Going to bat for his buddy, Justin Bieber grabbed some spray paint and plastered a message on Chris Brown's behalf while out in Bogota, Columbia on Wednesday evening (October 30).
The “One Less Lonely Girl” singer wrote “Free Breezy” on a graffiti wall, referring to the legal woes plaguing Mr. Brown after his assault charges earlier this month.
Chris was arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault after he got into a fight in Washington DC, and upon his release he checked into rehab for anger issues.
Of course, Justin also took the opportunity to spray paint a marijuana leaf as well as a tribute to Pac, his deceased hamster.
NEW YORK (AP) — The Vatican is taking the unusual step of conducting a worldwide survey on how parishes deal with sensitive issues such as contraception, divorce and gay couples.
The survey asks how priests minister to same-sex couples and their children — and to men and women living together outside of marriage.
The poll was sent in mid-October to every national bishops conference with instructions to get the widest possible response. The information is for a major meeting on the family that Pope Francis plans next year.
The National Catholic Reporter was first to report the survey Thursday. A U.S. bishops' spokeswoman told The Associated Press the document is authentic and each bishop will decide how to get input.
In England, bishops posted the survey online asking church members to participate.
Los Angeles (AFP) - US and Mexican authorities have unearthed another sophisticated "supertunnel" used to smuggle drugs beneath their common border, the third since 2011, officials said Thursday.
Zig-zagging for a third of a mile beneath the border between San Diego and Tijuana, the newly-constructed tunnel was equipped with an electric-powered rail system to carry the drugs, as well as ventilation.
For the first time, agents seized cocaine intended to be smuggled through the tunnel as well as more than eight tons of marijuana, indicating that Mexican drug cartels are getting increasingly "desperate," they said.
"These cartels are foolish to think they're shoveling under the radar," said US Attorney for Southern California Laura Duffy at a press conference outside the San Diego warehouse where the US end of the tunnel was found Wednesday.
Investigators released video footage of the tunnel, which they stressed was uncovered before it had been been used.
In a message to drug smugglers including notably Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, Duffy vowed: "If you continue to build and attempt to use these tunnels, we are determined to make this a big waste of your dirty money."
Three people were arrested and authorities seized the huge marijuana haul as well as 325 pounds of cocaine, which is usually transported in smaller quantities and does not come through tunnels.
"Their traditional routes are failing at this point. They're very desperate. They'll do anything they can to get into the US," said Bill Sherman, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)'s San Diego office.
As with two other "supertunnels" discovered in 2011, agents pounced before it had even become operational. "They did not move one gram of narcotics thru that tunnel," said Sherman.
Law enforcement authorities were increasingly seeing attempts to bring narcotics including cocaine and methamphetamines over the border through tunnels, or micro-light aircraft.
"Those are acts of desperation," he said.
The tunnel was built at an average depth of 35 feet, and was 4 feet high by 3 feet wide, said Derek Benner of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
Construction likely took a year or more, officials said, adding that it was the work of "engineers and architects." It included hydraulically-controlled steel doors.
Of the three arrested, two were detained in connection with the cocaine seized, and one, a Mexican national, was held over the marijuana haul. All face a maximum of 10 years to life in jail, officials said.
In Tijuana, a Mexican security source said the tunnel was accessed at the southern end by a metal stairway down to a depth of 20 meters, from a building about 80 meters from the border fence.
Discoveries of such underground passageways along the US-Mexico border are not uncommon and authorities say they are used by organized crime groups to traffick drugs and people into the United States.
The tunnel was the eighth large scale such structure discovered since 2006, and the fifth intercepted since 2010.
Over 77,000 people have died in drug-linked violence since 2006, when troops were deployed to battle drug cartels, including under ex president Felipe Calderon and his successor Enrique Pena Nieto, who took office last year.
NEW YORK (AP) — The sunburst Fender Stratocaster that a young Bob Dylan played at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival when he famously went electric, perhaps the most historic instrument in rock 'n' roll, is coming up for auction, where it could bring as much as half a million dollars.
Though now viewed as changing American music forever, Dylan's three-song electric set at the Rhode Island festival that marked his move from acoustic folk to electric rock 'n' roll was met by boos from folk purists in the crowd who viewed him as a traitor. He returned for an acoustic encore with "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue."
Now the guitar is being offered for sale Dec. 6, Christie's said. Five lots of hand- and typewritten lyric fragments found inside the guitar case — early versions of some of Dylan's legendary songs — also are being sold. The lyrics have a pre-sale estimate ranging from $3,000 to $30,000.
With a classic sunburst finish and original flat-wound strings, the guitar has been in the possession of a New Jersey family for nearly 50 years. Dylan left it on a private plane piloted by the owner's late father, Vic Quinto, who worked for Dylan's manager.
His daughter, Dawn Peterson, of Morris County, N.J., has said her father asked the management company what to do with the guitar but nobody ever got back to him.
Last year, she took it to the PBS show "History Detectives" to try to have it authenticated. The program enlisted the expertise of Andy Babiuk, a consultant to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and owner of an upstate New York vintage instrument shop, and Jeff Gold, a Dylan memorabilia expert. Both men, who appeared on the episode, unequivocally declared the artifacts belonged to Dylan.
Babiuk took the instrument apart and also compared it to close-up color photos of the guitar taken at the 1965 festival.
"I was able to match the wood grain on the body of the guitar ... and the unique grain of the rosewood fingerboard. Wood grains are like fingerprints, no two are exactly alike," Babiuk said in an interview. "Based on the sum of the evidence, I was able to identify that this guitar was the one that Bob Dylan had played in Newport."
Dylan's attorney and his publicist did not respond to email and phone requests for comment. Dylan and Peterson, who declined to be interviewed, recently settled a legal dispute over the items.
The terms of the settlement were not disclosed but allowed Peterson to sell the guitar and lyrics, according to Rolling Stone, which wrote in July about Peterson's quest to authenticate the guitar.
"Representatives for Bob Dylan do not contest the sale of the guitar, and are aware of Christie's plan to bring it to auction," a statement issued through Christie's said.
Dylan has generally looked upon his instruments to convey his art, akin to a carpenter's hammer, Howard Kramer, curatorial director of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, said last year. "I don't think he's dwelled on a guitar he hasn't played for 47 years," he said. "If he cared about it, he would have done something about it."
Festival founder George Wein told the AP that when Dylan finished playing, Wein was backstage and told him to go back out and play an acoustic number because that's what people expected. Dylan said he didn't want to do it and said he couldn't because he only had the electric guitar. Wein called out for a loaner backstage and about 20 musicians raised their acoustic guitars to offer them.
The lyrics for sale include "In the Darkness of Your Room," an early draft of "Absolutely Sweet Marie" from Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde" album, and three songs from the record's 1965 recording session that were not released until the 1980s: "Medicine Sunday" (the draft is titled "Midnight Train"), "Jet Pilot" and "I Wanna Be Your Lover."
Dylan's "going electric changed the structure of folk music," the 88-year-old Wein said. "The minute Dylan went electric, all these young people said, 'Bobby's going electric, we're going electric, too.'"
___
Associated Press writer Michelle R. Smith in Providence, R.I., contributed to this report.
Lefties more likely to have psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia: Yale study
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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Contact: Karen N. Peart karen.peart@yale.edu 203-432-1326 Yale University
Being left-handed has been linked to many mental disorders, but Yale researcher Jadon Webb and his colleagues have found that among those with mental illnesses, people with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia are much more likely to be left-handed than those with mood disorders like depression or bipolar syndrome.
The new study is published in the October-December 2013 issue of the journal SAGE Open.
About 10% of the U.S. population is left-handed. When comparing all patients with mental disorders, the research team found that 11% of those diagnosed with mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder are left-handed, which is similar to the rate in the general population. But according to Webb, a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at the Yale Child Study Center with a particular interest in biomarkers of psychosis, "a striking of 40% of those with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder are left-handed."
"In general, people with psychosis are those who have lost touch with reality in some way, through hallucinations, delusions, or false beliefs, and it is notable that this symptom constellation seems to correlate with being left-handed," said Webb. "Finding biomarkers such as this can hopefully enable us to identify and differentiate mental disorders earlier, and perhaps one day tailor treatment in more effective ways."
Webb and his colleagues studied 107 individuals from a public outpatient psychiatric clinic seeking treatment in an urban, low-income community. The research team determined the frequency of left-handedness within the group of patients identified with different types of mental disorders.
The study showed that white patients with psychotic illness were more likely to be left-handed than black patients. "Even after controlling for this, however, a large difference between psychotic and mood disorder patients remained," said Webb.
What sets this study apart from other handedness research is the simplicity of the questionnaire and analysis, said Webb. Patients who were attending their usual check-ups at the mental health facility were simply asked "What hand do you write with?"
"This told us much of what we needed to know in a very simple, practical way," said Webb. "Doing a simple analysis meant that there were no obstacles to participating and we had a very high participation rate of 97%. Patients dealing with serious symptoms of psychosis might have had a harder time participating in a more complicated set of questions or tests. By keeping the survey simple, we were able to get an accurate snapshot of a hard-to-study subgroup of mentally ill people those who are often poverty-stricken with very poor family and community support."
###
Other authors on the study include Mary I. Schroeder, Christopher Chee, Deanna Dial, Rebecca Hana, Hussam Jefee, Jacob Mays, and Patrick Molitor.
Citation:Sage Open vol. 3 no. 4 2158244013503166 (October-December 2013)
http://sgo.sagepub.com/content/3/4/2158244013503166.full.pdf+html
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Lefties more likely to have psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia: Yale study
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:
31-Oct-2013
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| E-mail
]
Share
Contact: Karen N. Peart karen.peart@yale.edu 203-432-1326 Yale University
Being left-handed has been linked to many mental disorders, but Yale researcher Jadon Webb and his colleagues have found that among those with mental illnesses, people with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia are much more likely to be left-handed than those with mood disorders like depression or bipolar syndrome.
The new study is published in the October-December 2013 issue of the journal SAGE Open.
About 10% of the U.S. population is left-handed. When comparing all patients with mental disorders, the research team found that 11% of those diagnosed with mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder are left-handed, which is similar to the rate in the general population. But according to Webb, a child and adolescent psychiatry fellow at the Yale Child Study Center with a particular interest in biomarkers of psychosis, "a striking of 40% of those with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder are left-handed."
"In general, people with psychosis are those who have lost touch with reality in some way, through hallucinations, delusions, or false beliefs, and it is notable that this symptom constellation seems to correlate with being left-handed," said Webb. "Finding biomarkers such as this can hopefully enable us to identify and differentiate mental disorders earlier, and perhaps one day tailor treatment in more effective ways."
Webb and his colleagues studied 107 individuals from a public outpatient psychiatric clinic seeking treatment in an urban, low-income community. The research team determined the frequency of left-handedness within the group of patients identified with different types of mental disorders.
The study showed that white patients with psychotic illness were more likely to be left-handed than black patients. "Even after controlling for this, however, a large difference between psychotic and mood disorder patients remained," said Webb.
What sets this study apart from other handedness research is the simplicity of the questionnaire and analysis, said Webb. Patients who were attending their usual check-ups at the mental health facility were simply asked "What hand do you write with?"
"This told us much of what we needed to know in a very simple, practical way," said Webb. "Doing a simple analysis meant that there were no obstacles to participating and we had a very high participation rate of 97%. Patients dealing with serious symptoms of psychosis might have had a harder time participating in a more complicated set of questions or tests. By keeping the survey simple, we were able to get an accurate snapshot of a hard-to-study subgroup of mentally ill people those who are often poverty-stricken with very poor family and community support."
###
Other authors on the study include Mary I. Schroeder, Christopher Chee, Deanna Dial, Rebecca Hana, Hussam Jefee, Jacob Mays, and Patrick Molitor.
Citation:Sage Open vol. 3 no. 4 2158244013503166 (October-December 2013)
http://sgo.sagepub.com/content/3/4/2158244013503166.full.pdf+html
[
| E-mail
Share
]
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
With MetroPCS transitioning to GSM smartphones that run on T-Mobile's network, you'd expect the two carriers to have near-identical offerings, but MetroPCS's larger roster of affordable smartphones is more robust. The Huawei Vitria ($129 up front) is a solid Android smartphone, and the least expensive MetroPCS phone with LTE. It doesn't compete with the carrier's flagship Android smartphone (and our Editors' Choice), the Samsung Galaxy S4, though it isn't meant to. The Vitria's display could be a little better, the camera could be faster, and it could have a little more storage, but it's an inexpensive device that performs well enough in its price class.
Design and Display For such a small device the Vitria is pretty hefty. It measures 4.99 by 2.51 by 0.46 (HWD) inches and weighs 4.94 ounces, 0.94 ounces more than the LG Optimus F3, another 4-inch smartphone, now available on MetroPCS.
The Vitria's enclosure is smooth, with rounded corners, and the bottom comes to a very slight point. It's pretty plain looking, and doesn't stand out among the crowd of slimmer smartphones. On the back is the 5-megapixel camera and LED flash, which is flush with the soft touch exterior. Remove the matte black plastic back and you'll gain access to the 1750mAh battery, SIM card, and microSD card slot. Pulling the battery lets you remove the SIM card; the microSD card is accessible without powering down your phone, and located right next to the camera lens.
On the left side is the micro USB port for charging and connecting to a PC. It's an awkward placement when using the phone in landscape mode. On the other side is a faux-metal plastic volume rocker. The same plastic wraps around the edge of the phone, making it seem a little cheap, but still feel sturdy. On top is the Power button on the left and headphone jack on the right. Included with the Vitria is a small wall charger and a micro USB cable.
For this price you're not getting an HD screen. The Vitria has a 4-inch Gorilla Glass 2 LCD with 800 by 480 resolution. That's about 233 pixels per inch. Not bad, but not stellar either. Text and images aren't especially clear, but colors look vibrant. Viewing angles is adequate, but the display begins to wash out at more extreme angles. There's a set of Back, Home, and Menu buttons below the screen. Though it has a low-resolution display, typing on the on-screen keyboard is incredibly easy. The Vitria has Swype's keyboard installed at launch, making it a breeze to slide your finger over the letters you need and have the phone spell the right word for you, and eliminating the annoying smartphone hunt-and-peck typing.
Connectivity and Call Quality The Huawei Vitria is pretty well-connected for the price. Under the hood is Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi with Wi-Fi calling, A-GPS, and DLNA support for media streaming to the few and far between DLNA-capable devices.
The Vitria may be inexpensive, but it's one of the few sub-$150 phones with LTE. The next LTE-capable phone on MetroPCS is the $149 Optimus F3. It's running on T-Mobile's network, and as such doesn't support any of MetroPCS' CDMA bands. For $40 per month you get unlimited voice, texting, and data (with 500MB worth of LTE speeds). $50 gets you 2.5GB of high-speed data, and $60 gets you unlimited high-speed data.
Call quality on the phone was remarkably good, at least on my end. The other person's voice was clear and loud thanks to the earpiece. My voice came through more muddied and muffled than I would have liked. Noise cancellation was also an issue whenever a truck or car would pass by. The caller on the other end would hear every sound outside. My tests with a Jabra Stone 3 Bluetooth headset yielded the same results. The speakerphone was very quiet and barely audible in the streets of New York City.
The Vitria's 1750mAh cell was a boon during battery testing. The phone lasted a solid 9 hours and 23 minutes in our talk time test.
Hardware, OS, and Apps The Vitria contains a Snapdragon MSM8930 1.2GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM; old hardware, but fine for an entry-level smartphone. In Nenamark's graphical performance test, the Vitria scored 59 frames per second. It trounces its similarly priced competitor, the Samsung Galaxy Exhibit, which scored a meager 38.6 frames. In the Taiji graphics test it beats the more expensive LG Optimus L9, with 42.8 versus LG's 13.6. When you remember it isn't pushing too many pixels, all that speed makes more sense. As a result, the Vitria is an affordable casual gaming machine, though it routinely runs out of space needed to download the games and apps without a microSD card. Our tests showed that a 64GB card was too large, but a 32GB one worked just fine. You're going to need that card, however, as the Vitria only has 1.72GB of available storage.
Huawei's Android 4.1.2 is carrying a lot more bloatware than I'd like. It's too gratuitous, even coming with a theming app that customizes the interface with new sets of icons that doesn't look as great as stock Android. A few of the apps are simply shortcuts to settings like mobile hotspots or visual voicemail, but with apps like Rhapsody ($5/month), MetroPCS Screen-It ($5/month) for screening calls, and Metro Block-It ($1/month) for blocking calls, all I see is my phone trying to nickel-and-dime me. In total there are 16 nonstandard apps, none of which are removable.
One interesting app is Profiles, which allows you to tie a group of settings together into a phone "profile" of sorts. For example, the preloaded Sleep profile has brightness at 7 percent, all data services off, and alarm sound at around 60 percent. It's useful for quickly turning on or off a group of related settings when in a movie, meeting, or other environment where you can't miss an alert.
Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions The Vitria played most video formats except any AVI files, whether encoded in MPEG-4, Xvid, or DivX. As for audio, it played everything except FLAC. Video looks passable, but darker scenes become muddled and contrast is quite low.
Many low-end Android phones have a built-in FM radio, and the Vitria is no exception; you'll need to plug in headphones, which double as an antenna; you can then toggle the sound output from headphone to phone speaker. You can't record what you're listening to, but bookmarking and searching for stations with two large arrow buttons is very convenient. As for purchasing content, the Vitria is equipped with the full suite of Play Store apps, including Play Movies & TV, and Play Music.
The 5-megapixel camera on the Vitria isn't a great shooter. Most of the images are washed out and noisy indoors, or overexposed outdoors. It takes almost a full second for the phone to capture each the photo and process it. Video recording is poor in low light; the frame rate drops dramatically and there's no image stabilization. Every step was a tremor to the phone and screwed with the autofocus while recording. The front-facing VGA camera snaps low-resolution photos.
The Huawei Vitria is in the sweet spot of price for performance on MetroPCS. If you're willing to spend a little more, $149 gets you the LG Optimus F3, a similar 4-inch touch-screen Android phone with LTE and better battery life. If you're on a shoestring budget you can save $20 with the Samsung Galaxy Exhibit, though it lacks LTE and has a slightly smaller display. The Huawei Vitria doesn't have a great screen, but at under $150, and with 4G LTE, it's a solid value.
She’s been busy touring the world as of late, and Beyoncé Knowles just unveiled a teaser for her forthcoming DVD “Life is But a Dream.”
The “Independent Women” songstress sings her new song “God Made You Beautiful” on the trailer, a song she dedicated to her daughter Blue Ivy.
Beyonce croons, “When you were born/The angels sighed in delight/They never thought they'd see such a beautiful sight.”
Knowles’ ditty is a follow-up to husband Jay Z’s song “Glory,” also dedicated to Blue. He raps, “The most amazing feeling I feel, words can't describe what I'm feeling for real / Baby, I paint the sky blue, my greatest creation was you.”
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