Six Weeks From Launch, ?Mint For Student Loans? Contender ...

Currently, outstanding national student loan debt is over $1 trillion, $864 billion of which is backed by ye olde federal government. According to the Center for American Progress, the majority of those loans have an interest rate higher than six percent ? generally speaking, twice the average mortgage rate and is thrice the rate at which the government borrows. In the American education system, student debt is the 8,000-pound elephant in the room.

Tuition.io, the startup formerly-known-as Binksty, is one of a handful of companies trying to give college students some much-needed help in the loan department. A member of Launchpad LA accelerator?s fourth class, Tuition.io wants to become the Mint.com for student loans by allowing student borrowers to manage their loans from a single interface and by providing a suite of tools to help them find the most relevant repayment options.

After officially launching its public beta six weeks ago, Tuition.io is today announcing that it has surpassed the $250 million mark in aggregate user debt under management and that it has raised $1 million in seed funding from investors that include Mohr Davidow Ventures, early-stage investor Jerry Neumann, New York-based venture firm Mesa+, AF Square?s Troy Carter, Richard Wolpert, Rob Glaser and Launchpad LA ? to name a few.

Considering the media buzz around the fact that student loan debt is fast becoming the ?new subprime? category, Tuition.io?s concept is timely. More than 37 million people in the U.S. have outstanding student loan debt, including Brendon McQueen, the startup?s founder, who graduated from Columbia with 12 loans of his own.

Of course, given the timeliness of the growing student debt crisis, Tuition.io isn?t the only company tackling this space, competing with young startups like Socratic Labs? Student Loan Hero, more broadly with debt managers including ReadyForZero, PeerTransfer, SimpleTuition and the P2P lending services like the well-funded Social Finance and the new-ish Pave.com.

To stay relevant in a competitive space, McQueen says that he set out to create a loan management tool that was simple to set up for any user and would allow students to get their loans under control no matter how much they owe or where they are in the payment process.

Tuition.io offers an automated onboarding process to get students started, and then allows them to access all of their loans in one place and visualize debt via detailed charts and graphs, along with a comprehensive calendar of loan payment due dates. The site also creates a personalized action plan for each student, which provide students with better ways to save on monthly payments and tips on how to pay down loans faster, McQueen says.

Since launch, Tuition.io has partnered with socially conscious, student-focused organizations like Student Veterans of American and OurTime.org to help make student debt a bigger part of the public discourse on education in the U.S. To date, the startup is managing over $250 million in debt and over 40,000 loans from borrowers at 130 universities.

As of now, the service is free, which McQueen says will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future. While the startup now has a longer runway with its new seed capital, it will need to begin monetizing at some point, especially as it does not currently originate or consolidate loans.

McQueen says that Tuition.io may charge a fee down the road, or, like Mint.com, leverage its student financial profiles to offer refinancing or other loan services. But, for now, Tuition.io is focused on helping match students with the best loans, rates and providers, find savings and apply for consolidation if/when it makes sense for them.

For more, find Tuition.io at home here.

Tuition.io is a revolutionary new tool for managing your student loans that lets you optimize your debt for your unique situation.

? Learn more

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/27/six-weeks-from-launch-mint-for-student-loans-contender-tuition-io-hits-250m-under-management-lands-1m-in-seed/

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As budget cuts loom, is government shutdown next?

FILE - In this Feb. 26, 2013 file photo, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. President Barack Obama will meet Friday with the top leaders in the House and Senate to discuss what to do about automatic cuts to the federal budget, White House and congressional leaders said. The meeting is set to take place hours after the $85 billion in across-the-board cuts will have officially kicked in. This suggests both sides are operating under the assumption a deal won't be reached to avert the cuts ahead of the March 1 deadline. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 26, 2013 file photo, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. President Barack Obama will meet Friday with the top leaders in the House and Senate to discuss what to do about automatic cuts to the federal budget, White House and congressional leaders said. The meeting is set to take place hours after the $85 billion in across-the-board cuts will have officially kicked in. This suggests both sides are operating under the assumption a deal won't be reached to avert the cuts ahead of the March 1 deadline. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 26, 2013 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in Newport News, Va. President Barack Obama will meet Friday with the top leaders in the House and Senate to discuss what to do about automatic cuts to the federal budget, White House and congressional leaders said. The meeting is set to take place hours after the $85 billion in across-the-board cuts will have officially kicked in. This suggests both sides are operating under the assumption a deal won't be reached to avert the cuts ahead of the March 1 deadline. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File)

The Capitol plaza is seen as automatic spending cuts are set to take effect on March 1, in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - In this Feb. 26, 2013 file photo, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. President Barack Obama will meet Friday with the top leaders in the House and Senate to discuss what to do about automatic cuts to the federal budget, White House and congressional leaders said. The meeting is set to take place hours after the $85 billion in across-the-board cuts will have officially kicked in. This suggests both sides are operating under the assumption a deal won't be reached to avert the cuts ahead of the March 1 deadline. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 26, 2013 file photo, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. President Barack Obama will meet Friday with the top leaders in the House and Senate to discuss what to do about automatic cuts to the federal budget, White House and congressional leaders said. The meeting is set to take place hours after the $85 billion in across-the-board cuts will have officially kicked in. This suggests both sides are operating under the assumption a deal won't be reached to avert the cuts ahead of the March 1 deadline. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? With big, automatic budget cuts about to kick in, House Republicans are turning to mapping strategy for the next showdown just a month away, when a government shutdown instead of just a slowdown will be at stake.

Both topics are sure to come up at the White House meeting Friday between President Barack Obama and top congressional leaders, including Republican House Speaker John Boehner. A breakthrough on replacing or easing the imminent across-the-board spending cuts still seems unlikely at the first face-to-face discussion between Obama and Republican leaders this year.

To no one's surprise, even as a dysfunctional Washington appears incapable of averting a crisis over economy-rattling spending cuts, it may be lurching toward another over a possible shutdown.

Republicans are planning for a vote next week on a bill to fund the day-to-day operations of the government through the Sept. 30 end of the 2013 fiscal year ? while keeping in place the new $85 billion in cuts of 5 percent to domestic agencies and 8 percent to the military.

The need to keep the government's doors open and lights on ? or else suffer the first government shutdown since 1996 ? requires the GOP-dominated House and the Democratic-controlled Senate to agree. Right now they hardly see eye to eye.

The House GOP plan, unveiled to the rank and file on Wednesday, would award the Pentagon and the Veterans Administration with their line-by-line budgets, for a more-targeted rather than indiscriminate batch of military cuts, but would deny domestic agencies the same treatment. And that has whipped up opposition from veteran Democratic senators on the Appropriations Committee. Domestic agencies would see their budgets frozen almost exactly as they are, which would mean no money for new initiatives such as cybersecurity or for routine increases for programs such as low-income housing.

"We're not going to do that," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. "Of course not."

Any agreement needs to pass through a gantlet of House tea party conservatives intent on preserving the across-the-board cuts and Senate Democrats pressing for action on domestic initiatives, even at the risk of creating a foot-tall catchall spending bill.

There's also this: GOP leaders have calculated that the automatic cuts arriving on Friday need to be in place in order for them to be able to muster support from conservatives for the catchall spending bill to keep the government running. That's because many staunch conservatives want to preserve the cuts even as defense hawks and others fret about the harm that might do to the military and the economy. If the automatic cuts are dealt with before the government-wide funding bill gets a vote, there could be a conservative revolt.

"The overall sequester levels must hold," said Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif.

Little to no progress has been made so far between House and Senate leaders and the White House, and given the hard feelings engulfing Washington, there's no guarantee that this problem can be solved, even though the stakes ? a shutdown of non-essential government programs after March 27 ? carry more risk than the across-the-board cuts looming on Friday.

The funding plan for the rest of the fiscal year will be a main topic at the White House meeting on Friday, the March 1 deadline day for averting the across-the-board cuts.

Obama, speaking to a group of business executives Wednesday night, said the cuts would be a "tumble downward" for the economy, though he acknowledged it could takes weeks before many Americans feel the full impact of the budget shrinking.

The warring sides in Washington have spent this week assigning blame rather than seeking a bipartisan way out. In a glimpse of the state of debate on Wednesday, Republicans and the White House bickered over whether the cuts would be under way by the time Friday's meeting started. A spokesman for Boehner said they would be in place; the White House countered that Obama would in fact have until midnight Friday to set them in motion.

The cumbersome annual ritual of passing annual agency spending bills collapsed entirely last year ? not a single one of the 12 annual appropriations bills for the budget year that began back in October has passed Congress ? and Congress has to act by March 27 to prevent a partial shutdown of the government.

By freezing budgets for domestic agencies, the Republican plan would deny an increase for a big cybersecurity initiative, additional money to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal and money to build new Coast Guard cutters. GOP initiatives such as more money for the Small Business Administration or fossil fuels research would be hurt as well, but there's little appetite for the alternative, which is to stack more than $1 trillion worth of spending bills together for a single up-or-down vote.

But the GOP move to add the line-by-line spending bills for the Pentagon and veterans' programs to the catchall spending bill would give the military much-sought increases for force readiness and the Veterans Administration additional funding for health care.

That approach has few fans in the White House, which is seeking money to implement Obama's signature efforts to overhaul financial regulation and the nation's health care system, or within the Democratic Senate, where members of the Appropriations Committee want to add a stack of bills covering domestic priorities such as homeland security, NASA and federal law enforcement agencies like the FBI.

"You need balance," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "We feel as strongly about the domestic side as we do defense."

The catchall spending measure, known as a continuing resolution or CR inside Washington, was originally seen as a potential must-pass measure to avert Friday's cuts or make them less severe. But no serious talks to avert the cuts have been under way.

On Thursday, Democrats will force a vote on a measure that would forestall the automatic cuts through the end of the year, replacing them with longer-term cuts to the Pentagon and cash payments to farmers and installing a minimum 30 percent tax rate on income exceeding $1 million. But that plan is virtually certain to be toppled by a GOP-led filibuster vote.

Republicans in turn are considering offering a measure that would give Obama authority to propose a rewrite to the 2013 budget to redistribute the cuts. Obama would be unable to cut defense by more than the $43 billion reduction that the Pentagon currently faces, and would also be unable to raise taxes to undo the cuts. The GOP plan would allow a resulting Obama proposal to go into effect unless Congress passed a resolution to overturn it.

The idea is that money could be transferred from lower-priority accounts to accounts funding air traffic control or meat inspection. But the White House says that such moves would offer only slight relief. At the same time, however, it could take pressure off of Congress to address the sequester.

In the House, where Republicans in the past Congress passed legislation to replace the cuts, Boehner has said it's now up to Obama and the Senate to figure a way out. The Senate never took up the House-passed bills, which expired when the new Congress was seated in January.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-02-27-Budget%20Battle/id-e416d6f5d5b9401f8bca6135ddf4e15e

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Eat too much? Maybe it's in the blood

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Bone marrow cells that produce brain-derived eurotrophic factor (BDNF), known to affect regulation of food intake, travel to part of the hypothalamus in the brain where they "fine-tune" appetite, said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and Shiga University of Medical Science in Otsu, Shiga, Japan, in a report that appears online in the journal Nature Communications.

"We knew that blood cells produced BDNF," said Dr. Lawrence Chan, professor of molecular and cellular biology and professor and chief of the division of diabetes, endocrinology & metabolism in the department of medicine and director of the federally funded Diabetes Research Center, all at BCM. The factor is produced in the brain and in nerve cells as well. "We didn't know why it was produced in blood cells."

Dr. Hiroshi Urabe and Dr. Hideto Kojima, current and former postdoctoral fellows in Chan's laboratory respectively, looked for BDNF in the brains of mice who had not been fed for about 24 hours. The bone marrow-derived cells had been marked with a fluorescent protein that showed up on microscopy. To their surprise, they found cells producing BDNF in a part of the brain's hypothalamus called the paraventricular nucleus.

"We knew that in embryonic development, some blood cells do go to the brain and become microglial cells," said Chan. (Microglial cells form part of the supporting structure of the central nervous system. They are characterized by a nucleus from which "branches" expand in all directions.) "This is the first time we have shown that this happens in adulthood. Blood cells can go to one part of the brain and become physically changed to become microglial-like cells."

However, these bone marrow cells produce a bone marrow-specific variant of BDNF, one that is different from that produced by the regular microglial cells already in the hypothalamus.

Only a few of these blood-derived cells actually reach the hypothalamus, said Chan.

"It's not very impressive if you look casually under the microscope," he said. However, a careful scrutiny showed that the branching nature of these cells allow them to come into contact with a whole host of brain cells.

"Their effects are amplified," said Chan.

Mice that are born lacking the ability to produce blood cells that make BDNF overeat, become obese and develop insulin resistance (a lack of response to insulin that affects the ability to metabolize glucose). A bone marrow transplant that restores the gene for making the cells that produce BDNF can normalize appetite, said Chan. However, a transplant of bone marrow that does not contain this gene does not reverse overeating, obesity or insulin resistance.

When normal bone marrow cells that produce BDNF are injected into the third ventricle (a fluid-filled cavity in the brain) of mice that lack BDNF, they no longer have the urge to overeat, said Chan.

All in all, the studies represent a new mechanism by which these bone-marrow derived cells control feeding through BDNF and could provide a new avenue to attack obesity, said Chan.

He and his colleagues hypothesize that the bone marrow cells that produce BDNF fine tune the appetite response, although a host of different appetite-controlling hormones produced by the regular nerve cells in the hypothalamus do the lion's share of the work.

"Bone marrow cells are so accessible," said Chan. "If these cells play a regulatory role, we could draw some blood, modify something in it or add something that binds to blood cells and give it back. We may even be able to deliver medication that goes to the brain," crossing the blood-brain barrier. Even a few of these cells can have an effect because their geometry means that they have contact with many different neurons or nerve cells.

He credits Urabe and Kojima (now with Shiga University of Medical Science in Japan) with doing most of the experiments involved in the research.

###

Baylor College of Medicine: http://www.bcm.edu/news/mediacenter

Thanks to Baylor College of Medicine for this article.

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

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127033/Eat_too_much__Maybe_it_s_in_the_blood

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My Father's Good Nature | Mom's Education Sites

When my father lost an employee due to an injury, he told the employee that he might try apply for disability. My father is always trying to help people, so he found the employee a Social Security Disability Attorney Sacramento to take the case. My father even offered to put up the fees for the lawyer until he was able to be reimbursed for the expenses. My father stayed with the employee until he was able to get his benefits started.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2013 at 11:15 am and is filed under Uncategorized. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Source: http://www.suchasmartmom.com/uncategorized/my-fathers-good-nature/

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Video: Hundreds of flights canceled at Chicago O?Hare

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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/50964279/

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Holographs help firefighters spot victims through flames

John Roach , NBC News ? ? ? 3 hrs.

Firefighters may soon be able to see through flames and find people trapped in burning buildings, according to details of a new holographic imaging technique described Tuesday.

Some fire departments already use infrared cameras to see through smoke, but these cameras use zoom lenses to collect and focus light. The intense infrared radiation emitted by flames can overwhelm the camera sensors and limit their use, the researchers explain.

The new technique developed by Pietro Ferraro at the National Institute of Optics in Italy and his colleagues makes use of a lens-free digital holography technology in the infrared range.

Holography is a means of producing 3-D images of an object using two beams of light: an object beam and a reference beam. The object beam is shone onto the object being imaged. The reflected light is combined with the reference beam to create a pattern that encodes a 3-D image.

In the new technique described in the journal Optics Express, a beam of infrared laser light is widely dispersed throughout a smoke-and-flame-filled room. A holographic imager records the reflected light and decodes it to reveal what lies behind the inferno.

"The result is a live, 3-D movie of the room and its contents," the Optical Society, which publishes the journal, notes in a news release. "The next step to moving this technology to the field is to develop a portable tripod-based system that houses both the laser source and the IR camera."

John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/imaging-technique-lets-firefighters-see-through-flames-1C8564100

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The Engadget Interview: Qualcomm's Raj Talluri talks Snapdragon at MWC 2013

Qualcomm finally detailed its Snapdragon 200 and 400 processors here at MWC, and we got the opportunity to discuss the new chips with Raj Talluri, SVP of product management. While the Snapdragon 600 and 800 SoCs are geared towards high-end devices, the 200 and 400 are targeting sub-$100 and $200-300 phones. He explained that the software remains as close as possible to what's available on the 600 and 800, but the hardware is scaled down to support lower-resolution displays and cameras by using ARM cores instead of the company's own Krait architecture. We then talked about the Snapdragon 800, which was decoding 4K video at CES but is being showcased here in Barcelona handling 4K playback with Dolby and DTS in Qualcomm's movie theater (sans popcorn, sadly). He also mentioned some of the other demos at the company's booth -- 4K encoding and streaming (via TransferJet), realtime video editing, voice activation, games (Modern Combat 4 and Need For Speed) and more. Don't miss our video interview after the break.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Mobile

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/26/the-engadget-interview-qualcomm-svp-of-product-management-raj-t/

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Scientists' findings disclose a new and much needed test for river blindness infection

Scientists' findings disclose a new and much needed test for river blindness infection

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found a telltale molecular marker for Onchocerciasis or "river blindness," a parasitic infection that affects tens of millions of people in Africa, Latin America and other tropical regions. The newly discovered biomarker, detectable in patients' urine, is secreted by Onchocerca volvulus worms during an active infection. The biomarker could form the basis of a portable, field-ready test with significant advantages over current diagnostic methods.

"There has been a need for an inexpensive, non-invasive test that can discriminate between active and non-active river blindness infections during treatment campaigns," said Kim D. Janda, who is Professor and Ely R. Callaway, Jr. Chair in Chemistry, member of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology, and director of the Worm Institute of Research and Medicine at TSRI. "We think that this new biomarker can be the basis for such a test."

The work is described in an online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of February 25, 2013.

Leading Cause of Vision Loss

A leading cause of vision loss, Onchocerciasis infections are transmitted among humans by river-dwelling blackflies in tropical regions. The vast majority of cases occur in sub-Saharan Africa, although pockets of endemic infection exist in Yemen and in Central and South America. The major symptoms of the disease, including blindness, result from the spread of O. volvulus "microfilariae"?early-stage larval worms?to the eyes and other tissues, where they trigger damaging inflammatory reactions.

Mass treatment campaigns, begun in the 1990s, have used the anti-worm drug ivermectin, as well as the antibiotic doxycycline, which kills a symbiotic bacterium within the worms. The World Health Organization's African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control has set a target date of 2025 for the eradication of the disease in that region. But Onchocerciasis treatment is seldom effective immediately and often spares adult worms. The latter can remain in protected nodules under the skin of a patient and secrete microfilaria for a decade or more. Health agencies need better diagnostic methods not only to monitor the progress of Onchocerciasis treatment campaigns, but also to limit the use of ivermectin and doxycycline to reduce the risk of resistance.

Current diagnostic methods include the painful cutting of "skin snips" from patients for microscopic analysis and an ELISA antibody test for microfilariae, which may yield positive results even for non-active infections. "You can still have circulating antibodies to a nemotode antigen in your blood for a long time after the infection is gone," said Janda.

Looking for a Better Way

A better diagnostic marker would be a metabolite of O. volvulus that appears only during an active, microfilariae-producing infection and that could determine both the presence and the severity of disease. In 2010, Janda's laboratory demonstrated the feasibility of this approach by sifting through the small-molecule metabolites within blood samples from river blindness patients?a technique called "metabolome mining"?and finding a set linked to active onchocerciasis infection. For the new study, the team sought a simpler set of biomarkers?or better yet, a single unique biomarker in urine.

Daniel Globisch, a postdoctoral fellow in the Janda laboratory, started with samples of urine from onchocerciasis-infected and non-infected Africans. Using a powerful laboratory technique called liquid chromatography mass spectrometry, he measured the concentrations of hundreds of small-molecule metabolites in the samples. Excitingly, between the infected and non-infected urine samples, one difference stood out clearly: "An unknown small molecule was highly elevated in the samples from infected individuals," said Globisch.

In a process akin to looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack, Globisch was able to purify the mysterious metabolite, and, using mass spectrometry, determine the chemical identities of its individual pieces. "The metabolite itself wasn't present in the databases, so I searched the literature for what is known about the biosynthesis and metabolic pathways in these nematodes," Globisch said. Ultimately, he was able to identify the metabolite as N-acetyltyramine-O,?-glucuronide. Remarkably, this molecule's inception can be traced to O. volvulus as a neurotransmitter molecule that is secreted by young, reproducing worms and then modified by the human body on its way to being excreted in urine.

"It's a spectacular find in terms of biomarkers as it does not occur naturally in humans," Globisch said. Levels of the metabolite in a non-infected North American control sample were near zero.

Toward a Field Test

In urine samples from Africans with active onchocerciasis infections, Globisch found that levels of the biomarker were on average four to six times higher than in samples from Africans with non-active infections. In a separate test, the team determined that a full course of doxycycline treatment, which sterilizes or kills infecting worms by destroying their symbiotic bacteria, also reduced levels of the biomarker to near-normal. "This biomarker appears to be specific for an active infection," Globisch said. The wide gap between biomarker levels in active and non-active infections suggests that a field test based on the biomarker would be robustly useful.

Such a diagnostic, said Janda, might ultimately be a simple urine dipstick test, much like a home pregnancy test, which would indicate the amount of the O. volvulus biomarker present in the sample. "Ultimately for this to be of value in Third World countries we will need to morph this biomarker into something that's inexpensive, simple to use, tolerant of extreme temperatures and portable?basically distilling our finding to a test that can be carted around in a backpack," Janda said.

Importantly, he adds that Globisch's metabolome-mining approach in theory should be applicable to the development of diagnostic tests for other worm diseases.

###

Scripps Research Institute: http://www.scripps.edu

Thanks to Scripps Research Institute for this article.

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

This press release has been viewed 20 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127013/Scientists__findings_disclose_a_new_and_much_needed_test_for_river_blindness_infection

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Warrant issued for Vegas Strip shooting suspect

This photo provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department shows Ammar Harris in a booking photo from a 2012 arrest in Las Vegas. Police have identified Harris as a suspect in a shooting that sent a Maserati into a taxi that exploded, killing three people on Feb. 21, 2013 in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department)

This photo provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department shows Ammar Harris in a booking photo from a 2012 arrest in Las Vegas. Police have identified Harris as a suspect in a shooting that sent a Maserati into a taxi that exploded, killing three people on Feb. 21, 2013 in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department)

This photo provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department shows Ammar Harris in a booking photo from a 2012 arrest in Las Vegas. Police have identified Harris as a suspect in a shooting that sent a Maserati into a taxi that exploded, killing three people on Feb. 21, 2013 in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department)

This photo provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department shows a black Range Rover SUV in Las Vegas that was found Saturday, Feb. 23, 2013, at an apartment complex east of the Las Vegas Strip. It has been impounded as evidence in connection with a shooting that sent a Maserati into a taxi that exploded, killing three people. Police are looking for 26-year-old Ammar Harris in connection with the shooting. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department)

FILE - In this Feb. 21, 2013 file photo, law enforcement personal investigate the scene of a mulit-vehicle accident on Las Vegas Blvd and Flamingo Road Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013. Variously known as an adult playground and Disneyland for grown-ups, Las Vegas has worked to brand itself as a place where tourists can enjoy a sense of edginess with no real danger. But a series of high-profile and seemingly random incidents that have left visitors to the Strip dead or in the hospital is threatening Sin City?s reputation as a padded room of a town where people can cut loose with no fear of consequences. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Review-Journal, Jeff Scheid) LOCAL TV OUT; LOCAL INTERNET OUT; LAS VEGAS SUN OUT

This undated image provided by Robert S. Beckett shows Kenneth Cherry Jr., also known as rapper Kenny Clutch. The Clark County, Nev., coroner's office identified Cherry as the Maserati driver who died after being peppered with gunfire from someone in a Range Rover SUV, sparking a fiery crash that killed two others, in Las Vegas, Feb. 21, 2013. (AP Photo/Robert S. Beckett)

LAS VEGAS (AP) ? Police said Monday they have a warrant for a 26-year-old ex-convict identified as the prime suspect in a shooting and fiery crash that killed three people last week on the Las Vegas Strip.

"We can say with certainty that Ammar Harris is the suspect who fired the fatal shots," Las Vegas police Capt. Chris Jones told reporters at an afternoon update about a manhunt that he said would be advertised on southern Nevada billboards.

Police previously released a photo of Harris taken after his arrest last year in Las Vegas in a 2010 prostitution case. It showed Harris with tattoos on his right cheek and words on his neck above an image that appeared to depict an owl with blackened eyes. Jones said Harris should be considered armed and dangerous.

Jones said investigators were looking everywhere Harris had lived in the past. He wasn't specific.

Public records show that Harris previously lived in South Carolina and Georgia, and told a police officer when he was arrested in Miami Beach last December that he had lived in Florida for about a year.

Harris was convicted in 2004 in Orangeburg, S.C., of felony possession with intent to sell a stolen pistol, Jones said. The conviction was not in California, as police said earlier.

Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson attended the news conference and said afterward that the case was getting top priority from prosecutors and he hoped Harris would turn himself in. He said the warrant was issued Friday.

"If Mr. Harris is listening, I would urge him to surrender," Wolfson said.

Harris used the name Ammar Asim Faruq Harris when he was arrested last May in Las Vegas in the June 2010 case. He was charged with robbery, sexual assault, kidnapping and coercion with a weapon.

Las Vegas police also sought pandering by force and ex-felon in possession of concealed weapon charges stemming from allegations that Harris was a pimp and attacked a woman.

Court records show the case was dismissed last June. The prosecutor and a public defender who handled the case didn't immediately respond to messages Monday.

In Miami Beach, Harris was arrested Dec. 7 after he was accused of driving a silver 2006 Hummer H3 the wrong way on a congested street at 2 a.m. The arresting officer said Harris produced a Florida state identification card and provided a Miami address. The status of the case in Miami-Dade courts was unclear Monday.

In Atlanta, Harris was arrested in June 2004 on a felony marijuana possession with intent to distribute charge. According to court records, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge and was sentenced to three months in jail.

Fulton County jail records show Harris spent about two weeks in jail in February 2008 after a misdemeanor battery arrest. The outcome of that case was not immediately clear Monday.

In Las Vegas, investigators say Harris was driving a black Range Rover SUV when he fired shots into a Maserati before dawn Thursday, killing an aspiring rapper and causing a crash that killed two people when the Maserati slammed into a taxi that exploded in a fireball at the heart of the Strip.

Police said several other people were with Harris in the SUV as it fled the scene of the six-vehicle, chain-reaction crash on Las Vegas Boulevard near the Bellagio, Caesars Palace, Bally's and Flamingo resorts.

Jones and police homicide Lt. Ray Steiber said they were confident that Harris was the only shooter. They didn't say whether police intend to prosecute anyone else in the SUV.

But, "To anyone who is aware of his location or is assisting Ammar Harris in any way, you will be arrested and prosecuted," Jones said. "You may think you're being a friend, but keep in mind Ammar Harris is wanted for the murder of three citizens."

The SUV was the focus of an intense search before it was found Saturday parked in the garage of a gated apartment complex just a couple of blocks east of the Strip. Harris wasn't found at a nearby apartment where he was believed to have been living.

Kenneth Wayne Cherry Jr. was mortally wounded when the dark gray Maserati he was driving was peppered by gunfire from the SUV. Taxi driver Michael Boldon, 62, of Las Vegas, and passenger Sandra Sutton-Wasmund, 48, of Maple Valley, Wash., died in the taxi.

Police say the triple homicide stemmed from an altercation between Cherry and Harris in a valet area of the upscale Aria resort a block south of the crash scene at Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo Road.

A passenger in the Maserati was wounded in the arm, and four people from four other vehicles were treated for non-life-threatening injuries after the crash.

Police released a photo of Harris taken after last year's arrest in Las Vegas in the prostitution case. It showed Harris with tattoos on his right cheek and words on his neck above an image that appeared to depict an owl with blackened eyes. Jones said Harris should be considered armed and dangerous.

Las Vegas police sought help during last week's search for the Range Rover from local and federal authorities in Nevada and neighboring states of Arizona, California and Utah.

___

Associated Press writer Kate Brumback in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-02-25-Vegas%20Gun%20Battle/id-ce9eaa7842564b6698b02b8dd6a0584a

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Man takes dog for a walk, returns to house engulfed in inferno

By Donna Rapado, NBCMiami.com

A man who took his dog out for a walk around the block Saturday night returned home moments later to a raging inferno with flames of up to 30 feet bursting through his roof.

The fire was so bad, it destroyed the home. "There's no positive to this,? said homeowner Dave Rudra, who watched his home of 10 years go up in flames. ?I don't know what's going on."

---

Police and fire arson investigators spent the day Sunday sifting through the house, looking for evidence to help them identify what caused the fire. Chief Jorge Mara, with Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, said the fire had been so large, firefighters needed to make sure it didn?t spread to other homes.?

?There was such heavy flames involved, they felt it was too dangerous for guys to go in and make an initial interior attack so they decided to go to a defensive mode and protect the houses on either side," Mara said.

Sunday afternoon, Rudra returned to the home and spoke to investigators. He wanted to see whether he can salvage anything inside the home, including pictures of his three children.

"The only thing that I really care about is my children's pictures and the videotapes,? he said. ?Everything else can be replaced, and that's all I want."

He said the fire left him with nothing but the pants he wore. "They've already torn it down with tractors and everything,? he said. ?So even if there was anything left, it's all debris now.?

As Sunday's daylight disappeared and with damage and debris still left to sift through, fire investigators said they planned to return to the destroyed property Monday.

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/24/17079191-man-takes-dog-for-a-walk-returns-to-house-engulfed-in-inferno?lite

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Barnes & Noble chair wants to buy retail business - NewsOn6.com ...

By MAE ANDERSON
AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) - The last remaining national bookstore chain is being taken off the shelf and dusted off for sale.

Founder Barnes & Noble's founder Leonard Riggio disclosed in a regulatory filing Monday that he wants to acquire the company's stores and website, but not the business that makes the Nook e-reader or the company's college bookstores. No price was disclosed.

It's the latest attempt by a company founder to take back control of all or part of a company he founded. Best Buy's co-founder Richard Schulze is mulling a bid for the electronics retailer, and Michael Dell earlier this month announced a $24.4 billion deal to take the namesake computer company he founded private.

The deals are a way executives can have more control over companies without the need to run everything by shareholders. In all of these cases, the founders have devoted decades to the businesses and the companies are long past their glory days and struggling to survive in a changing retail landscape.

"When you've got control outside public eye or public market, you can invest and translate your strategy at your own pace," said Peter Wahlstrom, analyst at Morningstar. "It's him believing he can run it better by himself without the distraction of the digital side. He believes the brand has value that's not being recognized by investors."

Barnes & Noble, based in New York, has been struggling to find its place as more readers have shifted to electronic books and competition has grown from discount stores and online competitors. The company, which has 689 bookstores in 50 states and 674 college bookstores, has been trying to avoid the fate of its former rival Borders Group, which did not adapt to the growing threat of the Internet and e-books and went out of business in 2011.

Technically, Riggio, who is chairman of the chain, didn't found the original Barnes & Noble store in New York, which opened in 1917. But he bought the store and brand name in the 1970s. Under his leadership, Barnes & Noble became a one of the pioneers of the "big box" format in which national chains would set up large stores that offer a wide selection of merchandise under one roof.

The company also pioneered bookselling in general. In 1975 it began offering 40 percent off New York Times best sellers, which was then unheard of in the bookselling business.

Throughout the 1980s, the company expanded through acquisitions. It bought B Dalton Bookseller in 1987 and BookStop in 1989. Then it went public in 1993 and established its Web site in 1997.

But the company was hurt by Internet retailers like Amazon.com and discounters such as Wal-Mart and Costco expanding their book selections. Barnes & Noble has been proactive, investing heavily in its Nook e-book readers and a digital library. It struck a deal with Microsoft last April to create a Nook subsidiary. But the Nook faces competition from other devices like Apple's iPad Mini, Amazon's Kindle and Google's Nexus tablet.

And the unit is far from profitable. Earlier this month, the company said it expects Nook media revenue of less than $3 billion. It also anticipates a loss for the unit before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to exceed the $262 million loss recorded in its 2012 fiscal year.

This follows a report from the retailer in January that its Nook unit revenue fell 12.6 percent to $311 million during the critical holiday period. Overall sales during the holiday period fell 10.9 percent at bookstores and online compared with a year ago. Barnes & Noble is scheduled to report third-quarter results Thursday.

Barnes & Noble bookstores, though, have been profitable even though they're facing falling sales. The company has broadened its offerings in stores and sells more high-margin games, educational toys and other non-book items to improve results.

In its fiscal second recent quarter ended Oct. 27, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in the retail segment - which includes the stores and the Web site that Riggio wants to buy - doubled to $28 million, helped by selling higher margin products. Revenue from that segment fell 3 percent to $996 million. Overall, the company's net income totaled $2.2 million, up from a prior-year loss of $6.6 million. Revenue was nearly flat at $1.88 billion.

Monday's filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said that Riggio will seek to negotiate a price with Barnes & Noble's board and pay for the deal with cash and debt. Riggio is making the offer in order to facilitate the company's review of its strategic options for separating its Nook business, according to the filing.

Barnes & Noble said the offer will be considered by a committee of three independent directors. But there is no set timetable for the process. Barnes & Noble said the offer will be considered by a committee of three independent directors. But there is no set timetable for the process.

Morningstar's Wahlstrom said the deal makes sense considering the retail side of the business has been overshadowed by investments needed for the Nook business. He added that the move by Riggio was not unexpected: His large stake in the company - and history with it - would likely make finding extra financing the company needs easier.

"Riggio feels like he can run it better than just about anyone else, and with four decades of operating history there's not much reason to believe that he can't," he said.

On the news, Barnes & Noble shares rose $1.18, or 8.8 percent, to $14.69. Its shares have traded in a 52-week range of $10.45 in mid-April to $26 later that same month.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.newson6.com/story/21345068/barnes-noble-chair-wants-to-buy-retail-business

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Distinct niches in bone marrow nurture blood stem cells

Monday, February 25, 2013

In research that could one day improve the success of stem cell transplants and chemotherapy, scientists have found that distinct niches exist in bone marrow to nurture different types of blood stem cells.

Stem cells in the blood are the precursors to infection-fighting white blood cells and oxygen-carrying red blood cells.

The research, by a team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is reported Feb. 24 in the advance online edition of Nature.

The new findings, in mice, suggest that it may be possible to therapeutically target support cells in a particular niche. On the one hand, a drug that nourishes support cells could encourage blood stem cells to establish themselves in the bone marrow, enabling patients who have had stem cell transplants to more quickly rebuild their immune systems.

On the other, tumor cells are known to hide in the bone marrow, and a drug that disrupts the niche environment may drive cancer cells into the bloodstream, where they are more vulnerable to the damaging effects of chemotherapy.

"Our results offer hope for targeting these niches to treat specific cancers or to improve the success of stem cell transplants," says senior author Daniel Link, MD, the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Professor of Medicine. "Already, we and others are leading clinical trials to evaluate whether it is possible to disrupt these niches in patients with leukemia or multiple myeloma."

Working in the mice, the researchers selectively deleted a critical gene, CXCL12, which is known to be important for keeping blood stem cells healthy. Rather than knock out the gene in all of the support cells in a niche, the researchers deleted the gene in specific types of support cells. This led to the discovery that each niche holds only certain blood stem cells that are nourished by a unique set of support cells.

"What we found was rather surprising," Link says. "There's not just one niche for developing blood cells in the bone marrow. There's a distinct niche for stem cells, which have the ability to become any blood cell in the body, and a separate niche for infection-fighting blood cells that are destined to become T cells and B cells."

The findings provide a strong foundation for investigating whether disrupting these niches can improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy.

In a phase II pilot study led by Washington University medical oncologist Geoffrey Uy, MD, assistant professor of medicine, Link is evaluating whether the drug G-CSF can alter the stem cell niche in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia whose cancer has recurred or is resistant to treatment. The drug was approved by the Food and Drug Administration more than 20 years ago to stimulate production of white blood cells in patients undergoing chemotherapy, who often have weakened immune systems and are prone to infections.

But Uy and colleagues will evaluate the drug when it is given before chemotherapy. Patients enrolled in the trial at the Siteman Cancer Center will receive G-CSF for five days before chemotherapy, and the investigators will determine whether it can disrupt the protective environment of the bone marrow niche and make cancer cells more sensitive to chemotherapy.

While it's too early to know whether the treatment approach will be successful, Link's new research in mice is bolstered by a companion paper in the same issue of Nature. In that research, Sean Morrison, PhD, director of the Children's Medical Center Research Institute at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, used similar molecular methods to also discover distinct niches in the bone marrow for blood stem cells.

"There's a lot of interest right now in trying to understand these niches," Link adds. "Both of these studies add new information that will be important as we move forward. Next, we hope to understand how stem cell niches can be manipulated to help patients undergoing stem cell transplants."

###

Greenbaum A, Hsu Y-MS, Day RB, Schuettpelz LG, Christopher MJ, Borgerding JN, Nagasawa T, Link DC. CXCL12 production by early mesenchymal progenitors is required for haemoatopoietic stem-cell maintenance. Nature. Advance online publication Feb. 24, 2013.

Washington University School of Medicine: http://www.medicine.wustl.edu

Thanks to Washington University School of Medicine for this article.

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

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126999/Distinct_niches_in_bone_marrow_nurture_blood_stem_cells

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Mozilla, AT&T and Ericsson team up to help you make calls from your browser, sans-plugin

Seems like you can make calls from everywhere these days, so really, why not one's browser? Mozilla, AT&T and Ericsson are using MWC to launch their new WebRTC-based proof of concept that'll bring plugin-free phone functionality to Firefox, letting users make voice calls, video calls, share files and access things like their address book through the comfort of their browser. Ericsson and Mozilla will be showing the proof of concept off this week at MWC -- if you're not in Barcelona, you can live vicariously through the press release after the break.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/j9kGzLCX9pA/

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Panthers coach Kevin Dineen angry over penalty that helped lead to the Penguins' win

PITTSBURGH -- If Kevin Dineen believes his team has been wronged by the officials, they certainly hear about it.

On Friday night, Dineen eventually threw up his hands in disgust after Florida's Tomas Kopecky was charged for slashing Pittsburgh goalie Marc-Andre Fleury in the third period of a tie game.

The ensuing power play led to Pittsburgh scoring the winning goal in a 3-1 victory over the Panthers at Consol Center.

Kopecky had charged out the box, but the Penguins were still cycling the puck around the Florida zone when Matt Niskanen zipped a 65-foot shot that flew past Jacob Markstrom's glove with 12:11 left.

Despite having time to cool off, it was obvious Dineen was still fuming afterward.

Dineen was upset with Kopecky being penalized for what Pittsburgh's Chris Kunitz wasn't when he jabbed the puck past Jacob Markstrom in the second. Kopecky was trying to get a puck past Fleury - just as Kunitz did to put the Penguins on the board.

Dineen was also mad there was no call when James Neal jumped Erik Gudbranson after he checked Evgeni Malkin at the end of the ice. Malkin fell and slammed his head into the boards and stayed face down on the ice for a few scary moments. Gudbranson wasn't penalized for what looked like a clean hit.

"It's frustrating, certainly when the game was decided on the tempo and that penalty was big at the end," Dineen said, "especially since there was a non-call for us when a guy attacks Gudbranson after a clean hit. And then they score a goal when they whack at our goalie three times.

"Our guy goes down, and he doesn't blow the whistle. It's a tough one to take, but that's the nature of it. You have to understand where your place is and just go out and play the game."

The Panthers believed they deserved a better fate than Friday's regulation loss as they played good defense and had decent offensive chances. Still, the loss was Florida's sixth in the past seven games with the Panthers now coming home for three games.

Markstrom, making his first NHL start this season, faced a barrage of shots from a rested and loaded Pittsburgh team ready to put Wednesday's wild loss to the Flyers behind them.

The Penguins came in looking to score a bushel of goals yet found the 6-6 Markstrom hogging the net and denying them for much of the night.

Pittsburgh took aim at Markstrom 60 times on Friday night with 40 on goal. Florida blocked 10 shots and the Penguins fired 10 off course.

"I've been looking forward to this all year," said Markstrom, recalled from the minors Wednesday. "I was just excited to play a game, and the fans were awesome here. I felt like I got into the game really quickly. They threw a lot of pucks from all different areas. It was a fun game to play in, too bad we didn't win."

Pittsburgh's first goal came when Kunitz jabbed the puck away two minutes after defenseman Mike Weaver gave the Panthers a 1-0 lead with a long slap shot.

The Penguins made it 3-1 with 4:45 left when Dustin Jeffrey knocked in an odd-angle pass across the goal from Matt Cooke.

Malkin remained face down on the ice for a few moments after he banged his head into the boards after Gudbranson sent him sprawling. Malkin, whose condition was not disclosed by the Penguins, eventually got up and skated off on his own.

Gudbranson said he expected retaliation from the Penguins after he saw the reigning league MVP go into the boards and not get up.

"I just finished my check," Gudbranson said afterward. "You never want to see a guy go down, and he is in a vulnerable position. But you can't pass up a hit like that. You never know, he could go around the net and he could get a back-door pass. It's unfortunate he got hurt on the play, but it's one I would take every time."

Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/23/3249168/panthers-coach-kevin-dineen-angry.html

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President Obama signs a bill into law giving himself and former President George...

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Obama presses GOP to halt automatic spending cuts

by JULIE PACE and JIM KUHNHENN / Associated Press

KING5.com

Posted on February 19, 2013 at 12:06 PM

Updated Tuesday, Feb 19 at 12:06 PM

WASHINGTON? -- Staking out his ground ahead of a fiscal deadline, President Barack Obama lashed out against Republicans, saying they are unwilling to raise taxes to reduce deficits and warning that the jobs of essential government workers, from teachers to emergency responders, are on the line.

Obama spoke as a March 1 deadline for automatic across-the-board spending cuts approached and with Republicans and Democrats in an apparent stalemate over how to avoid them.

Obama cautioned that if the $85 billion in immediate cuts -- known as the sequester -- occur, the full range of government would feel the effects. Among those he listed: furloughed FBI agents, reductions in spending for communities to pay police and fire personnel and teachers, and decreased ability to respond to threats around the world.

He said the consequences would be felt across the economy.

"People will lose their jobs," he said. "The unemployment rate might tick up again.?

"So far at least, the ideas that the Republicans have proposed ask nothing of the wealthiest Americans or the biggest corporations," Obama said. "So the burden is all on the first responders, or seniors or middle class families.?

House Republicans have proposed an alternative to the immediate cuts, targeting some spending and extending some of the reductions over a longer period of time. They also have said they are willing to undertake changes in the tax code and eliminate loopholes and tax subsidies. But they have said they would overhaul the tax system to reduce rates, not to raise revenue. Obama did win an increase at the start of the year when Congress increased the upper tax rate for the wealthiest Americans.

"The American people understand that the revenue debate is now closed," House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement Tuesday following Obama's remarks. "Tax reform is a once-in-a generation opportunity to boost job creation in America. It should not be squandered to enable more Washington spending. Spending is the problem, spending must be the focus.?

Obama's remarks came a day after he returned to Washington from a three-day golfing weekend in Florida.

Congress is not in session this week, meaning no votes will occur before next week and complicating the ability to negotiate any short-term resolution.

Obama said the anticipated cuts were already having an effect, noting that the Navy had already delayed the deployment of a carrier to the Persian Gulf.

"Changes like this -- not well thought through, not phased in properly -- changes like this effect our ability to respond to threats in unstable parts of the world," he said.

Obama wants to offset the immediate spending cuts, known as a sequestration in budget language, through a combination of targeted spending cuts and increased tax revenue. The White House is backing a proposal unveiled last week by Senate Democrats that is in line with the president's principles.

But that plan has met an icy reception among Republicans, who oppose raising taxes to offset the cuts.? GOP leaders say the president got the tax increases he wanted at the beginning of the year when Congress agreed to raise taxes on family income above $450,000 a year.

Obama called on congressional Republicans to compromise and accept the Senate Democrats' proposal.

The Democrats propose to generate revenue by plugging some tax loopholes. Those include tax breaks for the oil and natural gas industry and businesses that have sent jobs overseas, and by taxing millionaires at a rate of at least 30 percent.

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner said the Ohio Republican agrees the sequester is a bad way to reduce spending, but put the onus for averting the cuts on Democrats.

"A solution now requires the Senate -- controlled by the president's party -- to finally pass a plan of their own," spokesman Brendan Buck said.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan proposal Tuesday by co-chairs of an influential deficit-reduction commission called for reducing the deficit by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years, with much of the savings coming through health care reform, closing tax loopholes, a stingier adjustment of Social Security's cost of living increases and other measures.

The proposal by former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Democrat Erskine Bowles, the former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, calls for about one quarter of the savings to come from changes in health care programs and another quarter from revenue generated by tax changes.

In their plan, Bowles and Simpson say the automatic cuts scheduled for March 1 are too steep and could set back the economy.

"Sharp austerity could have the opposite effect by tempering the still fragile economic recovery. In order to protect the recovery, the sequester should be avoided and deficit reduction should be phased in gradually," they wrote.

Some Republicans, including House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., have advocated plugging loopholes, but as part of a discussion on a tax overhaul, not sequestration.

"Loopholes are necessary for tax reform," Ryan said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." `'If you take them for spending, you're blocking tax reform and you're really not getting the deficit under control.?

The sequester was first set to begin taking effect on Jan. 1. But as part of the "fiscal cliff" negotiations, the White House and lawmakers agreed to push it off for two months in order to create space to work on a larger budget deal.

With little progress on that front in recent weeks, Obama is calling for the sequester to be put off again, though it's unclear whether another delay would have any impact on the prospects for a broader budget agreement.

Source: http://www.king5.com/news/politics/Obama-presses-GOP-to-halt-automatic-spending-cuts-191872891.html

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Storm promises messy, dangerous commute in Midwest

Trucker Ray Jersey of St. Louis exercises his dog Samson at a truck stop as snow falls in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013. Ray Jersey opted to wait the snow storm out as much of the nation's heartland is experiencing heavy snow, treacherous roads and a day off from work or school as a large, potentially dangerous winter storm pushed eastward out of the Rockies. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

Trucker Ray Jersey of St. Louis exercises his dog Samson at a truck stop as snow falls in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013. Ray Jersey opted to wait the snow storm out as much of the nation's heartland is experiencing heavy snow, treacherous roads and a day off from work or school as a large, potentially dangerous winter storm pushed eastward out of the Rockies. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

Kamika Ralstin,left, Sarah Blakley, back, and Claudia Huerta sled down the slope of the South Van Buren overpass Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013, in Enid, Okla. Temperatures dropped into the upper 20s, as an upper level winter storm produced lightning, heavy rain, freezing rain, snow and thunder sleet, closing schools and colleges across Enid and most of Oklahoma. (AP Photo/Enid News and Eagle, Bonnie Vculek)

Two men help push a car down a snow-covered street Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013, in St. Louis. Blinding snow bombarded much of the nation's midsection Thursday, causing whiteout conditions, making major roadways all but impassable and shutting down schools and state legislatures. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Emergency crews work to get a van out from the snow packed shoulder of I-70, Thursday afternoon Feb. 21, 2013 in Topeka, Kan. Kansas was the epicenter of the winter storm, with parts of the state buried under 14 inches of powdery snow, but winter storm warnings stretched from eastern Colorado through Illinois.(AP Photo/The Topeka Capital Journal, Chris Neal)

Braden Center jumps his sled over a mound of snow on Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013 in Wichita. Kan. Parts of Kansas have received over a foot of snow since a strong winter storm moved through the area. (AP Photo/The Wichita Eagle, Travis Heying)

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) ? A major snowstorm that shuttered airports in Missouri, stranded truckers in Illinois and buried parts of Kansas in knee-deep powder was promising a messy and possibly dangerous commute Friday morning as it crawled northeast.

Wind gusts of 30 mph were expected to churn-up snow that fell overnight in southern Wisconsin, where forecasters were warning Milwaukee-area residents of slick roads and reduced visibility. The same was expected in northeast Iowa, where residents could wake up to as much as 7 inches of new snow, while nearly 200 snowplows were deployed overnight in Chicago.

At a Travel Centers of America truck stop in the central Illinois city of Effingham, all of the 137 parking spaces were filled by truckers unwilling to drive through the storm overnight.

"When it gets really bad, they like to camp out," cashier Tia Schneider said Thursday night, noting that some drivers called ahead. "They can make reservations from 500 miles away to make sure a space is available."

The storm system swirled to the north and east late Thursday, its snow, sleet and freezing rain prompting winter storm across the region ? and leaving some impressive snow accumulations.

Northern Oklahoma got more than 13 inches of snow, while up to 10 inches fell in the Kansas City, Mo., area. In Kansas, 17 inches of snow fell in Hays and several other cities got nearly that amount. Farther east in Topeka, 3 inches of snow fell in only 30 minutes, leaving medical center worker Jennifer Carlock dreading her drive home from work.

"It came on fast," Carlock said as she shoveled around her car late Thursday. "We're going to test out traction control on the way home."

Numerous accidents and two deaths were being blamed on the icy, slushy roadways.

State legislatures shut down in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Nebraska and Iowa. Most schools were closed in Kansas and Missouri, and many in neighboring states.

That included the University of Missouri, where classes were canceled for one of the few times in its 174-year history. At a nearby WalMart, students made a beeline for the aisles containing sleds and alcohol.

"This isn't our usual Thursday noon routine," Lauren Ottenger, a senior economics major from Denver, said as she stockpiled supplies.

All flights at Kansas City International Airport were canceled for Thursday night, and officials said they'd prepare to reopen Friday morning. On the other side of the state in St. Louis, more than 320 flights at Lambert Airport were canceled.

Transportation officials in the affected states urged people to stay home.

"If you don't have to get out, just really, please, don't do it," Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback said. Interstate 70 through Kansas was snow-packed, and a 200-mile stretch between Salina and Colby was closed. The Kansas National Guard had 12 teams patrolling three state highways in Humvees to rescue motorists stranded by the storm.

For those who needed to drive, it's wasn't a fun commute.

Richard Monroe, a technology manager and marketing representative for the Missouri State University bookstore, said he arrived with eight of his colleagues in Kansas City, Mo., on Wednesday for a conference. He said a shuttle bus taking them on what should have been a five-minute trip got stuck in the snow, then ran into a truck. The vehicle was incapacitated for nearly two hours.

"We saw today that Kansas City is just shut down. I've never seen a big city like this where nothing is moving," the 27-year-old said.

Others people came down with cabin fever, including Jennifer McCoy of Wichita, Kan. She loaded her nine children ? ages 6 months to 16 years ? into a van for lunch at Applebee's.

"I was going crazy, they were so whiny," McCoy said.

Heavy, blowing snow caused scores of businesses in Iowa and Nebraska to close early, including two malls in Omaha, Neb. Mardi Miller, manager of Dillard's department store in Oakview Mall, said most employees were gone by 4 p.m., with "only two customers are in the entire store."

The storm brought some relief to a region that has been dealing with its worst drought in decades.

Vance Ehmke, a wheat farmer near Healy, Kan., said the nearly foot of snow was "what we have been praying for." Climatologists say 12 inches of snow is equivalent to about 1 inch of rain, depending on the density of the snow.

Near Edwardsville in Illinois, farmer Mike Campbell called the precipitation a blessing after a bone-dry growing season in 2012. He hopes it is a good omen for the spring, noting that last year, "the corn was just a disaster."

Areas in the Texas Panhandle also had up to 8 inches of snow, and in south central Nebraska, Grand Island reported 10 inches of snow. Arkansas saw a mix of precipitation ? a combination of hail, sleet and freezing rain in some place, 6 inches of snow in others.

___

Associated Press writers Alan Scher Zagier in Columbia, Mo.; Bill Draper and Margaret Stafford in Kansas City, Mo.; Margery Beck in Omaha, Neb.; John Hanna in Topeka, Kan.; Roxana Hegeman in Wichita, Kan.; Catherine Lucey in Des Moines, Iowa; Tim Talley in Oklahoma City; Chuck Bartels in Little Rock, Ark.; Jim Suhr and Jim Salter in St. Louis; and Erin Gartner and Herbert G. McCann in Chicago contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-02-22-US-Winter-Storm/id-466c2700d58949b6b3d12a7c2068bd46

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