Snowden's limbo in purported airport hideout

MOSCOW (AP) ? Russian President Vladimir Putin says that fugitive National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden has been in the transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport since flying in from Hong Kong ? meaning that he has not officially entered the country. If true, it's effectively a life of airport limbo for Snowden, whose American passport has been revoked by U.S. authorities.

Here's a look at the place and how it operates.

WHAT IT'S LIKE

The area where Snowden is purportedly staying serves both connecting passengers traveling via Moscow to onward destinations and passengers departing from Moscow who have passed border and security checks. An Associated Press reporter entered the area Wednesday by flying from Kiev, Ukraine.

The huge area unites three terminals: the modern, recently built D and E, and the older, less comfortable F, which dates to the Soviet era. The transit and departure zone is essentially a long corridor, with boarding gates on one side and gleaming duty free shops, luxury clothing boutiques and souvenir stores selling Russian Matryoshka dolls on the other. About a dozen restaurants owned by local and foreign chains serve various tastes.

Hundreds of Russian and foreign tourists await flights here, some stretched out on rows of gray chairs, others sipping hot drinks at coffee shops or looking out through giant windows as silver-blue Aeroflot planes land and take off.

Business ran as usual at the terminals on Wednesday morning. An Asian girl, about 10 years old, slept peacefully on her father's lap. A middle-aged mother and her teenage daughter tried out perfume samples at a duty free store, while nearby a woman in a green dress picked out a pair of designer sunglasses. A pilot was buying lunch at Burger King.

NO TRACE OF SNOWDEN

Putin insisted Tuesday that Snowden has stayed in the transit zone without passing Russian immigration and is free to travel wherever he likes. Snowden, who arrived Sunday on a flight from Hong Kong, registered for a Havana-bound flight Monday en route to Venezuela, but didn't board the plane. His ultimate destination was believed to be asylum in Ecuador. Dozens of Russian and foreign journalists boarded the Havana flight only to photograph Snowden's empty seat 17A during the 12-hour journey.

The U.S. move to annul Snowden's passport might have further complicated his travel plans.

Hordes of journalists armed with laptops and photo and video cameras have camped in and around the airport, looking for Snowden or anyone who may have seen or talked to him. But after talking to passengers, airport personnel, waiters and shop clerks, the press corps has discovered no trace of the elusive leaker.

Russian news agencies, citing unidentified sources, reported that Snowden was staying at a hotel in the transit terminal, but he was nowhere to be seen at the zone's only hotel, called "Air Express." It offers several dozen capsule-style spaces that passengers can rent for a few hours to catch some sleep. Hotel staff refused to say whether Snowden was or has in the past stayed there.

"We only saw lots of journalists, that's for sure," said Maxim, a waiter at the Shokoladnitsa diner not far from Air Express. He declined to give his last name because he wasn't allowed to talk to reporters.

PLACES TO HIDE

The departure and transit area is huge and has dozens of small rooms, some labeled "authorized personnel only," where one could potentially seek refuge with support from airport staff or security personnel. And security forces or police patrolling the area can easily whisk a person out of this area though back doors or corridors.

There are also a few VIP lounge areas, accessible to business-class passengers or people willing to pay some $20 per hour. Snowden was not seen in those areas.

Exiting the area would either require boarding a plane or passing through border control. Both require a valid passport or other identification.

Sheremetyevo's press service declined to comment on Snowden's whereabouts. A policeman at the airport laughed off a question from an AP reporter about Snowden's whereabouts. "Journalists have searched this place for three days and have found nothing. Was he ever here in the first place?" the policeman asked. He spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/snowdens-limbo-purported-airport-hideout-154331234.html

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Prince Jackson tears up recalling dad's death

Celebs

Maria Elena Fernandez TODAY

17 hours ago

Michael Jackson's 16-year-old son's bloodshot eyes welled up with tears Wednesday when he told a Los Angeles jury that when his father died in a hospital emergency room four years ago, the singer's personal physician simply turned to Jackson's three children and said, "Sorry, kids, Dad's dead."

Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., known as Prince, was the first member of the Jackson family to take the stand in the Los Angeles Superior Court wrongful death and negligence suit that his grandmother filed against concert promoter AEG Live. At the time of his death, Jackson, 50, was in the middle of rehearsals for his "This is It" comeback tour in London. The lawsuit alleges that AEG was responsible for hiring Dr. Conrad Murray, who was convicted in 2011 of involuntary manslaughter in Jackson's death, as Jackson's doctor.

Jackson's eldest son remained composed as he spoke of the special relationship he and his siblings had with their father and described in detail the confusing days before the King of Pop died, and the impact of his death on the lives of his children.

"It will never be the same," said the teen who lives with his grandmother, a cousin, and siblings in Calabasas, Calif. He talked about how challenging life has been for his 15-year-old sister, Paris, who is recovering in a Los Angeles hospital after a suicide attempt on June 5. He said his 11-year-old brother, Prince Michael Jackson, known as Blanket, "is so young he doesn't realize what he lost" and that he and Paris no longer celebrate their birthdays.

"She was hit the hardest," he said. "She was my dad's princess. She is definitely dealing with it in her own way."

In telling stories about his life, Prince made himself sound like any other teenager. He just completed his sophomore year of private high school, and is currently taking a U.S. history class in summer school. He is an honor student, has played football and basketball, and takes martial arts. He also loves to build robots and volunteers reading books to sick children.

He can't sing and he can't play an instrument, he noted, and added that his father suggested he could become an actor. But he never knew how famous his father was until he was gone.

"We always listened to his music but we didn't know he was famous," Prince said. His father made the children wear protective masks when they were out so they wouldn't be recognized.

"When I was little, the masks were annoying," he said. "It was hot and the feathers were always in my face but now that I'm older, I understand why he did it."

Prince Jackson only saw his father perform live once. He said his dad was "very excited about the concert because we would get to see him perform." But his father wished he had more time to rehearse, and after phone calls with "AEG people," usually chief executive officer Randy Phillips, "Prince said his dad would be in tears saying, 'They're gonna kill me. They're gonna kill me."

The teen recalled that while preparing for the 2009 tour, his father would sometimes come down the stairs and be "freezing cold" and "not strong enough." Jackson looked "malnourished," his son said.

On the day of his father's death, Prince Jackson testified that the family chef screamed at him that Murray wanted him upstairs. No employees, except for Murray, were allowed upstairs.

"My dad was hanging halfway off the bed and his eyes were rolling back in his head," he testified. "Murray was doing CPR. My sister was screaming the whole time saying she wants her daddy. I was waiting at the bottom of the stairs crying." When they got to the hospital, he told his sister, "Angels were watching over us," and tried to remain optimistic, but then Murray delivered the news that their father had suffered a heart attack.

The teen testified that he sometimes gave money to "Dr. Conrad" as instructed by his father because Murray would not take payments from Jackson himself and AEG would not pay him. "He didn't always take the cash and if he did, he only took a portion."

"He was supposed to make my dad healthy," he said.

Prince Jackson testified that the siblings are doing the best they can without their father, and that he missses him "a lot every day."

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/michael-jacksons-son-tears-court-he-recalls-dads-death-6C10452622

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Sony starts upgrading Xperia Z to Android 4.2.2

We dinged Sony for shipping the Xperia Z with an old version of Android, but the company is catching up today by posting an upgrade to Android 4.2.2. Most owners receiving the update are carrying unbranded HSPA+ and LTE models at this stage, although there are reports of at least a few carrier-specific phone variants getting the refresh. As with the Xperia ZL update, most of the user-facing changes are minor. The biggest addition is support for lock screen widgets; there's also slight (if noticeable) tweaks to the interface look and feel. If those revisions are still meaningful enough for you, we'd suggest a quick upgrade check through the usual desktop and OTA channels.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Sony

Comments

Via: Xperia Blog, Phone Arena

Source: Sony Mobile forums

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/jAO-ZKIjOMY/

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PFT: Gators AD angry over Hernandez misreporting

AP

All the draft picks at this week?s NFL Rookie Symposium are learning about the pitfalls that can come with their new opportunities.

But as the first quarterback taken, and the guy expected to lead the Bills out of a generation of mediocrity-at-best, there?s an extra burden on E.J. Manuel.

Manuel said that the Symposium was an introduction into what he can expect as the guy the Bills expect to become the face of the franchise.

?It?s a great responsibility,? Manuel said, via Tim Graham of the Buffalo News. ?You?re always going to be watched, always going to be evaluated each and every day. You?ve got to take that responsibility and respect it. . . .

?I had high expectations no matter where I went in the draft. I?m a natural competitor. I mean, that?s something I was going to work toward anyway. So I don?t feel any added pressure.?

Of course, the first thing Manuel has to do to reach his goal is to prove more able than Kevin Kolb. While that shouldn?t be the most difficult thing in the world, being in a setting where setting up their future is the main topic of discussion had Manuel thinking about what his legacy as a player would be.

?I?ve always been taught that a good name is more important than great treasure,? Manuel said. ?So just keeping that respect for yourself and keeping your name clean, I think that?s what adds to your legacy.

?Obviously, when you play well you have a football legacy. But at the end of the day, I still want to be known as more than a football player. I want to be remembered as a great man.?

If he can deliver the Bills to the playoffs for the first time since 1999, he?ll have the first half of that taken care of.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/06/25/florida-a-d-takes-issue-with-reports-on-aaron-hernandezs-past/related/

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AT&T cuts smartphone prices in half, jumps on the discount bandwagon

If you're looking for a new smartphone, this is apparently the weekend to go shopping. Following Radio Shack's promise to chip in a $100 Google Play credit with purchase an HTC One and Walmart's deep iPhone discounts, AT&T has quietly tacked on a 50% discount for phones under $199. This puts devices like the HTC One, Samsung's Galaxy S4 (and the S4 Active), the Note II, both of BlackBerry's latest handsets and iPhone 5 at an enticing $100. Naturally, Ma Bell has attached the usual hooks: the deal necessitates a new 2-year agreement or contract renewal, and in-store purchases require a trade-in device to activate the discount. Not a bad deal if you're hankering for new hardware -- just make sure you don't walk away with buyer's remorse.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, AT&T

Comments

Via: TUAW

Source: AT&T

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/IaHSY8xOKj8/

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French minister comment "absurd, false": EU's Barnier

PARIS (Reuters) - European Commissioner Michel Barnier struck back on Monday at a French minister who criticized the European Union's executive arm, calling his remarks "absurd" and saying France should stop blaming others for its own problems.

French Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg accused European Commission President Manuel Barroso at the weekend of fuelling far-right groups through austerity policies, the latest in a growing war of words over EU-imposed measures to cut debt.

"I'm tired of seeing ministers like Mr. Montebourg ... saying it's always the fault of someone else, shirking responsibility and looking for scapegoats," Barnier, European commissioner in charge of regulation, told France 2 television.

"But they won't be shirking for very much longer because the moment of truth will arrive at some point, it's arriving for the minister."

Barnier's reaction, which he followed up with a Twitter post calling Montebourg's criticism "absurd & false", added to tension between Brussels and Paris where politicians are blaming austerity policies for strangling the French economy.

It showed the Commission is ready to match euroskeptic French rhetoric with criticism of a political class it says is responsible for France's lagging competitiveness, high unemployment and flat growth.

"Look how some countries in Europe, with the same Commission, are doing better than France ... Germany is doing better because it supports business," said Barnier, a French former minister, from the center-right UMP party.

The European Commission is waiting to see how France will respond to policy recommendations it made in May, which include reforming the pension system, opening up protected job sectors to competition and continuing to overhaul labor rules.

President Francois Hollande has already lowered expectations for a plan to fix a debt-laden pension system, saying there would be no rise in the legal retirement age.

Montebourg's blamed austerity for the far-right Front National party scoring 46.2 percent in a local election on Sunday in the former constituency of ex-Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac, who is under formal investigation for tax fraud.

(Reporting By Nicholas Vinocur; Editing by Brian Love and Elizabeth Piper)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/french-minister-absurd-false-eus-barnier-095529869.html

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The Next Affirmative Action?

In this file photo, UC?Berkeley students walk through Sproul Plaza. A 1996 state proposition banned race-based affirmative action from the University of California.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The Supreme Court?s ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas won?t end race-based affirmative action. The court made it harder for schools to defend their policies but not impossible. Justice Anthony Kennedy said for the majority, about any court faced with a challenge to a university?s affirmative-action policy, "The reviewing court must ultimately be satisfied that no workable race-neutral alternatives would produce the educational benefits of diversity."

Still, this decision could?and should?lead to a smarter kind of affirmative action that is mostly based on class rather than race. Ten states have banned race-based affirmative action, usually by voter initiative. After the bans passed, an initial dip in minority enrollment often followed. But then in most of these states, schools created new programs to promote racial and ethnic diversity indirectly by giving an admissions preference to low-income students, boosting financial aid, and reducing reliance on test scores. I show this in a report I wrote with Halley Potter, A Better Affirmative Action: State Universities that Created Alternatives to Racial Preferences (PDF).

The new affirmative action, based primarily on economic disadvantage, better addresses the glaring inequities students face. As you can see from the chart below, a low-income student scores on average 399 points lower on the SAT than a wealthy student. By contrast, the average SAT difference between African-American and white students of the same socioeconomic status is only 56 points. In other words, the SAT class gap is seven times as large as the SAT race gap.

Source: Anthony P. Carnevale and Jeff Strohl, ?How Increasing College Access Is Increasing Inequality, and What to Do about It,? in Rewarding Strivers: Helping Low-Income Students Succeed in College, Richard D. Kahlenberg, ed., (New York: Century Foundation Press, 2010), 170, Table 3.7.

If universities wanted to be truly meritocratic in admissions, they would weight socioeconomic status heavily and race lightly. In fact, research shows that selective universities do the opposite.

Source: Thomas J. Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford, No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 92, Table 3.5.

Currently, selective schools boost the chances of admission of black and Hispanic students by 28 percentage points. That is, if a white candidate has a 30 percent chance of being admitted based on her record, an African-American or Latino student with the same record has a 58 percent chance. By contrast, low-income students receive no boost whatsoever.

Note: Figures refer to 1995 applicant pool. Adjusted admissions advantage for Bottom income quartile is calculated relative to middle quartiles. Source: William G. Bowen, Martin A. Kurzweil, and Eugene M. Tobin, Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2005), 105, Table 5.1.

Colleges and universities say they care about economic diversity among students. But 74 percent of students at the most selective 146 schools come from the top socioeconomic quarter of the population, while just 3 percent come from the poorest quarter. Put differently, you are 25 times as likely to run into a rich kid as a poor kid on these campuses.

Source: Anthony P. Carnevale and Stephen J. Rose, ?Socioeconomic Status, Race/Ethnicity and Selective College Admissions,? in Richard D. Kahlenberg (ed), America?s Untapped Resource: Low Income Students in Higher Education (The Century Foundation, 2004), p. 106, Table 3.1.

What happens to racial diversity when colleges stop using racial preferences in admissions? The numbers of minority students don?t necessarily drop. After the University of Texas at Austin was barred from considering race by a 1996 court decision, officials started factoring in socioeconomic status. Then the university began admitting students who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school class. By 2004, these race-neutral plans, coupled with growing diversity statewide, produced more racial and ethnic diversity at UT?Austin than had been achieved in 1996 using race.

Source: Brief for Petitioner in Abigail Noel Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, et al., http://www.projectonfairrepresentation.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/Brief-for-Petitioner-Fisher-v-Univ-of-Texas.pdf

Texas is not alone. In Washington, Florida, Georgia, and Nebraska, where race-based affirmative action ended, new programs to provide a leg up to low-income students, improve outreach to them, and reduce the importance of test scores have boosted the number of black and Latino students at flagship campuses.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/

Among the 10 leading public universities in states that banned racial preferences, three did not fully restore black and Latino representation using economic affirmative action and other race-neutral means. Those schools are UC?Berkeley, UCLA, and the University of Michigan. They are the three most selective schools in the study Halley Potter and I did, and the most likely to draw from a national pool of applicants. That?s important because Berkeley, UCLA, and Michigan were competing for minority students with other universities that could continue to use racial preferences in admission. Given that uneven playing field, it?s not surprising that these three universities have had difficulty in recruitment.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/

Some studies find that income-based affirmative action won?t produce much racial diversity. That?s true in part because, on average, compared with whites of the same income level, black and Latino students face extra obstacles?they are more likely to live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty, and to have less family wealth. UCLA Law School developed a definition of socioeconomic disadvantage that includes family wealth and neighborhood poverty, as well as income. Using those measures, the school admitted far more black and Latino students than it did using the regular admissions standards that didn?t include these factors.

Source: Karman Hsu, director of admissions, UCLA Law School, email to Halley Potter on September 4, 2012.

If schools admit more low-income students, will graduation rates drop (because of poor preparation in K?12)? A simulation of admissions at the most selective 146 universities shows that graduation rates would slightly rise if the proportion of students from the less wealthy half of the population rose increased from 10 percent to 38 percent, using admissions standards based on merit plus class-based affirmative action, and compared with current admissions policies that take into account merit, race, athletic status, and legacy status.

Source: Anthony P. Carnevale and Stephen J. Rose, ?Socioeconomic Status, Race/Ethnicity, and Selective College Admissions,? in America?s Untapped Resource: Low-Income Students in Higher Education, Richard D. Kahlenberg, ed. (New York: Century Foundation Press, 2004), 142, 149.

The Fisher decision could be something of a setback for upper-middle-class minority students, but it should be a boon for low-income students of all races as universities develop a new, and better, form of affirmative action based on class.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2013/06/fisher_v_university_of_texas_decision_at_the_supreme_court_affimative_action.html

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