Top Stories: It's Week 3 Of The Shutdown; Iran Nuclear Talks

Good morning, here are our early stories:

— Welcome To Week Three Of The Shutdown.

— Leaders Express 'Cautious Optimism' Over Iran Nuclear Plan.

And here are more early headlines:

Alleged Al Qaida Bomber To Appear Today In Federal Court In New York. (CNN)

Report: NSA Collects Email, Instant Messanger Contact Lists Worldwide. (Washington Post)

Pacific Typhoons To Hit Vietnam, Japan This Week. (Al Jazeera)

Powerful Quake Kills Dozens Of People In Philippines. (Reuters)

Another Dry Ice "Bomb" Reported At Los Angeles International Airport. (NBC)

Looming San Francisco Mass Transit Strike Put Off Again. (San Jose Mercury News)

Joining Other Retailers, Macy's To Open Thanksgiving Night. (USA Today)

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/15/234590555/top-stories-its-week-3-of-the-shutdown-iran-nuclear-talks?ft=1&f=
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Astronauts Use Twitter During Shutdown To Update Space Fans

U.S.

Second Dry Ice Bomb Goes Off At L.A. Airport

Politics

Welcome To Week Three Of The Shutdown

U.S.

Astronauts Use Twitter During Shutdown To Update Space Fans

Around the Nation

One Roof, Many Generations: Redefining The Single-Family Home

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/15/234587006/astronauts-use-twitter-to-update-space-fans?ft=1&f=1003
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The Surprising Story of 'Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an'

Denise Spellberg is an associate professor of American and Islamic history at the University of Texas at Austin.

University of Texas at Austin/Courtesy of Knopf

Denise Spellberg is an associate professor of American and Islamic history at the University of Texas at Austin.

University of Texas at Austin/Courtesy of Knopf

Thomas Jefferson had a vast personal library reflecting his enormous curiosity about the world. Among his volumes: a Quran purchased in 1765 that informed his ideas about plurality and religious freedom in the founding of America.

In her book Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders, author Denise Spellberg draws parallels between the beliefs of the founding father and religious tolerance in the United States today.

"I think that there is anxiety about what Muslims believe, largely because people don't understand Islam very well. I think that was also true in the 18th century," Spellberg says. "It strikes me that Jefferson was theorizing for a future that included Muslims — not in spite of their religion, but because of it and because of his notion of universal civil rights."

She sat down with All Things Considered host Arun Rath to discuss Jefferson's Qur'an and the lasting impact of the third U.S. president's views on religious freedom.

On how Jefferson came to have a Quran:

"He actually was a bibliophile from the beginning. He ordered this Quran in 1765, eleven years before he wrote the Declaration of Independence. He was a law student at the time, and he had the book shipped from England to Williamsburg, Va. ... There's an entry in the local newspaper because they were the booksellers for the time.

...

"Europeans, and Americans after them, in this period tended to be quite hostile toward Islam. And yet Jefferson was curious about the religion and law of Muslims, and that's probably why he bought the Quran."

On his views of religious freedom:

"Jefferson was unique in many ways. He criticized Islam as he did Christianity and Judaism. He talked about Islam as a religion that repressed scientific inquiry — a strange idea he got from Voltaire that wasn't right — but ... was able to separate his principles about Muslim religious liberty and civil rights from these inherited European prejudices about Islam.

"He did the same thing when arguing for the inclusion of Catholics and Jews, actually. He had not very good things to say about either Catholicism or Judaism, but he insisted that these individual practitioners should have equal civil rights. ... [Jefferson] resisted the notion, for example, that Catholics were a threat to the United States because of their allegiance to the pope as a foreign power. There were many Protestants who would have disagreed with him about Catholics, and many who would have disagreed with him about Muslims.

"They were the outsiders, whose inclusion represented the furthest reach of toleration and rights. So for Jefferson and others — and he was not alone in this, although it was a minority — for him to include Muslims meant to include everyone of every faith: Jews, Catholics and all others. And to exclude Muslims meant that there would be no universal principle of civil rights for all believers in America."

On the Muslim population in America during the 1770s:

"Jefferson and [George] Washington and others were theorizing about a future American population when, ironically and tragically, they never knew that real Muslims were already in America. But they were slaves, brought from west Africa against their will.

"We don't know how many were the first American Muslims; we think they numbered in the thousands or tens of thousands. And it's not impossible that Jefferson actually owned Muslim slaves from Africa, but there's no direct evidence of it. That's not the case for George Washington, his neighbor in Virginia.

"Washington, among his taxable items ... someone on his plantation listed the names of Fatimer and Little Fatimer. And despite being spelled with an 'er' at the end, this is clearly the name of the prophet's daughter Fatima. So there were Muslim women working on Washington's plantation at the same time he was inviting people of all faiths to a protected religious liberty and rights in the United States."

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/12/230503444/the-surprising-story-of-thomas-jeffersons-quran?ft=1&f=1033
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Snow Queen: Film Review

The Bottom Line

Unfortunately, none of the characters,--whether human, fantastical, or anthropomorphically animal—prove remotely engaging.

Directors-Screenwriters

Vlad Barbe, Vadim Sveshnikov

Cast

Jessica Straus, Doug Erholtz, Cindy Robinson, Marianne Miller, Wendee Lee

The bar for animated releases has been set so high by Pixar and the like that it comes as something of a shock to encounter Snow Queen on American theater screens. This crudely animated and narratively muddled Russian import seems to have little reason for being here, except possibly for the fact that one of its producers is the recently transplanted Russian director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) and that it serves as a sort of warm-up for Disney’s upcoming Frozen, also loosely based on the same classic Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale.

This effort from Russia’s Wizart Animation, written and directed by Vlad Barbe and Vadim Sveshnikov, relates the story of the titular evil character’s plan to turn the world into a frozen wasteland. But first she must get rid of a magical glassmaker who has created a mirror that reflects the true nature of anyone who gazes into it.

After dispatching the mirror maker, the Snow Queen takes prisoner his young son Kai so that he will not be able to follow in his father’s footsteps. She also sends her troll minion Orm to similarly get rid of his sister Gerda. But they form an unlikely bond, experiencing a series of adventures involving pirates, witches and other colorful characters as they attempt to rescue Kai from the Snow Queen’s clutches.

Dubbed with American voices sporting a variety of jarring accents, the film features the sort of broad, vulgar humor—it’s not long before the first fart joke—presumably intended to amuse undiscriminating small fry.

Unfortunately, none of the characters,--whether human, fantastical, or anthropomorphically animal—prove remotely engaging. And the cheap animation, the sort of low-grade CGI endemic to endless direct-to-video efforts, proves visually unappealing. Destined to make a quick exit from American theater screens—the film did reasonably well in Russia in a 3D version—Snow Queen will soon find its way to video stores’ bargain basement bins.

Opened Oct. 11 (Vertical Entertainment)

Production: Wizart Animation

Cast: Jessica Straus, Doug Erholtz, Cindy Robinson, Marianne Miller, Wendee Lee

Directors/screenwriters: Vlad Barbe, Vadim Sveshnikov

Producers: Yuri Moskin, Vlad Nikolaev, Olga Sinelshchikova, Sergey Rapoport, Alexander Ligay, Timur Beckmambetov

Composer: Mark Willott

Not rated, 80 min.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/reviews/film/~3/YI5WZ9AB9Bo/snow-queen-film-review-648191
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Trapped In A Fossil: Remnants Of A 46-Million-Year-Old Meal

A very old squished mosquito found in fossilized rock from Montana. Analysis of the insect's gut revealed telltale chemicals found in blood.

PNAS

A very old squished mosquito found in fossilized rock from Montana. Analysis of the insect's gut revealed telltale chemicals found in blood.

PNAS

Scientists who study why species vanish are increasingly looking for ancient DNA. They find it easily enough in the movies; remember the mosquito blood in Jurassic Park that contained dinosaur DNA from the bug's last bite? But in real life, scientists haven't turned up multi-million-year-old DNA in any useable form.

Fortunately, a team at the Smithsonian Institution has now found something unique in a 46-million-year-old, fossilized mosquito — not DNA, but the chemical remains of the insect's last bloody meal.

They started with a fossilized mosquito. If you think it's incredibly rare for a dinosaur to die and get fossilized for millions of years, imagine what it's like for a bug. Dale Greenwalt has. "Everything has to go exactly right to become fossilized," the retired biochemist explains.

Everything did go right in a little corner of Montana millions years ago. There's a rock formation there — mostly shale — that's a veritable bug cemetery. Greenwalt collects fossils there, as a Smithsonian volunteer. He spends weeks along a stream examining pieces of shale with a handheld lens, then hauls the loot back to the Smithsonian for more microscopic study.

How the bugs ended up in the shale, he says, is a process that only happened rarely. Millions of years ago, a mosquito, say, might land on a gooey mat of algae and microbes, floating on a pond. The mosquito gets stuck in the muck and dies. And then, Greenwalt says, "The algae and the microbes actually grow up and around and encase and envelope the insect."

That entombment protects the bug's corpse. The mat eventually sinks to the bottom of the pond. As sediment slowly covers it and becomes rock, the bug's impression is preserved in stone.

What Greenwalt and a team from the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History have discovered in one of those impressions is iron — a lot of it — as well as chemical compounds called porphyrins. They're found in what had been the mosquito's abdomen, and nowhere else in the impression. Nor are these compounds in the surrounding rock.

The tiny cache of iron and porphyrins was preserved inside the mosquito fossil for 46 million years. "It was exciting," Greenwalt says, "and everyone was jumping up and down because we knew this was exceedingly rare and important."

Fossil mosquitoes collected by Dale Greenwalt, a volunteer research collaborator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.The fossils were collected as part of a 5-year project to produce a research collection of fossil insects from the Kishenehn Formation.

Courtesy of James Di Loreto

Fossil mosquitoes collected by Dale Greenwalt, a volunteer research collaborator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.The fossils were collected as part of a 5-year project to produce a research collection of fossil insects from the Kishenehn Formation.

Courtesy of James Di Loreto

They were jumping up and down because iron and porphyrins are the brick and mortar of hemoglobin, the substance that carries oxygen in blood. What they had were the remains of the mosquito's last blood meal. Given the species of mosquito (something Greenwalt could tell from its shape), Greenwalt guesses that its last meal came from a bird; it's a species that preys on birds nowadays. He says the research is important because it demonstrates a technique that could turn up other chemical clues to ancient life.

The team describes the discovery in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Greenwalt says it was the Smithsonian's high-tech spectroscopy equipment — which can detect tiny amounts of any element — that made this possible. It's the kind of hardware you don't find in most paleontology labs.

The team plans to try their equipment out on more bugs. "We have fossil insects that are bright yellow, bright red [and] bright orange ... probably a whole array of different types of pigments," Greenwalt says. "I've got the next ten years of my life all planned out working at the museum."

Considering that Greenwalt is a volunteer at the Museum of Natural History — he's been retired from a career as a biochemist for years — that looks like a pretty good deal for the Smithsonian ... and for bug history.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/14/232048774/trapped-in-a-fossil-remnants-of-a-46-million-year-old-meal?ft=1&f=1007
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After First Flawed Attempt, Florida Tries Voter Roll Restrictions Again

When Florida Governor Rick Scott's administration began an effort to find and purge non-citizens from the voting rolls last year, life-long citizens and voters received letters asking them to prove their citizenship. That became a political embarrassment. But now, the Scott administration is ready to start the purge again, this time using a federal citizenship database. But county election officials remain wary.

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A year before the next big election, officials in Florida are beginning to look once again at removing non-citizens from the state's voter rolls. When Florida started the process last year, it quickly became a fiasco. U.S. citizens were mistakenly identified as ineligible to vote and county election supervisors refused to go forward with the purge. Well, now the state is trying again, saying it has improved the process. But as NPR's Greg Allen reports from Plantation, Florida, the controversy remains.

GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: Among the biggest embarrassments last year came when a 91-year-old man - a life-long citizen and World War II vet - was told he had to show proof of citizenship or be removed from voter rolls.

MARIA MATTHEWS: Admittedly, we've gone on record, there were some missteps that were made with that.

ALLEN: The head of Florida's Division of Elections, Maria Matthews, was in Lauderhill, near Fort Lauderdale today to discuss with voters and county officials the new plan to identify and remove non-citizens from voter rolls. Governor Rick Scott's administration was forced to abandon last year's effort. But after a Supreme Court decision struck down part of the Voting Rights Act, the governor announced he would resume the voter purge, now renamed Project Integrity.

Florida's Secretary of State Ken Detzner explained that the new process would be much more reliable: indentifying non-citizens through a federal database operated by the Department of Homeland Security. And he said federal and state law is clear: State and county elections officials are charged with making sure only those who are eligible cast ballots.

KEN DETZNER: We can't pick and choose which laws that we want to enforce; we're required to.

ALLEN: Detzner and Matthews painstakingly went through a multi-colored flow chart with county elections supervisors, showing them the ways in which suspected non-citizens would be identified and cross-checked before being notified they were being purged from the voter rolls. Many county officials seem satisfied. But there are some, like Elections Supervisor of Palm Beach County Susan Bucher, who remain critical.

SUSAN BUCHER: If we don't know who's putting data into this database and how often they're updating and there's already a program to correct your records, what kind of assurance can you provide to us?

ALLEN: After the meeting, Bucher said she has lots of questions that will have to be answered before she signs on to Florida's new voter purge.

BUCHER: Well, we got pretty burned last year. You know, last year, all we got was a spreadsheet and they said trust us.

ALLEN: Last year, the secretary of state's office initially identified over 180,000 voters suspected of being non-citizens. It later reduced the list to 2,600. But because of questions about how they were identified, Bucher never sent letters to any of her voters in Palm Beach County. In Broward County, Elections Chief Brenda Snipes says some letters did go out.

BRENDA SNIPES: We had about seven people who came in on their own and removed themselves from the rolls because they admitted that they were not citizens. But we didn't go much beyond that because we stopped the process.

ALLEN: Snipes says she's seen no evidence in her county that non-citizens who were registered actually cast votes. Asked by audience members about how many non-citizens last year were removed from the voter rolls and how many were prosecuted, Secretary of State Detzner said he didn't have that information. Detzner denied that the renewed voter purge effort has anything to do with politics. And as for skeptical county officials, he said, they'll come around.

DETZNER: I'm optimistic that every one will have confidence in the process and that we will earn their respect and that they will follow the law.

ALLEN: That remains to be seen, as does the timing. Detzner says he has no timetable to begin the new purge of non-citizens from the rolls, just that he's certain it will be underway before the next election. Greg Allen, NPR News, Plantation, Florida.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NprProgramsATC/~3/dNcIoeilkak/story.php
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Jon Jones vs. Glover Teixeira UFC title fight pushed back from Super Bowl weekend

In a teleconference Monday, UFC president Dana White told members of the media that the light heavyweight title fight between champion Jon Jones and Glover Teixeira will not, in fact, take place Super Bowl weekend on Feb. 1 as was originally widely reported.

"That was never, ever a done deal," White said.

"That's going to be later. That was never a done deal…the timing didn’t work out…Our [public relations] people put it out, and they shouldn't have."

White went on to say that the 205 pound title bout is likely to take place in March and that he expects Alexander Gustafsson to fight near the same time. Gustafsson unexpectedly pushed Jones to the limit in their UFC 165 main event last month and the decision win for the champion was so close that fans are already clamoring for a rematch.

Should Jones and Gustafsson both win their fights in early 2014, White said that the rivals will "100 percent will fight next."

Listen to the full audio of the media teleconference here.

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/jon-jones-vs-glover-teixeira-ufc-title-fight-190708353--mma.html
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