One Pakistani city has turned into a boom town by manufacturing and exporting a diverse array of products from bagpipes to replica Civil War uniforms. NBC's Amna Nawaz reports from Sialkot, Pakistan.?
By Amna Nawaz, Correspondent, NBC News
SIALKOT, Pakistan ? It's not a sound you expect to hear in Pakistan. And yet, here we stand, in the heart of the country's Punjab province, listening to the theme song from ?The Titanic? played on traditional bagpipes.
The Pakistani teenager serenading us with the soaring wails of this iconic Scottish instrument?was taught to play by his father, who was taught by his father before him.
And his bagpipe was made right here in Sialkot, a city of 3 million that's emerged as the world's leading manufacturer of the instrument. More than 100,000 locally made bagpipes are exported every year.
M.H. Geoffrey's factory is one of over a dozen in the city. His grandfather began the business when a British army officer, part of the colonial forces in the region in the 19th century, approached him to get his own bagpipe fixed.
"My grandfather not only fixed that one, he made?two more!" Geoffrey said.
Today, Geoffrey's company makes and exports nearly 3,000 bagpipes a year.
In a narrow, high-ceilinged room covered in sawdust and lit by an over-sized skylight, five workers squat before their lathes, expertly churning out intricately carved bagpipe parts. When the power goes out, as it often does in Pakistan, a single generator spurts to life, filling the room with a deafening hum.
Farooq Naeem / AFP - Getty Images file
Ibrahim, the son of Farooq Ahmad, owner of the Imperial Bagpipe Manufacturing Company, tests a bagpipe at a bagpipe factory in Sialkot, Pakistan.
Every piece is handcrafted. Every bagpipe is hand-assembled. The cheapest bagpipes cost around $100; the most expensive, over $1,000. But Geoffrey, like many local businessmen, has also found other niche markets.
A combination of cheap textiles and skilled seamstresses prevalent in Sialkot led to the costume wing of his company. They now make, sell and export hundreds of replica U.S. Civil War uniforms every year.
The vintage, leather goods wing followed soon after ? manufacturing everything from footballs to cleats.
?Anything you need made? We can make it here. Anything at all,? Geoffrey said.
Sialkot is an anomaly in Pakistan?s economy. In a country where taxes aren?t regularly collected, power companies can?t produce sufficient electricity, and the currency continues to lose value, Sialkot?s business community decided to go its own way.
Ten years ago, business leaders pooled their resources to construct the nation?s first privately funded airport. It now boasts the country?s longest runway and more than 30 domestic and international flights a week. Last year alone, more than 6,000 tons of locally produced exports were flown out.
Those products run the gamut from bagpipes and costumes to medical instruments and sporting goods.
Companies around the world have long tapped into Sialkot?s manufacturing prowess for access to cost-effective, high-quality goods. Nike, Adidas and Puma all have contracts here. A walk down one main market street reveals over a dozen medical instrument and surgical supply storefronts, all selling local goods.
Sheikh Abdul Majid, the chairman of the local chamber of commerce, said Sialkot?s exports brought in more than $1.4 billion last year, and the local economy had grown by 10-15 percent every year for the last five years.
The IMF estimates the national economy, by comparison, may grow by just 3.5 percent this fiscal year. Across the country, fewer than a million Pakistanis pay income taxes.
Majid said?all local exports were taxed, with the money re-invested into the city.
Farooq Naeem / AFP - Getty Images file
A Pakistani laborer prepares components to make bagpipes at a bagpipe factory in Sialkot, on April 14, 2011.
?We?ve fixed roads, built schools, even put in sewage systems with the money we?ve been able to bring in,? he said. ?And we plan to continue doing that, every year.?
For a new national government, elected largely on its promise to right an upended economy, the secrets to Sialkot?s success could prove useful.
Much voter frustration centered on 20-hour power cuts in parts of the country, a failure of the previous government to tackle corruption, and a lack of any clearly articulated plan to address either.
After just one month on the job, the new leaders? plans for emergency cash infusions to the power sector and increasing tax revenues are beginning to take shape. However, economists say an economic revival on a national level could take years.
Back in Sialkot, Geoffrey said business had never been better. Bagpipe sales now make up half of their revenue, and with the addition of online sales, his costume orders have grown exponentially.
?My sons are now learning the business, helping me to run it,? Geoffrey said. ?One day, this whole business will be given to the next generation ? the fourth generation to run it.?
A U.S. Airways jet takes off from Washington's Reagan National Airport outside Washington, passing an American Airlines plane, February 25, 2013. Reuters reports the Justice department is probing the proposed American-US merger for antitrust issues.
The U.S. Justice Department is taking depositions as part of a probe into a planned merger of American Airlines and US Airways that would create the world's largest airline, three sources close to the discussions told Reuters.
The sticking point in talks between the Justice Department and the companies is whether the airlines will agree to sell slots -- take-off and landing rights -- to reduce their dominance at Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C., according to one source.
The three sources spoke privately to protect business relationships.
US Airways announced on February 14 that it planned to merge with American, which is emerging from bankruptcy, to create an $11 billion airline. The deal requires the approval of the Justice and Transportation Departments. The companies hope to wrap up the merger by the end of September.
American Airlines and US Airways declined comment. Justice Department spokeswoman Gina Talamona said only that the agency's investigation was continuing.
The fact that the Justice Department is taking sworn testimony in the form of depositions indicates it has concerns that the proposed merger creates antitrust problems. Depositions will be needed if the agency approves the deal with conditions or, in rare cases, if it decides to try to stop it. The department could also decide to approve the merger without requiring asset sales.
Depositions preserve testimony if the department decides to challenge the merger, said Robert Doyle, an antitrust expert with Doyle, Barlow and Mazard PLLC.
If the deal is approved, the new airline would have 68 percent of the slots at Reagan National, far more than Delta Air Lines with 12 percent, United Airlines with 9 percent and the 11 percent held by other airlines, according to a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
The companies have pushed back hard against any suggestion that takeoff and landing slots at Reagan National be sold.
US Airways CEO Doug Parker told lawmakers in congressional testimony last week that requiring the combined company to surrender slots could mean fewer flights to small and medium-sized cities.
Antitrust experts have said the Justice Department could request divestitures of some slots at Reagan National and a small number of other airports. Outside these hubs, the carriers fly different routes for the most part.
In late May, more than 100 members of Congress asked U.S. regulators to allow the new American to keep all the slots at Reagan National. The airport is used by many members of Congress to travel to and from their home districts.
The U.S. airline industry has undergone five years of rapid consolidation. Delta acquired Northwest Airlines in 2008, United merged with Continental in 2010 and Southwest Airlines Co bought discount rival AirTran in 2011.
With fewer carriers competing, ticket prices have risen. The average fare rose about 8 percent to $375 in the third quarter of 2012, compared with $346 in 2008, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
ROME (Reuters) - A senior Catholic cleric with connections to the Vatican bank was arrested on Friday for plotting to help rich friends smuggle tens of millions of euros in cash into Italy from Switzerland, in the latest blow to the Vatican's image.
Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, 61, who worked as a senior accountant in the Vatican's financial administration, was arrested along with an Italian secret service agent and a financial intermediary in a tale that reads like a spy novel.
It involves police wiretaps, a private plane rented to collect the cash from Locarno, burned cell phones and an allegedly corrupt secret services agent who promised to get the money past customs.
Details of the case against Scarano will come as an acute embarrassment to Pope Francis, who, since his election in March, has pointedly eschewed many of the trappings of office and sought to stress the importance of a simple life of devotion.
Only two days ago, the Vatican announced he had set up a commission of inquiry into the Vatican bank, formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), which has been hit by a number of scandals in the past decades.
Scarano, who was arrested in a Rome parish and taken to Rome's Queen of Heaven jail, had hatched a plot to bring up to 40 million euros ($52 million) into Italy for a family of shipbuilders in his hometown of Salerno in southern Italy, magistrate Nello Rossi told reporters.
Rossi is already investigating the Vatican bank for money laundering, and the latest arrests stemmed from that.
Rossi and fellow magistrate Stefano Pesci said there was no indication so far that the bank was directly involved in the attempt to bring the money into Italy, but that the investigation was continuing and more searches were underway.
Scarano is under separate investigation in southern Italy in relation to his accounts in the Vatican bank.
CELL PHONES DESTROYED
According to Rossi, in July last year Scarano engaged Giovanni Zito, a paramilitary Carabiniere policeman on loan to the secret services, to help him get the money, which was in a Swiss bank, into Italy without tax and customs controls.
The third person arrested was Giovanni Carenzio, a financial broker with offices in Switzerland and the Canary Islands and who was acting as the fiduciary for the owners of the money.
It was not clear how or when the money got to Switzerland in the first place.
The three originally planned to bring back 40 million euros in cash but later reduced it to 20 million euros. A private plane went to Locarno from Rome and waited several days before returning to Rome without the money.
The cash never left Switzerland because of disagreements and nervousness among the three, Rossi said, adding that cell phones that were used were later destroyed by being burned.
Zito had promised to use his position in the secret services to avoid customs controls. The plane was to have been met on the runway of a Rome airport and the cash taken under armed escort to Scarano's home in Rome, Rossi said, calling the plot "intricately planned".
Even though the money never left the Swiss bank, Zito, who is now in a military prison, demanded the payment he had been promised for his services.
Scarano gave Zito two checks, one for 400,000 euros and another for 200,000 euros. Zito cashed the first check but Scarano blocked the second before Zito could cash it by filing a false report that it had been lost.
VATICAN READY TO COOPERATE
Asked if money laundering was involved, Rossi said that would depend if the continuing investigation determined that the original source of the money was criminal activity.
"We are trying to determine the origin of the vast amount of money that was at the disposal of Scarano, who is the holder of several accounts at IOR," Rossi said.
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said Vatican authorities stood ready to cooperate with the Italian investigation, but had so far received no official request.
He said the FIA, the Vatican's own financial intelligence authority, was following the case and would take action if necessary.
Rossi said his office would seek permission from the Vatican, which is a sovereign state, to question officials. "This is just a piece in a much larger mosaic," he said.
Scarano, who Rossi said had worked for a German bank before he became a priest, was for years a senior accountant for a Vatican department known as APSA, whose official title is the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See.
He was suspended from his duties several weeks ago when he was placed under investigation by magistrates in Salerno.
In that investigation, his lawyer Silverio Sica said wealthy friends had donated money to Scarano in order for him to build a home for the terminally ill.
According to Sica, his client wanted to use that money to pay off his mortgage so he could sell a property in Salerno and use the proceeds to build the care home.
Apparently to cover his tracks, Scarano has been accused of taking 560,000 euros in cash out of his account in the Vatican bank and giving various amounts to friends who gave him checks in exchange. He then deposited the checks into an Italian bank account to pay off the mortgage.
"Scarano was able to use the bank for his personal reasons" Rossi said. ($1 = 0.7691 euros)
(Additional reporting by Antonella Cinelli and James Mackenzie, Editing by Mike Collett-White)
?The federal snack rules don?t take effect until the 2014-15 school year?
Really?? Since when the Feds have the need and/or the rights to tell us what to eat?
That is a direct hit against of the 10th Amendment of the US Constitution.
?
Posted: Jun 27, 2013 5:07 AM CDT Updated: Jun 27, 2013 4:27 PM CDT
By MARY CLARE JALONICK and CONNIE CASS Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Kids, your days of blowing off those healthier school lunches and filling up on cookies from the vending machine are numbered. The government is onto you.
For the first time, the Agriculture Department is telling schools what sorts of snacks they can sell. The new restrictions announced Thursday fill a gap in nutrition rules that allowed many students to load up on fat, sugar and salt despite the existing guidelines for healthy meals.
?Parents will no longer have to worry that their kids are using their lunch money to buy junk food and junk drinks at school,? said Margo Wootan, a nutrition lobbyist for the Center for Science in the Public Interest who pushed for the new rules.
That doesn?t mean schools will be limited to doling out broccoli and brussels sprouts.
Snacks that still make the grade include granola bars, low-fat tortilla chips, fruit cups and 100 percent fruit juice. And high school students can buy diet versions of soda, sports drinks and iced tea.
But say goodbye to some beloved school standbys, such as doughy pretzels, chocolate chip cookies and those little ice cream cups with their own spoons. Some may survive in low-fat or whole wheat versions. The idea is to weed out junk food and replace it with something with nutritional merit.
The bottom line, says Wootan: ?There has to be some food in the food.?
Still, 17-year-old Vanessa Herrera is partial to the Cheez-It crackers and sugar-laden Vitaminwater in her high school?s vending machine. Granola bars and bags of peanuts? Not so much.
?I don?t think anyone would eat it,? said Herrera of Rockaway, N.J.
There are no vending machines at Lauren Jones? middle school in Hoover, Ala., but she said there?s an ?a la carte? stand that sells chips, ice cream and other snacks.
?Having something sweet to go with your meal is good sometimes,? the 13-year-old said, although she also thinks that encouraging kids to eat healthier is worthwhile.
The federal snack rules don?t take effect until the 2014-15 school year, but there?s nothing to stop schools from making changes earlier.
Some students won?t notice much difference. Many schools already are working to improve their offerings. Thirty-nine states have some sort of snack food policy in place.
Rachel Snyder, 17, said earlier this year her school in Washington, Ill., stripped its vending machines of sweets. She misses the pretzel-filled M&M?s.
?If I want a sugary snack every now and then,? Snyder said, ?I should be able to buy it.?
The federal rules put calorie, fat, sugar and sodium limits on almost everything sold during the day at 100,000 schools ? expanding on the previous rules for meals. The Agriculture Department sets nutritional standards for schools that receive federal funds to help pay for lunches, and that covers nearly every public school and about half of private ones.
One oasis of sweetness and fat will remain: Anything students bring from home, from bagged lunches to birthday cupcakes, is exempt from the rules.
The Agriculture Department was required to draw up the rules under a law passed by Congress in 2010, championed by first lady Michelle Obama, as part of the government?s effort to combat childhood obesity.
Nutritional guidelines for subsidized lunches were revised last year and put in place last fall.
Last year?s rules making main lunch fare more nutritious faced criticism from some conservatives, including some Republicans in Congress, who said the government shouldn?t be telling kids what to eat. Mindful of that backlash, the Agriculture Department left one of the more controversial parts of the rule, the regulation of in-school fundraisers like bake sales, up to the states.
The rules have the potential to transform what many children eat at school.
In addition to meals already subject to nutrition standards, most lunchrooms also have ?a la carte? lines that sell other foods ? often greasy foods like mozzarella sticks and nachos. That gives students a way to circumvent the healthy lunches. Under the rules, those lines could offer healthier pizzas, low-fat hamburgers, fruit cups or yogurt and similar fare.
One of the biggest changes will be a near-ban on high-calorie sports drinks. Many beverage companies added sports drinks to school vending machines after sodas were pulled in response to criticism from the public health community.
The rule would only allow sales in high schools of sodas and sports drinks that contain 60 calories or less in a 12-ounce serving, banning the highest-calorie versions of those beverages.
Low-calorie sports drinks ? Gatorade?s G2, for example ? and diet drinks will be allowed in high school.
Elementary and middle schools will be allowed to sell only water, carbonated water, 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice, and low fat and fat-free milk, including nonfat flavored milks.
Republicans have continued to scrutinize the efforts to make school foods healthier, and at a House subcommittee hearing Thursday, Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Ind., said the ?stringent rules are creating serious headaches for schools and students.?
One school nutritionist testified that her school has had difficulty adjusting to the 2012 changes, and the new ?a la carte? standards could also be a hardship.
The healthier foods are expensive, said Sandra Ford, president of the School Nutrition Association and director of food and nutrition services for a school district in Bradenton, Fla. She also predicted that her school district could lose $975,000 a year under the new ?a la carte? guidelines because they would have to eliminate many of the popular foods they sell.
In a report released at the hearing, the Government Accountability Office said that in some districts students were having trouble adjusting to the new foods, leading to increased waste and kids dropping out of the school lunch program.
The food industry has been onboard with many of the changes, and several companies worked with Congress on the child nutrition law three years ago.
Angela Chieco, a mother from Clifton Park, N.Y., sees the guidelines as a good start but says it will take a bigger campaign to wean kids off junk food.
?I try to do less sugar myself,? Chieco said. ?It?s hard to do.?
___
Associated Press writer Stacy A. Anderson contributed to this report.
When some people see Detroit, they see bankruptcy and doom.
When Kelli Kavanaugh sees Detroit, she sees a fun town to tour by bicycle.
"If anything, we have more tour ideas than we can handle," says the co-owner of Wheelhouse Detroit Bike Shop on the downtown riverfront. The company's newest is the Musical Heritage tour, which takes groups of up to 15 people to important Motown sites and places where techno, punk, rock, gospel, jazz and soul were developed.
U.S. actor John Travolta arrives at the opening of the 48th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, Friday, June 28, 2013. (AP Photo/CTK, Pavel Nemecek) SLOVAKIA OUT
U.S. actor John Travolta arrives at the opening of the 48th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, Friday, June 28, 2013. (AP Photo/CTK, Pavel Nemecek) SLOVAKIA OUT
U.S. actor John Travolta arrives at the opening of the 48th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, Friday, June 28, 2013. (AP Photo/CTK, Pavel Nemecek) SLOVAKIA OUT
PRAGUE (AP) ? An international film festival in the Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary is bestowing its Crystal Globe awards on actor John Travolta and director Oliver Stone for outstanding contributions to world cinema.
Travolta is receiving his award on Friday, the opening day of the 48th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Stone has to wait for the final day, July 6.
Fourteen movies are competing for top honors, including "A Field in England" directed by Ben Wheatley, and U.S.-Swedish production "Bluebird" by director Lance Edmands.
The grand jury is led by Polish director Agnieszka Holland.
The festival, known for its relaxed atmosphere, features some 200 movies.
Despite court battles, Aereo is on a roll. The startup just announced its streaming TV service will hit Chicagoland September 13. This comes just a month after the company announced its Atlanta launch details. Once Chicago is online, Aereo will be live in four of the country's biggest cities, serving up network television to over 12 million Americans.
Last weekend I attended the baby shower of a family friend. Well, basically an adopted family member. It was great to catch up with her and her family, even if it did make me feel old. I remember going to meet her at the hospital just after she was born, and now she?s having a baby. Oh and it certainly didn?t help with the cluckyness I?ve been feeling lately!
I didn?t purposely dress in blue & pink, but it did kind of suit a baby shower theme! They are waiting to be surprised of the sex, but in one of the baby shower games I guessed it?d be a boy. I guess time will only tell!
The weather turned during the day and by the time I got home my feet were freezing. While I love winter, sometimes I miss being able to wear my sandals without feeling like i?m going to lose my toes!
Dress ? ASOS |Cardigan ? City Chic | Shoes & Belt ? ASOS |Necklace ? Colette |Bangles ? Lou & Chow
NSF and Mozilla announce breakthrough applications on a faster, smarter internet of the futurePublic release date: 27-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lisa-Joy Zgorski lisajoy@nsf.gov 703-292-8311 National Science Foundation
NSF investments in the development of innovative applications to address societal challenges yielding a brighter future
Imagine connecting sophisticated weather radars and other sensor data to ultra-high-speed networks so that weather forecasters can more accurately predict natural disasters. Imagine the nation's finest brain surgeon seamlessly operating on a patient in a remote area while sitting in her office thousands of miles away. Imagine an entrepreneur, without the capital for even the most basic start-up expenses, borrowing key business tools from an online software lending library to turn an idea for a new venture into reality.
Imagine the possibilities of a gigabit-capable network at national scale.
Software designers did...and today their visions are closer to reality.
That is the message at US Ignite's "Next-Generation Application Summit" convening in Chicago, Ill. this week, a year after the administration announced US Ignite, an initiative comprising public and private partners seeking to jumpstart gigabit application development that can take advantage of advanced networks and lead to societal benefit in ways people are just starting to imagine.
Today at the Summit, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Mozilla announced 22 winning applications, or "apps," for an open innovation challenge called "Mozilla Ignite."
Funded by NSF and hosted by Mozilla as part of the US Ignite Initiative, the competition called for cutting-edge app ideas that would leverage ultra-fast, programmable networks to advance national priorities such as healthcare, energy, transportation and education in creative and innovative ways.
"These winning apps offer a glimpse into how we might catalyze the innovation ecosystem to develop next-generation applications and services with enormous public benefit," said Farnam Jahanian, who heads NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. "They are the result of exciting partnerships spanning application designers and developers, university researchers and students, federal, state and local officials, entrepreneurs and visionaries all across the country."
Gigabit fiber, a developing form of Internet infrastructure that is able to transfer data at speeds of one gigabit per second--three to 10 times faster than current infrastructures allow--enables these partnerships to push current limits of app design.
"Gigabit fiber is now able to move data at about 70 percent of the speed of light," said Mozilla's project lead for the Mozilla Ignite Challenge, Will Barkis. "The winning applications showcase what's possible when we make networks not only faster, but also smarter and deeply programmable."
The Mozilla Ignite challenge
How did the competition work? First, Mozilla hosted a brainstorming round, during which the public was invited to imagine applications that make use of ultra-fast and deeply programmable networks, such as the NSF-funded Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) project, which is some 250 times faster than networks available today. Mozilla's brainstorming round received more than 300 submissions examined by 38 expert judges. NSF and Mozilla announced 8 winning ideas in September, with prizes ranging from $1,000 to $5,000.
Next, with a funding pool of more than $500,000, Mozilla Ignite engaged in three development rounds, inviting developers everywhere to realize these winning and other app ideas. They hosted "hackathons" in multiple cities throughout the country and encouraged collaboration on existing ideas and entirely new ones. When teams provided working code, they received funding and access to expert mentorship, special resources and NSF's GENI test bed to test their applications.
Top winning apps
One of this week's top winners, Real Time Emergency Response, also won the Mozilla Ignite brainstorm competition in September. Working with U.S. emergency responders and starting pilot programs in Minnesota and Quebec, Jeremy Cooperstock of the Shared Reality Lab at McGill University and his team developed the Real-Time Emergency Response Observation and Supervision system. The system allows emergency operators and responders to filter and sort multiple streams of data--in real time--from mobile phones, Twitter and other social media into manageable forms that the responders could process. The team is focused on targeting their app toward agencies like the National Guard. The team is looking at integrating street-level and highway cameras into the system so that cities can better monitor problems in crime-prone areas.
Another innovative application spotlighted in Chicago this week is called Cizzle, which stands for Collaborative Science Learning Environment. Cizzle creates a fun, interactive, fast-paced video game environment in which kids, with notoriously short attention spans, may engage and learn. The Cizzle team is composed of collaborators from MX, a San Francisco-based technology and design firm specializing in next-generation educational and entertainment experiences, a group of graduate students from Amherst, Mass., and Ontario, Canada, Hollywood filmmakers and science educators.
"CIZZLE stands to transform the way students all across the country learn," said Suzi Iacono, deputy assistant director for computer and information science and engineering at NSF. "Together with the 21 other exciting new tools spotlighted here today, it demonstrates how next-generation gigabit apps offer the potential for significant positive impact across all sectors of society."
List of Mozilla Ignite awardees
What follows is a list of the 22 winning Mozilla Ignite teams, including a brief description of their apps. Further details may be obtained by clicking on the hotlinks below.
Real-Time Emergency Response--Detect, observe and assess situations for emergency responders using live video and social media data.
Remote Process Control using a Reliable Communication Protocol--Observe and control remote processes reliably and in real time with smart, redundant network paths
The Software Lending Library--Check-out software from the library using ultra fast low latency networks.
Cizzle (Collaborative Science Learning Environment)--Collaborate and earn in immersive 3-D environments that users can update simultaneously.
Simulation-as-a-Service for Advanced Manufacturing--Remotely access software and compute resources using a virtual desktop-as-a-service system for advanced manufacturing processes.
Easy 3D--Post to and access a "Flickr," or an online repository, for 3-D images and videos.
PlanIT Impact--Understand and participate in decisions in the community with data visualization and 3-D tools.
High Quality Open Source Web Conferencing--Access high-quality, interactive education from classrooms throughout the country, regardless of location or resources (all one needs is a browser).
OpenPath--Engage in mobile, place-based, collaborative learning in real-time.
Hyperaudio Pad--Learn, edit and remix media through simple text interface to audio/video (rely less on the "experts").
PeerCDN--Experience a better web with peer-based content delivery networks.
Luminosity--Collaborate on large data through web-based tools-advantageous for scientists, researchers and citizens.
Brief+Case Health--Coordinate medical diagnoses and treatment among students, parents and medical specialists at a school with multi-party telemedicine.
Optimizing Public Transit--Optimize public transit planning through real-time data analysis of variables such as weather and traffic patterns.
KinectHealth--Achieve fitness goals with peers and trainers from anywhere.
euMetrica--Monitor and alert patients and doctors with real-time, cloud-based analysis of health sensors.
Rashomon: Multi-perspective Chronology--Tell the story of an event from audio and video simultaneously captured from many users.
FloodCube: National Flood Information Platform--Predict floods more precisely with real-time analysis of flood sensors and tailor alerts for individuals in harm's way.
WeCounsel--Access and conduct counsel and therapy at a distance using high quality videoconferencing.
Banyan--Facilitate collaboration and version control for scientists and researchers.
Cyber Physical Collaboration for Advanced Manufacturing--Use haptic feedback-that is, technology which takes advantage of the sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations or motions or "doing for the sense of touch what computer graphics does for vision"--and virtual manufacturing environments to learn and collaborate, especially valuable for engineers and students.
All the ideas in the competition are available on the Mozilla Ignite website.
"At its very beginning, the web revolutionized what we thought was possible," said Mozilla's Executive Director, Mark Surman. "And now with this new technology, we can see how it's happening again. These Mozilla Ignite teams show how the collaboration, wealth and creativity we see on today's internet could grow beyond our wildest imaginations--and in many cases how it's already doing so."
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NSF and Mozilla announce breakthrough applications on a faster, smarter internet of the futurePublic release date: 27-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Lisa-Joy Zgorski lisajoy@nsf.gov 703-292-8311 National Science Foundation
NSF investments in the development of innovative applications to address societal challenges yielding a brighter future
Imagine connecting sophisticated weather radars and other sensor data to ultra-high-speed networks so that weather forecasters can more accurately predict natural disasters. Imagine the nation's finest brain surgeon seamlessly operating on a patient in a remote area while sitting in her office thousands of miles away. Imagine an entrepreneur, without the capital for even the most basic start-up expenses, borrowing key business tools from an online software lending library to turn an idea for a new venture into reality.
Imagine the possibilities of a gigabit-capable network at national scale.
Software designers did...and today their visions are closer to reality.
That is the message at US Ignite's "Next-Generation Application Summit" convening in Chicago, Ill. this week, a year after the administration announced US Ignite, an initiative comprising public and private partners seeking to jumpstart gigabit application development that can take advantage of advanced networks and lead to societal benefit in ways people are just starting to imagine.
Today at the Summit, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Mozilla announced 22 winning applications, or "apps," for an open innovation challenge called "Mozilla Ignite."
Funded by NSF and hosted by Mozilla as part of the US Ignite Initiative, the competition called for cutting-edge app ideas that would leverage ultra-fast, programmable networks to advance national priorities such as healthcare, energy, transportation and education in creative and innovative ways.
"These winning apps offer a glimpse into how we might catalyze the innovation ecosystem to develop next-generation applications and services with enormous public benefit," said Farnam Jahanian, who heads NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. "They are the result of exciting partnerships spanning application designers and developers, university researchers and students, federal, state and local officials, entrepreneurs and visionaries all across the country."
Gigabit fiber, a developing form of Internet infrastructure that is able to transfer data at speeds of one gigabit per second--three to 10 times faster than current infrastructures allow--enables these partnerships to push current limits of app design.
"Gigabit fiber is now able to move data at about 70 percent of the speed of light," said Mozilla's project lead for the Mozilla Ignite Challenge, Will Barkis. "The winning applications showcase what's possible when we make networks not only faster, but also smarter and deeply programmable."
The Mozilla Ignite challenge
How did the competition work? First, Mozilla hosted a brainstorming round, during which the public was invited to imagine applications that make use of ultra-fast and deeply programmable networks, such as the NSF-funded Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) project, which is some 250 times faster than networks available today. Mozilla's brainstorming round received more than 300 submissions examined by 38 expert judges. NSF and Mozilla announced 8 winning ideas in September, with prizes ranging from $1,000 to $5,000.
Next, with a funding pool of more than $500,000, Mozilla Ignite engaged in three development rounds, inviting developers everywhere to realize these winning and other app ideas. They hosted "hackathons" in multiple cities throughout the country and encouraged collaboration on existing ideas and entirely new ones. When teams provided working code, they received funding and access to expert mentorship, special resources and NSF's GENI test bed to test their applications.
Top winning apps
One of this week's top winners, Real Time Emergency Response, also won the Mozilla Ignite brainstorm competition in September. Working with U.S. emergency responders and starting pilot programs in Minnesota and Quebec, Jeremy Cooperstock of the Shared Reality Lab at McGill University and his team developed the Real-Time Emergency Response Observation and Supervision system. The system allows emergency operators and responders to filter and sort multiple streams of data--in real time--from mobile phones, Twitter and other social media into manageable forms that the responders could process. The team is focused on targeting their app toward agencies like the National Guard. The team is looking at integrating street-level and highway cameras into the system so that cities can better monitor problems in crime-prone areas.
Another innovative application spotlighted in Chicago this week is called Cizzle, which stands for Collaborative Science Learning Environment. Cizzle creates a fun, interactive, fast-paced video game environment in which kids, with notoriously short attention spans, may engage and learn. The Cizzle team is composed of collaborators from MX, a San Francisco-based technology and design firm specializing in next-generation educational and entertainment experiences, a group of graduate students from Amherst, Mass., and Ontario, Canada, Hollywood filmmakers and science educators.
"CIZZLE stands to transform the way students all across the country learn," said Suzi Iacono, deputy assistant director for computer and information science and engineering at NSF. "Together with the 21 other exciting new tools spotlighted here today, it demonstrates how next-generation gigabit apps offer the potential for significant positive impact across all sectors of society."
List of Mozilla Ignite awardees
What follows is a list of the 22 winning Mozilla Ignite teams, including a brief description of their apps. Further details may be obtained by clicking on the hotlinks below.
Real-Time Emergency Response--Detect, observe and assess situations for emergency responders using live video and social media data.
Remote Process Control using a Reliable Communication Protocol--Observe and control remote processes reliably and in real time with smart, redundant network paths
The Software Lending Library--Check-out software from the library using ultra fast low latency networks.
Cizzle (Collaborative Science Learning Environment)--Collaborate and earn in immersive 3-D environments that users can update simultaneously.
Simulation-as-a-Service for Advanced Manufacturing--Remotely access software and compute resources using a virtual desktop-as-a-service system for advanced manufacturing processes.
Easy 3D--Post to and access a "Flickr," or an online repository, for 3-D images and videos.
PlanIT Impact--Understand and participate in decisions in the community with data visualization and 3-D tools.
High Quality Open Source Web Conferencing--Access high-quality, interactive education from classrooms throughout the country, regardless of location or resources (all one needs is a browser).
OpenPath--Engage in mobile, place-based, collaborative learning in real-time.
Hyperaudio Pad--Learn, edit and remix media through simple text interface to audio/video (rely less on the "experts").
PeerCDN--Experience a better web with peer-based content delivery networks.
Luminosity--Collaborate on large data through web-based tools-advantageous for scientists, researchers and citizens.
Brief+Case Health--Coordinate medical diagnoses and treatment among students, parents and medical specialists at a school with multi-party telemedicine.
Optimizing Public Transit--Optimize public transit planning through real-time data analysis of variables such as weather and traffic patterns.
KinectHealth--Achieve fitness goals with peers and trainers from anywhere.
euMetrica--Monitor and alert patients and doctors with real-time, cloud-based analysis of health sensors.
Rashomon: Multi-perspective Chronology--Tell the story of an event from audio and video simultaneously captured from many users.
FloodCube: National Flood Information Platform--Predict floods more precisely with real-time analysis of flood sensors and tailor alerts for individuals in harm's way.
WeCounsel--Access and conduct counsel and therapy at a distance using high quality videoconferencing.
Banyan--Facilitate collaboration and version control for scientists and researchers.
Cyber Physical Collaboration for Advanced Manufacturing--Use haptic feedback-that is, technology which takes advantage of the sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations or motions or "doing for the sense of touch what computer graphics does for vision"--and virtual manufacturing environments to learn and collaborate, especially valuable for engineers and students.
All the ideas in the competition are available on the Mozilla Ignite website.
"At its very beginning, the web revolutionized what we thought was possible," said Mozilla's Executive Director, Mark Surman. "And now with this new technology, we can see how it's happening again. These Mozilla Ignite teams show how the collaboration, wealth and creativity we see on today's internet could grow beyond our wildest imaginations--and in many cases how it's already doing so."
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Nothing goes unregulated in China. Even China?s ?one child policy? has a little known canine equivalent: Only one dog per household in cities like Beijing and Shanghai.
By Peter Ford,?Staff writer / June 24, 2013
Dogs wonder around while their owners check marble bracelets at a market in Beijing, China, April 2, 2013.
Alexander F. Yuan/AP
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Western human rights activists have never made much of a fuss about it, but China?s ?one child policy? has a little known canine equivalent.
Skip to next paragraph Peter Ford
Beijing Bureau Chief
Peter Ford is The Christian Science Monitor?s Beijing Bureau Chief. He covers news and features throughout China and also makes reporting trips to Japan and the Korean peninsula.
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The ?one dog policy? means what it says. In cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, each household is allowed only one?canis lupus familiaris.? Nor are urban pet lovers allowed just any kind of dog.
?Vicious? dogs are outlawed. But so is every other dog that is likely to stand more than 14 inches high when it is fully grown.
That means no Rottweilers, St. Bernards or Great Danes, of course. But it also rules out keeping a Dalmatian, a Bloodhound, or a Chow.
Officials say the law is a public health measure, aimed at protecting citizens from strays. More people die of rabies in China than anywhere else in the world save India, they point out.
This being China, nothing goes unregulated. (Though this being China, the regulations are by no means always enforced: The number of outsized Tibetan Mastiffs you see being paraded around town as status symbols is testimony to that.) So each dog must, like his or her owner, have a ?residence permit.?
The plastic permits look very like Chinese ID cards, with the dog?s photo, name, sex, and type printed on it. The reverse of a Beijing resident-dog-license is decorated with ? what else? ? a Pekinese. And it doesn?t come cheap: $160 the first year and $80 a year after that.
Failure to register your dog risks an even costlier punishment ? an $800 fine.
Keeping dogs as pets is not really a Chinese tradition, though in the countryside farmers may keep guard dogs or hunting dogs. In fact, pooches are as often eaten than pampered in this part of the world, despite the best efforts of nascent animal rights groups.
Last week, for example, residents of Yulin in the southern province of Guangxi, got through about 10,000 dogs at their annual summer solstice dog meat festival, according to activists. Most of them were served in a traditional hotpot with lychees and grain liquor.
June 27, 2013 ? Recent studies by researchers at Thomas Jefferson University's Kimmel Cancer Center have shown a gene known to coordinate initial development of the eye (EYA1) is a powerful breast tumor promoter in mice. The gene EYA1 was also shown to be overexpressed in a genetic breast cancer subtype called luminal B.
The scientists found that excess activity of this gene -- EYA1 -- also enhances development of breast cancer stem cells that promote resistance to cancer therapy, recurrence, and poor survival.
Because EYA1 is an enzyme, the scientists are now working to identify a natural compound that could shut down EYA1 activity, says Richard Pestell, M.D., Ph.D., Director of Kimmel Cancer Center.
"It was known that EYA1 is over-expressed in some breast cancers, but no one knew what that meant," he says. "Our studies have shown the enzyme drives luminal B breast tumor growth in animals and the enzyme activity is required for tumor growth."
In a mouse model of aggressive breast cancer, the research team targeted a single amino acid on the EYA1 phosphatase activity. They found that inactivating the phosphatase activity of EYA1 stopped aggressive human tumors from growing.
"We are excited about the potential of drug treatment, because it is much easier to develop a drug that targets a phosphatase enzyme like EYA1, than it is to target a gene directly," he says.
Tracing how EYA1 leads to poor outcomes
The study, which was published in the May 1 issue of Cancer Research, examined 2,154 breast cancer samples for the presence of EYA1. The researchers then linked those findings to patient outcomes. They found a direct relationship between increased level of EYA1 and cyclin D1 to poor survival.
They then chose one form of breast cancer -- luminal B -- and traced the bimolecular pathway of how EYA1 with cyclin D1 increases cancer aggressiveness. Luminal B breast cancer, one of five different breast cancer subtypes, is a hormone receptor-positive form that accounts for about 20 percent of human breast cancer. It is more aggressive than luminal A tumors, a hormone receptor-positive cancer that is the most common form of breast cancer.
Their work delineated a string of genes and proteins that are affected by EYA1, and they also discovered that EYA1 pushes an increase in formation of mammospheres, which are a measure of breast cancer stem cells.
"Within every breast cancer are breast cancer stem cells, which give rise to anti-cancer therapy resistance, recurrence and metastases," Dr. Pestell says. "We demonstrated in laboratory experiments that EYA1 expression increase the number of mammospheres and other markers of breast cancer stem cells."
"As the EYA1 phosphatase activity drove breast cancer stem cell expansion, this activity may contribute to worse survival," he says.
This study was supported in part by the NIH grants RO1CA132115, R01CA70896, R01CA75503, R01CA86072 and P30CA56036 (RGP), a grant from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (RGP), a grant for Dr. Ralph and Marian C. Falk Medical Research Trust (RGP), Margaret Q. Landenberger Research Foundation, the Department of Defense Concept Award W81XWH-11-1-0303.
Study co-authors are, from Kimmel Cancer Center: first author Kongming Wu, Zhaoming Li, Shaoxin Cai, Lifeng Tian, Ke Chen, Jing Wang and Adam Ertel; Junbo Hu, from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China; and Ye Sun, and Xue Li from Boston Children's Hospital.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? Members of a South African choir have prayed and sung outside a hospital where Nelson Mandela, the country's former president, is reported to be in critical condition.
In addition to the choir from the Salvation Army, other people arrived Thursday to deliver flowers and messages of support for 94-year-old Mandela at the hospital in Pretoria, the South African capital.
Members of the youth league of the country's ruling party, the African National Congress, were planning prayer meetings Thursday to honor the anti-apartheid leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
President Jacob Zuma canceled a trip to Mozambique on Thursday in an indication of heightened concern about Mandela, whose health deteriorated last weekend.
Fifteen people took ill in a possible case of food poisoning during a trans-Atlantic flight Wednesday, officials told ABC News.
Inspectors with the local health department and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention met Delta Flight 72 as it arrived at Kennedy International Airport in New York around 5 p.m., airport officials said. The flight originated in Istanbul, Turkey.
?They had stomach cramps and were vomiting,? said one source.
The stricken passengers were interviewed and declined offers to be transported to a hospital for further treatment.
In a statement to ABC News, the airline said: ?After a small number of customers on flight 73 from Istanbul reported feeling ill prior to landing at JFK, Delta called for medical personnel to meet the flight. Delta employees are working closely with these customers to ensure they are well cared for. Delta will look into what may have caused these reports.?
DirecTV recently switched the name of its Nomad transcoding device to GenieGo to match its new DVRs, a change we first noticed on its Android app. On Windows PC and iOS the apps are about to get a new update that changes the name and lets users stream video from their DVRs over WiFi even when they're away from home (Mac and Android support is due later in the year.) Previously, it allowed users to stream live and recorded TV, or download recorded TV to a mobile device for viewing offline, but Slingbox-style streaming of live or recorded TV anywhere is new, and brings it closer to the device we thought it could be when it launched. Solid Signal and DBSTalk report the incoming update (not live yet, but it should pop up tomorrow) is easy to use, letting users stream recordings, start a recording so it can stream or remotely setting up the transcoder to make a mobile copy users can download once they get home. Satellite TV competitor Dish has brought deeper integration of Sling into its new Hopper DVRs, and now DirecTV has its own in-house solution, anyone thinking of switching sides?
He calls himself the "human with the battery operated brain" because he does, in fact, have electrodes in his head, put there by his New Zealand doctors.
Andrew Johnson (also known as "Cyber AJ") a few months ago was a young, 39 year old, early-onset Parkinsonian who tremored constantly. His hands shook. His neck crimped. His body was stiff. He had balance problems, voice problems, trouble speaking. He can make those problems disappear now by hitting a switch. It's amazing to see. This video begins with him looking totally normal; he talks a bit, then, when he's ready, he pushes the "off" button, and the disease comes roaring back. Instantly.
This procedure, called "deep brain stimulation" is now used all over the world. When neurons in the brain start firing in ways that cause shakes and tics, it is sometimes possible, says neurosurgeon Andres Lozano, to control those tics by adding or subtracting electricity.
So what we've been able to do is to pinpoint where these disturbances are in the brain and we've been able to intervene within the circuits in the brain ... We do that with electricity. We use electricity to dictate how they fire and we try to block their behavior using electricity.
Over the years, these implants can pinpoint the errant neurons with increasing accuracy adding or subtracting electricity as needed. In Andrew's case, the implants turned him from a "39 year old trapped in an 89 year old body" to what passes for normal guy ? at least when the current is on. As he says on his blog, youngandshaky.com, the surgery went fast.
I only had a small patch of hair removed from my head and chest and the wires pulled down and plugged into the neuro-stimulator which was implanted in my chest. Straight after the surgery I was in obscene amounts of pain (in my head) but double the normal dose of morphine soon put paid to that. While I was in recovery (incidentally longer than the time it took to do the surgery) there were lots of people milling around talking and getting ready to go to lunch etc. I am sure they were talking quietly but to me the slightest whisper was like a dagger to the skull and I remember thinking they better be quiet soon or I was going to get out of that bed and make them. That's if moving without falling to the floor in a crumpled heap was a possibility. The effects of the morphine soon kicked in and I started to feel halfway human again, albeit now a human with a battery operated brain. Cyber-AJ on the loose!
A few days later, after the staff had adjusted his monitor to compensate for his brain dysfunction, so that his body could move without shaking, (those settings will change; Parkinson's is a progressive disease), Andrew Johnson was released.
[T]he effects of being powered up are almost instantaneous. I have required several tweaks and medication adjustments but that is to be expected. I do feel a great deal better, certainly not to the point I was pre-Parkinson's but 100% better than I have felt in recent years. So from that perspective it has been a dream come true as I explained to a good friend Andy McDowell who came to visit me in hospital.
Andy McDowell also has Parkinson's, and he's written a poem about it to explain the disease to his children. "The only positive thing about this [expletive deleted] disease is meeting fantastic people like Andy and his wife Kate," says AJ. Here's the poem, "Smaller, A Poem About Parkinson's Disease", read by Andy's daughter Lily.
Thanks to blogger Jason Kottke for pointing me to AJ's story.
According to the Airports Council International, the world's busiest airport by passenger traffic is Hartsfield?Jackson Atlanta International Airport with a whopping 95,462,867 passengers passing through in 2012. Which makes sense considering it's the home of Delta, the world's largest airline. So one can only imagine what the flight paths of all those planes must look like, which is why Alexey Papulovskiy scraped data from Plane Finder for a month before charting it all out in a beautifully interactive visualization tool called Contrailz.
HELENA, Mont. (AP) ? A Jesus statue that has for six decades been a curiosity to skiers as they cruise down a popular run at a northwest Montana ski resort will not be evicted from federal land, a judge ruled Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen said the Flathead National Forest can re-issue a 10-year permit for the statue installed on the ski hill by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men's organization.
The judge disagreed with a Wisconsin-based group of atheists and agnostics that argued the Forest Service was unconstitutionally sanctioning the statue. Its religious nature has been made clear in special-use permit applications since the 1950s, the Freedom From Religion Foundation had argued.
The Forest Service first indicated in 2011 that it would reject a new permit for the statue, which occupies a 25-by-25 foot patch of land at Whitefish Mountain Resort. But the agency reversed itself in 2012 amid public outcry.
Christensen said that the statue does not convey to a reasonable informed observer that the government, rather than a private party, endorses Christianity over any other faith or the absence of faith. The new federal judge, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2011, said the statue is one of the last remaining remnants of the original Big Mountain Ski Resort and some locals say it reflects the transition from old timber town to tourist hotspot.
"The statue's secular and irreverent uses far outweigh the few religious uses it has served. The statue is most frequently used as a meeting point for skiers or hikers and a site for photo opportunities, rather than a solemn place for religious reflection," the judge wrote.
"Typical observers of the statue are more interested in giving it a high five or adorning it in ski gear than sitting before it in prayer."
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, which argued the statue violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on Congress making any law regarding an establishment of religion, said it was shocked by the ruling. The group disputed the notion that the Knights of Columbus statue honors veterans, calling it a ruse to place a Catholic shrine on public land.
"Saying it is fine to appropriate federal land to benefit the Knights of Columbus proselytizing efforts would seem to say the government is endorsing religion," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president.
She said the statue's length of time on the hill does not justify keeping it there, and she argued it makes the constitutional transgression worse. The group said it likely will appeal.
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which defended the monument in court, applauded the "commonsense" decision. It argued the statue is a far cry from creating a state religion and not every religious statue runs afoul of the Constitution.
"What we are seeing on the other side is Iconoclasm, the destruction of idols. If they disagree with something religiously, they have to destroy it," said Eric Rassbach, an attorney for the group.
The statue has been maintained by the local Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization, since members that included World War II veterans ? inspired by religious monuments they saw while fighting in the mountains of Europe ? erected the monument in 1955. The Knights have never been charged for use of the public land.
LAS VEGAS (AP) ? The country's newest Miss USA is leaving a white collar job behind for the glamour and excitement that goes with her new role ? and she can't wait.
Moments after she was crowned at the Planet Hollywood hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip Sunday, Connecticut accountant Erin Brady said all she could think about was letting her bosses know she won't be coming in tomorrow. Or ever again.
As her family and fiancee looked on, Brady beat out other beauties from every U.S. state and Washington D.C. to take the title, accepting the crown from outgoing queen Miss Maryland Nana Meriwether.
She wore an orange bikini with a matching halter-top as she strutted to the Jonas Brother's "Pom Poms." Later, she donned a strapless gown with a spangled golden corset and long white train.
In the pageant's final minutes, she answered without hesitation a question about the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold widespread DNA tests.
"If someone is being prosecuted and committed a crime, it should happen. There are so many crimes that if that's one step closer to stopping them, then we should be able to do so," she said.
Miss Utah, meanwhile, apparently stumbled in response to a question about income disparity, providing a rambling, halting answer included an invocation to "create education better."
As Miss USA, she will live in a swanky Manhattan apartment and travel the world raising awareness about breast cancer, but Brady has an additional goal of her own: Helping children cope with the effects of drug and alcohol abuse, which have marked those close to her.
"I grew up in a family influenced by that and I think it's really important to help the children of families that are suffering from those problems," she told The Associated Press.
Her father Francis said he always knew his math-oriented daughter was a glamour girl. She and her sisters used to strut around and pretend they were beauty queens.
Her sister Audrey, 20, said with tears in her eyes that her grandmother, who was watching from home, would orchestrate the pretend shows.
"She'd be like, 'Prance around the pool like Miss America.'"
The family was taken by surprise two years ago when Brady announced she would be entering the Miss Connecticut competition, but they cheered her on.
"She just went up there on a whim, man. But it was like, 'Just go for it. There should be more people like you who are competing, where it's not all about the hair and the makeup, but personality too,'" Audrey said.
Brady told The Associated Press that she hopes her background will help dispel negative associations held by some toward pageants.
"I think that now more than ever, they're accepting that we're all intelligent individuals and that it's really not a stereotype," she said.
Unlike the rival Miss America pageant, Donald Trump's Miss USA doesn't ask its queens to perform a talent or choose a charity mission.
As suspenseful music played on Sunday night before the winner announcement, Brady held hands with first runner up Mary Margaret McCord, of Alabama. McCord could be seen saying, "I love you." Miss Illinois Stacie Juris was second runner up.
Two of the six judges' questions on Sunday touched on the controversial data-collection programs run by the National Security Agency brought to light earlier this month.
In both cases, the queens took an unconcerned attitude. Miss South Carolina said the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden who leaked the information should not be charged with treason. Miss Alabama said the programs did not bother her.
Beaming fianc? Tony Capasso said he advised Brady to compete without makeup.
The Central Connecticut State University finance major will represent the U.S. at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow this winter. Last year's Miss USA, Olivia Culpo, won that international crown, becoming the first Miss USA to ascend to Miss Universe in 16 years. Brady said she is determined to pull of the feat for the U.S. again.
For the next few days, though, she's just hoping to unwind with a routine that sounded not very different from her training regime: hitting the gym and getting in her beauty sleep.
___
Yvette Cruz contributed to this report.
Hannah Dreier can be reached at http://twitter.com/hannahdreier
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Public release date: 27-Jun-2013
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