For Pentagon Lawyer Who Co-Wrote Report on Gays, Military Bias Hits Home

As Mr. Johnson recounted in an interview at the Pentagon last week, ?A year ago, this subject was so sensitive that whenever I had a conversation with anybody about it in the building, it was always a group of three or less, behind closed doors.?

As he wrote the report, which is a crucial factor in the Congressional debate over reversing the ?don?t ask, don?t tell? policy, he had to navigate the growing legal challenges to the 17-year-old law, which requires gay men and lesbians in the military to keep their sexual orientation secret or face discharge.

In October, a series of court decisions whipsawed the Pentagon into suspending and then resuming enforcement of the law over the course of little more than a week, creating bewilderment at recruiting stations and confusion among Defense Department lawyers. Wrangling in the courts continued into November.

?In the space of eight days we had to shift course on the worldwide enforcement of the law twice, and in the space of a month faced the possibility of shifting course four different times,? Mr. Johnson told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week.

The experiences have turned Mr. Johnson into a force behind the Pentagon?s argument that Congress has to repeal ?don?t ask, don?t tell,? and soon, or the courts will do it for them. Although it is not at all clear whether the Supreme Court would strike down the law, Mr. Johnson and his boss, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, are warning of the dangers of repeal by abrupt ?judicial fiat,? which they said would not give the Pentagon enough time to prepare the armed forces for change.

But Mr. Johnson, 53, an early fund-raiser for President Obama in New York and the first black partner at the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, also has a window into the ?don?t ask, don?t tell? debate from beyond the courtroom ? from his own family history.

His uncle, Robert B. Johnson, was not only one of the Tuskegee Airmen, but was also a participant in what is known as the Freeman Field Mutiny in 1945, when a group of the airmen were arrested for entering an all-white officers? club at Freeman Field in Indiana. The airmen were imprisoned for 10 days until the Army chief of staff, Gen. George C. Marshall, intervened. Three years later, President Harry S. Truman integrated the military by executive order.

Although Mr. Johnson says that discrimination based on race and sexual orientation are different ? sexual orientation, he maintains, is ?not a self-identifier? ? he has found similarities in the way the armed forces reacted in both cases to the prospect of change. The study Mr. Johnson wrote with Gen. Carter F. Ham found that, over all, 70 percent of the troops surveyed said the repeal of ?don?t ask, don?t tell? would have little effect, but about 60 percent of Marines predicted a negative impact.

The opposition to integrating the armed forces in the 1940s, Mr. Johnson said, was as high as 80 percent. ?The lesson to be drawn from that,? he said, ?is that very often the predictions about what is going to happen overestimate the negative consequences and underestimate the military?s ability to adapt.?

Mr. Johnson said he did not consider his work on the study as an assignment to advance civil rights. As the Defense Department?s lawyer and the report?s co-author, his position is that the Pentagon could make the change, but whether it should, he said, is up to Congress.

In the meantime, Mr. Johnson is handling a raft of other issues like the stalled efforts to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay and legal reviews of all United States military operations, including drone strikes. He supervises 10,000 Defense Department lawyers around the world and a staff of 200 at the Pentagon.

Mr. Johnson?s first name, pronounced ?Jay,? is taken from a Liberian chief whom his grandfather, Charles S. Johnson, a sociologist who was president of Fisk University, met during a League of Nations mission to Africa in 1930. He has never served in the military, but when Bill Clinton was president, Mr. Johnson told their mutual friend, the lawyer Vernon E. Jordan Jr., that he wanted to work in the new administration and got the job of Air Force counsel, in part, he said, to advance diversity.

?I had never set foot in the Pentagon,? he said.

Mr. Johnson served in the Pentagon from 1998 to 2001 and then returned to his job as a litigator at Paul, Weiss, but he wanted to go back to the capital. ?The scent and allure of Washington was very compelling to him,? said Gordon Davis, a former New York City parks commissioner and the founding chairman of Jazz at Lincoln Center who is a friend of Mr. Johnson.

Mr. Johnson, who is married and has two children, now has a home in Georgetown, but he has kept his old house in Montclair, N.J. Most of his waking hours are spent at the Pentagon.

As he told the Senate Armed Services Committee about what he faces on ?don?t ask, don?t tell?: ?This legal uncertainty is not going away anytime soon.?

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Android to pass iOS before iOS catches up to BlackBerry

60.7 million people in the US owned smartphones during the last quarter, up 14 percent from the preceding three month period. The number of smartphone owners who use Google's Android OS is about to pass the number of users on Apple's iOS, but the number of Americans on RIM's BlackBerry OS is still ahead of both. Based on the data provided by tracking firm comScore, Android saw a huge sales jump while iOS gained a little and BlackBerry dropped quite a bit.

In the three months ending in October, RIM dropped from 39.3 percent to 35.8 percent. Apple's share rose less than a single percentage point, going from 23.8 percent to 24.6 percent. Meanwhile, the share of Google users rose sharply from 17.0 percent to 23.5 percent.

If iOS and Android were neck and neck a month ago, it looks like the latter will pass the former in the current quarter, especially given that it includes the 2010 holiday season. BlackBerry should remain in first this year, but that lead won't last for long.

Microsoft's share dropped from 11.8 percent to 9.7 percent of smartphone subscribers. Palm's numbers fell from 4.9 percent to 3.9 percent. Despite losing share to Android, most smartphone platforms are still gaining users because the smartphone market overall continues to grow.

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Turn your iPad into the best radio you?ve ever owned [TNW Apps]

You may not realise it, but the iPad is potentially one the best portable radios available, as long as you have an Internet connection available. It?s got a good pair of built-in speakers and accessing a world of radio stations is just an app download away. But which app? Here?s our round-up of five of the best out there.

TuneIn Radio

£1.19 or local equivalent. [iTunes link]

Already popular on the iPhone, TuneIn Radio has recently been optimised for the iPad and with iOS 4.2.1 support, it will run in the background while use other apps.

Far more than any of the other apps we?re looking at here, TuneIn Radio has made good use of the iPad?s screen space. Like many of the apps here it hooks into the RadioTime directory to offer thousands of stations, here categorised as Music, Talk and Sport. If you want to narrow your choice down to your local stations, a map view allow you to browse the stations available on the airwaves in different parts of the world. It?s optimised for

While many stations now offer online catchup services, not all do and many are incomplete. So, the idea of recording a station for later listening may appeal. TuneIn Radio allows you to record any station you?re listening to at the tap of a button. You can even set a timer for it to record a specific station for a specific duration, with all your recordings available in a menu for later listening. The only problem is that recording won?t work when TuneIn Radio is left running in the background ? it has to be left open on the screen with the power cable plugged in to work. Still, it?s a feature that none of the other app here offer and it?s highly useful to have the option.

Tunemark

£0.59 or local equivalent. [iTunes link]

SHOUTcast is a technology that lets anyone set up their own Internet radio station. Tunemark is a dedicated browser for these station that, while often run by amateurs, can be a great way to discover new music and new voices. You?ll also find American NPR here and there?s the option to add a custom audio stream by pasting the URL into the app. A unique feature among the apps we?re featuring here allows you to scrobble the music you listen to your Last.fm account. The app supports running in the background on the iPad, meaning you can get on with other things while you listen.

It has a full-screen clock mode, equipped with both a radio alarm clock and sleep timer. In order to fill up the iPad?s screen real estate there?s a photo viewer. The problem is that it can only show a single shot at a time, either one of the four default options or a custom option from your own collection. It would be better if it acted as a gallery viewer, cycling through a number of images to provide some variety. As it is, it looks like the photo has simply been placed there to fill up empty space on the screen.

Internet RadioBox

£0.59 or local equivalent. [iTunes link]

In terms of choice of stations, Internet RadioBox is best of the bunch here. There?s support for RadioDeck, SHOUTcast and Icecast directories, meaning almost limitless choice. If you have a RadioDeck account, you can sync your favourite stations with the app. Multitasking is supported, meaning it will run in the background while you use other apps.

A sleep timer, the option to buy the music you?re listening to from iTunes and the ability to share links to stations via Twitter and email have been thrown in too, but that?s basically it. This is a nice app that gets the job done with few bells and whistles. For many people, that?s just what they?ll want.

WunderRadio

£3.99 or local equivalent [iTunes link]

In addition to the RadioTime and TUNED.mobi directories of ?normal? stations, WunderRadio supports a wide range of police and emergency services radio scanners. Yes, if you like to break up your everyday radio listening with blasts of what the cops around the world are doing, this is the app for you. Quite why they put them in here is unclear but they can be a fascinating listen sometimes. That said, for the most part they?re pretty tedious.

In terms of design, WunderRadio is utilitarian at best, with just a listening history, a column for your favorite stations and details of the current station being listened to breaking up a mass of blue that fills the screen. At the top of the screen there?s a station search box which works as you?d expect, but also a ?Web search? that seems to do absolutely nothing. There?s no multitasking support yet either, meaning that the app simply stops working when you press the iPad?s main button. Given the price of this app compared to superior rivals available at lower prices, we can?t really recommend Wunder Radio.

ActionRadio

£0.59 or local equivalent [iTunes link]

Finally we come to ActionRadio, which aims to combine radio with related video clips from around the web. Graphically, this is the best of the bunch. A colourful but slick interface fills the screen, with a station browser on the left-hand side of the screen. The emphasis here is on music, with genres as niche as ?Space Age Pop?, ?Heartache? and ?Sexy? getting their own listings in the menu. Sadly, not all genres have any stations associated with them. So, if you wanted to find out what ?Quiet Storm? music is supposed to be, you?re out of luck.

Then we come to the videos. For almost every station that you listen to, ActionRadio displays a range of related videos in a ?Coverflow? browsing interface. Unfortunately, every single time we tried to play one of the videos, we were told ?File not found?. Whether or not this is just temporary glitch we?re not sure, but it does make the one unique element of the app completely useless, at least for now. Another flaw at present is the lack of multitasking support ? this app needs to be run in the foreground to work.

TNW recommendations

We can?t recommend one single app here, it really depends what you?re looking for.

For sheer choice of stations, Internet RadioBox has the edge, although for actually navigating them TuneIn Radio is far more useful with its map view making finding stations from your part of the world simple.

If you?re looking for an alarm clock replacement, Internet RadioBox get the job done with its full screen mode. Serious radio freaks will appreciate TuneIn Radio?s recording feature, while those with a passion for discovering new music will appreciate Tunemark and Action Radio?s genre-based approach.

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News Analysis: Arizona Medicaid Cuts Seen as a Sign of the Times

With enrollments exploding, revenues shrinking and the low-hanging fruit plucked long ago, virtually every state has had to make painful cuts to its Medicaid program during the economic downturn.

What distinguishes the reductions recently imposed in Arizona, where coverage was eliminated on Oct. 1 for certain transplants of the heart, liver, lung, pancreas and bone marrow, is the decision to stop paying for treatments urgently needed to ward off death.

The cuts in transplant coverage, which could deny organs to 100 adults currently on the transplant list, are testament to both the severity of fiscal pressures on the states and the particular bloodlessness of budget-cutting in Arizona.

?It?s a real sign of the times,? said Alan Weil, executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy. ?And I think this is a precursor to a much larger number of states having this discussion.?

Policy choices with such life-threatening implications are all the more striking given the partisan framing of the health debate.

Republicans have argued that the new health law will lead to rationing, warning even of ?death panels.? Democrats have responded that care is already rationed, with 50 million people going largely without insurance, and that the law will bring greater equity.

The Arizona case, said Diane Rowland, director of the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, ?is a classic example of making decisions based not on medical need but based on a budget.? And, she added, ?it results, potentially, in denial of care to individuals in a life-or-death situation.?

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services do not monitor which states use Medicaid money for transplants. But health experts said no other state had withdrawn coverage for patients pursuing transplants.

Arizona?s decision, by Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, and the Republican-controlled Legislature, was made after state officials assessed success and survival rates for a number of transplant procedures. National transplant groups call the figures misleading.

?It seems inappropriate that life-saving care has the potential to be withheld based solely on budgetary issues and the bureaucratic determination of relative benefits,? said Dr. Robert S. Gaston, president-elect of the American Society of Transplantation.

There is usually a long-term consequence to short-term cuts in safety-net programs like Medicaid, which insures low-income Americans and is financed by state and federal governments.

When payments to doctors are cut, fewer providers are willing to treat Medicaid patients. When eligibility levels are lowered, more people are left to seek charity care in emergency rooms. When optional benefits like dental services and prescription drugs are eliminated, conditions worsen until they require more expensive care.

But no other state in recent memory has made such a numbers-driven calculation pitting the potential loss of life against modest savings.

Jennifer Carusetta, the legislative liaison for Arizona?s Medicaid agency, said the transplant cuts would save a mere $800,000 in the current fiscal year, and only $1.4 million for a full year.

The cuts were imposed in an effort to close a $2.6 billion shortfall in the state?s $8.9 billion budget for this year.

The options available to states for cutting Medicaid have been limited because the federal stimulus package and the health care law have required them to maintain eligibility levels. That has left states to cut payments to providers and trim benefits not required by federal regulations.

Many states, including Arizona, have done both. A September report by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that 39 states cut provider payments and 20 cut optional benefits in their 2010 fiscal years, with similar numbers planning to do so in 2011.

Arizona reduced Medicaid payments to doctors by 5 percent last year and has frozen payments to hospitals and nursing homes for two years. All providers will undergo another 5 percent cut on April 1, Ms. Carusetta said.

This year, Arizona became the only state to eliminate its Children?s Health Insurance Program, which would have affected 47,000 children of working-class parents. Lawmakers reversed course before the effective date only after concluding that the state might run afoul of federal requirements and lose billions of dollars in matching money.

The state has also enacted a wide range of Medicaid cuts, eliminating coverage for emergency dental procedures, insulin pumps and orthotics. ?We realize this has serious impacts on people,? Ms. Carusetta said. ?Unfortunately, given the fiscal constraints facing our state, the Legislature has limited options at this point.?

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Device Helps Paralyzed Rats Walk Again

Until recently, severe spinal cord injuries came with a fairly definite diagnosis of paralysis, whether partial or complete. But new developments in both stem-cell therapy and electronic stimulation have begun to provide hope, however distant, that paralysis may not be a life sentence. Complicated muscle stimulation devices can enable limited standing and walking, and the first embryonic stem-cell trials began last year. Other techniques, however, may provide an even simpler solution.

In his lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, V. Reggie Edgerton is developing an electronic neural bridge, one that helps impulses jump from one side of a severed spinal cord to the other to take advantage of neural "circuitry" that remains intact even after it's been cut off from the brain. In research presented two weeks ago at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego, Edgerton and graduate student Parag Gad used this approach, combined with electromyography (EMG), to help rats with severed spinal cords and completely paralyzed hind legs to run on all fours again. When their front legs began to run, the movement triggered a small current that prompted their rear legs to keep up.

Edgerton has been working on a system that employs preëxisting abilities of the spinal cord: neural pathways that, after an injury, may be blocked but don't disappear. Although the brain may control the impulse that initiates walking, the sequential muscle-by-muscle movement is not under our conscious command. "The signal coming down from the brain isn't to activate this muscle and then this muscle and then this muscle," Edgerton says. "It's to activate a program that's built into the circuitry. A message comes down from the brain that says step. The spinal cord knows what stepping is; it just has to be told to do that."

Rather than connecting electrodes to neurons or muscles, Edgerton attaches his neural bridge to electrodes on the outside membrane of the severed spinal cord. Slow pulses of electricity fire up the spinal circuitry associated with stepping, and, once the legs start to bear weight, the spinal cord recognizes the resulting sensory information and generates stepping motions on its own?no brain connection required.

With the flick of a switch, Edgerton and his colleagues made the rat's paralyzed hind limbs break into a trot. The result?an even, rhythmic gait controlled by the researchers?is something that stimulation of individual muscles can't yet replicate.

Gad took this system one step further, creating a technique that monitors movement of the animal's front legs and uses this information to generate electrical pulses that prompt the rear legs to move. First, he developed an algorithm that can distinguish walking activity?constant, alternating movement in both forelegs. Then, he implanted EMG wires into the front and rear legs, to detect the activity of skeletal muscles. The EMG wires connect to a small backpack containing a microcontroller that, upon detecting walking in the forelimbs, sends out a constant pulse to the spinal cord, triggering the hind limbs to join in.

"They're demonstrating, in a practical sense, many of the concepts that have been tossed around for some time," says Vivian Mushahwar, a biomedical engineer at the University of Alberta. "It is really refreshing." Mushahwar and physiologist Richard Stein, also at the University of Alberta, have been working on another system that takes advantage of the spinal cord's innate circuitry.

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For Pentagon Lawyer Who Co-Wrote Report on Gays, Military Bias Hits Home

As Mr. Johnson recounted in an interview at the Pentagon last week, ?A year ago, this subject was so sensitive that whenever I had a conversation with anybody about it in the building, it was always a group of three or less, behind closed doors.?

As he wrote the report, which is a crucial factor in the Congressional debate over reversing the ?don?t ask, don?t tell? policy, he had to navigate the growing legal challenges to the 17-year-old law, which requires gay men and lesbians in the military to keep their sexual orientation secret or face discharge.

In October, a series of court decisions whipsawed the Pentagon into suspending and then resuming enforcement of the law over the course of little more than a week, creating bewilderment at recruiting stations and confusion among Defense Department lawyers. Wrangling in the courts continued into November.

?In the space of eight days we had to shift course on the worldwide enforcement of the law twice, and in the space of a month faced the possibility of shifting course four different times,? Mr. Johnson told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week.

The experiences have turned Mr. Johnson into a force behind the Pentagon?s argument that Congress has to repeal ?don?t ask, don?t tell,? and soon, or the courts will do it for them. Although it is not at all clear whether the Supreme Court would strike down the law, Mr. Johnson and his boss, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, are warning of the dangers of repeal by abrupt ?judicial fiat,? which they said would not give the Pentagon enough time to prepare the armed forces for change.

But Mr. Johnson, 53, an early fund-raiser for President Obama in New York and the first black partner at the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, also has a window into the ?don?t ask, don?t tell? debate from beyond the courtroom ? from his own family history.

His uncle, Robert B. Johnson, was not only one of the Tuskegee Airmen, but was also a participant in what is known as the Freeman Field Mutiny in 1945, when a group of the airmen were arrested for entering an all-white officers? club at Freeman Field in Indiana. The airmen were imprisoned for 10 days until the Army chief of staff, Gen. George C. Marshall, intervened. Three years later, President Harry S. Truman integrated the military by executive order.

Although Mr. Johnson says that discrimination based on race and sexual orientation are different ? sexual orientation, he maintains, is ?not a self-identifier? ? he has found similarities in the way the armed forces reacted in both cases to the prospect of change. The study Mr. Johnson wrote with Gen. Carter F. Ham found that, over all, 70 percent of the troops surveyed said the repeal of ?don?t ask, don?t tell? would have little effect, but about 60 percent of Marines predicted a negative impact.

The opposition to integrating the armed forces in the 1940s, Mr. Johnson said, was as high as 80 percent. ?The lesson to be drawn from that,? he said, ?is that very often the predictions about what is going to happen overestimate the negative consequences and underestimate the military?s ability to adapt.?

Mr. Johnson said he did not consider his work on the study as an assignment to advance civil rights. As the Defense Department?s lawyer and the report?s co-author, his position is that the Pentagon could make the change, but whether it should, he said, is up to Congress.

In the meantime, Mr. Johnson is handling a raft of other issues like the stalled efforts to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay and legal reviews of all United States military operations, including drone strikes. He supervises 10,000 Defense Department lawyers around the world and a staff of 200 at the Pentagon.

Mr. Johnson?s first name, pronounced ?Jay,? is taken from a Liberian chief whom his grandfather, Charles S. Johnson, a sociologist who was president of Fisk University, met during a League of Nations mission to Africa in 1930. He has never served in the military, but when Bill Clinton was president, Mr. Johnson told their mutual friend, the lawyer Vernon E. Jordan Jr., that he wanted to work in the new administration and got the job of Air Force counsel, in part, he said, to advance diversity.

?I had never set foot in the Pentagon,? he said.

Mr. Johnson served in the Pentagon from 1998 to 2001 and then returned to his job as a litigator at Paul, Weiss, but he wanted to go back to the capital. ?The scent and allure of Washington was very compelling to him,? said Gordon Davis, a former New York City parks commissioner and the founding chairman of Jazz at Lincoln Center who is a friend of Mr. Johnson.

Mr. Johnson, who is married and has two children, now has a home in Georgetown, but he has kept his old house in Montclair, N.J. Most of his waking hours are spent at the Pentagon.

As he told the Senate Armed Services Committee about what he faces on ?don?t ask, don?t tell?: ?This legal uncertainty is not going away anytime soon.?

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Sprint Epic 4G becomes first U.S. Galaxy S handset to get Android 2.2 [TNW Mobile]

Sprint certainly chose an odd time to do this but hey, those of you with the Samsung Epic 4G on Sprint probably aren?t going to complain.

That?s right folks, according to Brief Mobile, the official version (not the leaked) of Android 2.2 has begun rolling out over the air for the Epic 4G after a wait that left many owners frustrated. In doing so, Sprint has beat all three of their rivals to the punch. AT&T has yet to roll out Android 2.2 for the Captivate and Verizon and T-Mobile have yet push the update for the Fascinate and the Vibrant, respectively.

However, now that Sprint made a move, expect the other carriers in the United States to start pushing their updates in the very near future.

Side note.

Because this is an OTA update, it?s going to roll out slowly. However, if you have the brawn, you can install the update this very second if you wish. Head here and follow the instructions and you?ll be running Froyo in no time at all.

Enjoy everyone.

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Predicting How Long You'll Live

For most of the past century, the financial-services industry has used actuarial tables to design life-insurance policies, pensions, and other products based on predictions of human lifespan. These "life tables" rely on historical death rates to predict the future longevity of broadly defined population groups. But human life expectancy has increased dramatically?from 47 years in 1900 to 77 today in the United States, with similar surges around the world, leading to skyrocking pension and healthcare costs. What's more, sizable variations in longevity have emerged among different subgroups. Thus the financial-services industry no longer considers life tables adequate, as they leave too much room for companies to lose money.

A growing number of corporations and governments are turning to an emerging group of lifespan modelers. These experts are studying the living in an attempt to predict who will make it well into old age?and who won't. "Life tables are crude and based on the past," says S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago and co-founder of GD Analytics, a longevity consulting firm. Olshanksy says we now need to "generate much more finely grained estimates of survival."

A couple of years ago, Olshansky traveled around the world lecturing J.P. Morgan Chase executives on the rapidly changing face of human longevity. It was an eye-opening lesson for many at the Wall Street firm. "He had striking visuals showing the growth of obesity in the western world," recalls Guy Coughlan, a managing director in J.P. Morgan's London office. "He showed us how individual trends specific to a country, or social class, or occupation, all play into longevity."

For example, Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 are not as healthy as the generation that preceeded them into retirement, Olshansky says. People born in the United Kingdom in the 1930s?often called the "golden cohort"?have lower death rates than the generations that came before and after them. Insights like these are vital to J.P. Morgan, which is among a growing number of Wall Street firms that offer "longevity swaps"?insurance policies that pension funds use to hedge the risk that pensioners will outlive their funds' reserves.

In addition to correlating health conditions with longevity, lifespan modelers drill far deeper into individual traits than traditional actuaries do. So, says Olshansky, he's not just a 56-year-old white male in the United States. "I'm also a Jewish male with a given level of education," he says. "Education and religious background actually play an important role, as does the state you live in, and the duration of your parents' lives."

Other companies are creating models based on what people buy online, what magazines they read, and even what hobbies they pursue. According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, Deloitte Consulting uses models that predict individuals' risk of developing specific illnesses based on their exercise habits, shopping patterns, and hankering for fast food. Future models may even include genetic test results and data from wireless health monitors. Scrutinizing all these factors yields insights about specific subgroups of the population, which financial professionals can then use to predict the longevity of individuals and the average longevity of groups.

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Obama Pays Visit to Afghanistan

Wrapped in a tight cocoon of secrecy and security, Mr. Obama landed at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, on a pitch-black evening and told thousands of American service members who greeted him that they had begun to turn the tide in a war that has frustrated commanders and soldiers alike for nearly a decade.

But Afghanistan confounded the president?s plans, just as it has foreign forces over the centuries. Its notoriously gusty winds whipped around him at 45 m.p.h. and dust clouds limited visibility, grounding the helicopter that was to take him to Kabul to meet with President Hamid Karzai.

A backup plan to confer via video teleconference then was scrapped due to technical problems. The two leaders talked by telephone for 15 minutes, never laying eyes on each other, even though they were just 35 miles apart.

White House officials played down the glitches, saying Mr. Obama?s main mission during his three-and-a-half-hour stay was to show support for the troops heading into another holiday season far from home. The president had met with Mr. Karzai just two weeks ago at a NATO meeting in Lisbon, where they set forth a plan to gradually start turning over the lead role in the war to Afghan forces next year, with the aim of ending the foreign combat mission by 2014.

?Thanks to your service, we are making important progress,? Mr. Obama, wearing a bomber jacket and dark slacks, told more than 3,800 troops at Bagram. ?We said we were going to break the Taliban?s momentum, and that?s what you?re doing. You?re going on the offense, tired of playing defense, targeting their leaders, pushing them out of their strongholds.

?Today,? he continued, ?we can be proud that there are fewer areas under Taliban control and more Afghans have a chance to build a more hopeful future.?

He added, ?Because of the service of the men and women of the United States military, because of the progress you?re making, we look forward to a new phase next year, the beginning of a transition to Afghan responsibility.?

The president?s remarks offered a more positive assessment of the situation on the ground than he has in some time, influenced perhaps by the optimism expressed in recent weeks by his commanding general, Gen. David H. Petraeus. American military forces have tripled, to 100,000, on Mr. Obama?s watch, and he has vowed to begin reducing the number of troops next July.

But others in Washington and Kabul have been more skeptical of the claims of progress, noting the unabated and pervasive corruption of Mr. Karzai?s government, the resilience of the insurgency despite escalated attacks and the debacle of recent peace talks that turned out to be held not with a senior Taliban leader but an impostor.

Mr. Obama, too, dwelled on the continuing cost of the war, noting the platoon he met that had lost six members, the five Purple Hearts he awarded in the base hospital and the Medal of Honor he presented recently to an American soldier at the White House.

The atmosphere appeared more subdued than in past presidential visits, as Mr. Obama noted that ?many of you have stood before the solemn battle cross, display of boots, a rifle, a helmet, and said goodbye to a fallen comrade.?

Mr. Obama?s visit came at a pivotal moment in the war on both sides. In Washington, the administration is completing a review of the surge and counterinsurgency strategy that the president approved a year ago, although officials played down its import. ?I don?t think you?ll see any immediate adjustments,? Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the president?s top Afghan policy adviser, told reporters on Air Force One.

In Kabul, an election held on Sept. 18 has yet to result in a sitting Parliament, as Mr. Karzai has neither endorsed nor condemned its outcome. And State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks and made public on Friday laid bare the unvarnished and dubious view of American diplomats toward Mr. Karzai and his government. The cables questioned whether Mr. Karzai will ever be ?a responsible partner? and depicted him as ?erratic? and ?indecisive and unprepared.?

But unlike his last trip to Afghanistan in March, when Mr. Obama pressed Mr. Karzai about corruption and the frictions were on public display, the president this time was intent on working around the divisions, and aides said the cables did not come up in the call between the presidents.

As has become customary under both Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush, the trip to Afghanistan was carried out in clandestine fashion. Mr. Obama slipped out of the White House without notice on Thursday night after presiding over a Hanukkah celebration, accompanied only by his personal aide, Reggie Love, Secret Service agents and members of his support staff.

At Andrews Air Force Base, he was joined by General Lute; his national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and other top aides. Air Force One took off in secret at 10 p.m. A small pool of journalists was brought along on condition that they not report on the trip until the president landed in Afghanistan.

Many White House officials, and most of the Afghan government, were not informed. The president?s advance schedule for Friday listed him meeting with advisers in the Oval Office and then making a public statement on the latest unemployment report, with the schedule reporting that ?the location of the statement is T.B.D.,? or to be determined. Aides said Mr. Karzai?s government was informed in the last few days.

Mr. Obama?s trip was the third time he had left the United States in the month since his party absorbed major losses in midterm elections. He left Washington at a very busy moment, as he struggles with Congress over a host of issues like tax cuts, deficit spending, arms control, gays in the military and immigration.

He landed just after 8:30 p.m. Afghan time and took off from Bagram shortly after midnight. He spent time with General Petraeus and Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry in addition to visiting wounded soldiers. Aides said it was a useful visit even without a meeting with Mr. Karzai.

?Obviously it would be nice to be able to share a meal together, but at the same time they were able to be face-to-face less than two weeks ago,? Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, told reporters traveling with the president. ?I think President Karzai understood the purpose of this was really for the president to spend time with the troops.?

Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.

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Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=a08ae48543de6751b42dd8cc5019a9ee

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Nexus S camera gets put to the test, passes with flying colors [TNW Mobile]

We?ve seen some blurrycam shots of it running Gingerbread. We?ve seen crisp shots of it. We have seen Google?s CEO holding it in plain sight. Before today though, we had never seen what the Nexus S itself could do video and photo wise.

Those strange test shots of nothing that popped up awhile back don?t count.

The folks over at Engadget have obtained some pretty clear images and video taken with the upcoming, Gingerbread rocking device from Samsung. While the videos aren?t mind blowing, the photo from inside one of Google?s buses is pretty darn impressive for what supposedly is a 5 megapixel camera.

And the videos:

So again, the capabilities of the camera on the Nexus S aren?t out of this world but they are very capable and that should please those of you who have been waiting for this thing to arrive.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2010/12/04/nexus-s-camera-gets-put-to-the-test-passes-with-flying-colors/

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