IT COSTS $100 million (?77 million), comes with its own ballroom, and has knockout views of San Francisco ? but there?s also a catch.
This gigantic mansion in California is up for sale by its elderly owner who is doing some estate planning, and as part of the terms and conditions, he won?t be handing over the house until he dies. ?Christian de Guigne IV, whose grandfather started building the house 99 years ago, has exclusive use of the home until his death, according to The Wall Street Journal, which could be awkward for anyone hoping to move into their new pad any time soon.
The giant house has seven bedrooms, a servants? wing, two reservoirs, a flower-arranging room and ? of course! ? a pool.
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Manfred Mann's Earth Band is pictured in 1973, three years before the group confused music lovers everywhere by seeming to sing about a feminine hygiene product.
It happens every day in showers, speeding vehicles and karaoke bars all across America. Feeling joyous and carefree, amateur vocalists belt out their favorite tunes ? and botch the lyrics big time.
Which song gets butchered most frequently? A new survey reveals that it?s the 1976 version of ?Blinded by the Light,? which tends to get interpreted like so: ?Blinded by the light...wrapped up like a douche when you?re rollin? in the night.?
I'm a Skittle! I'm a Beatle! '90s lyrics gone mad
On Thursday, Spotify released the results of a June survey of more than 1,000 music fans. Respondents weighed in on the most misquoted song lyrics of all time, and the results are in:
Hulton Archive / Getty Images
They performed "Rock the Casbah," not "Rock the cat box"! From left to right, Mick Jones, Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon of punk rock band The Clash, circa 1980.
?Blinded by the light...wrapped up like a douche when you?re rollin? in the night? / Actual lyrics: ?Blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night? (Manfred Mann?s Earth Band, ?Blinded by the Light?), 52 percent
??Scuse me, while I kiss this guy? / ??Scuse me, while I kiss the sky? (Jimmy Hendrix, ?Purple Haze?), 19 percent
?Rock the cat box? / ?Rock the Casbah? (The Clash, ?Rock the Casbah?), 14 percent
?Hold me closer, Tony Danza? / ?Hold me closer, tiny dancer? (Elton John, ?Tiny Dancer?), 13 percent
?There?s a bathroom on the right? / ?There?s a bad moon on the rise? (Creedence Clearwater Revival, ?Bad Moon Rising?), 12 percent
?Take me down to a very nice city? / ?Take me down to the paradise city? (Guns N? Roses, ?Paradise City?), 10 percent
?Like a cheese stick? / ?Like a G6? (Far East Movement, ?Like a G6?), 8 percent
?Don't go Jason waterfalls? / ?Don?t go chasing waterfalls? (TLC, ?Waterfalls?), 7 percent
?I blow bubbles when you are not here? / ?My world crumbles when you are not near? (Macy Gray, ?I Try?), 4 percent
Evening Standard / Getty Images
For the record, Jimi Hendrix did not sing, "'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy."
(Survey participants were able to pick more than one song, which is why the percentages above add up to more than 100.)
'Come on, Irene'? Why we mishear song lyrics
The survey, which was conducted via social media and SurveyMonkey.com, also revealed how frustrated people get when they hear mangled song lyrics. The majority of the 1,042 respondents ? 70 percent of them ? said they find flubbed lyrics annoying.
Meanwhile, 47 percent of respondents said they?ve felt embarrassed when they?ve been busted singing the wrong song lyrics themselves.
What's on your playlist affects how you walk
Which song lyrics do you think are misquoted most of all? Tweet us using the hashtag #MisheardLyrics.
Need a Coffey break? Connect with TODAY.com writer Laura T. Coffey on Facebook, follow her on Twitter or read more of her stories at LauraTCoffey.com.
CAIRO // Egypt's military intensified efforts to undermine the supporters of former president Mohammed Morsi yesterday, casting doubt on the number of people killed in a shoot-out on Monday.
Military spokesman Col Ahmed Ali accused Muslim Brotherhood leaders of engaging in "psychological warfare" and denied claims that soldiers opened fire first.
The health ministry put the death toll at 51 after the clashes outside an army barracks where protesters believed Mr Morsi was being held against his will since his removal from power on July 3.
"We don't know how many casualties there were because they took the victims to the mosque, where they were making some kind of propaganda" using images of the injured and dead Col Ali said. "I have a doubt that we killed the number they are announcing."
The military claims its troops only opened fire after a group of militants attacked their positions around the Republican Guard building with guns, rocks and Molotov cocktails.
Protesters said they were attacked by the army and police at dawn during the fajr prayer.
To back up the army's claims, Col Ali showed video footage of pro-Morsi protesters firing weapons and throwing material onto soldiers from roofs around the Republican Guard building.
The footage also included clips from Brotherhood leaders and supporters that Col Ali said was proof of "incitement".
He also said the army believed some of the protesters had killed each other in a bid to increase anger toward the military.
Brotherhood leaders and their supporters were making false claims as part of a "psychological warfare" against the army to sow division and instability, he said.
He said the army's release of video footage was part of their own "psychological operations".
"My job is to deny we are killers," Col Ali said. "We were only protecting Egyptian security."
But Amnesty International said its investigators found "use of grossly disproportionate force" by the army against the protesters.
"Even if some protesters used violence, the response was disproportionate and led to the loss of life and injury among peaceful protesters," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, the deputy director of the group's Middle East and North Africa programme.
Adly Mansour, a former supreme constitutional court judge who was appointed as Egypt's interim president by the military, has promised an independent investigation into the killings.
There was little doubt yesterday that the incident, the deadliest since police fought with protesters during the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak, was fuelling discontent.
The Brotherhood has described the incident as a "massacre" and called on its supporters to remain in the streets. But they remain committed to peaceful protest, according to a spokesman?. Large marches and demonstrations are planned today to protest the military violence and actions against Mr Morsi and other leaders.
Many of the group's top leaders have been detained by the police over the past week on charges of "incitement".
The deep polarisation between Mr Morsi's supporters and a huge swathe of Egypt that opposed him was already proving the biggest challenge for the new government.
Mr Mansour has called on the Brotherhood to join a national reconciliation initiative and participate in upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections, but they have refused, arguing that by doing so they would legitimise the military's actions.
The challenges of reviving Egypt's economy were also thrown into stark relief yesterday after a former official warned that the nation held just two months worth of imported wheat.
Bassem Ouda, the former minister of supplies, told Reuters that the country had just 500,000 tonnes of wheat left in storage. Egypt imports about 10 million tonnes each year.
Mr Morsi had forecast in speeches over the past several months that domestic wheat production would be 9.5 million tonnes, 30 per cent higher than in the year before. Invoking a verse from the Quran, he pointed to what he described as a bountiful harvest as the result of good government policy.
But analysts have thrown cold water on those claims in recent months, predicting a much more modest crop.
On Thursday, the UN Food and Agriculture organisation said that Egypt's would face food security problems.
The interim government was bolstered this week with promises of $12 billion of grants, loans and petroleum products from the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The money will go a long way in preventing Egypt from facing sudden problems, but the new government will still have to find a way to begin reforming its unsustainable fuel and energy subsidy programme that is seen as its most pressing financial problem.
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NEW YORK (AP) ? Get ready for more stage versions of your favorite movies ? 20th Century Fox has formed a new joint venture to turn the studio's vast arsenal of films into musicals.
The studio said Thursday it has joined up with Tony Award-winner producer Kevin McCollum, film producer John Davis and entertainment executive Tom McGrath to develop at least nine musicals based upon the studio's films over the next several years.
The three will continue to work on other projects while collaborating with Fox.
The move takes 20th Century Fox from a licenser of films into a player on Broadway, adding its heft to already established film studios operating in Times Square, including Disney, Warner Bros., Sony and MGM.
But 20th Century Fox ? which includes the units Twentieth Century Fox, Fox 2000 Pictures, Fox Searchlight Pictures, Fox International Productions and Twentieth Century Fox Animation ? has a mouth-watering list of films that range from "Cocoon" and "Carmen Jones" to "Zorba the Greek" and "There's Something About Mary."
McCollum put together the Broadway hits "Rent," ''Avenue Q" and "In the Heights." Davis was behind the movies "Predator," ''The Firm," ''Grumpy Old Men" and "I Robot." McGrath, a former executive with Viacom Entertainment Group, currently helps lead Crossroads Media, Inc.
They will be aided by Isaac Robert Hurwitz, the executive director and producer of The New York Musical Theatre Festival, who will act as a consultant.
Now that the White House says it has determined with ?high certainty? that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons against its people, the United States is planning to send small arms and ammunition to rebel groups there.
Analysts and high-ranking military officials within the Pentagon, however, are warning that this plan may have dangerous and unintended consequences, including drawing the United States into another war in the Middle East.
Arming rebels may also be of questionable strategic value, some senior US military officials argue, although they add that other military options ? notably a no-fly zone ? would come with serious concerns as well.
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Syria ?is awash in weapons,? says one senior Pentagon official who spoke on condition of anonymity. ?The main thing is, will it make a difference??
Rebels have been supplied with arms from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other neighboring countries vying for influence in the region.
Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona ? one of the most outspoken advocates of establishing a no-fly zone and arming rebel groups with heavy anti-tank and anti-air weapons ? acknowledged Friday on Fox News: ?Just sending arms, very frankly, although they need them very badly ... is not going to change the situation on the ground.?
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However, a no-fly zone would be ?quite frankly, an act of war,? Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO?s supreme allied commander, warned earlier this month.
Senior military officials, for their part, have argued that a no-fly zone would be of questionable strategic value since 10 percent of the casualties inflicted by the Syrian opposition have occurred through the use of air power. ?The other 90 percent are by direct fire or by artillery,? said Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a Monitor breakfast in April.
Senior military officials are also concerned that a no-fly zone could inadvertently catapult the US into a more complex military operation than it had intended. ?The question becomes, if you eliminate one capability of a potential adversary, will you be inclined to find yourself in a position to be asked to do more against the rest?? Dempsey said.
The Obama administration has ruled out a no-fly zone for now.
What might prove more helpful, according to the senior Pentagon official, are supplies like night vision goggles, body armor, and communications gear to help rebel factions coordinate with one another. The US has been considering such a move, but there are no firm plans.
Still, some warn against aiding rebel groups that include large numbers of Islamic fundamentalists and even some members with ties to Al Qaeda.
The Syrian rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra ?has declared its affiliation to Al Qaeda and is the strongest military force on the rebel side,? notes James Paul, author of ?Syria Unmasked? and the former executive director of the Global Policy Forum, a think tank that monitors the United Nations. ?This does not bode well for democracy.?
The best hope for a resolution is a diplomatic push that would bring nonviolent democratic activists within Syria into the peace process, Mr. Paul says.
While such a diplomatic resolution seems like a ?long shot,? Syria?s neighbors, including Iran, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, ?all have a lot to lose by this continuing to spiral out of control, and none of them have a lot to win,? says Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute.
The decision that the Obama administration has made to arm rebels ?is a halfway step,? he says. ?I don?t think it?s very likely that providing light armaments will significantly change the balance.?
And in the event that the rebels continue to falter even with US arms, ?the pressure comes to do more,? he says. ?So it?s no longer a discussion of, ?Does this make sense?? It becomes, ?Well, we?re committed.? ?
The war in Syria ?is awful,? Mr. Bandow adds. ?Civil wars are the most awful and horrible kinds of conflict. But if we become involved, we?re looking at a very bad outcome. It?s a horrible situation.
?I don?t think the US can make it much less horrible by providing arms.?
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ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) ? After a lengthy stretch away from baseball to recover from a personal tragedy, Tommy Hanson is pitching his way back into top form.
The rest of the Los Angeles Angels are also looking sharp against the struggling New York Yankees.
Erick Aybar homered and drove in two runs, and Albert Pujols added two more RBIs in the Angels' 6-2 victory Saturday night, sending New York to its fifth straight defeat.
Hanson (4-2) recorded a season-high eight strikeouts while pitching five-hit ball into the seventh inning for the Angels, who have won three straight after a four-game skid.
"This was the most confident I've felt all year," said Hanson, just the third pitcher in 20 years to win in each of his first three career appearances against the Yankees. "Obviously, I needed a little time to deal with what I was dealing with, but I feel like I'm getting back to a rhythm. I'm back to a normal routine."
The big right-hander delivered his strongest start since returning from a 27-day gap between starts in May while he was on the Angels' restricted list, mentally dealing with his stepbrother's death. Against the Yankees, Hanson walked just one and allowed the second-fewest hits in any start of his debut season with Los Angeles.
He also got plenty of help from his teammates.
Josh Hamilton had an RBI double, and Aybar hit an early homer before delivering a tiebreaking RBI single in the sixth. Howie Kendrick had three hits and drew a bases-loaded walk in the seventh inning of his fourth straight multi-hit game. Mike Trout drew three walks and scored two runs.
Combined with Pujols' third straight multi-hit game, the Angels got another standout day from their inconsistent offense, which has 25 hits in the first two games of this weekend series.
"A lot of guys are really swinging the bats real well," said Kendrick, who leads the AL with 24 hits while batting .500 in June. "One through nine, different guys are doing it every time. We just want to play good baseball. We're not worried about the standings or whatever. We just want to win."
Brett Gardner had an RBI triple for the Yankees, who matched their worst skid of the season. Jayson Nix drove in Gardner in the third inning, but New York managed just two more hits in the final six innings ? both by Ichiro Suzuki, who also made two outstanding catches in right field.
"He's a little funky out there with his mechanics," Yankees catcher Chris Stewart said of Hanson. "It throws you off when the ball comes out at a weird angle, and we had shadows today, too, so it was a little tough to pick him up. He's got extreme speeds ? a real slow curveball, which he mixes with his slider, and his fastball kind of gets on you because of his motion."
And it gets worse: Mark Teixeira left in the fourth inning with an aggravated right wrist, heading home to New York for further evaluation.
David Phelps (4-4) yielded nine hits and four runs while pitching into the seventh for the Yankees, taking a small step back from outstanding work in his two previous starts.
The Yankees have lost 27 of their last 39 games at the Big A, and their overall skid got even more foreboding with the latest injury setback for Teixeira, their $180 million slugger.
Teixeira flied out to right and popped out to third before leaving in the fourth inning when David Adams replaced him at first base. Teixeira is hitless in 12 at-bats and is just 8 for 53 since coming off the disabled list on May 31 with a torn sheath on his right wrist.
"It's the first time he's come to us, really, and said something," New York manager Joe Girardi said. "I think he just doesn't feel that he has the whip that he normally does, hitting left-handed, so we'll see what it is. He came to us after the second at-bat and just said he feels like there's not a lot of strength there, so we told him we're going to take him out of there. I've always said that wrist is tricky, so I'm concerned."
Aybar put the Angels ahead in the second inning with a low drive that barely cleared the short fence in the right-field corner for the shortstop's second homer of the season.
After Aybar drove in Mark Trumbo with the go-ahead run in the sixth, Hamilton bounced an RBI double down the first-base line in the seventh against reliever Shawn Kelley.
NOTES: The Yankees stole four bases against Hanson, who has yielded 14 stolen bases this season. "I can't hold runners on first base," Hanson said with a chuckle. "I'm terrible at that." ... Suzuki doubled in the fourth inning, but was caught trying to steal third base. Television replays showed Suzuki might have been safe even though Hank Conger's throw beat him to the bag, and Girardi had an animated argument with umpire Manny Gonzalez. ... Yankees LHP Andy Pettitte turned 41 on Saturday, and Eduardo Perez turned 26.
The "True Blood" vamp was reborn after drinking Lilith's blood, but maybe it's time to kill Bill.
He started out as the gentleman vampire who managed to woo the residents of Bon Temps with his too-good-to-be-believed ways. But now, Bill Compton is a changed man -- and it's not a change for the better.
Last season, Bill chugged the last drops of Lilith's blood -- otherwise known as the holy juice that made all of those Authority-seizing Sanguinistas loopy -- and it transformed the 175-year-old vamp. First he turned into a puddle of goo, then he turned into Billith.
If previews for the new season are anything to go by, he's about to turn into a something else too: a massive jerk with even more superpowers than he had before.
That's why it's time to kill Bill -- or Billith. Whatever.
The truth is Bill's been a jerk for a while. The evolution of "True Blood's" leading man started long before he ever imbibed the ancient proto-vampire. Sure, back in the first season he was charmer, and it was easy to see why Sookie Stackhouse fell for him. And in the second season, he was still a protector and a more-or-less loyal BF.
It was in season three when Bill's glamour first started to wear off. After his proposal to Bon Temps best bad waitress went awry (granted, through no fault of his own), Bill lost his dark-knight-in-shining-armor vibe. Maybe it was that brutal bit of cheating he did with his maker, Lorena. Or maybe it was the way he -- oops! -- nearly drained Sookie to death. Or just maybe it had something to do with the fact that he had a big bad ulterior motive behind why he ever got together with her in the first place. (Mmm, fairy blood.)
Whatever it was, no one could blame Sookie for breaking it off and turning to the Viking-vamp arms of Eric Northman in season four. Besides, by then Bill had offed the Queen of Louisiana and turned into a politician who worried about public image more than personal relationships.
So by the time he started his slip into the dark side of vampire fundamentalism in season five, the idea of killing Bill just didn't seem so bad.
Now? As season six approaches, it seems necessary.
But the question is: Would the "True Blood" powers-that-be actually consider killing Bill? After all, this isn't HBO's other dark and deadly hit, "Game of Thrones," where no major character is safe.
And, yet, the answer is "maybe."
"One of our principal characters will not make it all the way through the season," new showrunner Brian Buckner recently told Rolling Stone without divulging more about the doomed character's identity.
Many small business owners feel like they can?t compete with the ?big? brands simply because they don?t have the money or the manpower to achieve real SEO success. But comparing your SEO success against those bigger brands might actually be selling your own campaign short! Small businesses can have just as much SEO success as any other company, the key is knowing where to focus your limited resources to get the most bang for your buck.
Here are 3 ways small businesses can still achieve big SEO success:
1. Build one quality link at a time.
Links are still the bread and butter of SEO. And although the Google Penguin update has many small business owners running scared from link building you can?t afford to ignore this crucial component of SEO for too long. They key to link building is to build one quality link at a time and to vary up the link sources as much as you can. This helps keep your link profile looking natural and can protect your website from future algorithm updates. Don?t set arbitrary link count goals for yourself as this can often lead to last minute scrambling at the end of the month, which usually means you?re building links you would have otherwise passed over. If it wasn?t a good link then why is it now that a deadline in hanging over your head?
Remember that no quality link needs to be justified! The minute you have to look at it through rose colored glasses to make a link look like a good idea is the moment you know it?s time to walk away. Relevancy and authority determine a quality link, not how easy it is to build!
2. Create content that serves your audience?s needs, not your ego?s.
In a recent interview Elisabeth Osmeloski of Search Engine Land said;
Small businesses who connect with their most loyal customers on a regular basis, through simple interactions can be more agile and responsive to customer needs. Content marketing doesn?t have to be a massive investment of time or even intense amounts of writing. Just quick announcements on G+ or pictures/comments on Facebook might be enough for their audience.
Your content marketing campaign has to be about your audience and what they need; it should not be about how awesome your company is. What kind of information is your target audience looking for? What problems are they trying to solve? Your content should become a resource for your audience and over time you authority and online brand presence will grow. Great content can also earn you high quality links, which is like killing two birds with one stone! The key is to figure out what your audience needs and to give it to them. A company blog, a strong social media presence, and an ear to the ground can help your small business build its online presence over time.
Just remember that building authority through content marketing takes time. It could be months or even longer before your company blog starts getting much traffic. But you have to be committed to the long haul for your SEO program to work.
3. Focus on the niches your competition has overlooked.
If you run a small floral shop in Boston chances are you will never have the same online brand presence that 1-800-Flowers does. But that doesn?t mean you can?t dominate your own local market with a strong SEO program! Your shop can cater to wedding parties, high-end hotels that throw events, gardening enthusiasts, local restaurants and more. The key is to figure out what niches your competition isn?t in or has overlooked and claim that space for yourself. SEO is about positioning your website so that when visitors come looking your site is ready to go! The goal is to not interrupt their online experience with ads and banners, but create enough touch points so that when they need you they can easily find you and do business with your brand.
Nick Stamoulis is the President of Brick Marketing, a full service Boston SEO firm. With nearly 13 years of experience in the Internet Marketing industry, Nick Stamoulis shares his B2B SEO knowledge by contributing to the Brick Marketing Blog and publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, read by over 160,000 opt-in subscribers.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) ? Moderate cleric Hasan Rowhani was declared the winner of Iran's presidential vote on Saturday after gaining support among many reform-minded Iranians looking to claw back a bit of ground after years of crackdowns.
The powerful showing by the former nuclear negotiator allowed him to avoid a two-person runoff and demonstrated the strength of opposition sentiment even in a system that is gamed against it. The ruling clerics barred from the race reform candidates seen as too prominent, allowing a list of hopefuls who were mainly staunch loyalists of the supreme leader.
But the opposition settled on Rowhani as the least objectionable of the bunch, making him the de facto reform candidate.
While Iran's presidential elections offer a window into the political pecking orders and security grip inside the country ? particularly since the chaos from a disputed outcome in 2009 ? they lack the drama of truly high stakes as the country's ruling clerics and their military guardians remain the ultimate powers.
Security forces also are in firm control after waves of arrests and relentless pressures since the last presidential election in 2009, which unleashed massive protests over claims the outcome was rigged to keep the combative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power for a second and final term. He is barred from seeking a third consecutive run. However the last-moment surge around Rowhani injected some excitement in the race.
Rowhani won with 50.7 percent of the more than 36 million votes cast, the Interior Ministry reported, well ahead of Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf with about 16.5 percent. Hard-line nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili came in third with 11.3 percent followed by conservative Mohsen Rezaei with 10.6 percent.
Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said the turnout was 72.7 percent, suggesting that liberals and others abandoned a planned boycott as the election was transformed into a showdown across the Islamic Republic's political divide. Iran has more than 50 million eligible voters.
Voters waited on line for hours in wilting heat Friday at some polling stations in downtown Tehran and other cities, while others cast ballots across the vast country from desert outposts to Gulf seaports and nomad pastures. Voting was extended by five hours to meet demand, but also as possible political stagecraft to showcase the participation.
On one side were hard-liners looking to cement their control behind candidates such as Jalili, who says he is "100 percent" against detente with Iran's foes, or Qalibaf, who was boosted by a reputation as a steady hand for Iran's sanctions-wracked economy.
Opposing them were reformists and others rallying behind the "purple wave" campaign of Rowhani, the lone relative moderate left in the race.
Candidates needed more than 50 percent of the vote to seal victory and avoid a runoff. Journalists face limits on reporting such as requiring permission to travel around the country. Iran does not allow outside election observers.
The Interior Ministry said Rowhani had 18,613,329 votes, followed by Qalibaf with 6,077,292, Jalili with 4,168,946 votes and Rezaei with3,884,412. The other two candidates were far behind.
Despite reformists' support, Rowhani's win is likely to be more of a limited victory than a deep shake-up. Iran's establishment, a tight alliance of the ruling clerics and the ultra-powerful Revolutionary Guard, still holds all the effective power and sets the agenda on all major decisions such as Iran's nuclear program and its dealings with the West. The greater comfort level by the theocracy and Revolutionary Guard also sets a different tone from 2009. Opposition groups appear too intimidated and fragmented to revive street demonstrations.
Rowhani, the only cleric in the race, led the influential Supreme National Security Council and was given the highly sensitive nuclear envoy role in 2003, a year after Iran's 20-year-old atomic program was revealed.
"Rowhani is not an outsider and any gains by him do not mean the system is weak or that there are serious cracks," said Rasool Nafisi, an Iranian affairs analyst at Strayer University in Virginia. "The ruling system has made sure that no one on the ballot is going to shake things up."
Yet a Rowhani victory is not entirely without significance either as it could make room for more moderate voices in Iranian political dialogue and display their resilience. It also brings onto the world stage an Iranian president who has publicly endorsed more outreach rather than bombast toward the West.
The last campaign events for Rowhani carried chants that had been bottled up for years.
Some supporters called for the release of political prisoners including opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, both candidates in 2009 and now under house arrest. "Long live reforms," some cried at Rowhani's last rally. The rally was awash in purple banners and scarves ? the campaign's signature hue in a nod to the single-color identity of Mousavi's now-crushed Green Movement.
"My mother and I both voted for Rowhani," said Saeed Joorabchi, a university student in geography, after casting ballots at a mosque in west Tehran.
In the Persian Gulf city of Bandar Abbas, local journalist Ali Reza Khorshidzadeh said many polling stations had significant lines and many voters appeared to back Rowhani.
Just a week ago, Rowhani was seen as overshadowed by candidates with far deeper ties to the current power structure: Jalili and Qalibaf.
Then a moderate rival of Rowhani bowed out of the presidential race to consolidate the pro-reform camp. That opened the way for high-profile endorsements including his political mentor, former President Akbar Heshmi Rafsanjani, who won admiration from opposition forces for denouncing the postelection crackdowns in 2009. This, too, may have led to Rafsanjani's being blackballed from the ballot this year by Iran's election overseers, which allowed just eight candidates among more than 680 hopefuls.
Fervor remained strong for Rowhani's rivals as well.
Qalibaf was riding on his image as a capable fiscal manager who can deal with the deepening problems of Iran's economy and sinking currency.
Jalili drew support from hard-line factions such as the Revolutionary Guard's paramilitary corps, the Basij. His reputation is further enhanced by a battlefield injury that cost him the lower part of his right leg during Iran's 1980-88 war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which at the time was backed by the United States.
"We should resist the West," said Tehran taxi driver Hasan Ghasemi, who supported Jalili.
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has not publicly endorsed a successor for Ahmadinejad following their falling out over the president's attempts to challenge Khamenei's near-absolute powers.
Ahmadinejad leaves office weakened and outcast by his political battles with Khamenei ? yet another sign of where real power rests in Iran. The election overseers also rejected Ahmadinejad's protege Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei in apparent payback. The usually talkative Ahmadinejad gave only a brief statement to reporters as he voted and refused to discuss the election.
Khamenei remained mum on his own choice even as he cast his ballot. He added that his children don't know whom he backs.
Instead, he blasted the U.S. for its repeated criticism of Iran's clampdowns on the opposition and the rejection of Rafsanjani and other moderates from the ballot.
"Recently I have heard that a U.S. security official has said they do not accept this election," Khamenei was quoted by state TV after casting his vote. "OK, the hell with you."
Iran's state media hailed the apparently high turnout as a boost for the Islamic Republic's political system.
"A great political epic has shocked the world," read a front-page headline inestimated at 75 percent by the hard-line newspaper Kayhan ? Kayhan Saturday. Khamenei had called for a "political epic," saying a high turnout would protect Iran against its enemies.
The economy, too, is under far more pressures than in 2009.
Western sanctions over Iran's nuclear program have shrunk vital oil sales and are leaving the country isolated from international banking systems. New U.S. measures taking effect July 1 further target Iran's currency, the rial, which has lost half its foreign exchange value in the past year, driving prices of food and consumer goods sharply higher.
When a man in work clothes showed up at her door, the Monitor's Europe bureau chief let him inside. But fortunately, he didn't get a chance to pull off a well-known Parisian scam.
By Sara Miller Llana,?Staff writer / May 17, 2013
People walk in the business district of La D?fense, Paris, Wednesday. The Monitor's Europe bureau chief learns not to let strangers through the front door, even in Paris.
Christophe Ena/AP
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I let a stranger into our apartment.
Skip to next paragraph Sara Miller Llana
Europe Bureau Chief
Sara Miller Llana?moved to Paris in April 2013 to become the Monitor's Europe Bureau?Chief. Previously she was the?paper's?Latin America Bureau Chief, based in Mexico City, from 2006 to 2013.
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I suppose that in moving from Mexico City to Paris, and feeling a sudden burst of elation for not having to worry so intently about drug and gang violence and, worst of all kidnapping, I went to the extreme.
A man knocked on the door of our temporary apartment saying he needed to check on something and asked if he could come in. He must have said what he was checking but my French, only now on its way back after lying dormant for over two decades, missed the details. He was dressed in work clothes, and I let him in.
He first said he was looking for the heater panel, then started asking all kinds of questions about who we were and how long we?d been in France. I thought this was a bit bizarre, but didn't think much of it.
Then he spotted the chimney. He opened the screen: ?Oh no, look at all of this soot.? (I had to look up the word for soot, suie, on my laptop.)
?You have a small child,? he went on. ?If she breathes this in, it could be the end. I am obligated to fix this.?
In my daze of jetlag, living out of suitcases, with a mountain of bureaucracy to tackle each day, I actually thought this man might be from the city government, and he was doing his municipal duty, for free, to make sure no Paris residents ? even foreigners, God bless France! ? breathe contaminated air.
I almost let him get to work ? until my more rational husband said, ?Let?s call the owner first.?
The owner's response was immediate: ?Get that guy out of the house now.?
I learned later that it?s a well-known scam in Paris that plumbers or electricians and other workers will come in, and tell you you need X, Y, and Z fixed. A colleague told me one man entered her house, broke a pipe, and then tried to get them to pay to fix it. I told the guardian downstairs about our visitor, and she said any communal or municipal work to be done will always be posted in the building.
Some of these scams are actually done by thieves, she said, who might rob you ? or worse. ?Don?t let anyone in your house. It could be very dangerous.?
I did learn back in elementary school not to talk to strangers, and most definitely not to let them through the front door.
But I had a momentary lapse of judgment, a good reminder that you have to be careful anywhere ? even in Paris!
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May 21, 2013 ? When infections occur in the body, stem cells in the blood often jump into action by multiplying and differentiating into mature immune cells that can fight off illness. But repeated infections and inflammation can deplete these cell populations, potentially leading to the development of serious blood conditions such as cancer. Now, a team of researchers led by biologists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has found that, in mouse models, the molecule microRNA-146a (miR-146a) acts as a critical regulator and protector of blood-forming stem cells (called hematopoietic stem cells, or HSCs) during chronic inflammation, suggesting that a deficiency of miR-146a may be one important cause of blood cancers and bone marrow failure.
The team came to this conclusion by developing a mouse model that lacks miR-146a. RNA is a polymer structured like DNA, the chemical that makes up our genes. MicroRNAs, as the name implies, are a class of very short RNAs that can interfere with or regulate the activities of particular genes. When subjected to a state of chronic inflammation, mice lacking miR-146a showed a decline in the overall number and quality of their HSCs; normal mice producing the molecule, in contrast, were better able to maintain their levels of HSCs despite long-term inflammation. The researchers' findings are outlined in the May 21 issue of the new journal eLIFE.
"This mouse with genetic deletion of miR-146a is a wonderful model with which to understand chronic-inflammation-driven tumor formation and hematopoietic stem cell biology during chronic inflammation," says Jimmy Zhao, the lead author of the study and a MD/PhD student in the Caltech laboratory of David Baltimore, the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Biology. "It was surprising that a single microRNA plays such a crucial role. Deleting it produced a profound and dramatic pathology, which clearly highlights the critical and indispensable function of miR-146a in guarding the quality and longevity of HSCs."
The study findings provide, for the first time, a detailed molecular connection between chronic inflammation, and bone marrow failure and diseases of the blood. These findings could lead to the discovery and development of anti-inflammatory molecules that could be used as therapeutics for blood diseases. In fact, the researchers believe that miR-146a itself may ultimately become a very effective anti-inflammatory molecule, once RNA molecules or mimetics can be delivered more efficiently to the cells of interest.
The new mouse model, Zhao says, also mimics important aspects of human myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) -- a form of pre-leukemia that often causes severe anemia, can require frequent blood transfusions, and usually leads to acute myeloid leukemia. Further study of the model could lead to a better understanding of the condition and therefore potential new treatments for MDS.
"This study speaks to the importance of keeping chronic inflammation in check and provides a good rationale for broad use of safer and more effective anti-inflammatory molecules," says Baltimore, who is a coauthor of the study. "If we can understand what cell types and proteins are critically important in chronic-inflammation-driven tumor formation and stem cell exhaustion, we can potentially design better and safer drugs to intervene."
Funding for the research outlined in the eLIFE paper, titled "MicroRNA-146a acts as a guardian of the quality and longevity of hematopoietic stem cells in mice," was provided by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease; the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; and the National Cancer Institute. Yvette Garcia-Flores, the lead technician in Baltimore's lab, also contributed to the study along with Dinesh Rao from UCLA and Ryan O'Connell from the University of Utah. eLIFE, a new open-access, high-impact journal, is backed by three of the world's leading funding agencies, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society, and the Wellcome Trust.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wall Street's watchdog will present a plan to its board in July that would require brokers to tell certain clients about compensation they receive when they switch firms, the regulator's chief said on Tuesday.
Richard Ketchum, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's chairman and chief executive, said he and his staff will review numerous letters about the proposal from industry and investor advocacy groups before the July meeting. Ketchum made the remarks during a briefing for reporters at FINRA's annual conference in Washington.
FINRA's plan spotlights the lucrative signing packages, offered to top advisers, that have scaled new highs over the past year. While the largest brokerage firms support the proposal, it has been controversial because others are concerned that customers will misjudge the disclosures and that it would ultimately limit compensation.
Disclosing a lucrative bonus would inform investors of a conflict of interest their brokers may have when they ask clients to switch firms along with them. Such a move could be costly to investors, who may have to sell certain securities, such as brokerage branded-mutual funds, that are not available through their broker's new firm, Ketchum has said.
Numerous letters to FINRA about the proposal from the securities industry and investor advocacy groups "make some fair points," Ketchum told reporters.
He said another proposal, requiring that brokerage websites link to the regulator's "BrokerCheck" background disclosure database -- which includes disciplinary violations as well as licensing information and work history -- may not be ready in time for the board's July meeting.
FINRA, Wall Street's industry-funded regulator, must seek permission from its board of governors for sending rule proposals to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for review and final approval.
A final compensation disclosure rule, however, could be a long way off even if FINRA's board approves it. "There are a lot of steps between now and when any rule would be in place," Ketchum told reporters.
The regulator withdrew the BrokerCheck database plan from SEC consideration in April after brokerage firms raised questions about how they would apply such a requirement in other online contexts, such as social media sites.
The regulator is also enhancing its regulatory processes to help boost investor confidence in U.S. financial markets, Ketchum said in his prepared remarks to Wall Street professionals. Those efforts include evaluating precautions brokerages are taking to manage certain risks.
A pilot program for FINRA brokerage examinations, launched last October, aims to identify potential risks by requiring brokerages to upload a broad array of data for FINRA to review before examiners visit on-site, Ketchum said.
The new approach gives examiners more flexibility to raise questions about red flags, Ketchum said. FINRA will phase in the program for all brokerages toward the end of 2013, he said.
(Reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; Editing by Linda Stern and Dan Grebler)
May 20, 2013 ? Parents who share a bed with their breastfed baby could face a fivefold increase in the risk of crib death, even if the parents do not smoke, according to a new study. The research was led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and is published in BMJ Open.
Crib death -- also known as cot death or sudden infant death syndrome (SIDs) -- remains a major cause of death among babies under 1 year of age in high income countries. There is already a general consensus that sleeping with a baby increases the risk of cot death if the parents smoke or if the mother has been drinking alcohol or taking drugs. However, there are conflicting opinions as to whether bed sharing in general represents a risk when these factors are not present.
Some countries, including the US and the Netherlands, advise all parents against sharing a bed with their baby for the first 3 months. The UK currently only advises certain groups, including parents who are smokers, not to bed share.
The new study is the largest ever analysis of its kind. Researchers examined the individual records of 1,472 cot death cases and 4,679 control cases across five major studies. They found that the risk of cot death among breastfed babies under 3 months increased with bed sharing, even when the parents did not smoke and the mother had not consumed alcohol or drugs. This fivefold increase was in comparison to room sharing, where a baby slept in a cot in the parents' room.
The researchers estimate that 81% of cot deaths among babies under 3 months with no other risk factors could be prevented if they did not sleep in the same bed as their parents. The study also showed that the risk associated with bed sharing decreases as a baby gets older, and that the peak period for instances of cot death was between 7 and 10 weeks.
Professor Bob Carpenter from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine who was lead author on the study said: "Currently in the UK more than half of cot deaths occur while a baby is sleeping in the same bed as its parents. Although it is clear that smoking and drinking greatly increase the risk of cot death while bed sharing, our study shows that there is in fact an increased risk for all babies under 3 months who bed share, even if their parents do not smoke or drink.
"If parents were made aware of the risks of sleeping with their baby, and room sharing was instead promoted in the same way that the 'Back to Sleep' campaign was promoted 20 years ago to advise parents to place their newborn infants to sleep on their backs, we could achieve a substantial reduction in cot death rates in the UK. Annually there are around 300 cot death cases in babies under a year old in the UK, and this advice could save the lives of up to 40% of those. Health professionals need to make a definite stand against all bed sharing, especially for babies under 3 months."
The authors state that babies can still be brought into the parents' bed for comfort and feeding during the night, but that they should be placed in a cot next to the parents' bed to sleep.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? North Korea fired short-range projectiles into its own eastern waters Monday for a third straight day, Seoul officials said. The North said it was bolstering deterrence against enemy attack.
North Korea regularly conducts short-range missile tests. Analysts say the recent launches appear to be weapons tests or an attempt to get U.S. and South Korean attention amid tentative signs of diplomacy after soaring tensions that followed U.N. sanctions aimed at a North Korean nuclear test in February.
The two projectiles fired by North Korea on Monday had similar trajectories as four previous launches over the past two days, according to officials at Seoul's Defense Ministry and Joint Chiefs of Staff. Officials were analyzing whether the projectiles were missiles or rockets fired from a large-caliber gun North Korea may be developing, the officials said on condition of anonymity citing department rules.
Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok told reporters earlier Monday that South Korea is taking seriously whatever weapons North Korea develops because it could attack the South. He said artillery guns with a larger caliber will likely have more destructive power.
South Korea urged North Korea to behave responsibly, while the U.S. said threats or provocations would only further deepen the North's international isolation.
North Korea's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea on Monday called South Korean and U.S. criticism an "intolerable challenge" that is deepening tension. It said it conducted "rocket launching tests" on Saturday and Sunday as part of drills to bolster deterrence against what it calls U.S. and South Korean plots to launch nuclear strikes against North Korea. It didn't comment on Monday's firing.
North Korea has a variety of missiles but Seoul and Washington don't believe the country has mastered the technology needed to make nuclear warheads small and light enough to be placed on a missile capable of reaching the U.S.
The Korean Peninsula officially remains in a state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iranian authorities executed two men on Sunday convicted of working for Israeli and U.S. spy agencies, Iran's Fars news agency reported.
Mohammad Heidari, accused of passing security-related information and secrets to Israeli Mossad agents in exchange for money, and Kourosh Ahmadi, accused of gathering information for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, were hanged at dawn, it said.
The sentence for their execution was handed down by Tehran's Revolutionary Court and confirmed by the country's Supreme Court. The report did not say when the pair were arrested nor when their trial took place.
Iran has in the past said it had successfully detected and dismantled spy networks operating inside the country. It has blamed the assassinations of scientists associated with its disputed nuclear program on Western spy agencies, especially Mossad.
The United States has denied any role in the killings. Israel has not commented.
(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Alison Williams)
Contact: Evan Lerner elerner@upenn.edu 215-573-6604 University of Pennsylvania
A team of University of Pennsylvania engineers has used a pattern of nanoantennas to develop a new way of turning infrared light into mechanical action, opening the door to more sensitive infrared cameras and more compact chemical-analysis techniques.
The research was conducted by assistant professor Ertugrul Cubukcu and postdoctoral researcher Fei Yi, along with graduate students Hai Zhu and Jason C. Reed, all of the Department of Material Science and Engineering in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science.
It was published in the journal Nano Letters.
Detecting light in the mid-infrared range is important for applications like night-vision cameras, but it can also be used to do spectroscopy, a technique that involves scattering light over a substance to infer its chemical composition. Existing infrared detectors use cryogenically cooled semiconductors, or thermal detectors known as microbolometers, in which changes in electrical resistance can be correlated to temperatures. These techniques have their own advantages, but both need expensive, bulky equipment to be sensitive enough for spectroscopy applications.
"We set out to make an optomechanical thermal infrared detector," Cubukcu said. "Rather than changes in resistance, our detector works by connecting mechanical motion to changes in temperature."
The advantage to this approach is that it could reduce the footprint of an infrared sensing device to something that would fit on a disposable silicon chip. The researchers fabricated such a device in their study.
At the core of the device is a nanoscale structure about a tenth of a millimeter wide and five times as long made of a layer of gold bonded to a layer of silicon nitride. The researchers chose these materials because of their different thermal expansion coefficients, a parameter that determines how much a material will expand when heated. Because metals will naturally convert some energy from infrared light into heat, researchers can connect the amount the material expands to the amount of infrared light hitting it.
"A single layer would expand laterally, but our two layers are constrained because they're attached to one another," Cubukcu said. "The only way they can expand is in the third dimension. In this case, that means bending toward the gold side, since gold has the higher thermal expansion coefficient and will expand more."
To measure this movement, the researchers used a fiber interferometer. A fiber optic cable pointed upward at this system bounces light off the underside of the silicon nitride layer, enabling the researchers to determine how far the structure has bent upwards.
"We can tell how far the bottom layer has moved based on this reflected light," Cubukcu said. "We can even see displacements that are thousands of times smaller than a hydrogen atom."
Other researchers have developed optomechanical infrared sensors based on this principle, but their sensitivities have been comparatively low. The Penn team's device is an improvement in this regard due to the inclusion of "slot" nanoantennas, cavities that are etched into the gold layer at intervals that correspond to wavelengths of mid-infrared light.
"The infrared radiation is concentrated into the slots, so you don't need any additional material to make these antennas," Cubukcu said. "We take the same exact platform and, by patterning it with these nanoscale antennas, the conversion efficiency of the detector improves 10 times."
The inclusion of nanoantennas provides the device with an additional advantage: the ability to tailor which type of light it is sensitive to by etching a different pattern of slots on the surface.
"Other techniques can only work at the maximum absorption determined by the material itself," Yi said. "Our antennas can be engineered to absorb at any wavelength."
While only a proof-of-concept at this stage, future research will demonstrate the device's capabilities as a low-cost way of analyzing individual proteins and gas molecules.
###
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, Penn's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Penn's Nano/Bio Interface Center and the Penn Regional Nanotechnology Facility.
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Contact: Evan Lerner elerner@upenn.edu 215-573-6604 University of Pennsylvania
A team of University of Pennsylvania engineers has used a pattern of nanoantennas to develop a new way of turning infrared light into mechanical action, opening the door to more sensitive infrared cameras and more compact chemical-analysis techniques.
The research was conducted by assistant professor Ertugrul Cubukcu and postdoctoral researcher Fei Yi, along with graduate students Hai Zhu and Jason C. Reed, all of the Department of Material Science and Engineering in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science.
It was published in the journal Nano Letters.
Detecting light in the mid-infrared range is important for applications like night-vision cameras, but it can also be used to do spectroscopy, a technique that involves scattering light over a substance to infer its chemical composition. Existing infrared detectors use cryogenically cooled semiconductors, or thermal detectors known as microbolometers, in which changes in electrical resistance can be correlated to temperatures. These techniques have their own advantages, but both need expensive, bulky equipment to be sensitive enough for spectroscopy applications.
"We set out to make an optomechanical thermal infrared detector," Cubukcu said. "Rather than changes in resistance, our detector works by connecting mechanical motion to changes in temperature."
The advantage to this approach is that it could reduce the footprint of an infrared sensing device to something that would fit on a disposable silicon chip. The researchers fabricated such a device in their study.
At the core of the device is a nanoscale structure about a tenth of a millimeter wide and five times as long made of a layer of gold bonded to a layer of silicon nitride. The researchers chose these materials because of their different thermal expansion coefficients, a parameter that determines how much a material will expand when heated. Because metals will naturally convert some energy from infrared light into heat, researchers can connect the amount the material expands to the amount of infrared light hitting it.
"A single layer would expand laterally, but our two layers are constrained because they're attached to one another," Cubukcu said. "The only way they can expand is in the third dimension. In this case, that means bending toward the gold side, since gold has the higher thermal expansion coefficient and will expand more."
To measure this movement, the researchers used a fiber interferometer. A fiber optic cable pointed upward at this system bounces light off the underside of the silicon nitride layer, enabling the researchers to determine how far the structure has bent upwards.
"We can tell how far the bottom layer has moved based on this reflected light," Cubukcu said. "We can even see displacements that are thousands of times smaller than a hydrogen atom."
Other researchers have developed optomechanical infrared sensors based on this principle, but their sensitivities have been comparatively low. The Penn team's device is an improvement in this regard due to the inclusion of "slot" nanoantennas, cavities that are etched into the gold layer at intervals that correspond to wavelengths of mid-infrared light.
"The infrared radiation is concentrated into the slots, so you don't need any additional material to make these antennas," Cubukcu said. "We take the same exact platform and, by patterning it with these nanoscale antennas, the conversion efficiency of the detector improves 10 times."
The inclusion of nanoantennas provides the device with an additional advantage: the ability to tailor which type of light it is sensitive to by etching a different pattern of slots on the surface.
"Other techniques can only work at the maximum absorption determined by the material itself," Yi said. "Our antennas can be engineered to absorb at any wavelength."
While only a proof-of-concept at this stage, future research will demonstrate the device's capabilities as a low-cost way of analyzing individual proteins and gas molecules.
###
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, Penn's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Penn's Nano/Bio Interface Center and the Penn Regional Nanotechnology Facility.
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