U.S. lawmakers are irked
by asylum for Snowden


U.S. lawmakers continue to slam Russia over Moscow's decision to grant temporary asylum to former federal contractor and surveillance program leaker Edward Snowden.

Long gone are the heady days after the collapse of the former Soviet Union, when Washington and Moscow spoke of each other as budding allies in the post-Cold War era.

Sunday, American lawmakers took to the airwaves to heap scorn on the Russian government, and in particular President Vladimir Putin.

Sen. John McCain, a Republican, spoke on the Fox News Sunday television program.

“He is an old KGB colonel that has no illusions about our relationship, does not care about a relationship with the United States, continues to oppress his people, continues to oppress the media, and continues to act in an autocratic and unhelpful fashion," he said of Putin.

McCain said the Snowden episode signals “incredibly bad relations between the United States and Russia,” adding that President Putin has “put his thumb right in America’s eye.”

Tensions between Washington and Moscow extend beyond Edward Snowden, according to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Menendez, a Democrat.

“They are unresponsive to us as it relates to the tragedies going on in Syria. They are unresponsive to us as it relates to further nuclear arms reduction. They are unresponsive when they violate the rights of gays and lesbians, including foreign visitors who come to Russia and could be arrested," he said.

Menendez spoke on ABC’s This Week program.

At a news conference Friday, President Barack Obama said he does not have a bad personal relationship with Putin. Nevertheless, last week, the White House announced the cancelation of a planned summit between the two leaders.

“It is probably appropriate for us to take a pause, re-assess where it is that Russia is going, what our core interests are, and calibrate the relationship so that we are doing things that are good for the United States, and hopefully good for Russia as well, but recognizing that there are just going to be some differences and we are not going to be able to completely disguise them," Obama said.

Bilateral tensions did not prevent a meeting last week between Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, and their Russian counterparts. U.S. officials said the tone of the meetings remained positive and constructive.

Reacting to the cancelation of the Obama-Putin summit, a foreign affairs adviser to Putin said America has shown it is not ready to develop relations with Russia on an equal basis.


Obamas on vacation again
as immigrants pot boils


President Barack Obama has begun a week-long vacation, and the U.S. Congress and the Supreme Court are idle. Washington may be unusually quiet this week, but major demonstrations are expected in multiple states on immigration reform, one of the most hotly contested issues facing the nation.

The President and First Lady Michelle Obama had a more casual look as they arrived at a Massachusetts island resort town.

Meanwhile, members of Congress are in their home districts, where they face intense pressure on immigration reform from a broad range of activists. Some are demanding a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants.

“There are people here who just want to live this American dream that you live every day that some of us are not so lucky to see," said demonstrator Miguel Porfirio.

Others are telling lawmakers to focus on stemming illegal immigration once and for all. “Just trying to reinforce that we want the borders secure without blanket amnesty," said Terry Moench.

A Senate-approved bill that would boost enforcement and provide a path to citizenship faces significant opposition in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

Before departing on vacation, Obama urged lawmakers to find consensus. “I would urge, when they get back, to do something, put forward a bill that has an opportunity to actually pass. Our economy would be $1 trillion stronger if we got immigration reform done," he said.

Obama also promised to work with Congress to address privacy concerns about the federal government’s vast data collection capabilities that were exposed by fugitive former National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden. “It is right to ask questions about surveillance, particularly as technology is reshaping every aspect of our lives," he said.

Lawmakers of both parties have crafted NSA reform proposals. Sen, Mark Udall, a Democrat, said, “My bill, which I want to push as hard as I possibly can, would limit the ways in which the intelligence community accesses average Americans,’ innocent Americans,’ phone records. That is the way to go forward.”

But the president and many members of Congress stress that America must retain a robust intelligence-gathering ability, as evidenced by last week’s terror alert that prompted a global travel warning and the closing of numerous U.S. diplomatic outposts.


Washington Post deal seen
as possible game changer


 One of the nation’s top newspapers, The Washington Post, has been losing money for years. Initial reaction to the $250-million deal made by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos has been mostly positive. The buyout is raising questions, however, about the future of the struggling newspaper industry.

Bezos founded one of the world’s most profitable online companies. He has shaped the way consumers buy books. And now Bezos is poised to become the owner of one of the nation’s most influential papers. 

Ken Doctor, the author of "Newsonomics" about how digital trends are shaping the news said the buyout marks a significant shift for newspapers, not just the Post.

“It raises on a high level, questions about the future of The New York Times," he said. "And this, of course, at the same time when Axel Springer in Germany is getting out of the regional newspaper business. So we have a worldwide phenomenon, an earthquake really in the news business.”

That’s because what happens at the Post in the Bezos era is likely to set the pattern for other struggling newspapers.

One issue likely to come up is the role of unions and collective bargaining. Amazon often has seen unions as obstacles to innovation. Chris Tolles, CEO of the online news community Topix, said that Bezos is unlikely to run the Post, though, the way he runs Amazon.

“The fact that he made a personal investment is the interesting part here. It’s not that he was the founder of Amazon. But this seems to be his own thing. And it will be, I think it’s going to be, different than any of us can foresee in terms of how it goes on. I doubt it’s going to be just another arm of Amazon,” said Tolles.

Bezos, who has been described as libertarian in his views, has promised no radical changes at the Post, assuring staff that he would leave editorial politics and day-to-day operations to the professionals. 

But a new media professor, Paul Levinson, says he’s not buying it. “It’s almost become a cliché that when a big corporation buys out some kind of media operation, whether it’s a newspaper or television operation, they always say the same thing: 'We’re going to keep our hands off the editorial policy, we’re going to allow the original editors to continue,' and invariably that never holds,” said Levinson.

For the Post to return to profitability, something has to give. Experts say Bezos either will have to bring in more revenue or cut costs.

Doctor said running a newspaper is not the same as running an online store. “What Bezos does with The Washington Post is a real open question. No experience as a media entrepreneur, no idea how thin-skinned he may be, or how he’s going to run that organization.”

Advertising accounts for up to 80 percent of newspaper revenue. While recent double-digit declines in print advertising have slowed, publishers continue downsizing newsrooms across the country as more people turn to online news. 

Experts say what happens next at the 136-year old Washington Post either will signal the start of a new business model or the continuing decline of newspapers in the digital age.


Apple gets favorable ruling
on patents against Samsung


Apple has won a partial legal victory against its rival, Samsung, the latest development in a global legal battle over smartphones and tablets.

A U.S. trade panel ruled Friday that Samsung had infringed on portions of two Apple patents. However, it also cleared the South Korean company on charges that it had violated four more.

Before the ruling by the U.S. International Trade Commission goes into effect, President Barack Obama's administration has 60 days to decide whether or not to veto it.

Last week, the Obama administration overturned an Trade Commision decision that would have banned some Apple products in the United States for violating Samsung patents. It was the first veto of a ruling since 1987. and South Korea expressed concern about the move.

In a separate battle in U.S. federal court, Samsung was ordered last year to pay Apple $1 billion in damages for patent infringements. A judge later reduced the award.

  
Decline in Coca cultivation
reported by Colombia, U.N.


Coca cultivation in Colombia, the world's biggest cocaine producer, fell by a quarter in 2012 as the state cracked down on the crop and farmers diversified away from it, data shows.

The area under coca cultivation shrank to 48,000 hectares at year's end from 64,000 a year earlier although farmers may have planted as much as 135,000 hectares during the year in a cat-and-mouse game with police, according to an annual survey.

Authorities eradicated by hand nearly 30,500 hectares of coca bushes and sprayed over three times more from the air, similar to 2011 levels, the report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the Bogota government showed.

It estimated the value of coca leaf and derivatives such as coca paste and cocaine base at $370 million in 2012, down from $422 million the year before, worth 0.2 percent of national economic output.

While prices were mostly stable for cocaine base and paste, the coca leaf yield per hectare fell and the number of households linked to coca growing fell 3 percent to 60,600.

“With the average gross income of a farmer selling coca leaf estimated at $1,220 per year, coca production does not fetch the same lucrative rewards as in the past,” the report said.

It put 2012 production of pure cocaine at around 309 tons, in line with the 2011 figure, while cocaine seizures rose by a fifth to around 188 tons.

Bo Mathiasen, the Office on Drugs and Crine representative in Colombia, said government efforts to eradicate the illicit coca crop were having a visible impact but that farmers often simply replant bushes in new or previously cleared fields.

Peru, Colombia and Bolivia are the world's biggest coca producers. Official data earlier this week showed Bolivia's cultivation fell for the second consecutive year in 2012.


New movie, 'Elysium,' pits
haves vs. the have nots


South African filmmaker Neil Blomkamp has a new sci-fi film, "Elysium." Like his previous futuristic drama "District 9," Elysium tackles social separation.

It's the year 2154, and the world is starkly divided between the haves and the have nots. The downtrodden inhabit an overpopulated polluted earth, while the rich have migrated to Elysium, an outpost in space where there is no poverty or sickness.

The story is centered on Max, who is played by Matt Damon. Having broken the law many times, he's trying to sort out his life on earth. He gets a job at a factory where he's exposed to radiation. "In five days time you will die," a robot tells him. That's unless he can make it to Elysium, the place of his dreams.
 
Neil Blomkamp directed the film. “All of the things that make life worth living, everything that's been extracted from earth, all of the medical help and the technology and the wealth and standard of living and the longevity and everything else is all there,” he said, in reference to Elysium.

But Elysium is inaccessible to foreigners,  that is, everyone living on Earth, including Max.

Jodie Foster portrays the unyielding Madame Delacourt, a government official on Elysium, who will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws to protect her environment. She orders that vessels filled with women and children be shot down to prevent them from entering Elysium.

“. . . Her point is that the earth that she came from, that she remembers, and don't forget she's 108 years old, was falling apart and was horrible and it was a terrible place to be. And they created this new habitat Elysium to get rid of some of the bad things that happened then, the pollution, toxicity of the planet, overpopulation, all of things that we know right now are a problem,” said Foster about the character she plays.

Blomkamp’s movie is an allegory about many of today’s problems: poverty and immigration, homeland security, lack of universal health care, and the destruction of our planet.

After he agrees to go on a dangerous mission to Elysium and hack into its security system, Max turns into a human transformer, with equipment that makes him incredibly strong and turns his brain into a hard drive filled with security data. From that point on, "Elysium" is action packed and delivers social justice, Hollywood-style.


Bee pollen found to contain
wide assortment of chemicals


A widely used chemical used to fight plant disease is hurting honeybees in an unexpected way, according to new research. It may be contributing to the widespread loss of honeybees that pollinate many fruits, vegetables, nuts and other crops.

Honeybee hives in the United States and elsewhere are dying, and researchers like Dennis VanEngelsdorp at the University of Maryland are trying to understand why. “The number of colonies that die every winter has been one in three. So on average 30 percent of the colonies have died every winter over the last six winters. And that’s an astronomical number.”

VanEngelsdorp's research team examined the pollen that honeybees carried to their hives, and found that it was contaminated with high doses of 35 different pesticides. They also found that eating certain fungicides made bees more susceptible to infection by Nosema, a deadly microbe. The most widely found fungicide was chlorothalonil, which is used on apples and other crops. the most frequent insecticide was fluvalinate, which beekeepers themselves use to control mite s that harm bees.

But fungicides are essential to U.S. agriculture, according to pesticide industry researcher Mike Leggett, with CropLife America. "Fungicides are used, and have been used, pretty broadly, for centuries, for protection of plants from plant disease,” he said.

He also points out that many of the other pesticides VanEngelsdorp found in the pollen actually made the bees less likely to be infected with Nosema.
 
“I think it’s interesting research that adds to the body of research that’s available, but I’m not really sure that the conclusions reached were… you know, well-supported,” said Leggett.
 
Maryland farmer and beekeeper Keith Ohlinger has watched his bees die every winter. Researchers are investigating the effects of a variety of factors, including pesticides, diseases and malnutrition. Many people, including Ohlinger, think widespread bee death is caused by many different stresses at once.
 
“What I felt it was, was a compilation of a lot of little things. I didn’t feel that there was probably one smoking gun. But there’s a division there, some people feel that it is just one thing,” said Ohlinger.
 
Ohlinger does feel sure that pesticides are a part of the problem. “Maybe I’m just not educated enough, I don’t know, but my view is, if you can take a bath in it, it’s probably safe. And I don’t know many of the things that they’re putting out right now that anybody would come out of a bath in for any length of time and go, ‘Wow, that was great, I feel much better!’ You know?”
 
Honeybees are essential to agriculture. This makes the search for an answer to the bee die-off especially urgent for VanEngelsdorp's team.

“One in every three bites of food we eat are directly or indirectly pollinated by honeybees. So without honeybees, we wouldn’t have that variety in our diet,” said VanEngelsdorp.
 
Even as a third of the country's food supply depends on honeybees, a third of those bees continue to die each winter.


Mexican court frees man
linked to agent's murder


A Mexican drug kingpin convicted of murdering an American government agent has been freed on a technicality after serving 28 years of a 40-year sentence for kidnapping, torturing and killing the man in 1985.
 
A Mexican court unexpectedly overturned the conviction of Rafael Caro Quintero, ruling that he should have been tried in a state court rather than a federal court for killing the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent, Enrique Camarena. Caro Quintero was released in the early morning hours Friday, without advance notice to U.S. authorities or news media.
 
The Drug Enforcement Administration said the Mexican court's actions were deeply troubling and pledged to vigorously seek Quintero's extradition to the United States to face criminal charges pending against him there.
 
The office of Mexico's attorney general also said it disagrees with the ruling in Jalisco state, and said it was considering whether further legal action is possible.
 
The brutal circumstances of the American DEA agent's death strained U.S.-Mexico relations at the time, with U.S. officials contending their Mexican counterparts allowed Camarena's killers to escape punishment.
 
Caro Quintero, who eventually was captured in Costa Rica, was a founding member of one of Mexico's earliest and biggest drug cartel.


Changes in popular words
mirrors urban development


A new analysis of words used in more than 1.5 million American and British books published between 1800 and 2000 shows how cultural values have changed.
 
The increase or decrease in the use of certain words over the past two centuries, a period marked by growing urbanization, greater reliance on technology and the widespread availability of formal education, reveals how human psychology has evolved in response to major historical shifts, said Patricia Greenfield, a distinguished professor of psychology the University of California-Los Angeles and the author of the study.
 
For instance, the words "choose" and "get" rose significantly in frequency between 1800 and 2000, while "obliged" and "give" decreased significantly over these two centuries. "Choose" and "get" indicate "the individualism and materialistic values that are adaptive in wealthier urban settings," while "obliged" and "give" "reflect the social responsibilities that are adaptive in rural settings," Ms. Greenfield said.
 
Usage of "get" declined between 1940 and the 1960s before rising again in the 1970s, perhaps reflecting a decline in self-interest during World War II and the civil rights movement, she noted.
 
Ms. Greenfield also observed a gradual rise in the use of "feel" and a decline in the use of "act," suggesting a turn toward inner mental life and away from outward behavior. She found a growing focus on the self, with the use of "child," "unique," "individual" and "self" all increasing from 1800 to 2000.
 
Over the two centuries, the importance of obedience to authority, social relationships and religion in everyday life seems to have waned, as reflected in the decline of "obedience," "authority," "belong" and "pray."
 
"This research shows that there has been a two-century–long historical shift toward individualistic psychological functioning adapted to an urban environment and away from psychological functioning adapted to a rural environment," Ms. Greenfield said. "The currently discussed rise in individualism is not something recent but has been going on for centuries as we moved from a predominantly rural, low-tech society to a predominantly urban, high-tech society."
 
For her research, which appears Aug. 8 in the online edition of the journal Psychological Science, Ms. Greenfield used Google's Ngram Viewer, a publicly available tool that can count word frequencies in a million books in a matter of seconds. The Google Books database comprises a wide variety of books, including novels, non-fiction publications and textbooks.
 
To assess culture-wide psychological change, Ms. Greenfield examined the frequencies of specific words in approximately 1,160,000 books published in the United States.
 
Drawing on her theory of social change and human development, she hypothesized that the usage of specific words would wax and wane as a reflection of psychological adaptation to sociocultural change. The data supported her hypothesis.
 
The same patterns in word usage also emerged in approximately 350,000 books published in the United Kingdom over the last 200 years. She was able to replicate all findings using synonyms for each target word in the both the U.S. and UK books.
 
"These replications indicate that the underlying concepts, not just word frequencies, have been changing in importance over historical time," Ms. Greenfield said.
 
Empirically testing hypotheses about psychological adaptation to long-term cultural change on the scale of centuries would not have been possible as recently as a decade ago, she said.
 
Ms. Greenfield hopes to replicate these findings using Google Books' Spanish, French, Russian and Chinese databases. The socio-demographic shifts driving cultural and psychological change are global, she noted.