SF transit agency, unions reach deal to end strike

With the BART transit system on strike, traffic slows on Interstate 80 leading to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge during the morning commute Monday, Oct. 21, 2013, in Berkeley, Calif. San Francisco Bay Area commuters started the new work week on Monday with gridlocked roadways and long lines for buses and ferries as a major transit strike entered its fourth day. At the same time, federal investigators were searching for clues to a weekend train crash that killed two workers. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

With the BART transit system on strike, traffic slows on Interstate 80 leading to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge during the morning commute Monday, Oct. 21, 2013, in Berkeley, Calif. San Francisco Bay Area commuters started the new work week on Monday with gridlocked roadways and long lines for buses and ferries as a major transit strike entered its fourth day. At the same time, federal investigators were searching for clues to a weekend train crash that killed two workers. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

With the BART transit system on strike, traffic slows on Interstate 80 leading to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge during the morning commute Monday, Oct. 21, 2013, in Berkeley, Calif. San Francisco Bay Area commuters started the new work week on Monday with gridlocked roadways and long lines for buses and ferries as a major transit strike entered its fourth day. At the same time, federal investigators were searching for clues to a weekend train crash that killed two workers. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

A traffic sign on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge alerts motorists to expect delays because of the BART transit strike Monday, Oct. 21, 2013, in Oakland, Calif. Frustrated San Francisco Bay Area commuters started the work week on Monday with gridlocked roadways and long lines for buses and ferries as a major transit strike entered its fourth day. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

With the BART transit system on strike, a San Francisco Bay Ferry makes its way toward the Ferry Building Monday, Oct. 21, 2013, in San Francisco. Frustrated bay area commuters started the work week on Monday with gridlocked roadways and long lines for buses and ferries as a major transit strike entered its fourth day. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

With the BART transit system on strike, a San Francisco Bay Ferry passes Alcatraz Island Monday, Oct. 21, 2013, in San Francisco, Calif. Frustrated San Francisco Bay Area commuters started the work week on Monday with gridlocked roadways and long lines for buses and ferries as a major transit strike entered its fourth day. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — The San Francisco Bay Area's main commuter train system and its unions reached a tentative agreement on a new contract Monday night, ending a crippling four-day strike.

Union officials announced the deal, which still requires approval from union members, then from the Bay Area Rapid Transit's board of directors.

BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost said limited service would begin Tuesday at 4 a.m. on all lines. BART officials hoped trains would be running at full strength in time for the afternoon commute.

BART is the nation's fifth-largest rail system, with an average weekday ridership of 400,000.

Workers walked off the job on Friday after talks broke down. Commuters endured jammed roadways and long lines for buses and ferries, as they looked for alternate ways around the region.

The talks between BART and its two largest unions dragged on for six months— a period that saw two chaotic dayslong strikes, contentious negotiations and frazzled commuters wondering if they would wake up to find the trains running or not.

"The public expects us to resolve our differences and to keep the Bay Area moving," BART general manager Grace Crunican said Monday night.

Crunican said there would be no immediate announcements on the details while union leaders explained the agreement to their members, but she said it was a compromise and added: "This deal is more than we wanted to pay."

Negotiations resumed and a settlement was reached just two days after two track workers were killed in a BART train accident in Walnut Creek. Federal investigators said Monday that the train was run by a BART employee who was being trained to operate trains. Union officials had warned that training managers to operate trains during the walkout could be dangerous.

"This is a reminder, this weekend, that this is about people," said Lt Gov. Gavin Newsom, who joined BART and union officials to announce the settlement.

Of the strike, he said, "This has got to be the last time this happens."

Antonette Bryant, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555, expressed her condolences Monday night to the families of the workers who were killed.

"We did not want to strike," she said, "and we are glad to have a tentative agreement that we feel will work for all parties."

The key issues in the negotiations were salaries and worker contributions to their health and pension plans.

Talks began in April, three months before the June 30 contract expirations, but both sides were far apart. The unions initially asked for 23.2 percent in raises over three years. BART countered, offering a four-year contract with 1 percent raises contingent on the agency meeting economic goals.

The unions contended that members made $100 million in concessions when they agreed to a deal in 2009 as BART faced a $310 million deficit. And they said they wanted their members to get their share of a $125 million operating surplus produced through increased ridership.

But the transit agency countered that it needed to control costs to help pay for new rail cars and other improvements.

BART and its workers all but agreed on the typically contentious contract issues of wages and benefits. Then a deal fell apart, and workers went on strike Friday for a second time.

The main sticking point was work rules, which can be anything from how schedules are made and how grievances are handled to how paychecks are distributed and whether reports are written electronically or in longhand. For workers, stricter rules create stability in their assignments and how they do their jobs. For managers, they limit how flexibly and efficiently they can run the system.

Some of the biggest work-rule changes BART sought relate to work shifts and worker protections.

For example, BART wanted to be able to change work schedules with greater ease; the unions wanted to preserve schedules such as a 4-day, 10-hour week, saying this would help workers with child care and other obligations. Other proposed changes would have affected the handling of worker claims of discrimination or harassment by managers.

BART workers also walked off the job in early July, shutting down train service for nearly five days.

___

Thanawala reported from San Francisco. Associated Press writers Haven Daley and Terence Chea in Walnut Creek contributed to this report.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-10-22-BART%20Strike/id-339591a76648483aa05a0cb0903fa77b
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T-Mobile HTC One Android 4.3 update now live

Big update for HTC One owners on T-Mobile US

Right on schedule, the Android 4.3 update for the HTC One on T-Mobile US has begun rolling out, bringing T-Mo's version of HTC's flagship up to the latest platform version. The update also brings some extra features to HTC's Sense 5 UI, including new video highlight themes, Instagram support in BlinkFeed and greater control over the way "home" and "menu" button functionality works.

If you're rocking an HTC One on T-Mobile, hit the comments and let us know how you're getting on. Next up is Verizon's HTC One, which launched with Android 4.2 and already has many of the new Sense features. That device is due to get Android 4.3 around the end of the month.

Source: Android Central forums

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/4XWSEWs5cvA/story01.htm
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Revolt TV CEO on Sean Combs' Plan to Conquer Cable

Sean Combs is betting big on Revolt TV.

At 5 p.m. EST Monday, the all music channel goes live in the homes of about 22 million Comcast subscribers and 12 million Time Warner Cable customers, marking one of the biggest launches of a cable channel in years.

Revolt TV is the latest brainchild of Combs (aka Diddy, P. Diddy, Puff Daddy), a serial entrepreneur who has found success in music as an executive and hip hop artist as well as in fashion, liquor, marketing and more, helping him accumulate a fortune that Forbes estimated in 2012 at $550 million.

Now, seven years after he first conceived a new kind of all music channel, Combs is pouring tens of millions of that into launching a service aimed at 18 to 34 year olds – members of the Millennial generation – who consume more music than ever but not necessarily in traditional ways like listening to the radio or watching cable TV. In fact, they are the generation often described as “cord cutters,” because they haven’t rushed to subscribe to cable and often are more likely to view TV on a mobile phone or tablet computer than on the living room flat screen.

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Combs has chosen Keith Clinkscales, who helped Quincy Jones launch Vibe magazine and spent years doing content development for ESPN, to be CEO of Revolt TV. He hired former MTV programming chief Andy Schuon as president. They have been working with a team of more than 100 other hires, mostly at Los Angeles headquarters and in New York City, to figure out how to make the all music formula work on TV.

Clinkscales says it's a good time to launch because music and digital consumption are both up.

"You have more and more bands and artists going across the whole eco system. Music is very healthy," Clinkscales tells The Hollywood Reporter. "To have a place that can be the center of that—we would like to earn that position by reaching our fans well. We have to have good access and engage with the artists and be able to go ahead and provide sponsors, advertisers, and record companies a place we can meet."

Two decades after he founded Bad Boy Records, Combs at 44 seems confident he can reach the younger generation and build a significant business by reaching his audience on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media as a way to lure them to watch his cable channel. He calls it the first launch in the era of social media.

His pitch is simple. It will be fresh, new and unlike what you have seen before. “I said it twice,” he recently tweeted, “and imma say it again. No Rules. Anything can happen. @RevoltTV.”

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Combs has crisscrossed the country in the last year meeting with brands and advertisers, talking up his channel vision to advertisers, media and some private investors who have joined his latest venture as minority investors.

He seems confident even though there are lots of challenges for a music channel. Consider that MTV started with a business plan similar to what Combs has in mind – get lots of videos at little cost from record companies and artists, present them with exciting young personalities, fill in airtime with music oriented news and attract advertisers who are hip to the value of this audience.

What happened, however, was that over time MTV couldn’t generate high enough ratings with that formula. So it shifted its focus to individual shows, first with reality and then scripted, pushing the music to MTV 2, until that too became more series oriented.

There is also Fuse, a music channel owned by The Madison Square Garden Company, Mark Cuban’s AXS pay channel, and of course Viacom’s VH-1, which programs music and series but for a somewhat older crowd. All have struggled to build their own viewership to a significant level. 

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Revolt TV is one of about ten channels chosen by Comcast for carriage in fulfillment of a 2011 agreement when the big cable company bought NBCUniversal to provide more diversity across the dial. Combs was one of those who sought such carriage and he won that lottery; but now he has to prove his formula will really draw Millennials.

Clinkscales says that both Comcast and Time Warner Cable, which is also a charter carrier of Revolt TV, see this as a way to turn those cable cutters into cable consumers. The two cable giants are distributing but are not investors in Revolt TV.

“The leadership opportunity for them was to recognize what were trying to do is reach a new generation of people that are going to be watching cable in the future,” says Clinkscales. “When I came out of college getting cable was an extremely important thing in my life. For the generation currently coming out of college and going into the workforce that challenge is something cable operators have to address. We’re hoping to develop the kind of product that can help them meet that challenge.”

Clinkscales says that they believe the combination of social media, an online presence (but not a full stream of the channel) and smart programming carefully targeted at their Millennial audience will draw in viewers, who then will return because of the environment of music, culture, fashion and insider insights that they will create.

“This won’t be just a channel,” says Clinkscales. “The main thing were going to do is be a place where you can get news and information about music. We want to make sure when you come to Revolt, you’re getting a full picture of what is happing in the world of music.”

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In September, Revolt TV hired Bruce Perlmutter, the former editor of E! News and E! Online, to head the news operation. Clinkscales says they will have reports not only about music newsmakers, but also behind the scenes at concerts, music festivals and related events.

The shows being planned are being designed both to attract Millennials and to interact with them. One called Power To The People is supposed to reflect content based on feedback from the audience.

Combs' presence suggests that music and the related news will be mostly urban, hip-hop and possibly R&B-related, but Combs has said (and Clinkscales is adamant) it will program beyond that.

“We are working hard from the launch to be not just an urban channel but a channel that covers all music from alternative to rock and roll to hip-hop and down the line.”

Even country? “If young people bang it,” promises Clinkscales, “we’ll cover it. If the target audience we are after likes electronic dance music, we’re going to be there.”

They don’t plan to sign a lot of artists to exclusive music and video breaks, at least not initially. And Clinkscales insist that it will be one of the few places to discover emerging artists – whom it plans to identify early on and bring to the market.

“We want artists to be more vulnerable & say what they really feel,” read a recent Revolt TV tweet, “even introduce us into their private lives. Don't be upset when they do.”

“We're out here on a mission,” read another tweet, “to use music as an influence to make your OWN rules. Get it ? No Rules.”

Revolt TV also has a movie division, Revolt Film, which to date has one picture and one documentary under its belt. The movie, Lawless, starring Shia LaBeouf and Jessica Chastain, was released in Aug. 2012 and grossed about $51 million worldwide. Revolt Film came on board Lawless as a financier after it's premiere at the Cannes International Film Festival.

So will Combs rule as he has in hip-hop, fashion and as a vodka salesman? He has said he is ready to do and spend what it takes for as long as it takes.

“You can feel music now bringing back the excitement and emotion of the timeless years,” read another Revolt TV tweet. “It's a marathon, not a sprint.”

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/business/~3/t2XjlCkaFxQ/story01.htm
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UFC’s new public service campaign “Protect Yourself At All Times” designed to increase HIV awareness

Much as the NFL has decided to use its resources to promote breast cancer awareness, the UFC has come up with a similar plan to promote HIV awareness, particularly among young people who are being infected at an alarmingly high rate.

The Center for Disease Control & Prevention said the awareness about HIV and AIDS among those under 35 is surprisingly poor. Given that the UFC's strength is with the 18-to-34-year-old demographic, chief operating officer Ike Lawrence Epstein felt it was natural for the company to team with the Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada to promote the "Protect Yourself at all Times," campaign.

In the last two years in the U.S., half of all new cases of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, affected those under 30. The Center for Disease Control & Prevention referred to the lack of education among young people about HIV prevention and safe sex practices as "shocking," "astonishing," and "just unacceptable."

Given its audience and the fact that all UFC fighters must take an HIV test prior to a fight, Epstein said the campaign made sense. It has the perfect platform to reach those in danger of contracting HIV, he said.

"As someone who grew up in the 1980s and saw the virus beaten back with education in the 1990s, I was stunned to learn from our friends at The Center that HIV is still having such a dramatic impact on young people," Epstein said. "No other sport reaches the under-35 demographic like the UFC does and the UFC felt a duty to try and do something about this situation.

"It gives me great pride to announce the UFC will be partnering with The Center, LBGTQ+ and other organizations for a project we are calling 'Protect Yourself At All Times.' This will be a local, national and, ultimately, international campaign designed to educate the UFC’s vast core audience of under 35s about the realities of HIV."

The UFC's campaign will urge people to take an HIV test and to practice safe sex. UFC fighters will make appearances on behalf of the program and the UFC will produce ads and public service announcements.

UFC Hall of Famer Forrest Griffin and women's bantamweight contender Liz Carmouche are serving as spokespersons for the project.

"I had 15 fights in the UFC Octagon during my career, and before each and every one of them, I had an HIV test," Griffin said. "I'm encouraging everybody to show themselves and their partners the same respect I showed my opponents by getting tested and protecting themselves at all times."

The campaign will be rolled out leading up to Worlds AIDS Day on Dec. 1.

Carmouche said she is participating because it is something that should not be taken for granted.

"There's a feeling of invincibility that comes with being young, with being fit and in the prime of your life," Carmouche said. "But I learned when I was in the Marines just like I've learned as a UFC fighter that no one is invincible, and that you have to project yourself at all times."

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/ufc-public-campaign-protect-yourself-times-designed-increase-005606847--mma.html
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France joins list of allies angry over NSA spying

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry waves to the media as he arrives at the U.S. embassy for a meeting with the Arab League in Paris, Monday, Oct. 21, 2013. Kerry is in Paris for diplomatic talks about a peace process for Israel and Palestinian authorities. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry waves to the media as he arrives at the U.S. embassy for a meeting with the Arab League in Paris, Monday, Oct. 21, 2013. Kerry is in Paris for diplomatic talks about a peace process for Israel and Palestinian authorities. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

U.S Ambassador to France Charles H. Rivkin, right, leaves the Foreign Ministry in Paris, after he was summoned Monday, Oct. 21, 2013. The French government had summoned the ambassador to explain why the Americans spied on one of their closest allies. Le Monde newspaper said Monday, Oct. 21, 2013 that documents leaked by Edward Snowden show that the U.S. National Security Agency swept up 70.3 million French phone records in a 30-day period. (AP Photo/Claude Paris)

U.S Ambassador to France Charles H. Rivkin, right, leaves the Foreign Ministry in Paris, after he was summoned Monday, Oct. 21, 2013. The French government had summoned the ambassador to explain why the Americans spied on one of their closest allies. Le Monde newspaper said Monday, Oct. 21, 2013 that documents leaked by Edward Snowden show that the U.S. National Security Agency swept up 70.3 million French phone records in a 30-day period. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

FILE - In this March 8, 2013 file photo, U.S Ambassador to France Charles H. Rivkin, stands as the US national anthem is played aboard US aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, in Marseille, southern France. Le Monde newspaper says Monday, Oct.21, 2013 that documents leaked by Edward Snowden show that the U.S. National Security Agency swept up 70.3 million French phone records in a 30-day period. The French government has summoned the Rivkin to explain why the Americans spied on one of their closest allies.(AP Photo/Claude Paris, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Joining a growing list of angry allies, France on Monday demanded an explanation from Washington of a report that the U.S. swept up 70 million French telephone records and text messages in its global surveillance net, even recording certain private conversations.

The fallout prompted a phone call from President Barack Obama to President Francois Hollande and, the White House said, an acknowledgment by Obama that the episode raises "legitimate questions for our friends and allies" about how U.S. surveillance capabilities are employed. Hollande's office issued a strongly worded statement afterward expressing "profound reprobation" over U.S. actions that it said intruded on the private lives of French citizens.

Spying among friendly countries is classic tradecraft but the sweep and scope of the National Security Agency program have surprised allies and raised indignation among those targeted — Germany, Mexico and Brazil among them.

The report in Le Monde, co-written by Glenn Greenwald, who originally revealed the surveillance program based on leaks from former NSA analyst Edward Snowden, found that when certain phone numbers were used, conversations were automatically recorded. The surveillance operation also gathered text messages based on key words, Le Monde reported.

"This sort of practice between partners that invades privacy is totally unacceptable and we have to make sure, very quickly, that this no longer happens," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. "We fully agree that we cooperate to fight terrorism. It is indispensable. But this does not justify that personal data of millions of our compatriots are snooped on."

Seeking to limit damage in relations with one of America's closest allies, Obama called Hollande late Monday and made clear the U.S. government is reviewing its intelligence-gathering "so that we properly balance the legitimate security concerns of our citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that all people share," a White House statement said. The statement said some recent disclosures have "distorted our activities" while others have raised genuine concerns by other countries.

Earlier, the French government summoned U.S. Ambassador Charles Rivkin for answers. A statement issued by the U.S. Embassy in Paris said Rivkin assured Alexandre Ziegler, chief of staff to Fabius, that "our ongoing bilateral consultations on allegations of information-gathering by U.S. government agencies would continue."

The level of the diplomatic consultation at the time — between the U.S. ambassador and only an aide to Fabius — suggested that France was modulating its response. Secretary of State John Kerry landed in Paris early Monday for meetings on Middle East issues and could have been contacted immediately if it appeared relations were in deeper trouble. But the matter was subsequently elevated with Obama's phone call.

Hollande's office said later that the French leader asked Obama to make available all information on NSA spying of French communications.

Kerry would not confirm the newspaper account or discuss intelligence-gathering except to say: "Lots of countries are engaged in the activity of trying to protect their citizens in the world."

Le Monde reported that from Dec. 10, 2012 to Jan. 8 of this year, 70.3 million recordings of French citizens' telephone data were made by the NSA. Intercepts peaked at almost 7 million in Dec. 24 and again on Jan. 7, the paper said. The targets were people with suspected links to terrorism and people chosen because of their roles in business, politics or the French government, the report said.

Former CIA officer Bob Baer, who was stationed in Paris for three years, said the French intelligence service regularly spies on Americans — both on U.S. diplomats and business people. The spying has included rifling through possessions of a diplomat, businessman or spy in Paris hotel rooms and installing listening devices in first-class seats of the now-defunct Concord aircraft to record Americans' conversations, he said.

In another instance, a former French intelligence director stated that the spy agency compiled a detailed secret dossier of the proprietary proposals that U.S. and Soviet companies wrote to compete with a French company for a $1 billion contract to supply fighter jets to India.

But while corporate and spy- vs.-spy espionage may be common, the newspaper report indicated that French citizens were unwittingly drawn into U.S. surveillance, too.

Dennis Blair, a former director of national intelligence, tried to broker a closer intelligence-sharing relationship with France, so the two would simply ask each other to explain political or economic policies directly instead of resorting to snooping.

"The U.S. is overwhelmed by cooperation by France on things like ... terrorism and organized crime," Blair said in an interview Monday. "It dwarfs the amount of time we spend on spying on each other. I'm hoping the day will come when both countries realize they have a lot more to be gained by working with each other, but we're not quite there yet."

The most recent documents cited by Le Monde, dated April 2013, indicated the NSA's interest in communications linked to Wanadoo — once part of France Telecom — and Alcatel-Lucent, the French-American telecom company. One of the documents instructed analysts to draw not only from the electronic surveillance program, but also from another initiative dubbed Upstream, which allowed surveillance on undersea communications cables.

Snowden's leaks exposing details of the U.S. global surveillance apparatus have sparked an international debate over the limits of American spying. The strongest objection has come from Brazil.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff canceled a state visit to Washington over a dispute involving Brazil's desire to question Snowden after information he leaked indicated that the U.S. intercepted Rousseff's communications with aides, hacked the state-run oil company's computer network and snagged data on emails and telephone calls flowing through Brazil .

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government canceled a Cold War-era surveillance agreement over reports that NSA snooping swept up communications in Europe.

"I can understand the anger in France," said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle. "You don't do that among partners. You don't do that among friends."

Mexico has also expressed outrage about an alleged NSA program that the German newspaper Der Spiegel said accessed a domain linked to former Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his Cabinet. Also, a document from June 2012 indicated the NSA had read current Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's emails before he was elected.

The U.S. is thought to avoid spying on its coalition of "'Five Eye" partners — Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand — but considers other countries fair game.

The U.S. intelligence community has discussed bringing France into the Five Eyes alliance because of its close cooperation with U.S. troops and intelligence against al-Qaida in such as Afghanistan and Mali, according to two current U.S. intelligence officials. But the trust between both countries has never reached the level needed for that, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the relationship publicly.

___

Associated Press writers Lara Jakes and Lori Hinnant in Paris, Matthew Lee and Adam Goldman in Washington and Raf Casert in Luxembourg contributed to this report.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-10-21-US-NSA-Surveillance/id-c8a3049dcfe44ac6a7acd3177f575410
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Why is the Obamacare website so bad?

For the first five years of President Barack Obama’s presidency, the administration has been almost universally lauded for its unprecedented political-technical savvy. Obama and his team “got” social media in ways that other campaigning politicians did not, embracing every platform from YouTube to Tumblr; the Obama for America re-election group was celebrated for mastering the intersection of big data and on-the-ground organizing in its victory over Mitt Romney in 2012.

Now it appears that the Obama tech apparatus has a bug. On Monday morning, President Obama took to the Rose Garden to discuss technology problems: specifically, the various glitches bogging down HealthCare.gov, which for many Americans is the online entry to Obamacare. “The website has been too slow,” he conceded, among other things. “People have been getting stuck during the application process. And I think it’s fair to say that nobody’s more frustrated by that than I am."

President Barack Obama gestures while speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. …

It was a striking admission of technical incompetence from the iPresidency. The HealthCare.gov site launched October 1, and while the early reports of technical failings were overshadowed by the debt ceiling drama, those failings didn’t go away along with the temporary government shutdown. Just Sunday, in fact, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it’s bringing in the “best and brightest from both inside and outside government” to help resolve problems users are having creating accounts and logging in, as well as “slow page loads,” “confusing error messages” and so on. The announcement called this new plan a “tech surge” — a phrase that, intentionally or not, calls to mind the military “surge” credited with saving the Iraq War from total disaster.

But as with Iraq, you can’t help but wonder: What took so long? Bringing in the “best and brightest” tech minds sounds like an excellent thing to do — before launch.

Instead, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius suggested during the initial glitch period that we were witnessing mere hiccups — nothing more dramatic than the kinks that need smoothing with every routine iOS update. Three weeks later, nobody except gleeful conservatives in attack mode is comparing the Obamacare site to an iPhone. In fact, it’s getting easier every day for opponents to spin it as more of a Newton.

That “tech surge” announcement reiterated the defense that HealthCare.gov is partly a victim of its own success — the site has had “19 million unique visits to date,” it reports, as if softening us up for an investment pitch. But this is not a hot social media property whose growing pains can eventually be repackaged as proof of popularity on the IPO roadshow some day.

And rhetoric aside, we remain largely in the dark about the “metrics,” as they say, that matter most. “We've already heard so many stories of individuals getting health insurance for the first time,” that HHS announcement says. Oh? How many? And who are these "best and brightest" new minds, anyway? And what’s the timetable for this “surge”?

It’s plausible that the site is partly a victim of its own success — and I certainly hope it’s plausible that the mysterious Special Coding Forces can save the day, soon. But three weeks in, it’s time for this supposedly tech-savvy administration to recognize the value of transparency, and tell us how it’s going to keep a bunch of frustrating glitches from culminating in a Blue Screen of Death for a major government initiative.

Meanwhile, if things aren’t going to improve quickly, maybe the overseers of HealthCare.gov should at least hack together a way to make the glitches more palatable. Surely we have the resources to convene a blue-ribbon Fail Whale task force?

• Politics & Government
• Barack Obama

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obamas-healthcare-tech-fail-193812489.html
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NASA's TRMM satellite monitors Typhoon Francisco

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

18-Oct-2013

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Contact: Rob Gutro
robert.j.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Typhoon Francisco passed west of Guam on Oct. 18 as NASA and the Japan Space Agency's TRMM satellite passed overhead and measured its heavy rainfall. Francisco is forecast to intensify into a super typhoon.

Francisco developed in the Western Pacific Ocean on October 16, 2013. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite called TRMM passed over on October 18, 2013 at 1002 UTC/6:02 a.m. EDT when Typhoon Francisco was located west-northwest of Guam.

At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. a rainfall analysis that used data from TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) instruments was overlaid on an enhanced infrared image from TRMM's Visible and InfraRed Scanner (VIRS). The image showed rain was falling at a rate of over 113 mm/~4.5 inches per hour in powerful storms within Francisco's distinct eye wall.

On Oct. 18 at 1500 UTC/ 11 a.m. EDT, Francisco's maximum sustained winds had increased to 125 knots/ 143.8 mph/231.5 kph, and they are expected to increase over the next two days. Francisco was located near 15.5 north and 141.5 east, about 201 nautical miles/231.3 miles/372.3 km west-northwest of Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. Francisco continues to move away from Guam in a northwesterly direction at 10 knots/ 11.5 mph/18.5 kph. Satellite imagery indicated that the eye is about 10 nautical miles/11.5 miles/18.5 km wide.

Francisco is expected to become a super-typhoon over the next two days. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center classifies a "super-typhoon" when typhoons that reach maximum sustained 1-minute surface winds of at least 130 knots/150 mph. This is the equivalent of a strong Saffir-Simpson category 4 or category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic basin or a category 5 severe tropical cyclone in the Australian basin.

Francisco is expected to continue moving to the northwest toward the big island of Japan. Forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center expect Francisco to approach Japan by Oct. 23.

###

Text credit: Hal Pierce/Rob Gutro

SSAI / NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

18-Oct-2013

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Contact: Rob Gutro
robert.j.gutro@nasa.gov
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Typhoon Francisco passed west of Guam on Oct. 18 as NASA and the Japan Space Agency's TRMM satellite passed overhead and measured its heavy rainfall. Francisco is forecast to intensify into a super typhoon.

Francisco developed in the Western Pacific Ocean on October 16, 2013. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite called TRMM passed over on October 18, 2013 at 1002 UTC/6:02 a.m. EDT when Typhoon Francisco was located west-northwest of Guam.

At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. a rainfall analysis that used data from TRMM's Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) instruments was overlaid on an enhanced infrared image from TRMM's Visible and InfraRed Scanner (VIRS). The image showed rain was falling at a rate of over 113 mm/~4.5 inches per hour in powerful storms within Francisco's distinct eye wall.

On Oct. 18 at 1500 UTC/ 11 a.m. EDT, Francisco's maximum sustained winds had increased to 125 knots/ 143.8 mph/231.5 kph, and they are expected to increase over the next two days. Francisco was located near 15.5 north and 141.5 east, about 201 nautical miles/231.3 miles/372.3 km west-northwest of Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. Francisco continues to move away from Guam in a northwesterly direction at 10 knots/ 11.5 mph/18.5 kph. Satellite imagery indicated that the eye is about 10 nautical miles/11.5 miles/18.5 km wide.

Francisco is expected to become a super-typhoon over the next two days. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center classifies a "super-typhoon" when typhoons that reach maximum sustained 1-minute surface winds of at least 130 knots/150 mph. This is the equivalent of a strong Saffir-Simpson category 4 or category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic basin or a category 5 severe tropical cyclone in the Australian basin.

Francisco is expected to continue moving to the northwest toward the big island of Japan. Forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center expect Francisco to approach Japan by Oct. 23.

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Text credit: Hal Pierce/Rob Gutro

SSAI / NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-10/nsfc-nts101813.php
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