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Advent (from the Latin adventus meaning "coming") is a liturgical season observed in many Western Christian churches as a time of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus at Christmas. Advent marks the beginning of the Western liturgical year and begins on Advent Sunday, the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day, Dec. 25. For Christians, the season of Advent serves as a reminder both of the original waiting by Israelites for the birth of the Messiah, and the waiting by Christians for the return of Christ. The most famous hymn of Advent is "O Come Emmanuel." Its lyrics, based on the Prophet Isaiah, articulate the hopeful anticipation of the Advent season:
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
Originally observed as a time of fasting and penitence, the emphasis of the season of Advent is one of expectation and anticipation for the coming Messiah. The season of Advent starts out in a sombre tone and for the first two weeks, purple and blue are the primary colors used in church. On the third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday (gaudete means rejoice) pink or rose are the primary colors used. This shift in color symbolizes change in emphasis from expectation to celebration.
In 2011, the Advent season begins on Nov. 27, 2011 and ends on Dec. 24, 2011. The Eastern Churches' equivalent of Advent, Nativity Fast, is 40 days long and began on Nov. 15, 2011.
The themes of the Advent season are Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. Lighting of candles, especially the circular Advent wreath with five candles is an important tradition of the Advent season. Each Sunday of Advent, one of four candles is lit -- with the final candle, the Christ Candle, being lit on Christmas Eve.
PHOTOS: Images Of Advent
Darkness To Light Advent Procession
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SALISBURY, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 28: The interior of Salisbury Cathedral is illuminated by candles carried by choristers during the annual 'darkness to light' advent procession on November 28, 2010 in Salisbury, England. This year's service - which begins with the cathedral in total darkness and silence before the Advent Candle is lit at the West End - features Bruce Munro's fibre optic 'Light Shower' installation high in the Spire Crossing made with 2,000 points of light. The annual advent service is a mix of music and readings during which two great processions move around the different spaces in the building which is, by the end, illuminated by almost 1300 candles. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)
SALISBURY, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 28: The interior of Salisbury Cathedral is illuminated by candles carried by choristers during the annual 'darkness to light' advent procession on November 28, 2010 in Salisbury, England. This year's service - which begins with the cathedral in total darkness and silence before the Advent Candle is lit at the West End - features Bruce Munro's fibre optic 'Light Shower' installation high in the Spire Crossing made with 2,000 points of light. The annual advent service is a mix of music and readings during which two great processions move around the different spaces in the building which is, by the end, illuminated by almost 1300 candles. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)
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Darkness To Light Advent Procession
SALISBURY, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 28: The interior of Salisbury Cathedral is illuminated by candles carried by choristers during the annual 'darkness to light' advent procession on November 28, 2010 in Salisbury, England. This year's service - which begins with the cathedral in total darkness and silence before the Advent Candle is lit at the West End - features Bruce Munro's fibre optic 'Light Shower' installation high in the Spire Crossing made with 2,000 points of light. The annual advent service is a mix of music and readings during which two great processions move around the different spaces in the building which is, by the end, illuminated by almost 1300 candles. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)
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Ruth Stone, an award-winning poet for whom tragedy halted, then inspired a career that started in middle age and thrived late in life as her sharp insights into love, death and nature received ever-growing acclaim, has died in Vermont. She was 96.
Stone, who for decades lived in a farmhouse in Goshen, died Nov. 19 of natural causes at her home in Ripton, her daughter Phoebe Stone said Thursday. She was surrounded by her daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Widowed in her 40s and little known for years after, Ruth Stone became one of the country's most honored poets in her 80s and 90s, winning the National Book Award in 2002 for "In the Next Galaxy" and being named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for "What Love Comes To." She received numerous other citations, including a National Book Critics Circle award, two Guggenheims and a Whiting Award.
She was born Ruth Perkins in 1915, the daughter of printer and part-time drummer Roger Perkins. A native of Roanoke, Va., who spent much of her childhood in Indianapolis, Ruth was a creative and precocious girl for whom poetry was almost literally mother's milk; her mother would recite Tennyson while nursing her. A beloved aunt, Aunt Harriette, worked with young Ruth on poetry and illustrations and was later immortalized, with awe and affection, in the poem "How to Catch Aunt Harriette."
By age 19, Stone was married and had moved to Urbana, Ill., studying at the University of Illinois. There, she met Walter Stone, a graduate student and poet who became the love of her life, well after his ended. "You, a young poet working/in the steel mills; me, married, to a dull chemical engineer," she wrote of their early, adulterous courtship, in the poem "Coffee and Sweet Rolls."
She divorced her first husband, married Stone and had two daughters (she also had a daughter from her first marriage). By 1959, he was on the faculty at Vassar and both were set to publish books. But on a sabbatical in England, Walter Stone hung himself, at age 42, a suicide his wife never got over or really understood.
In the poem "Turn Your Eyes Away," she remembered seeing his body, "on the door of a rented room/like an overcoat/like a bathrobe/ hung from a hook." He would recur, ghostlike, in poem after poem. "Actually the widow thinks/he may be/in another country in disguise," she writes in "All Time is Past Time." In "The Widow's Song," she wonders "If he saw her now/would he marry her?/The widow pinches her fat/on her abdomen."
Her first collection, "In an Iridescent Time," came out in 1959. But Stone, depressed and raising three children alone, moving around the country to wherever she could find a teaching job, didn't publish her next book, "Topography and Other Poems," until 1971. Another decade-long gap preceded her 1986 release "American Milk."
Her life stabilized in 1990 when she became a professor of English and creative writing at the State University of New York in Binghamton. Most of her published work, including "American Milk," "The Solution" and "Simplicity," came out after she turned 70.
Her poems were brief, her curiosity boundless, her verse a cataloguing of what she called "that vast/confused library, the female mind." She considered the bottling of milk; her grandmother's hair, "pulled back to a bun"; the random thoughts while hanging laundry (Einstein's mustache, the eyesight of ants).
"I think my work is a natural response to my life," she once said. "What I see and feel changes like a prism, moment to moment; a poem holds and illuminates. It is a small drama. I think, too, my poems are a release, a laughing at the ridiculous and songs of mourning, celebrating marriage and loss, all the sad baggage of our lives. It is so overwhelming, so complex."
Aging and death were steady companions ? confronted, lamented and sometimes kidded, like in "Storage," in which her "old" brain reminds her not to weep for what was lost: "Listen ? I have it all on video/at half the price," the poet is warned.
Stone was not pious ? "I am not one/who God can hope to save by dying twice" ? but she worshipped the world and counted its blessings. In "Yes, Think," she imagines a caterpillar pitying its tiny place in the universe and "getting even smaller." Nature herself smiles and responds:
___
"You are a lovely link
in the great chain of being
Think how lucky it is to be born."
___
Associated Press Writer Holly Ramer in Concord, N.H., contributed to this report.
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CAIRO (AP) ? For months, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood has focused single-mindedly on this moment ? parliamentary elections beginning Monday that the fundamentalist group is expected to dominate. Now it may be a pyrrhic victory.
The Brotherhood stayed on the sidelines of this week's protests by secular liberal groups demanding the country's military rulers step down, hurting its image among key sectors of the Egyptian public who accuse the group of siding with the generals and selling out democracy demands to gain power.
By staying out of the protests, "the Brotherhood has made it clear that they want elections because they want the seat of power, no matter what that seat looks like," said Abdel-Jalil el-Sharnoubi, who once headed the Brotherhood's website until he quit the group earlier this year in frustration with its leadership.
Ever since the Feb. 11 fall of autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak, fears have been growing among some Egyptians that the country would take a strong turn toward Islamic fundamentalism.
The Brotherhood was long repressed under Mubarak but it built up Egypt's largest and most disciplined political organization, with tens of thousands of members around the country, as well as a network of charities providing food, money and medical care to the poor. They have been campaigning furiously for months, while liberal, leftist and secular parties that arose since Mubarak's fall have been disorganized and divided, struggling to build up their national presence.
But the group's popularity has limits. Particularly, even many Egyptians who have no problem with greater religious conservatism in public life are suspicious that the Brotherhood is too authoritarian in its ways and too eager to rule. For that reason, the blow to the Brotherhood reputation stings, undermining the image it has pushed hard in its election campaign that it is a trustworthy, pious group that ? as their slogan declares ? "brings good for Egypt."
The explosion of protests against the military, which stepped in to rule when Mubarak fell, pushed the Brotherhood into a corner. Activists accuse the generals of acting as much the dictators as Mubarak and seeking to retain power. The protests, which began Saturday, have only grown as security forces try to suppress them, killing nearly 40 people even as the crowds have swollen to tens of thousands.
The Brotherhood refused to join the rally out of fear they would swell out of control and delay the elections. On Tuesday, the Brotherhood and several smaller parties met with the generals of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and agreed to a compromise.
Under the deal, the military would form a new interim civilian government, parliamentary elections would go ahead on schedule, but presidential elections would be moved up to the end of June, after which the military would step aside.
Protesters rejected the deal, demanding the generals surrender power immediately.
The damage from staying out of Tahrir may not be heavy enough to set back the Brotherhood's election showing, given its powerful campaign machine. In one possible scenario, the violence in Cairo's Tahrir Square and in cities around the country could even benefit it. If turmoil reduces turnout at the polls, the Brotherhood's results could be inflated because its supporters are the most organized and will cast ballots in large numbers no matter what.
But the chaos will undermine the legitimacy of the vote, and the parliament that emerges will have a deeply damaged mandate. Many liberals already say the parliament won't be truly representative. Even if the Brotherhood and other Islamic parties gain the largest bloc or majority, they will have a difficult time pushing through any agenda at a time when divisions among all Egypt's factions have been enflamed by the past week's violence.
And the prize itself is not so sweet ? a legislature and government under the shadow of the military, which will keep its overwhelming power at least until the end of June, after presidential elections are held. The military, as head of state, is attempting to take a major role in writing the next constitution, a process that parliament has expected to oversee.
"Whatever leadership emerges from the election will only be secretaries for the military, and if elections take place, the only result will be to divide Egyptians more," said el-Sharnoubi, the former Brotherhood activist.
Younger Brotherhood members have defied the leadership's decision and joined the demonstration. Loyalties among Brotherhood youth have been increasingly fraying since the uprising against Mubarak as cadres feel pressured to choose between the group and the "revolution."
Mohammed al-Gebbah was running for election in the Nile Delta province of Damietta on the Brotherhood's slate, but he froze his campaign ? and his membership in the group ? to join the crowds in Tahrir.
"I couldn't imagine myself campaigning while my people here got killed for no reason but only calling for freedom," he said, standing at his tent in the square. "How could I be elected under the authority of the military council, whose hands are stained with blood of the Egyptians."
"These elections are Egypt's, not the elections of the Brotherhood's leaders," he said. "The Brothers are not all of Egypt, they are part of Egypt."
Al-Gabbah says he still hopes to reform the Brotherhood from within. But in past months, others have broken completely to join other parties, including forming a new movement called the Egyptian Current, which avoids religious references in its rhetoric altogether.
The Brotherhood leadership "is working just like Mubarak regime," said Ahmed Zahran, an Egyptian Current activist. "It has lost sensibility of what the street wants. It has lost the people's sympathy."
Brotherhood officials have insisted that the decision to stay out of the square was to avoid chaos that would hurt the country. The deal they reached with the military, they point out, moves up the date for the military to hand over power, which under the generals' previous timetable would not have come until late 2012 or early 2013.
Kamal el-Helbawi, formerly a senior figure in the Brotherhood who quit the group, said the dispute could diminish the number of seats they win in parliament but "not very seriously."
The problem, he said, is that the alternatives in the campaign are not strong. Several liberal and leftist parties have formed, but they are far less known than the Brotherhood and have been unable to unify their ranks because of personal and political disputes.
"If there was an alternative," the Brotherhood chances would be "limited," he said.
Estimates of how much of parliament the Brotherhood could win have varied, a reflection of how unpredictable Egypt has become since Mubarak's fall. Participation was minimal in elections under the old regime and choices were restricted, so the leanings of vast swaths of the population of 85 million are unknown. Observers and Brotherhood members have predicted anywhere from 20 percent to 50 percent.
Under Mubarak, the Brotherhood ran in parliamentary elections, scoring its biggest victory in 2005 when it took 20 percent of the seats.
"The situation is very fluid right now and the undecided voters are much more right now," Khalil Annani, expert in political Islamic groups said. I don't think there is a single force will take the majority."
Other Islamic groups are also running, particularly the ultraconservative Salafis, who follow an ideology close to puritanical Saudi Arabia, and parties more moderate than the Brotherhood. But the chances of them forming an "Islamic bloc" in parliament are unclear because of longtime divisions between them. Early in the campaign, the Brotherhood attempted an election alliance with the Salafis, who later quit complaining that the Brotherhood was too domineering.
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FILE - In this Nov. 22, 2011 file photo, President Barack Obama gestures while speaking at Central High School in Manchester, N.H. The failure of Congress' supercommittee adds a new dimension to the 2012 political contests by drawing political battle lines around broad tax increases and massive spending cuts that are now scheduled to begin automatically in 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
FILE - In this Nov. 22, 2011 file photo, President Barack Obama gestures while speaking at Central High School in Manchester, N.H. The failure of Congress' supercommittee adds a new dimension to the 2012 political contests by drawing political battle lines around broad tax increases and massive spending cuts that are now scheduled to begin automatically in 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The failure of Congress' deficit-reduction supercommittee adds a new dimension to the 2012 political contests, drawing political battle lines around broad tax increases and massive spending cuts that now are scheduled to begin automatically in 2013.
President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger will be forced to debate alternatives for reducing deficits, made all the more urgent by the looming consequences of congressional inaction. The dividing lines already are sharply drawn, with Obama supporting deficit reduction that includes a mix of spending cuts and tax increases on the wealthy, while Republicans have declared themselves averse to tax hikes.
An election that has been shaping up as a referendum on Obama's stewardship of the economy now will require the candidates to offer competing forward-looking deficit-reduction plans to avoid cuts and tax hikes that neither side wants to see materialize.
For Obama, that is a more favorable place to be, drawing contrasts with his opponent and arguing for higher taxes on the rich rather than defending his oversight of an economy that could still be suffering from high unemployment and slow growth next November.
Beginning in 2013, the federal government faces two oncoming trains. When the supercommittee was unable to find agreement by Wednesday, it triggered spending cuts of $1.2 trillion starting in January 2013 and extending over 10 years. Half of the cuts would come from defense spending, the other from education, agriculture and environmental programs, and, to a lesser extent, Medicare.
At the same time, tax cuts adopted during the presidency of George W. Bush will expire at the end of 2012, meaning an increase for every taxpayer.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said the cuts would "tear a seam in the nation's defense."
Meanwhile, the tax increases would hit a still-fragile economy, endangering a recovery and raising prospects of another recession.
But while neither side wants those outcomes, Washington's recent history of tackling fiscal problems shows Congress does not act unless faced with a dire deadline. It extended Bush-era tax cuts in 2010 just days before they expired, it avoided a government shutdown by hours and it put off a debt crisis this summer in the face of a government default.
"The next big event, barring some movement from Congress, may just well be the 2012 election," said Kevin Madden, a former senior House leadership aide and an outside adviser to Republican Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. "Then we look to either a new president and a new Congress, or the same president and the same Congress to restart it all."
Election years do not lend themselves to big legislative initiatives. Lawmakers are too busy seeking re-election to take potentially controversial stances that could cost them votes. Moreover, congressional leaders may well want to see how the elections affect Washington's balance of power before undertaking changes that require compromises.
An angry public could demand swift action. But even if Congress were to attempt to find common ground next year, the legislative maneuvering would unfold in the midst of the presidential contest, and White House aides acknowledge that it can't avoid becoming a part of the political debate.
They repeatedly point out that each of the eight Republican candidates have refused to endorse any deficit-reduction plan that contains any tax increases and that they reiterated that position en masse during a recent presidential debate.
"The very men and woman who would occupy the Oval Office stood up on a stage and all raised their hand and said they would not accept a deal that had as its foundation $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue," White House spokesman Jay Carney said this week.
While Republicans have criticized Obama for not engaging directly in the supercommittee negotiations, his hands-off approach was calculated, coming in the aftermath of his own failed attempts to strike a deficit deal with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. In a gridlocked Congress, Obama is more likely to lose if he gets deeply involved.
The detachment allows him to set a clear dividing line for voters, one in which he can cast Republicans as protecting the rich. It's a stance that for now has political appeal. A number of recent public opinion polls show that up to two-thirds of Americans support raising taxes on individuals earning more than $1 million, and about half favor raising taxes on families earning at least $250,000 a year.
Even if some Republicans were disposed to negotiate a new deficit-reduction plan, Obama's sharpening of the lines between the parties could drive them away.
"If the president has decided that he is now in full campaign mode, that's going to make things very difficult in terms of finding common ground," said David Winston, a GOP strategist who advises House Republican leaders.
Eager to maintain pressure on Congress, Obama this week issued a veto threat against any efforts to change the automatic spending cuts triggered by the supercommittee's inaction.
Aides said Obama did not prefer those cuts, but he made it clear that the threat of such cuts was essential to get Congress to act.
"There will be no easy off-ramps on this one," Obama said Monday. "We need to keep the pressure up to compromise, not turn off the pressure. The only way these spending cuts will not take place is if Congress gets back to work and agrees on a balanced plan to reduce the deficit by at least $1.2 trillion."
Republicans pounced on the veto threat, portraying Obama as indifferent to deep Pentagon reductions.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, said he found the veto threat "reprehensible." He added: "If Leon Panetta is an honorable man, he should resign in protest."
But Democrats, and Obama in particular, don't feel as vulnerable on defense as the party once was. Aides point to foreign policy advances, the killing of Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders, and the drawdown of forces from Iraq and Afghanistan as evidence that Obama has credibility on military issues.
But Carney this week also said that if critics worry about maintaining defense spending levels, "There is an easy way out here, which is be willing to ask the wealthiest Americans to pay a little bit more in order to achieve this comprehensive and balanced deficit-reduction plan."
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US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced a $10 million aid package for Thailand flood relief during a visit to Bangkok Wednesday.
Both US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon paid visits to Bangkok today as a fierce political debate threatens to destabilize the flood-ravaged country.
Skip to next paragraphMrs. Clinton announced more than $10 million in extra flood relief assistance, telling media in Bangkok that she ?admired the resilience of the Thai government and people.?
Areas of the capital, Bangkok, are still under water almost four months after the Thailand's worst-ever floods grabbed headlines worldwide. The official death toll is now at 564, and several neighborhoods of Bangkok were today ordered to evacuate as water slowly drains through Bangkok toward the sea.?
The night before the high profile arrivals, however, the Thai government discussed an official pardon for some 26,000 felons, possibly including fugitive former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a September 2006 coup and faces two years jail time for corruption in office.
The mere hint of his return to Thailand has riled the country's opposition.
The pardon was discussed by the Thai cabinet on Tuesday and Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra ? Thaksin's younger sister ? will present the country's King Bhumibol Adulyadej with a list of names for pardon to mark the monarch's 84th birthday on Dec. 5.
While the focus of the Clinton visit was on the disaster and on the upcoming Asia-Pacific summit meetings in Bali, Indonesia, the pardon eventually came up.
Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra sidestepped the issue, however, reminding journalists that she wasn't present when the pardon was discussed and suggested that the matter was in the hands, for now, of Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yubumrung.
Opposition leader and former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejajjiva said today that any move to pardon Thaksin would undermine the rule of law in Thailand. He is expected to take up the issue in parliament.
Clinton made no comment on the pardon issue, but praised the work of the truth and reconciliation body set up by the former Thai government to investigate the Thaksin-backed "redshirt" street protests that turned ugly in 2010, killing 91 people.
The latest pardon attempt increases the possibility of new protests in the country.
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MOSCOW ? Russia's state-controlled natural gas company bought the remaining stake in Belarus' gas pipeline system Friday to become its sole owner in a move that strengthens Moscow's control over gas exports to the West.
Russia is the main ally and sponsor of Belarus' authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, but he had been reluctant to yield control over the pipeline network and other Belarusian economic assets in the past, accusing Russia of trying to erode his nation's sovereignty.
Lukashenko's stance, however, has been softened recently by a severe economic crisis that has weakened his power and made him more prone to compromise.
Russia's Gazprom already had owned 50 percent in Belarus' pipeline operator, Beltransgaz, and wanted to gain full control. It said in a statement after the signing that it agreed to pay $2.5 billion for the remaining 50 percent stake.
Russia provides about a quarter of the natural gas that Europe consumes, with 80 percent of it going through Ukraine. The rest is shipped through Belarus and Turkey.
Moscow has sought to win control of existing transit routes and build new export pipelines bypassing its neighbors in order to secure its hold on energy supplies to Europe, its main export market.
Past pricing disputes between Ukraine and Belarus have led to disruptions in energy supplies to customers in the European Union, prompting EU nations to intensify a search for alternative supply routes.
Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said after the signing Friday that the deal has brought an end to the energy wars between Russia and Belarus.
As part of the deal, Russia has also reduced the price of gas it sells to Belarus. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday that Gazprom will now charge Belarus $164 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas in the first quarter of next year, down from the $280 per 1,000 cubic meters it was paying in the third quarter of this year. The gas price for Gazprom customers in Europe hovers around $400 per 1,000 cubic meters.
"We are making a significant discount for our Belarusian friends and partners," Putin said. He added that Russia also agreed to restructure Belarus' debt for previous supplies.
The low gas price is essential for the Belarusian economy, most of which has remained in state hands. Belarus has been hit by its worst financial crisis since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, which has led to sharp devaluation of the national currency and triggered high inflation that has eroded public savings.
"Cheap gas and oil are like drugs for the Soviet-style Belarusian economy," said Alexander Klaskovsky, an independent analyst in the Belarusian capital, Minsk. "It's a lifebelt for Lukashenko who has driven the country into a deep crisis and 100 percent inflation."
Belarus' first post-Soviet leader, Stanislav Shushkevich, said that surrendering control of the pipelines "will mean the loss of a significant part of Belarus' sovereignty."
He described the gas deal with Belarus as part of efforts by Putin, who is all but certain to reclaim the Russian presidency in March's vote, to create a new, stronger alliance of ex-Soviet nations.
Putin, who has lamented the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, has recently proposed forming a "Eurasian Union" of former Soviet nations, saying the bloc could become a major global player competing for influence with the United States, the European Union and Asia.
"Putin is going to the vote with a geopolitical plan of a new empire, and he's ready to pay the devil or Lukashenko to achieve that," Shushkevich told The Associated Press.
____
Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow and Yuras Karmanau in Minsk, Belarus, contributed to this report.
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'Nicki's back in the studio, so we're looking to drop Nicki in the first quarter,' Cash Money boss Birdman says.
By Jocelyn Vena
Nicki Minaj
Photo: Frank Micelotta/Getty Images
The countdown is on, Barbz. Nicki Minaj's Cash Money boss Birdman is dishing on when the fierce female MC plans to drop her follow-up to Pink Friday.
"Nicki's back in the studio, so we're looking to drop Nicki in the first quarter," Brian "Birdman" Williams said in an interview with Billboard.com. He went on to dish that Minaj could potentially drop new music sometime before year-end. "Maybe this year? I don't know," he added about releasing a single before 2012 strikes. "We're really thinking it out. But she's in the studio, and we're looking real soon, because she's ready to go and we're ready to go with her."
Earlier this month, BET reported that Minaj posted a blog post about how her alter-ego Roman would play a part in her new music. Although the post was later removed, the MC teased that Roman is out for revenge.
"Roman will be in rare form this time. You know why? Cuz he no longer gives a f---," she wrote. "He has two more weeks in boarding school. We're going to pick him up now. When he lands, he will address the nation in the form of music. He will also announce the date."
Over the summer, Roman was the topic of discussion when Minaj teased her new LP. "I don't think I'm hitting up anybody for features for this sophomore album," she told us. "Roman ... possibly. But I never give away all my secrets."
Whether or not Roman will have anything to do with this record, Minaj's Pink Friday producer Kane Beatz recently told MTV News, "We got one so far. She's in L.A. goin' crazy. ... She just started, so she's really picking her music and picking the songs. She's real selective. She'll pick all the beats before she even starts writing, so right now, we're just getting music together, and it's goin' crazy right now."
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1674818/nicki-minaj-album.jhtml
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If your travel plans for Thanksgiving involve sitting behind the wheel for a few hours until you get to your destination, there are still a few things you should do before you leave to make sure that you get to your destination quickly and safely.
Whether your road trip will last for a handful of hours or you're traveling across country, you'll want to make sure that you're ready for the trip, and that your vehicle is ready to go. Here are a few ways to make sure you're all set.
Photo by Patxi Izkue.
Are you hitting the road this week? Any additional tips you'd share with the community to make the road trip as smooth as possible? Share your suggestions in the comments below.
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WASHINGTON ? The Obama administration says it will not restrict recreational shooting on public lands, reversing a draft policy that had caused an uproar among gun owners and hunters, especially in the West.
In a memo sent Wednesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he would direct his agency to "take no further action to develop or implement" the draft policy, which would have restricted target shooting on some public lands near residential areas. Officials said they were trying to ensure public safety in rapidly growing areas of the West, where some residents have clashed with gun owners who use public lands for target practice.
Republican lawmakers and gun rights groups called the policy unnecessarily restrictive.
Salazar said the vast majority of land overseen by the Interior Department remains open to recreational shooting.
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Regeneration after a stroke requires intact communication channels between brain hemispheres
Monday, November 21, 2011The structure of the corpus callosum, a thick band of nerve fibres that connects the two halves of the brain with each other and in this way enables the rapid exchange of information between the left and right hemispheres, plays an important role in the regaining of motor skills following a stroke. A study currently published in the journal Human Brain Mapping has shown that in stroke patients with particularly severely impaired hand movement, this communication channel between the two brain hemispheres in particular was badly damaged.
In order to relate brain function and anatomical structure with each other, in this study the scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Neurological Research and the Department of Neurology at the University Hospital of Cologne combined two imaging methods. They asked stroke patients to make a simple tapping movement using the hand affected by the stroke and recorded their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The data obtained in this way were then compared with data from healthy subjects. As expected from previous test results, compared with the control group, the stroke patients recorded a lower tapping speed and increased brain activity on both sides of the brain. "The increased activity in the healthy brain hemisphere, in particular, points to the impaired processing of motor programs between the two brain hemispheres," explains Christian Grefkes, head of the research study.
In order to demonstrate the structural connection between brain areas, the Cologne researchers used diffusion-based magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI), which can be used to reconstruct longer stretches of nerve fibres. dMRI is based on the principle that cell elements, such as the membrane or extensions, inhibit the spread of water molecules thereby preventing them from diffusing randomly in all directions. Consequently, parallel nerve fibres can be clearly identified using dMRI. Compared to the healthy control group, the stroke patients had lower diffusion values in the corpus callosum region. This would indicate that this interhemispheric communications connection was damaged by the stroke. The most significant deviations from the values of the control group were observed in patients with more severe motor defects and increased activity in the healthy brain hemisphere.
Therefore, in addition to cell death in the actual stroke area, damage to a very distant connection structure plays a crucial role in the inability of stroke patients to fully regain their original motor capacities. "This is why, we are currently examining whether we can regenerate the communication between the brain hemispheres through early and regular stimulation treatment. Our long-term aim is to improve motor deficits in stroke patients," says Grefkes.
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Max-Planck-Gesellschaft: http://www.mpg.de
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The Monarch butterfly is famous for its ability to travel up to 2,000 miles from North America to central Mexico every fall. Now, it's enjoying fame of a different sort. In the November 23rd issue of Cell, researchers report the full genomic sequence of this iconic butterfly. The new genome is the first for any butterfly. It is also the first complete genome of any long-distance migrant.
"With this genome sequence in hand, we now have an overwhelming number of opportunities to understand the genetic and molecular basis of long-distance migration," says Steven Reppert of the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Reppert's team has been studying the monarch migration for years, with a particular interest in how their brains incorporate information in time and space to find their way. Monarchs are all the more remarkable given that migrating butterflies are always at least two generations removed from those that made the journey the previous fall. "It is in their genes," Reppert said.
The researchers focused their genome analysis on pathways known to be critical for this migration, including those responsible for vision, the circadian clock, and oriented flight. The genome also revealed the complete set of genes required for synthesizing juvenile hormone. Changes in that hormone are required for migrating butterflies to shut down reproduction and extend their lifespan up to nine months. By comparison, non-migrants only live for about a month.
Comparisons of the new monarch genome with other insect genomes also reveal that butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) are the fastest evolving insect order yet examined.
"Overall," the researchers write, "the attributes of the monarch genome and its proteome provide a treasure trove for furthering our understanding of monarch butterfly migration; a solid background for population genetic analyses between migratory and non-migratory populations; and a basis for future genetic comparison of the genes involved in navigation yet to be discovered in other long-distance migrating species, including vertebrates like migratory birds."
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Cell Press: http://www.cellpress.com
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/115441/Introducing_the_monarch_butterfly_genome
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Conservative Popular Party candidate Mariano Rajoy reacts next to his wife Elvira Fernandez Balboa, left, and the secretary general of the party Maria Dolores de Cospedal, right, as they celebrate after wining in the national election polls at the party headquarter in Madrid, Spain, Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Conservative Popular Party candidate Mariano Rajoy reacts next to his wife Elvira Fernandez Balboa, left, and the secretary general of the party Maria Dolores de Cospedal, right, as they celebrate after wining in the national election polls at the party headquarter in Madrid, Spain, Sunday, Nov. 20, 2011. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Conservative Popular Party candidate Mariano Rajoy waves after winning the general elections in Madrid, Sunday, Nov, 20, 2011. (AP Photo/Paul White)
A homeless man sleeps in a bank in Madrid in the early hours of Monday Nov. 21, 2011, a day after the Popular Party won the general elections. Spain's center-right conservatives swept commandingly into power and into an economic hot seat Sunday as voters enduring 21.5 percent unemployment dumped the ruling Socialist government. But Mariano Rajoy gave no hints for how he will tackle Spain's unemployment nightmare with a much higher rate for young adults. (AP Photo/Paul White)
MADRID (AP) ? Throw a dart at a map of Europe now and it takes expert aim to hit a country run by a left-of-center government, especially after Spain's Socialists were emphatically drubbed out of power over the weekend.
Although the shift to the right began years ago in such heavyweights as France and Germany, it is now all but complete three years into the continent's grinding debt and economic crisis. Why? When times get tough ? when "the cows get thin" as the Spanish say ? political experts say edgy voters seek comfort with conservatives.
"The center-right is the natural preference in times of crisis," said Piotr Kaczynski of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. "If you look at societies and how they make their preferences, they all tend to vote more conservative in times of crisis and more center-left in times of economic progress."
Granted, on the European Union map there are scattered spots of leftist liberalism. A new Social Democratic government runs Denmark, there is a center left government in Norway and there is a broad Social Democratic-led coalition in Austria. And the Socialists might beat conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy in France's presidential election next year.
But Kaczynski said there is no doubt the European left faces an uphill battle in re-establishing itself with an appealing message and the means to enact it, despite widespread disillusionment with go-go capitalism as seen in the Occupy Wall Street protests and Europe's widespread anti-austerity marches.
In Spain, voters enduring a 21.5 jobless rate ejected the Socialists and install the center-right Popular Party by a crushing margin in Sunday's election.
Voters dumped the Socialists in Portugal earlier this year and the Labour Party in Britain last year, in both cases shifting to conservative parties. A technocrat government has taken over in the last month from Greece's Socialist prime minister.
Kaczynski said is not an ironclad rule that a government will be dumped from power during an economic crisis. He cited the cases of troubled governments being re-elected in Latvia, Estonia ? a member of the eurozone ? and Poland, and said as long as the public concludes the government is capable and taking the right approach to a financial crisis, it might get a second chance.
That was not the case for Spain's Socialists, due to the poor record of outgoing Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in fighting unemployment and in resurrecting an economy that overcome nearly two years of recession in 2010 only to stall again last quarter.
His punishment: the conservative Popular Party won 186 seats in the 350-seat lower chamber of Parliament, up from 154, while the Socialists plummeted from 169 seats to 110, their worst performance ever.
"Clearly, Spain is the biggest loss for the European Socialists. That is absolutely the case," Kaczynski said.
In his first public comments, Zapatero ? who did not seek a third term ? said Monday that the austerity measures he took ? and which caused supporters to flee in a stampede ? "put the national interests ahead of party interests."
Spanish stock and bond markets shrugged off the Popular Party win because it was so widely expected and because leader Mariano Rajoy has yet to spell out how he will attack Spain's unemployment debacle, deficit and growth woes.
However, some experts say Europe is not going right ideologically but rather seeking something ? anything ? new to get out of its quagmire.
"I wouldn't say Europe is turning to the right. It's basically the crisis is crushing the incumbents," said Eurasia Group's analyst for Europe, Antonio Barroso. "People are disappointed in the bad economic data, high unemployment and basically they are voting for the other alternative."
He noted that in Italy, conservative premier Silvio Berlusconi was forced to resign this month as the eurozone crisis centered on his debt-laden country ? but that was to a technocratic administration, not to leftist politicians.
Barroso also mentioned the 2012 French presidential race and Sarkozy's record low approval rating. The feisty French conservative is trailing the Socialist Francois Hollande badly in the polls, although he has recovered a bit in recent weeks.
Socialists are strong in local and regional politics in France: They head 24 of France's 26 regional governments and run major cities including Paris, Lyon, and Lille. Most recently, in September, the Socialists wrested control of the Senate, Parliament's upper house, for the first time in more than a half-century ? seen by many as a rebuff to Sarkozy.
In Germany, conservative Angela Merkel beat the center-left's Gerhard Schroeder in 2005 after he pushed through labor market reforms and welfare state cuts. The moves angered his leftist supporters but they are credited with bolstering Germany's strength in the current financial crisis.
However, Stephen Lewis of Monument Securities in London agreed it is perhaps natural for people to turn to the right in times of extreme financial hardship. He noted it happened in the 1930s during the Depression.
"It is not surprising that we are seeing all these right-wing governments appear as a result of elections or imposed from Brussels," Lewis said.
___
Ciaran Giles and Alan Clendenning in Madrid, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Jamey Keaten in Paris contributed to this report.
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ScienceDaily (Nov. 22, 2011) ? Explosions of reactive gases and the associated rapid, uncontrolled release of large amounts of energy pose threats of immense destructive power to mining operations, fuel storage facilities, chemical processing plants, and many other industrial applications.
To gain a better understanding of what's going on during these explosions, US Naval Research Laboratory research physicist Alexei Poludnenko, and Elaine Oran, senior scientist for reactive flow physics, teamed up with Sandia National Laboratories' Thomas Gardiner, principal member of technical staff, to study the deflagration-to-detonation (DDT) transition, which can occur in environments ranging from experimental and industrial systems on Earth to astrophysical thermonuclear supernovae explosions.
The team presented their findings at the American Physical Society's 64th Annual DFD Meeting, on Nov. 20-22, 2011, in Baltimore, Maryland.
"Explosions are most often driven by flames propagating at relatively slow subsonic velocities," explains Poludnenko. "Under certain conditions, however, this 'slow' mode of burning can transition to a completely different regime -- detonation, a.k.a. the 'deflagration-to-detonation transition.' In this case, burning is driven by very fast, strong shock waves that can travel at more than 5 times the speed of sound. The power and destructive potential of such detonation- driven explosions is vastly greater than flame-driven ones. Understanding the conditions and physical mechanisms that can cause the transition between these two explosive modes is critical for developing proper preventive and protective measures in industrial settings."
Significant research efforts have been devoted to studying the deflagration-to-detonation transition, and progress has been made in understanding its role in confined systems. Importantly, it was discovered that walls and obstacles are instrumental in detonation formation. For example, burning in a closed space naturally leads to an increase in pressure and the formation of shocks that can be further amplified through reflections with walls and obstacles -- ultimately producing a detonation.
Walls and obstacles were clearly important in these earlier studies. But scientists also wondered if unconfined flames could be inherently susceptible to the development of detonations.
"We've used detailed computer simulations of flames in hydrogen-air and methane-air mixtures in a fully unconfined environment under atmospheric conditions to study whether detonations can indeed form in such systems," Poludnenko says.
Among their findings: A subsonic flame evolving in the presence of sufficiently intense turbulence can spontaneously form a detonation both in reactive gases on Earth as well as in the interior of the white dwarf stars -- providing a missing link for the current theoretical models of Type la supernovae (which are formed by the violent explosion of a white dwarf star).
This work is supported by the Naval Research Laboratory and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) ? A Pennsylvania man has agreed to plead guilty to a charge that he harassed an attorney for former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, actions that authorities said followed his similar goading of Palin herself, according to court documents filed on Monday.
Shawn Christy, 20, is charged with a single federal count of making harassing interstate phone calls, an offense that carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
He and his father, Craig, are accused of making hundreds of hostile telephone calls to Fairbanks, Alaska, attorney John Tiemessen, who represents the Palin family, and his colleagues.
Attorneys for Shawn Christy, who is in jail in Anchorage on the charge, submitted a change-of-plea motion in U.S. District Court on Monday.
"Defendant, Shawn Richard Christy, by and through counsel ... notifies this court that he intends to plead guilty," the filing stated.
Representatives from the U.S. Attorney's Office and Shawn Christy's lawyers could not be reached for comment.
Shawn Christy is scheduled to enter his guilty plea officially and be sentenced on December 1, the court papers state.
A plea agreement is also expected from Craig Christy, according to court papers filed earlier this month.
Both men were already the subject of restraining orders issued by an Alaska state court over repeated telephone calls that authorities say the two made to Palin's parents and a long-time Palin friend, Kristan Cole.
Palin first won a restraining order against Shawn Christy last year. In a court hearing this year, she described him as being obsessed with her and said he made sexual threats.
In May, the state court issued a new restraining order against Shawn Christy and a similar order against Craig Christy over calls he had made to the Palin camp.
The two men from McAdoo, Pennsylvania, were arrested in August in their home state and later sent to Anchorage, Alaska, to face charges over the calls made to Palin's attorney.
Those calls were laced with profanities, and Shawn Christy also used repeated anti-Semitic slurs, an affidavit filed in the case said.
A psychiatric report prepared for the U.S. Secret Service and submitted in state court said Shawn Christy was intelligent but suffered from delusions that made him believe he was entitled to contacts with powerful people.
(Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Peter Bohan)
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