budget Committee. "But I am hopeful that we can bridge this divide."

Congressional budgets are planning documents that leave actual changes in revenues and spending for later legislation, and this was the first the Democratic-run Senate has approved in four years. That is testament to the political and mathematical contortions needed to write fiscal plans in an era of record-breaking deficits that until this year exceeded an eye-popping $1 trillion annually, and to the parties' profoundly conflicting views.

"I believe we're in denial about the financial condition of our country," Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, top Republican on the Budget panel, said of Democratic efforts to boost spending on some programs. "Trust me, we've got to have some spending reductions."

Though the shortfalls have shown signs of easing slightly and temporarily, there is no easy path to the two parties finding compromise ? which the first months of 2013 have amply illustrated.

Already this year, Congress has raised taxes on the rich after narrowly averting tax boosts on virtually everyone else, tolerated $85 billion in automatic spending cuts, temporarily sidestepped a federal default and prevented a potential government shutdown.

By sometime this summer, the government's borrowing limit will have to be extended again ? or a default will be at risk ? and it is unclear what Republicans may demand for providing needed votes. It is also uncertain how the two parties will resolve the differences between their two budgets, something many believe simply won't happen.

Both sides have expressed a desire to reduce federal deficits. But President Barack Obama is demanding a combination of tax increases and spending cuts to do so, while GOP leaders say they won't consider higher revenues but want serious reductions in Medicare and other benefit programs that have rocketed deficits skyward.

Obama plans to release his own 2014 budget next month, an unveiling that will be studied for whether it signals a willingness to engage Republicans in negotiations or play political hardball.

In a long day that began Friday morning, senators plodded through scores of amendments ? all of them non-binding but some delivering potent political messages.

They voted in favor of giving states more powers to collect sales taxes on online purchases their citizens make from out-of-state Internet companies, and to endorse the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that is to pump oil from Canada to Texas refineries.

They also approved amendments voicing support for eliminating the $2,500 annual cap on flexible spending account contributions imposed by Obama's health care overhaul, and for charging regular postal rates for mailings by political parties, which currently qualify for the lower prices paid by non-profits.

In a rebuke to one of the Senate's most conservative members, they overwhelmingly rejected a proposal by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., to cut even deeper than the House GOP budget and eliminate deficits in just five years.

The Democratic budget envisions $975 billion in unspecified new taxes over the coming 10 years. There would be an equal amount of spending reductions coming chiefly from health programs, defense and reduced interest payments as deficits get smaller than previously anticipated.

This year's projected deficit of nearly $900 billion would fall to around $700 billion next year and bottom out near $400 billion in 2016 before trending upward again.

Shoehorned into the package is $100 billion for public works projects and other programs aimed at creating jobs.

__

Associated Press reporter Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senate-nears-pre-dawn-ok-democratic-budget-073539397.html

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