UK, Somalia host aid conference in London

LONDON (AP) ? Somalia's president opened an international conference Tuesday by asking donors to provide "considerable investment and support" for his beleaguered government in the coming years.

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and British Prime Minister David Cameron were co-hosting the conference in London that aimed to bolster Mohamud's government in Mogadishu.

"There is a huge amount at stake right now," Mohamud told the delegates. "The future of our country, the security of the region, and the wider world, and the removal of the piracy stranglehold on the Gulf of Aden."

Somalia was expected to detail its plans to develop the country's security forces, justice sector and financial management systems in hopes of getting more international aid.

Delegates included a number of African heads of state and representatives from the IMF and the World Bank. Human Rights Watch has urged those attending to make accountability and women's rights a priority for the Somali government.

The conference came under harsh criticism from Al-Shabab, an al-Qaida affiliate active in Somalia that seeks to overthrow the Mogadishu-based government and install an Islamic one.

Al-Shabab, which counts several hundred foreign fighters among its ranks, controlled Mogadishu from roughly 2006 to 2011 until African Union troops forced it out of the capital. The group still controls wide swaths of south-central Somalia.

Al-Shabab leader Mukhtar Abu Zubeyr released an audiotape over the weekend in which he called Tuesday's meeting a plot to "plunder" Somalia's mineral wealth "under the guise of international trade relations and fighting corruption." He said the international community wanted to discard Islamic law in Somalia and replace it with Western laws and constitutions.

Zubeyr also urged his followers to increase suicide attacks to "permanently cripple" the Mogadishu-based government. The next day a suicide car bomb attack in the Somali capital killed at least seven people.

Zubeyr blamed the regional tensions over land and ethnicity on the Britain's colonial-era partitioning of Somalia between Kenya and Ethiopia.

Mohamud, the president, was inaugurated in September at the end of the eight-year U.N.-backed transitional government.

___

Jason Straziuso in Kenya contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/uk-somalia-host-aid-conference-london-110636510.html

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This Ad Has a Secret Anti-Abuse Message That Only Kids Can See

In an effort to provide abused children with a safe way to reach out for help, a Spanish organization called the Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk Foundation, or ANAR for short, created an ad that displays a different message for adults and children at the same time.

The secret behind the ad's wizardry is a lenticular top layer, which shows different images at varying angles. So when an adult?or anyone taller than four feet, five inches?looks at it they only see the image of a sad child and the message: "sometimes, child abuse is only visible to the child suffering it." But when a child looks at the ad, they see bruises on the boy's face and a different message: "if somebody hurts you, phone us and we?ll help you" alongside the foundation's phone number.

The ad is designed to empower kids, particularly if their abuser happens to be standing right next to them. And while this is a great and worthwhile use of lenticular images, how long will it be before toy companies start doing to the same thing to hawk their products directly at kids? [YouTube via PetaPixel via DIY Photography]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/this-ad-has-a-secret-anti-abuse-message-that-only-kids-493108460

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Facebook Messenger for iOS: now with stickers and message-deleting swipes

Facebook's been giving its Messenger app quite a few facelifts lately, with the arrival of Chat Heads and VoIP calling among the highlights. Today, an app update was released for iOS that lets users add stylized critter stickers to messages, freeing them from the crippling visual limitations of emoticons in textual communications -- largely identical to the recent Android update. The upgrade also enables a swipe to delete feature to remove conversations from inboxes for good, saving users precious fingertips from an extra tap or two in the process. If your iPhone hasn't already told you about version 2.4, you'll find the fresh download at the source below.

Filed under: Software, Facebook

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Via: The Next Web

Source: App Store

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/07/facebook-messanger-ios-update-stickers/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

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What's Your Grubbiest Tech Confession?

Nobody's perfect. Some people Skype without a headset in public. Others insists on using Internet Explorer. Some weirdos even use Comic Sans without flinching. But what's your grubbiest tech confession? We're all friends here, so let it out. It'll be cathartic. I promise.

Read more...

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/CRDl1DNXlME/whats-your-grubbiest-tech-confession-493101233

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Hubble sees the remains of a star gone supernova

May 6, 2013 ? A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows delicate wisps of gas that make up an object known as SNR B0519-69.0, or SNR 0519 for short.

The thin, blood-red shells are actually the remnants from when an unstable progenitor star exploded violently as a supernova around 600 years ago. There are several types of supernovae, but for SNR 0519 the star that exploded is known to have been a white dwarf star -- a Sun-like star in the final stages of its life.

SNR 0519 is located over 150 000 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Dorado (The Dolphinfish), a constellation that also contains most of our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Because of this, this region of the sky is full of intriguing and beautiful deep sky objects.

The LMC orbits the Milky Way galaxy as a satellite and is the fourth largest in our group of galaxies, the Local Group. SNR 0519 is not alone in the LMC; the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope also came across a similar bauble a few years ago in SNR B0509-67.5, a supernova of the same type as SNR 0519 with a strikingly similar appearance.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/bZsI70MyNR8/130506161618.htm

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Mariah Carey Debuts A New 'Texture' On Miguel Collaboration '#Beautiful'

Carey says she wanted 'a texture that feels fresh' on lead single off her 2013 album.
By Jocelyn Vena

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1706849/mariah-carey-miguel-beautiful-single.jhtml

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5 Ways to Avoid a Burglar

Every 15 seconds, someone is ripping off a home in the United States.

Someone like Chris Patterson. Patterson, who is on parole, has been convicted four times for breaking into homes. He's trying to clean up his life, so he agreed to share his inside knowledge to keep homeowners safer.

"It would be great if other people didn't have to go through what ... my victims went through," Patterson said in an interview for "20/20."

"People make it so easy for burglars to victimize them."

Here are five inside secrets and tips from Patterson on how to avoid getting burglarized.

Watch the full story, and get more of Patterson's secrets, on "20/20: Confessions" TONIGHT at 10 ET.

1.

Invest in a Security System

They're worth it, Patterson said, especially the ones with cameras. Some can even beam live video of a break-in as it's happening so a homeowner can call the cops.

Patterson said a burglar alarm alone was no guarantee to keep him out.

"You are obviously looking in the window, peeking through the glass in the door to see if there is an alarm box and if it's armed. ... Maybe half the time it's not even armed," he said.

Even if you are just going for a quick jog or down the block to pick up milk, that's plenty of time for a burglar if you don't arm the system, Patterson said.

3.

'Beware of Dog' Signs Work

"That 'Beware of Dog' sign? Not even going near it," Patterson said. You can even skip the actual dog. The low-tech, small and cheap sign is effective enough.

No burglar wants to deal with a dog and so won't take the chance -- and probably will avoid the neighbors' houses, too, Patterson said.

4.

Don't Blab on Facebook When You're Leaving Town

Burglars check out social media, too, Patterson said.

"It's one of the newest, hottest trends out there. If they have already said they are going to be gone ? you just have to set a time when you want to go over and pick it up."

5.

Camouflage and Stash Your Bling

"I have done a lot of homes, and it doesn't matter the race, nationality, income bracket, age. Almost every single person puts things in the exact same place as the next one," Patterson said.

If it's jewelry, it's likely lovingly organized in boxes and bags in the top drawer of a dresser. Instead, put jewelry in a plain old shoe box and hide it elsewhere, like the kids' room, Patterson said.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ways-avoid-break-confessions-burglar/story?id=19101417

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Ebola's secret weapon revealed

Friday, May 3, 2013

Researchers have discovered the mechanism behind one of the Ebola virus' most dangerous attributes: its ability to disarm the adaptive immune system.

University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston scientists determined that Ebola short-circuits the immune system using proteins that work together to shut down cellular signaling related to interferon. Disruption of this activity, the researchers found, allows Ebola to prevent the full development of dendritic cells that would otherwise trigger an immune response to the virus.

"Dendritic cells typically undergo a process called 'maturation' when they're infected by a virus ? they change shape and present antigens on their surface that tell T-cells to attack that particular virus, thus generating an adaptive immune response," said UTMB professor Alexander Bukreyev, senior author of a paper on the discovery now online in the Journal of Virology. "But Ebola prevents dendritic-cell maturation and produces a severe infection without an effective adaptive immune response. We found that its ability to do this depends on several specific regions of two different proteins."

Bukreyev's research group made the discovery after a series of procedures that started with a clone of the Ebola Zaire virus strain. Working under maximum-containment conditions in a biosafety level 4 facility in UTMB's Galveston National Laboratory, the team introduced mutations into the virus' genetic code at four locations thought to generate proteins that affected immune response.

They then infected human dendritic cells with each of the resulting new strains and compared the results with those produced by unmutated Ebola Zaire. Each of the four new viruses, they found, was unable to suppress dendritic-cell maturation.

"We saw two very interesting things," Bukreyev said. "First, that these mutations restore maturation of dendritic cells very effectively, and second, that a mutation in even one of these genetic domains makes the virus unable to suppress maturation. That means that the virus needs multiple combined effects in order to undermine the immune system in this way."

Ebola's ability to evade the human immune response is one of the factors that accounts for its high mortality rate ? up to 90 percent in humans ? and the notoriety that it gained after its first appearance in Zaire in 1976, in an outbreak that killed 280 people. Zaire ? now the Democratic Republic of the Congo ? is the home country of Ndongala Lubaki, lead author on the paper and a postdoctoral fellow at UTMB.

###

University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston: http://www.utmb.edu

Thanks to University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128123/Ebola_s_secret_weapon_revealed

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Obama defends FBI handling of Boston investigation

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama is defending the FBI's handling of the Boston Marathon bombing investigation as Republicans ready for oversight hearings on the attack.

Obama tells the Spanish-language television network Univision he doesn't think it's fair to say law enforcement "dropped the ball"

The president says "there are going to be times where individuals decide they want to cause harm to people for crazy reasons, for no good reason, for ideological reasons."

He says it's a challenge when would-be attackers are "self-radicalizing" and not part of a broad conspiracy. Obama says the FBI "can't arrest somebody just based on a rumor."

The first of a series of House hearings is set for Thursday before the GOP-led House Homeland Security Committee.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-05-04-Boston%20Marathon-Obama/id-ddc0ff11369a4ec1bcc3652b31ff89b6

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Traktor DJ gets remixed for iPhone, brings big features to small pockets (video)

Traktor DJ for iPad showed us what can be done when you resist the urge to simply shrink your existing software or just slide it under a touch interface. Since its iOS debut, the folk at Native Instruments have spent the last couple of months cautiously considering how best to transplant the same waveform-based interface over to the iPhone. Today, you can find out. You get everything you find in the iPad version, like three band EQ, filters, hot cues and effects --along with the same key, tempo and timbre matching utilities, plus library sharing with the full-fat desktop version. The UI isn't the only thing getting downsized, either: this iPhone-friendly version costs just $4.99 (compared to $20 on the iPad). That should leave enough change to drop a few on party rock anthems.

Filed under: Software, HD, Mobile

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Source: iTunes

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

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