Nelson Mandela in 'critical' condition

By Ed Cropley

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Former South African president Nelson Mandela's condition deteriorated to "critical" on Sunday, the government said, two weeks after the 94-year-old anti-apartheid leader was admitted to hospital with a lung infection.

The worsening of his condition is bound to concern South Africa's 53 million people, for whom Mandela remains the architect of a peaceful transition to democracy in 1994 after three centuries of white domination.

A government statement said President Jacob Zuma and the deputy leader of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), Cyril Ramaphosa, visited Mandela in his Pretoria hospital, where doctors said his condition had gone downhill in the last 24 hours.

"The doctors are doing everything possible to get his condition to improve and are ensuring that Madiba is well looked after and is comfortable," it said, referring to him by his clan name.

Mandela, who became South Africa's first black president after historic all-race elections nearly two decades ago, was rushed to a Pretoria hospital on June 8 with a recurrence of a lung infection, his fourth hospitalisation in six months.

Until Sunday, official communiques had described his condition as "serious but stable" although comments last week from Mandela family members and his presidential successor, Thabo Mbeki, suggested he was on the mend.

Since stepping down after one term as president, Mandela has played little role in the public or political life of the continent's biggest and most important economy.

His last public appearance was waving to fans from the back of a golf cart before the final of the soccer World Cup in Johannesburg's Soccer City stadium in July 2010.

During his retirement, he has divided his time between his home in the wealthy Johannesburg suburb of Houghton, and Qunu, the village in the impoverished Eastern Cape province where he was born.

The public's last glimpse of him was a brief clip aired by state television in April during a visit to his home by Zuma and other senior ANC officials.

At the time, the 101-year-old liberation movement, which led the fight against white-minority rule, assured the public Mandela was "in good shape" although the footage showed a thin and frail old man sitting expressionless in an armchair.

"Obviously we are very worried," ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu told Johannesburg station Talk Radio 702. "We are praying for him, his family and the doctors."

"ABSOLUTELY AN ICON"

Since his latest admission to hospital, well-wishers have been arriving at his Johannesburg home, with scores of school-children leaving painted stones outside the gates bearing prayers for his recovery.

However, for the first time, South African media have broken a taboo against contemplating the inevitable passing of the father of the post-apartheid "Rainbow Nation" and one of the 20th century's most influential figures.

The day after he went into hospital, South Africa's Sunday Times newspaper carried a front-page headline saying it was "time to let him go".

"He's absolutely an icon and if he's gone we just have to accept that. He will be gone but his teachings, what he stood for, I'm sure we've all learnt and we should be able to live with it and reproduce it wherever we go," said Tshepho Langa, a customer at a Johannesburg hotel.

"He's done his best," he added. "We are grateful for it and we are willing to do the good that he has done."

Despite the widespread adulation, Mandela is not without detractors at home and in the rest of Africa who feel that in the dying days of apartheid he made too many concessions to whites, who make up just 10 percent of the population.

After more than 10 years of affirmative action policies aimed at redressing the balance, South Africa remains one of the world's most unequal societies, with whites still controlling much of the economy and the average white household earning six times more than a black one.

"Mandela has gone a bit too far in doing good to the non-black communities, really in some cases at the expense of (blacks)," Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, 89, said in a documentary aired on South African television this month.

"That's being too saintly, too good, too much of a saint."

(Additional reporting by Pascal Fletcher, Leon Malherbe and Bart Noonan; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ex-president-mandelas-condition-now-critical-government-195941217.html

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Today in History

Today is Monday, June 24, the 175th day of 2013. There are 190 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

On June 24, 1983, the space shuttle Challenger ? carrying America's first woman in space, Sally K. Ride ? coasted to a safe landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

On this date:

In 1314, the forces of Scotland's King Robert I defeated the English in the Battle of Bannockburn.

In 1509, Henry VIII was crowned king of England; his wife, Catherine of Aragon, was crowned queen consort.

In 1793, the first republican constitution in France was adopted.

In 1813, American clergyman and social reformer Henry Ward Beecher was born in Litchfield, Conn.

In 1908, the 22nd and 24th presidents of the United States, Grover Cleveland, died in Princeton, N.J., at age 71.

In 1940, France signed an armistice with Italy during World War II.

In 1948, Communist forces cut off all land and water routes between West Germany and West Berlin, prompting the western allies to organize the Berlin Airlift. The Republican National Convention, meeting in Philadelphia, nominated New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey for president.

In 1968, "Resurrection City," a shantytown constructed as part of the Poor People's March on Washington D.C., was closed down by authorities.

In 1973, President Richard Nixon concluded his summit with the visiting leader of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev, who hailed the talks in an address on American television.

In 1975, 113 people were killed when an Eastern Airlines Boeing 727 crashed while attempting to land during a thunderstorm at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

In 1982, a British Airways Boeing 747 lost power in all four engines while passing through volcanic ash generated by Mount Galunggung in Indonesia. (The crew managed to restart the engines and make a safe emergency landing in Jakarta.)

In 1993, David Gelernter, a Yale University computer scientist, was seriously injured by a mail bomb sent from the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski.

Ten years ago: Six British soldiers were killed by Iraqis in a police station in southern Iraq and eight were wounded in a nearby ambush. President Vladimir Putin arrived in London on the first state visit to Britain by a Russian leader since the 19th century. A museum-bound Air France Concorde landed in southwestern Germany.

Five years ago: Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe refused to give in to pressure from Africa and the West, saying the world could "shout as loud as they like" but he would not cancel an upcoming runoff election even though his opponent had quit the race. Leonid Hurwicz, who shared the Nobel Prize in economics in 2007, died in Minneapolis at age 90.

One year ago: The Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi was declared the winner of Egypt's first free presidential election. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced a settlement that would bring $405 million to victims of Bernard Madoff's historic investment scam.

Today's Birthdays: Actor Al Molinaro is 94. Comedian Jack Carter is 90. Rock singer Arthur Brown is 71. Actress Michele Lee is 71. Actor-director Georg Stanford Brown is 70. Rock musician Jeff Beck is 69. Rock singer Colin Blunstone (The Zombies) is 68. Musician Mick Fleetwood is 66. Actor Peter Weller is 66. Rock musician John Illsley (Dire Straits) is 64. Actress Nancy Allen is 63. Reggae singer Derrick Simpson (Black Uhuru) is 63. Actor Joe Penny is 57. Reggae singer Astro (UB40) is 56. Singer-musician Andy McCluskey (Orchestral Manoevres in the Dark) is 54. Actor Iain Glen (TV: "Game of Thrones"; "Downtown Abbey") is 52. Rock singer Curt Smith is 52. Actress Danielle Spencer is 48. Actress Sherry Stringfield is 46. Singer Glenn Medeiros is 43. Actress-producer Mindy Kaling is 34. Actress Minka Kelly is 33. Actress Kaitlin Cullum is 27. Singer Solange Knowles is 27.

Thought for Today: "There is a way to look at the past. Don't hide from it. It will not catch you if you don't repeat it." ? Pearl Bailey, American singer and actress (1918-1990).

(Above Advance for Use Monday, June 24)

Copyright 2013, The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/today-history-050206767.html

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Wing walker, pilot die in crash at Ohio air show

CINCINNATI (AP) ? A plane carrying a wing walker crashed at an air show and exploded into flames Saturday, killing the pilot and stunt walker, authorities said.

The crash of the 450 HP Stearman happened at around 12:45 p.m. at the Vectren Air Show near Dayton in front of thousands of horrified spectators. No one else was hurt.

A video posted on WHIO-TV shows the plane turn upside-down as the performer sits on top of the wing. The plane then tilts and crashes to the ground, erupting into flames as spectators screamed.

Ian Hoyt, an aviation photographer and licensed pilot from Findlay, was at the show with his girlfriend. He told The Associated Press he was taking photos as the plane passed by and had just raised his camera to take another shot.

"Then I realized they were too low and too slow. And before I knew it, they hit the ground," he said.

He couldn't tell exactly what happened, but it appeared that the plane stalled and didn't have enough air speed, he said. He credited the pilot for steering clear of spectators and potentially saving lives.

"Had he drifted more, I don't know what would have happened," Hoyt said. He said he had been excited to see the show because he'd never seen the scheduled performer ? wing walker Jane Wicker ? in action.

On the video, the announcer narrates as the plane glides through the sky and rolls over while the stuntwoman perches on a wing.

"Now she's still on that far side. Keep an eye on Jane. Keep an eye on Charlie. Watch this! Jane Wicker, sitting on top of the world," the announcer said, right before the plane makes a quick turn and nosedive.

Federal records show that biplane was registered to Wicker, who lived in Loudon, Va. A man who answered the phone at a number listed for Wicker on her website said he had no comment and hung up.

One of the pilots listed on Wicker's website was named Charlie Schwenker. A post on Jane Wicker Airshows' Facebook page announced the deaths of Wicker and Schwenker and asked for prayers for their families.

A message left at a phone listing for Charles Schwenker in Oakton, Va., wasn't immediately returned.

Dayton International Airport spokeswoman Linda Hughes and Ohio State Highway Patrol Lt. Anne Ralston confirmed that a pilot and stunt walker had died but declined to give their names. The air show also declined to release their identities.

The show was canceled for the rest of the day, but organizers said events would resume Sunday and follow the previous schedule and normal operations. The National Transportation Safety Board said it is investigating the crash.

Another spectator, Shawn Warwick of New Knoxville, told the Dayton Daily News that he was watching the flight through binoculars.

"I noticed it was upside-down really close to the ground. She was sitting on the bottom of the plane," he said. "I saw it just go right into the ground and explode."

Thanh Tran, of Fairfield, said he could see a look of concern on the wing walker's face just before the plane went down.

"She looked very scared," he said. "Then the airplane crashed on the ground. After that, it was terrible, man ... very terrible."

Wicker's website says she responded to a classified ad from the Flying Circus Airshow in Bealeton, Va., in 1990, for a wing-walking position, thinking it would be fun. She was a contract employee who worked as a Federal Aviation Administration budget analyst, the FAA said.

She told WDTN-TV in an interview this week that her signature move was hanging underneath the plane's wing by her feet and sitting on the bottom of the airplane while it's upside-down.

"I'm never nervous or scared because I know if I do everything as I usually do, everything's going to be just fine," she told the station.

Wicker wrote on her website that she had never had any close calls.

"What you see us do out there is after an enormous amount of practice and fine tuning, not to mention the airplane goes through microscopic care. It is a managed risk and that is what keeps us alive," she wrote.

In 2011, wing walker Todd Green fell 200 feet to his death at an air show in Michigan while performing a stunt in which he grabbed the skid of a helicopter.

In 2007, veteran stunt pilot Jim LeRoy was killed at the Dayton show when his biplane slammed into the runway while performing loop-to-loops and caught fire.

Organizers were presenting a trimmed-down show and expected smaller crowds at Dayton after the Air Force Thunderbirds and other military participants pulled out this year because of federal budget cuts.

The air show, one of the country's oldest, usually draws around 70,000 people and has a $3.2 million impact on the local economy. Without military aircraft and support, the show expected attendance to be off 30 percent or more.

___

Thomas reported from Philadelphia. Associated Press writers Kerry Lester in Chicago and Randy Pennell in Philadelphia contributed to this report.

___

Online:

Raw video of crash: http://bit.ly/11Vf7JA

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/wing-walker-pilot-die-crash-ohio-air-show-191655523.html

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State Machinery For State Machines

My name is Andrew Auernheimer. I used to believe problems could be solved with criticism and discourse in our marketplace of ideas. Three years ago I incremented an integer on a public web API and analyzed the output for all to read. It was then demanded I apologize for abusive arithmetic. I disagreed that addition could be abhorrent, so now I write this from the Special Housing Unit of a federal prison.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/BZdphK7M4Sg/

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Wine Bottles Can Perch On Any Wall Now

If there's one thing you might actually want in your face or protruding into your kitchen, it's a bottle of wine. An aggressive reminder to take a load off is always welcome. And these wine holders can be arranged so the bottles form any shape you want.

Wine Cell created by Fiduz, a Danish design studio, comes in packs of three (though it's unclear how much each pack costs). The holders come in six colors and could potentially be used for an ill-advised, yet obviously awesome game of darts. Let it all hang out. [Bless This Stuff]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/wine-bottles-can-perch-on-any-wall-now-536200579

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Tawny Crazy Ants Invade Southern States

Tawny crazy ants are invading ecosystems and homes in states including Texas and Florida, wiping out other ant species and overwhelming homeowners. Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon talks to Texas A&M research scientist Robert Puckett, who says the ants are "ecological steamrollers" that reproduce so fast they are nearly impossible to get rid of.

Copyright ? 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Tawny crazy ants. Sounds like something out of a sci-fi thriller. But it's a real species invading states that include Texas and Florida. Tawny crazy ants arrived from South America in 2002 but they're spreading like crazy. Their gift for multiplication, if you please, is devastating homes and alarming researchers, and they just keep coming.

Robert Puckett is a research scientist at Texas A&M University who's been studying the ants. He joins us now from member station KAMU in College Station, Texas. Dr. Puckett, thanks for being with us.

ROBERT PUCKETT: Hey, how are you?

SIMON: What makes these ants so crazy?

PUCKETT: Well, they're not any crazier than any other ant, in reality. I should mention, I've been studying about ants for many years and, in fact, have begun focusing on these ants in the recent past and they have found their way into our system in the U.S. and they appear to be very happy to be here.

SIMON: What do they do to homes?

PUCKETT: Well, you're probably familiar with ants in a home. Most people have had ants that trail into their pantry or along their countertops. These ants, they come in in almost unbelievable number in infestations to the point that it becomes most difficult to remove them, to physically move them out of the house.

I've seen pictures of garbage can-sized trash bags that are completely full of ants that had been swept over the course of a couple of days from the floor in homes. Yeah, it's a real problem.

SIMON: I mean, somebody looking at a scene like that from the outside would conclude that the home actually belongs to the ants and it's the human who are the interloper.

PUCKETT: There certainly appears to be competition for the ownership in some case.

SIMON: Do the tawny crazy ants inflict not only an actual but emotional burden on the people who have to live with them?

PUCKETT: I can certainly tell you that I've met with many people that were very emotional about it, both angry and sad. I've visited people and actually had people breakdown emotionally in front of me as they were describing the problem that they're dealing with.

SIMON: Do they do anything good?

PUCKETT: Most folks in the South are familiar, in the Southern U.S., are familiar with red imported fire ants. The difference in red imported fire ants and the tawny crazy ants are - well, there's any number of differences, but one of the big differences is the tawny crazy ants don't sting, whereas red imported fire ants have a powerful sting.

It appears that they are displacing, now competing red imported fire ants, and so from the outside looking in you might think, well, that's great. You know, they're removing this species of ant that has a sting and has had some severe ecological consequences associated with it, but the tawny crazy ant numbers are so extraordinarily high, I think folks that are familiar with both ant species would not care to make that trade off.

SIMON: I've gotta tell you, I'm scared to death.

PUCKETT: Well, you don't need to be scared. There are lots and lots of stories of invasive species that have found their way into our system and we've learned to, not only manage them, but to one degree or another coexist, so I think we'll learn to make due with them in our system. And unfortunately, I think we're going to be forced to.

SIMON: Robert Puckett is a research scientist at Texas A&M. He's been studying ants for 10 years. Dr. Puckett, thanks for being with us.

PUCKETT: Thanks for having me.

SIMON: This is NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Copyright ? 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=194523225&ft=1&f=1007

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RolePlayGateway?

<^>Project: A.I.R.E.S<^>

?Subject-Re: Project AIRES Update
From: Lead, Augustus Eckridge
To: Director, John Ford
Date: October 26th, 2037

Dear Director Ford,

In response to your request I?m attached the latest projections for the project to this e-mail, however I?ve also included several various reports to expedite the process. We are making great strides toward the end goal and the team has thus far gotten along with little happenings (Barring the incident with Richter), beyond the typical professional bickering, and production is moving along at pace. The base code for the world, taken from Project: ITUS, has halved the initial generation period leaving us more flexibility to produce exemplary Programs.

By altering the parameters as discussed with yourself and the board we have managed to produce exactly what we intended. Military Smart AIs capable of command and control decisions based on ?human? impulses, though the actual process has developed differently than we expected. In week two we decided to give moderator rights to the world to several selected programs within the system, who unexpectedly began taking more active roles in the projects administration. By the next week these programs had completely reorganized our initial structure of the mock-civilization within the cluster, creating a new system of interaction between themselves and even our Team Members, to our surprise we found this actually increased their absorption rates and development by 6% and have thus elected to leave the changes unmolested. For more information on this please see Report #7.

However, sir, I must admit that it is not all roses over here. My attempted to reach HR in regards to Mr. Richter?s disgruntled harassment has gone responded too. I understand that Mr. Richter was terminated on grounds of Offensive Tendencies however his personal believes cannot be forgotten here. Mr. Richter only became violent when he discovered the purpose of Project AIRES was military. He recently was permitted back in the lab to retrieve some personal files? without a security escort! I ask that you please look into this, before it becomes a greater problem.

Sincerely,
<^>
Dr. Augustus Eckridge

?

Welcome to Project: A.I.R.E.S the most advanced Artificial Intelligence development undertaking ever attempted, and you are a part of it. Not for nothing of course, you?re an expert of some type whose past has some barring on the project, be it as a programmer, a developer, or even a psychologist or virtual gamer. Why those last two? Simple, because here are AAI Inc. the programmers of the top projects aren?t just making simple top-to-bottom AI with limited information and interaction capabilities like at the turn of the millennium, these are bottom-to-top AIs that begin as little more than basic code ?eggs? and blossom into being of exponentially more possibilities than their ?dumb AI? cousins. To create these ?Smart AI? the company uses a relatively new technology otherwise reserved for the public?s entertainment. Full Immersion Virtual Reality.

By building a whole world for these AI to grow up in at an accelerated rate AAI has managed to create the world most user friendly and capable computer programs ever to exist, and you, for one reason or another, are helping to pursue that dream.

Ironically this technology has done things bass-ackwards (;3) and was first introduced in the civilian sector and not in the military. The smart AI made banking and consumer relations a breeze while at that time these boundless programs were too untrusted by authority figures to be implemented in military protocols despite the facts. However recently the military has begun sojourning into world of smart AI, and to fill that new demand AAI has created a new team to work on Project: AIRES-

-Advanced

-Infantry

-Rendering
and
-Engineering

-Sector

This project uses a newly generated Server World to raise a whole different society, where competition and conflict abound creating the perfect Artificial Intelligence for Military operations, with everything from command and control programs to attack protocols designed to command UAVs and even the shadowy world of Intelligence Programs designated to infiltrate enemy systems being breed within. You are here to expedite and enhance this system. If you, like your former team member Dylan Richter, can?t handle that then there is the door. Because it?s time to dive in.

Story:

You were recruited months ago for a specialized project involving the development of Smart AI for Advanced Artificial Intelligence Incorporated, the equivalent of a modern day Microsoft and Google combined this company has got bank. And you just couldn?t say no to the opportunity of working in the most high tech lab with the greatest programmers and doctors in the industry? or the money they offered. Too bad for you though, you would have been much better off having refused?

The team dives into the virtual world that the Programs occupy on a daily basis, using Admin accounts to adjust the world as needed so that the Programs growing within advance as needed toward their end goals. In this world of mixed time periods the programs are left to compete for advancement, gaining further storage space to expand their abilities. Almost like a video game. It worked, creating immensely human military programs which would work better with their operators than any dumb AI ever could. However this success comes at a price.

When the team dives a week or so after a disgruntled colleague was terminated the normal everyday turns into a fight for survival against a deadly virus implanted in the inescapable system. This is where the game begins.

World:

Whereas typically the programs are grown in a world that greatly resembles our own to increase their synchronization with humans and thus create greater user friendliness this system was poorly suited toward military applications. To that end the world was tweaked for Project: AIRES, becoming darker, more metallic in nature, but still keeping the essence of the outer-world, with one major exception, the developers added RPG gaming elements to the server to induce even greater combat amongst the programs for a strong survive system. With every successful venture the programs complete they gain a form of experience, like in an RPG, which determines how much space they can access in their memory cubes, and thus how effective they can be. Of course under normal circumstances Admins are exempt.

Guns were removed, replaced instead with blades, armor, and more primitive weaponry in contrast to the otherwise still modern world. The society that bloomed within this world is a strange one, with an almost religious reverence for the Admins (players) who control and manage the world, a high focus on competition and gaining ?experience? to expand their horizons, and a hierarchy centered around those most daring of programs; those that take part in the dangerous gladiatorial like games call Trials.

Admins, the avatars in which the Development Team inhabit when operating within the virtual space of the world, are different from the other programs of the AI, as they are human and have access to the system consoles. Capable of altering the server at will and using any item or process regardless of their ?experience? these beings are like gods? or were until the Virus interrupted, but that will be explored by you.

OOC: Okay, so, in case you haven?t figured yet, this world greatly resembles Tron, however uses more archaic weaponry, and operates almost like Sword Art Online in the combat, save for the existence of what is called ?Surges? which take the form of various almost magical attacks or spells.

The actual game is taking place after the team is trapped by the virus, and will involve their attempts to escape, this is how we will play, with a deadly program on the loose that is taking control of the Server, intending to conquer every program and destroy them. This includes the Admins, who now have lost their abilities and must battle to escape. It?ll be fun, trust me.

The game will take place the morning before everyone gets stuck, that will be in the real world before the team dives in. I?ve yet to decide if I want to make a reservations list for backgrounds but if you have a suggestion please feel free to post it. Thanks!

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RolePlayGateway

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