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Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/23/240163081/what-to-watch-for-in-the-world-series?ft=1&f=1055Category: Sleepy Hollow Ariel Castro backstreet boys What Did Riley Cooper Say Nexus 7
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
What To Watch For In The World Series
Category: Sleepy Hollow Ariel Castro backstreet boys What Did Riley Cooper Say Nexus 7
China Fights Choking Smog With New Regulations
China's central and local governments are releasing a slew of new regulations aimed at cutting severe air pollution and mitigating its deadly effect on citizens. The seriousness of the problem is obvious in China's northeast, where smog in one city this week cut visibility down to a few yards, and particulate matter soared to 60 times the level deemed safe by the World Health Organization.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
And I'm Audie Cornish.
Cool autumn temperatures are moving into Northeast China. And Sunday, many cities turned on their coal-fired heating systems for the first time this season. This contributed to severe air pollution, which has largely shut down Harbin, a city of 11 million people. China has recently announced new regulations aimed at cutting smog and mitigating its deadly effect on citizens.
But as NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports from Beijing, any fundamental solution seems a long way off.
(SOUNDBITE OF A ROADWAY)
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Schools, highways and airports remain closed for a second day in the city of Harbin. State television showed images of cars with flashing hazard lights and pedestrians wearing face masks, appearing and disappearing in a thick grey miasma. A mix of soot, dust and other tiny particles, that get into people's lungs, was recorded at levels as high as 60 times the concentration of the World Health Organization considers safe.
Many officials are blaming this emergency in part on the weather. Fang Li, the vice director of Beijing's Environmental Protection Agency, spoke at a press conference in the capital.
FANG LI: (Through translator) The heavy pollution in Harbin is due to weather conditions. We have noticed that the entire northeastern region is shrouded in heavy fog. Under these conditions, it's not easy for these pollutants to dissipate.
KUHN: Indeed, there has been no strong winds and heavy rain to lower wash the manmade pollution away. Today, Fang outlined the Chinese capital's new plan for dealing with pollution emergencies. After three days of heavy pollution, schools will close; factories will scale back production; and private cars will only be allowed on the roads on alternating days, depending on their license plates.
LI: (Foreign language spoken)
KUHN: And when it really gets smoggy, Fang added, the capital will also ban fireworks and barbecues.
Before last year, China did not disclose detailed data about air pollution. The Chinese language did not even have a word for smog until very recently. Wang Jingjing is vice director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. She displays a map which shows that most of the pollution in China comes from industry.
WANG JINGJING: (Through translator) We can see that there are more than 4,100 major sources of air pollution. These sources emit more than 65 percent of all the sulfur dioxide, nitrides and particulate matter.
KUHN: Wang welcomes a series of recently announced government plans to tackle pollution. Last month, China announced a plan to cut its coal consumption to below 65 percent of primary energy use by 2017 - a reduction of less than 2 percent in five years. She says China's government is determined to avoid the mistakes the West made when it industrialized.
JINGJING: (Through translator) We've seen the historical experiences and lessons that have come before. We don't want to take that path. We must control the pollution beforehand, instead of cleaning up afterwards.
KUHN: Whatever is learned from the West's experienced, it seems clear that China already faces a lengthy process of cleaning up its air, land and water.
Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Beijing.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
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Is Obamacare in a Death Spiral?
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Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2013/10/22/is_obamacare_in_a_death_spiral_318353.htmlCategory: mrsa emmy winners Nokia danity kane lea michele
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Boy Meets World Reunites On Good Morning America! Watch The Video HERE!
Cory, Topanga, Shawn and the rest of the Boy Meets World gang haven't been on the air in over thirteen years but they're clearly having the most AH-Mazing week ever!
Danielle Fishel and Rider Strong BOTH got married last weekend, the show is celebrating their twenty year anniversary, and now the entire cast is coming together for a BMW reunion!
The stars from the classic Friday night sitcom reunited on Tuesday morning, two decades after they made their TGIF debut on ABC!
Good Morning America and Entertainment Weekly celebrated the show's seven seasons on TV with a special tribute video!
Ben Savage, who hasn't aged a bit, talked about how Boy Meets World seems to be more popular than ever these days! He explained:
"We've really had a strong afterlife with the show. I think the themes in the show are timeless."
His Girl Meets World co-star and long-time TV wife Danielle Fishel also weighed in on why their storyline is still relevant to so many fans! She admitted:
"I don't think any of us anticipated that after the show went off the air it was going to gain in popularity but people still seem to relate to it a lot, which is fantastic!"
So many good memories! And more memories to made with the new Disney Channel spinoff Girl Meets World!
Ch-ch-check out the gang, all grown up and back together again, above!
And CLICK HERE to view our gallery, "Boy Meets World Turns 20!"
Tags: ben savage, boy meets world, danielle fishel, disney, girl meets world, rider strong, tv news
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On 'Sesame Street,' The Sweet Sounds Of Another Thoroughfare
Sesame Street music director Bill Sherman with Elmo and Zoe on the set. Sherman won a Tony Award for In the Heights in 2008 and has recruited Broadway peers to compose for the children's show.
Howard Sherman for NPR
Sesame Street music director Bill Sherman with Elmo and Zoe on the set. Sherman won a Tony Award for In the Heights in 2008 and has recruited Broadway peers to compose for the children's show.
Howard Sherman for NPR
You know how to get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice. But do you know how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?
Turns out there's a shortcut from New York's theater district — and it's landed a number of Broadway's top songwriting talents on the venerable children's program.
The man to see is Bill Sherman, a 2008 Tony Award winner for his work on orchestrations for In the Heights. Sherman is in his fifth season as music director for Sesame Street. Back when he started the job, Broadway's songwriters were an obvious go-to.
"I knew them," he shrugs. "It was easy access. I was trusting songwriters I knew and loved."
He's since discovered that no matter whom he calls, Sesame Street meets with universal enthusiasm. "Everybody will stop some really important thing they should be doing and really focus on this."
From A College Buddy To Strangers In The Biz
Sherman's first call, five seasons back, was to Lin-Manuel Miranda, composer and lyricist of In the Heights. "Lin has been my best friend for 10 years," Sherman says. "We went to college together, so asking him to write a song was very easy."
Miranda was followed by other Heights alumni, Alex Lacamoire and Chris Jackson, and by composers Jason Robert Brown (Parade, The Last Five Years), Justin Paul (A Christmas Story) and Tom Kitt (Next To Normal). And while some of these artists typically write both music and lyrics, Sesame Street primarily taps into their composing skills.
"So much of what we do is curriculum-based that it has to go through many levels of approval," Sherman explains. "So most of the lyrics come from the [Sesame Street] scriptwriters."
Miranda, an adept lyricist, says being forced to focus solely on the music was "enormous fun."
YouTube
"What Rhymes with Mando?" was composed by Tony-winner Lin-Manuel Miranda for the show's 44th season.
"It's easier than usual, since lyrics take longer," he says — though he's quick to note that he confers with the show's wordsmiths.
"The writer will say, 'It's very Harry Belafonte; it's Ravel's Bolero; it will build and build.' You get a sense of what they were thinking, of the rhythm that's in their heads."
With "Elmo the Musical," More Shots At The Spotlight
Sesame Street's musical universe expanded further when the show introduced its "Elmo the Musical" segments — stand-alone bits, eight to 10 minutes long, that take place entirely in the imagination of the childlike red fuzzball.
The Elmo the Musical segments are through-composed — musicalized from start to finish — "so each composer had their chance to really sink their teeth into the music," Sherman says. "It became their episode, their thing. We tried to figure out a way to use the composers' strengths for whatever particular episode it was."
An installment called "Detective," for instance, "asked for this complex, jazzy [sound], and Jason Robert Brown is known for that."
Like all the composers, Brown — who's never met Sherman — jumped at the opportunity.
"I had a 2-year-old who stared at Elmo all day long," Brown says. "So there was nothing better than that."
Then came the kicker: That episode's script was to be written by John Weidman, a Sesame Street veteran and co-creator, with Stephen Sondheim, of iconic musicals like Assassins and Pacific Overtures.
Tom Kitt, who wrote "If Me Had a Magic Wand" for Sesame Street, won a Tony Award for the Broadway musical Next to Normal.
Howard Sherman For NPR
Tom Kitt, who wrote "If Me Had a Magic Wand" for Sesame Street, won a Tony Award for the Broadway musical Next to Normal.
Howard Sherman For NPR
"I called him and said, 'So we're finally writing a show together, only it's for a furry red puppet,' " Brown says. "When I got the recording of Elmo, I could not have been more excited if it had been Frank Sinatra, if it had been Joni Mitchell."
This fall, as puppeteer David Rudman laid down Cookie Monster's vocal track on Tom Kitt's "If Me Had a Magic Wand," Kitt described the song using an old-school musical-theater term. It's "a soaring, emotional 'I want' moment," he said, a readily identifiable, recognizably Broadway kind of sound.
But as Sherman is quick to point out, the "Broadway sound" is very much in flux.
"I've been part of musical-theater situations that pushed boundaries, that brought new sounds to Broadway. Taking this job, like [working on] In the Heights, was an opportunity to put new sounds in kids' ears. People assume musical theater is vaudevillian, epic ballads and tap-dance numbers. So to turn that on its head and bring in audiences that don't go to Broadway shows is important to me."
Is it a challenge for these sophisticated writers to gear their work for toddlers? "Sometimes," says Sherman, "composers think that because it's Sesame Street, they have to dumb it down. ... [But] these days children have unbelievably sophisticated ears. I think dumbing it down is disrespectful to kids."
"That's Not What Cookie Monster Sounds Like"
When composers have kids of their own, they've got an in-house test panel. Brown did demos, complete with character voices, for his daughter.
"Her response was, 'That's not what Cookie Monster sounds like,' " he reports.
Sherman has met with greater success at home.
"If my 3-year-old hears something, and 15 to 20 minutes later she's still singing it, then I know I did the right thing," he says. "If the 1-year-old dances to it, then I know that it sounds right."
There might well be more musical theater in Sesame Street's future; Sherman admits he'd like to work with Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Pippin) and Marc Shaiman (Hairspray).
And there's one more big fish he'd like to land — the whale of the business, really.
"We toyed a bit with going after Sondheim," he said. "We haven't gone that route yet, but to call up Stephen and see if he was down [for it], that'd be funny. Why not?"
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Lauren Holly’s Blog: Am I Raising a Liar?
In her blog, Holly recounts the mystery of the disappearing soda and fears she is raising a liar when none of her boys confess.
Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/PJ7gBMBf_Ns/
Related Topics: Case Keenum Best Song Ever
Source: http://feeds.celebritybabies.com/~r/celebrity-babies/~3/PJ7gBMBf_Ns/Related Topics: Case Keenum Best Song Ever
'Ravenswood' EP on Caleb's Rocky Transition, 'Compelling' Mysteries and New Faces (Q&A)
Skip Bolen/ABC Family
"Ravenswood"
After months of buildup, Pretty Little Liars spinoff Ravenswood is ready to make its debut.
Centered on a town not far from Rosewood, Penn., Ravenswood has suffered for generations under a deadly curse. Five strangers find themselves connected by the fatal curse and are charged with investigating the town's mysterious and terrible history before time runs out.
Pretty Little Liars viewers were first introduced to the eerie town earlier this summer, a stark contrast from Liars' home base of Rosewood, with Caleb (Tyler Blackburn) the first PLL regular to make the move to Ravenswood. The first person he encounters on his way to Ravenswood is Miranda (Nicole Gale Anderson), a feisty teenager with a similar foster-care background. Other characters include twins Luke (Bret Dier) and Olivia (Merritt Patterson), whose father was murdered, and the chameleon, Remy (Britne Oldford).
VIDEO: ABC Family's 'Ravenswood' Gets New Trailer
In previewing the new series, executive producer Oliver Goldstick talks to The Hollywood Reporter about the differences between Pretty Little Liars and Ravenswood, Caleb's "difficult" transition and his return to Rosewood.
As someone who's been on both Pretty Little Liars and Ravenswood, has there been a contrast with how things operate?
First of all we're not shooting [Ravenswood] here [in Los Angeles], which has actually made a huge difference. Pretty Little Liars has been such a contained show for us because we're here on the backlot of Warner Bros., therefore our involvement on a daily basis is more intimate. We see the cast, we see the crew. For New Orleans, we're flying there and we're doing our best to become part of this family. It feels different because we're shooting in a city. I was watching a scene in playback the other day for episode one and the lightning cooperated! There's a scene where Luke and Olivia walk down a deserted tree-canopied street at night and there's lightning and fog; that ain't Hollywood magic, that's the real thing. It just has scale, if that makes sense.
Would creepy be a good word to describe Ravenswood?
That's a good word. I told someone the other day, we've set the narrative dial on creepy. (Laughs.) Simply because the town is haunted. We introduced the town through Pretty Little Liars but we wanted to make sure, even in its brief introduction, that there was something not right about this place, something was off. Whether there's people in this town who know its unique and haunted history, and there are indeed older people who know a great deal and there are some young people who even know and our people who will learn that this is in fact a place unlike any other.
STORY: 'Pretty Little Liars': Tyler Blackburn on High Stakes, 'Ravenswood' and What's Next
When we were first introduced to the town, the color scheme drastically changed when it went from Rosewood to Ravenswood. Will that new scheme continue to be used?
It's a bluer palette. Even when you shoot back east, it almost comes naturally just because you don't have that golden California sunshine. When you shoot in Atlanta, New Orleans, Wilmington, New York, Chicago, the gray-blue palette is something that's organic and inherent to that area.
How would you describe Caleb's journey to Ravenswood?
He goes for a compelling reason because Hanna seems to be in peril, or at least in over her head with something, so he hops on the bus to get there. But what we learn is there is an equally compelling, if not more compelling, reason to stay in Ravenswood. Unbeknownst to him, he has a strong link and connection to this new place.
Which of the new characters should we look out for?
You'll meet Miranda in the Halloween episode, who Caleb befriends on the bus, and she becomes very quickly this interesting soulmate because they have similar backgrounds being foster kids, shuttled from house to house, not really having a nuclear family or knowing their families. Her case is even more extreme. With Miranda, she didn't even know she had living relative until recently and that's what prompts her journey to meet her uncle. Three other teenagers [Luke, Olivia and Remy] are bound, without realizing that they are, to Caleb and Miranda by something that happened close to 100 years ago.
How does Caleb transition to the new town?
Not easily. It's not easy for him. There's a mystery he has to solve and he won't leave until he understands what this means -- the impact of his own life. It's going to be difficult. It's not the most welcoming place. Even though we've got a lot of suspicious people walking around Rosewood, and our cops definitely lead the bunch, Rosewood is a visually more welcoming environment. There will be some doors slammed in Caleb's face.
There was some speculation that the new teacher being introduced may be the new Ezra of Ravenswood. How accurate is that?
That might be a little off. We're not really looking for the teacher-student romance. Sorry. (Joking.) Caleb is not going to hook up with Mr. Price (Justin Bruening). In episode four he has the largest role; he actually takes on Luke as a project. Luke and Olivia, who are twins, are under the cloud of their father's murder, which is an unsolved murder in this town, where many people in this town believe the mother is the murderer. Her alibi isn't strong and it looks like Luke may be covering for her as well. That's part of why Mr. Price recognizes this kid as floundering and helps. It's not the same as Ezra by any means.
What can you say about the context in which Hanna (Ashley Benson) appears on Ravenswood?
She's a booty call! Even though our time is passing, we're saying the first five episodes -- believe it or not -- are taking place over a couple of weeks. Two weeks without Caleb in Rosewood is withdrawal for Hanna and she's going to miss him terribly and she's going to need to see him -- although he'll do everything he can to get her from coming to this godforsaken place.
Should we expect to see Caleb back in Rosewood any time in the near future?
He's in the season opener of Pretty Little Liars in January. (ABC Family released the official synopsis for the Jan. 7 return Monday: "As the Liars go looking for answers about Alison and try to make sense of their lives for the past year, a darker side of Ezra emerges.")
Ravenswood premieres Oct. 22 at 9 p.m. on ABC Family.
E-mail: Philiana.Ng@THR.com
Twitter: @insidethetube
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Recommendations for clinical trial accrual published in Journal of Oncology Practice
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 21-Oct-2013
[
]
ShareContact: Alicia Reale
alicia.reale@uhhospitals.org
216-844-5158
University Hospitals Case Medical Center
CLEVELAND: New recommendations for overcoming issues related to cancer clinical trial accrual have been published online in the Journal of Oncology Practice. Following a National Cancer Institute (NCI) and American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) co-sponsored symposium, the research team compiled a summary of best practices and strategies for future research aimed at advancing cancer trials more rapidly.
"Cancer clinical trials provide the evidence base for new advances in oncology. However, only a few percent of cancer patients participate in them," says Neal J. Meropol, MD, senior author, Chief of the Division of Hematology and Oncology at UH Case Medical Center and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. "Poor enrollment onto trials threatens to slow progress in cancer care at a time when advances in science are enabling new opportunities for prevention and treatment. To help address this problem, we have compiled a series of recommendations to address multiple barriers to clinical trials for patients, health care providers and the clinical trials sites."
Titled "Cancer Trial Accrual Symposium: Science and Solutions", the symposium brought together more than 350 cancer research experts, including clinical investigators, researchers of accrual strategies, research administrators, nurses, research coordinators, patient advocates, and educators. It was held in Bethesda, MD, in April 2010.
Common barriers to patient enrollment in clinical trials include lack of awareness, fear of side effects, receiving placebo instead of treatment, financial concerns and logistical issues.
For health care providers, a common obstacle is the view that clinical trials should only be considered as a "last resort" option. Attendees developed innovative strategies for improving recruitment and identified priority areas for future research at the patient/community, physician/provider, and site/organizational levels.
Recommendations at the patient/community level included involving patient advocates, community leaders, representatives of target minority groups, peer mentors and patient navigators to enhance recruitment and retention. Simplifying patient consent forms and enhancing communication during the informed consent process as well as including multilingual staff and medical interpreters on the medical team were additional strategies.
In the physican/provider arena, recommendations included developing evidence-based training initiatives to improve communication and disseminating the availability of local trials to primary care providers. Using information technology such as registries and electronic health records was also encouraged.
At the site level, participants suggested promoting accrual through leadership best practices, including establishing a "culture of commitment" to clinical trials in addition to adopting formal quality improvement processes to increase the efficiency of opening and conducting trials.
"Clinical trials should be considered as an option in the care for all patients with cancer, regardless of their socioeconomic status or where they choose to receive their care," concluded the authors. "If all sites participating in cancer clinical trials identify ways in which to improve their own accrual, we will be able to advance cancer research more rapidly and ultimately improve the lives of people at risk for or diagnosed with cancer."
###
The study's coauthors are: Andrea M. Denicoff, MS, RN; Worta McCaskill-Stevens, MD, MS, Stephen S. Grubbs, MD; Suanna S. Bruinooge, Robert L. Comis, MD, Peggy Devine, David M. Dilts, PhD, MBA, CMA; Michelle E. Duff, DPT, Jean G. Ford, MD, Steven Joffe, MD, MPH, Lidia Schapira, MD; Kevin P. Weinfurt, PhD; Margo Michaels, MPH; Derek Raghavan, MD, PhD; Ellen S. Richmond, MS, RN; Robin Zon, MD, FACP, FASCO; Terrance L. Albrecht, PhD; Michael A. Bookman, MD; Afshin Dowlati, MD; Rebecca Enos, RN, MPH; Mona N. Fouad, MD, MPH; Marjorie Good, RN, MPH, OCN; William J. Hicks, MD; Patrick J. Loehrer Sr, MD; Alan P. Lyss, MD; Steven N. Wolff, MD; and Debra M. Wujcik, PhD, RN, FAAN.
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Share]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 21-Oct-2013
[
]
ShareContact: Alicia Reale
alicia.reale@uhhospitals.org
216-844-5158
University Hospitals Case Medical Center
CLEVELAND: New recommendations for overcoming issues related to cancer clinical trial accrual have been published online in the Journal of Oncology Practice. Following a National Cancer Institute (NCI) and American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) co-sponsored symposium, the research team compiled a summary of best practices and strategies for future research aimed at advancing cancer trials more rapidly.
"Cancer clinical trials provide the evidence base for new advances in oncology. However, only a few percent of cancer patients participate in them," says Neal J. Meropol, MD, senior author, Chief of the Division of Hematology and Oncology at UH Case Medical Center and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. "Poor enrollment onto trials threatens to slow progress in cancer care at a time when advances in science are enabling new opportunities for prevention and treatment. To help address this problem, we have compiled a series of recommendations to address multiple barriers to clinical trials for patients, health care providers and the clinical trials sites."
Titled "Cancer Trial Accrual Symposium: Science and Solutions", the symposium brought together more than 350 cancer research experts, including clinical investigators, researchers of accrual strategies, research administrators, nurses, research coordinators, patient advocates, and educators. It was held in Bethesda, MD, in April 2010.
Common barriers to patient enrollment in clinical trials include lack of awareness, fear of side effects, receiving placebo instead of treatment, financial concerns and logistical issues.
For health care providers, a common obstacle is the view that clinical trials should only be considered as a "last resort" option. Attendees developed innovative strategies for improving recruitment and identified priority areas for future research at the patient/community, physician/provider, and site/organizational levels.
Recommendations at the patient/community level included involving patient advocates, community leaders, representatives of target minority groups, peer mentors and patient navigators to enhance recruitment and retention. Simplifying patient consent forms and enhancing communication during the informed consent process as well as including multilingual staff and medical interpreters on the medical team were additional strategies.
In the physican/provider arena, recommendations included developing evidence-based training initiatives to improve communication and disseminating the availability of local trials to primary care providers. Using information technology such as registries and electronic health records was also encouraged.
At the site level, participants suggested promoting accrual through leadership best practices, including establishing a "culture of commitment" to clinical trials in addition to adopting formal quality improvement processes to increase the efficiency of opening and conducting trials.
"Clinical trials should be considered as an option in the care for all patients with cancer, regardless of their socioeconomic status or where they choose to receive their care," concluded the authors. "If all sites participating in cancer clinical trials identify ways in which to improve their own accrual, we will be able to advance cancer research more rapidly and ultimately improve the lives of people at risk for or diagnosed with cancer."
###
The study's coauthors are: Andrea M. Denicoff, MS, RN; Worta McCaskill-Stevens, MD, MS, Stephen S. Grubbs, MD; Suanna S. Bruinooge, Robert L. Comis, MD, Peggy Devine, David M. Dilts, PhD, MBA, CMA; Michelle E. Duff, DPT, Jean G. Ford, MD, Steven Joffe, MD, MPH, Lidia Schapira, MD; Kevin P. Weinfurt, PhD; Margo Michaels, MPH; Derek Raghavan, MD, PhD; Ellen S. Richmond, MS, RN; Robin Zon, MD, FACP, FASCO; Terrance L. Albrecht, PhD; Michael A. Bookman, MD; Afshin Dowlati, MD; Rebecca Enos, RN, MPH; Mona N. Fouad, MD, MPH; Marjorie Good, RN, MPH, OCN; William J. Hicks, MD; Patrick J. Loehrer Sr, MD; Alan P. Lyss, MD; Steven N. Wolff, MD; and Debra M. Wujcik, PhD, RN, FAAN.
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Share]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-10/uhcm-rfc102113.php
Category: chicago fire grand theft auto 5 Kaepernick katie couric Anna Kendrick
More Is More In Donna Tartt's Believable, Behemoth 'Goldfinch'
If you're a novelist who takes a decade or so between books, you can only hope that your readers remember how much they loved you in the past. It's a saturated market out there, and brand loyalty doesn't always extend to novelists.
But ever since the news broke that Donna Tartt's new book The Goldfinch would soon be published, many readers have been waiting in a state of breathless excitement. They've never quite gotten over how much they loved Tartt's 1992 novel, The Secret History, a tale of friendship and murder set at a college, which went on to become not only an international hit but also one of those rare books that are read over and over, in hopes of reliving that initial literary rush.
Would Tartt's latest book inspire the same kind of devotion? After all, she published a second novel, The Little Friend, that was frequently described as a letdown. Is The Goldfinch more like The Little Friend, or — fingers crossed — The Secret History?
As it turns out, it's not much like either The Secret History or The Little Friend, and if I hadn't known that Donna Tartt had written it, I would never have guessed. This dense, 771-page book tells the story of a boy named Theo Decker, whose mother is killed in a terrorist act early in the novel. In the midst of the trauma and chaos, Theo steals a famous painting, "The Goldfinch," by the Dutch painter Carel Fabritius, setting the sweeping, episodic story in motion.
Several reviewers have compared her book to Oliver Twist, but when I started it I was more reminded of the Harry Potter series (a comparison that is actually made later in the book). The contemporary plot is often nervily improbable and outsized, and Theo, age 13 at the start, is a lot like Harry, in that both boys are gifted, tender-hearted and woefully unsupervised. Theo's scar, while deep and permanent, is of the invisible kind.
Donna Tartt's other works include The Secret History and The Little Friend.
Bruno Vincent/Getty Images
Donna Tartt's other works include The Secret History and The Little Friend.
Bruno Vincent/Getty Images
The day The Goldfinch arrived I promptly cracked it open, remembering how my sons would pounce on the latest Harry Potter on the day it was published. J.K. Rowling transformed a generation of kids into passionate readers. Donna Tartt does something different here — she takes fully grown, already passionate readers and reminds them of the particularly deep pleasures that a long, winding novel can hold. In the short-form era in which we live, the Internet has supposedly whittled our attention-spans down to the size of hotel soap, and it's good to be reminded that sometimes more is definitely more.
So we get a whole lot of Theo here, and also his friend Boris, a kid with a Ukrainian passport and a multi-national history who befriends him after he's forced to leave New York City and go live with his deadbeat dad and his dad's new girlfriend Xandra in a horrible development in Las Vegas. Boris is a great character — totally appealing, a victim of appalling parental neglect, and together he and Theo forge a friendship that's believable, destructive, and comical:
"Don't go!" said Boris, one night at his house when I stood up toward the end of The Magnificent Seven" ... "You'll miss the best part."
... "You saw this movie before?"
"Dubbed into Russian, if you can believe it. But very weak Russian. Sissy. Is sissy the word I want? More like schoolteachers than gunfighters, is what I'm trying to say."
The Las Vegas section is long and detailed, just like all the other sections of this novel. Tartt almost seems to be writing in real time, and yet I was never bored. A series of long set pieces moves the story from the suspenseful opening to the rich, dense, leisurely middle and eventually the action-packed end, which is set in Amsterdam. That part, weirdly, feels as if it was grafted on from a different novel. Or no, it almost feels as if it was grafted on from a particularly literate, stylish indie crime film on the Sundance Channel.
But the occasional disjointedness doesn't affect the overall success of the novel, which absorbed me from start to finish. While The Goldfinch delves seriously and studiously into themes of art, beauty, loss and freedom, I mostly loved it because it kept me wishing I could stay in its fully-imagined world a little longer. Donna Tartt was right to take her time with this book. Readers will want to take their time with it, too.
Meg Wolitzer's latest novel is The Interestings.
Category: homeland twerking Tom Harmon Anna Kendrick Iams Recall
Visualized: global DDoS attacks animated and mapped by Google
Earlier today, Google announced it had built Project Shield to help small websites stay online during DDoS (distributed denial of service) strikes, and it turns out the search giant also unveiled a frequently-updated online map of such assaults. Dubbed Digital Attack Map, the project was created in partnership with Arbor Networks, which updates the site every hour with anonymous DDoS events from over 270 internet service providers it counts as customers. Animations of inbound, outbound and internal volleys from countries across the globe fill the map, and are accompanied by data regarding duration, bandwidth and more. However, only a partial picture of the situation is painted, and the source of incursions can be incorrect. Not only does the effort rely on an incomplete data set -- though Mountain View argues this is the most fleshed out around -- but the origin of DDoS attacks are often forged, and are sometimes unwilling computers directed by foreign-controlled botnets. This affair is far from scientific, but feel free to play security researcher for a day at the source.
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In Kansas, Farmers Commit To Take Less Water From The Ground
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Water from the Ogallala Aquifer is withdrawn about six times faster than rain or rivers can recharge it. Now, a group of farmers in one part of northwestern Kansas have agreed to pump 20 percent less water out of the aquifer over the next five years.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NprProgramsATC/~3/NPBIjlX3LRs/in-kansas-farmers-commit-to-take-less-water-from-the-ground
Tags: Obama impeachment
Tags: Obama impeachment
Monday, October 21, 2013
'Gravity' exerts its force, earns $30M in 3rd week
NEW YORK (AP) — "Gravity" continued to exert its force at the box office, the WikiLeaks drama "The Fifth Estate" flopped, and the anticipated Slavery tale "12 Years a Slave" opened strong in limited release.
Final weekend box office totals were released Monday. Warner Bros.' space adventure "Gravity" remained in first place for the third straight week, adding $30 million to its three-week haul of $169.6 million.
Disney's "The Fifth Estate," starring Benedict Cumberbatch as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, had one of the year's worst debuts, taking in just $1.7 million in more than 1,700 theaters.
In just 19 theaters, Steve McQueen's highly acclaimed "12 Years a Slave" made nearly $1 million in its first weekend. Fox Searchlight plans to gradually expand the film in the coming weeks.
___
The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Monday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Rentrak, are:
1. "Gravity," Warner Bros., $30,027,161, 3,820 locations, $7,861 average, $169,563,291, 3 weeks.
2. "Captain Phillips," Sony, $16,413,093, 3,020 locations, $5,435 average, $52,443,328, 2 weeks.
3. "Carrie," Sony, $16,101,552, 3,157 locations, $5,100 average, $16,101,552, 1 week.
4. "Escape Plan," Lionsgate, $9,885,732, 2,883 locations, $3,429 average, $9,885,732, 1 week.
5. "Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2," Sony, $9,672,791, 3,602 locations, $2,685 average, $92,709,559, 4 weeks.
6. "Prisoners," Warner Bros., $2,064,235, 2,160 locations, $956 average, $57,258,393, 5 weeks.
7. "Enough Said," Fox Searchlight, $1,750,519, 757 locations, $2,312 average, $10,737,966, 5 weeks.
8. "Fifth Estate," Disney, $1,673,351, 1,769 locations, $946 average, $1,673,351, 1 week.
9. "Runner Runner," 20th Century Fox, $1,665,242, 2,011 locations, $828 average, $17,576,560, 3 weeks.
10. "Insidious Chapter 2," FilmDistrict, $1,499,842, 1,665 locations, $901 average, $80,890,083, 6 weeks.
11. "Rush," Universal, $1,261,115, 1,197 locations, $1,054 average, $24,623,294, 5 weeks.
12. "Machete Kills," Open Road, $1,203,135, 2,538 locations, $474 average, $6,402,374, 2 weeks.
13. "Don Jon," Relativity Media, $1,182,410, 1,114 locations, $1,061 average, $22,479,577, 4 weeks.
14. "Baggage Claim," Fox Searchlight, $1,100,374, 865 locations, $1,272 average, $20,001,029, 4 weeks.
15. "I'm In Love With A Church Girl," High Top Releasing, $971,826, 457 locations, $2,127 average, $971,826, 1 week.
16. "12 Years A Slave," Fox Searchlight, $923,715, 19 locations, $48,617 average, $923,715, 1 week.
17. "We're The Millers," Warner Bros., $744,255, 881 locations, $845 average, $147,710,416, 11 week.
18. "Pulling Strings," Lionsgate, $607,966, 438 locations, $1,388 average, $5,163,752, 3 weeks.
19. "Instructions Not Included," Lionsgate, $538,588, 475 locations, $1,134 average, $43,542,138, 8 weeks.
20. "Despicable Me 2," Universal, $485,850, 395 locations, $1,230 average, $363,741,080, 16 weeks.
___
Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-10-21-Box%20Office/id-40e56d80bf934c8a95c3e837e4c545b8Tags: darren sproles Jake Locker aldon smith apple stock vanessa hudgens
BBM for Android finally here today ... later ... eventually ... NOW!
Some will be waitlisted when app is available this afternoon
Update: OK, folks. The app is (mostly) live. Go ahead and get on the list.
OK, folks. Here's the deal. BBM for Android — that's BlackBerry's proprietary messaging system — is finally going to be publicly available later today, BlackBerry announced in a blog post.
Only, things aren't quite that simple.
Here's the deal: BlackBerry is going to release it in Google Play and in Samsung's own app store in a few select locations. (Yes, Samsung has its own app store.) If you've already registered with BlackBerry somehow, you'll be good to go and BBM should work. If you've yet to sign up, you'll be able to today — and you'll be placed in waiting list. No telling how long that list will be.
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Asteroid 2013 TV135: A reality check
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Newly discovered asteroid 2013 TV135 made a close approach to Earth on Sept. 16, when it came within about 4.2 million miles (6.7 million kilometers). The asteroid is initially estimated to be about 1,300 feet (400 meters) in size and its orbit carries it as far out as about three quarters of the distance to Jupiter's orbit and as close to the sun as Earth's orbit. It was discovered on Oct. 8, 2013, by astronomers working at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in Ukraine. As of Oct. 14, asteroid 2013 TV135 is one of 10,332 near-Earth objects that have been discovered.Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131021103112.htm
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Related Topics: Scandal Steam Controller liam hemsworth dave chappelle blue moon
Book News: Health Woes Will Keep Munro From Nobel Ceremony
The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.
- Alice Munro, the 82-year-old short story writer who won this year's Nobel Prize in Literature, will miss the Dec. 10 Nobel awards ceremony in Stockholm for health reasons. Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy Peter Englund wrote in a blog post that "her health is simply not good enough." He added that "all involved — including Mrs. Munro herself — regret this." (Englund's post, in Swedish, is here). Munro said in 2009 that she has been treated for cancer in the past, and had had heart bypass surgery. She announced earlier this year that she plans to retire from writing. Munro, who the Academy called "master of the contemporary short story," is known for her spare accounts of life in small Canadian towns. As NPR's Lynn Neary said at the time of the Nobel announcement: "In a really short space of time, she can provide a fully realized story that provides remarkable insight into human beings, their shortcomings, their complexities, their loves, their lives."
- Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer speaks about Marcel Proust and how reading fiction can engender empathy in a wide-ranging French interview in La Revue des Deux Mondes, which was translated into English and published in The New York Review of Books. Breyer says that: "Reading makes a judge capable of projecting himself into the lives of others, lives that have nothing in common with his own, even lives in completely different eras or cultures. And this empathy, this ability to envision the practical consequences on one's contemporaries of a law or a legal decision, seems to me to [be] a crucial quality in a judge."
- British publisher Granta is rush-printing an extra 100,000 copies of The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton's Booker-winning mystery novel set during the New Zealand Gold Rush.
The Best Books Coming Out This Week:
- After an unforgettable first novel and a fairly forgettable second novel, Donna Tartt has returned with The Goldfinch, a massive, moving monolith of a third book. The narrator Theo Decker is 13 and on a visit to the Met when a bomb goes off, killing his mother and a man who, as he is dying, begs Theo to take a small painting out of the museum's ruins. Tartt spoke to NPR's Scott Simon about the painting at the heart of the novel: "The word priceless is only really ever used in connection with two things, with art and with human life."
- An "encyclopedia of lady things" from the editors of the popular feminist website, The Book of Jezebel covers everything from abortion and Abigail Adams to zits, zombies and Erica Jong's famous "zipless f—-." It's engaging and witty, though unquestionably guilty of the sins of that imaginary feminist website from 30 Rock: "Joan of Snark." That's the "really cool feminist website where women talk about how far we've come and which celebrities have the worst beach bodies." Editor Anna Holmes spoke to NPR's Arun Rath over the weekend.
Canadian author Alice Munro in June 2009.
Peter Muhly /AFP/Getty Images
Canadian author Alice Munro in June 2009.
Peter Muhly /AFP/Getty Images
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Tom Arnold Reveals Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Man-Whore Ways
Tom Arnold has been dishing about the sex life of his “True Lies” co-star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who reportedly has sex five times a day.
The 54-year-old comedian said Schwarzenegger, 66, has a harem of women that visit him daily to satisfy his sexual appetite.
Schwarzenegger and his wife Maria Shriver separated in May 2011 after 25 years of marriage after his love child with the family’s maid came to light.
The action star has seemingly enjoyed his life as a single man.
His friend Tom Arnold said, “Arnie has a tremendous sex drive. There are women who come over. He is not lonely. He has female companions.”
The former bodybuilder feels his sex drive is because of his physical condition. Arnold adds, “He does have a lot of needs and he believes it is all part of the fitness. Five times a day, as he says. It is a good number. A lot of women won’t do that, but he is in great shape”.
Tom also was quoted in the article claiming that Schwarzenegger surrounds himself with semi-naked muscle men who live at the actor’s Los Angeles home.
he muscle men regularly work out on Schwarzenegger’s front lawn and show off their muscles to visitors,’ Tom said.
‘There are guys in their underwear. It’s a weird scene,’ he said.
‘When you pull up in your car they all scamper out. He is trying to live life like a king,’ Tom added.
Schwarzenegger, an Austrian immigrant, moved from bodybuilding to acting and has enjoyed a successful Hollywood career with numerous blockbuster hits, including Conan the Barbarian, The Terminator and Predator.
Schwarzenegger later went into politics and became known as ‘The Governator’ after being elected governor of California.
Click thumbnails for larger pictures
Images: wenn.com
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Maryville, Missouri sex assault case: Hack group Anonymous plans 'Twitter storm'
Two weeks after teenager Daisy Coleman alleges that she was raped, the most serious charges were dropped. She claims that the politically-connected family of the accused are to blame. KSHB's Garrett Haake reports.
By Kevin Murphy, Reuters
The online activist group Anonymous said on Tuesday it would launch a "Twitter storm" and stage a rally in a Missouri town to protest the dropping of sex charges against two ex-high school football players in an incident involving a 14-year-old girl.
Prosecutors in Nodaway County charged the male teenagers in connection with the incident at a party in January 2012 in Maryville, Mo. They said they dropped the case because of lack of evidence.
Residents of Maryville, Missouri defend the town at the center of a controversial rape case against attacks on social media . KSHB's Brendaliss Gonzalez reports.
Anonymous, a loosely associated international group of activists and hackers, said it was planning an October 22 rally outside a courthouse in Maryville to support the girl, Daisy Coleman. It also plans to use Twitter to draw attention to the case.
Coleman and her mother, Melinda Coleman, have spoken about the case publicly in interviews with the Kansas City Star and other media. Melinda Coleman could not be reached immediately for comment on Tuesday.
"We demand an immediate investigation into the handling by local authorities of Daisy's case," Anonymous said in a statement posted online. "We have seen Daisy's story all too often."
Missouri Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder on Tuesday asked that the case be reopened, urging state Attorney General Chris Koster and Nodaway County Prosecutor Bob Rice to join him in asking the circuit court to convene a grand jury in the case.
"The appalling facts in the public record shock the conscience and cry out that responsible authorities must take another look," said Kinder, a Republican. Koster, like Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, is a Democrat.
The renewed focus on the case, which has drawn comparisons to the 2012 rape of a 16-year-old girl in Steubenville, Ohio, followed the Star's publication on Sunday of a months-long investigation.
The newspaper reported that one of the teenagers is from a prominent local family and admitted having sex with Coleman after providing her with alcohol, but said it was consensual. He was originally charged with felony sex assault.
David Eulitt / Kansas City Star via AP
The Nodaway County Courthouse in downtown Maryville, Mo.
The other teenager was accused of videotaping part of the encounter with an iPhone and was charged with felony sexual exploitation of a minor, the Star said. Both were 17 at the time of the incident and had been Maryville High School football players, it said.
Melinda Coleman told the Star that many people in Maryville, a city of about 12,000 in northwestern Missouri, turned on her daughter and family after they pursued the case and the family moved out of town after repeated threats and harassment.
Rice said on Tuesday that the article did not include all the facts about the criminal case.
"There was insufficient evidence to prove a criminal charge beyond a reasonable doubt," Rice said in a statement. "The state's witnesses refused to cooperate and invoked their 5th Amendment privilege to not testify."
Nanci Gonder, a spokeswoman for Koster, said the state attorney general would not get involved in the case.
"Charging decisions in criminal cases are placed within the discretion of elected county prosecutors in Missouri," Gonder said. "State law provides the Attorney General's Office with no authority to review or overrule a prosecutor's charging decisions."
In the Ohio case, Anonymous accused authorities of shielding the popular Steubenville High School football program after two players were accused of raping a teenage girl at a party. The players were later convicted and a grand jury recently indicted a school employee on charges of obstructing the investigation.
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/663306/s/32858213/sc/38/l/0Lusnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C10A0C160C20A9875450Emaryville0Emissouri0Esex0Eassault0Ecase0Ehack0Egroup0Eanonymous0Eplans0Etwitter0Estorm0Dlite/story01.htmCategory: Beyond Two Souls tesla futurama Amanda Rosenberg ariana grande
Shutdown Shows Republican Party More Splintered Than Ever
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The 1973 Arab Oil Embargo: The Old Rules No Longer Apply
On Dec. 23, 1973, cars formed a double line at a gas station in New York City. The Arab oil embargo caused gas shortages nationwide and shaped U.S. foreign policy to this day.
Marty Lederhandler/AP
On Dec. 23, 1973, cars formed a double line at a gas station in New York City. The Arab oil embargo caused gas shortages nationwide and shaped U.S. foreign policy to this day.
Marty Lederhandler/AP
Forty years ago this week, the U.S. was hit by an oil shock that reverberates until this day.
Arab oil producers cut off exports to the U.S. to protest American military support for Israel in its 1973 war with Egypt and Syria. This brought soaring gas prices and long lines at filling stations, and it contributed to a major economic downturn in the U.S.
The embargo made the U.S. feel heavily dependent on Middle Eastern oil, which in turn led the U.S. to focus on instability in that region, which has since included multiple wars and other U.S. military interventions.
"The oil crisis set off an upheaval in global politics and the world economy. It also challenged America's position in the world, polarized its politics at home and shook the country's confidence," author and oil analyst Daniel Yergin wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.
While these concerns linger, the world energy market has changed dramatically over the past four decades. U.S. energy production is rising. Less than 10 percent of U.S. oil comes from the Middle East. Global prices are relatively stable.
All this has spurred debate about whether the U.S. is too focused on the Middle East and its oil when it does not appear to pose much of an economic threat to America. We won't try to answer that question today, but we did want to point out things that were very different back in the fall of 1973:
Leon Mill spray-paints a sign outside his Phillips 66 station in Perkasie, Pa., in 1973 to let his customers know he's out of gas. An oil crisis was the culprit, squeezing U.S. businesses and consumers who were forced to line up for hours at gas stations.
AP
Leon Mill spray-paints a sign outside his Phillips 66 station in Perkasie, Pa., in 1973 to let his customers know he's out of gas. An oil crisis was the culprit, squeezing U.S. businesses and consumers who were forced to line up for hours at gas stations.
AP
Saudi Arabia was a leading proponent of the 1973 embargo. For many Americans, Saudi Arabia was the symbol of the wealthy Arab monarchies that were inflicting so much pain on the U.S. Yet today, Saudi Arabia is one of the closest U.S. allies in the region and is currently pumping oil at high levels to keep world markets stable and offset lower production in places like Iraq, Iran and Nigeria.
Iran and the U.S. were allies. Under the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran kept on producing and exporting throughout the six-month embargo that lasted until March 1974. After the shah was overthrown in 1979, the U.S. and Iran became sworn rivals, a confrontation that has lasted more than three decades. Iran is now the target of Western sanctions that took effect last year and have cut the Islamic Republic's oil exports by half, from 2.5 million barrels a day to around 1.2 million.
In response to the oil shock, Congress passed fuel economy standards. That 1975 measure required automakers to raise mileage from 13.5 miles per gallon to 27 mpg. Last year, the standards were again doubled, and vehicles must average 54 mpg by 2025. As a result, Americans are driving more without increasing the amount of gas they are using.
Soaring oil prices remade the global energy industry. As oil prices skyrocketed in the 1970s, producers were willing to travel to more remote and difficult places to drill, including Alaska, the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Canadian oil sands. World oil production today is 50 percent higher than it was in 1973. Also, the crisis prompted efforts to find and develop other power sources, from natural gas to wind to solar.
The U.S. is less dependent on the Middle East today. In the years that followed the 1973 embargo, a cutoff of Middle Eastern oil was regarded as a grave national threat.
Here's President Jimmy Carter in his 1980 State of the Union address:
"An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America. Such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."
In reality, Middle Eastern oil has never been a huge part of the overall U.S. supply. Imports from the Middle East never accounted for more than 15 percent of the U.S. oil supply and now they account for only about 9 percent.
The U.S. now imports more oil from Canada than anywhere else. Saudi Arabia is the only Middle Eastern nation among the top five nations sending oil to America.
By limiting supply, OPEC was able to cause oil price spikes in the 1970s and '80s. But it has much less power today, and a number of top producers, such as Saudi Arabia, work to stabilize prices rather than disrupt the market.
"For the last four decades, Washington's energy policy has been based on the faulty conclusion that the country could solve all its energy woes by reducing its reliance on Middle Eastern oil," Gal Luft and Anne Korin write in Foreign Affairs.
"The crux of the United States' energy vulnerability was its inability to keep the price of oil under control, given the Arab oil kingdoms' stranglehold on the global petroleum supply," the authors write.
So the oil industry is a very different place. But not everything has changed:
The Israelis and the Arabs are still feuding. The 1973 Middle East war was essentially a draw, and Israel and Egypt then made peace before the decade was over. Israel also has a peace treaty with Jordan, but it is still at odds with its other immediate neighbors, the Palestinians, Lebanon and Syria. And Israel considers its biggest threat to be Iran, arguing that Tehran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, which Iran denies.
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Sunday, October 20, 2013
Hurricane Raymond Threatens Soaked Mexico Coast
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Newly formed Hurricane Raymond swirled on Sunday toward Mexico's southern Pacific coast, an area already devastated by rains and mudslides from Tropical Storm Manuel last month.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center predicted Raymond would take a sharp westward turn and head out to sea before reaching land, but warned that the Category 1 storm still might get as close as 50 miles (80 kilometers), bringing the threat of heavy and possibly dangerous rains.
In a region where 10,000 people are still living away from their homes one month after Manuel caused widespread flooding and left landslide risks, officials hurried to get emergency teams in place and weighed possible further evacuations.
Mexican authorities pinned their hopes on a cold front moving from the north that could help force Raymond to turn away from the coast, said the head of Mexico's National Water Commission, David Korenfeld.
"The cold front coming down is what makes it (Raymond) turn to the left, but that is a model," Korenfeld said. "If that cold front comes down more slowly, this tropical storm ... can get closer to the coast."
Raymond's center was about 135 miles (215 kilometers) south of the beach resort of Zihuatanejo and had maximum sustained winds of 75 mph (120 kph) early Sunday evening. The storm was moving north-northwest at about 6 mph (9 kph), the U.S. hurricane center said. It said some additional strengthening was expected overnight and the storm's forward motion was forecast to slow.
Authorities in southern Guerrero state, where storm deluges caused about 120 deaths from flooding and landslides in September, were more worried about Raymond's potential to bring more heavy rains than its winds.
The state government closed seaports, set up 700 emergency shelters and urged residents in risk areas to take precautions. Officials were expected to decide late Sunday on whether to order more evacuations, including from low-lying areas of Acapulco that flooded during Manuel.
Forecasters said Raymond was expected to slowly approach the coast late Monday or Tuesday but then begin to meander. The center said Raymond was likely to become a hurricane "very soon."
Forecasts warned that heavy rainfall was possible along the south-central Mexican coast in coming days and could cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides. A tropical storm warning and hurricane watch was in effect from Acapulco west to the seaport of Lazaro Cardenas.
"There will be rain for the next 72 hours along the Pacific coast, very heavy rain, torrential rain," Korenfeld said.
The potential for damage from such rains is high. About 50 dams in the area were still over capacity, and officials were releasing water to make room for expected rainfall.
Dozens of hillsides along the coast are thought to be unstable and could collapse from additional rain. In advance of the storm, the government moved helicopters and work crews to the places that problems were most likely.
Some villages high in the mountains of Guerrero were still without electricity and phone service following Manuel.
About 5,000 people in Guerrero are still living in shelters after their homes were flooded, and another 5,000 who were evacuated from homes built on hillsides at risk of mudslides are staying with relatives on safer ground.
In Zihuatanejo, near the Ixtapa resort, authorities sent emergency personnel into low-lying areas to warn people to seek safer ground, said Miguel Quiroz, a local Red Cross dispatcher.
In Barra de Potosi, a beach area just outside Zihuatanejo, a light rain began falling Sunday but tourists were largely undisturbed by the storm's proximity.
"We've got bookings coming in, people are coming in," said London native Les Johnson, an employee at the Our House bed and breakfast. "There's people on the beach, it's quite nice ... there's no problem at the moment."
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