Middle East turmoil draws Turkey and Iraqi Kurds closer (Reuters)

ARBIL, Iraq (Reuters) ? Upheaval in the Middle East and mutual economic interests are drawing together two unlikely partners; rising powerhouse Turkey and an entity whose name Turkish leaders hardly dare mention - Kurdistan, the semi-autonomous region of northern Iraq.

Ankara has developed solid political and trade ties with Iraq's Kurds, as its foreign policy of "zero problems with the neighbors" unravels due to the uprising in Syria, tensions with Baghdad and rivalry with Iran.

Iraqi Kurdish leaders also recognize that in an unstable region and with sectarian conflict threatening to upset the delicate political balance in Baghdad, their landlocked, oil producing territory needs an ally among its neighbors.

Turkey, with one of the fastest growing economies in the world, could be their best bet.

"We can call it a key relationship because Turkey has an important status because of its location and because of the role that it plays in the international community," said Falah Mustafa Bakir, the head of the Department of Foreign Relations of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

"Turkey is a major partner for Iraq as a whole, but also for the Kurdistan region in terms of commerce and trade," he told Reuters in a recent interview. "I am sure Turkey would have a good opportunity to be a major or main partner with the KRG, but also with Iraq."

But big issues remain, not least the presence in northern Iraq of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a militant group whose 27-year armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey has claimed the lives of 40,000 rebels, soldiers and civilians.

Turkish leaders are also reluctant to see the emergence of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq, fearing this could rouse the already restless Kurds just across the border in Turkey.

In a landmark visit to the region last year, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan repeatedly referred to the "Kurdish administration," but never once used the word Kurdistan.

PIPELINE DIPLOMACY

Victims of massacres and chemical weapons attacks, Iraq's Kurds rose up against Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War and broke free from Baghdad-rule. The 2003 U.S.-led invasion then toppled the dictator and led to a constitution that recognized the Kurds' hard-won de facto autonomy.

Once the poorest region of Iraq, Kurdistan is now its most prosperous, insulated from the insurgency and sectarian violence in the south by its mountains and stable government.

For now the region largely depends on receiving 17 percent of the national budget, but the regional government estimates there are about 45 billion barrels of oil reserves in the north, most of it as yet untapped.

Oil majors, analysts say, are expected to follow the lead of Exxon Mobil and sign exploration and production deals with the regional government. This should help to raise production, estimated to reach 175,000 barrels per day this year, to 1 million bpd by 2015.

Kurdish oil exports are pumped into the Iraqi national pipeline system, but relations between the Kurds and Baghdad have been dogged for years by rows over late payments for crude, the legality of the regional government's oil deals and disputed territory.

Add to that the traditional distrust of Baghdad following Saddam's atrocities, the present political infighting in the capital and risk of renewed sectarian violence, and the Kurds feel they are right to look after their own interests.

That means the regional government becoming less reliant on Baghdad.

One pipeline pumping about 60,000 bpd already feeds directly from Kurdistan's Tawke oilfield into the main pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, and more are due to follow.

"Turkey is our port to Europe and the West," said a regional government official who declined to be named. "It is a member of NATO, and one day could join the European Union. It is a much better option than Baghdad or Iran."

With an economy growing at 8 percent last year, Turkey is hungry for energy and values a fast-growing market on its doorstep where it can sell its manufactured goods.

From the construction firms putting up new five-star hotels to accommodate Western oil executives flocking to the region, to banks, retailers and restaurants, more than half the foreign companies in Iraqi Kurdistan are Turkish. About 80 percent of goods sold in the region are made in Turkey.

Iraq as a whole is now Turkey's second biggest export market after Germany, selling more than $8 billion of goods last year. But according to Turkish Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan, about 70 percent of Turkey's exports to Iraq are to the north.

If the Kurdistan region were a country it would still be Turkey's eighth biggest export market.

A war of words between Erdogan and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has also drawn Turkey closer to the Kurds. Erdogan has warned that Turkey would not remain silent if a sectarian conflict erupts in Iraq. Maliki has accused Erdogan of meddling.

Turkey has heavily courted the Kurds, along with Iraq's Sunni Arab parties in recent years, analysts said, but Maliki and Shi'ite parties remain allied to Iran.

STRATEGIC ALLIANCE

Involving Turkey in the economy of Iraqi Kurdistan may not be enough to ensure Ankara's enduring support, particularly while its soldiers are being killed by PKK militants whose leaders are based in the mountains of northern Iraq.

"For 30 years, we have paid a very heavy price for the terror directed here because of the lack of authority in Iraq, especially northern Iraq," Erdogan told his parliamentary deputies on Tuesday. Turkey, the United States and the European Union all classify the PKK as a terrorist organization.

Turkey has staged 28 operations into northern Iraq in pursuit of the PKK in the last 20 years, Kurdish officials said, so it is in the regional government's interests to help solve the problem if it is to seek closer ties with Turkey.

The regional government, made up of pro-Western conservative parties led by landowners, has little natural sympathy with the PKK, a group with Marxist roots.

But a military move against the Turkish Kurd militants by the regional government's forces would be extremely unpopular with Iraqi Kurds, and in any case when the two sides have clashed in the past the PKK have generally come out on top.

While Erdogan has granted some Kurdish language and cultural rights in Turkey to try to de-link the "Kurdish problem" from the "terrorism problem," secret peace talks between the Turkish state and the PKK broke down last year, Turkish media said.

Masoud Barzani, the regional president, and the government are working behind the scenes to bring the two sides back to negotiations, said a second official who declined to be named.

"I think violence only brings catastrophe," Barzani said when asked about efforts to mediate between Turkey and the PKK.

"I cannot call it a mediating role, but both sides know our view very clearly ... We only see a peaceful solution to this and the moment there is a need to follow a peaceful approach then we are ready to do whatever we can," he said in a recent interview.

"Turkey is the key alliance for us, politically and economically," said the second government official. "It is a strategic alliance for us, mutually beneficial for both sides."

(editing by David Stamp)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120201/wl_nm/us_turkey_iraq_kurds

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5 Great Things About Possessing A Niche market Video Web page ...

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Source: http://berryhillforcongress.com/1792/5-great-things-about-possessing-a-niche-market-video-web-page-home-business-enterprise-empire/

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AP Source: Assistant Flood accepts Rutgers job (AP)

A person familiar with the decision says Rutgers assistant Kyle Flood has accepted an offer to replace Greg Schiano as the team's head coach.

The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Monday because the school has yet to make an official announcement.

Rutgers had pursued Florida International football coach Mario Cristobal, but he opted to stay put.

Schiano left Rutgers last week to become the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' head coach, leaving the school scrambling for a replacement less than a week before national signing day.

Flood was promoted to interim coach last week and interviewed for the job over the weekend. He has been a member of Schiano's staff since 2005, working his way up to assistant head coach in 2008.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120130/ap_on_sp_co_ne/fbc_rutgers_coach

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How a Mother's Love Changes a Child's Brain (LiveScience.com)

Nurturing a child early in life may help him or her develop a larger hippocampus, the brain region important for learning, memory and stress responses, a new study shows.

Previous animal research showed that early maternal support has a positive effect on a young rat's hippocampal growth, production of brain cells and ability to deal with stress. Studies in human children, on the other hand, found a connection between early social experiences and the volume of the amygdala, which helps regulate the processing and memory of emotional reactions. Numerous studies also have found that children raised in a nurturing environment typically do better in school and are more emotionally developed than their non-nurtured peers.

Brain images have now revealed that a mother?s love?physically affects the volume of her child?s hippocampus. In the study, children of nurturing mothers had hippocampal volumes 10 percent larger than children whose mothers were not as nurturing. Research has suggested a link between a larger hippocampus and better memory.

"We can now say with confidence that the psychosocial environment has a material impact on the way the human brain develops," said Dr. Joan Luby, the study's lead researcher and a psychiatrist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo. "It puts a very strong wind behind the sail of the idea that early nurturing of children positively affects their development."

The research is part of an ongoing project to track the development of children with early onset depression. As part of the project, Luby and her colleagues previously measured the maternal support that children ? who were ages 3 to 6 and had either symptoms of depression, other psychiatric disorders or no mental health problems ? received during a so-called "waiting task."

The researchers placed mother and child in a room along with an attractively wrapped gift and a survey that the mother had to fill out. The children were told they could not open the present until five minutes had passed ? basically until their mothers had finished the survey. A group of psychiatrists, who knew nothing about the children's health or the parents' temperaments, rated the amount of support the mothers gave to their children.

A mother who was very supportive, for example, would console her child, explaining that the child had only a few more minutes to wait and that she understands the situation was frustrating. "The task recapitulates what everyday life is like," Luby told LiveScience, meaning that it gives researchers an idea of how much support the child receives at home.

Now, four years later, the researchers gave MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans to 92 children who underwent the waiting task. Compared with non-depressed children with high maternal support, non-depressed children with low support had 9.2 percent smaller hippocampal volumes, while depressed children?with high and low support had 6.0 and 10.6 percent smaller volumes, respectively.

Though 95 percent of the parents in the study were the children's biological mothers, the researchers say that the effects of nurturing on the brain are likely to be the same for any primary caregiver. [Why Gay Parents May Be the Best Parents]

Luby and her team will continue following the children as they grow older, and plan to see how other brain regions are affected by parental nurturing during preschool years.

"It's now clear that a caregiver's nurturing is not only good for the development of the child, but it actually physically changes the brain," Luby said.

The study was published online today (Jan. 30) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/parenting/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20120130/sc_livescience/howamotherslovechangesachildsbrain

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No letup on Gingrich by Romney before Florida vote (AP)

MIAMI ? Cheered by new polls, Mitt Romney is all but predicting victory in Tuesday's Republican presidential primary. Newt Gingrich is looking past Florida to regroup, vowing he won't stay buried long.

"With a turnout like this, I'm beginning to feel we might win tomorrow," an upbeat Romney told a crowd of several hundred at a stop in Dunedin on Monday as he and Gingrich zipped across the state making their final appeals.

Gingrich, in turn, acknowledged that his momentum had been checked but promised not to back down. He characterized Romney as an imposter, and his team started to plot a strategy for upcoming contests.

"He can bury me for a very short amount of time with four or five or six times as much money," Gingrich said in a television interview. "In the long run, the Republican Party is not going to nominate ... a liberal Republican."

GOP officials in Florida were anticipating a big turnout, more than 2 million voters, up from a record 1.9 million in the Republican primary in 2008. More than 605,000 Floridians had already voted as of Monday, either by visiting early voting stations or by mailing in absentee ballots, ahead of the total combined early vote in the GOP primary four years ago.

In the span of a volatile week, the tables have turned in this potentially pivotal primary state.

Gingrich rode a triumphant wave into Florida after a South Carolina victory nine days ago. But since then, Romney and his allies have pummeled the former House speaker on TV and on the campaign trail. Romney turned in two strong debate performances, while Gingrich faltered. Now opinion polls show the former Massachusetts governor with a comfortable lead here.

Romney and Gingrich have been the only two candidates to compete in Florida in earnest. Neither former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum nor Texas Rep. Ron. Paul campaigned much in the state, and they were elsewhere on Monday.

Clearly in command, Romney flew to stops in media markets in northern Florida and the populous swing regions of central Florida, determined to keep Gingrich from surging late.

Romney renewed attacks on his rival as an untrustworthy, Washington influence peddler at the outset of two separate appearances Monday. He claimed that Gingrich's ties to federally backed mortgage giant Freddie Mac have hurt the former speaker in a state wracked by the foreclosure crisis.

"He made $1.6 million in his company, the very institution that helped stand behind the huge housing crisis here in Florida," Romney said in Dunedin. Gingrich's consulting firm received more than $1.5 million from the federally backed mortgage giant over a period after he left Congress in 1999.

Gingrich plowed ahead, flying to stops in northern Florida starting in Jacksonville ? near his home state of Georgia ? before touching down in conservative Pensacola and then Tampa.

Along the way, he tried to rally conservatives by casting Romney as an imposter and himself as the true GOP stalwart. His claim to conservative principles wasn't limited to economic issues.

"No politician, no judge, no bureaucrat can come between you and God," Gingrich told an audience in Tampa. "I'm a little bit tired of being lectured about respecting every other religion on the planet."

Gingrich, who has sought to wrap himself in the mantle of Ronald Reagan, campaigned with the late president's son Michael. He was also joined by former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, who endorsed him Sunday.

A win by Romney would again reset the 2012 GOP race, seen early this month as his to lose, then thrown into doubt by Gingrich's come-from-behind win in South Carolina.

Romney easily won the New Hampshire primary after nearly winning the in leadoff Iowa. The South Carolina setback behind him, Romney sought to aggressively stop Gingrich, aided by a well-funded political action committee that supports him and is run by former political aides.

Together, Romney's campaign and the supportive group Restore Our Future have combined to spend $6.8 million on television ads in the final week of the Florida campaign, about three times what Gingrich and a group supporting him have spent.

Romney capped his Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina campaigns with upbeat spots. Nothing doing in Florida, where he was running out the clock with ads attacking Gingrich over Freddie Mac and an ethics violation in Congress.

But Romney dropped any reference to Gingrich at his final stop Monday at The Villages in central Florida. And instead of reciting the lyrics of "America the Beautiful," as he typically does, Romney ? on pitch ? broke into song and led the crowd in a reverent rendition.

Rick Tyler, a former top Gingrich aide now running a pro-Gingrich political action committee, showed up at Romney's kickoff event in Jacksonville on Monday, stealing a page from Romney's Florida playbook.

"I'm here to get as many cameras and microphones so I can talk about Mitt Romney's incessant failure to tell the truth," Tyler said.

Gingrich said he was confident he could narrow Romney's margin in public voter surveys, even as he and his campaign began trying to soften the blow a defeat in Florida might bring.

Gingrich aides tried to diminish the state's impact on the quest for the nomination by issuing a memo from his political director, Martin Baker.

It noted that by Wednesday morning, only 5 percent of the 2,288 national convention delegates will have been awarded.

Gingrich, who has promised to campaign through the national convention this summer, was clearly looking to regroup after Florida.

"The campaign is shifting to a new phase where opportunities are not limited to a single state," Baker wrote.

Gingrich had not announced his plans for Wednesday. Romney, who has already begun advertising in next-up Nevada ahead of the state's Feb. 4 caucuses, was traveling there Wednesday, and to Minnesota, which holds its caucuses on Feb. 7.

___

Associated Press writers Kasie Hunt in The Villages, Shannon McCaffrey in Tampa and Brendan Farrington in Miami contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120131/ap_on_el_pr/us_gop_campaign

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Huawei Ascend II (U.S. Cellular)

The original Huawei Ascend was a low-end, free-with-contract smartphone?released on a number of different carriers. It sold well because of its low price, but it wasn't a very good device. The Huawei Ascend II for U.S. Cellular addresses some of that phone's issues, but it's a case of too little, too late. The Ascend II won't cost you a dime, but you can get a much better phone if you're willing to spend some cash.

Design and Call Quality
Like a diet-version of the original, the Ascend II measures 4.6 by 2.4 by 0.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.1 ounces. It looks and feels nicer than the Ascend, clad all in black with a soft touch plastic back and a shiny plastic ring around the display. The display is the same 3.5-inch, 320-by-480-pixel capacitive touch screen as the last time around, which looks reasonably sharp and bright. There are four haptic feedback-enabled touch keys beneath it, and typing on the on-screen keyboard felt fine.

The Huawei Ascend II is a dual-band EVDO Rev A (850/1900 MHz) device with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. In New York where we test, U.S. Cellular phones use Sprint's network. Signal reception was fine, and it connected to my WPA2-encrypted Wi-Fi network without a problem. It can also function as a mobile hotspot with the appropriate data plan.

Call quality was decent on the Ascend. Voices sound clear, but thin and a touch robotic. Calls made with the phone are easy to understand and feature good noise cancellation, but can sound a bit muffled. The speakerphone sounds fine and is loud enough to use outdoors. Calls sounded clear through a?Jawbone Era?Bluetooth headset ($129, 4.5 stars) and voice dialing worked fine. Battery life was on the shorter side of average at 5 hours, 8 minutes of talk time.

Android and Apps
The Ascend II runs Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread). There's no word on whether it will receive an update to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), but we wouldn't hold out hope. Huawei has added some very limited customizations to the UI. Unfortunately, they give off a bargain bin vibe; Huawei would've fared better leaving well enough alone in this case.

There are five customizable home screens you can swipe between, which come preloaded with a number of useful apps and widgets, along with a bunch of nonremovable bloatware.

Everything is powered by a 600MHz Qualcomm S1 MSM7627 processor. This was standard for lower-end smartphones a year ago, but it's really starting to show its age. The Ascend II turned in some of the worst benchmarks we've seen for a device sporting these specs, and you can really feel that while using the phone. Most tasks felt sluggish, and it took longer to open and close apps than usual.

App-wise, you get Google Maps Navigation for free voice-enabled, turn-by-turn GPS directions, along with all that bloatware from U.S. Cellular. You should also be able to run most of the 300,000+ third-party apps in the Android Market, but again, be prepared to encounter stalls and crashes.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
The Ascend II has 146MB of internal memory, along with a 2GB microSD card; my 32GB and 64GB SanDisk cards worked fine as well. Thankfully, the phone has a standard 3.5mm headphone jack this time around, which makes it easy to find a pair of earbuds. Music tracks sounded fine over both wired earbuds and Altec Lansing BackBeat?Bluetooth headphones ($99.99, 3.5 stars). I was able to play AAC, MP3, OGG, and WAV files, but not FLAC or WMA.

Video playback is lackluster. I was able to watch movies at resolutions up to 800-by-480, but anything above 640-by-480 looked choppy. I could play H.264 and MP4 files, but not AVI, DivX, or Xvid.

The Ascend II's 5-megapixel camera lacks auto-focus and an LED flash. Test photos looked soft and dark, with muted color detail. The camera also records 640-by-480 video at 16 frames per second indoors and 19 outside.

The Huawei Ascend II isn't a terrible phone, it's just not a very good one. It's sluggish today; a year from now, it will probably feel glacial. If you're looking to score a smartphone on the cheap, you'll get a faster processor but slower Internet with the Samsung Repp?(Free, 3 stars). For $49.99 there's the LG Genesis?(3 stars), which gets you two higher-res displays, along with a physical QWERTY keyboard. But you'd do best to spend $100 and pick up the HTC Hero S?(3.5 stars), or $149.99 for the Motorola Electrify?(4.5 stars). Both phones feature faster processors, sharper displays, and better cameras than the Ascend II. The Electrify can even convert into a laptop PC with the proper accessories. And even better, in both cases you won't be itching to upgrade your phone in just a few months.?

Benchmarks
Continuous talk time: 5 hours 8 minutes

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??? Huawei Ascend II (U.S. Cellular)
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?? more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/Ui3j0zUK4Hk/0,2817,2399392,00.asp

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Y Combinator Names Seasoned Entrepreneur Geoff Ralston As Its Newest Partner

geoff-ralstonY Combinator has just announced the newest partner to join the prestigious firm: Geoff Ralston. Ralston's previous credentials include founding Four11, which was acquired by Yahoo back in 1997 for $96 million and served as the foundation for Yahoo Mail. Ralston spent eight years at Yahoo, eventually becoming Yahoo's Chief Product Officer. Several years after leaving Yahoo he was named CEO of Lala, before it was acquired by Apple in 2009. Most recently he cofounded?Imagine K12, a tech incubator for education-related startups, which presented at TechCrunch Disrupt SF (you can find the incubator's first batch of companies here).?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/TUFPdW6UGjI/

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