Diamond, Streep, Ma feted at Kennedy Center

WASHINGTON?? Meryl Streep received her next film assignment over the weekend from a friend ? to play the role of Hillary Rodham Clinton in a future film ? as Streep and four others were saluted with the Kennedy Center Honors.

Writer Nora Ephron said Streep's talent, versatility and resemblance to Clinton made it "inevitable" that she would one day play the secretary of state and former first lady. Clinton, who flew home for 36 hours to celebrate the honorees over the weekend, just laughed, while Streep stood up for a better look at the nation's top diplomat.

Along with Streep, pop singer Neil Diamond, Broadway singer Barbara Cook famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma and jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins joined in receiving the nation's top award Sunday night for those who have influenced American culture through the arts.

Caroline Kennedy, who hosts the show as part of a living memorial to her father, John F. Kennedy, acknowledged her personal connection to one honoree.

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In a nod to Diamond, she said he was "a Brooklyn lad with a gift of melody who grew into a solitary man, 'reaching out, touching me.'" That was enough to draw big laughs as the crowd of celebrities and politicians recalled that Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" was named for her.

"I'm going to have to thank her for that," Diamond said before the show, noting that the song is a story about he and his former wife. But he took the name from Kennedy.

Smokey Robinson sang "Sweet Caroline" with help from Kennedy and fans brought in from Boston's Fenway Park where it's a favorite anthem.

Lionel Richie, who sang, "I Am ... I Said," told The Associated Press he got into the music business because he wanted to be Diamond.

"He's a great storyteller," Richie said. "He's not an acrobatic singer. Basically he told the story in a very simple voice."

Classical music stole the show's finale, though, with surprise tributes from Stephen Colbert ? who seemed lost at first ? and the puppet Elmo from TV's "Sesame Street."

"Tonight we celebrate the greatest living cellist," Colbert said "We chell-ebrate, if you will."

Story: Meryl Streep's daughter Mamie Gummer weds

Ma, one of the best-known classical musicians, has played cello since he was 4. At age 7, he played for presidents Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Now at 56, he is hailed as a musical ambassador to the world who has spanned styles from Bluegrass to sounds from the Silk Road with an ensemble he founded. Many of his friends performed in his honor.

Elmo, dressed in a tux, said he came to honor his friend, Ma who taught him that "music is like a playground" that makes everybody happy.

James Taylor and conductor John Williams joined in a performance of "Here Comes the Sun" with a string ensemble.

CBS will broadcast the show on Dec. 27.

Earlier President Barack Obama lauded the actors and musicians at the White House.

"They have different talents, and they've traveled different paths," Obama said. "And yet they belong here together because each of tonight's honorees has felt the need to express themselves and share that expression with the world."

He said everyone has that desire for self-expression in common.

"That's why we dance, even if, as Michelle says, I look silly doing it," he added to laughter.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton flew home between visits to Myanmar and Germany to honor the artists with a dinner Saturday night. After visiting the isolated Southeast Asian country also known as Burma, Clinton said such U.S. artists have worldwide influence by using their freedom of creativity.

"You may not know it, but somewhere in a little tiny room in Burma or even in North Korea, someone is desperately trying to hear you or to see you, to experience you," Clinton said. "And if they are lucky enough to make that connection, it can literally change lives and countries."

Streep, 62, has made more than 45 movies and won two Oscars in her career. Her movies have spanned Shakespeare and "Angles in America" to portraying chef Julia Child in "Julie and Julia."

In her upcoming film, Streep will play British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the upcoming "The Iron Lady."

Streep said she was in awe of the accolades from the president and others.

"Look where we are, look who's here," Streep told The Associated Press. "It's overwhelming. I feel very proud."

Emily Blunt and Anne Hathaway who co-stared with Streep in "The Devil Wears Prada," joined Kevin Kline and Stanley Tucci for a musical tribute to Streep.

Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick opened the tributes to Cook, recalling the days when they first started dating and went to hear Cook sing at the Caf? Carlyle in New York.

"I don't think Matthew at the time knew what kind of special memory he was creating for us," Parker said.

"Oh, I knew," Broderick said back.

Cook, 84, made her Broadway debut in 1951, and later Leonard Bernstein cast her in his musical "Candide." She topped that performance as Marian the Librarian in 1957's hit musical "The Music Man," for which she won a Tony Award.

A film tribute noted Cook went silent for a decade, due to drinking and depression, but she came back.

Glenn Close called her an icon for anyone who has worked on Broadway.

"I think we have the biggest respect for her because she really has survived, survived and prevailed," Close said.

Rollins, 81, is a jazz saxophonist who has shared the stage with Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, among others.

"America is the home of jazz. It's what we started," he said. "By the way, hip hop music is a part of jazz, believe it or not."

Friend Bill Cosby marveled about how he has heard Rollins' distinctive sax around the world in Greece, Hong Kong, Italy ? and found so many people who knew the musician's work.

"All over the world, Sonny Rollins," Cosby said.

Benny Golson and Herbie Hancock joined in playing some of Rollins' tunes.

Fellow sax player and former President Bill Clinton said earlier that he has been a fan since the age of 15 or 16 when he bought his first Rollins LP and played it until it was worn out.

"His music can bend your mind, it can break your heart, and it can make you laugh out loud," Clinton said. "He has done things with improvisation that really no one has ever done."

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45550505/ns/today-entertainment/

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Congo's Kabila leads election in early results (AP)

KINSHASA, Congo ? Congo's president, seeking a second term in a nation reeling from poverty and pummeled by war, was leading Saturday in early results, but his opponents insisted he step aside and accused him of trying to engineer "carnage."

President Joseph Kabila had 50.3 percent of the vote in early results from an election marred by technical problems and accusations of favoritism. Analysts had predicted he would likely win because the opposition candidates are splitting the vote.

In a show of unity, the 10 opposition parties held a press conference and accused Kabila of attempting to engineer a situation like Kenya, Zimbabwe or the Ivory Coast, all countries where rulers used the army to try to silence dissent and cling to power after losing at the polls.

"I think that Joseph Kabila could go down in history ... if he were to say, 'I'm a good sport and I lost,'" said opposition candidate Vital Kamerhe, a former speaker of Parliament. "He is preparing a carnage."

International observers noted irregularities including possible instances of fraud, but most said the shortcomings seemed to be due to technical glitches rather than a systematic attempt to rig the vote.

Due to bad weather, planes carrying ballots did not take off in time to reach the remote interior of the giant nation, which stretches over a territory as large as Western Europe.

Monday's vote had to be extended for three days in order to give porters carrying ballots on their heads, on bicycles, in canoes and in wheelbarrows to reach the distant corners of this gigantic nation at the heart of Africa.

Election commission chief Daniel Ngoy Mulunda released province by province tallies Saturday he said amounted to 33 percent of all voting bureaus, showing that Kabila was ahead with 3.27 million of the 6.48 million votes counted so far. Opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi was trailing with 2.23 million votes, or 34.4 percent.

The gap between them is sure to close when results from Kinshasa are released, where poll workers in the four warehouses processing votes were visibly overwhelmed.

Sacks of ballots were being brought in on the backs of poll workers; there were so many they were being piled in the parking lot outside. Some had split open, and ballots had fallen into the mud or the cement floor of the warehouse, where they were being trampled by election workers.

As of Friday, less than 5 percent of the ballots in one of the four warehouses had been processed, said a poll worker who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the press. The election official complained they were not being brought food or even water, and several of the poll workers were asleep, splayed out across tables with bags of ballots piled up around them.

The results released from Kinshasa represent only 3.33 percent of the capital's precincts, said Mulunda. In the small sample that was released, Tshisekedi had so far received roughly twice as many votes as Kabila, nearly 43,000 compared to the 23,000 cast for the incumbent. Over 3 million voters are registered in Kinshasa, so it's possible that Tshisekedi will be able to catch up once the capital's tallies are in.

Still, the opposition has clearly been hurt by its inability to unite behind a single candidate. In the results released so far, nearly a million votes had been cast for the nine opposition candidates besides 79-year-old Tshisekedi. That's roughly equal to the gap now separating Tshisekedi from Kabila.

The opposition leaders said they are seeking a group of "African sages," to act as mediators in order to tell Kabila to step aside.

"We know who lost. We know who won," said Kamerhe. "We are asking the sages of Africa ... to go tell their counterpart, change is not the end of the world. You can come back in 10 years, 15 years. But leave the nation of Congo in peace. Because it's not worth burning Congo for one person," he said.

Tshisekedi's supporters on Saturday attacked the car of a team of foreign correspondents, accusing the international community of propping up Kabila in order to help him win re-election. Hotels were emptying out on Saturday as expatriates left the country ahead of what is expected to be a violent week.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/africa/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111203/ap_on_re_af/af_congo_election

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Gingrich praises Cain for optimism, big ideas (AP)

NEW YORK ? Newt Gingrich is praising GOP presidential rival Herman Cain for bringing optimism and big ideas to the 2012 campaign.

Gingrich, a former House speaker, made his comments at a tea party rally on New York's Staten Island, not long after Cain said he was suspending his campaign.

Polls show that Gingrich's candidacy has surged in recent weeks, with many showing him topping the Republican field.

Gingrich refused to say the race has come down to a two-man contest with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney just a month before the first vote, in Iowa.

Gingrich says any of the Republicans could rebound before the Iowa caucuses, just as he did after his campaign almost collapsed last summer.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111203/ap_on_el_pr/us_gingrich

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Dos Santos happy to pen new Barcelona deal

Jonathan dos Santos is delighted with his new deal at Barcelona.

Jonathan, brother of former Barca forward Giovani, remains on the fringes of the Barca first team but is a valued member of the club's 'B' side.

The 21-year-old, who has signed on until 2015, told Barca TV: "I have gone through all the categories, I fought hard, I had some difficult years. I was ready to leave the club, not everything always goes well.

"I am a born fighter, and I never wanted to leave here. I'm very happy."

Source: http://www.tribalfootball.com/articles/dos-santos-happy-pen-new-barcelona-deal-2533451?utm_source=main_feed

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Immigration scam awareness campaign goes national (Providence Journal)

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US lawmakers blast plans for training Iraqi police (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Democrats and Republicans are joining together in harshly criticizing a State Department program for training Iraq's police force.

Lawmakers at House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing Wednesday said it was a waste of money to spend nearly $900 million in the 2012 budget year on Iraqi police training.

They cited an October report from a U.S. government watchdog that said the training program lacked focus, could become a "bottomless pit" for U.S. dollars and may not even be wanted by the Iraqis.

That audit also found that only about 12 percent of the money actually will go to helping the Iraqi police. It said most will pay for security and other items such as living quarters for trainers.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iraq/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111130/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq_police_training

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Sharp decline in pollution from U.S. coal power plants, NASA satellite confirms

ScienceDaily (Dec. 1, 2011) ? A team of scientists have used the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA's Aura satellite to confirm major reductions in the levels of a key air pollutant generated by coal power plants in the eastern United States. The pollutant, sulfur dioxide, contributes to the formation of acid rain and can cause serious health problems.

The scientists, led by an Environment Canada researcher, have shown that sulfur dioxide levels in the vicinity of major coal power plants have fallen by nearly half since 2005. The new findings, the first satellite observations of this type, confirm ground-based measurements of declining sulfur dioxide levels and demonstrate that scientists can potentially measure levels of harmful emissions throughout the world, even in places where ground monitoring is not extensive or does not exist. About two-thirds of sulfur dioxide pollution in American air comes from coal power plants. Geophysical Research Letters published details of the new research this month.

The scientists attribute the decline in sulfur dioxide to the Clean Air Interstate Rule, a rule passed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2005 that called for deep cuts in sulfur dioxide emissions. In response to that rule, many power plants in the United States have installed desulfurization devices and taken other steps that limit the release of sulfur dioxide. The rule put a cap on emissions, but left it up to power companies to determine how to reduce emissions and allowed companies to trade pollution credits.

While scientists have used the Ozone Monitoring Instrument to observe sulfur dioxide levels within large plumes of volcanic ash and over heavily polluted parts of China in the past, this is the first time they have observed such subtle details over the United States, a region of the world that in comparison to fast-growing parts of Asia now has relatively modest sulfur dioxide emissions. Just a few decades ago, sulfur dioxide pollution was quite severe in the United States. Levels of the pollutant have dropped by about 75 percent since the 1980s due largely to the passage of the Clean Air Act.

Vitali Fioletov, a scientist based in Toronto at Environment Canada, and his colleagues developed a new mathematical approach that made the improved measurements a reality. The approach centers on averaging measurements within a 30 miles radius (50 km) of a sulfur dioxide source over several years. "Vitali has developed an extremely powerful technique that makes it possible to detect emissions even when levels of sulfur dioxide are about four times lower than what we could detect previously," said Nickolay Krotkov, a researcher based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and a coauthor of the new paper.

The technique allowed Fioletov and his colleagues to pinpoint the sulfur dioxide signals from the 40 largest sulfur dioxide sources in the United States -- generally coal power plants that emit more than 70 kilotons of sulfur dioxide per year. The scientists observed major declines in sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia by comparing levels of the pollutant for an average of the period 2005 to 2007 with another average from 2008 to 2010.

"What we're seeing in these satellite observations represents a major environmental accomplishment," said Bryan Bloomer, an Environmental Protection Agency scientist familiar with the new satellite observations. "This is a huge success story for the EPA and the Clean Air Interstate Rule," he said.

The researchers focused their analysis on the United States to take advantage of the presence of a robust network of ground-based instruments that monitor sulfur dioxide emissions inside power plant smokestacks. The ground-based instruments have logged a 46 percent decline in sulfur dioxide levels since 2005 -- a finding consistent with the 40 percent reduction observed by OMI.

"Now that we've confirmed that the technique works, the next step is to use it for other parts of the world that don't have ground-based sensors," said Krotkov. "The real beauty of using satellites is that we can apply the same technique to the entire globe in a consistent way." In addition, the team plans to use a similar technique to monitor other important pollutants that coal power plants release, such as nitrogen dioxide, a precursor to ozone.

OMI, a Dutch and Finnish built instrument, was launched in 2004, as one of four instruments on the NASA Aura satellite, and can measure sulfur dioxide more accurately than any satellite instrument flown to date. Though OMI remains in very good condition and scientists expect it to continue producing high-quality data for many years, the researchers also hope to use data from an upcoming Dutch-built OMI follow-on instrument called TROPOMI that is expected to launch on a European Space Agency satellite in 2014.

On July 6, 2011, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), requiring 27 states to significantly reduce power plant emissions that contribute to ozone and fine particle pollution in other states. This rule replaces EPA's 2005 Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR). A December 2008 court decision kept the requirements of CAIR in place temporarily but directed EPA to issue a new rule to implement Clean Air Act requirements concerning the transport of air pollution across state boundaries. This action responds to the court's concerns.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center.

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. V. E. Fioletov, C. A. McLinden, N. Krotkov, M. D. Moran, K. Yang. Estimation of SO₂ emissions using OMI retrievals. Geophysical Research Letters, 2011; 38 (21) DOI: 10.1029/2011GL049402

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://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111201163608.htm

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