brickwork deleon: February 2013

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Kauai, the Petrified Forest, Costa Rica, and more: New GSA Bulletin articles now online

Public release date: 26-Feb-2013
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Contact: Kea Giles
kgiles@geosociety.org
Geological Society of America

GSA Bulletin articles published online ahead of print 22 Feb. 2013

Boulder, Colo., USA New GSA Bulletin articles cover wind erosion and sediment traps in the Qaidam basin; rain erosion on Kauai; new insights from the Petrified Forest, USA; a forearc sliver in Costa Rica; Quebec's St. Lawrence rift system; a new model for the development of Ries Crater Lake, Germany; bending and buckling mountain belts; a record of 22 large earthquakes in northern Fiordland, New Zealand; and the evolution of the ancient Montana landscape.

GSA BULLETIN articles published ahead of print are online at http://gsabulletin.gsapubs.org/content/early/recent; abstracts are open-access at http://gsabulletin.gsapubs.org/. Representatives of the media may obtain complimentary copies of articles by contacting Kea Giles.

Sign up for pre-issue publication e-alerts at http://www.gsapubs.org/cgi/alerts for first access to new journal content as it is posted. Subscribe to RSS feeds at http://gsabulletin.gsapubs.org/rss/.

Please discuss articles of interest with the authors before publishing stories on their work, and please make reference to GSA BULLETIN in your articles or blog posts. Contact Kea Giles for additional information or assistance. Non-media requests for articles may be directed to GSA Sales and Service, gsaservice@geosociety.org.

Detailed highlights are provided below.

Climatic and tectonic controls on sedimentation and erosion during the Pliocene-Quaternary in Qaidam Basin (China)
Richard V. Heermance et al., Dept. of Geological Sciences, California State University-Northridge, Northridge, California 91330-8266, USA. Posted online 22 Feb. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/B30748.1.

The Pliocene-Quaternary boundary, approx. 2.6 million years ago (2.6 Ma), represents a time of rapid global climate change from warm and moist to cool and arid (i.e., glacial) conditions. The influence of this climate change on both sedimentation and tectonics is preserved in strata within the Qaidam Basin, China. Overall, climate-controlled basin aridification initiated 3.1 million years ago and caused the gradual change from more humid lacustrine sedimentation to evaporite conditions by 2.6 Ma. After 2.6 Ma, uplift above active structures combined with wind erosion of the basin sediments produced localized sediment traps that controlled sedimentation. This study provides isotopic (O and C), paleomagnetic, and sedimentologic data that distinguish the climatic versus tectonic controls on sedimentation and erosion within the northeastern Tibetan Plateau at this important time period.

Variation of climate and long-term erosion rates across a steep rainfall gradient on the Hawaiian island of Kauai
Ken L. Ferrier et al., Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139-4307, USA. Posted online 22 Feb. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/B30726.1.

The erosion of volcanic ocean islands creates dramatic landscapes, modulates Earth's carbon cycle, and delivers sediment to coasts and reefs. Despite concerns that modern sediment fluxes to island coasts may exceed long-term fluxes, little is known about how erosion rates and processes vary across island interiors. This study by Ken L. Ferrier and colleagues presents new measurements of erosion rates over five-year to five-million-year time scales on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, which is home to one of Earth's steepest precipitation gradients, with mean annual precipitation ranging from 0.5 to 9.5 m. Eroded rock volumes from basins across Kauai indicate that basin-averaged erosion rates over the past several million years vary by a factor of 40 across the island and increase with modern mean annual precipitation. In the Hanalei basin of Kauai, estimates of sediment fluxes and solute fluxes imply that modern erosion rates are no more than 2.3 plus or minus 0.6 times faster than erosion rates over the past few thousand years, as determined by new measurements of helium-3 in olivines in stream sediment. To the extent that modern precipitation patterns resemble long-term precipitation patterns, these measurements provide new support for a link between precipitation rates and long-term basin-averaged erosion rates.

Sedimentological constraints on the evolution of the Cordilleran arc: New insights from the Sonsela Member, Upper Triassic Chinle Formation, Petrified Forest National Park (Arizona, USA)
Evan R. Howell, Noble Energy, 1625 Broadway, Suite 2200, Denver, CO 80202, USA; and Ronald C. Blakey. Posted online 22 Feb. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/B30714.1.

The Sonsela Member of the Upper Triassic Chinle Formation in Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, USA, forms a distinctive part of an extensive ancient river system that once flowed, at least in part, from a major volcanic arc bordering the western margin of North America (Cordilleran magmatic arc). The Sonsela Member is characterized as a relatively coarse-grained unit compared to other mudstone-dominated members of the Chinle Formation, and is therefore thought to reflect a unique period in the evolution of the basin. Modern exposures of the Cordilleran arc are poorly preserved, the result of subsequent tectonic deformation, erosion, and sedimentation in western North America since the Late Triassic. Sedimentary sequences of the Chinle Formation, however (particularly those of the Sonsela Member), preserve the dynamic evolution of the basin as the volcanic arc was established in southwestern North America. The Sonsela Member therefore serves as the most reliable indicator of fluctuations in arc dynamics of a poorly preserved and disjointed portion of the Cordilleran magmatic arc.

Neotectonic faulting and forearc sliver motion along the Atirro-Ro Sucio fault system, Costa Rica, Central America
Walter Montero P. et al., Geological Sciences Research Center, University of Costa Rica, San Jos, Costa Rica; Corresponding author: Sarah Kruse, Dept. of Geology, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida 33620, USA. Posted online 22 Feb. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/B30471.1.

Two important questions about the Cocos-Caribbean subduction zone of Costa Rica are how trench-parallel forearc motion is accommodated and what drives forearc sliver motion. This work by Walter Montero P. and colleagues provides critical constraints on the former and lays the foundation for exploring the latter. It documents a network of northwest-striking right-lateral strike slip faults that appears to mark the northern boundary of an upper-plate sliver moving NW relative to the Caribbean plate. Despite high erosion rates and deep weathering, the fault system includes pull-apart basins with preserved normal fault scarps and tilted hanging-wall buttress unconformities, pressure ridges, displaced and beheaded drainages, sag ponds, and fault-controlled upland valleys. Montero and colleagues integrate geomorphic observations with outcrop-scale bedrock fault kinematic and earthquake focal mechanism data to map the active through-going fault zone. The mapping reveals that the fault system traverses the active volcanic arc from NW to SE and connects to an area of high uplift rate in the inactive Talamanca magmatic arc, where the faults are interpreted to originate inboard of the actively colliding Cocos ridge. This suggests that, kinematically, the forearc sliver is rooted in the collision zone.

Mesozoic fault reactivation along the St. Lawrence rift system, eastern Canada: Thermochronologic evidence from apatite fission-track dating
Alain Tremblay et al., Dpartement des Sciences de la Terre et de l'Atmosphre and GEOTOP, Universit du Qubec. Posted online 22 Feb. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/B30703.1.

The St. Lawrence rift system is formed by a series of northeast-southwest-trending faults in southeastern Qubec that links and includes the northwest-trending Ottawa-Bonnechre and Saguenay River regions. It is an active fault zone where reactivation of Late Precambrian (less than one billion years ago) faults, at times as young as post-Late Devonian (350 million years ago), is believed to occur. Apatite fission-track (AFT) ages, which represent the time that the rocks cooled through 100 degrees Celsius (3-4 km depth) on their way to the surface, have been determined for Late Precambrian rocks from both sides of typical rift faults at different locations in the St. Lawrence and Saguenay river fault systems along the St. Lawrence rift system. Differences in AFT ages were found across all the faults studied, suggesting reactivation of extensional movement approx. 250-200 million years. Along the St. Lawrence River fault system, the AFT ages also suggest a renewal of movement in a compressional sense at ca. 150 Ma. This study provides evidence for extension related to rifting in the Atlantic Ocean followed by compressional deformation in the interior of Canada, more than 500 km west of the Atlantic coastal margin.

Chemical and ecological evolution of the Miocene Ries impact crater lake, Germany: A reinterpretation based on the Enkingen (SUBO 18) drill core
Gernot Arp et al., Georg-August-Universitt Gttingen, Geowissenschaftliches Zentrum, Goldschmidtstrasse 3, 37077 Gttingen, Germany. Posted online 22 Feb. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/B30731.1.

Impact crater lakes potentially form valuable climatologic archives. The lacustrine succession of the 15-million-year-old Ries Crater Lake has previously been interpreted as climate-controlled development from a playa to a highly saline soda lake, which successively decreased in salinity to reach freshwater sedimentation with temporary coal swamps. New multidisciplinary investigations based on a partial section now question this view: The sediments of this new drill core reflect increasing, not decreasing salinities, with brown coals formed by plant debris swept into a hypersaline setting. In addition, the chemical composition of the inflowing waters changed due to the weathering of different ejecta layers in the catchment area. Interpolated to the whole succession, a new model for the Ries Crater Lake is developed: After the development of a brackish soda lake and erosion of the upper ejecta blanket (suevite), an increasing ion influx from the lower ejecta (Bunte Breccia) caused a change to a marine-like, and finally hypersaline salt lake. Therefore, intrinsic factors, such as weathering history in the catchment area, probably dominated over external, climatic factors with respect to the chemical and ecological evolution of this impact crater lake. Moreover, the initial suevite blanket might have been more widespread than previously assumed.

Oroclines: Thick and thin
S.T. Johnston et al., School of Earth & Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, PO Box 3065 STN CSC, Victoria British Columbia, Canada V8P 4B2. Posted online 22 Feb. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/B30765.1.

Folded rocks characterize young and old mountain belts the world over, and form some of the most familiar and spectacular of geological structures. But can you fold an entire mountain belt? Stephen Johnston of the University of Victoria and his colleagues Arlo Weil of Bryn Mawr University and Gabriel Gutierrez-Alonso of the University of Salamanca have been studying the geometry of mountain belts, and their findings, summarized in this review paper, suggest that not only can you bend a mountain belt, but that folds of mountain belts, referred to as oroclines, constitute the largest geological structures on Earth. Based on an extensive compilation of geological and geophysical data, they demonstrate that during the development of a mountain chain, minor bends of faults and folds can develop, but that subsequently the entire mountain chain can be buckled into one or more oroclines. For example, the 320-million-year-old Variscan Mountain chain of Iberia, which formed during the continental collisions that gave rise to Pangea, subsequently buckled giving rise to two coupled oroclines. During buckling, a 2,300-km-long, 300-km-wide, linear mountain chain was shortened by more than 1,100 km, giving rise to two of Earth's largest folds and forming the Iberian Peninsula. These findings suggest that the buckling of mountain chains is an important process responsible for the development and growth of continents.

Deriving a long paleoseismic record from a shallow-water Holocene basin next to the Alpine fault, New Zealand
K.J. Clark et al., GNS Science, PO Box 30368, Lower Hutt, New Zealand. Posted online 22 Feb. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/B30693.1.

Scientists have investigated evidence left by large surface-rupturing earthquakes on the Alpine Fault in New Zealand over an 8,000 year period. The earthquakes left "geological signatures" of alternating peat and silt in the exposed banks of Hokuri Creek, an isolated creek in northern Fiordland. Detailed mapping, sedimentology and microfossil analysis were used to investigate the relationship between sediment deposition and Alpine fault rupture at Hokuri Creek. Repeated fault rupture involving a component of vertical movement is shown to be the most convincing mechanism for explaining the cyclical peat and silt sedimentary sequence. This article by K.J. Clark and colleagues delves into the detail of how a record of 22 earthquakes between circa AD 800 to 6000 BC was obtained. The Hokuri Creek sequence represents one of the longest continuous large earthquake records of any on-land plate boundary fault in the world. The Alpine Fault extends about 600 km along the spine of the South Island between Milford Sound and Marlborough. It last ruptured in 1717 AD producing an earthquake of approx. magnitude 8.

Paleogene postcompressional intermontane basin evolution along the frontal Cordilleran fold-and-thrust belt of southwestern Montana
Theresa M. Schwartz and Robert K. Schwartz, Geological and Environmental Sciences, Stanford University, 450 Serra Mall, Bldg. 320, Stanford, California 94305, USA. Posted online 22 Feb. 2013; http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/B30776.1.

This article by Theresa M. Schwartz and Robert K. Schwartz investigates the evolution of the Montana landscape between approximately 50 and 20 million years ago. Detailed examination of the depositional facies and provenance of the Renova Formation in southwestern Montana provides important insight into the physical processes that affected the eastern part of the North American Cordillera after it became inactive. These include the interplay between tectonism (both in the crust and deeper in the lithosphere), erosion on the surface by large river systems, and shifts in climate patterns. Ultimately, this study finds that the complex structure that was generated more than 50 million years ago exerted and continues to exert strong controls on the landscape, dictating areas of erosion and deposition.

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Kauai, the Petrified Forest, Costa Rica, and more: New GSA Bulletin articles now online

Public release date: 26-Feb-2013
[ | E-mail |

Share ]

Contact: Kea Giles
kgiles@geosociety.org
Geological Society of America

GSA Bulletin articles published online ahead of print 22 Feb. 2013

Sign up for pre-issue publication e-alerts at http://www.gsapubs.org/cgi/alerts for first access to new journal content as it is posted. Subscribe to RSS feeds at http://gsabulletin.gsapubs.org/rss/.

Detailed highlights are provided below.

www.geosociety.org

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[ | E-mail |

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/2013-02/gsoa-ktp022613.php

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Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Pierce lifts road-weary Celtics over Jazz in OT

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) ? The Boston Celtics weren't too tired after playing five games in seven days back and forth across time zones.

They had enough left to play overtime to close out a long Western road trip, beating the Utah Jazz 110-107 on Monday night.

Thirty-five-year-old Paul Pierce led Boston with 26 points, including seven straight in the extra session.

"It was huge," Celtics coach Doc Rivers said. "Whatever that was, it was the best win of the year for me. . To go into overtime and still have enough to win."

It wasn't just the ageless Pierce. Kevin Garnett, three months shy of his 37th birthday, stood strong at the end, refusing to let Rivers sub him out by insisting, "I am good."

Rivers didn't believe that, "but I kept him in and he was terrific."

Garnett had four points in overtime on 2-of-2 shooting, with three rebounds. He finished with 13 points, 10 rebounds, a blocked shot and steal.

The Celtics also got a big game from Avery Bradley, who scored a season-high 18 points on 8-of-12 shooting.

Pierce had a chance to win it in regulation, but his 19-footer at the buzzer rimmed out.

Alec Burks' reverse layup pulled Utah to 108-105 with 37 seconds left in overtime. Garnett's banked 3-pointer with 13 seconds left came after the shot clock expired, giving the Jazz another chance.

Paul Millsap was fouled before he could get off a 3, but made two free throws with 4.2 seconds remaining.

Courtney Lee added two free throws at the other end with 1.2 seconds left to bump Boston's lead back to three, and Randy Foye's 26-footer at the buzzer missed everything.

It was another one the Jazz let get away, though Monday's game had huge swings both ways from start to finish.

Overall, the game had 13 lead changes and was tied 17 times.

"We were in position," said Jazz forward Marvin Williams. "We fought back in the fourth quarter to force overtime but Boston just made big plays down the stretch."

Gordon Hayward led Utah with 26 points, Millsap had 16 and Al Jefferson finished with 15 points and 11 rebounds.

The Celtics (30-27) were playing their fifth game in seven days, but didn't seem to care down the stretch.

The Jazz (31-26) led 101-99 in overtime on DeMarre Carroll's 21-footer, but Pierce countered with a 3-pointer, then followed with a pull-up jumper over Carroll and a 15-footer to give the Celtics a 106-101 edge with 1:12 left.

Jefferson hit a 15-footer with 1:05 left to get Utah within 106-103, but Garnett's jumper helped seal it.

"We knew this was probably going to be the toughest game for us physically and mentally," Pierce said. "Talking about a long road trip, coming in to one of the toughest places to play. We felt we could salvage this trip with a win here. So guys did a good job of just being mentally tough, digging in and doing what we had to do to get the win."

The Celtics, who went 2-3 on the trip, also were smart down the stretch, fouling with fouls to give and finding a wide-open Lee on the inbounds pass when the Jazz needed a late steal in overtime. His free throws provided the final margin.

The Jazz trailed by eight entering the fourth but opened on a 13-2 run.

Jefferson's 10-foot turnaround jumper over Brandon Bass tied it at 93 with 2:46 left in regulation.

Pierce hit an 18-footer with Carroll diving at him for a 97-95 Boston lead with 36 seconds remaining in regulation, only to see Burks tie it with a tough layup with 19 seconds left.

"We wanted to win in regulation," Pierce said. "It would have felt better just to get a stop when we needed it. That's what we need to get better at. We didn't do it in Portland. We didn't do it tonight. That's what we need to start focusing on. When we get the lead and we need crucial stops, we have to figure out how to get them."

The game took a 16-point swing in the third, as Boston trailed 58-50 only to counter with a 20-4 run and lead 80-72 entering the fourth.

Pierce ignited the run with a 3-pointer, Bradley hit two more 3s and Lee added a dunk after a steal and another 3-pointer. Pierce capped the run with a jumper over Hayward for a 70-62 Boston lead.

The Celtics hit 6 of 13 3-pointers in the 32-point third quarter, while Utah made just 5 of 16 from the field.

It was the same story as Saturday, when the Jazz fought back early only to see the Los Angeles Clippers go on a 23-4 run and douse any hopes.

A Jazz team that had won three straight and seven of 10 has now dropped two in a row.

While Hayward showed he is recovered from a right shoulder injury despite missing a pair of shots in overtime, the Jazz still need point guard Mo Williams back from a thumb injury.

Monday, Earl Watson started over Jamaal Tinsley, but Burks ended up playing the position during Utah's big second-quarter run.

Pierce said Boston reverted to various defenses to slow the Jazz.

"We did a lot of zone, did a lot of man and tried to force turnovers," Pierce said. "That's what we have to do. A lot of times we had to go to small because they had plenty of size and they rebound well. We just junked up the game a little bit by changing our defense."

It may have been junk, but it was a win nonetheless.

"We have champions," said guard Jason Terry, who made four 3-pointers and finished with 14 points and two assists off the bench for Boston.

"When you have champions that have been through so many tough games as we have, then you know you're in good hands. For us, we hang our hat on executing down the stretch."

NOTES; Jazz F Derrick Favors picked up his third foul with 9:06 left in the second quarter. . Jazz G Foye needed four 3-pointers to tie Mehmet Okur (129, 2006-07) for the franchise single-season record. Foye went 0-5 Saturday but hit his first Monday and finished 2 of 6. . Bradley started 5 of 5 and had 10 points in six minutes for Boston, while Millsap started 4 of 4 for Utah. . The Jazz led 53-48 at halftime.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pierce-lifts-road-weary-celtics-over-jazz-ot-045904827--spt.html

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Monday, February 25, 2013

Cuba: Raul Castro Plans To Retire In 2018, Signaling The End Of An Era (VIDEO)

HAVANA -- It's been more than 54 years since someone not named "Castro" led Cuba, and it will likely be five more.

But now islanders and exiles alike have finally been given a date for when the sun will set on brothers Fidel and Raul's longtime rule: 2018.

In accepting a new presidential term on Sunday, the 81-year-old Raul Castro announced that it would be his last. And for the first time, he tapped a rising young star, Miguel Diaz-Canel, to be his top lieutenant and possible successor.

"This will be my last term," Castro said, his voice firm.

Castro also said he hopes to establish two-term limits and age caps for political offices including the presidency, though he didn't specify what age.

As the new first vice president of the ruling Council of State, the 52-year-old Diaz-Canel is now a heartbeat from the presidency and has risen higher than any other Cuban official who didn't directly participate in the heady days of the 1959 revolution.

In his 35-minute speech, Castro hinted at other changes to the constitution, some so dramatic that they will have to be ratified by the Cuban people in a referendum. Still, he scotched any idea that the country would soon abandon socialism, saying he had not assumed the presidency in order to destroy Cuba's system.

"I was not chosen to be president to restore capitalism to Cuba," he said. "I was elected to defend, maintain and continue to perfect socialism, not destroy it."

Castro fueled interest in Sunday's legislative gathering after mentioning on Friday his possible retirement and suggesting lightheartedly that he had plans to resign at some point.

It's now clear that he was serious when he promised that Sunday's speech would have fireworks, and would touch on his future in leadership.

Cuba is at a moment of "historic transcendence," Castro told lawmakers in speaking of his decision to name Diaz-Canel to the No. 2 job, replacing the 81-year-old Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, who fought with the Castros in the Sierra Maestra.

Castro praised Machado Ventura and another aging revolutionary for offering to leave their positions so that younger leaders could move up.

Their selflessness is "a concrete demonstration of their genuine revolutionary fiber ... That is the essence of the founding generation of this revolution."

Castro said that Diaz-Canel's promotion "represents a definitive step in the configuration of the future leadership of the nation through the gradual and orderly transfer of key roles to new generations."

"Our greatest satisfaction is the tranquility and serene confidence we feel as we deliver to the new generations the responsibility to continue building socialism," he added.

On the streets of Havana, where people often express a jaded skepticism of all things political, there was genuine excitement.

"This is the start of a new era," said Roberto Delgado, a 68-year-old retiree walking down a street in the leafy Miramar neighborhood. "It will undoubtedly be a complicated and difficult process, but something important happened today."

"I'm mesmerized," added Regla Blanco, 48. "You thought that with all these old men, it would never end. I am very satisfied with what Raul said. He is keeping his promise."

Since taking over from Fidel in 2006, Castro has instituted a slate of important economic and social changes, expanding private enterprise, legalizing a real estate market and relaxing hated travel restrictions.

Still, the country remains ruled by the Communist Party and any opposition to it lacks legal recognition.

Indeed, several dozen anti-government protesters were detained across the island Sunday and held for a few hours for public disorder before being released, according to Elizardo Sanchez, a dissident who monitors human rights in Cuba.

Castro has mentioned term limits before, but he has never said specifically when he would step down, and the concept has yet to be codified into Cuban law.

If he keeps his word, Castro will leave office no later than 2018. Cuban-American exiles in the United States have waited decades for the end of the Castro era, although they will likely be dismayed if it ends on the brothers' terms.

Nevertheless, the promise of a change at the top could have deep significance for U.S.-Cuba ties. The wording of Washington's 51-year economic embargo on the island specifies that it cannot be lifted while a Castro is in charge.

In Florida, home to hundreds of thousands of Cuban exiles, some were skeptical that Castro's eventual retirement will change much.

"First we have to see if he lives another five years, and after we have to see what happens," said Raul Lopez Mola, an 81-year-old who abandoned Cuba in 1966 for a new life in Miami. "No one can predict what will happen in five years. For me, I don't think it has great importance."

"It would be more meaningful if Fidel Castro died," Lopez Mola added.

Fidel Castro is 86 and retired, and has appeared increasingly frail in recent months. He made a surprise appearance at Sunday's gathering, receiving a thunderous ovation from lawmakers.

Some analysts have speculated that the Castros would push a younger member of their family into a top job, but there was no hint of that Sunday.

While few things are ever clear in Cuba's hermetically sealed news environment, rumblings that Diaz-Canel, an electrical engineer by training and ex-minister of higher education, might be in line for a senior post have grown.

In recent weeks, he has frequently been featured on state television news broadcasts in an apparent attempt to raise his profile.

He also traveled to Venezuela in January for the symbolic inauguration of Hugo Chavez, a key Cuban ally who had been re-elected president but was too ill to be sworn in.

The 612 lawmakers sworn in Sunday also named Esteban Lazo as the National Assembly's first new chief in 20 years, replacing Ricardo Alarcon.

Lazo, who turns 69 on Tuesday, is a vice president and member of the Communist Party's ruling political bureau. Parliament meets only twice a year and generally passes legislation unanimously without visible debate.

The legislature also named as vice presidents of the ruling Council Machado Ventura; comptroller general Gladys Bejerano; second Vice President Ramiro Valdes; Havana Communist Party secretary Lazara Mercedes Lopez Acea; and Salvador Valdes Mesa, head of Cuba's labor union.

___

Associated Press writers Anne Marie-Garcia and Paul Haven in Havana, and Christine Armario in Miami, contributed to this report.

___

Peter Orsi on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Peter_Orsi

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/25/end-of-castro-era_n_2757191.html

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South Korea's new president demands North drop nuclear ambitions

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's new president Park Geun-hye urged North Korea on Monday to abandon its nuclear ambitions, and to stop wasting its scarce resources on arms, less than two weeks after the country carried out its third nuclear test.

In her inauguration speech, the country's first female president, also called on South Koreans to help revive the nation's export-dependent economy whose trade is threatened by neighbouring Japan's weak yen policy.

Park, the 61-year-old daughter of South Korea's former military ruler Park Chung-hee, met with the father of North Korea's current ruler in 2002 and offered the impoverished and isolated neighbour aid and trade if it abandoned its nuclear programme.

"I urge North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions without delay and embark on the path to peace and shared development," Park said after being inaugurated on Monday.

Park, usually an austere and demure figure in her public appearances, wore an olive-drab military style jacket and lavender scarf on Monday and smiled broadly and waved enthusiastically as a 70,000 strong crowd cheered her.

Rap sensation Psy was one of the warm up acts on an early spring day outside the country's parliament and performed his "Gagnam Style" hit, but without some of the raunchier actions.

Park's tough stance was supported by the partisan and largely older crowd at her inauguration.

"I have trust in her as the first female president ... She has to be more aggressive on North Korea," said Jeong Byung-ok, 44, who was at the ceremony with her four-year-old daughter.

PARK FACES CHOICE: PAY OFF PYONGYANG OR ISOLATE NORTH

North Korea is ruled by 30-year-old Kim Jong-un, the third of his line to hold power in Pyongyang and the grandson of a man who tried to assassinate Park's father.

The North, which is facing further U.N. sanctions for its latest nuclear test, which was its biggest and most powerful to date, is unlikely to heed Park's call and there is little Seoul can do to influence its bellicose neighbour.

Park's choices boil down to paying off Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons plan, which would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and failed in 2006 when the North exploded its first nuclear bomb. Alternatively, Seoul could try to further isolate the North, a move that resulted in the 2010 sinking of a South Korean ship and the shelling of a South Korean island.

Referring to the fast economic growth under her father's rule, which drove war-torn South Korea from poverty to the ranks of the world's richest nations, Park urged Koreans to re-create the spirit of the "Miracle on the Han".

Park wants to create new jobs, in a country where young people often complain of a lack of opportunities, and boost welfare, although she hasn't spelled out how she will do either.

Growth in South Korea has fallen sharply since the days of Park's father who oversaw periods of 10 percent plus economic expansion. The Bank of Korea expects the economy to grow just 2.8 percent this year and 2.8 percent in 2014.

Park also faces a challenge from a resurgent Japan whose exports have risen sharply after new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe embarked on a policy to weaken the yen currency.

The won has jumped five percent in 2013 against the yen after a 23 percent gain in 2012, boosting the competitiveness of Japanese exports of cars and electronics against the same goods that South Korean firms produce.

Park last week said she would take "pre-emptive" action on the weak yen, but has yet to specify what action she will take.

(Additional reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by David Chance and Michael Perry)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/south-koreas-president-demands-north-drop-nuclear-ambitions-021646206.html

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Police: Report of gunman at MIT is unfounded

Feb 23 (Reuters) - Unstoppable leaders Bayern Munich hammered hapless Werder Bremen 6-1 on Saturday to clock up their sixth straight Bundesliga win since the winter break. Mario Gomez scored twice, Arjen Robben, Javi Martinez and Franck Ribery shared three goals and Theodor Gebre Selassie put through his own net as Bayern went 18 points clear of Borussia Dortmund, who visit Borussia Moenchengladbach on Sunday. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/police-report-gunman-mit-unfounded-153446026.html

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Sunday, February 24, 2013

Notre Dame football: Te'o states his case

INDIANAPOLIS -- Manti Te'o walked into a crowded room of reporters Saturday, took a breath and settled in for 15 minutes of NFL Scouting Combine history.

Again, the former Notre Dame linebacker explained how he had been duped in the Internet romance he had with a girlfriend he never met, and again, he tried to turn the page on an embarrassing chapter by talking football.

This time, he even got to see it play out on live television 12 yards away -- where three muted flat-screen monitors were in direct view of Te'o.

He answered every question with thoughtful deliberation and tried to provide clarity on a hoax that turned one of the nation's most inspirational football players into the butt of national jokes.

"I cared for somebody. That's what I was taught to do ever since I was young. Somebody needs help, you help them out," Te'o said.

Later he added: "People doubted me, because I took a while to come out. From our point of view, we wanted to let everything come out first, and then let my side come out. The way we did it, I thought, worked best for me."

Te'o's news conference was the most anticipated event of the NFL's second-biggest offseason weekend, which brought the makeshift media room inside Lucas Oil Stadium to a virtual standstill -- twice.

The too-good-to-be-true story began with Te'o's incredible performances after learning his grandmother and what he believed was his girlfriend had died within hours of one another in September. Te'o said it inspired him to play his best football all season, and it was so compelling that it turned Te'o into a Heisman Trophy contender as he was leading the Fighting Irish to an undefeated season and into the national championship game.

On Dec. 26, Te'o notified Notre Dame officials that he had received a call from his supposedly dead girlfriend's phone three weeks earlier.

The school investigated and on Jan. 16, athletic director Jack Swarbrick announced at a news conference that Te'o had been duped. Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, 22, later said he created the online persona of Lennay Kekua, a nonexistent woman who Te'o said he fell in love with despite never meeting her in person.

Since then, Te'o had only done a few one-on-one interviews.

On Saturday all that changed as many of the 800 credentialed media members surrounded the podium in rows that went eight deep. Te'o wore a tie-died red-and-black workout shirt.

"It's pretty crazy," said Te'o, who has played most of his games on national television and was one of the most recognizable college players last season. "I've been in front of a few cameras before, but never as many as this."

Only two scenes from the combine over the past 15 years could even compare to what Te'o had to contend with Saturday.

The first came in 2004, when former Ohio State running back Maurice Clarett was allowed to participate in the combine after a court ruled he should be allowed to enter the draft after finishing high school only two years earlier. That decision was later reversed.

The other time was 2010, when Heisman Trophy winner and two-time national champion Tim Tebow stepped to the podium in Indianapolis and everyone, including those listening to Packers coach Mike McCarthy, sprinted to the opposite end of the room for Tebow.

This was different.

When word leaked Te'o would speak at about noon, reporters immediately surrounded the podium. Over the next 25 minutes, rumors circulated that in a rare and possibly unprecedented move, Te'o's agent would speak from the podium. That did not happen.

There also was speculation that Te'o might deliver an opening statement like the then-injured Michael Crabtree did in 2009 and Cam Newton did two years later. That did not happen, either, though Te'o did make a closing statement in which he thanked his family, friends and fans for standing by him during this tumultuous month.

Source: http://www.southbendtribune.com/sports/notredame/sbt-notre-dame-football-teo-states-his-case-20130223,0,1674475.story?track=rss

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Saturday, February 23, 2013

[Dispute] from gomez_dawn - ADK= Gaming Community

Hello Gomez,

Thanks for coming to dispute your ban. The ban you are disputing is temporary and will be up shortly. Until then you will not be able to enter or play on our severs. The ban should be expired in about one hour. Let this serve as a stern warning to you that using explosives is NOT acceptable and further infractions WILL result in a permanent ban as you have already been temporarily banned in the past. Next time you break the rules you will be?permanently?banned.

Furthermore, we do appreciate the fact that you do go out of your way to report players that break our server rules. Thank you for that and we hope that you will continue to play on our servers and provide the reports that you do.

Meet you on the battlefield,

/InfamousHoole BF3 admin

System Specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte 990 FXA UD3
CPU: AMD 8120 OC 4.0ghz Turbo-4.2ghz
RAM: 8Gb G.Skill Sniper series 1866
PSU: Cooler Master 700 watt
GPU: Galaxy GTX 570 (850 core/ 1700 shader/ 2025 memory)
Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212+ | Zalman ZM-STG1
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB | OCZ agility 3, 60GB
Case: Cooler Master HAF 992
Other: Logitech G500 mouse Logitech G510 keyboard

Source: http://www.adkgamers.com/topic/23995-dispute-from-gomez-dawn/

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Aspiring rapper among dead after Vegas Strip shooting

In a scene witnesses describe as looking like a Hollywood set, a confrontation between a group of men escalated into a shooting, multiple vehicle pileup, and an exploding taxicab. The incident left three people dead. NBC's Miguel Almaguer reports.

By Matthew DeLuca, Staff Writer, NBC News

The driver of a Maserati that was shot up early Thursday morning on Las Vegas? famed Strip, causing the vehicle to crash into a taxi cab and leading to a deadly explosion, was a 27-year-old aspiring rapper, according to his family.

Three people were killed and at least six injured as a result of the 4:30 a.m. shooting and subsequent car crashes in a section of the Strip that includes Caesars Palace, Bally?s, and the Bellagio.?

The shooting came after the occupants of a Range Rover and the Maserati got into an altercation in the valet area of the Aria hotel and casino, according to Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie.

?We have numerous witnesses to this,? Las Vegas Police Sgt. John Sheahan said. ?But what is the genesis of this? We don?t know yet.?

A major manhunt is under way for the occupants of the Range Rover.

Kenny ?Clutch? Cherry of Oakland, Calif. was at the wheel of the Maserati, his father told NBCBayArea.com on Thursday, when a black Range Rover with tinted windows and black rims pulled up and allegedly opened fire near a stoplight in the pre-dawn hours.

A passenger was injured by the gunfire and Cherry was killed, causing the car to spin out of control. The careening silver Maserati smashed into a taxi cab, trapping the passenger and driver and causing the cab to burst into flames; both occupants were killed, police said. Then, the Maserati smashed into three other cars before coming to a stop.?

The Maserati driver was a Chico State dropout who had gone to Las Vegas to pursue a rap career, father Kenneth Cherry, Sr., told NBCBayArea.com. He had filmed a music video on the Strip featuring his Maserati just months before. Cherry left behind three children, including a toddler and 2-month-old baby girl.

?I heard there was some sort of disagreement and the guys pulled to the side of him, and rolled their window down, and he rolled his window down,? Cherry said. ?They just started shooting. My son for the record did not have any guns in his car. There was no gun battle. Nothing like that.?

Attorney Vicki Greco told Reuters she had represented the deceased Cherry in a civil case and a few traffic issues.

In Las Vegas, visitors and law enforcement reacted with shock to the violent spectacle. The Strip has seen other recent incidents of violence, including a man who fired a gun inside the Circus Circus casino on New Year?s Eve and a parking garage shooting on Feb. 6.

?We get stabbings and gang violence,? Mark Thompson, a visitor from Manchester, England, told The Associated Press, ?but this is like something out of a movie. Like ?Die Hard? or something.?

Officers are searching for the Range Rover with paper dealership plates and its male African-American occupants, police said. They are combing through surveillance tape for clues.

?Finding those involved is a top priority for my agency and law enforcement here in southern Nevada,? Sheriff Douglas Gillespie of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department told NBC affiliate KSNV.

Others spoke of the inconveniences caused as police tape continued to rope off popular sections of the neon-lit thoroughfare throughout the day Thursday, about a block away from where the unsolved shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur took place in 1996.

?You come to Vegas and you want to come walk the streets of the Strip and now you can?t,? visitor Judge Chavez from Albuquerque, New Mexico told KSNV. ?You want to go to the Paris, and you want to go to whatever casino, and all of a sudden you can?t go there.?

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Google's Driverless Cars Will Drive Down Real Estate Prices

By Margie Nemcick-Cruz - February 22, 2013 | Tickers: GOOG | 0 Comments

Margie is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network -- entries represent the personal opinions of our bloggers and are not formally edited.

In my last column on the majorly disruptive technology of Google?s (NASDAQ: GOOG) driverless car, I outlined 5 ways that we all will benefit from this innovation. Due to my sheer excitement of the prospect, before in my next column diving into the challenges of implementing the technology, I want to offer you some additional ways that both you as individual and we as a society will benefit. (the two certainly go hand in hand don?t they?)

My original 5 (again outlined here, were)

Car ownership won?t even be necessary
Cheaper insurance
Less demand for medical care
Seniors will be much more independent
Productivity of society will increase dramatically

Let?s Add On To Society?s Benefits

Cost of roads will drop precipitously
Cheaper gas prices via less demand for fuel
Better use of land
Fewer lawyers (hooray!)
Drunk driving becomes so pass? (and who benefits)

Roads

Traffic in major metropolitan areas can be horrendous and time consuming. Ever waited to turn right for twenty minutes because the old lady in front of you needs a two mile window of zero traffic before she?ll make a move? Ever wait to merge right onto a four lane road, all traffic in the two far lanes, and the moron in front of you seems to lack a three dimensional model of the world, and not even a long blare of your horn can jog her memory?

And how do we respond as a society, we yell at our politicians, ?to widen the roads!? or ?Build an overpass!?

Well let me tell you something, roads cost a lot of money. Not only would robotic cars be in constant communication with each other, allowing the cars to merge much more easily and safely thus insuring the flow of traffic, but they would be able to drive much more closely together. No more need to widen the roads. Yes, they would still require maintenance but the transportation budget for both Federal, State, and City would drop dramatically (and with it our taxes)

Cheaper Gas Prices

As many of the benefits of the driverless car will stem from efficiency, I?ll follow suit with my words.

There will be less demand for gas due to three factors I can think of.

Robotic cars driving down the freeway can use convoys, the minor gaps between the cars mean less air drag, and therefore less consumption of fuel. Chinese owned Volvo, with their own driverless technology has already demonstrated this possibility on freeways. This is the process referred to as ?drafting? and is a strategy commonly used by cyclists in a race to use less of their own energy.
With traffic moving more efficiently there won?t be gas and energy wasted in gridlock.
Let?s say you are headed to the grocery store. You call the robotic cabbie, unbeknownst to your friend two blocks away is going to the same destination. Via Google Plus, an icon pops up on screen. ?Share ride with Joe?? You accept, now your ride is cheaper because you split it, maybe they cab company charges an extra few cents for the ride, so they make more, and the demand for fuel is cut. Don?t get out of the store at the same time, no problem, you don?t have to wait, just take separate cars home.

Better Use of Land

City streets might become several feet more narrow because parking would not be required. This leaves room for more trees in the neighborhood enhancing both quality of life and air.

Those massive parking lots you see everywhere, at the mall, the airport, outside the grocery store? There will be no need for them. This will free up massive tracts of land for new businesses, for parks, or even living space (apartments, etc.) With a growing population and thus demand for land, the rate of increase of property would slow or even fall making home ownership more affordable for all, etc etc.?

Fewer Lawyers

Society loses vast amounts to dishonest people, some of which are, of course, lawyers.

Google assumes its driverless technology deployed in mass can rid the world of 90% of accidents. Less accidents for ambulance chasers to run after. Also, the sensors, video, and read outs of the respective cars will in most cases show exactly who, or what, was at fault reducing time and friction in court.

Drunk Driving

With almost no one owning a car, it becomes a relic like crime. "James got arrested for drunk driving? How quaint."

All those don?t drink and drive commercials get replaced by ads for Anheuser-Busch?InBev ?Thanks Google, this Bud?s on us!?

Seriously, demand for alcohol will increase with the deployment of driverless technology. Of course, throwing up in the back seat of the robotic taxi might earn you a $50 cleaning bill, but that?s exponentially better than the 10k it costs to defend yourself against a drunk driving offense. (again, bye-bye lawyers and costs to society)

Expect to find alcohol producers on the same side of the aisle as Google.

Coming Up

I have explored only a few of the myriad of benefits that driverless technology might offer us. Yes, it IS that disruptive and awesome and I encourage you readers to feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section about your feelings/ vision.

In the next column of this series, I?ll be discussing who stands to lose from this technology and why it?s no sure bet.?

Source: http://feeds.fool.com/~r/usmf/foolwatch/~3/yGMadOJPl1M/story01.htm

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Friday, February 22, 2013

Prosecutor questions woman in Arizona murder case

PHOENIX (AP) ? A woman charged in the stabbing and shooting death of her Arizona lover traded barbs with a prosecutor under a withering cross-examination as she struggled to explain why she can recall precise details of her life from years earlier, yet can't remember crucial aspects of the murder case against her.

Jodi Arias, 32, faces a potential death sentence if convicted of first-degree murder in the June 2008 killing of Travis Alexander in his suburban Phoenix home. She was testifying for a ninth day Thursday as the prosecution began its cross-examination, hammering her with questions about her apparent selective memory.

Questioning grew so heated Thursday that the judge admonished Arias and prosecutor Juan Martinez to stop talking over each other. Arias smirked at times while Martinez stammered in frustration.

Trial is set to resume Monday.

Alternating between tears and poise, Arias has testified in painstaking detail about the events that led her to kill Alexander, she says in self-defense.

Yet when asked for details from the day of the killing, she didn't recall much.

"Do you have memory problems, ma'am?" Martinez asked.

"Sometimes," Arias replied.

Martinez hammered back, noting it's puzzling that she can't remember such crucial details to the case, yet "can tell us what kind of coffee you bought at Starbucks sometime back in 2008."

"When do you have memory problems? Martinez asked, raising his voice.

"Usually when men like you are screaming at me or grilling me or someone like Travis," Arias replied calmly.

Martinez also questioned her contention that she was monogamous throughout her relationship with the victim while referring to Arias' previous testimony that the day she killed him, she went to visit a man in Utah and slept in his bed, kissing and cuddling.

She said she didn't know Alexander was dead when she left his home, noting her memory from that day has "huge gaps."

"At that point you didn't know, according to your own story, that Mr. Alexander was dead, right?" Martinez snapped.

"I guess I knew. I just wasn't expecting it," Arias said softly. "I wasn't really in my own mind."

"Make up your mind, please," Martinez responded sharply.

Arias testified on Wednesday she recalled little about the day of the killing. She remembers Alexander in a rage, body slamming her and chasing her around his home.

She said she grabbed a gun from his closet, and it went off, but she wasn't sure if she shot him. She had no explanation for his 27 stab wounds and slit throat. He had been shot in the forehead.

Arias also attempted to explain away her repeated lies. She first told authorities she knew nothing about Alexander's death, then later blamed it on masked intruders before eventually settling on self-defense.

She said she was scared of being arrested, had been contemplating suicide and didn't want to sully Alexander's name with accounts of his violent behavior and lurid details of their sexual relationship, given his public persona as a devout Mormon who was saving himself for marriage.

Martinez also hammered her Thursday on other changing stories. Arias claims she injured her right finger when Alexander beat her months before the killing, even once holding up her crooked digit in a dramatic display for jurors in previous testimony.

However, Martinez noted Arias told a detective after her arrest that she injured her finger on the day of Alexander's death when one of the intruders attacked her.

"You gave him a different story," Martinez said pointedly.

"Yes," Arias replied.

"Then you testified about it in this court and you gave us another story of how this happened, right?" Martinez asked.

"No," Arias said defiantly.

Martinez noted that Arias made no mention of injuring her finger in a fight with Alexander in her journal where she kept pages of intimate details from her life.

"And no one knew about this supposed or claimed injury to your finger until after you killed Alexander, right?" he said.

"That's right," Arias replied.

Prosecutors say Arias planned the killing in a jealous rage, savagely attacking Alexander in his home.

Alexander's friends say Arias is lying about her contention that he had sexual desires for young boys, and that he was physically abusive, and no witnesses have testified of any previous violent behavior or his interest in children. Authorities also have said they did not believe Alexander owned a gun, and there has been no testimony to back up Arias' story that he kept one in his closet.

Arias' grandparents reported a .25 caliber handgun stolen from their Northern California house about a week before the killing ? the same caliber used to shoot Alexander ? but Arias claims to know nothing about the robbery. She says she brought no weapons to Alexander's home on the day she killed him.

Prosecutors must prove she planned the attack in advance to secure a first-degree murder conviction and a chance for a death sentence.

Of the day she killed Alexander, Arias said she only remembers shooting at him, putting a knife in the dishwasher and disposing of the gun in the desert as she drove from Arizona on her way to Utah. And she immediately began planning an alibi "to "throw the scent off for a little while."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/prosecutor-questions-woman-arizona-murder-case-185739412.html

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IntelliBriefs: Mobile phone nation

14 February 2013 @ 11:37 am

With subscriber numbers heading for a billion, the disruptive impact of mobile phones in India could be enormous. Robin Jeffrey and Assa Doron look at how the technology is unsettling domesticity, sexuality and morality

Mobile Wali, [1] a Bhojpuri-language video about a woman with a mobile phone, sung by Manoj Tiwari, is one of many film clips circulating on mobiles in Banaras.

"IT IS the girls who have gone astray," a village elder told a journalist after the rape of a girl near New Delhi in early 2012. "The girls? are so scantily clad that it's shameful? Mobile phones have given a lot of freedom to these girls and that's why they are behaving in a wild manner." It is a common theme [2]. The autonomy provided by the phone leads young people, especially girls, to elude the authority of those who would have controlled and disciplined them in the past. In this, as in many other ways, the mobile phone symbolises the disruption of Indian life by much wider economic, cultural and technological forces.

Before the mobile phone, landlines existed in India, but they were the preserve of the privileged (and even they had to wait years for a connection). The mobile phone, by contrast, is said to have reached a stunning 900 million subscribers [3] since its full-blooded arrival in India just over a decade ago. Cheap mobile phones mean that Indians of every status are able to speak with each other as never before.

For governments and great corporations, and for entrepreneurs who would like to be great, the mobile phone represented an immense challenge and opportunity. Between 1993, when the technology began to be deployed in India, and 2012 the country had ten communication ministers. One of them was convicted of corruption and sent to prison; a second was also charged with corruption; a third faced probes that would take years to unravel; a fourth was murdered (though in circumstances not directly related to telecommunications); a fifth was undermined, overruled and rancorously removed. For governments, bureaucrats, regulators and politicians, telecommunications offered a bed of thorny roses, and it is these contests over decision-making and power that we try to understand in the first part of our book ? the Controllers.

The mobile phone expanded faster than the automobile. It was cheaper, of course, but many more people were involved in the chain that connected manufacturers to customers. There was nothing natural about wanting to have a mobile phone: the technology was alien and calls were expensive. The process to build infrastructure and create demand involved trial, error and millions of dollars invested in what was still an unknown future. As the technology spread in the first decade of the twenty-first century, a vast enterprise bubbled up alongside it, with a cascade of occupations and jobs.

These were the Connectors, people ranging from the fast-living advertising women and men of Mumbai to small shopkeepers persuaded by their suppliers to stock recharge coupons for pre-paid mobile services. In between were the technicians who installed transmission equipment; the office workers who found sites and prepared the contracts to install transmission towers (400,000 in 2010); the construction workers and technicians who built and maintained the towers; and the shop owners, repairers and secondhand dealers whose premises varied from slick shopfronts to roadside stalls only slightly more elaborate than those of the repair-walas who once fixed bicycles on the pavement. The Connectors ensured even those with limited purchasing power were participated in India's booming economy.

Once the mobile phone reached "the masses," the masses became the third group in the chain, the Consumers. Mobile phones were used for business and politics, in households and families and to commit crime and organise terror. But the phone was only a tool. Its effects depended on the knowledge and resources of the people using it, and "middle men" usually started with advantages that "lesser" men and women did not share. In politics, the mobile phone was a device that allowed organisations that were already bound together by convictions to exert influence in a manner that hitherto was impossible. Fancy technologies alone don't win elections, but cheap, easy-to-use technology gives people with common interests a powerful new weapon with the potential to mobilise and disrupt existing political and social structure.

AS THE technology entered people's lives, they had to deal with its varied effects: on household economies, parenting practices, intimate relationships [4], youth culture and much else. Values and meanings ? how people regarded "public" and "private," or the proper roles of men and women in controlling technology ? were reshaped in the process. In India, the cheap mobile phone enabled young couples to talk to each other unknown to disapproving elders or for daughters-in-law to talk to fathers-in-law as they had been able to do in the past. Transactions like these occurred in tens of millions of families almost daily from the early years of the twenty-first century. As they accumulated, like grains of sand on a windswept beach, the dunes of social practice began to shift.

Beyond India's cities, and among conservative people in the cities themselves, the mobile phone became a metaphor for changing values and practices related to domesticity, sexuality and morality. In a time of rapid change and disarray, certainties were challenged by ballooning consumerism, relentless migration and unprecedented access to information. The mobile phone embodied the ills of an anxious modernity.

In the cities, it became common to see middle-class women, dressed in Western-style business suits or jeans, using their mobile phones wherever they went. Advertising campaigns were quick to tap into these changes, using images of alluring women to promote mobile phones; makers of music videos incorporated the apparent liberation bestowed by the mobile phone into songs and dances.

For new, "liberated" women, the phone was portrayed as a perfect vehicle for gossip (gupshup), romance or the promotion of exciting social relations. Many songs and videos featured women ? popularly known as mobile walis [5] ? speaking on their mobile phones to their lovers. Though available in CD/VCD shops and later on YouTube, they were most popular on mobile phones.

Music clips featured seductively clad women using mobile phones, dancing in come-hither style and singing lyrics peppered with double meanings. Well before it entered the mainstream music market popular Bhojpuri music had been characterised by "clever phrasing, double entendres, subtle innuendos and suggestive imagery that enabled it to convey taboo sexual acts and desires." For at least one critic, though, the "raunchy flavour" [6] of Bhojpuri music in VCD/DVD formats and on mobile phones was indistinguishable from soft pornography. Yet the music also retained its capacity to satirise the "modern condition" and laugh at the antics of both women and men as they coped with new times and customs.

One video clip begins with Tiwari, well-known the singer, daydreaming of a woman [1] he met in a bar. It cuts to a scene where a glamorous young woman in a halter-neck top, tight jeans and loose hair dances seductively while drinking alcohol and talking on her mobile phone. This mobile wali is depicted as a daring, sexy tease: a woman who defies the norms that usually bind Indian women. She dances, smiles, drinks, smokes and wears skimpy clothes ? all with a mobile phone in her hand. This is her style, as the chorus says:

Mobile in [her] hand, she has a smile on her lips.

She radiates style whenever she moves sideways, forwards, up or down.

Everyone, including neighbours are dying [from excitement]

[Because] the babe, having drunk beer? Oh baby, having drunk beer?

The baby (babe) dances chhamak-chhamak-chham.

The following scenes revolve around the woman who makes men drool as she struts around with a mobile glued to her ear. She is both objectified as a femme fatale and empowered as someone who can choose from those around her or from others at the end of her phone. The song continues:

Forever ready to explode with anger [and] swear words on your lips,

You move the way life moves out of one's body [when one dies].

The cap worn back to front, dark sunglasses, the cigarette is Gold Flake [a famous Indian brand],

I'm working at trying [to seduce you], there is still some time to go

before we get married.

The young woman remains remarkably composed, comfortably entering male-only arenas and adopting male-dominated practices, such as drinking alcohol in a bar and smoking in public spaces, all this while talking on her mobile phone. Only among urban sophisticates could such conduct be imagined. The singer and his rustic male companions go to pieces under her spell. The main male character warns his friends: "She shoots Cupid's arrows with her eyes." True to the Bhojpuri genre of satire, the clip ridicules the lewd, drunken men at the same time as it reminds viewers of the challenges that new attitudes and technologies present to old values.

The clip vividly illustrates the confrontations with tradition that cheap mobile phones provoked. The panicking priest reminds viewers of the precariousness of religious structures and the frailty of people in authority. In the final scene, the priest succumbs to temptation and joins the men in a dance around the woman, who still holds her magic wand ? her mobile phone. Portrayed as a loose, urban woman, the mobile wali breaks long-established rules of conduct, partly empowered by her mobile phone. It could lead a village elder to apoplexy.

Another video clip, Mobile Wali Dhobinaya, betrays a larger anxiety: that of the "village" divested of its men, who have increasingly moved to the cities in search of work. The sari-clad wife roams alone in the fields, with only a cell phone to communicate with her absent husband. The theme recurs in many video clips where the bemused Bihari migrant labourer arrives in the city. He finds a forbidding place, filled with voluptuous mobile walis, riding on scooters and confidently chatting on their mobile phones in public. This time, however, it is the Bihari bhaiya (village guy), a shadow of his former male self, who is depicted as helpless and confused at the sight of these city women with phones clapped to their ears.

We found more than a dozen popular songs at this time that highlighted how young men and women could connect through the mobile phone. The mobile wali was anything but the demure maiden presented to a select group of future in-laws prior to an arranged marriage. Rather, she was flirtatious, uninhibited and confident, challenging established social conduct and "traditional" values. None of this, of course, was "pornographic" or contrary to the law. Yet for guardians of old values, the unconstrained freedom enjoyed by the mobile wali led morality towards dark, wayward ways.

The mobile wali?style clips are relatively innocent. But some Indian manufacturers of handsets, eager to eat into Nokia's dominance, have used racier material to advertise their phones. The Lava brand marketed its Lava 10 phone in 2010 with a television commercial [7] in which a supermarket cashier gives customers their change in the form of teabags, a common solution to a shortage of small coins. Then a handsome young man, and his even more handsome Lava 10 mobile and its "sharp gun-metal edges," come to the checkout. The winsome cashier abandons teabags as change and gives him a packet of condoms. Lava, the tag-line declared, "separates the men from the boys." In 2012, Chaze Mobile, manufacturers of ultra-cheap cell phones, hired Sunny Leone [8], a Canadian citizen of Indian origin and a leading actor in pornographic videos, as their "brand ambassador" for a new range of multi-featured yet very cheap phones. Gambling on Leone's notoriety, the company aimed "to position its product in an extremely cluttered low-end handsets market."

IN INDIA, the mobile phone was not the old landline that had slipped into daily life in Western countries as unnoticed, in the words of sociologist Claude S. Fischer, as "food canning, refrigeration and sewage treatment" and become "mundane." [9] The mobile phone, as Clay Shirky argues in Here Comes Everybody: How Change Happens when People Come Together, now means that "the old habit of treating communications tools like the phone differently from broadcast tools like television no longer makes sense." The potential to record and to broadcast, at one time limited to those who controlled presses and transmitters, was now available to the majority of people, even the poor.

Alongside music and screen savers featuring gods, WWF wrestlers and Bollywood stars, mobile phones have also brought cheap, full-colour, small-screen pornography to the masses. Pornography could be made available everywhere?from kaccha houses to penthouses. But though police and morality crusaders aimed mostly at the poor, the powerful too were vulnerable to the seductive properties of the cell phone. In an incident in the Karnataka state legislature that came to be dubbed as "Porngate," [10] two MPs were caught viewing what were said to be pornographic clips on a mobile phone while a debate was going on. The legislators belonged to the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, constant advocates of censorship in the name of preserving morality and Hindu values.

Mobile phones also facilitated crime and terrorism. Indeed, they created new crimes ? harassment through text-messaging, for instance, and "faceless frauds" in which money disappeared without a victim ever seeing the criminal. And, as the Mumbai attacks in 2008 demonstrated, mobile phones enabled gullible young terrorists to be directed like human drones by remote "controllers."

India experimented with a host of initiatives to establish mobile phone laws and cyber-security frameworks; but provisions were scattered through legislation, guidelines and rules. [11] In 2012, proposals were made to establish a "telecommunications security testing laboratory" to certify that all telecom equipment conformed to government regulations and did not harbour illegal tapping or disruptive devices. Such an organisation, however, was many months or years away from functioning. State police forces established modest mobile cyber-crime labs [12] that attended crime scenes and collected evidence effectively.

Indian governments, however, faced a problem that wealthy states such as those in Japan, western Europe and North America had not solved: how to mitigate the evils that mobile phones could generate while preserving their capacity to improve even a poor citizen's ability to take advantage of the rights of democratic citizenship.

But mobile phones can both empower and disempower, and it can be a distraction to focus on questions of good or bad. The technology exists; immensely powerful economic forces, augmented by widespread social acceptance, have disseminated it widely; and it will only go away if a major cataclysm befalls humanity. We live with mobile telephony, and most of us relish the benefits. India in this sense is no different from other places. But its disabling inequalities and its diversity mean that the disruptive potential of the mobile phone is more profound than elsewhere and the possibilities for change more fundamental. ?

This is an edited extract from The Great Indian Phone Book: How Cheap Mobile Phones Change Business, Politics and Everyday Life, by Robin Jeffrey and Assa Doron (Hurst and Company), also published in the United States by Harvard University Press [13] and in India, as Cell Phone Nation, by Hachette.

Source: http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/2013/02/mobile-phone-nation.html

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