Pandora's Promise: The Triumph of Hope over Fear in Nuclear Power?

A believer in solar power rarely has a good word to say about nuclear, though the sun generates light in a nuclear way via fusion. Of course, the zealotry works in the other direction as well. Almost any energy source boasts a cadre of ardent adherents: burning coal (it alleviates poverty!). Fracking for natural gas (we're better than coal!) Wind turbines (the fuel is always free!) Even fusion here on Earth. If you don't believe me, check the comments on this piece. So it's no surprise that energy has proven a wedge issue among those who strive to save the world. Now along comes a new, intriguing documentary entitled Pandora's Promise that hits movie theaters on June 12 and promises to drive that wedge even deeper. The story of the film is your basic conversion narrative, minus the conversion onscreen and geared to produce a hoped-for one in the audience. A band of five self-professed converts to the benefits of nuclear power--iconoclast Stewart Brand, author Gwyneth Cravens, climate activist Mark Lynas, nuclear weapons expert Richard Rhodes, and environmental thinker Michael Shellenberger--lay out their individual reasons for their newfound belief. That newfound belief runs counter to that of the majority of environmentalists and environmental organizations from the beginnings of the movement in the 1970s. Much of that opposition stems from the original sin of nuclear power: it was used as a weapon first. Nuclear became synonymous with mushroom clouds at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and many other testing grounds and skies, mutually assured destruction, even nuclear winter and some kind of Armageddon, in the words of Whole Earth Catalog founder Brand. What has cracked that catholic opposition for Brand and others is the invisible and invidious challenge of climate change. Simply put: nuclear power is one of the few technologies available today that can produce a lot of electricity, a lot of the time without a lot of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere. To be anti-nuclear at this point means being for burning fossil fuels because energy sources such as solar and wind are too fickle and small to play a big role in providing clean electricity to the 7 billion people on the planet, according to this belief. The film, through interviews with engineers and others, also notes that another original sin of nuclear power may have been the technology chosen by U.S. Admiral Hyman Rickover in the 1950s. The light water reactors the "Father of the Nuclear Navy" selected for commercial development may be simpler in design but they produce nuclear waste fairly rapidly and in quantity that still has no place to go. Safety is not an inherent feature of such reactors but instead has to be engineered around them with the cloak of containment vessels, redundant systems and other support and safety systems that add to the expense of nuclear power today. In fact, light water reactors are one of the few technologies to see little or no reduction in cost as more and more of them were built over the past several decades. Each one was, in essence, custom-designed to deal with the specific issues for a particular site and the specific version of the technology deployed. That has left each reactor with its own unique flaws, as witnessed in the three nuclear catastrophes in Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania; Chernobyl, Ukraine; and Fukushima, Japan. Each reactor may be flawed in its own way, but the three milestone accidents did share one critical failing in common: the human factor. In all three, human oversight, omission, and/or flat-our error played a pivotal role in allowing the nuclear accidents to occur--so much so that engineers of new reactor systems have emphasized the removal of humans from their oversight in an accident entirely. So-called passive safety designs--such as the two new AP-1000 reactors being built at the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia--require no human intervention to work. These systems intend to provide some insurance against human error leading to catastrophic meltdown. And the world needs more and more power. Lifting hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty in the last few decades required the construction of hundreds of coal-fired power plants, which has lead to China disappearing beneath a sulfurous haze of choking smog as well as surpassing the U.S. as the world leader in greenhouse gas pollution. Energy efficiency can't save us from that, according to the Breakthrough Institute's Shellenberger. As the global population heads toward 9 billion or even more potentially, energy use may double by 2050 and continue to increase. To stop adding yet more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, all of that energy would have to be clean energy. And the only clean energy available is nuclear, according to Shellenberger and the other true believers of this film--in the absence of CO2 capture and storage for fossil fuel burners or some form of inexpensive electricity storage in the case of renewables like the wind and sun. Size is an enduring totem for the proponents of nuclear power: the poster for the film above shows the actual size of the tiny cube of enriched uranium that could provide enough electricity for your entire life. And the filmmaker's own conversion experience came when he visited the single room in France, the size of a basketball court, beneath which much of that nation's nuclear waste is stored. Here is another size comparison: a pound of uranium contains as much energy as more than 2 million pounds of coal. Size matters and, since we face outsized problems from burning fossil fuels, an atomic-sized solution, with few emissions and well understood risks, can seem attractive. That means we have to get over our overblown fears of radiation. Cravens, who wrote Power to Save the World about her own pilgrim's progress from nuclear opponent to proponent, notes that eating a single banana gives a higher dose of radiation than drinking water laced with tritium from the leaking Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant--as footage plays of anti-nuclear activists handing out bananas to their fellow protesters at Vermont Yankee. Why? Each and every banana bears radioactive potassium, which also happens to be a necessary nutrient. This is where the film is strongest, showing the ridiculousness embedded in the zealotry of those opposed to nuclear power. One sight gag shows radioactivity readings from a dosimeter in Chernobyl, high in the sky over the Pacific Ocean and at a naturally radioactive beach in Brazil, along with many other places. Those three are listed in order of size of dose by the way, yet we see a man being buried in these sands for a holistic treatment of his body pains. And that's what it comes down to for these converts: the risks are smaller than people think since few have died directly from the meltdowns at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and even Fukushima. Burning coal already kills thousands of people each year, and that's just premature deaths from polluted air. A recent paper by retired climate scientist James Hansen pegs the number of lives saved by nuclear power (via displaced fossil fuels) at 1.8 million people since the 1970s--and the technology has the potential to save millions more. Everyone in the film points to the French energy transition from burning oil to generate electricity to getting 80 percent of their power from nuclear within just a few decades as inspiration for what the world should undertake. And, though the existing global fleet of 400+ reactors mass produces the plutonium needed for nuclear weapons, it can also be used to rid the world of excess bombs. The U.S. and Russia have already proven that as the U.S. has turned old Russian nuclear warheads into the fuel for the U.S. fleet of 104 reactors under the "Megatons to Megawatts" program. Besides, there are better, safer nuclear technologies that could be explored further, like the integral fast reactor that enjoyed, in a test, conditions similar to those that resulted in the Fukushima disaster--a total loss of electric power to run cooling pumps and other safety technology. This advanced reactor, instead of melting down, just shut down in the absence of electricity during a trial in Idaho in the 1980s. Similarly, there are enthusiasts for molten-salt reactors or the kind of small, modular reactor that could be built on an assembly line and finally make nuclear power at least cheaper. Even Microsoft billionaire turned global philanthropist Bill Gates, among others, thinks the nuclear industry is in desperate need of some innovation. Maybe the innovation for nuclear is to take the Homer Simpsons and Mr. Burns of the world and replace them with super-smart robots or sealed nuclear batteries. Of course, the old adage in the nuclear business is that the best reactor is a paper reactor. Every nuclear power technology looks best when it exists only in drawings and schematics before real construction and operation begins, as Admiral Rickover observed (pdf) at the dawn of the nuclear age. On the one hand, these five proponents note that nuclear is here today and available, but the technology that is so available to help combat climate change in the near term is this same decried light water reactor technology with all of its flaws (some of which have been remedied by better engineering). And we would need to build thousands in short order and at great expense to displace all the coal and natural gas fired power plants around the world. It might be cheaper to bolt on even inefficient CO2 capture and storage technology to each and every one of those power plants and bury the greenhouse gas if the goal is to prevent further climate change. We could even bury the CO2 in the same place that Craven's nuclear mentor, physicist Rip Anderson, suggested for nuclear waste: beneath the sea. On the other hand, these proponents urge a new look at other technologies for generating electricity from fission: the fast-breeder reactors that work like a perpetual motion machine and require liquid sodium as a coolant, which has a propensity to burn in the presence of either air or water. Others propose a thorium fuel cycle, yet other alternative reactor designs or even fusion, which seems to always be 50 years in the future. All of them would take decades to develop and deploy and face the same hurdles as the dismissed renewable power from the sun, wind and the Earth's own heat. In fact, such advanced nuclear is well behind in the deployment race compared to all these other renewable technologies. As it stands, nuclear power struggles to grow fast enough to keep up with existing reactors that retire and only India and China seem keen on building a new fleet, primarily composed of light water reactors, albeit incorporating the latest in passive safety design. This film springs from director Stone's dismay at the pessimism surrounding efforts to combat climate change and runs somewhat counter to his own first feature, Radio Bikini, which chronicled the horrors of nuclear weapons. But the main question around nuclear power is not answered by this visually compelling and interesting film Pandora's Promise: what if this is an example of a technology that people just cannot handle due to its complexity and unforgiving nature as well as its inability to gain widespread social acceptance? Early in the film, we watch Lynas tour the aftermath of the multiple meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan and have his faith shaken. "There is no other energy source that does this, leaves huge areas contaminated by its strange invisible presence," he notes on camera while wearing a white Tyvek anti-contamination full body suit. "It's kind of eerie. I could say I'm having a wobble. I could see why we'd want to do without nuclear power." By the calculus known as probabilistic risk assessment that governs nuclear power safety in the U.S. we should have one nuclear meltdown in 100,000 years. We've already had such a partial core meltdown at Three Mile Island in the first 50 years of the nuclear era, with at least three more even more drastic core meltdowns worldwide. For many, nuclear power remains more closely related to some of the other woes afflicting humankind that sprang from Pandora's mythical box than the hope that these converts require. Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
? 2013 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pandoras-promise-triumph-hope-over-fear-nuclear-power-163200914.html

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Grown-up Nicole Richie laughs over bad tattoo

TV

Randee Dawn TODAY contributor

17 hours ago

Everybody's got to grow up sometime; it's just that reality stars can take a little longer than some. Well, consider Nicole Richie -- erstwhile star of "The Simple Life" -- all grown up now, and ready to take responsibility for some of her mistakes. Like a particular tattoo.

"My embarrassing tramp stamp!" she laughed about it on TODAY Tuesday morning while discussing her new web series, "#CandidlyNicole."

The show, which posts on AOL on Tuesdays, basically is made up of short videos focusing on her tweets. "Twitter is something that I enjoy doing," she said. "I don't take it that deep."

But while she's still living a funny life via Twitter, her real life is now that of a wife (to Good Charlotte singer Joel Madden) and mom of two kids. "Joel and I are very specific about the way that we do raise our children," she said. "We just do everything that we can to make sure that they live normal lives."

Well, as normal as you can when you've got a rock star for a dad, a web star for a mom and an R&B icon -- in Lionel Richie -- for a granddad. Speaking of which, Richie (who will perform on the TODAY Plaza Friday) appears in the June 11 "#CandidlyNicole" episode doing something surprising -- gardening.

"L-Train is the best at gardening," she said. "We decided to throw him a bone and help him out."

Yep, all grown up now!

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/nicole-richie-grows-gets-candid-about-new-web-series-6C10185383

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How Smartphones Are Trying to Replace Your Doctor (But Can't Yet)

For most of time medicine was a guessing game. Doctors, or witch doctors, or shaman would inspect a patient, stir a potion and hope it would work. With some notable exceptions, modern medicine isn't so different. The data collection?blood pressure, heart rate, weight, reflexes?is largely rudimentary. We're getting by, but technology can take us so much further. Even technology that fits in your pocket.

In the past year or two (or three) iPhones and iPads have been a fixture in doctors' offices around the world. Why carry a clipboard when you could pull up records via Wi-Fi and type the information directly into the patient's medical record? Perhaps even more powerful is the idea that these devices can be collecting data all the time. Smartphones are incredibly powerful tools for anything as simple as data mining to something so sophisticated as measuring a patient's sleeping pattern. There are apps that can help regulate your mental health, apps that can help you keep track of what and how much you eat. There are apps that can take your blood pressure and you blood sugar. There are even apps that help you cope with aging.

While an app can't cure a disease, some of the newer, more experimental medical apps can do truly extraordinary things. This technology can not only help you feel better; it can prevent illness by spotting symptoms early on.

An Ounce of Prevention

The first step?and the one smartphones are best suited for?is prevention, specifically in the form of fitness and nutrition. You probably have at least one Apple fanboy friend with a Nike+ FuelBand. Sure, they're a little bit goofy-looking, but they work fantastically well in collecting data about your workout that you can sync with your home computer or smartphone. Check out some more mobile fitness ideas in our Fitmodo guide.

There are several blood pressure apps, but the iHealth kit (components sold separately) stormed on to the scene a couple of years ago, introducing most of the world to the medical capabilities of the iPhone. Another app called Doctor Mole will help you monitor the grown and progress of your moles. (Yay!) For overall wellness and symptomatology, try iTriage, an app built by doctors for patients.

Old Problems, New Tools

Back in 2009, when Apple first announced accessory support for iPhone OS, it proposed an at-home medical device capable of sending data to doctors. Since then we've seen specialized apps that do everything from checking your weight to your blood sugar levels, and everything in between. iBGSTAR uses a $49 accessory to check glucose levels (and sounds like it's an astronomy or hip hop app, so that's fun). If you want to go for the whole clinic, you can throw down $99 for the iHealth do-it-all app. Separate components do everything from take your blood pressure to monitor your weight. The list goes on and on.

That's just a disclaimer. In truth, new smartphone-based technology is starting to change the way medicine works in America?and elsewhere. See a doctor toting around an iPad instead of a clipboard is not uncommon, nor is seeing a dermatologist use a smartphone camera to monitor potential skin cancers. A number of apps have been released lately by researchers that attempt to better understand the human brain. It's like that psych study you did in college so that you could earn enough beer money to make it through the weekend, only you can do it in the subway.

One of the most robust products on the market is called Epocrates. It's not just one app but a whole suite of specialized resources?everything from pictures of pills to links to labs.

As for the features beyond a smartphone's screen, the data collected by its guts can be pretty powerful in a doctor's hands. The phone's gyroscope is sensitive to movement so it could sense record how much a patient's moving and wrist-based devices like the once problematic Jawbone UP can monitor your movement and sleep patterns. You could also imagine how even the phone's microphone or an enhanced accessory could work three times better than a stethoscope. You can even monitor your heart with apps like AliveCor. And of course, what's really incredible about all of these tools is the sheer quantity of data they collect, data doctor's can use to diagnose diseases.

Next up: tiny robots that tell your smartphone when somethings wrong. Check out this chip that's embedded in your skin and can warn you up to four hours before you're going to have a heart attack. Or these pills with microchips in them that send signals from your belly to your smartphone. Those nanobots, onces that could possibly seek out and destroy cancer cells, those aren't far behind.

Nothing Like the Real Thing

But here comes the caveat: you are not a doctor. No matter how many fancy health apps you have in your phone, unless you've been to medical school, you should really refrain from trying to self-diagnose diseases. There's a chance that you'll make whatever anxiety you already have about mortality much, much worse. Trust me on this one.

Smartphones aren't drugs. (Argue with me on this point, please.) An iPhone may be extremely valuable for tracking symptoms and knowing when it's time to visit your oncologist, but it's no replacement for chemotherapy. Even hacked-out Androids aren't going to cure cancer yet. But even doctors acknowledge that smartphones are changing the game. And the technology is only getting better.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/smartphones-arent-doctors-but-theyre-trying-to-be-511099164

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Animal Crossing: New Leaf (for Nintendo 3DS)

Animal Crossing is a strange game series. It's a little like The Sims and a little like a children's coloring book. You can do whatever you want in your little town, and there are no real rewards or penalties outside of the actions themselves. Still, Animal Crossing's become a successful series since its Nintendo Gamecube debut. The newest game, Animal Crossing: New Leaf for the Nintendo 3DS, adds a handful of fun features, but remains the same relaxing, zen-like experience you'll either love or be very confused by. Regardless, this $34.99 (direct) game is worth a try even if you're new to the series.

The Basics
If you've played an Animal Crossing game before, you know what to expect from New Leaf. If you haven't, it will be a strange, unfocused, but ultimately charming experience. Like in all of the Animal Crossing games, you're a boy or girl sent to live in a small forested town populated by cute animals. You get a home loan from a tanuki shopkeeper, and have to repay your debt to expand your home, but otherwise you have no real objective. You can collect bugs, go fishing, talk to the other townsfolk, find different decorations for your home, and dig for fossils, and influence the town the way you see fit. There's no true end game, outside of selling objects for "bells," the game's currency, and collecting more objects, but that's the point. New Leaf's like a zen garden or a bonsai tree, letting you rake, sand, or trim branches until it "feels" right, then requiring steady, calming upkeep.

Besides the town itself, a shopping district north of the train tracks that form the town's north border holds most of the stores. This district grows and changes with time, starting with a small general store, a post office, a real estate agency, a clothing store, and a strangely large museum/aquarium, and eventually getting additional attractions like a late-night convenience store, a night club, and a "dream suite." The dream suite, along with the Happy Home Association showcase north of the shopping district, are covered below with the game's online functionality.

You're the Mayor Now
This time, you're made mayor of the town as soon as you get off the train for reasons not explained, and this adds a new layer of influence. By going to town hall and sitting at the desk, you can have public works projects started and place things like benches, street lights, clocks, and even a police station (which serves as a lost and found, because there's no crime in Animal Crossing). These things all require "donations" of bells, which will come mostly out of your pockets because the townsfolk tend to be very stingy, but it still makes you feel like you're shaping the town. You can also pass ordinances to make the stores open later or earlier or otherwise slightly change the behavior of the town. These changes are generally cosmetic or useful to players, and the townsfolk will usually only respond positively to them.

There's plenty of fun to have besides just walking around town. The old mayor of the Animal Crossing series, Tortimer, now runs a resort you can access by boat. It's a tiny island with activities and contests in randomly generated areas based on the fishing, swimming, digging, and bug-collecting mechanics. They can include a match game where you dig up random objects in a grid, run through a maze to collect certain kinds of fruit, catch butterflies, or dive for crabs. Instead of bells, you win medals from the games that can be used to buy special items in the resort's own store. You can also explore the small island and its surrounding waters on your own, borrowing fishing poles, bug catching nets, and wet suits to collect even more rare and valuable birds and fish and bring them back to town. In fact, I found running around the island collecting giant beetles and sharks the best way to pay back my home loans, build a bigger house, and fund public works projects.

The game takes place in real time, with day changing to night based on the 3DS' clock, and seasons changing based on the handheld's calendar. Stores open and close based on the time of day, so you might find yourself waiting patiently to find out what new things the town has to offer each day. This gives Animal Crossing a living quality, letting you look for different bugs and fish based on the seasons and enjoying how the town changes over time. It also lets the game have different unique events in the town square, like art shows where you can buy art, or fishing contests where the townsfolk try to catch the biggest fish for a trophy. Changing the 3DS' clock to make the game move forward is possible, but frowned upon and can disrupt how it tracks time (and can make the townspeople dislike you).

Multiplayer Features
While direct multiplayer interaction is limited to inviting friends to your town and visiting their town (using the same frustrating friend code other online Nintendo games use), there are plenty of local and online multiplayer features that don't require swapping numbers. You can visit random users' towns through the Dream Suite, "dreaming" about their towns and exploring without being able to mess with them (which you can do if you're invited to go to a friend's town by train). You can also play games with other resort visitors at Club Tortimer, meeting with random players and competing once you collect enough medals through the single-player resort games to fill out an application to unlock the multiplayer. You can also share your house locally through StreetPass; when you pass another Animal Crossing player who is sharing his home, you trade copies of that home that appear in each player's Happy Home Association showcase north of the shopping district. You can see how they decorated their house and even order similar decorations (for a higher price than if you found them elsewhere).

Besides bells and medals, you can also use 3DS Play Coins (the 10 coins maximum the 3DS accumulates per day through walking around) to buy fortune cookies at the general/convenience store. The cookies themselves don't do anything, but they contain fortunes that you can trade for Nintendo-themed items at the store. They include costume components for Mario, Link, and Samus Aran, and decorations like the Triforce, a Metroid, and an Arwing.

Conclusion
Animal Crossing: New Leaf isn't a massive change from previous Animal Crossing games, but it is a big departure from nearly every other video game out there. It's less a game with rules and objectives and is more like a lazy afternoon in your pocket, where you can just relax and do whatever you want in your little town. It satisfies collectors and fans of the cute and quirky and will keep you playing for weeks, but if you want a defined goal and actual challenge, this might not be the game for you.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/z2MR0_8ez6g/0,2817,2419847,00.asp

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Matthew Dowd: Institution of Marriage Stronger Than Ever

With June such a popular month for weddings and my oldest son getting married this summer (in a barefoot wedding in Woodstock, N.Y., with a Game of Thrones themed reception) and other friends and relatives tying the knot, I thought it a perfect moment to comment on the state of marriage.

Marriage is actually stronger today and on more solid ground than it has been in our history. Yes, I just wrote that. It defies conventional wisdom and what many believe and promulgate every day in our discourse. And it also probably sounds ironic coming from someone who has been married and divorced twice.

Let me explain my rather unconventional statement. I look at marriage as a direct connection with the idea of a trusting commitment based on freedom and love. And when looked at it with that understanding, committed relationships with love as a foundation are more healthy and stronger today than ever before.

For hundreds of years (including in the Old Testament), "traditional" marriage was defined in the following ways: (a) it wasn't monogamous for most of our history; (b) women in the marriage were seen as property and a possession with very limited rights; (c) the freedom to choose whom to marry didn't exist for most people; (d) even when abuse was rampant, women didn't have much choice about leaving; and (e) there was no notion of marriage based on romance, love or mutual trust and respect.

Today, the overwhelming majority of people see marriage in a vastly different way. While there are still many men (and some women) who cling to the traditional idea of marriage, most people would look aghast at the way traditional marriage existed over the centuries. There are still some stereotypes, which allow some men to see their wives as possessions and treat them as such. It is interesting that many women don't discover this until they dare decide to exercise some freedom and lead better lives. In that instant, some men become very angry because how dare their possessions leave and make changes.

Women over the years had bought into this because the relationship gave them something they lacked -- whether it was economic security, physical security or the ability to not have to be alone. Today, women (and men) see the most desired attribute of a fulfilling and meaningful relationship as mutual trust.

Despite the conversation and platitudes espoused regularly, and even with the divorce rate at today's levels, on average marriages today last longer than they did for most of our civilized existence. People died younger, tragic circumstances happened regularly, and today people marry much later in life.

So when one looks at the length and strength of a bond based on love, mutual trust, commitment and freedom as the defining elements, marriage and relationships have never been stronger or healthier or more widespread.

I would point to five developments that highlight and are instructive in this change:

1. People can now choose whom they want to commit to whether it is someone from a different class or race or someone of the same sex. This didn't exist until very recently. This freedom has provided a greater ability to live out one's deepest heartfelt desires and values. Interestingly, gay marriages on average last longer than heterosexual unions and are judged by the participants as happier.
2. The development, availability and acceptance of safe and effective birth control has given people power to choose if and when to have children. This choice gives women (and men) the option of how to live out their commitment. In years past not having this choice anchored many women in unhealthy relationships.
3. Women now work and in many cases earn more than men. This development, while unsettling to some men (and many male Fox News commentators) is good for strengthening a bond based on love and freedom. This gives women the opportunity to enter into their commitments for reasons other than economic ones, and to leave if their marriages are abusive or unfulfilling. This is a very recent change, and while upsetting to some who see marriage in the old way, it is time men (and women) let go of old sexist stereotypes.
4. Men are now more involved in child rearing, and are providing more of a partnership in duties related to the home. While this has been a stereotype slow to change, where women did nearly all the home duties, the expectation is building that there be a shared commitment to work at home. Over time, this will give men a greater degree of emotional connection to their children and spouse, and give some needed relief from the stresses involved in managing a home.
5. The changes in divorce and child support laws over time have begun to give women at least the ability to exit abusive relationships or ones lacking respect, and find a place to lead a more free and open life. One good outcome of this is that it has put men (and women) on notice that some behaviors won't be tolerated.

I am not advocating for divorce, and I am still a big believer in marriage and the idea of a powerful soulful commitment based on mutual respect and trust. I just think that all of us need to look at marriage in the way it has positively evolved today. And let go of the stereotypes that we each became anchored to about what it means to be a man or woman in a relationship.

Once we can "divorce" ourselves from these old stereotypes, we can begin to see love and mutual commitment more clearly and understand that the evolution of marriage has been and will continue to be a very positive development for each of us and society as a whole. I do.

Cross-posted from ABCNews.com

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Follow Matthew Dowd on Twitter: www.twitter.com/matthewjdowd

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-dowd/marriage-stronger-than-ever_b_3382969.html

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Erdogan rejects 'dictator' claims

ISTANBUL (AP) ? Turkey's prime minister on Sunday rejected claims that he is a "dictator," dismissing protesters as an extremist fringe even as thousands returned to the landmark Istanbul square that has become the site of the fiercest anti-government outburst in years.

Over the past three days, protesters around the country have unleashed pent-up resentment against Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who after 10 years in office many Turks see as an uncompromising figure with undue influence in every part of life.

A huge, exuberant protest in Taksim Square subsided overnight, but an estimated 10,000 people again streamed into the area on Sunday, many waving flags, chanting "victory, victory, victory" and calling on Erdogan's government to resign.

Some protesters have compared Erdogan to a sultan and denounced him as a dictator. Scrambling to show he was unbowed and appealing to a large base of conservative Turks who support him, Erdogan delivered two speeches on Sunday and appeared in a television interview.

With Turkish media otherwise giving scant reports about the protests, many turned to social media outlets for information on the unrest.

"There is now a menace which is called Twitter," Erdogan said. "The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society."

Under Erdogan's leadership, Turkey has boosted economic growth and raised its international profile. But he has been a divisive figure at home, with his government recently passing legislation curbing the sale of alcohol and taking a strong stand against the Syrian regime that some believe has put security at risk.

The demonstrations were ignited by a violent police crackdown on a peaceful sit-in to prevent the uprooting of trees at Taksim Square and have since spread around the country.

More skirmishes broke out in the capital, Ankara, on Sunday, with police unleashing tear gas at several thousand protesters who tried to march toward Erdogan's office from the city's main square.

A group of youths formed a barricade and hurled fire bombs or threw back gas canisters at police. An Associated Press reporter saw at least eight injured people being carried away, and police appeared to directly target journalists with tear gas.

In Taksim, dozens of people climbed on the roof of a cultural center that Erdogan says will be demolished and turned into an opera hall. A banner reading "Don't yield" was hung from the building.

"If they call someone who has served the people a 'dictator,' I have nothing to say," Erdogan said in an address to a group representing migrants from the Balkans. "My only concern has been to serve my country."

In another speech delivered an hour later, Erdogan said: "I am not the master of the people. Dictatorship does not run in my blood or in my character. I am the servant of the people."

Police and protesters also clashed violently on Friday and Saturday, leaving hundreds injured. Clouds of tear gas overwhelmed Istanbul's normally touristy city center.

Interior Minister Muammer Guler said some 1,750 people had been detained since May 28, but most had since been released.

Erdogan called the protests "ideological" and manipulated by an opposition "unable to beat (the government) at the ballot box."

He said 89 police vehicles, 42 private cars, four buses and 94 businesses were destroyed by the "vandalism" of the past two days.

Alluding to his party's strong base, Erdogan said he had the power to summon much larger numbers of his supporters at rallies.

"Our supporters are calling and saying 'are we going to stay silent?' but I am urging calm," he said in an interview with Haberturk television.

Erdogan reiterated that his government would not back away from plans to uproot trees at Taksim as part of his urban renovation plans for the area. In a statement that could cause more controversy, he also declared that a mosque would be built at Taksim.

The mosque plans have long been contentious because it would further shrink the green spaces in Istanbul's city center. Some argue that there are already plenty of mosques around Taksim.

"I am not going to seek the permission of the (the opposition) or a handful of looters," Erdogan said.

Erdogan also defended his government's environmental record, saying it had planted two billion trees and built 160 parks since coming to office in 2002.

In Berlin meanwhile, about 500 people staged a peaceful solidarity protest outside the Turkish Embassy.

"The people are finally standing up, speaking up and fighting for their rights," said Hakan Tas, a deputy for the Left Party in Berlin's local assembly, who took part in the protest.

_____

Fraser reported from Ankara. Burhan Ozbilici in Ankara and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/erdogan-rejects-dictator-claims-132920777.html

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Stocks start mixed; automakers rise

NEW YORK (AP) ? Stocks are getting off to a mixed start on Wall Street.

Automakers rose as traders anticipate good sales reports for last month.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 36 points to 15,150 shortly after the opening bell Monday. That's a gain of 0.2 percent.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell two points to 1,628, or 0.1 percent. The Nasdaq fell 10 points to 3,445.

Industry analysts believe automakers will report that sales rose 7 percent in May, which would put the annualized rate back above 15 million. Sales dropped below that threshold in April for the first time in six months.

Ford and General Motors each rose 2 percent in early trading.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stocks-start-mixed-automakers-rise-134831490.html

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