Miami Dolphins stadium renovation bill rejected

By Kevin Gray

MIAMI (Reuters) - A proposal by the Miami Dolphins to use taxpayer money to help finance an upgrade of the NFL team's stadium failed on Friday to win broad support among Florida state lawmakers, dealing a potential blow to Miami's bid to host the 2016 Super Bowl.

The Dolphins, owned by real estate tycoon Stephen Ross, lobbied the state legislature for months to back a bill to increase hotel taxes in Miami-Dade County to finance nearly half of a proposed $350 million renovation of the Sun Life Stadium, which is privately owned.

But a bill that passed the Florida Senate this week proposing that the tax increase to 7 percent from 6 percent stalled in the House of Representatives on Friday, the last day of this year's legislative session.

In a statement, Ross blamed House Speaker Will Weatherford, a Republican, for failing to bring the legislation to the floor for a vote.

"The Speaker single-handedly put the future of Super Bowls and other big events at risk for Miami-Dade and for all of Florida," he said.

The Dolphins' failure to win over lawmakers comes as public scrutiny over publicly financed sports stadiums has heightened.

The issue has proved particularly controversial in Miami, where the use of taxpayer money to pay three-quarters of the cost of the new $550 million Miami Marlins baseball stadium has proved highly unpopular.

After the Marlins' inaugural season in the stadium last year, the team's owner, Jeffrey Loria, sold off many of the team's top players, angering fans.

The Dolphins pitched the overhaul of Sun Life Stadium in suburban north Miami as crucial to securing high-profile sporting events like the Super Bowl, arguing it would help create 4,000 jobs and bring hundreds of millions of tourist dollars to south Florida.

Miami and San Francisco are the finalists to host the 2016 Super Bowl. The Dolphins had hoped lawmakers would approve the deal before a May 22 meeting where National Football League officials are expected to announce which city will be awarded the championship game.

Sun Life Stadium, where the Dolphins have played for 26 years, is one of the older stadiums in the NFL.

In a last-ditch effort to build lawmaker support for the bill, the Dolphins asked Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to meet with lawmakers this week.

As part of an agreement with officials, Ross pledged to pay $5 million to hold a voter referendum on whether state tax money should be used to fund the stadium renovation. He also vowed to keep the team in Miami for the next 30 years.

The referendum was scheduled to be held on May 14, but Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez said in a statement the vote would now be canceled.

(Reporting by Kevin Gray; Additional reporting by Zachary Fagenson; Editing by Eric Beech)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/miami-dolphins-stadium-renovation-bill-rejected-010134510.html

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NRA meets in Houston after gun control blocked in Congress

By Corrie MacLaggan

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of National Rifle Association members gather in Houston this weekend for the first time since the U.S. Senate rejected a plan to expand background checks for gun buyers, but NRA officials said attendees would not sit back to celebrate victory.

"We view it as an opening battle in what will be a multi-year war," said Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the NRA, which lobbied against the proposal. "We're definitely not resting on our laurels."

Polls show more than 80 percent of Americans support expanded background checks, but the proposal to extend background checks for sales made online and at gun shows fell six votes shy on April 17 of the 60 votes needed to clear a procedural hurdle in the Senate.

The proposal, which supporters have vowed to revive, is a key part of President Barack Obama's gun-control effort sparked by the school shooting massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.

The vote was a sign of the influence of the gun rights lobby, particularly the NRA, which spent $18.6 million in the 2012 campaign cycle, according to the Sunlight Foundation. The NRA has more than 4 million members.

The NRA gathering in America's fourth most populous city, which runs from Friday to Sunday, is billed as a celebration of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution setting out the right to bear arms.

On Thursday, as thousands of NRA delegates were arriving for the conference, a man sparked a panic at a busy Houston airport terminal when he pulled out a gun and shot at the ceiling, then either shot himself or was killed by a security officer who confronted him.

The NRA event is expected to draw some 70,000 attendees who can stroll 400,000 square feet (37,000 square meters) of displays to see the latest products from firearm manufacturers and hunting outfitters, check out wildlife art and shooting accessories, or sign up for hunting trips around the world.

There will also be a "Stand and Fight Rally" with political commentator Glenn Beck, a country music jam featuring the Eli Young Band, and remarks from gun-rights advocates, including former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Texas Governor Rick Perry and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.

The event will also draw protesters who plan to demonstrate for more gun-control measures such as background checks.

AFTER NEWTOWN

Since last year's NRA annual meeting in St. Louis, a national debate about gun laws has been reignited by the December shooting at Newtown's Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 children and six adults were killed. States including Connecticut, Colorado, Maryland and New York have since passed gun-control laws, while Arkansas, Wyoming and South Dakota loosened gun restrictions.

"Almost from the moment of the tragedy in Newtown, it became apparent that the ensuing push for a wide variety of new anti-gun laws had a lot less to do with school safety than it did with a decades-long crusade to destroy the Second Amendment," NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre wrote in an opinion piece in the Houston Chronicle.

"NRA members exemplify everything that's good and right about America," he wrote.

On Wednesday, Perry, the Texas governor, celebrated the recent move to Texas from California of a company called Shield Tactical, which sells firearm-related gear and training services. Perry's office said the Republican governor had reached out to more than 30 firearms manufacturers in states that are considering curbing guns sales or manufacturing, urging them to move to Texas.

The NRA's opponents are also gearing up for the Houston event. The local chapter of a group called Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America plans to demonstrate in support of background-check legislation. Military veterans who disagree with NRA positions on guns plan an "Occupy the NRA" event.

"The NRA leadership actively worked to block background checks for gun sales, spreading lies about the Senate bill," Lauren Weiner, a spokeswoman for the advocacy group Americans United for Change, told reporters on Thursday. "The reality is that the majority of gun owners do, in fact, support these common-sense reforms."

An online Reuters/Ipsos poll released in January showed that 86 percent of Americans surveyed favored expanded background checks of all gun buyers. A CBS News/New York Times poll released on Wednesday showed 88 percent of Americans supported background checks for all gun buyers and that 59 percent were disappointed or angry about the recent Senate vote on gun legislation.

State Representative Garnet Coleman, a Houston Democrat whose district includes the convention center hosting the NRA meeting, will not be among the Texas politicians at the event.

"Clearly, the sales and promotion of firearms is big business," Coleman said. "This is business with politics as the cloak."

(Reporting By Corrie MacLaggan; Editing by David Gregorio, Edith Honan and Peter Cooney)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nra-meet-texas-gun-control-blocked-u-congress-002652906.html

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North Korea sentences American to 15 years' labor

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? A Korean American detained for six months in North Korea has been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for "hostile acts" against the state, the North's media said Thursday ? a move that could trigger a visit by a high-profile American if history is any guide.

Kenneth Bae, a Washington state man described by friends as a devout Christian and a tour operator, is at least the sixth American detained in North Korea since 2009. The others eventually were deported or released without serving out their terms, some after trips to Pyongyang by prominent Americans, including former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

With already abysmal U.S.-North Korean ties worsening since a long-range rocket-launch more than a year ago, Pyongyang is fishing for another such meeting, said Ahn Chan-il, head of the World Institute for North Korea Studies think tank in South Korea.

"North Korea is using Bae as bait to make such a visit happen. An American bigwig visiting Pyongyang would also burnish Kim Jong Un's leadership profile," Ahn said. Kim took power after his father, Kim Jong Il, died in December 2011.

The authoritarian country has faced increasing criticism over its nuclear weapons ambitions. Disarmament talks including the Koreas, the United States, Japan, China and Russia fell apart in 2009. Several rounds of U.N. sanctions have not encouraged the North to give up its small cache of nuclear devices, which Pyongyang says it must not only keep but expand to protect itself from a hostile Washington.

Pyongyang's tone has softened somewhat recently, following weeks of violent rhetoric, including threats of nuclear war and missile strikes. There have been tentative signs of interest in diplomacy, and a major source of North Korean outrage ? annual U.S.-South Korean military drills ? ended Tuesday.

In Washington, the U.S. State Department said it was working with the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang to confirm the report of Bae's sentencing. The United States lacks formal diplomatic ties with North Korea and relies on Sweden for diplomatic matters involving U.S. citizens there.

Bae's trial on charges of "committing hostile acts" against North Korea took place in the Supreme Court on Tuesday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported. KCNA referred to Bae as Pae Jun Ho, the North Korean spelling for his Korean name.

FILE - This 1988 file photo provided by Bobby Lee shows Kenneth Bae, right, and Lee together when they were freshmen students at the University of Oregon. Bae, detained for nearly six months in North ... more? FILE - This 1988 file photo provided by Bobby Lee shows Kenneth Bae, right, and Lee together when they were freshmen students at the University of Oregon. Bae, detained for nearly six months in North Korea, has been sentenced to 15 years of "compulsory labor" for unspecified crimes against the state, Pyongyang announced Thursday, May 2, 2013. (AP Photo/The Register-Guard, Bobby Lee, File) less? ?

Bae was arrested in early November in Rason, a special economic zone in North Korea's far northeastern region bordering China and Russia, state media said. The exact nature of Bae's alleged crimes has not been revealed.

Friends and colleagues say Bae was based in the Chinese border city of Dalian and traveled frequently to North Korea to feed orphans. Bae's mother in the United States did not answer calls seeking comment Thursday.

There are parallels to a case in 2009. After Pyongyang's launch of a long-range rocket and its second underground nuclear test that year, two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor after sneaking across the border from China.

They later were pardoned on humanitarian grounds and released to Clinton, who met with then-leader Kim Jong Il. U.S.-North Korea talks came later that year.

In 2011, Carter visited North Korea to win the release of imprisoned American Aijalon Gomes, who had been sentenced to eight years of hard labor for crossing illegally into the North from China.

Korean American Eddie Jun was released in 2011 after Robert King, the U.S. envoy on North Korean human rights, travelled to Pyongyang. Jun had been detained for half a year over an unspecified crime.

Jun and Gomes are also devout Christians. While North Korea's constitution guarantees freedom of religion, in practice only sanctioned services are tolerated by the government.

U.N. and U.S. officials accuse North Korea of treating opponents brutally. Foreign nationals have told varying stories about their detentions in North Korea.

The two journalists sentenced to hard labor in 2009 stayed in a guest house instead of a labor camp due to medical concerns.

Ali Lameda, a member of Venezuela's Communist Party and a poet invited to the North in 1966 to work as a Spanish translator, said that he was detained in a damp, filthy cell without trial the following year after facing espionage allegations that he denied. He later spent six years in prison after a one-day trial, he said.

___

AP writer Lou Kesten contributed to this report from Washington.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/north-korea-sentences-american-15-years-labor-035931247.html

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Officers hurt, 17 arrested in clash at May Day rally in Seattle

By Eric M. Johnson

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Seattle police said on Thursday they would form a task force to investigate any crimes committed during a violent May Day rally which saw eight police officers injured and 17 protesters arrested.

Protesters and police had exchanged a chaotic barrage of rocks, bottles and pepper spray grenades on Wednesday. It was the second year in a row that a rally on May Day had turned violent.

Demonstrators threw large rocks at police, smashed store and car windows, overturned trash cans and lined up newspaper display racks to block streets, police said.

Those arrested so far face charges including property destruction and assault, said police, who reduced the number of arrests to 17 from an earlier tally of 18.

The eight officers who were hurt suffered only scrapes and bruises, police officials said, although a policewoman was hit in the knee by a large chunk of asphalt.

A woman driving by the protest was treated for cuts after a protester threw a glass bottle at her car and shattered her window, police said.

The day started with a peaceful march in support of immigrant rights, part of May Day rallies in cities across the U.S. west planned by a coalition of organized labor activists, students, civil rights advocates and members of the clergy.

The marches came on the heels of an 844-page bill introduced in April by a bipartisan group of U.S. senators, and backed by President Barack Obama, that would rewrite many of America's immigration laws.

A centerpiece of the measure would create a path to legal status, and ultimately citizenship, for many of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

It also aims to secure the U.S. border with Mexico against illegal entry and to make it easier for industry, particularly high-tech businesses and agriculture, to hire workers from abroad when needed.

(Additional reporting by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Scott Malone and Bernadette Baum)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/thousands-call-immigration-reform-los-angeles-may-day-002300781.html

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Neon exposes hidden ALS cells

Apr. 30, 2013 ? A small group of elusive neurons in the brain's cortex play a big role in ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), a swift and fatal neurodegenerative disease that paralyzes its victims. But the neurons have always been difficult to study because there are so few of them and they look so similar to other neurons in the cortex.

In a new preclinical study, a Northwestern Medicine? scientist has isolated the motor neurons in the brain that die in ALS and, for the first time, dressed them in a green fluorescent jacket. Now they're impossible to miss and easy to study.

The cells slide on neon jackets when they are born and continue to wear them as they age and become sick. As a result, scientists will now be able to track what goes wrong in these cells to cause their deaths and be able to search for effective treatments.

"We have developed the tool to investigate what makes these cells become vulnerable and sick," said Hande Ozdinler, senior author of the study and assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "This was not possible before."

Ozdinler and colleagues also identified the motor neurons that don't die, enabling scientists to study what protects them.

The study will be published in the Journal of Neuroscience on May 1.

ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, causes the death of muscle-controlling nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord (motor neurons). It results in rapidly progressing paralysis and death usually within three to five years of the onset of symptoms.

There are about 75,000 upper motor neurons affected in ALS out of some 2 billion cells in the brain. Previously, the only way to study the upper motor neurons was to extract them through surgery, a difficult process that was beyond the scope of most scientists and still didn't allow examination of the ailing neurons at various stages of the disease.

"You couldn't study them at the cellular level, so the research field ignored them," Ozdinler said. She is one of the few scientists in the country who studies cortical motor neurons. Most of ALS research has focused on the death of motor neurons in the spinal cord.

Key puzzle piece: Why ALS moves so swiftly

But the brain's motor neurons are a key piece of the ALS puzzle. Their disintegration explains why the disease advances more swiftly than other neurodegenerative diseases. It had previously been thought that the spinal motor neurons died first and their demise led to the secondary death of the brain's motor neurons. But Ozdinler's recent research showed that the motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord die simultaneously.

"The whole system collapses at once," Ozdinler said. "It's degeneration from both ends which is why the disease moves so swiftly."

Every voluntary movement is initiated and modulated by upper motor neurons -- answering a cell phone, typing an email, walking to the store. The upper motor neurons tell the spinal motor neurons what to do. In ALS, both the directing neurons and the neurons that create the movement disintegrate at the same time.

Finding the light that never goes out

Ozdinler spent the last four years figuring out how to permanently sheath cortical motor neurons in fluorescence.

Although scientists can flag spinal cord motor neurons in fluorescence, it wears off as the neuron ages because the process uses an embryonic gene. Ozdinler wanted a longer lasting effect so scientists could study the neuron as it ages and develops ALS. She sorted through 6,000 upper motor neuron genes that are vulnerable to ALS before she found one -- UCHL1 -- that is expressed through adulthood.

She used that gene -- which had been cloned with the fluorescence molecule -- and created a mouse model whose upper motor neurons shimmer in green. Then she mated that mouse with an ALS transgenic mouse model. The result is a mouse with fluorescent diseased motor neurons in the brain.

"Now we have a model of one motor neuron population that dies and one that is resistant," Ozdinler said. "That's the perfect experiment. You can ask what does this neuron have that makes it resistant and what does the other one have that makes it vulnerable? That's what we will find out."

Marina Yasvoina, a graduate student, and Baris Genc, a postdoctoral fellow, both in Ozdinler's lab, are the lead authors of the paper. Ozdinler collaborated with Gordon Shepherd, associate professor of physiology, and C.J. Heckman, professor in physiology, both at Feinberg.

"This work was possible thanks to the collaborative nature of Northwestern," Ozdinler said.

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/HIOOYW0vTQs/130430194318.htm

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Stylish Office Products & Furnishing E-Tailer Poppin Raises $11.1 Million Series B, Prepares Offline Expansion

Poppin, an online office products and furniture shop whose goal is to make design more affordable (and Pinterest-worthy), is announcing today having raised $11.1 million in Series B funding. The round was led by TrilogyGrowth, a Canadian growth stage investment fund run by former Indigo Books & Music President Music president Joel Silver. Existing investors Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital, and company founder J. Christopher Burch also participated alongside a small group of angels, which included David Tisch and others. As a part of the new round Silver will be joining Poppin?s board. Burch had the concept for Poppin back in 2009, and later?closed on $6 million in Series A funding in February 2012.?He saw that people today now had access to great design at lower price points in so many aspects of their lives, but that didn’t seem to apply to the office environment. In addition, there’s a lot of crossover between work and home these days – with office spaces serving not only as places to work, but also places to relax, dine and play ?- a concept startups and other tech companies are very familiar with, of course. Meanwhile, home offices often serve dual needs as well. With these concepts in mind, Poppin launched its “fashion forward” online catalog which today has grown to include furniture, office accessories and supplies, kitchenware, organizational aids and more. In recent weeks, Poppin has added new categories as well, like wall art and lighting, for example, which is furthering the blurring of lines between those items that are meant for the workplace and those that could be found in a home. Now with its Series B round, the company plans to expand again, says Chief Marketing Officer Kevin Ranford. And not only in the product lineup itself, he says, but also beyond e-commerce. Although Poppin’s products are only available on the web right now, it sounds like that will be changing in the near future. Ranford says he couldn’t go into details on this front, as deals are in the works. But the company has been approached by a number of people who want to sell its products, and it plans to make it possible for others to sell Poppin both in brick-and-mortar stores as well as other online ones. The company had previously offered items on promotion on Fab.com, which it saw as a helpful way to promote its brand,

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/BPSREsu21UM/

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Adam calls Blake an 'idiot' on 'The Voice'

TV

Craig Berman TODAY contributor

22 hours ago

NBC

Adam Levine and Blake Shelton had a bit of a tiff on "The Voice."

Blake Shelton often comes across as a laid-back dude who stopped by ?The Voice? stage on a lark and is just hangin? out, listening to music and trading insults with friends before going home to drink some beers on his porch. But as Tuesday night showed, even he can lose his cool when he finally gets bored with the back-and-forth barbs.

It all started when "The Voice" coaches were trying to say nice things about C. Perkins to give him a faint bit of hope to cling to in the final moments before Usher kicked him off the show. Blake asked him what the ?C? stood for.

Adam Levine responded, ?It?s C because it sounds cool, man. It?s like if your name was B, you?d be so much cooler than Blake. ?I?m B. Shelton. What?s up?? ?

The audience laughed, and Adam pressed on. ?Maybe you should try that. You need to try something.?

?Kiss my (expletive), Adam,? Blake retorted. And the crowd ?Ooooooooooohed.?

?That?s a lot of smart talk for a guy whose initials are B.S.,? Adam shot back once the noise subsided.

Host Carson Daly put an end to that spat by interrupting. ?We?re wondering who won that knockout round,? he said, killing the moment but reminding everyone that, you know, two actual singers were onstage awaiting their verdict, and maybe everyone should move things along so ?Grimm? could start on time.

Related: It's good to be a stolen woman on 'The Voice'

It seemed like a random thing for Blake to get snippy about, but that wasn?t the first or only dig Adam sent his way Tuesday as the country star and Usher conducted their knockout rounds and selected their singers for the live shows. Adam had earlier called Blake an "idiot" for sending Luke Edgemon home instead of Holly Tucker.

?He?s a whole unique thing. He?s original. He?s different,? Adam said of Luke.

Sure, but the hopeful decided to sing ?Teenage Dream? and sounded too much like a lounge singer. And ? more to the point ? Luke?s not a country singer.

Blake is. So are Holly, Danielle Bradbery, Justin Rivers and The Swon Brothers, the four acts Blake is bringing to the next round. Sensing a theme here? Much like ?Adam?s Angels,? the four women who advanced on Mr. Levine?s team Monday night, Blake clearly had a vision of what he wanted his team to look like, and that?s what he?ll take into next week?s live shows.

Usher went in the opposite direction. With Michelle Chaumel, Cathia, Vedo and Josiah Hawley, he?s got a little bit of everything on his squad. Michelle is super entertaining and has the whole nerd-power thing going for her. Vedo?s a quality R&B performer. Cathia, who Usher stole from Shakira, has a big voice in two languages. And Josiah ... well, he?s a good-looking dude who can sing a little bit, and those kind of folks have been known to do well in singing competitions.

We?ll see how Usher and fellow newcomer Shakira fare once the voters start having a say.

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/blake-shelton-adam-levine-feud-voice-6C9692841

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