Oct. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Netflix Inc. dropped the most in seven years after the video-rental service said it lost 800,000 U.S. subscribers in the third quarter, more than expected, and predicted more cancellations over a price increase.

 Netflix plunged 37 percent to $75.28 at 9:39 a.m. New York time, for the biggest intraday decline since October 2004. The stock closed at an all-time high of $298.73 on July 13, according to Bloomberg data.

 The outlook suggests Netflix has been unable to contain a subscriber revolt over a price increase and aborted plan to force subscribers into separate streaming and DVD services. The company now forecasts losses in 2012 because of costs to offer content in the U.K. and Ireland, and will delay further expansion until profitability is restored.

 “Pausing is a good thing from an investor standpoint,” Chief Executive Officer Reed Hasting said in an interview. “We are going to pause and restore our global profitability.”

 Hastings, responding to questions, said he has no plans to step down and declined to comment on discussions with Netflix directors.

 Domestic subscribers fell to 23.8 million as of Sept. 30 from 24.6 million three months earlier, a bigger decline than the company projected in September, according to a website statement yesterday. This quarter, U.S. customers will fall short of the 24.9 million analysts were predicting.

 Subscriber Fallout

 Investors are trying to gauge the extent of the fallout from the price increase and aborted plan to put DVD customers on a new service called Qwikster.

 “To show even modest U.S. subscriber growth in the fourth quarter will require significant ramp-up in Netflix's marketing spending,” said Paul T. Sweeney, director of research for Bloomberg Industries.

 Hastings downplayed the likelihood of a big increase in marketing efforts.

 “Our streaming marketing has been very effective in the past two years,” Hastings said. “We are going to work on improving the user interface, expanding to more platforms and delivering more content. There's no grand gestures, there's just a lot of steady and intense efforts.”

 Domestic streaming subscriptions are forecast to decline this month, level off in November and rebound in December to end at 20 million to 21.5 million, Netflix said. DVD subscriptions will fall “sharply” to 10.3 million to 11.3 million customers.

 Fourth-Quarter Outlook

 Fourth-quarter profit will be $19 million to $37 million, or 36 cents to 70 cents a share, on revenue of as much as $875 million, the company said. Analysts were projecting profit of $1.10 a share on sales of $919 million, according to Bloomberg data. The company earned $47.1 million, or 87 cents a share, on sales of $595.9 million, a year earlier.

 Domestic subscriber growth is particularly important because Netflix has used its wide lead over U.S. rivals to finance growth in its streaming business and expand overseas.

 Netflix had projected a loss of 600,000 users on Sept. 15 to end the third quarter at 24 million. The actual results were in line with the average loss of 780,000 customers seen by 10 analysts in a Bloomberg survey.

 Domestic churn, a measure of subscriber turnover, jumped to 6.3 percent in the third quarter from 4.2 percent in the prior three months. The company's total subscriber count, including service in Canada and Latin America, fell to 25.3 million from 25.6 million

 For the third quarter, Netflix reported net income rose 65 percent to $62.5 million, or $1.16 a share. Analysts projected 95 cents, the average of 25 estimates. Sales rose 49 percent to $821.8 million, beating expectations of $812.8 million.

 --Editors: Rob Golum, Anthony Palazzo ||||| Reed Hastings was soaking in a hot tub with a friend last month when he shared a secret: his company, Netflix , was about to announce a plan to divide its movie rental service into two — one offering streaming movies over the Internet, the other offering old-fashioned DVDs in the mail.

 “That is awful,” the friend, who was also a Netflix subscriber, told him under a starry sky in the Bay Area, according to Mr. Hastings. “I don’t want to deal with two accounts.”

 Mr. Hastings ignored the warning, believing that chief executives should generally discount what their friends say.

 He has since regretted it. Subscribers revolted and many dropped the service. The plan further tarnished a once widely respected Internet service that had already been wounded by an unpopular price increase in the summer. Mr. Hastings was forced to reverse the planned split — but not the price increase — three weeks later and apologized.

 On Monday, the company revealed the damage that had been done. It told investors that it ended the third quarter of the year with 800,000 fewer subscribers in the United States than in the previous quarter, its first decline in years. The stock plummeted more than 25 percent in after-hours trading. [In regular trading Tuesday, the stock fell more than 30 percent.]

 Despite the decline in subscribers, the company did well financially in the quarter. It reported net income of $62.5 million, or $1.16, a share, compared with $38 million, or 70 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter. Revenue rose 49 percent to $822 million. Both revenue and income topped analysts’ expectations.

 Like many other companies built in Silicon Valley, Netflix prides itself on its analytical, data-driven approach to making decisions. But it made a classic business misstep. In its reliance on data and long-term strategy, the company underestimated the unquantifiable emotions of subscribers who still want those little red envelopes, even if they forget to ever watch the DVDs inside.

 Mr. Hastings said in an interview last week, his most detailed discussion yet of the bruising period, that he had been guilty of overconfidence and of “moving too quickly.” But he said he still believed — as do nearly all investors and analysts — that Netflix’s future lay not in DVDs but in streaming over the Internet. “We still need to move quickly in streaming,” he said.

 Twice in the interview, Mr. Hastings linked the hostility toward Netflix’s price change and proposed breakup to the angry mood of the country, even citing the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movement by name.

 He said — and repeated it on a conference call for investors on Monday evening — that subscribers had been bothered more by the summer price shock than by the breakup plan. Until September, a combination of video streams and DVDs cost as little as $10 a month; now, that same package costs $16. “We are done with pricing changes,” Netflix said Monday in a letter to shareholders.

 Mr. Hastings said he was not sure whether the plan to split the company had been presented to customer focus groups before it was made public. Mr. Hastings said he assumed it had been. But he said he did not recall what those focus groups had said about the plan.

 He said Netflix was now trying to slow its decision-making to ensure that there was more room for debate about major changes at the company.

 How Netflix came to be so out of touch with its customers is a cautionary tale for other companies that try to transform to new media from old. As the company’s streaming Internet service caught on with consumers, subscriber numbers soared and, with them, the company’s stock, rising ninefold from the start of 2009 to peak above $300 in July.

 Last year, Fortune magazine put Mr. Hastings, 51, on its cover as the businessperson of the year after he seemed to pull off the rare feat of finessing the “innovator’s dilemma” by navigating Netflix to the digital future from its DVD rental business.

 A key to its success was the way it blended its new and legacy businesses. While the library of material available for streaming was relatively sparse because of Hollywood licensing restrictions, Netflix customers could find many of those missing movies, especially new releases, in the company’s far larger DVD selection.

 But Netflix needed to spend more money to license additional material for its streaming service. Collecting $10 a month from subscribers was insufficient as costs ballooned. Mr. Hastings defended the increase last week and again on Monday, but he said it was “too big a price change all at once.” Hubris played a big role in the errors, he said.

Summary: – The horror movie isn't over for Netflix shareholders. The company, facing a customer revolt over price hikes, posted third-quarter results that were even worse than expected, Bloomberg reports. The company has lost around 800,000 subscribers since June, leaving it with 23.8 million, when it had predicted that numbers would swell to 25 million. The company's stock, which peaked just short of $300 a share in July, plunged 27% to $87 after the results were announced. Netflix warned that it will probably make a loss in 2012 because of the costs of expansion into UK and Ireland. CEO Reed Hastings says the company is guilty of "moving too quickly," but he has no plans to resign, the New York Times reports. Hastings says he blames the hostile reaction to Netflix's price hikes on the angry mood sweeping the US, citing the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements. (And speaking of Occupy Wall Street...)


Dow Jones Reprints: This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com ||||| The U.S. government is abandoning a legal battle to require that cigarette packs carry a set of large and often macabre warning labels depicting the dangers of smoking and encouraging smokers to quit.

 FILE - This file combination photo made from file images provided by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration shows two of nine cigarette warning labels from the FDA. On Tuesday, March 19, 2013, the U.S.... (Associated Press)

 Instead, the Food and Drug Administration will go back to the drawing board and create labels to replace those that included images of diseased lungs and the sewn-up corpse of a smoker, according to a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder obtained by The Associated Press. The government had until Monday to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review an appeals court decision upholding a ruling that the requirement violated First Amendment free speech protections.

 "In light of these circumstances, the Solicitor General has determined ... not to seek Supreme Court review of the First Amendment issues at the present time," Holder wrote in a Friday letter to House Speaker John Boehner notifying him of the decision.

 Some of the nation's largest tobacco companies, including R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., sued to block the mandate to include warnings on cigarette packs as part of the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act that, for the first time, gave the federal government authority to regulate tobacco. The nine labels originally set to appear on store shelves last year would've represented the biggest change in cigarette packs in the U.S. in 25 years.

 Tobacco companies increasingly rely on their packaging to build brand loyalty and grab consumers _ one of the few advertising levers left to them after the government curbed their presence in magazines, billboards and TV. They had argued that the proposed warnings went beyond factual information into anti-smoking advocacy.

 The government, however, argued the images were factual in conveying the dangers of tobacco, which is responsible for about 443,000 deaths in the U.S. a year.

 The nine graphic warnings proposed by the FDA included color images of a man exhaling cigarette smoke through a tracheotomy hole in his throat, and a plume of cigarette smoke enveloping an infant receiving a mother's kiss. These were accompanied by assertions that smoking causes cancer and can harm fetuses. The warnings were to cover the entire top half of cigarette packs, front and back, and include the phone number for a stop-smoking hotline, 1-800-QUIT-NOW.

 In a statement on Tuesday, the FDA said it would "undertake research to support a new rulemaking consistent with the Tobacco Control Act." The FDA did not provide a timeline for the revised labels.

 "Although we pushed forcefully ... (the) ruling against the warning labels won't deter the FDA from seeking an effective and sound way to implement the law," Dr. Howard Koh, assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote in an blog post Tuesday afternoon.

 Floyd Abrams, a noted First Amendment lawyer who represented Lorillard Tobacco Co. in the challenge said he wasn't surprised by the Justice Department's decision not to appeal.

 "The graphic warnings imposed by the FDA were constitutionally indefensible," he wrote in an email.

 Warning labels first appeared on U.S. cigarette packs in 1965, and current warning labels that feature a small box with text were put on cigarette packs in the mid-1980s.

 The share of Americans who smoke has fallen dramatically since 1970, from nearly 40 percent to about 19 percent. But the rate has stalled since about 2004, with about 45 million adults in the U.S. smoking cigarettes. It's unclear why it hasn't budged, but some market watchers have cited tobacco company discount coupons on cigarettes and lack of funding for programs to discourage smoking or to help smokers quit.

 In recent years, more than 40 countries or jurisdictions have introduced labels similar to those created by the FDA. The World Health Organization said in a survey done in countries with graphic labels that a majority of smokers noticed the warnings and more than 25 percent said the warnings led them to consider quitting.

 Joining North Carolina-based R.J. Reynolds, owned by Reynolds American Inc., and Lorillard Tobacco, owned by Lorillard Inc., in the lawsuit were Commonwealth Brands Inc., Liggett Group LLC and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company Inc.

 Richmond, Virginia-based Altria Group Inc., parent company of the nation's largest cigarette maker, Philip Morris USA, which makes the top-selling Marlboro brand, was not a part of the lawsuit.

 The case is separate from a lawsuit by several of the same tobacco companies over other marketing restrictions in the 2009 law. Last March, a federal appeals court in Cincinnati ruled that the law was constitutional. The companies in October petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review that case.

 ___

 Michael Felberbaum can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/MLFelberbaum .

Summary: – Big Tobacco can breathe easier: The Food and Drug Administration has scrapped a series of graphic warning labels for cigarettes after deciding not to challenge a court ruling that said the shocking images violated free-speech protections, the Wall Street Journal reports. The labels included images such as diseased lungs and the sewn-up corpse of a smoker and carried stern warnings like, "Smoking can kill you." The FDA now plans to come up with a different set of warning labels, but the process is likely to take years. A separate court ruling last year upheld a 2009 ruling that gave the federal government the authority to regulate tobacco and to add stronger warnings on cigarette packets. Dozens of countries have introduced similar graphic warnings on tobacco products in recent years, and a World Health Organization survey found that they caused around a quarter of smokers to consider quitting, the AP reports.


Tweet with a location

 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| ESPN's Chris Fowler posts on his Twitter account that he needed broadcast partner Jesse Palmer to perform the Heimlich maneuver on him during halftime of the Pinstripe Bowl to avoid choking on a chicken sandwich.

 "Never before needed a Heimlich at halftime. (Or any time)!" Fowler posted Saturday. "thanks Jesse Palmer! He saved me from death by dry chicken sandwich. Really."

 Fowler was doing play-by-play for the game at Yankee Stadium between Notre Dame and Rutgers. Palmer, the former Florida and New York Giants quarterback, was the analyst. Both live in New York, so the Pinstripe Bowl is home game for them.

 Fowler also posted: "Not bad to have quick thinking, ex-NFL player around when Heimlich needed. I'll take bruised ribs to avoid choking!" ||||| Tweet with a location

 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

Summary: – At times the losing team is accused of choking. This time ESPN announcer Chris Fowler admits he choked, literally, during yesterday's Pinstripe Bowl, the AP reports. Fowler tweeted that he was choking on a chicken sandwich at halftime when fellow broadcaster Jesse Palmer gave him the Heimlich maneuver. "Never before needed a Heimlich at halftime. (Or any time)!" he posted. "Thanks Jesse Palmer! He saved me from death by dry chicken sandwich. Really." He soon added that it was "not bad to have a quick-thinking, ex-NFL player around" in a time of need.


Got parasites? The American Society of Parasitologists is interested. We invite you to share with us your observations, ideas and questions about parasites. Our members and The Journal of Parasitology represent a wide range of research interests including ecology, evolution, systematics, immunology, biochemistry and molecular biology. Please post any aspect of parasitology you wish to share with us on our Facebook Group Page. Please go to our home page at

 http://asp.unl.edu/

 and look for the ASP on Facebook link.

 We look forward to hearing from you soon.

 The Membership Committee of ASP

 Marius Fuentes

 Spain

 Hugo Mejia-Madrid

 Mexico

 Mike Moser ||||| | 4

 The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

 Email Print

 In 1922, a scientist named F.W. Edwards published a paper describing a remarkable thing: a flying, biting midge collected from the Malay Peninsula in southeast Asia that he named Culicoides anophelis. What made the midge was remarkable was the thing it bit: mosquitoes.

 Yet in the years since, relatively little work has been done on these potentially important blood-sucking midges, even though their geographic range encompasses the mosquito hotbeds of India, China, and southeast Asia. Recently, however, a team of scientists in China managed to capture one of them on film.

 Using a tasty cow as bait, the Chinese scientists trapped mosquitoes and took them back to the laboratory. Among their catch was a single mosquito with a midge clinging tenaciously to its backside. The next day, they repeated the procedure and again netted a midge-bearing skeeter. This time they chloroformed the pair “lightly” and placed them under a dissecting microscope and appear to have recorded a video by sticking a camera up to the lens.

 After about three minutes, the midge decided it had had enough and attempted to de-deploy — with somewhat comical results — at about 1:30. In order to uncork itself, it has to do a 180 and pull like hell, bracing itself against its victim for leverage. After nearly a minute of struggle, it finally pops free. The midge’s mouthparts seem designed to keep it securely harpooned to their new bestest friend whether they’re feeding, flying, or silently cursing evolution’s ironies. Some midges have been observed attached to their mosquitoes for up to 56 hours. One poor mosquito was found flying like a drunkard on the southeast Asian island of New Britain in 1945. The mosquito was ornamented by an engorged midge and was apparently woozy from blood loss. Both were preserved, and even in death the midge remained steadfastly attached to its host. Culicoid midges, apparently, have to decide they’ve really had enough blood, thank you, to leave.

 Although it’s oh-so-satisfying to hear mosquitoes have their own blood-sucking winged pests (though ponder for a moment that, scaled to our size, their parasites would be about the size of dinner plates, and unlike us, mosquitoes have nothing to whack them with), we may ultimately be losers in the business as well. The host range of C. anophelis, like its geographic range, is enormous. It has been found to parasitize at least 19 species of mosquito, but it has also been collected sucking blood directly from buffaloes and cattle.

 Culicoides midges are known carriers of bluetongue virus, Oropouche virus and Schmallenburg virus while mosquitoes they parasitize carry Dengue, West Nile, and Japanese encephalitis viruses. If mosquitoes are flying dirty syringes that spread disease among humans, parasitic midges may further scramble the disease load, introduce new viruses to new vectors, and generally add another order of magnitude to disease transmission calculus. But no one really knows. The studies, as authors of this paper point out, have yet to be done.

 ____________

 The idea for this post came from an excellent post written by student Sarah Prammer over at the Parasite of the Day blog. Thanks guys!

 Reference

 Ma Y., Zhenzhou Yang, Xiaohua Wang, Zhongling Lin, Wei Zhao, Yan Wang, Xiangyu Li & Hua Shi (2013). A video clip of the biting midge Culicoides anophelis ingesting blood from an engorged Anopheles mosquito in Hainan, China, Parasites , 6 (1) 326. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1756-3305-6-326

Summary: – Next time you're annoyed by a tenacious mosquito, you can take solace in the fact that it, too, has to deal with parasites who want to suck its blood. And, as Jennifer Frazer points out in Scientific American, the mosquito has no way of slapping the tiny creature known as a Culicoid midge. And while a mosquito bite doesn't last too long, the flying midges have been known to lock onto mosquitoes for days at a time: One bit its host for 56 hours. "The midge’s mouthparts seem designed to keep it securely harpooned to their new bestest friend whether they’re feeding, flying, or silently cursing evolution’s ironies," writes Frazer. As many as three have been seen on one host, reports Parasite of the Day. Worse yet: Scaled to human size, they're about the size of a dinner plate. The midges were noted in 1922, but they haven't been studied much since then. Recently, however, some Chinese scientists caught one and filmed it, apparently through a microscope; viewers can see the creature hang onto a mosquito for three minutes before letting go. They live in a vast area including India, China, and southeast Asia, Frazer notes. But just because they torment our tormentors doesn't mean they're good news for humans. The midges also bite cattle directly, and they can carry a number of viruses, as can the mosquitoes they bite. (If you're sick of mosquitoes bothering you, you might try an anti-mosquito newspaper.)


WikiLeaks publishes the Saudi Cables

 Today, Friday 19th June at 1pm GMT, WikiLeaks began publishing The Saudi Cables: more than half a million cables and other documents from the Saudi Foreign Ministry that contain secret communications from various Saudi Embassies around the world. The publication includes "Top Secret" reports from other Saudi State institutions, including the Ministry of Interior and the Kingdom's General Intelligence Services. The massive cache of data also contains a large number of email communications between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and foreign entities. The Saudi Cables are being published in tranches of tens of thousands of documents at a time over the coming weeks. Today WikiLeaks is releasing around 70,000 documents from the trove as the first tranche.

 Julian Assange, WikiLeaks publisher, said: "The Saudi Cables lift the lid on a increasingly erratic and secretive dictatorship that has not only celebrated its 100th beheading this year, but which has also become a menace to its neighbours and itself."

 The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a hereditary dictatorship bordering the Persian Gulf. Despite the Kingdom's infamous human rights record, Saudi Arabia remains a top-tier ally of the United States and the United Kingdom in the Middle East, largely owing to its globally unrivalled oil reserves. The Kingdom frequently tops the list of oil-producing countries, which has given the Kingdom disproportionate influence in international affairs. Each year it pushes billions of petro-dollars into the pockets of UK banks and US arms companies. Last year it became the largest arms importer in the world, eclipsing China, India and the combined countries of Western Europe. The Kingdom has since the 1960s played a major role in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) and dominates the global Islamic charity market.

 For 40 years the Kingdom's Ministry of Foreign Affairs was headed by one man: Saud al Faisal bin Abdulaziz, a member of the Saudi royal family, and the world's longest-serving foreign minister. The end of Saud al Faisal's tenure, which began in 1975, coincided with the royal succession upon the death of King Abdullah in January 2015. Saud al Faisal's tenure over the Ministry covered its handling of key events and issues in the foreign relations of Saudi Arabia, from the fall of the Shah and the second Oil Crisis to the September 11 attacks and its ongoing proxy war against Iran. The Saudi Cables provide key insights into the Kingdom's operations and how it has managed its alliances and consolidated its position as a regional Middle East superpower, including through bribing and co-opting key individuals and institutions. The cables also illustrate the highly centralised bureaucratic structure of the Kingdom, where even the most minute issues are addressed by the most senior officials.

 Since late March 2015 the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been involved in a war in neighbouring Yemen. The Saudi Foreign Ministry in May 2015 admitted to a breach of its computer networks. Responsibility for the breach was attributed to a group calling itself the Yemeni Cyber Army. The group subsequently released a number of valuable "sample" document sets from the breach on file-sharing sites, which then fell under censorship attacks. The full WikiLeaks trove comprises thousands of times the number of documents and includes hundreds of thousands of pages of scanned images of Arabic text. In a major journalistic research effort, WikiLeaks has extracted the text from these images and placed them into our searchable database. The trove also includes tens of thousands of text files and spreadsheets as well as email messages, which have been made searchable through the WikiLeaks search engine.

 By coincidence, the Saudi Cables release also marks two other events. Today marks three years since WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange entered the Ecuadorian Embassy in London seeking asylum from US persecution, having been held for almost five years without charge in the United Kingdom. Also today Google revealed that it had been been forced to hand over more data to the US government in order to assist the prosecution of WikiLeaks staff under US espionage charges arising from our publication of US diplomatic cables. ||||| An undated file photo shows al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden. (EPA/STR)

 According to a recently leaked document, the son of al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden, Abdullah bin Laden, sent a letter to the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia to ask for his father's death certificate.

 In response, the embassy wrote to Abdullah to inform him that there was no death certificate issued for the older bin Laden.

 The letter went on to suggest other ways that the al-Qaeda leader's death could be officially confirmed.

 The remarkable exchange has come to light thanks to the latest release from WikiLeaks, the controversial secret sharing organization helmed by Julian Assange. On Friday, the organization released what it said was the first part of more than a half-million cables and other documents from the Saudi Foreign Ministry, which it had dubbed "The Saudi Cables."

 The U.S. Embassy's response to Abdallah was included within the release. It is dated Sept. 9, 2011, approximately four months after bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces during a raid on his hideout in Pakistan. U.S. officials have said that bin Laden was later buried at sea. Requests to publish photographs of bin Laden's body or his burial have been denied and any photographs taken are suspected to have been destroyed.

 In the letter to Abdullah bin Laden, Glen Keiser, a consul general at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, explains that the lack of a death certificate for bin Laden is "consistent with regular practice for individuals killed in the course of military operations."

 Keiser goes on to suggest that the criminal case against Osama bin Laden had effectively been dropped due to his death since June 2011, and describes a process for requesting the order of "nolle prosequi" (which literally means "unwilling to pursue") from the court, which could act as proof of death.

 It's unclear why Abdullah bin Laden had requested the death certificate.

 In 2012, the Department of Defense responded to an Associated Press Freedom of Information Act request and said that it was unable to find a death certificate for bin Laden.

 You can see the full letter below:

 More on WorldViews

 The bin Laden library the U.S. government doesn’t want you to see: The porn stash.

 Chomsky, Woodward and 9/11 conspiracy theories: Bin Laden’s English-language bookshelf

 The Saudi king gave a prize to an Islamic scholar who says 9/11 was an ‘inside job’

Summary: – WikiLeaks released a boatload of new documents today, this time from the Saudi Foreign Ministry, and one item in particular caught the eye of the Washington Post. It involves an exchange between a son of Osama bin Laden and the US government over the al-Qaeda leader's death certificate. Abdullah bin Laden asked for the certificate in the aftermath of the raid that killed his father, but a general counsel at the American embassy in Riyadh informed him that he was out of luck. Glen Keiser wrote that no death certificate existed, as is "consistent with regular practice for individuals killed in the course of military operations." But he suggested an alternative: Noting that the US had closed the criminal case against bin Laden because he was dead, Keiser wrote that Abdullah bin Laden could request the order making that closure official, something called an order of "nolle prosequi" ("we shall no longer prosecute"). That would be the closest thing to proof of death. He even provided the necessary request form, adding, "I hope that these U.S. Government documents are of assistance to your and your family." It's not clear whether bin Laden's son followed through on the suggestion.


Gwyneth Paltrow, the actress and founder of online lifestyle brand Goop, thinks that nasty, anonymous online commenters should take a look at themselves first before they post.

 “The Internet is an amazing opportunity, socially. We have this opportunity to mature and learn, which is the essence of being on earth — to being the closest person we can be to our actual, real, truest self,” she said ahead of her surprise appearance at the Code Conference today. “But the Internet also allows us the opportunity to project outward our hatred, our jealousy. It’s culturally acceptable to be an anonymous commenter. It’s culturally acceptable to say, ‘I’m just going to take all of my internal pain and externalize it anonymously.'”

 Of all the celebrities out there, Paltrow receives a particularly curious reception online, and she’s well aware of it. She is beloved and obsessed-over (the success of her Goop project comes largely from people wanting to live like her, have lunch in Paris or moisturize their bodies like she would).

 At the same time, there seems to be some frustration and even aggression aroused by her lanky-blonde-perfect-frittata persona. Consider a recent headline: “Gwyneth Paltrow Joins Instagram, Will Probably Do This Better Than the Rest of Us, Too.”

 In February, the newly hired editor of anonymous image-sharing site Whisper promoted one of his company’s user-submitted posts that included a picture of Paltrow’s face overlaid with text alleging that she was having an affair, an image that then went viral.

 “It’s taken me a long time to get to the point where I can see these things and not take it as a personal affront and a hurt. I see myself as a chalkboard or a whiteboard or a screen, and someone is just putting up their own projection on it,” she said.

 “It has nothing to do with me. They have an internal object, and they’re putting it on me. I kind of look at it as, ‘Wow this is an interesting social experiment.’ You’re talking about a blind stranger having feelings about you. It can only be projection.”

 The conversation about celebrity and the Internet, she said, is part of a larger one about “containment and self-regulation” online.

 “Our culture is trying to wrestle with the idea that everybody has a voice, and how it’s unimportant and really important at the same time,” said Paltrow. “We’re in this very adolescent phase. It’s dangerous, [because] we lack the capacity to say, ‘Why does this matter to me, and who am I in this?’ ‘Why am I having opinions about Angelina Jolie’s operation?’ ‘What is unhealed in me?’ ‘Why am I using the Internet to do this?'”

 She compared the experience of living through vitriolic Internet commenters to surviving a war.

 “You come across [online comments] about yourself and about your friends, and it’s a very dehumanizing thing. It’s almost like how, in war, you go through this bloody, dehumanizing thing, and then something is defined out of it,” she said. “My hope is, as we get out of it, we’ll reach the next level of conscience.”

 This year may be a tipping point for Internet trolls, she hopes: “It’s almost like we’re being given this test: Can you regulate yourself? Can you grow from this? Can you learn? You can make it as bloody as you want to, but is that the point?”

 And yet, for Paltrow, the Internet can also be a source of great good. Though the Goop team won’t disclose specific details, Paltrow said her e-commerce business is profitable, and that the “open rate” (meaning subscribers that actually open Goop emails) for the Goop newsletter, which reaches people in 120 different countries, is more than double the industry average.

 “I started it across all those categories kind of by accident. But it set me up really well to have a lifestyle brand,” she said. “I have big goals in mind for what I want it to be. I finally have been able to find the self-confidence that I really can do this, and I’m doing it.”

 Paltrow said she was initially hesitant about speaking at the Code Conference, where she would be onstage among tech CEOs.

 “At first, I thought, wow, I don’t belong in this group. But, you know, I’m really excited about my Web business and where we are with it,” she said. “I think we’re achieving a new or newish paradigm — and we’re actually achieving it — this mix of content and commerce.”

 Her goal for Goop this year is to “do more of it, and do it better,” she said. So far, Paltrow has not yet taken venture capital for her site, where posts are signed “Love, gp.” Instead, she said she has used her own money, as well as “my blood, sweat and tears.”

 “When I look at new companies, we’re kind of the opposite of, let’s just build it, build it quick and sell it,” said Paltrow. “Because my name is so attached to it — because it really is mine — it’s important that it be something real.” ||||| BEImages/Matt Baron

 Well, this could all get a bit meta if any of you leave comments that are in any way negative on this post, but—here goes! Last night, Gwyneth Paltrow—Goop Overlord, Conscious Uncoupler—made a surprise appearance at the inaugural Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, alongside the likes of Sergey Brin and Satya Nadella. (The conference is co-run by Vanity Fair contributing editor Kara Swisher.)

 Paltrow has had great success with her weekly Goop newsletter (its “open rate”—that is, the percentage of subscribers who actually open her missives—is, according to Paltrow, “more than double the industry average”), and her e-commerce business is currently turning a profit. But while Paltrow sees the great opportunities available thanks to the Internet, and has clearly reaped the benefit of such, she told Re/code, the tech-news site hosting the conference, that she was also keenly aware of the Internet’s dark underbelly: comment threads.

 “The Internet is an amazing opportunity, socially. We have this opportunity to mature and learn, which is the essence of being on Earth—to being the closest person we can be to our actual, real, truest self,” she said. “But the Internet also allows us the opportunity to project outward our hatred, our jealousy. It’s culturally acceptable to be an anonymous commenter. It’s culturally acceptable to say, ‘I’m just going to take all of my internal pain and externalize it anonymously.’”

 Does this mean Gwyneth actually reads the thousands of posts written about her each week? Gwyn, are you reading this right now!??!? (If so, hi! Uh, that “Gwyneth Responds to Chris Martin Lyrics” post from last week was all in good fun! Also, want to meet up for some bruschetta and white wine? You can pick the place and time. Do you eat bruschetta?! Is bruschetta healthy?! We know you won’t answer these questions in the comments, clearly, but e-mail us, maybe?)

 Paltrow went on to say that she has become somewhat immune to the onslaught of comments.

 “It’s taken me a long time to get to the point where I can see these things and not take it as a personal affront and a hurt. I see myself as a chalkboard or a whiteboard or a screen, and someone is just putting up their own projection on it,” she said. “It has nothing to do with me. They have an internal object, and they’re putting it on me. I kind of look at it as, ‘Wow this is an interesting social experiment.’ You’re talking about a blind stranger having feelings about you. It can only be projection.”

 The experience of reading about herself online over the years is analogous to what it’s like for veterans of war, she reportedly said.

 “You come across [online comments] about yourself and about your friends, and it’s a very dehumanizing thing. It’s almost like how, in war, you go through this bloody, dehumanizing thing, and then something is defined out of it,” she said. “My hope is, as we get out of it, we’ll reach the next level of conscience.”

 So, the next time you’re about to leave an anonymous, caps-lock comment on a Kim Kardashian photo post, imagine a mini-Gwyneth on your shoulder, drinking a mini-kale smoothie, shaking her head. We’ll all be on that next level of conscience in no time. ||||| Gwyneth Paltrow isn't who you'd expect to speak at a big tech conference featuring Microsoft and Google honchos. But on Tuesday, she gave a short and impassioned speech about the dark side of the Internet.

 The actress was the surprise guest at Re/Code's Code Conference outside of Los Angeles. She spoke about the anonymity of the Internet — and its ability to allow "objectification and dehumanization" of others, especially celebrities.

 "It's like the scabs from your high-school wounds being ripped off on a daily basis," Paltrow said.

 Actress Gwyneth Paltrow was a surprise speaker at the Code Conference on Tuesday. Asa Mathat / Re/code

 A visibly nervous Paltrow started off self-deprecating — she promised that she wouldn't talk about Javascript or Ruby On Rails — but she relaxed as she went on about the effect Internet trolls have had on her life and those of her celebrity friends.

 Paltrow acknowledged that some abuse goes along with being a public figure: "When you go back through history, it's always happened. From a spiritual leader to Katharine Hepburn ..."

 But the nature of the Internet adds a disturbing layer, she said. Paltrow gave one chilling example: A celebrity friend who posted a "normal photo" on Instagram received a comment from a user who expressed a desire to "rape and disembowel" her.

 Paltrow, who specifically slammed Facebook for its "foundation of objectification," didn't go into many details about the online abuse she herself has taken.

 But in February, a user of the anonymous secrets-sharing app Whisper posted a message alleging that Paltrow was cheating on husband Chris Martin — a claim that her rep quickly denied. The following month, Paltrow earned Internet scorn for calling her separation from Martin a "conscious uncoupling."

 "At a certain point when you've been made fun of and excoriated and dragged through the mud ... for 20 years ... you realize it's not really about you," Paltrow said.

 Instead, Paltrow said, she has accepted she "cannot be more than an external representation" of whatever hurts the trolls keep inside themselves.

 Paltrow said she thinks about how her children will grow up in an online world, and wonders: "Perhaps the Internet has been brought to us as a test of our own emotional evolution."

 Paltrow hopes that evolution will bring changes to the Internet and the way we live online.

 "It's no accident that as the Internet grows, and the voices get softer and softer because there are so many of them ... we're drawn to authenticity."

Summary: – Gwyneth Paltrow ... tech expert? The actress spoke at the Code Conference yesterday, rubbing elbows with tech CEOs, thanks to her Web business, Goop. Before her surprise appearance, she talked to re/code (the tech news site hosting the conference, Vanity Fair notes) about Goop (it's profitable, though she won't give exact numbers, and the "open rate" for her newsletter emails is more than double the industry average), but she also spoke quite a bit about mean online commenters on the Internet. One quote that's getting her some negative attention: "You come across [online comments] about yourself and about your friends, and it’s a very dehumanizing thing. It’s almost like how, in war, you go through this bloody, dehumanizing thing, and then something is defined out of it. My hope is, as we get out of it, we’ll reach the next level of conscience." The quote, of course, led to headlines like "Gwyneth Paltrow: Celebrities Who Have Dealt with Mean Internet Comments Are Almost Like War Veterans." (Even re/code acknowledged that Paltrow "compared the experience of living through vitriolic Internet commenters to surviving a war.") NBC News notes that her actual speech focused on the same themes, but her comparison there wasn't as dramatic: She said reading mean comments was like having "the scabs from your high-school wounds being ripped off on a daily basis." (Paltrow's last ill-advised comment had to do with working moms.)


If the notion of any current country performer labeling himself an outlaw was ever laughable, it would never be more so when considering David Allan Coe. In reform school by the age of nine, and charged with such offenses as armed robbery and auto theft, Coe would be in and out of various correctional facilities for the next two decades and would serve three years at the Ohio State Penitentiary.

 Related Merle Haggard: 'Prison Is the Biggest Business in America' Country music's most famous ex-con speaks out on the number of Americans in prison and changes his stance on marijuana

 While he was behind bars, Coe penned several songs that would be released on his 1969 debut album, the dark and crudely recorded Penitentiary Blues, which resurfaced in 2005 getting its first CD release. Coe was encouraged to write the songs, which detail stark prison life in such songs as "Death Row," "Oh Warden" and "Cell #33," by the man in the cell next to him, soul singer Screamin' Jay Hawkins. After he was released in 1967, Coe released those tracks via Shelby Singleton's SSS International label, and began touring with B.B. King and the Staples Singers. A subsequent deal with Columbia Records yielded The Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy, a hardcore country effort co-produced by Billy Sherrill and Ron Bledsoe, which failed to chart.

 The next album from Coe, Once Upon a Rhyme, would give him the first of his three Top Ten hits. "You Never Even Called Me By My Name" was a stone-country, semi-novelty song written by Steve Goodman ("City of New Orleans") and John Prine (who refused a writer's credit but was gifted a jukebox by Goodman for his contribution). In the second verse of the tune, Coe namechecks – and does some pretty spot-on imitations of – Waylon Jennings, Charley Pride and Merle Haggard. In the third verse, there's a little nod to Faron Young's "Hello Walls," penned by Willie Nelson, and Coe even namechecks himself. The fourth and final verse has Coe explaining, in a spoken intro, how Goodman wrote to him telling him he felt he had written "the perfect country and western song" with this one. Coe further explains that he wrote back to Goodman and protested that the song was missing key elements that would make it perfect: Mama, trains, trucks, prison and getting drunk. Goodman then rewrote the tune, resulting in one of the most iconic – and hilarious – verses in country music history.

 Recorded on August 20th, 1974, "You Never Even Called Me By My Name," would debut on the Billboard country chart in July 1975, eventually peaking at Number Eight. Although he wrote much of his own material, ironically, Coe's only Number One hit came in 1978 as the writer of Johnny Paycheck's Number One smash, "Take This Job and Shove It." He would score another pair of Top Five hits as an artist with songs he didn't write: "The Ride" in 1983, and his biggest solo hit, "Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile," which just missed the top spot, peaking at Number Two.

 Coe, who appeared in the 1981 film based on "Take This Job and Shove It," would later tour with Kid Rock, writing "Single Father" for him in 2003. He also worked with members of the metal band Pantera on an LP released in 2006, and he remains notorious for several X-rated songs he recorded while reportedly riding as a member of an outlaw biker gang.

 This rare clip [above] of "You Never Even Called Me By My Name," from the year the single was released, was certainly not radio-friendly, with the singer spitting out an F-bomb during the last verse, but it's vintage Coe and certainly another notch in the gun that is his well-deserved outlaw reputation.

 If there's any doubt that the "perfect country and western song" has stood the test of time, this 2010 all-star performance, featuring Darius Rucker, Easton Corbin, Montgomery Gentry, Vince Gill, Jason Aldean and the Band Perry should put that notion to rest. ||||| David Allan Coe in 1983 (Photo: AP file/Rudolph Faircloth)

 Country music singer-songwriter David Allan Coe pleaded guilty Monday in federal court in Cincinnati to income tax evasion and owes the IRS more than $466,000, officials said.

 Coe, 76, who wrote the song, "Take This Job And Shove It," has owed the Internal Revenue Service for outstanding taxes since at least 1993, court documents say.

 Between 2008 and 2013, officials said, he either failed to file his individual income tax returns -- or when he did, he failed to pay the taxes due. Coe faces up to three years in prison. The nearly half a million dollars owed includes taxes, interest and penalties.

 According to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office, instead of paying the taxes in full, Coe spent the money earned from live concert performances "on other debts and gambling."

 The case is in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati. Court documents say Coe received multiple MoneyGram transfers of income in Cincinnati in 2011 and 2012. He also used a Cincinnati-based accounting firm to prepare his taxes, and in 2009 filed his taxes from Cincinnati.

 His Memphis-based attorney, Michael Stengel, could not be reached for comment.

 Coe, who performs at least 100 times a year, arranged to be paid primarily in cash, the news release said. Coe didn't allow $50 bills, the news release said, because "he believed they were bad luck and would not gamble with them."

 He stopped using a personal bank account in 2009.

 "Coe's arrangement to be paid primarily in cash was also in an effort to impede the ability of the IRS to collect on the taxes owed," the news release said.

 The case was investigated by the U.S. Attorney's Office and special agents with the IRS's criminal investigations unit.

 Read or Share this story: http://cin.ci/1FadW1Y

Summary: – Well, this is about what you'd expect from the guy who wrote the song "Take This Job and Shove It": David Allan Coe owes the IRS more than $466,000 in back taxes. The country music singer-songwriter, 76, pleaded guilty to income tax evasion in federal court in Cincinnati yesterday, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports. He faces up to three years in prison—precisely the amount of time he spent in the Ohio State Penitentiary in his younger days, reports Rolling Stone. The US Attorney's Office says Coe arranged to get much of his payment in cash when he performed, which was partially "an effort to impede the ability of the IRS to collect on the taxes owed." He then spent that cash "on other debts and gambling," the office says in a press release. Perhaps the quirkiest detail in that release: Coe apparently refused payment in $50 bills, because he considered them bad luck and "would not gamble with them."


The deal only extends three weeks. But it seems less likely that congressional Republicans who didn't ask for this fight will support another one. ||||| CONCORD, N.H.—Conservative attorney Ovide Lamontagne and former Attorney General Kelly Ayotte were still waiting Wednesday to learn which of them will be New Hampshire's Republican U.S. Senate nominee.

 Paula Penney, elections assistant at the Secretary of State's office, said returns were still coming in and that staff had been working on counting them throughout the night.

 Ayotte held a slight lead -- close enough for Lamontagne to legally request a recount if the margin held -- with 257 of 301 precincts reporting, or 85 percent. Ayotte had 46,331 votes, or 38 percent, while Lamontagne had 45,352, or 37 percent.

 Multimillionaire businessman Bill Binnie, who spent more than $5 million out of his own pocket pushing his jobs agenda, received 16,960 votes, or 14 percent, and conceded along with millionaire businessman Jim Bender, who got 10,507 votes, or 9 percent.

 Lamontagne, who painted himself as the only true conservative in the race, held a slight advantage in early returns over Ayotte -- former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's pick for the seat. But as Tuesday night wore on, Ayotte took a slight lead.

 The winner hopes to win retiring GOP Sen. Judd Gregg's seat and face Democratic nominee Paul Hodes, who was unopposed.

 Losers in state primary elections can ask for a recount if the losing margin is within 1.5 percent of the total votes cast in a race. Penney said no recount request had been made yet; candidates have until 5 p.m. Wednesday to make the request.

 Hodes said Tuesday night the Republican agenda is "extreme, radical and right wing." He said Republicans would take the country backward into the hole from which the nation is struggling to dig out.

 "I'm running for the people of New Hampshire. I don't have to run against anyone," Hodes said.

 Ayotte, 42, of Nashua, won the blessing from Palin, who calls her a "Granite Grizzly." Ayotte spent more than $2 million on her anti-Democrat, anti-federal spending campaign.

 Lamontagne closed fast in the final days of the race despite spending only $400,000. Lamontagne, 52, counted on conservative groups, not money, to win the nomination.

 "It's not how much money you have, it's the message," Lamontagne said Tuesday night.

 In a fight over who is the most conservative, Ayotte won Palin's endorsement in July over Lamontagne, who courted tea party activists. Palin, the former vice presidential nominee, recorded telephone messages to voters that started Sunday praising Ayotte as "the true conservative" -- a mantle Lamontagne had tried to claim as his throughout his campaign.

 Lamontagne's two previous election bids were unsuccessful. His late surge was similar to his victory over former U.S. Rep. Bill Zeliff for the 1996 GOP gubernatorial nomination, but Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen beat him to capture the first of her three two-year terms as governor. Lamontagne failed in a GOP primary bid in 1992 to unseat Zeliff in the 1st District.

 The Republicans spent more than $9.5 million for the chance to face Hodes, 59, of Concord. Despite being unopposed, Hodes spent $2.5 million to line up support to try to win the seat. The spending totals will rise after final primary campaign finance reports are filed with the Federal Elections Commission.

 © Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Summary: – The final round of primaries before the midterms delivered some big wins for the Tea Party and there's still a prize to claim in New Hampshire. The state's seven-way Republican US Senate primary is down to two candidates and it's still too close to call between attorney Ovide Lamontagne and former state Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, the Boston Globe reports. The New Hampshire race is another one seen as Tea Party versus establishment, though this one's not as clear cut, notes Chris Cillizza in the Washington Post. Lamontagne billed himself as ultra-conservative and played up his connection to Tea Party groups in the final weeks of the rice, but Sarah Palin and other top conservatives backed Ayotte, who currently holds a lead narrow enough for Lamontagne to legally call for a recount.


Hey Friends. As many of you know, I am a teacher at Pittsburgh Perry High School. Each day, I am fortunate enough to hang out with some of Pittsburghs most amazing young people. If these young folks are the future of Pittsburgh, we are a very lucky city. Seriously, they are great. Every teacher knows that there are some students who stand out along the way and over the years.Kevonna is one of those students.I met Kevonna two years ago when she was in an AP Language class I was teaching. It didn't take me long to realize that Kevonna was the kind of person who pushed through anything to make the most of her opportunities. And unfortunately, as life goes, she had to push through more than some others. Half way through that year, her house burnt to the ground. Her family lost everything and was forced to move across the city. She barely blinked. She would get on a bus for an hour each day, traverse the city in time to arrive at Perry by 7:11 for first period. She kept smiling, kept being a good friend to her classmates, and kept getting good grades. In fact, her grades were good enough toand an acceptance to Temple University.For her, the hard work was paying off.Somewhere in the midst of that 11th grade year, I started telling Kevonna that. She asked what I meant, and I told her that she always seems to rise to the top. There has been plenty of reasons for her to give in to the weight and sink, but she continues to rise up. In fact, on our school talent night, Kevonna sang "Rise Up" by Andra Day and it almost made me tear up. She really will keep rising, and she'll do it "1000 times again" as the song says.Kevonna's financial aid at Temple covers all but $3500 of her semester's tuition ($7000 per year). Temple will not let her sign up for her Spring classes until she can pay $3500 dollars. In fact, they will not even release her first semester's transcripts without that money. She has lived at the financial aid office over the last month trying to exhaust every option, and it seems that there are none. We called everyone we knew who might be able to help, but we are learning that it is late to get that kind of money. She needs to get a private loan to cover the rest of her tuition. Unfortunately, no one in her amazing family has the positive credit to co-sign for a loan. She has all "A's" and "B's," which is pretty remarkable for a first generation college student in a new city. She is succeeding in every way that she can. I am too much of an optimist to allow Kevonna to come home midway through her freshman year over $3500.I asked Kevonna how personal she wanted me to be in this appeal. She said this:I wish I could cut a check for $7000 and help Kevonna figure out her scholarships for next year. She is that kind of person. She will not fail. I'm confident of that. In fact, she has overcome harder things than tuition bills. She will find a way to overcome this.But I don't want her to have to do this one on her own. She'll float, but this time I would like for all of us to show Kevonna that we can throw her a life jacket. We have the chance to help her ease the load a little.Temple is fortunate to have such an amazing young person on their campus. Pittsburgh should be proud of Kevonna. Her Perry family certainly is.If you can help, it would be great. Our first goal is to raise the $3500 needed to register for Spring classes. When we get there, we will keep going to try to pay the $7000 for the whole year. We are hoping to transfer the money from here directly to Temple. Help us tell Kevonna that we believe in her. And that we are all cheering. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.

Summary: – Kevonna Stevens graduated as valedictorian of her class and became the first of her family to head to college, thanks in part to teacher Jason Boll, who helped her apply. Now Boll is stepping up for Stevens again, in an even bigger way. The 18-year-old told the Pittsburgh teacher in October that while she was getting good grades, she might not be able to afford to stay in college at Philadelphia's Temple University, Boll's alma mater. With Stevens' OK, Boll started a GoFundMe campaign that passed its $7,500 fundraising goal in just about a week, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. Boll closed the fundraiser when $8,500 had been raised, since that covers what Stevens needs for the rest of the school year, but he encourages backers to share any scholarships or other financial assistance they knew of for students. Stevens lived in Las Vegas, North Carolina, and New York before arriving in Pittsburgh her freshman year of high school; she moved multiple times even once she'd settled there, including when her father moved across the country after her parents split up, and then after the family home burned down. None of this seemed to faze her, Boll wrote on the GoFundMe page. She got a job to pay for bus fare, and "she would get on a bus for an hour each day, traverse the city in time to arrive at [school] by 7:11 for first period. She kept smiling, kept being a good friend to her classmates, and kept getting good grades," Boll tells the Post-Gazette. When he heard about her financial troubles, he says, "I thought, there's no way that this is the end of the story." Most of Stevens' college costs are covered with grants, student loans, and scholarships, but a housing mix-up led to the financial issue.


DENVER, March 24, 2015 -- Chocolate has many health benefits -- it can potentially lower blood pressure and cholesterol and reduce stroke risk. But just as connoisseurs thought it couldn't get any better, there's this tasty new tidbit: Researchers have found a way to make the treat even more nutritious -- and sweeter.

 They will describe their research here today at the 249th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. The meeting features nearly 11,000 reports on new advances in science and other topics. It is being held here through Thursday.

 Cocoa undergoes several steps before it takes shape as a candy bar. Workers cut down pods from cocoa trees, then split open the pods to remove the white or purple cocoa beans. They are fermented in banana-lined baskets for a few days and then set out to dry in the sun. Roasting, the next step, brings out the flavor. But some of the healthful polyphenols (antioxidants) are lost during the roasting process, so the researchers wanted to figure out a way to retain as much of the polyphenols and good flavors as possible.

 "We decided to add a pod-storage step before the beans were even fermented to see whether that would have an effect on the polyphenol content," says Emmanuel Ohene Afoakwa, Ph.D., who is at the University of Ghana. "This is not traditionally done, and this is what makes our research fundamentally different. It's also not known how roasting affects polyphenol content."

 Afoakwa's team divided 300 pods into four groups that were either not stored at all or stored for three, seven or 10 days before processing. This technique is called "pulp preconditioning." After each storage period passed, fermentation and drying were done as usual. He reports that the seven-day storage resulted in the highest antioxidant activity after roasting.

 To assess the effects of roasting, the researchers took samples from each of the storage groups and roasted them at the same temperature for different times. The current process is to roast the beans for 10-20 minutes at 248-266 degrees Fahrenheit, he explains. Afoakwa's team adjusted this to 45 minutes at 242 degrees Fahrenheit and discovered that this slower roasting at a lower temperature increased the antioxidant activity compared to beans roasted with the conventional method.

 In addition, the beans that were stored and then roasted for 45 minutes had more polyphenols and higher antioxidant activity than beans whose pods were not stored prior to fermentation, says Afoakwa. He explains that pulp preconditioning likely allowed the sweet pulp surrounding the beans inside the pod to alter the biochemical and physical constituents of the beans before the fermentation. "This aided the fermentation processes and enhanced antioxidant capacity of the beans, as well as the flavor," he says. He adds that the new technique would be particularly useful for countries in Southeast Asia and Latin America where cocoa beans produce a chocolate with a less intense chocolate flavor and have reduced antioxidant activity.

 Looking to the future, he says the team will be studying in more detail the effects of roasting on the flavor of freshly picked compared to stored cocoa beans. They will be testing different temperatures and roasting and storing times to determine if even higher amounts of antioxidants can be retained through the process.

 The researchers acknowledge funding from the Belgium Government under the VLIR TEAM Cocoa Project between Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium, and the University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana.

 A press conference on this topic will be held Tuesday, March 24, at 11 a.m. Mountain time in the Colorado Convention Center. Reporters may check-in at Room 104 in person, or watch live on YouTube http://bit. ly/ ACSLiveDenver . To ask questions, sign in with a Google account.

 ###

 The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 158,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

 To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

 Note to journalists: Please report that this research is being presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.

 Follow us: Twitter | Facebook

 Title

 Roasting effects on phenolic content and free-radical scavenging activities of pulp pre-conditioned and fermented cocoa (Theobroma cacao) beans

 Abstract

 Polyphenols are phytochemicals responsible for the astringency, bitterness, green flavours and antioxidant activities in cocoa (Theobroma cacao) beans. These are degraded during fermentation, drying and roasting affecting the antioxidant activity of the beans. However, the extent of degradation of phenolics during roasting remains unknown. This work was aimed at investigating the changes in total polyphenols, anthocyanins, o-diphenols and antioxidant activity (free-radical scavenging activities) during roasting of pulp pre-conditioned and fermented cocoa. A 4×4 full factorial design with the principal experimental factors as pod storage and roasting time were used. Samples were analyzed for total polyphenols, o-diphenols, anthocyanins and antioxidant activity using standard analytical methods. Variable decrease in total polyphenols, o-diphenols and anthocyanins were observed with increase in pod storage and roasting durations. However, variable trends were observed for the % free-radical scavenging activities. The total polyphenols, anthocyanins and o-diphenols in the cocoa beans after 45 minutes roasting decreased from 132.24 to 57.17 mg/g, 6.71 to 1.07 mg/kg and 15.94 to 8.25 mg/g respectively for 0, 3, 7 and 10 days pod storage treatments. The total polyphenols for the fermented, dried and unstored cocoa beans was 132.25 mg/g which reduced to 122.14 mg/g (7.642% degradation), 116.721 mg/g (11.7% degradation) and 92.22 mg/g (30.3% degradation) for pod stored for 3, 7 and 10 days respectively. Increasing roasting time caused continuous decreases in the % free-radical scavenging activity from 89.10% to 74.31% after 45 minutes for the unstored pods. Pulp pre-conditioning by pod storage and roasting duration could be used to reduce the astringency and bitterness caused by polyphenols, o-diphenols and anthocyanins in cocoa beans whilst increasing the antioxidant activity imparted by cocoa. ||||| Polyphenols are phytochemicals responsible for the astringency, bitterness, green flavours and antioxidant activities in Theobroma cacao beans. Polyphenols degradation in cocoa beans during roasting is crucial to the flavour outcome and it is influenced by factors such as temperature, time and pod storage. Antioxidants are compounds that help to inhibit oxidation reactions caused by free radicals such as singlet oxygen, superoxide, peroxyl radicals, hydroxyl radicals and peroxynitrite thereby preventing damage to the cells and tissues. Their mechanisms of action include scavenging reactive oxygen and decreasing localised oxygen concentration thereby reducing molecular oxygen’s oxidation potential, metabolising lipid peroxides to non-radical products and chelating metal ions to prevent generation of free radicals in humans. The study aimed at investigating changes in total polyphenols, anthocyanins, o-diphenols and antioxidant activity (free-radical scavenging activities) after roasting of pulp preconditioned and fermented cocoa beans using standard analytical methods. A 4×4 full factorial design with the principal experimental factors as pod storage time (0, 3, 7 and 10 days) and roasting duration (0, 15, 30 and 45 minutes) at 120oC were used to study the changes in the total polyphenols, anthocyanins, o-diphenols and % free-radical scavenging activities of the cocoa beans. Variable decrease in total polyphenols, odiphenols and anthocyanins were observed with increase in pre-conditioning (pod storage time) and roasting duration. However, variable trends were observed for the % free-radical scavenging activities. The total polyphenols, anthocyanins and o-diphenols in the cocoa beans after 45 minutes roasting decreased in the range 132.24 to 57.17 mg/g, 6.71 to 1.07 mg/kg and 15.94 to 8.25 mg/g respectively at all pod storage treatments. The total polyphenols of the fermented, dried and unstored (freshly harvested) cocoa beans was 132.25 mg/g which reduced to 122.14 mg/g (7.6% degradation), 116.721 mg/g (11.7% degradation) and 92.22 mg/g (30.3% degradation) after storage for 3, 7 and 10 days, respectively. The optimum decrease in the % freeradical scavenging activity was 7 days and above of pods storage. Increasing roasting time caused a continuous decrease in the % free-radical scavenging activity from 89.10% to 74.31% after 45 minutes for beans from the unstored (freshly harvested) pods. However, pod storage caused an increase in the % free radical scavenging activities during roasting. Pulp pre-conditioning (pod storage) and roasting duration could be used to reduce the astringency and bitterness caused by polyphenols, o-diphenols and anthocyanins in cocoa beans as well as increase the antioxidant activity imparted by cocoa.

 Key words: Cocoa, pod storage, roasting, polyphenols.

Summary: – One of your vices could one day be a little more virtuous: Scientists are today announcing that they've figured out how to make chocolate healthier. The findings will be detailed by researchers from Belgium's Ghent University and the University of Ghana at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Denver, and center around how antioxidant-rich the sweet is. As a press release explains, it all comes down to tweaking the process. Cocoa beans are removed from pods, fermented in baskets, sun-dried, and then roasted. It's during that last step, the roasting, that polyphenols, which act as antioxidants, are partially lost. In a bid to up the polyphenol content, researchers added a nontraditional step that "makes our research fundamentally different," explains Emmanuel Ohene Afoakwa: pulp preconditioning. That simply means they stored the pods—in the case of their experiments, for zero, three, seven, or 10 days—before removing the beans and beginning the fermentation process. A sweet pulp rests between the pod and the beans, and Afoakwa believes the preconditioning gives the pulp time to affect those beans. Indeed, the researchers found that those stored for a week showed the highest antioxidant activity after roasting—which they also adjusted. Rather than heat the beans for the typical 10 to 20 minutes at 248-266 degrees, they lowered the temp to 242 and upped the roasting time to 45 minutes, and discovered that slower and lower was also best in terms of antioxidant activity. The researchers' abstract notes another benefit: "Pulp preconditioning and roasting duration could be used to reduce the astringency and bitterness," improving chocolate's flavor. (Also presented at the ACS meeting: what's really in your pot.)


Americans have a favorable early impression of the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran and feel strong skepticism toward the prospect of military action against the Islamic state, according to private Democratic polling shared with POLITICO.

 In a survey taken for the liberal group Americans United for Change and conducted by the firm Hart Research, a 34-percent plurality of respondents who had heard at least “a little” about the deal said they favor the White House arrangement with Iran. A total of 22 percent said they oppose the deal and 41 percent said they had no opinion or didn’t know enough to answer.

 Text Size -

 +

 reset

 After hearing a clinically worded description of the deal — stating that it requires Iran to “freeze its nuclear development program” and admit international inspectors, while reducing some U.S. economic sanctions and continuing negotiations for a six-month period – a full 63 percent of respondents favored the deal.

 The survey, which tested 800 voters from Nov. 26 to Dec. 1 — but did not include calls on Thanksgiving and the day after — may bolster the case President Barack Obama and his allies will make to Congress, as they ask the legislature to hold off on placing new sanctions on Iran as the administration seeks to make the Iran deal work.

 There are also indications that the argument over Iran is far from over: While many voters are “somewhat” inclined to back the deal or find Obama’s arguments “fairly convincing,” there is not yet a majority solidly set behind the administration’s position.

 Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, who conducted the survey, said the straightforward takeaway is that voters “clearly want to give negotiations a chance to work if there is a possibility negotiations can prevent Iran from acquiring a weapon without a military strike.”

 “Americans do not want to get involved in another war in the Middle East,” Garin said. “The public is reassured by the fact that most sanctions remain in place and Iran has agreed to intrusive inspections, and Americans understand tougher sanctions can be imposed if and when negotiations for a permanent resolution do not succeed.”

 Offered a choice between two congressional approaches to the Iran deal, 68 percent of voters said they would prefer to see Congress “closely monitor” the implementation without taking “any action that would block the agreement.” Twenty-one percent of voters said Congress should pass new Iran sanctions “even if doing so would break the agreement … or might jeopardize the negotiations.”

 In a sign of the country’s continuing war weariness, only 27 percent of respondents said they would take a favorable view of a lawmaker who backed “military action against Iran to destroy its nuclear development program.” Fifty-two percent said they would take a somewhat unfavorable or strongly unfavorable view of such a position.

 And two thirds of respondents said they would prefer a member of Congress who “wants to give the new agreement and further negotiations a chance,” as opposed to 25 percent who’d rather support a lawmaker who wants to hand down new sanctions at the risk of undermining negotiations.

 That divide isn’t merely a partisan one: Obama’s Iran deal has drawn flak from Democrats such as New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, as well as an array of leading Republicans, who have voiced concern that Iran is merely playing for time with the deal and has no real intention of abandoning its quest of atomic weapons.

 Garin maintained: “The clear majority of voters do not want Congress to impose more sanctions at this point if doing so might jeopardize the agreement and ongoing negotiations.”

 AUC president Brad Woodhouse said the group would be briefing congressional Democrats and “other interested parties” on the Iran poll in the coming days.

 Update: This story has been updated to clarify that the poll did not test voters on Thursday and Friday of the Thanksgiving holiday. ||||| Iran's Minister of Petroleum Bijan Namdar Zangeneh, center, speaks to journalists prior to the start of a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, at their headquarters... (Associated Press)

 Iran indirectly challenged OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, announcing that it plans to pump as much oil as it can once sanctions on its crude exports are lifted, even if its extra output drives prices into the basement.

 The comments by Iranian oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh reflected Tehran's determination to regain its global role as an oil power as soon as it is freed of the sanctions under any nuclear deal with six world powers meant to ensure that it cannot make atomic weapons.

 The Saudis produce about a third of OPEC's output now, and Zanganeh, in comments ahead of a meeting of OPEC's 12 oil ministers, said his country was determined to regain its share `'under all circumstances."

 `'We will produce 4 million even if the price drops to $20," he told reporters. Benchmark Brent crude on international markets now sells for nearly six times as much, and a drop to anywhere near $20 would spark a crisis among oil exporters by leaving production costs far outstripping sales revenue.

 Iran's agreement to limit its nuclear program is still only a preliminary one. Sanctions on its oil exports are likely to stay in place until a final deal is reached, which is unlikely before mid-2014. But the Iranian challenge reflected potential problems ahead for OPEC, unless the Saudis and others are prepared to cut back on their production and make room for a resurgent Iran.

 Bitter regional rivals with Iran, the Saudis may not be ready to cede much ground.

 Saudi oil minister Ali Naimi sought to ease concerns, telling reporters he did not see a price war on the horizon.

 "I hope Iran comes back (and) produces all it can," he said. But he gave no sign that his country was ready to reduce output, saying it remains `'prepared to supply our customers with what they need."

 Naimi and other oil ministers came to Wednesday's meeting saying the market is well balanced and expressing happiness with present prices. That means that ministers on Wednesday will probably opt to keep the present OPEC output target at around 30 million barrels daily.

 But a major uptick in Iranian exports _ and attempts by Iraq and Libya to increase their own output _ could result in an oil glut. OPEC has had little success in the past at asking member countries to respect individual targets.

 Zanganeh on Tuesday suggested oil sanctions may be incrementally relaxed even earlier than mid-2014. In a nod to the Saudis, he said he hoped OPEC members understand that `'when a member country comes back ... they should open the doors for him and not fight with him."

 Strong U.S. shale oil production could add to internal OPEC pressures beyond political tensions caused by Sunni Saudi Arabia vying with Shiite-led Iran and Iraq.

 All three countries have put forward candidates for the post of OPEC secretary general, who acts as the voice of the organization between meetings. But with their rivalries strong and potentially harmful to OPEC unity, the meeting is expected to skirt the issue and extend Libya's Abdullah Al-Badry's term for another year.

 ___

 Margaret Childs contributed to this report. ||||| VIENNA: OPEC was expected to stick by its oil output limit at a meeting here even as Iraq and Iran eye higher crude exports amid slashed Libyan production.

 The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries does not see a need to alter the cartel’s crude production ceiling of 30 million barrels per day, member nations led by the world’s biggest oil producer Saudi Arabia said in Vienna ahead of the meeting.

 Pumping about one third of the world’s crude, OPEC will decide also on whether to replace Abdullah El-Badri as secretary general.

 “We know demand is good, economic growth is good, supply is good,” Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi told reporters at OPEC headquarters in the Austrian capital.

 OPEC members Nigeria and Venezuela each said they believed the cartel would agree to maintain its crude oil production ceiling.

 Oil market analysts were meanwhile not expecting any surprises from OPEC, whose dozen member nations from the Middle East, Africa and Latin America are together producing slightly below its output target.

 “It is unlikely that OPEC will adjust its official notional production ceiling as it is unlikely that either Iran and Iraq can contribute incrementally in any significant manner to the group’s supply next year,” Harry Tchilinguirian, BNP Paribas’ global head of commodity markets strategy, told AFP.

 OPEC is facing also demand strains as consumers turn to cheaper oil and gas extracted from shale rock, particularly in North America.

 At the same time, Iraq and Iran are seeking to increase their production after sizable falls to output in recent years.

 Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members argue that benchmark crude oil prices, currently averaging $100 per barrel, provide acceptable income for producers without weighing too heavily on consumers.

 “The price of oil is acceptable and there will be some additional oil coming to the market from OPEC and outside OPEC,” Qatar’s Energy Minister Mohammed Al-Sada said.

 “What is more important is that this additional oil will be needed for the signs of economic recovery.”

 Al-Sada added: “The current (output) situation seems to be comfortable... 30 million barrels seems to do justice to the current economic situation.”

 Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh this week said that the country would be able to “immediately” export 4.0 million barrels per day (bpd) once sanctions are lifted in the wake of the international deal to roll back its nuclear program.

 Iranian crude oil exports have been slashed to about 1.2 million bpd from 2.5 million bpd in 2011, according to Zanganeh.

 At the same time, Iraq’s Oil Minister Abdelkarim Al-Luaybi said his country hoped to export 3.4 million bpd of crude oil next year, including 400,000 bpd from Iraqi Kurdistan, as it looks to recover from years of bloodshed.

 This compares with exports of 2.38 million bpd in November.

 The market though doubts how quickly new production can come on board.

 “OPEC will find it very hard to come to an agreement to cut production given a significant number of its members — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria — are suffering from constrained production,” said Thomas Pugh, commodities analyst at Capital Economics consultants.

 Libya’s output has plunged to about 250,000 bpd amid deadly fighting between radical fighters and the army, but oil minister Abdelbari Al-Arusi said he hoped production would be back to its normal level of 1.5 million bpd within two weeks.

 Nigeria is meanwhile facing regular acts of sabotage to its oil pipelines.

 Saudi Arabia is battling against Iraq and Iran for the position of succeeding El-Badri, who has steered the cartel through the financial crisis in the role of administrative head since 2007.

 OPEC voted in December last year to re-appoint the Libyan for another year after members failed to agree on a new secretary general. ||||| This player has full sharing enabled: social, email, embed, etc. It has the ability to go fullscreen. It will display a list of suggested videos when the video has played to the end.

 House Republicans are considering various legislative options that would either tacitly or explicitly rip the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran.

 A handful of House GOP lawmakers told The Hill that the party is debating how best to express disapproval of the multilateral agreement, which was struck shortly after Congress left for Thanksgiving recess.

 ADVERTISEMENT

 House Majority Leader(R-Va.) on Tuesday was adamant during a closed-door meeting with Republicans that the White House explain the details of the agreement, a source in the room told The Hill.

 Noting that Cantor is “very concerned with where the president is leading us,” the source said the No. 2 GOP House leader intended to work closely with Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) to produce a legislative response.

 Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), said, “The overwhelming sentiment [among House Republicans is] this was an agreement that was foolish, dangerous, and that we need to do something and push forward.”

 Many Republicans and some Democrats have criticized the nuclear pact because it does not insist that Iran suspend all uranium enrichment.

 Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has asserted Iran got more than it gave up, saying it “does not seem proportional.”

 Cantor spokesman Rory Cooper said, “The leader does not believe the interim agreement the White House negotiated with Iran was in our nation’s best interests, so he will work with members on both sides of the aisle to determine that any final deal definitively addresses serious congressional concerns.”

 According to several participants at the Tuesday morning meeting, House Republicans focused on several possible responses to the six-month agreement endorsed by the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and Iran. Under the deal, Iran agreed to enrich less uranium and allow nuclear weapons inspections in exchange for the elimination of nearly $7 billion in sanctions.

 One option would be pressuring the Senate to consider new sanctions on Iran. The House this summer passed a bill with bipartisan support to do just that, 400-20.

 Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has repeatedly noted that the House passed an Iran sanctions bill and that it is sitting in the Senate.

 Contrary to the wishes of the White House, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Schumer have indicated the upper chamber will tackle a companion bill next week.

 The other option for House Republicans would be a resolution to formally disapprove of the interim deal.

 “I think that we should have a sense of the House that we oppose the deal,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), a senior Foreign Affairs Committee member.

 Some Democrats would likely vote for such a measure, though Rohrabacher suspects “there are a lot of people on the Democratic side of the aisle who seem to feel compelled to support the administration on anything they possibly can, and this might fall within that range because you’ve got a Democratic president under attack.”

 More than a few Republicans, including Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (Texas), have suggested the Iran agreement was timed to distract from the disastrous rollout of ObamaCare.

 It is unclear when the House will act on an Iran resolution; the lower chamber is scheduled to adjourn for the year at the end of next week.

 Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday will appear before the House Foreign Affairs Committee to discuss the deal.

Summary: – Following an initial nuclear deal between Tehran and the West, Iran is planning to ramp up its oil production, its oil minister says. "We will produce 4 million even if the price drops to $20," says Bijan Namdar Zanganeh. That's about a sixth of the current price, and it would leave production costs far higher than revenue, the AP notes. Saudi Arabia, which produces about a third of OPEC's supply, doesn't plan to reduce production for Iran's benefit, and OPEC doesn't look likely to raise its 30-million-barrel daily production limit, Arab News notes. Still, the Saudi oil minister doesn't appear worried about any potential export crisis. "I hope Iran comes back (and) produces all it can," he says, per the AP. But the nuclear deal itself may face a challenge, with Republican lawmakers on the attack; some Democrats, including Charles Schumer, have also expressed doubts. "The overwhelming sentiment (among House Republicans is) this was an agreement that was foolish, dangerous, and that we need to do something and push forward," says Rep. Tom Reed. The House could push the Senate for new Iran sanctions, or it could pass a resolution officially expressing disapproval, the Hill reports. The public apparently feels differently. A poll shows that a plurality of Americans who know at least "a little" about the agreement—some 34%—back it. That's compared to 22% who are against it, and 41% who either don't have an opinion or know too little to give one, Politico reports.