About the Author: Bora Zivkovic is the Blog Editor at Scientific American, chronobiologist, biology teacher, organizer of ScienceOnline conferences and editor of Open Laboratory anthologies of best science writing on the Web. Follow on Twitter @boraz.More??
The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
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Occupy Wall Street protesters plan demonstrations in more than 100 cities, hoping to rekindle the movement after months in relative hibernation.
The Occupy Season is kicking off.
Skip to next paragraphStarting Tuesday morning, May Day, the Occupy Movement in 100 cities will begin what it is terming ?spring awakening,? with marches, rhetoric, and probably some old-fashioned civil disobedience. The organizers are calling for a general strike although union support for a work moratorium appears low. And after a day of unpermitted, pop-up protests, educational picket lines, ?free university" teach-ins, and other events there will be an ?after party,? with bands and speeches.
Many of the issues will seem familiar from last fall when the protests began: income inequality (think 99 percent vs. 1 percent), high levels of student debt, and anger at foreclosures. But this spring the disparate groups that make up Occupy are ?zeroing in? on some specific issues, such as breaking up the Bank of America, campaigning against right-wing groups, and a new focus on the issues facing people of color.
?I think it was inevitable, various groups are focusing on issues they feel they can have impact on,? says Karanja Gacuca, a spokesman for Occupy. ?Income inequality is still our focus but now we are drumming down on specific issues that solidify the 1 percent.?
Among the new issues, according to Mr. Gacuca:?
Narrowing the focus is a good plan, says Stephen Zunes, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. ?It?s good if you can get reforms even if the goal is more radical,? he says. ?Having short-term goals that are achievable is good.?
However, political scientist Edward Morgan of Lehigh University says to transition into actual legislative actions ?requires lots of outreach to the rest of America as well as sharpening the critique.?
Making contact with the public has been increasingly difficult for the Occupy movement, since police departments have cracked down on their encampments in most cities.
For example, on Monday in downtown Manhattan, only one Occupy Wall Street protester, Christopher Guerra, was sitting in Zuccotti Park, where protestors started the movement Sept. 17. Seated behind a sign that says, ?Prosecute the Fraud,? referring to the 2008 bank bailouts, he says the Occupy protesters are now spread out around the city, not just in one location.
One of those new locations is on the steps outside of Federal Hall National Memorial, which is across the street from the New York Stock Exchange. The protesters are on the stairs to the left of a statute of George Washington ? the site where he took his oath of office as first president. However, even in that location, there are limits: the police are limiting the protests to 25 people at any given time. A sign on the steps reads, ?NYPD created these barricades to mentally and physically separate us. Let?s be one ? talk to me.?
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We're here on the floor at the Samsung Galaxy S III launch and we've just managed to get some alone time with the unit to get some benchmarks. Now, let's stress that the handset is a pre-production model, so we can't take these as gospel truth, but it's a good indication of how powerful that Quad-Core Exynos really is. The only thing that isn't working is SunSpider, since our results just didn't tally with the other tests available, so hopefully it's just a quirk. Head on past the break for a dose of nitty and a sprinkling of gritty.
Continue reading Samsung Galaxy S III gets benchmarked, shows plenty of promise
Samsung Galaxy S III gets benchmarked, shows plenty of promise originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 May 2012 17:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Cheri Young began to cry when asked why she went along with the cover-up of Edwards' affair.
The wife of an ex-aide to John Edwards broke down on the witness stand Monday as she recounted how the candidate asked the couple to hide an affair he was having and justified using wealthy donors' money to do it.
Skip to next paragraphTestifying at Edwards' campaign corruption trial, Cheri Young said she huddled around a phone in her Chapel Hill home during December 2007 with her husband, Andrew Young, and Edwards' pregnant mistress, Rielle Hunter.
On the call, Edwards emphasized the need to preserve his campaign and keep the affair from his cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth, Cheri Young said. It was a couple weeks before the 2008 Iowa caucuses, and two suspicious tabloid reporters had already tracked Hunter from a doctor's appointment to the Youngs' home.
Edwards made the plan sound "as if it was for the good of the country," Cheri Young said.
Asked by a prosecutor why she went along with it, Young put her hands together, pressed them to her chin and bowed her head as if in prayer. As she began to weep, U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Eagles dismissed the jury to give her time to compose herself.
About 25 feet away, Edwards sat back in his chair and put two fingers to his pursed lips. As Young dabbed her tears with a tissue, the former U.S. Senator glanced at his watch.
Once the jury returned, Young answered the question.
"I felt like everything had been dumped in my lap," she said. "Everybody was on board but me. ... I didn't want the campaign to explode and for it to be my fault. I ultimately decided to live with a lie."
During the call, Edwards suggested that it would only be a one-day story if Andrew Young took responsibility for the baby.
"'Nobody cares about two staffers having an affair,'" Young recalled Edwards saying.
Hunter had earlier been paid as a videographer by one of the organizations linked with Edwards, who is accused of deliberately using money from two wealthy donors to hide Hunter as he sought the White House.
Edwards has pleaded not guilty to six counts related to campaign-finance violations. He faces up to 30 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines if convicted on all counts.
At issue are payments from a wealthy Texas lawyer, Fred Baron, who served as Edwards' campaign-finance chairman and an elderly heiress, Rachel "Bunny" Mellon. Andrew Young, who testified last week under an immunity agreement, has acknowledged that he kept about $1 million in payments from the two campaign supporters.
Earlier in her testimony, Cheri Young said she had doubts about taking the "Bunny money" and using it to cover up the affair. She said Edwards hatched the plan to have her deposit the money into an account controlled by her and her husband. Concerned about violating the federal $2,300 limit on individual campaign contributions, Young said she reluctantly agreed after insisting on hearing Edwards himself say the scheme was legal.
"I heard Mr. John Edwards tell me on the phone that he checked with the campaign lawyers and that this was legal," she said.
Cheri Young took the witness stand late Friday after a full week of testimony by her husband, a former fundraiser and close aide to Edwards.
Though Andrew Young testified last week that the couple spent much of the money provided by the donors to build his family's $1.5 million home, the couple also supported the pregnant mistress out of their checking account, paying for her medical care, a BMW, a $2,700-a-month rental house and a monthly allowance of thousands of dollars in cash.
Cheri Young said she agreed to handle the money because if the public found out about Edwards' affair with Hunter, the campaign and her husband's job were in danger.
"I cannot tell you how disgusted I was. Why me? This was my husband's fight," she said. "Now I had to fix it."
After reporters for the National Enquirer tracked Hunter down in December 2007 and the Youngs agreed for Andrew to issue a public statement accepting paternity, they embarked with the pregnant mistress on a cross-country odyssey of private jets and luxury retreats, all paid for by Baron.
Eventually they settled into a $20,000-a-month rental mansion Baron paid for in Santa Barbara, Calif. Cheri Young said Hunter chose the location because that was where her "healer and spiritual advisor" lived.
Cheri Young said Hunter also had her write checks totaling thousands of dollars to the New Age healer, Bob McGovern, whom the mistress said she wanted to be with her when she gave birth.
There was also tension between the Youngs' family and Hunter.
"We were not allowed to touch the baby," Cheri Young testified. "My kids were not allowed anywhere they might breathe on the baby."
Edwards had also stopped returning the Andrew's calls, prompting the Youngs to fly to Texas to meet Baron at his home. They met with Baron and his wife, Lisa Blue.
Cheri Young said she told Baron she wanted to go home, but he told them they could never return to North Carolina or live close to the politician. Baron's wife, a lawyer and psychologist, had recently visited the Edwardses and she advised them to steer clear of Elizabeth, who was angry with the Youngs over their role in her husband's affair.
"'Mrs. Edwards is not well," Young recounted Blue as saying. "'I'm a doctor and she is not mentally healthy. There is a very good chance she would be a harm to you and your family.'"
Blue is expected to testify later in the trial. Baron died of cancer in October 2008.
After a mid-afternoon break, a lawyer for Cheri Young told the judge she was suffering from a migraine. The judge dismissed the jury early, telling them Young was expected to retake the stand Tuesday.
After Young completes her testimony, the next witness called by prosecutors could be Josh Brumberger, a young aide who was with Edwards on the night in 2006 when Hunter walked up to the candidate in the bar of a New York hotel and introduced herself. Brumberger was later pushed aside by Edwards after he tried to dissuade his boss from continuing with the affair.
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Anna Paquin is married to True Blood costar Stephen Moyer and expecting her first baby this fall, but she hasn't stopped identifying as bisexual. In an interview with Zooey magazine, Paquin, 29, says that her attraction to both genders is still a part of who she is.
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