Gold falls further in longest losing streak in four years

By A. Ananthalakshmi

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Gold fell on Friday for a seventh straight session, in its longest losing streak since March 2009, as the dollar strengthened and investors cut exposure to the precious metal, fearing further drops and choosing equities instead.

Gold has lost nearly 6 percent of its value in the six sessions through Thursday as stocks gained on the back of strong U.S. economic data, and on fears the Federal Reserve could end its bullion-friendly bond buying program.

Spot gold was down 0.34 percent at $1,380.91 an ounce by 0538 GMT, having fallen to a four-week low of $1,369.29 on Thursday as renewed liquidation in gold ETFs and a recent drop below the $1,400-per-ounce level spooked investors.

The metal is down 17 percent for the year and is on track for its worst weekly decline in a month. Holdings in SPDR Gold Trust, the world's largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, fell to their lowest in four years.

Physical demand was also quiet on Friday as consumers in the biggest gold buyers, India and China, wait for prices to stabilize or drop further, traders and dealers said.

"Many people are waiting on the sidelines as they are expecting another drop," said Brian Lan, managing director of GoldSilver Central Pte Ltd in Singapore.

Demand in India is being hurt by central bank curbs on gold imports. Limits on bank consignments have hit supply and triggered a sharp jump in premiums.

Indian gold futures fell 1.5 percent on Thursday, extending losses for a second straight session to their lowest level in nearly a month, in line with global markets.

Lan said buying in India had fallen significantly from Monday, which saw the celebration of Akshaya Tritiya, considered an auspicious day to buy gold.

Premiums quoted in India on gold bars were as high as $5 an ounce, another physical dealer said.

Premiums for gold bars in Hong Kong, the main source of gold for China, hit record highs this week on supply constraints.

"Premiums for gold kilo bars have increased quite substantially. In Asia, gold bars are hard to come by," Lan said.

Gold demand fell 13 percent to a three-year low of 963 tonnes in the first quarter, as rising jewellery demand and strong appetite for coins and bars failed to offset a sharp drop in investment, the World Gold Council says.

Spot gold is headed towards a low last seen in April, when fears of European countries liquidating gold reserves sent gold prices tumbling.

SPDR said holdings fell 0.55 percent to 1041.42 tonnes on Thursday, the lowest in four years.

U.S. gold for June delivery was down 0.52 percent at $1,379.70.

The dollar held firm near a 10-month high versus a basket of currencies on Friday while Asian shares were mixed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gold-falls-further-longest-losing-streak-four-years-063545724.html

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Dinosaur predecessors gain ground in wake of world's biggest biodiversity crisis

Apr. 29, 2013 ? Many scientists have thought that dinosaur predecessors missed the race to fill habitats emptied when nine out of 10 species disappeared during Earth's largest mass extinction, approximately 252 million years ago. The thinking was based on fossil records from sites in South Africa and southwest Russia.

It turns out that scientists may have been looking for the starting line in the wrong places.

Newly discovered fossils from 10 million years after the mass extinction reveal a lineage of animals thought to have led to dinosaurs taking hold in Tanzania and Zambia in the mid-Triassic period, many millions of years before dinosaur relatives were seen in the fossil record elsewhere on Earth.

"The fossil record from the Karoo of South Africa remains a good representation of four-legged land animals across southern Pangea before the extinction event. But after the event animals weren't as uniformly and widely distributed as before. We had to go looking in some fairly unorthodox places," said Christian Sidor, University of Washington professor of biology. He's lead author of a paper appearing the week of April 29 in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new insights come from seven fossil-hunting expeditions since 2003 in Tanzania, Zambia and Antarctica, funded by the National Geographic Society and National Science Foundation, along with work combing through existing fossil collections. The researchers created two "snapshots" of four legged-animals about 5 million years before and again about 10 million years after the extinction event at the end of the Permian period.

Prior to the extinction event, for example, the pig-sized Dicynodon -- said to resemble a fat lizard with a short tail and turtle's head -- was a dominant plant-eating species across southern Pangea. Pangea is the name given to the landmass when all the world's continents were joined together. Southern Pangea was made up of what is today Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia and India. After the mass extinction at the end of the Permian, Dicynodon disappeared and other related species were so greatly decreased that newly emerging herbivores could suddenly compete with them.

"Groups that did well before the extinction didn't necessarily do well afterward," Sidor said. "What we call evolutionary incumbency was fundamentally reset."

The snapshot 10 million years after the extinction event reveals, among other things, that archosaurs were in Tanzanian and Zambian basins, but not distributed across all of southern Pangea as had been the pattern for four-legged animals prior to the extinction. Archosaurs are the group of reptiles that includes crocodiles, dinosaurs, birds and a variety of extinct forms. They are of interest because it is thought they led to animals like Asilisaurus, a dinosaur-like animal, and Nyasasaurus parringtoni, a dog-sized creature with a five-foot tail that scientists in December 2012 announced could be the earliest dinosaur, or else the closest relative found so far.

"Early archosaurs being found mainly in Tanzania is an example of how fragmented communities became after the extinction event," Sidor said. And the co-authors write: "These findings suggest that . . . archosaur diversification was more intimately related to recovery from the end-Permian mass extinction than previously suspected."

A new framework for analyzing biogeographic patterns from species distributions, developed by co-author Daril Vilhena, a UW biology graduate student, provided a way to discern the complex recovery, Sidor said.

It revealed that before the extinction event 35 percent of four-legged species were found in two or more of the five areas studied, with some species having ranges that stretched 1,600 miles (2,600 kilometers), encompassing the Tanzanian and South African basins. Ten million years after the extinction event, the authors say there was clear geographic clustering and just 7 percent of species were found in two or more regions.

The techniques -- new ways to statistically consider how connected or isolated species are from each other -- could be useful for other paleontologists and modern day biogeographers, Sidor said.

In the early 2000s Sidor and some of his co-authors started putting together expeditions to collect fossils from sites in Tanzania that hadn't been visited since the 1960s and in Zambia where there'd been little work since the '80s. Two expeditions to Antarctica provided additional materials, as did long-term efforts to examine museum-held fossils that had not been fully documented or named.

Other co-authors from the UW are graduate students Adam Huttenlocker and Brandon Peecook, post-doctoral researcher Sterling Nesbitt and research associate Linda Tsuji; Kenneth Angielczyk of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago; Roger Smith, of the Iziko South African Museum in Cape Town; and S?bastien Steyer from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.

Funding was also received from the Evolving Earth Foundation, the Grainger Foundation, the Field Museum/IDP Inc. African Partners Program and the National Research Council of South Africa.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Washington. The original article was written by Sandra Hines.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Christian A. Sidor, Daril A. Vilhena, Kenneth D. Angielczyk, Adam K. Huttenlocker, Sterling J. Nesbitt, Brandon R. Peecook, J. S?bastien Steyer, Roger M. H. Smith, and Linda A. Tsuji. Provincialization of terrestrial faunas following the end-Permian mass extinction. PNAS, April 29, 2013 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1302323110

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/t4B8Gs8a5mE/130429154059.htm

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The Edge: How a GOP Focus on Minorities Could Pay Off

The Edge is National Journal's daily look at today in Washington -- and what's coming next. The email features analysis from NJ's top correspondents, the biggest stories of the day -- and always a few surprises. To subscribe, click here.

How a GOP Focus on Minorities Could Pay Off

It may seem contrarian, but Republicans could be well-served by focusing on winning over African-Americans with an aspirational agenda that includes education reform, economic growth and faith-based initiatives.?

In fact, a new Associated Press analysis, which reports record-high turnout among blacks along with lagging white turnout in the 2012 presidential election, underlines the point.

The study suggests that the historic nature of President Obama?s candidacy raised African-American turnout to historic levels that aren?t likely to be replicated.?If a future Republican nominee got merely 10 percent of the black vote, with lower turnout levels, swing states like Ohio, Florida, Virginia and perhaps even Pennsylvania could flip.?A more relatable nominee may also increase turnout among working-class whites.

Latinos, despite their growing numbers, still lag behind in turnout, and immigration reform is one way to focus on that piece of the puzzle.?But policy items like education reform, which may appeal to a broader population of minority voters, could be a productive ticket for Republicans and should not be ignored.

Josh Kraushaar
jkraushaar@nationaljournal.com

TOP NEWS

KARZAI: AFGHAN GOVERNMENT ?VERY GRATEFUL? FOR CIA FUNDS. Afghan President Hamid Karzai confirmed a report by The New York Times that the United States has been making monthly payments to the Afghan National Security Council for the past decade, the Associated Press reports. Karzai said that the monthly sums were "a small amount," and have been "very useful, and we are grateful for it." The CIA, which has reportedly provided tens of millions of dollars in payments to the Afghan council, declined to comment on the report. Read more

• @ZekeJMiller: Q: ?Was the president aware of the payments [to Karzai]?? Carney: ?You are making an assertion about something I have no comment on.?
  

?MISHA?: I HAD NO ROLE IN BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING. The mysterious ?Misha? who reportedly helped to radicalize Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev is Mikhail Allakhverdov, The New York Review of Books? Christian Caryl reports. ?I wasn?t his teacher. If I had been his teacher, I would have made sure he never did anything like this,? Allakhverdov said. ?I?ve been cooperating entirely with the FBI. I gave them my computer and my phone and everything I wanted to show I haven?t done anything. And they said they are about to return them to me. And the agents who talked told me they are about to close my case.? Read more

GARY PETERS TO ANNOUNCE SENATE BID. Rep. Gary Peters, D-Mich., will announce this week that he will run to replace retiring Sen. Carl Levin, sources tell The Hotline, giving Democrats another top recruit in a state critical to their hopes of keeping the Senate next year. Peters, a three-term House member from the Detroit suburbs, will be the first major-party candidate to jump in the race. And he's likely to have the Democratic primary to himself. Republicans have yet to settle on a candidate of their own. Reps. Mike Rogers and Justin Amash are both considering a bid. Read more

NBA?S COLLINS INSPIRED BY JOE KENNEDY TO COME OUT. National Basketball Association player Jason Collins, who came out as gay in a Sports Illustrated story published Monday, was influenced by the decision of his former college roommate, Rep. Joe Kennedy III, D-Mass., to march in Boston?s Gay Pride parade last year, The Washington Post reports. ?I?m seldom jealous of others, but hearing what Joe had done filled me with envy. I was proud of him for participating but angry that as a closeted gay man I couldn?t even cheer my straight friend on as a spectator,? Collins wrote. The White House commended Collins?s decision today. Read more

• As only he could, FiveThirtyEight?s Nate Silver breaks down Collins?s chances of signing with another team.

FIVE THINGS TO WATCH AT SANFORD-COLBERT BUSCH DEBATE. The only debate in the special congressional race between Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican, and Democratic candidate Elizabeth Colbert Busch is Monday night at 7 p.m., and The Washington Post?s Sean Sullivan has five things to watch out for, including whether Sanford can shift the momentum and how Colbert Busch will perform under the spotlight. Read more

MORE GROUPS PLOT TO DODGE SEQUESTER CUTS. Now, with two sequester adjustments?the FAA and meat inspectors?on the books, other special-interest groups, unions, and lobbyists are planning to rev up their efforts to undo the cuts bit by bit or, in this case, by a few billion dollars here or there. The actions of the FAA in the past week, alongside airline groups and unions, offer a playbook for others to use as they too seek exemptions, National Journal?s Nancy Cook reports.?Read more

OBAMA AT WHCD: ?WE CAN DO BETTER.? President Obama closed his remarks at the White House Correspondents? Dinner not with humor but with ?a 607-word morality bomb,? National Journal?s Ron Fournier writes. ?If we?re only focused on profits or ratings or polls,? the president noted, ?then we?re contributing to the cynicism that so many people feel right now.? The remarks, which received less attention than the evening?s jokes, ?may stand as one of the best rhetorical moments of Obama?s presidency, a clearheaded indictment of four national institutions (the media, the entertainment industry, big business, and the political system), coupled by a prescription for revival,? Fournier writes. Read more

O?CONNOR HAS MISGIVINGS ABOUT BUSH V. GORE. During a recent interview with the Chicago Tribune editorial board, retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O?Connor expressed reservations over the Court accepting Bush v. Gore in 2000. "It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue. Maybe the court should have said, 'We're not going to take it, good-bye,'" O?Connor told the board. ?It turned out the election authorities in Florida hadn't done a real good job there and kind of messed it up. And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day.? Read more

HOUSE DEMOCRATS LINK CLIMATE CHANGE TO ?TRANSACTIONAL SEX,? DISEASE. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., along with 11 Democratic cosponsors, introduced a resolution recently highlighting the particular dangers of climate change for women and asserting support for the plight of female farmers. According to the resolution, women who are ?food-insecure,? and ?with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health.? Read more

TOMORROW

CONSUMER-CONFIDENCE NUMBERS OUT. The monthly gauge of consumer sentiment is due out tomorrow, and the numbers from the Conference Board are expected to show a slight rise from March?from 59.7 to 62.0, according to The Wall Street Journal. Read more

KERRY TO HOST MEETING WITH JORDANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER. Secretary of StateJohn Kerry will hold a bilateral meeting with Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh at the State Department. Closed press. He will also hold a bilateral meeting with Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, also at the State Department.

QUOTABLE?

?My wife, my family, I got one of the biggest liberal families in the world, but I had more money when Bush and Reagan was president. I shouldn?t have said that, my wife is going to kill me for that.? ? Former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson on Obama. (National Review)

BEDTIME READING

FROM DRUG-WAR INFORMANT TO FUGITIVE. ?On the run from his native country and abandoned by his adopted home,? Luis Octavio L?pez Vega, 64, lives in intentional obscurity, his former face vanished with a face-lift over a decade ago, writes Ginger Thompson for The New York Times. But what separates L?pez from numerous other immigrants living unregistered in the western United States is that L?pez is hiding from the authorities with whom he once worked closely. L?pez was a senior adviser to Mexico?s drug czar of the 1990s, Jes?s Guti?rrez Rebollo, while also working as a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration informant. When Rebollo was arrested in 1997 in what was considered the biggest drug-trafficking case in Mexican history, the DEA secretly helped L?pez and his family escape across the border in exchange for his cooperation with the investigation. Then the agency severed its ties. L?pez has been a fugitive ever since and the DEA denies any knowledge of his whereabouts. Read more

PROFILE AT A GLANCE: ANTHONY FOXX

• Why he is in the news: President Obama nominated him to serve as Transportation secretary (The New York Times)
• Current job: Mayor of Charlotte, N.C.
• Born: April 30, 1971 (Age 41)
• Education: B.A. in history, Davidson College; J.D., New York University (City of Charlotte)
• Married to: wife Samara; two children

Career Highlights

• Led bid and chaired host committee for the 2012 Democratic National Convention
• Led city?s economic turnaround, adding 13,000 jobs (The New York Times)
• Working to expand Charlotte Douglas International Airport (Charlotte Observer)
• Spearheading expansion of city?s light-rail system

Of Interest

• First black student body president at Davidson College
• At 38, was youngest-ever mayor of Charlotte
• Announced in early April that he would not seek reelection, citing family considerations (release)
• Considered a rising star in Democratic Party (National Journal)

TODAY?S PHOTO GALLERY

SARAH PALIN HATED NERD PROM, BUT THESE PEOPLE DIDN?T. The Washington Post photographers blanketed the White House Correspondents? Association Dinner, from the red carpet, to the dinner itself, to the boozy after-parties. Because what other red carpet would feature both George Stephanopoulos and the Duck Dynasty cast; what other dinner party would feature New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg seated next to Barbra Streisand; and what other event?s after-party would feature a hug between Jon Bon Jovi and Geraldo Rivera?

?

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/edge-gop-focus-minorities-could-pay-off-161510283.html

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Gov. Patrick, Students Stock Jamaica Pond [VIDEO] - Brookline Patch

Gov. Deval Patrick alongside state wildlife officials and JFK Elementary School students helped stock Jamaica Pond from the banks of Jamaica Pond Thursday morning.

The students took buckets of fish to the shore and helped 1,250 rainbow, brook, brown and tiger trout swim away.

Here is some additional information on the annual event from the state Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs:

This stocking event is part of an annual program that distributes various species of trout to 500 bodies of water throughout the Commonwealth. This year, the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife (MassWildlife) will release more than 510,000 trout produced at state-operated hatcheries in Belchertown and Sandwich. The 60-foot deep pond, the largest body of freshwater in Boston, is also home to snapping turtles, crayfish, eels and clams.?

Here is a list of trout-stocked waters around Massachusetts and other fishing information.

Source: http://brookline.patch.com/articles/gov-patrick-students-stock-jamaica-pond-video-132baa29

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Explorer West Middle school team wins 'Environmental Issues Slam'

April 25, 2013 at 12:00 pm | In Environment, West Seattle news, West Seattle schools | 1 Comment

As Earth Week continues, a local school is celebrating its students? achievements in a big event last night ? thanks to Amy French for sharing the photo and report:

The Explorer West Middle School community congratulates the three groups of students chosen to represent Explorer West at Washington Foundation for the Environment?s ?3rd Annual Great Environmental Issues Slam? last night at The Flagship REI Store. The 6 students (across three teams) had 5 minutes to present their issues to a packed room of audience members who had the chance to vote at the end. The other contestants were all talented, adult speakers from a range of non-profits.

One of the student teams, presenting on ?Drastic Plastic,? won the slam and the opportunity to donate $1,000 to the charity of their choice that is working to deal with the issue of plastics in our world?s oceans. Explorer West students will be voting this week to decide which non-profit receives the donation from Washington Foundation for the Environment.

Featured in the top photos is the winning group with EWMS Head of School Evan Hundley and history teacher Tim Owens, who Amy says ?was the lead in getting the school involved in the slam.?

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Source: http://westseattleblog.com/2013/04/explorer-west-middle-school-team-wins-environmental-issues-slam

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Escaped convict turns himself in after 14 years on the run

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) ? After 14 years on the run from the FBI and tips from witnesses in two countries, David Lee Kemp turned himself over to authorities in southwest Oklahoma early Friday morning, local authorities said.

Kemp, of Lawton, Okla., was the only inmate to elude capture after escaping with eight other inmates on March 11, 1999, while awaiting trial on two first-degree murder counts in the killings of his ex-wife and her boyfriend.

Comanche County Sheriff Kenny Stradley said Kemp told police he was done running.

"He said that he was just tired basically of running and it was affecting his health," Stradley told The Associated Press.

Comanche County Jail records show Kemp was taken into custody at about 1:40 a.m. Friday on charges of felony first-degree murder and escaping from a county jail, a misdemeanor.

The sequence of events leading up to his arrest started at a rest stop along Interstate 44, Stradley said, when Kemp knocked on the window of a sleeping truck driver.

"He said, 'I need you to call Comanche County Sheriff's department to come up here. I need to talk to them,'" Stradley told The Associated Press in a phone interview.

A deputy arrived and told Kemp he looked familiar. The deputy then asked for Kemp's name. Kemp told him and was immediately arrested, Stradley said. It's unclear if Kemp has a lawyer.

Kemp is charged in the deaths of Christina Cremer and her boyfriend, Robert Miller, whose bodies were found in August 1998, riddled with bullets in their Lawton apartment. He was apprehended by police in California several days later and taken to Comanche County.

In March 1999, he and eight other inmates overpowered a guard with a large grilling fork and escaped. Most were recaptured the same day.

Since then, Kemp was the subject of the "America's Most Wanted" and "Unsolved Mysteries" TV shows. He was reportedly spotted in Las Vegas and may have also been spotted in Phoenix, Louisiana and even Canada.

Stradley was also sheriff back in 1999 when Kemp escaped, and called Kemp's capture "a big relief."

A spokesman for the county said Kemp was under observation because of suicide concerns.

"He's completely compliant right now and following all the rules," said Jacob Russell, the spokesman. "All the added security at this time will be to and from the courtroom."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/inmate-missing-since-1999-surrenders-oklahoma-162641201.html

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Big Bangers Indeed (Powerlineblog)

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