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Friday, May 10, 2013

Cleveland man arraigned on rape, kidnap charges

Ariel Castro appears in Cleveland Municipal court Thursday, May 9, 2013, in Cleveland. Castro was charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape. Ariel Castro was charged while his brothers, Pedro and Onil Castro, were held but faced no immediate charges. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)

Gina DeJesus gives a thumbs-up as she is escorted toward her home Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in Cleveland. The three women held captive for about a decade at a run-down Cleveland house were apparently bound with ropes and chains, police said Wednesday, while charges were expected by the end of the day against the three brothers under arrest. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)

A member of the FBI evidence response team carries out a bag after searching a house near the home where three women were held Wednesday, May 8, 2013, in Cleveland. Amanda Berry, 27, Michelle Knight, 32, and Gina DeJesus, about 23, had apparently been held captive in the house nearby since their teens or early 20s, police said. (AP Photo/Roadell Hickman)

CLEVELAND (AP) ? A Cleveland man was arraigned Thursday on charges of rape and kidnapping after three women missing for about a decade and one of their young daughters were found alive at his home earlier in the week.

Ariel Castro looked down at the ground for almost the entire court proceeding, biting his collar and signing documents with his handcuffed hands. He didn't speak. Bond was set at $8 million.

The women found alive after a decade in captivity endured lonely, dark lives inside a dingy home where they were raped and allowed outside only a handful of times in disguises while walking to a garage steps away, investigators say.

The 52-year-old former school bus driver has emerged as the lone suspect.

While many questions remain about how Castro maintained such tight control over the women for so many years before one of them made a daring escape Monday, the horrors they suffered are beginning to come to light.

Police say the women were apparently bound by ropes and chains at times and were kept in different rooms. They suffered prolonged sexual and psychological abuse and had miscarriages, according to a city councilman.

Castro has been charged with four counts of kidnapping ? covering the captives and the daughter born to one of them ? and three counts of rape, against all three women.

The women and Castro have given lengthy statements to police that have helped build their case, said Deputy Police Chief Ed Tomba.

None of the women, though, gave them any indication that Castro's two older brothers, who've been in custody since Monday, were involved, Tomba said. Prosecutors brought no charges against the brothers, citing a lack of evidence.

"Ariel kept everyone at a distance," Tomba said.

One thing that remains a mystery, he said, is how the women were kept in the house so long.

"As far as the circumstances inside the home and the control he may have had over those girls ... I think that's going to take us a long time to figure that out," he said.

The women, now in their 20s and 30s, vanished separately between 2002 and 2004. At the time, they were 14, 16 and 20 years old.

At a news conference, authorities would not discuss the circumstances of their kidnapping and captivity.

City Councilman Brian Cummins earlier said: "We know that the victims have confirmed miscarriages, but with who, how many and what conditions we don't know."

"It sounds pretty gruesome," he added.

They never saw a chance to escape over the last 10 years until this week when Amanda Berry broke through a door and ran to freedom, alerting police who rescued the other two women while Castro was away from the house.

In newly released police audio tapes, a 911 dispatcher notifies officers on Monday that she's just spoken to a woman who "says her name is Amanda Berry and that she had been kidnapped 10 years ago."

An officer on the recorded call says, "This might be for real."

After police arrive at the house, women can be heard crying in the background. Then an officer tells the dispatcher: "We found 'em. We found 'em."

Tomba said of Berry, "Something must have clicked and she saw an opportunity and she took that opportunity."

He said the women could remember being outside only twice during their entire time in captivity. "We were told they left the house and went into the garage in disguise," he said.

Also in the house was Berry's 6-year-old daughter. A paternity test on Castro was being done to establish whether he fathered the child.

While prosecutors announced charges against Castro, federal agents searched a vacant house near where the women had been held. Officials would only say their search was an attempt to get evidence in the case against Castro, but they refused to say what they found or what led them there.

Castro was in custody and couldn't be reached for comment. A brother-in-law has said the family was shocked after hearing about the women at the home.

Few people in Cleveland, outside the families of the women, thought there was any chance they were still alive.

Berry, 27, and Gina DeJesus, who is in her early 20s, were welcomed home Wednesday by jubilant crowds of loved ones and neighbors with balloons and banners. Family members hustled them inside, past hundreds of reporters and onlookers.

Neither woman spoke.

"This is the best Mother's Day I could ever have," said Nancy Ruiz, Gina's mother. She said she hugged her daughter and didn't want to let go.

Ruiz said she spent time with all three women after they were rescued. "There's no word to describe the beauty of just seeing them," she said.

DeJesus' father pumped his fist after arriving home with his daughter, and urged people across the country to watch over the children in their neighborhoods ? including other people's kids.

"Too many kids these days come up missing, and we always ask this question: How come I didn't see what happened to that kid? Why? Because we chose not to," he said.

The third captive, Michelle Knight, 32, was reported in good condition at Metro Health Medical Center, which a day earlier had reported that all three victims had been released. There was no immediate explanation from the hospital.

The Associated Press does not usually identify people who may be victims of sexual assault, but the names of the women were widely circulated by their families, friends and law enforcement authorities for years during their disappearance.

Police submitted four affidavits detailing the allegations against Castro ? four kidnapping charges and three rape charges.

The affidavits say Berry, DeJesus and Knight each were lured into Castro's vehicle and then held captive at the home on Seymour.

"During this time period, the victim was repeatedly sexually assaulted by the defendant," Cleveland police Det. Andrew Harasimchuk wrote in each of the affidavits.

Castro was accused of twice breaking the nose of his children's mother, knocking out a tooth, dislocating each shoulder and threatening to kill her and her daughters, according to a 2005 domestic-violence filing in Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Court.

The filing for a protective order by Grimilda Figueroa also said that Castro frequently abducted her daughters and kept them from her. Figueroa died in April 2012 after a battle with cancer.

Figueroa's father, Ismail Figueroa, said Wednesday that Castro would regularly lock his daughter inside a second-floor apartment in the house where they lived when they were first together.

Later, when they moved a few blocks to the house Castro purchased ? the house from which, years later, the women would escape ? he kept a close eye on her and refused to let people come inside to visit her or even let her pick up their children from school, said Angel Villanueva, who is married to Grimilda Figueroa's sister.

Grimilda was "not allowed to go nowhere," said Villanueva. No matter where she wanted to go, "it had to be with him."

___

Associated Press writers Andrew Welsh-Huggins and Mike Householder and freelance reporter John Coyne in Cleveland; Mitch Stacy in Columbus; Dan Sewell in Cincinnati; John Seewer in Toledo; and news researchers Rhonda Shafner and Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-05-09-Missing%20Women%20Found/id-696a0edc34e045459cfa69f80d520f69

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Malaysians Defy Police, Rally Against Election Loss (Voice Of America)

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Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Powerstick+ USB Drive/Power Charger review

Since many of us carry around mobile devices such as smartphones, iPhones, handheld games, digital cameras, MP3 player, and the like, having emergency backup power is almost a?necessity when it comes to preventing your device ?from shutting down when a power outlet is out of reach.?Powerstick+ from Ecosol is a portable charger that can keep [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2013/05/08/powerstick-usb-drivepower-charger-review/

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In rural W.Va., schools rethink their role

WAR, W.Va. (AP) ? When school started here in the fall, 1 out of 7 classrooms was without a teacher; leaders couldn't recruit enough educators to this sparsely populated rural area at the southern tip of West Virginia.

When officials turned on the mandatory security cameras at one elementary school, the rest of the building lost its Internet connection; the buildings weren't wired for this century.

And when parent-teacher conferences came around, fewer than half of the biological parents got invitations; the others were long gone, in jail or dead.

This is the reality facing students in McDowell County, a place perpetually ranked among the worst in the state by almost every measure. Twelve people a month die from drug overdoses here, while more than 100 people are on a waiting list to talk to rehab counselors via Skype. Three-quarters of all students live in a home where parents can't find work in this one-time coal hub that has slowed. The county leads the state in teenage pregnancies.

With this as the backdrop, the West Virginia Board of Education on Wednesday was set to formally alter the scope of these schools. The state took over the schools more than a decade ago and its leaders no longer will limit their mission to the traditional school day. The officials are going to try to turn the schools into a base, not just for the students but for all of those who live around here in small towns with names such as Cucumber and Johnnycake, where storefronts are boarded up and homes abandoned.

Adult literacy, drug rehabilitation programs and basic medical care all will take place under the roofs of these schools. And in many cases, they're already under way even before the state approves the final deal that expands the schools' ambitions in exchange for some relaxed oversight.

"In addition to reading, writing and arithmetic, we're also acting as their parents," principal Florisha Christian McGuire said as she walked through the halls in War's Southside School.

Classes had dismissed for the day but dozens of students stayed for after-school programs that include dinner.

"You look into their eyes and they have the eyes of someone much older. They've seen so much," McGuire said. "So my role switched from being a principal to social worker."

The American Federation of Teachers-guided effort is called Reconnecting McDowell, and leaders hope it will stem decades of suffering, both physical and economic.

The effort started out as a conversation between then-West Virginia first lady Gayle Manchin and AFT President Randi Weingarten. During the past 18 months, the two high-energy women called allies and pulled together more than 120 partners. Communications firms replaced dial-up Internet service with high-speed upgrades, VH1 donated instruments for the bands, and volunteer firefighters are serving as mentors.

If successful and sustainable, this model could help despairing rural schools elsewhere. It has no less a champion that Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

"I think the lessons are not just for this county or for this state, but across this country, that this community effort, this collective endeavor can be as successful as we all hope and think it can be," Duncan said during a visit here. "The implications are truly national."

He knows. Before joining President Barack Obama's Cabinet, Duncan ran Chicago's public schools and oversaw a shift to such a community-focused model in many of those places of learning.

But that's not to say it will work here. Previous attempts at economic development in this southernmost corner of West Virginia have come in fits and starts, only to fizzle when well-intentioned visitors grew frustrated, bored or broke.

And similar attempts have fallen short in far more populous places where the challenges weren't as great.

"It would be a real mystery to me how to do that in a rural area," said Paul Heckman, an associate dean at the University of California, Davis, School of Education.

Heckman helped schools in Tucson, Ariz., set up a similar community-based program. But there he had a more densely populated area.

"How do you activate this community?" he said about this rural place.

It's not as though McDowell County is a stranger to outsiders' help. In 1966 alone, the county received $721,000 from federal anti-poverty programs.

"Eight community centers were opened, each with a library and recreation area, classrooms for Head Start and well-equipped sewing and cooking areas. Instructors were hired to teach adult education and home economics. Recreation directors were employed," The New York Times wrote in a 1966 article from here.

"Then, with everything in place, the word was sent out to the poor: Come to classes because they are good for you. ... Everything will be different for you from now on."

Little changed.

"Their heart was in the right place and they came in with the grants and instituted these programs. Everything was fine for six months and they went away and the program died," said Manchin, now the vice president of the West Virginia Board of Education and among those expected to vote for expanding the schools' mandate.

What they're trying to do is overlay an urban strategy on a place where cellphones often lack a signal. Boston, Cincinnati and Oakland, Calif., all have created schools where the academic leaders work with community partners on education, health and social issues. Between lessons on Shakespeare and Charlemagne, students can have their teeth cleaned or meet with a social worker.

But here it is something new.

"In 10 years, hopefully you'll see a McDowell County that is thriving, schools are thriving and students are successful," Weingarten said. "Back in the 1950s, Main Street looked like a teeming urban street. There was nowhere to walk and nowhere to drive."

The county had almost 100,000 people in 1950, according to census figures. They lost more than a quarter of that population over the next decade and that number fell another 50,000 in 1970. By 2010, that number had dropped to 22,000.

As the mines that produced $1 billion in coal grew quieter, so did the cash registers. Infrastructure became a luxury. Unemployment rushed in. Alcohol followed. Drugs weren't far behind.

"The problem at one point was alcohol. Through the last 15 years, I would guess, that problem has changed from alcohol," said Judy Akers, chief executive officer of the Southern Highlands Community Mental Health Center.

Her organization's clinic in McDowell County is treating 24 people for opiate addiction and has 143 others on a waiting list for the telemedicine program.

The drug problem here had become so severe, officials opened a juvenile program inside the school so teachers ? already combating truancy ? wouldn't have to lose more students from their classrooms when they went for counseling.

"We have good people here. We have educated people here," said Reba Honaker, the mayor of the county seat, Welch, and a former home economics teacher.

Just too few of them stay, she said.

Those who do leave behind statistics that make educators shake their heads.

Some 72 percent of the students live in a home where neither parent is working. About 46 percent of students live in a home without a biological parent; many of them are in jail for drugs. Many of the students will become parents before they become graduates; the county leads the state in the teen birth rate, with roughly 1 in 10 females between the ages of 15 and 19 giving birth.

And McDowell County has the highest death rate for prescription drug overdoses in the country. Twelve people die each month from abusing prescription pills.

Those are the extremes. On a more basic level, there are daily challenges.

Many of the students here have never sat in a dentist's chair to have their teeth cleaned. There is no central water system here so fluoride is not readily available. And it's a long drive through treacherous terrain for anything beyond an emergency.

That will change next year if leaders can pull off their plan. The Reconnecting McDowell leaders are trying to recruit dentists to work with the schools to set up medical clinics, not just for students but also their parents.

They're also looking to expand the existing efforts to help parents' reading skills.

The U.S. Department of Education estimates 22 percent of the adult population in the county lacks basic literacy skills. So project managers decided to introduce literacy centers not just for children, but also their parents and grandparents. At seven locations adults sit with educators and learn basic skills.

For others, there are home visits to help them learn reading skills.

"Parents want what's best for their children," said Jacki Wimmer, an early reading teacher who makes regular visits to seven families. "Some children come to school and they've never held a book."

And for the traditional functions of a school? Those, too, need work.

Of the 350 teaching positions in McDowell County, 51 were not filled at the start of the school year. Those who considered moving here couldn't find housing. In the mountainous region, there's no flat land to build new houses. Rental property is hard to come by. The Reconnecting McDowell project has talked about building an apartment building of its own to house 20 or 25 teachers. Plans are in the works.

In the short term, schools turned to substitutes and those who didn't have licenses. The state could loosen those requirements as part of the expanded roles.

Despite the dour outlook, students and educators alike remain upbeat.

"I like my teachers. I like my friends. I like math," third-grader Emma Cline said as she played in a computer lab after school, as she does three nights a week. "I really, really like that my teachers care about me."

If leaders get their way, that care will take on even stronger efforts in coming years.

"You've got to look past the mold, the mildew, the trash and the dust," McGuire, the principal, said as she walked through an abandoned gymnasium she hopes to turn into a community center. The outside doors were locked but the glass on one was broken so she let herself in.

"Think of how many kids could be saved here," she said, kicking up dust with every step. "We have got to at least try."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rural-w-va-schools-rethink-role-071950304.html

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Tuesday, May 7, 2013

We almost always buy in the same shops

Public release date: 6-May-2013
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Contact: ana herrera
oic@uc3m.es
Carlos III University of Madrid

This news release is available in Spanish.

This research study attempts to identify just how predictable we consumers are with respect to shopping patterns. As explained by one of its authors, Esteban Moro of the Department of Mathematics at UC3M, "the main conclusion we have drawn is that people's behavior is repetitive when it comes to visiting and spending in shops, and as such it is possible to have some success in predicting where we are going to buy in the future". Published in Scientific Reports, the open journal of the Nature group, the study was also produced by scientists from the Universidad Autnoma de Madrid, the University of California in San Diego (U.S.A), M.I.T (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and NICTA (Australia).
In order to carry out the study, researchers analyzed hundreds of thousands of de-identified economic transactions made with credit cards on both sides of the Atlantic. The goal was to find the predictability' of the time series of consumption in almost a year's worth of credit card purchases made by more than 50 million accounts. "What we found"- the researcher points out- "is that people are quite regular when visiting (and purchasing in shops and that there is quite a bit of predictability', above all in the long term". To put it another way, it is difficult to predict where your next purchase will be on the basis of where you are doing your shopping now. However, as Professor Moro indicates, it is possible to know with a fair degree of probability where you will go shopping during the next month. In short: we go back to the same shops with remarkable regularity.
As pointed out by the researchers, the study has various applications that range from geomarketing (marketing in specific areas of the city), provision of points of sale, locating cash tellers or detecting fraud. There is still not enough information available to the researchers as to whether this data can be extrapolated to cash operations.
Over the past few years there has been a good deal of research on the 'predictability' of social behavior. By using different data sources (telephones, Wi-Fi points, GPS data, etc.), many groups of scientists have studied how predictable our mobility is- that is, the routes, walks and places that we use to move about in the city.
While this mobility is determined by the tasks we have to carry out throughout the day (going to work, going home, etc.), there are also many variables throughout the day that are not completely predictable (where to, take out money, etc.). As Esteban Moro puts it, "our goal was to try to observe to what extent this 'predictability' also exists in economic decisions (how much and where I use the credit card). Although they are conditioned by our daily mobility, these decisions have a completely different dimension."
###

Further information:
Title: The predictability of consumer visitation patterns
Authors: Coco Krumme, Alejandro Llorente, Manuel Cebrian Alex Pentland, Esteban Moro
Journal: Scientific Reports. Volume: 3. Article number: 1645. Published18 April 2013
DOI:10.1038/srep01645
URL: http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130418/srep01645/full/srep01645.html
Lower image: Trajectory (fictitious) of an individual's movements/shopping in a city

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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.

We almost always buy in the same shops Public release date: 6-May-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: ana herrera
oic@uc3m.es
Carlos III University of Madrid

This news release is available in Spanish.

This research study attempts to identify just how predictable we consumers are with respect to shopping patterns. As explained by one of its authors, Esteban Moro of the Department of Mathematics at UC3M, "the main conclusion we have drawn is that people's behavior is repetitive when it comes to visiting and spending in shops, and as such it is possible to have some success in predicting where we are going to buy in the future". Published in Scientific Reports, the open journal of the Nature group, the study was also produced by scientists from the Universidad Autnoma de Madrid, the University of California in San Diego (U.S.A), M.I.T (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and NICTA (Australia).
In order to carry out the study, researchers analyzed hundreds of thousands of de-identified economic transactions made with credit cards on both sides of the Atlantic. The goal was to find the predictability' of the time series of consumption in almost a year's worth of credit card purchases made by more than 50 million accounts. "What we found"- the researcher points out- "is that people are quite regular when visiting (and purchasing in shops and that there is quite a bit of predictability', above all in the long term". To put it another way, it is difficult to predict where your next purchase will be on the basis of where you are doing your shopping now. However, as Professor Moro indicates, it is possible to know with a fair degree of probability where you will go shopping during the next month. In short: we go back to the same shops with remarkable regularity.
As pointed out by the researchers, the study has various applications that range from geomarketing (marketing in specific areas of the city), provision of points of sale, locating cash tellers or detecting fraud. There is still not enough information available to the researchers as to whether this data can be extrapolated to cash operations.
Over the past few years there has been a good deal of research on the 'predictability' of social behavior. By using different data sources (telephones, Wi-Fi points, GPS data, etc.), many groups of scientists have studied how predictable our mobility is- that is, the routes, walks and places that we use to move about in the city.
While this mobility is determined by the tasks we have to carry out throughout the day (going to work, going home, etc.), there are also many variables throughout the day that are not completely predictable (where to, take out money, etc.). As Esteban Moro puts it, "our goal was to try to observe to what extent this 'predictability' also exists in economic decisions (how much and where I use the credit card). Although they are conditioned by our daily mobility, these decisions have a completely different dimension."
###

Further information:
Title: The predictability of consumer visitation patterns
Authors: Coco Krumme, Alejandro Llorente, Manuel Cebrian Alex Pentland, Esteban Moro
Journal: Scientific Reports. Volume: 3. Article number: 1645. Published18 April 2013
DOI:10.1038/srep01645
URL: http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130418/srep01645/full/srep01645.html
Lower image: Trajectory (fictitious) of an individual's movements/shopping in a city

[ | E-mail | Share ]
?

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/2013-05/ciuo-waa050613.php
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Sunday, May 5, 2013

Hiromi: I've got Rhythm

Hiromi is a big deal Japanese jazz pianist who's getting pretty famous in the U.S. now, too. She's been touring around the world for awhile and her compositions are really great. Oh and her playing is totally badass.