TACOMA, Washington (Reuters) - Attorneys for a U.S. soldier accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians in two rampages from his Army post last year must advise military prosecutors next month if they plan to pursue a mental health defense, a judge ruled on Tuesday.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Robert Bales, a decorated veteran of four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan accused of gunning down villagers, mostly women and children, in attacks on their family compounds in Kandahar province in March 2012.
Defense attorneys have said Bales was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a brain injury even before his deployment to Afghanistan.
Army prosecutors have said Bales acted alone and with "chilling premeditation" when, armed with a pistol, a rifle and a grenade launcher, he left his base twice in the night, returning in the middle of his rampage to tell a fellow soldier: "I just shot up some people."
The shootings marked the worst case of civilian slaughter blamed on a rogue U.S. soldier since the Vietnam War and further eroded strained U.S.-Afghan relations after more than a decade of conflict in that country.
At a hearing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, presiding judge Army Colonel Jeffery Nance ruled that the defense team must advise the government on May 29 if it will pursue a defense based on a lack of mental responsibility.
"Bottom line is, on the 29th of May the defense has to advise the government if they are going to defend on lack of mental responsibility," Nance said, adding the deadline is flexible depending on production of witnesses and other reasons.
On May 29, the defense must also provide notice of experts they would call to testify on the issue of diminished capacity or mental issues. The defense team must also provide results of a medical review by doctors, called a sanity board hearing, to determine Bales's state of mind at the time of the killings and his ability to stand trial.
Even if Bales' attorneys do not wish to pursue a defense along those lines, they still have to provide the results of the medical review, due to be completed on May 1.
Attorneys also wrangled over which witnesses would be allowed to testify should the trial move to a sentencing phase, and Nance pared down an initial defense list to a handful of relatives, school officials, and friends who could testify to Bales' character during his formative years.
"This is a capital case. This is extraordinary," said Major Gregory Malson, one of Bales' defense attorneys. He argued that the defense should be able to present more witnesses, including the defendant's mother, because a bigger group would include witnesses who "vary in time and place and perception."
The defense also asked for the handwritten notes of the Afghan investigators who first examined the crime scene, despite having received a translated report on the findings. Nance said the government should officially ask the Afghan defense ministry for those notes.
Defense also sought to add a consultant versed in jury selection for capital trials and a new psychiatrist to their team, though Nance did not rule on those motions.
Major John Riesenberg, a military prosecutor, complained that the defense appeared to be "witness shopping."
Bales' lead civilian attorney, John Henry Browne, said in January that government documents showed Bales had been diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a brain injury before his deployment in Afghanistan in 2011.
Military justice experts have said a defense based on Bales' PTSD or deeper mental health could raise serious issues over premeditation, which would make a death sentence less likely.
Bales was bound over for court martial in December and faces 16 murder charges and other charges including attempted murder, assault and drug and alcohol counts. His court martial is set to begin in September.
(Editing by Cynthia Johnston, David Gregorio, Toni Reinhold)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top Obama administration official said on Tuesday that an immigration bill starting to move through Congress would fix some border control weaknesses that may have contributed to last week's Boston Marathon bombings.
The immigration to the United States of two ethnic Chechen brothers who are suspects in the bombings has become a point of controversy in the early debate over the legislation, with some conservatives saying that Congress should now go slower.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano repeatedly was asked at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about the Boston violence that killed three and injured more than 250, as the panel was wrapping up its hearings on a comprehensive immigration bill.
Napolitano told the panel that the legislation will "strengthen security at our borders."
But in three hearings held by the committee since the Boston bombings, some Republicans have raised new concerns about the legislation.
"If these two individuals used our immigration system to assist their attacks, it's important to our ongoing discussion," said Senator Charles Grassley, the senior Republican on the panel.
One of the two suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed last week after a gunfight with police, traveled from the U.S. to Russia in 2012, returning six months later. He and his brother both came to the United States legally a decade ago.
Officials have said that a misspelling of Tsarnaev's name on flight records when departing the United States last year may have contributed to some law enforcement agencies not being alerted to his movements.
CALMING NEW ANXIETIES
"The bill will help with this because it requires that passports be electronically readable as opposed to having manual input," Napolitano testified, adding the legislation "really does a good job of getting human error out of the process."
The bill's supporters also have tried to calm new anxieties over the legislation, arguing that by moving approximately 11 million illegal residents onto a path to citizenship - if they meet certain requirements - law enforcement will be able to learn more about those undocumented people.
"The bipartisan immigration reform proposal introduced last week would enable us to identify and perform criminal background and national security checks on immigrants who are here unlawfully," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a letter to Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Paul, who earlier this year expressed support for comprehensive immigration legislation, said on Monday that Congress "should not proceed" until more is known about failures in the immigration system related to the Boston bombing.
The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to spend the month of May debating and voting on panel members' amendments to the immigration bill introduced last week by four Democratic and four Republican senators.
Reid hopes to have the legislation, a top priority of President Barack Obama, ready for a long debate by the full Senate in June.
During Tuesday's Senate hearing, Napolitano heard criticisms from both Democrats and Republicans about specific aspects of the immigration bill that will take center stage in coming weeks.
"I question whether spending billions more on a fence between the United States and Mexico is really the best use of taxpayer dollars as we're furloughing air traffic controllers," said Senator Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas questioned whether the bill's emphasis on tightening border security at major "hot spots" in Arizona and Texas would merely encourage drug cartels and other criminals to shift their activities to border crossings that are monitored less.
Amanda Seyfried is sure to turn heads when she walks down the aisle in her new film, The Big Wedding. Judging by the trailer, her gown is gorgeous -- but she won't be the first onscreen bride to take our breath away! Take a look at our top 15 favorite movie wedding dresses.
An international study used tree rings and pollen to build the first?record of global climate change, continent by continent, over 2,000 years.
By Pete Spotts,?Staff writer / April 23, 2013
Emperor penguins walk across sea ice near Ross Island, Antarctica, in this 2012, photo released by Thomas Beer. The continent's pristine habitat provides a laboratory for scientists studying the effects of climate change.
Courtesy Thomas Beer/AP/File
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A reconstruction of 2,000 years of global temperatures shows that a long-term decline in Earth's temperatures ended abruptly about 1900, replaced by a warming trend that has continued despite the persistence into the 20th century of the factors driving the cooling, according to a new study.
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Indeed, for several continents, the increase in global average temperatures from the 19th century to the 20th was the highest century-to-century increase during the 2,000-year span, the study indicates. It's the first study to attempt building a millennial-scale climate history, continent by continent.
The research wasn't designed to identify the cause of the warming trend, which climate researchers say has been triggered by a buildup of greenhouse gases ? mainly carbon dioxide ? as humans burned increasing amounts of fossil fuel and altered the landscape in ways that released CO2.
Still, it's hard to explain 20th-century warming without including the influence of rising CO2 levels, because the factors driving the cooling were still present, notes Darrell Kaufman, a researcher at Northern Arizona University and one of the lead authors on the paper formally reporting the results in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The study, five years in the making, drew on the work of 87 scientists in 24 countries as part of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program. One goal of the 27-year-old program is to gain a deeper understanding of Earth's climate history and the factors that contribute to climate variability.
The study used nature's proxies for thermometers ? tree rings, pollen, and other natural temperature indicators ? to build continent by continent a coordinated record of temperature changes during the past two millenniums.
Scientists use this proxy approach to reach farther into the climate's temperature history than the relatively short thermometer record allows. Such efforts aim to put today's climate into a deeper historical context as well as to identify the duration and possible triggers for natural swings that the climate undergoes over a variety of time scales.
Last March, for instance, a team led by Shaun Marcott at Oregon State University used climate proxies to build a global temperature record reaching back 1,200 years ? one that also noted the pre-1900 cooling trend.
Until now, however, the proxy approach has been used to reconstruct changes in global-average and hemisphere-wide temperatures, Dr. Kaufman explains.
"There was very little information about past climate variability at the regional scale," he says. Yet the team notes that no one lives in a global-average world. People live in specific regions where geography plays a vital role in shaping the climate patterns they experience.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? American teenagers aren't doing as poorly on international science tests as adults think. Despite the misconception, people don't think the subject should get greater emphasis in schools, a survey released Monday found.
More Americans than not wrongly think that U.S. 15-year-olds rank near the bottom on international science tests, according to a Pew Research Center for the People and the Press poll. U.S. students actually rank in the middle among developed countries.
Even so, Americans are more likely to pick math or language skills over science when they are asked which subject they think deserves greater attention.
Among adults, there is wide variety in what they know about science and technology, the survey also found. For instance, two-thirds of those surveyed correctly said rust is an example of a chemical reaction and 77 percent correctly said the continents have been moving for millions of years and will continue to shift.
Yet only 47 percent correctly said electrons are smaller than atoms. Protons, neutrons and electrons are parts of atoms.
Education advocates have long warned that U.S. students need more science education if they are to keep pace with international peers. That perhaps has yielded the impression that the nation's students don't stack up to other nations on international tests.
About 35 percent of those surveyed by Pew correctly said U.S. 15-year-olds are about in the middle and 7 percent incorrectly said Americans ranked among the top nations. Yet the plurality ? 44 percent ? wrongly said American teens were ranked at the bottom of other developed nations.
International tests find U.S. scores aren't measurably different from the average of all other nations. Among the 33 countries measured in the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment, 12 had higher scores and nine had lower scores. Another 12 had scores that weren't that much different than Americans' scores.
The survey also asked participants an open-ended question about which single subject they thought deserved greater emphasis in elementary and secondary schools. Some 30 percent suggested math and arithmetic. Another 19 percent said English, grammar, writing and reading.
Science was the top choice for just 11 percent of participants. Among those who picked science, though, there was a partisan divide. Some 17 percent of Democrats said science should receive more attention, while 7 percent of Republicans agreed.
Republicans, however, were more likely to favor math and arithmetic than Democrats. Some 35 percent of Republicans picked math skills as the subject they thought deserved more attention while 24 percent of Democrats agreed.
Americans with college degrees were more likely than others to underestimate the students' international rankings. Those college graduates were also more likely to answer their own questions about science and technology correctly.
For instance, 76 percent of college graduates correctly identified carbon dioxide as the gas that most scientists blame for climate change. Just 55 percent of those with some college courses got the answer right, and that number reached 49 percent among adults who did not attend college.
Pew's poll was conducted March 7-10 and used landline and cellular telephone interviews with 1,006 adults. Results for the full sample have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points. It is larger for subgroups.
The survey was conducted with Smithsonian Magazine for an upcoming edition focusing on science, technology, engineering and mathematics education.
We've seen a possible case, what could be the front portion of Apple's next iPad and this time around, Tactus has got its hands on the other half, the rear casing. Unfortunately, it's the not-so-interesting view, but we can still make out the space for the hole for the camera lens, sharper corners and the same dark blue finish we saw on both the fifth iteration of the iPhone and the iPad Mini. Tactus reckons it'll hold onto the original iPad's 9.7-inch display, but surround it with a thinner bezel. As for the rest of the specs that will eventually reside inside the redesigned shell, well, we'll have to wait for the official reveal from Apple for the full story.
Homemade beauty treatments equal healthy skin without the chemicals. Hence it is important to prepare these homemade skin care treatments with utmost hygiene. Lack of hygiene practiced while preparing these products will defeat the purpose of the beautiful skin care treatment you are treating yourself to. Here are five crucial things to remember before making and using homemade beauty products.
*Data Courtesy:? Hanson Mingus is a guest blogger and aesthetician. Hanson is currently starting a blog to help people create safe, inexpensive homemade acne products.
It's not often that a guest post on TechCrunch turns into a startup Earlier this year, Googler Aditya Mahesh published a guest post on TechCrunch, which addressed what skills business students should take the time to learn before they start working in tech. As he writes, he wishes he had learned certain skills before entering the workforce at Google, such as Excel, basic HTML/CSS, web analytics, Photoshop, iMovie and other skills that he believes make you more valuable as a non-technical employee, even if you don't have a CS degree.
Commercial airline flights moved smoothly throughout most of the country on Sunday, the first day air traffic controllers were subject to furloughs resulting from government spending cuts. But while the nightmarish flight delays and cancellations that the airline industry predicted would result from the furloughs did not materialize yet, the real test will come Monday, when traffic ramps up.
Information from the FAA and others showed that flying Sunday was largely uneventful, with most flights on time. There were delays in parts of Florida, but those were caused by thunderstorms.
Mark Duell at the flight tracking website FlightAware noted non-weather delays of 15 to 30 minutes at New York area airports, but he couldn't say whether it was due to the furloughs or just typical New York traffic.
The trade group Airlines for America, which represents the airlines and had predicted a big traffic snarl, said Sunday evening that it was "not seeing a significant impact at this point." A spokeswoman said the group would continue to monitor the situation, and urged flyers to stay in contact with their airlines.
The FAA said that "relatively good weather" and light traffic, which is typical of Sundays, helped keep delays in check. The agency said it would be working with airlines "to minimize the delay impacts of lower staffing" as the busy summer travel season approaches.
Government budget cuts that kicked in last month are forcing the FAA and other agencies to cut their spending. FAA officials have said they have no choice but to furlough all 47,000 agency employees, including nearly 15,000 controllers. Each employee will lose one day of work every other week. The FAA has said that planes will have to take off and land less frequently, so as not to overload the remaining controllers on duty.
Friday, airline trade groups and the country's biggest pilots union sued the FAA to try to stop the furloughs. They predicted that the furloughs would delay or cancel flights for as many as one out of every three airline passengers across the country. Airlines have also directed their customers to tell the FAA to find other ways to cut costs.
LONDON (Reuters) - Chancellor George Osborne said on Sunday it would not be straightforward for an independent Scotland to keep the pound as its currency, as proposed by those campaigning for the country to break away from the United Kingdom next year.
The nation of five million will hold an independence referendum on September 18, 2014, at the instigation of the Scottish National Party (SNP), which runs the country's devolved government.
Pro-independence campaigners say Scotland would keep the pound, at least in the early years of independence, and could later hold a sovereign debate on whether to switch to its own currency.
But Osborne and his deputy Danny Alexander, who is Scottish, said in a joint article that monetary union would not work as well in "a disunited kingdom".
"The pound we share now works and it works well. Under independence all the alternatives are second best. So our question to the nationalists - are you really saying second best is good enough for Scotland?" the two men wrote.
As things stand, opinion polls suggest about 30 percent of Scottish voters favour independence while 50 percent would stick with the status quo, but those who want Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom are not taking victory for granted.
The central government in London will publish on Tuesday a detailed analysis of the implications on currency of Scottish independence. The article by Osborne and Alexander sought to make the case against independence ahead of that report.
It said that if an independent Scotland kept the pound and thus had its monetary policy set by the Bank of England, that would amount to "handing over to what would become a foreign government key decisions over the Scottish economy".
"This is one of the big contradictions in their (the nationalists') whole economic approach," the article said.
"Campaigning to 'bring powers home' with one hand, while giving them away with the other ... It simply doesn't add up."
Osborne and Alexander accused SNP ministers of "tying themselves in knots" over the currency issue because in their heart of hearts they knew that economic and political union across the United Kingdom worked well.
In a speech delivered in Scotland last week, Alexander said the euro zone crisis had shown that combining monetary union with fiscal independence was challenging.
"While such arrangements can appear successful in a period of stability, they can lead to brutal readjustments in times of economic stress and uncertainty," he said.
Osborne's Conservative Party and Alexander's Liberal Democrats are both against independence but are not dominant forces in Scottish politics. The opposition Labour Party, traditionally a major force there, also opposes independence.
(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Stephen Powell)
I just arrived in New York City to start prep work on [Redacted] -- watch the video above for a gigantic tease -- so I video bombed Kevin Michaluk's CrackBerry podcast, along with Alex Dobie of Android Central.
Radio communications can be unreliable in underground tunnels and other large, complicated structures, posing a safety hazard for emergency responders. New tests of wireless emergency safety equipment by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have defined the challenges more precisely and suggest how emergency communications might be improved.
In a series of experiments conducted in New York City, an epicenter of underground tunnels and high-rise buildings, NIST researchers measured path loss, or reduced signal strength, which can occur when signals must travel through thick walls and dense material. NIST researchers also found that wireless emergency beacons could be unreliable beyond the street-level stairwell entrance to a four-level subway station, and that signal strength depended on the frequency used in the 100-story Empire State Building. The findings are detailed in a new report.*
"The systems we tested generally operated successfully as long as path loss did not exceed the threshold specified in standards just adopted in November," project leader Kate Remley says.** "But the path losses we measured throughout these structures were generally much higher than the threshold. This means that repeaters or other technology to rebroadcast signals should be used in these and other similar environments, and standards must be extended to these higher-loss cases."
The study is part of an ongoing NIST project, launched in 2008, supporting the development of performance metrics and laboratory tests for electronic safety equipment with two-way radio-frequency (RF) transmission capabilities. The New York tests focused on RF-based personal alert safety systems (RF-PASS), used by firefighters as distress beacons, but the test methods and path-loss results are applicable to other wireless devices such as handheld radios.
NIST researchers visited New York City in 2012 to evaluate emergency radio transmissions in challenging settings such as high-rise buildings and underground tunnels. NIST's Kate Remley and Galen Koepke setting up a base station outside the Empire State Building.
(Photo Credit: NIST)
NIST tested four commercial RF-PASS systems operating in three frequency bands: 450 megahertz (MHz), 902 to 928 MHz, and 2.4 gigahertz. Researchers measured whether a firefighter-down signal was received by a base station outside the subway or building, and whether a portable RF-PASS unit inside the structure received an evacuation signal from the base station, within 30 seconds, given a certain amount of path loss.
In the subway, communication was poor beyond the entrance unless a repeater was located underground on the pay-station floor. In that case signals could be sent between the street level and the first passenger platform, but not to or from the second passenger level farther below, suggesting the need for a multi-hop repeater relay system. In the Empire State Building, NIST researchers found that path losses increased with RF-PASS operating frequency, and that only one of four systems tested communicated successfully without repeaters over most of the building test locations.
NIST researchers visited New York City in 2012 to evaluate emergency radio transmissions in challenging settings such as high-rise buildings and underground tunnels. George Grammas (on left) of the Fire Department of New York, and NIST's Galen Koepke, Dennis Camell, and Bill Young, at the command post outside the West 4th Street subway station.
Try-for-size-before-you buy virtual fitting room startup Fits.me has closed a ?5.5M ($7.2M) Series A round. It's not all new money -- we covered the first ?1.5M tranche, back in January 2012 -- but the startup has now added ?4M to complete the round. Backers include existing investor SmartCap, plus new participation from Conor Venture Partners, Fostergate Holdings Ltd and The Entrepreneurs Fund.
We already know what Page and Co. will be packing along with Glass, but now that participants of the Explorer program have begun picking up the wearable hardware, we're getting a second-hand unboxing experience. For those in need of a refresher, the glasses will be accompanied by a microUSB cable and charger, a pouch and an attachable shade and clear lens. Though there isn't much to glean from the stream of images, one of Mountain View's adventurers noticed that users will be able to send navigation directions straight from a smartphone to the eyewear. Click the source links below to take a gander at the photos, or hit the jump to watch a video shot with Glass by a Googler.
Update: We've slotted in a video after the break of Glass user Dan McLaughlin extracting his device from its packaging. The footage is a bit choppy, but it certainly provides a closer look at the hardware.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Tuesday he expects more posturing and provocation by North Korea and, while he does not believe the Asian nation has the capacity to mount a nuclear weapon on a ballistic missile, the United States is preparing for "every contingency."
"I think all of us would anticipate that - you know, North Korea will probably make more provocative moves - over the next several weeks," Obama told NBC's "Today" show.
"But our hope is that we can contain it and that we can move into a different phase in which they try to work through diplomatically some of these issues," he said.
The interview was conducted on Monday before the bombings that killed three people and injured more than 100 people in Boston.
After a series of belligerent steps and statements in recent weeks, Pyongyang has issued new threats against South Korea demanding an apology for anti-North Korean protests.
The North has also rejected U.S. overtures for talks, but a U.S. military official said the North Korean leadership was looking for a way to cool down its charged rhetoric.
Obama said he believes North Korea's saber rattling is similar to past patterns of behavior. Even so, the United States is taking precautionary measures, he said.
"We have to make sure that we are dealing with every contingency out there," the president said. "And that's why I've repositioned missile defense systems - to guard against any miscalculation on their part."
(Reporting By Mark Felsenthal; editing by Christopher Wilson)
Universities aren't just places for students to cut classes and enjoy themselves before eventually embarking on careers. They are also places where problems get solved, like the one facing runners who find it hard to read on the jog. That bane is the focus of a group of researchers at Purdue University, who are working on a system called ReadingMate, which moves text on a display in reaction to the bobbing head of a runner to stabilize what's being seen. The screen is sent information from a pair of infrared LED-equipped glasses, but it's not as simple as shifting text in time with head movement -- your eyes are performing corrections of their own, so the words dance slightly out of sync with your noggin to take this into account. It's performed well in testing, and could have applications beyond the gym, such as in heavy machinery and aircraft, where vibration can hamper reading ability in important situations. Those uses make the most sense -- we don't often find ourselves eager to attack that next Twilight chapter during a near-death treadmill experience.
Apr. 15, 2013 ? A study from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, shows that the drop in boys' physical activity during the teenage years levels off in early adulthood.
In 2000, about 1000 children aged 6-14 from southeast Sweden participated in an international study on physical activity, body constitution and physical self-perception.
The new study is a follow-up study on a sample of the 12-year-olds in the original study. The researchers followed and reassessed the group at age 15, 17 and 22. As in the first study, they measured physical activity using a pedometer.
The results indicate a reduction in total daily physical activity from the early teenage years to early adulthood. The boys show a dramatic drop between the ages of 12 and 15. Girls are on average more active than boys at both 17 and 22.
The activity pattern -- the question of whether the most active children are also the most active as adults -- is maintained only to a low extent. However, those who were deemed insufficiently active at age 12 seemed to maintain their activity pattern to a larger extent as adults.
'This is a problem. But low-activity children can be identified with simple methods like using a pedometer. They could then be targeted in school and through intervention programmes,' says Anders Raustorp, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Food and Nutrition, and Sport Science, University of Gothenburg, and one of the researchers behind the new study.
While many previous studies have looked at what happens to adolescents' exercise habits, this study also explores their overall levels of daily physical activity. Studies including objective measures of physical activity over the course of a whole decade in this age span are extremely rare.
Raustorp has previously published global steps-per-day recommendations for both children (2004 and 2011) and adults (2008). He has also introduced the pedometer in Swedish research and as a useful method in physiotherapy, and has become an authority within pedometer research.
His and his colleagues' step-per-day recommendations for children and adolescents published in International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity are in frequent use.
Objective measurements based on validated pedometers and accelerometers offer new opportunities to measure and communicate physical activity as number of steps per day. This simple measure continues to gain respect and popularity among both researchers and practitioners as an acceptable way to assess total daily physical activity.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Gothenburg, via AlphaGalileo.
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Journal Reference:
Raustorp A, Ekroth Y. Tracking of Pedometer Determined Physical Activity: A 10 Years Follow-Up Study from Adolescence to Adulthood in Sweden. J Phys Act Health, 2013, Jan 3 [link]
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Verizon could be looking to bolster its wireless network with Clearwire spectrum, according to the Wall Street Journal. The potential deal, of which little is known at the moment, would see the nation's number one wireless operator forking over $1.5 billion to lease Clearwire's spectrum. It's an odd move for Verizon given its past aggressive stance on spectrum acquisition, but due to legal entanglements involving Clearwire and 50-percent owner Sprint, it's likely the only available option. At present, Sprint is seeking to buy out the remaining stake in Clearwire, bringing that company and its valuable spectrum -- formerly used for WiMAX -- completely in-house.
But complicating matters is a rival bid from Dish, which is offering $25.5 billion to buy Sprint (a move prompted by its failed Clearwire bid) and build out a wireless network of its own with holdings it acquired from previous FCC spectrum auctions. With spectrum so finite a resource, the only recourse carriers have is to lease, acquire or win auctioned spectrum (should the FCC seek to free more up). Rest assured, these operator wars will only get messier and more frequent with time as the US rolls over into an all LTE future.
Immigration reform pushed by the bipartisan 'Gang of Eight' hits the Senate this week. Sen. Marco Rubio is a key player, and he was all over the news shows Sunday talking about that.
By Brad Knickerbocker,?Staff writer / April 14, 2013
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., speaks at a Capitol Hill news conference on immigration legislation with other members of the "Gang of Eight," including, from left, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
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Sen. Marco Rubio is a main Republican point man on immigration reform, not to mention trying to get Hispanics to vote GOP for a change. And he was all over the TV news shows Sunday ? seven venues (two Spanish language), which may be a record ? touting the points he?ll make when legislation is taken up this coming week.
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But first, he had a message for rapper Jay-Z, who went to Cuba recently on a trip with his wife pop singer Beyonc??that conservative critics saw as propaganda for a repressive country.
"If Jay-Z was truly interested in the true state of affairs in Cuba, he would have met people that are being oppressed, including a hip-hop artist in Cuba [jailed rapper Angel Yunier Remon Arzuaga] who is right now being oppressed and persecuted and is undergoing a hunger strike because of his political lyrics," Sen. Rubio said on ABC's ?This Week.?
"Jay-Z needs to get informed," Rubio said. "One of his heroes is Che Guevara.?Che Guevara was a racist.?Che Guevara was a racist that wrote extensively about the superiority of white Europeans over people of African descent, so he should inform himself on the guy that he?s propping up."
But aside from Cuba ? a minor issue in immigration reform but important to Floridians like Rubio, whose parents emigrated from there ? Rubio?s stance and now outspokenness on immigration could be risky for him and the Republican Party.
?The gambit could pay off in spades by crowning a leading presidential contender in 2016, or it could permanently damage the Republican?s brand with conservatives,? writes Manu Raju at Politico.
Rubio is one of the bipartisan ?Gang of Eight? Senators who?ve taken the lead on immigration, but he has remained a bit of a wild card, pressured from both directions.
On Friday, the president of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement union called on Rubio to step down from the Gang of Eight, charging that proposed legislation ?offers legalization, or amnesty, before enforcement.?
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I Have this code, whereby I want to update my database in microsoft access for seatNumbers...The table have the following fields, seat1, seat2, seat3, seat4 and seat5.
So when the user confirms the seats to be booked, e.g there are 5 seats in the form of JButton(5). The record for that row in the database is supposed to be updated to booked. When user clicks button1 then seat1 column is changed to booked. and should go on for the next 5 buttons.
So far I can only do for one button and update one field, however when i try to add other buttons, my database do have so many records and i only need one record to be updated not multiple.this is for modifyDB() method.
For the method bookedSeatDB(), it supposed to connect to the database and if seat is still empty, it will display green when it is booked then it will be red and not possible for the user to click on it
Am new to java programming and I really wish to be understand my mistakes in terms of coding.
The problem are on this 2 methods.Hopeful u understand my explanation Thank you in advance
public void bookedSeatsDB() { try{ String xx = "Select * FROM myBus"; Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:odbc:BusDetails"); tatement st = con.createStatement(); ResultSet rs = st.executeQuery(xx); while (rs.next()){ // My Problem is on this part as once I click then it changes all three buttons seatButtons[0].setText(rs.getString("Seat1")); seatButtons[0].setBackground(Color.RED); seatButtons[0].setEnabled(false); seatButtons[1].setText(rs.getString("Seat2")); seatButtons[1].setBackground(Color.RED); seatButtons[1].setEnabled(false); seatButtons[2].setText(rs.getString("Seat3")); seatButtons[2].setBackground(Color.RED); seatButtons[2].setEnabled(false); }//end of while JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Seat 1 is already Booked") ; }//wnd of try catch (Exception eva){ System.out.println("Cannot Connect to Databse"); } }
public void modifyDB(){ try{ //DBConnection(); String st1 = seatButtons[0].getText(); String st2 = seatButtons[1].getText(); String st3 = seatButtons[2].getText(); String st4 = seatButtons[3].getText(); String st5 = seatButtons[4].getText(); //I have tried update but its is not favouring the solution //String updst1 = "UPDATE myBus SET seat1 = Booked WHERE FromCol = Ipoh "; String dataInsertion = "Insert into myBus (seat1) VALUES ('" + st1 + "') "; st.executeUpdate(updst1); String changeSeat2 = "Insert into myBus (seat2) VALUES ('" + st2 + "') "; st.executeUpdate(changeSeat2); String changeSeat3 = "Insert into myBus (seat3) VALUES ('" + st3 + "') "; st.executeUpdate(changeSeat3); String changeSeat4 = "Insert into myBus (seat4) VALUES ('" + st4 + "') "; st.executeUpdate(changeSeat4); String changeSeat5 = "Insert into myBus (seat5) VALUES ('" + st5 + "') "; st.executeUpdate(changeSeat5); } catch (Exception even) { }
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Replies To: updating database and JButtons
#2 andrewsw ?
Reputation: 810
Posts:2,512
Joined:12-December 12
Re: updating database and JButtons
Posted Today, 12:21 PM
The first thing I suggest that you do is to remove those try..catch statements; you need to see all errors messages while developing your application.
Quote
So far I can only do for one button and update one field, however when i try to add other buttons, my database do have so many records and i only need one record to be updated not multiple.this is for modifyDB() method.
For the method bookedSeatDB(), it supposed to connect to the database and if seat is still empty, it will display green when it is booked then it will be red and not possible for the user to click on it
You need to use a WHERE clause so that an UPDATE will only update specific records. In the UPDATE statement that you attempted you need to include apostrophes around text-values (as you did with you SET statements). I assume, also, that Ipoh is a variable(?) (defined somewhere) in which case it needs to be split out from the expression, as you did further down with st1, st2.
For the second point you need to examine the data retrieved from the database, and use an if statement, based on a value from the database, to paint something red or green. Google and study how to retrieve data from a database, although there may be tutorials available here at DIC.
This post has been edited by andrewsw: Today, 12:22 PM
#3 andrewsw ?
Reputation: 810
Posts:2,512
Joined:12-December 12
Re: updating database and JButtons
Posted Today, 12:26 PM
You are using while (rs.next()) to loop through the recordset but you aren't doing anything with the data in this recordset - such as using an if-statement to paint something red or green.
This post has been edited by andrewsw: Today, 12:27 PM
#4 g00se ?
Reputation: 2030
Posts:8,476
Joined:20-September 08
Re: updating database and JButtons
Posted Today, 12:30 PM
Quote
The table have the following fields, seat1, seat2, seat3, seat4 and seat5.
That's not the way to do it. A Seat entity has a principal attribute of 'Number'. You could make that the primary key. A Bookings table would map a User to one or more seats.
#5 andrewsw ?
Reputation: 810
Posts:2,512
Joined:12-December 12
Re: updating database and JButtons
Posted Today, 12:47 PM
g00se, on 14 April 2013 - 07:30 PM, said:
Quote
The table have the following fields, seat1, seat2, seat3, seat4 and seat5.
That's not the way to do it. A Seat entity has a principal attribute of 'Number'. You could make that the primary key. A Bookings table would map a User to one or more seats.
I quite agree the database is poorly constructed and this should be OPs prime concern.
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g00se, on 14 April 2013 - 07:30 PM, said:
the database is poorly constructed and this should be OPs prime concern.