As White House Backs Device Unlocking, 4.6 Million iPad Jailbreakers Left In Legal Limbo

President Obama wants you to be able to choose the wireless carrier for your mobile device. But install the wrong software on it, and you might still be a criminal.

The White House scored points with cellphone users Monday by voicing its support for a petition against new regulations that make it illegal for consumers to ?unlock? cellphones, altering their software restrictions so that they can be used on a different wireless network from the one that the phone?s vendor initially intended. But some in the digital rights community have pointed out that the White House?s pro-unlocking stance neglects to defend users who want to hack their own devices in a different manner: ?Jailbreaking? or ?rooting? Apple?s iPads and other tablets to install unauthorized software on them may still be illegal under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, (DMCA) the same law that currently prevents carrier unlocking.

?The White House agrees with the 114,000+ of you who believe that consumers should be able to unlock their cell phones without risking criminal or other penalties,? reads the White House?s statement. ?In fact, we believe the same principle should also apply to tablets, which are increasingly similar to smart phones.?

The statement goes on to describe how carrier unlocking helps to ensure a ?vibrant, competitive wireless market.? But it doesn?t extend its support to jailbreaking devices to allow users to install whatever applications they want, rather than the walled garden of software approved by the device?s vendor, such as?Apple?s App Store.?

Last year the digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation applied to the Library of Congress for an exemption to the DMCA that would allow users to unlock, jailbreak and root their own devices. But while an exemption for jailbreaking phones was approved, unlocking phones? ties to a specific wireless carrier was left out of that exemption, as was any protection for jailbreaking tablet computers.

That means that aside from the phone unlocking controversy addressed in the White House?s statement, close to 4.6?million iPad owners who have jailbroken their devices are left in a state of legal limbo. Jay Freeman, the administrator of the app store for jailbroken Apple devices known as Cydia, says his software market received that number of visits from jailbroken iPads in just the last month, a growing number driven in part by the release of a new tool known as Evasion that removes download restrictions on the latest versions of the iPhone and iPad. He argues that those iPad jailbreakers also need legal protection from the DMCA, whose anti-tampering provision theoretically criminalizes both jailbreaking tablets and unlocking phones.

?It?s important to realize that the [White House's statement] is very narrow,? says Freeman. ?We definitely need a different campaign, one that focuses on the root problem: that the DMCA?s 1201 anti-tampering clause is confusing, limiting and generally really annoying.?

It?s not clear whether the DMCA would necessarily make unlocking phones or jailbreaking tablets illegal. But without precedents in court, it could make the practices punishable with hefty fines and even prison time in cases where the hacking is performed for ?commercial advantage.?

Outrage over the vague restrictions inspired a petition to Whitehouse.gov posted in January that quickly amassed more than 100,000 signatures and elicited Monday?s positive response from the Whitehouse. But meanwhile, another petition posted earlier this month that focuses on legalizing tablet jailbreaking has received a grand total of 56 signatures.

In fact, that lack of interest may be a result of users? feelings of invulnerability. No iPad owner has been sued or prosecuted yet for hacking a tablet in the privacy of his or own home. But creators of jailbreaking tools, like the hackers who coded the recently released evasi0n tool, may be more vulnerable, says Parker Higgins, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. ?These popular tools that millions of people use might still leave people legally liable,? says Higgins. ?Even if they?re not doing it yet, giving companies the legal power to abuse these laws makes me a little uneasy.?

The ban on jailbreaking tablets, like the one preventing phone unlocking, could be abolished with the same sort of three-year exemption that has made jailbreaking phones legal. But Higgins, like Cydia-maker Freeman, says that a better approach would be a comprehensive rewriting of the DMCA?s restriction on how consumers can use and hack their own devices, an update to the ?anti-circumvention? measure originally designed to stop users from breaking the digital locks that prevented music and video piracy.

?This is a symptom. The underlying problem is the anticircumvention provision,? says Higgins. ?And that works against consumers? interests every day.?

?

Follow me on?Twitter, and check out my new book,?This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks and Hacktivists Aim To Free The World?s Information.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/03/04/as-white-house-backs-phone-unlocking-close-to-4-6-million-ipad-jailbreakers-left-in-legal-limbo/

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Uganda keeps key lending rate unchanged at 12 pct

Researchers say they know how the Hindenburg airship came to its fiery end: static electricity. Seventy-six years ago, the German dirigible was promoted as the future of trans-Atlantic flight, but instead it became the notorious poster child of air disasters. As the hydrogen-filled blimp was landing in Lakehurst, N.J., on May 6, 1937, it suddenly [...]

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/uganda-keeps-key-lending-rate-unchanged-12-pct-092700937--business.html

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Chavez widely mourned, but some hope change on way

Argentine supporters of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez gather in front of Venezuela's embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Tuesday, March 5, 2013. Venezuela's Vice President Nicolas Maduro announced that Chavez died on Tuesday at age 58 after a nearly two-year bout with cancer.(AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)

Argentine supporters of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez gather in front of Venezuela's embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Tuesday, March 5, 2013. Venezuela's Vice President Nicolas Maduro announced that Chavez died on Tuesday at age 58 after a nearly two-year bout with cancer.(AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)

A man writes a note in a book of condolence at the embassy of Venezuela in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, March 6, 2013, to honor deceased President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

Candles, flowers and traditional Russian bottle of vodka, placed next to an image of Venzuela's late President Hugo Chavez outside the Venezuela's embassy in Moscow on Wednesday, March 6, 2013. Venezuela's Vice President Nicolas Maduro announced that Chavez died on Tuesday at age 58 after a nearly two-year bout with cancer. (AP Photo/Misha Japaridze)

A Mexican supporter of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez waves a Venezuelan flag in front of Venezuela's embassy in Mexico City, Tuesday, March 5, 2013. Venezuela's Vice President Nicolas Maduro announced that Chavez died on Tuesday at age 58 after a nearly two-year bout with cancer. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

People gather honoring Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez outside Venezuela's embassy in Quito, Ecuador, Tuesday, March 5, 2013. Venezuela's Vice President Nicolas Maduro announced that Chavez died on Tuesday at age 58 after a nearly two-year bout with cancer. (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa)

LONDON (AP) ? Some cried, some cheered. Many Latin Americans mourned the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, leaders in Europe and Asia sent condolences, and Iran's president predicted great works in the afterlife.

President Barack Obama, meanwhile, focused on "a new chapter" for Venezuela, following 14 years in which Chavez cast himself as a bulwark against U.S. domination.

Chavez, who died Tuesday at age 58, was seen as a hero by some for his socialist programs, his anti-U.S. rhetoric and gifts of cut-rate oil. Others considered him a bully who repressed his opponents.

A teary-eyed Bolivian President Evo Morales, one of Chavez's closest allies and most loyal disciples, declared that "Chavez is more alive than ever."

"Chavez will continue to be an inspiration for all peoples who fight for their liberation," Morales said Tuesday in a televised speech. "Chavez will always be present in all the regions of the world and all social sectors. Hugo Chavez will always be with us, accompanying us."

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, another left-wing fan of the Latin American strongman, told The Associated Press that Chavez's ability to shrug off American pressure and weather what he described as a U.S.-backed coup attempt had inspired the entire continent to defy Washington.

"The fact that he survived encouraged other Latin American nations to break free and put their own people ahead of corporate interests," Livingstone said in a telephone interview. "Before him, the governments there were just creatures of the White House. Now they are generally pursuing policies that help their own people."

Chavez pulled Venezuela out of America's sphere of influence and embraced Washington's rivals including Cuba, Iran and Russia. Officials in all three countries had effusive praise for the late leader.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced a day of mourning and compared Chavez to a saint, saying he will "return on resurrection day."

Ahmadinejad said he has "no doubt Chavez will return to Earth together with Jesus and the perfect" Imam Mahdi, the most revered figure of Shiite Muslims, and help "establish peace, justice and kindness" in the world. The Iranian leader said he believes something "suspicious" caused the cancer that killed Chavez.

In Cuba, President Raul Castro's government declared two days of national mourning and ordered flags to fly at half-staff.

"It is with deep and excruciating sorrow that our people and the revolutionary government have learned of President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias' decease," it said in a statement read on the nightly state TV newscast. "The Cuban people view him as one of their most outstanding sons."

Some islanders worried about the loss of the country's No. 1 ally, who has sent billions of dollars of oil to Cuba at preferential terms.

"It's a very tough blow. ... Now I wonder, what is to become of us?" said Maite Sierra, a 72-year-old Havana resident.

Across Latin American, grief-stricken supporters lit candles, waved Venezuelan flags or brandished portraits of the late leader in solidarity with mourners in Venezuela.

In Moscow, candles, flowers, and a traditional Russian bottle of vodka were left outside Venezuela's embassy. Russian President Vladimir Putin called Chavez "an extraordinary and strong man who looked into the future and always aimed high," while Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev posted photographs of himself with Chavez to his Facebook page.

Chinese President Hu Jintao, who steps down this month, and his replacement, Xi Jinping, also sent their condolences to Vice President Nicolas Maduro, the interim Venezuelan president ahead of new elections.

Venezuela took out tens of billions of dollars in Chinese loans, repayable in oil, which helped fund social programs and consumer goods giveaways that made Chavez popular. His anti-American policies and posturing also pleased some in Beijing, though Chinese leaders were careful not to show public support.

China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called Chavez "a good friend to the Chinese people."

In the United States, Obama issued a statement reaffirming Washington's support for the "Venezuelan people and its interest in developing a constructive relationship with the Venezuelan government."

"As Venezuela begins a new chapter in its history, the United States remains committed to policies that promote democratic principles, the rule of law, and respect for human rights," the statement read.

Republican U.S. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida called Chavez's death "an opportunity for democracy in Venezuela."

Some of the estimated 190,000 Venezuelan immigrants living in the United States ? about half of them in Florida ? turned out cheering and waving their country's flag and expressed hope Tuesday that change would come to their homeland.

"We are not celebrating death," Ana San Jorge, 37, said amid a jubilant crowd in the Miami suburb of Doral. "We are celebrating the opening of a new door, of hope and change."

Several U.S. allies offered praise for Chavez, though some, like France's Socialist President Francois Hollande, noted that "not everyone shared" his political views.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a statement that Chavez's death was "a heavy blow," but also said Venezuela would move on to "new times." Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy sent a telegram saying that with the death of Chavez "one of the most influential figures in Venezuela's contemporary history has disappeared."

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper also sent his condolences ? although he pointedly offered hopes for a "a better, brighter future based on the principles of freedom, democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights."

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez declared three days of mourning nationwide. She and President Jose Mujica of neighboring Uruguay prepared to travel to Venezuela for the funeral.

In Nicaragua, a nation that broadly benefited from Venezuelan cut-rate oil, Rosario Murillo, the wife and spokeswoman of President Daniel Ortega, said Chavez is "one of the dead who never die."

"We are all Chavez," she said in televised comments.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter released a statement saying Chavez had a vision to bring "profound changes" to those in his country who were neglected and marginalized.

"Although we have not agreed with all of the methods followed by his government, we have never doubted Hugo Chavez's commitment to improving the lives of millions of his fellow countrymen," Carter wrote.

A wistful Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador and another of Chavez's closest allies, predicted Chavez would have a lasting influence. "We have lost a revolutionary, but millions of us remain inspired."

His influence extended beyond Latin America. Nabil Shaath, an adviser to the Palestinian president, called Chavez "a loyal friend who passionately defended our right to freedom and self-determination."

There was no shortage of emotional farewells to a socialist hero who some feel rivaled the revolutionaries of the 1960s.

Cuban folk singer Silvio Rodriguez quoted the title words of a famous musical ode to revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara in bidding farewell to Chavez on his blog.

"Hasta siempre, comandante," he wrote, Spanish for "Farewell forever, commander."

___

Orsi reported from Havana, Cuba. Associated Press staff from around the globe contributed to this report.

___

Online:

Peter Orsi can be reached at: http://www.twitter.com/Peter_Orsi

Raphael Satter can be reached at: http://raphae.li/twitter

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-03-06-Hugo-Chavez-World-Reactions/id-c95faccdc66b4f95a0898b0e91877c24

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Jupiter's icy moon: Window into Europa's ocean lies right at the surface

Mar. 5, 2013 ? If you could lick the surface of Jupiter's icy moon Europa, you would actually be sampling a bit of the ocean beneath. So says Mike Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Brown -- known as the Pluto killer for discovering a Kuiper-belt object that led to the demotion of Pluto from planetary status -- and Kevin Hand from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have found the strongest evidence yet that salty water from the vast liquid ocean beneath Europa's frozen exterior actually makes its way to the surface.

The finding, based on some of the first data of its kind since NASA's Galileo mission (1989-2003) to study Jupiter and its moons, suggests that there is a chemical exchange between the ocean and surface, making the ocean a richer chemical environment, and implies that learning more about the ocean could be as simple as analyzing the moon's surface. The work is described in a paper that has been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal.

"We now have evidence that Europa's ocean is not isolated -- that the ocean and the surface talk to each other and exchange chemicals," says Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor and professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech. "That means that energy might be going into the ocean, which is important in terms of the possibilities for life there. It also means that if you'd like to know what's in the ocean, you can just go to the surface and scrape some off."

"The surface ice is providing us a window into that potentially habitable ocean below," says Hand, deputy chief scientist for solar system exploration at JPL.

Since the days of the Galileo mission, when the spacecraft showed that Europa was covered with an icy shell, scientists have debated the composition of Europa's surface. The infrared spectrometer aboard Galileo was not capable of providing the detail needed to definitively identify some of the materials present on the surface. Now, using current technology on ground-based telescopes, Brown and Hand have identified a spectroscopic feature on Europa's surface that indicates the presence of a magnesium sulfate salt, a mineral called epsomite, that could only originate from the ocean below.

"Magnesium should not be on the surface of Europa unless it's coming from the ocean," Brown says. "So that means ocean water gets onto the surface, and stuff on the surface presumably gets into the ocean water."

Europa's ocean is thought to be 100 kilometers deep and covers the entire globe. The moon remains locked in relation to Jupiter, with the same hemisphere always leading and the other trailing in its orbit. The leading hemisphere has a yellowish appearance, while the trailing hemisphere seems to be splattered and streaked with a red material.

The spectroscopic data from that red side has been a cause of scientific debate for 15 years. It is thought that one of Jupiter's largest moons, Io, spews volcanic sulfur from its atmosphere, and Jupiter's strong magnetic field sends some of that sulfur hurtling toward the trailing hemisphere of Europa, where it sticks. It is also clear from Galileo's data that there is something other than pure water ice on the trailing hemisphere's surface. The debate has focused on what that other something is -- i.e., what has caused the spectroscopic data to deviate from the signature of pure water ice.

"From Galileo's spectra, people knew something was there besides water. They argued for years over what it might be -- sodium sulfate, hydrogen sulfate, sodium hydrogen carbonate, all these things that look more or less similar in this range of the spectrum," says Brown. "But the really difficult thing was that the spectrometer on the Galileo spacecraft was just too coarse."

Brown and Hand decided that the latest spectrometers on ground-based telescopes could improve the data pertaining to Europa, even from a distance of about 400 million miles. Using the Keck II telescope on Mauna Kea -- which is outfitted with adaptive optics to adjust for the blurring effect of Earth's atmosphere -- and its OH-Suppressing Infrared Integral Field Spectrograph (OSIRIS), they first mapped the distribution of pure water ice versus anything else on the moon. The spectra showed that even Europa's leading hemisphere contains significant amounts of nonwater ice. Then, at low latitudes on the trailing hemisphere -- the area with the greatest concentration of the nonwater ice material -- they found a tiny dip in the spectrum that had never been detected before.

"We now have the best spectrum of this thing in the world," Brown says. "Nobody knew there was this little dip in the spectrum because no one had the resolution to zoom in on it before."

The two researchers racked their brains to come up with materials that might explain the new spectroscopic feature, and then tested everything from sodium chloride to Drano in Hand's lab at JPL, where he tries to simulate the environments found on various icy worlds. "We tried to think outside the box to consider all sorts of other possibilities, but at the end of the day, the magnesium sulfate persisted," Hand says.

Some scientists had long suspected that magnesium sulfate was on the surface of Europa. But, Brown says, "the interesting twist is that it doesn't look like the magnesium sulfate is coming from the ocean." Since the mineral he and Hand found is only on the trailing side, where the moon is being bombarded with sulfur from Io, they believe that there is a magnesium-bearing mineral everywhere on Europa that produces magnesium sulfate in combination with sulfur. The pervasive magnesium-bearing mineral might also be what makes up the nonwater ice detected on the leading hemisphere's surface.

Brown and Hand believe that this mystery magnesium-bearing mineral is magnesium chloride. But magnesium is not the only unexpected element on the surface of Europa. Fifteen years ago, Brown showed that Europa is surrounded by an atmosphere of atomic sodium and potassium, presumably originating from the surface. The researchers reason that the sodium and potassium chlorides are actually the dominant salts on the surface of Europa, but that they are not detectable because they have no clear spectral features.

The scientists combined this information with the fact that Europa's ocean can only be one of two types -- either sulfate-rich or chlorine-rich. Having ruled out the sulfate-rich version since magnesium sulfate was found only on the trailing side, Brown and Hand hypothesize that the ocean is chlorine-rich and that the sodium and potassium must be present as chlorides.

Therefore, Brown says, they believe the composition of Europa's sea closely resembles the salty ocean of Earth. "If you could go swim down in the ocean of Europa and taste it, it would just taste like normal old salt," he says.

Hand emphasizes that, from an astrobiology standpoint, Europa is considered a premier target in the search for life beyond Earth; a NASA-funded study team led by JPL and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory have been working with the scientific community to identify options to explore Europa further. "If we've learned anything about life on Earth, it's that where there's liquid water, there's generally life," Hand says. "And of course our ocean is a nice salty ocean. Perhaps Europa's salty ocean is also a wonderful place for life."

The Astronomical Journal paper is titled "Salts and radiation products on the surface of Europa." The work was supported, in part, by the NASA Astrobiology Institute through the Astrobiology of Icy Worlds node at JPL.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by California Institute of Technology. The original article was written by Kimm Fesenmaier.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/17kPC8uPuOA/130305131253.htm

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Scotiabank profit jumps, pushing stock to new high

TORONTO (Reuters) - Bank of Nova Scotia capped the Canadian bank earnings season with a better-than-expected 13 percent profit gain and a dividend hike, helped by higher markets-related income and the acquisition of Canadian online lender ING Direct.

The result, which pushed its shares to an all-time high, ended an earnings period that saw all of Canada's five biggest banks exceed earnings estimates and all but one raise dividends, as each were able to find ways to boost profit in spite a slowdown in their key consumer lending businesses.

In Scotiabank's case, its numbers were padded by the C$3.1 billion ($3.01 billion) acquisition of the Canadian online bank of Dutch lender ING Groep , which boosted loans and deposits, although its lower-rate mortgages weighed on the bank's loan margins.

"The ING numbers kind of cloud the trends a little bit, but if you take those numbers out, you get still-solid progression. The margins hung in well, the loan growth numbers are OK," said CIBC World Markets analyst Robert Sedran.

Net profit was C$1.63 billion, or C$1.25 a share, in the fiscal first quarter ended January 31. That compared with a year-before profit of C$1.44 billion, or C$1.20 a share.

Excluding certain items, Scotiabank earned C$1.27 a share, up from C$1.22 a year before, and just beating the $1.25 a share expected by analysts, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The addition of ING direct, along with organic asset growth and lower credit losses, pushed income from the Canadian banking up 21 percent to C$574 million.

"(Loan-loss) provisions were lighter than forecast, consistent with the other banks this quarter," John Aiken, an analysts at Barclays Capital, said in a note.

Acquisitions also contributed to Scotiabank's international operations, as the $1 billion acquisition of a 51 percent stake in Colombia's Banco Colpatria, which closed early last year, helped push international banking income up 12 percent to C$416 million.

Scotiabank, Canada's third-largest bank, operates in more than 50 countries, with the heaviest weighting in Latin America and a growing presence in Asia.

Profit at its global banking and markets division, which includes trading, investment banking and advisory fees, rose 28 percent to C$399 million.

Wealth managed income rose 7 percent to C$301 million, helped by stronger markets.

SHARES HIT HIGH

The bank's shares ended the session up 0.7 percent at C$61.32 on the Toronto Stock Exchange, after touching an all-time high of C$61.84 earlier in the session.

Canadian bank stocks have churned steadily higher in recent weeks in spite of signs that Canadian lending is slowing due to a cooling housing market and generally more frugal borrowing from heavily indebted Canadians.

Recent data shows that Canadians' debt-to-income levels hit a record in the third quarter of last year.

While analysts describe the current domestic environment as hostile to the banks, the results this quarter have shown the lenders are able to squeeze profit from other parts of their vast businesses.

"This quarter, capital markets did OK in most cases, and loan losses were actually an unexpectedly positive catalyst and helped offset some of that impact," said Sedran.

"So it's not all about retail lending in Canada."

As expected, Scotiabank raised its quarterly dividend by 5 percent to 60 Canadian cents a share, following the lead of Bank of Montreal , Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto-Dominion Bank last week.

Return on equity was 16.6 percent, down from 19.8 percent a year earlier.

While some analysts have suggested Canadian banks may bleed investors to U.S. banks that appear to be poised to benefit from a sharp rebound in the U.S. housing market, David Baskin, president of Toronto-based Baskin Financial, said there was little reason to turn away from the Canadian lenders.

"You're getting (good) returns on equity. You're getting a dividend of almost 4 percent, when five-year Canada bonds are under 2 percent," he said.

"What's not to like?"

(Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe, Grant McCool and Matthew Lewis)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/scotiabank-profit-jumps-pushing-stock-high-180515481--finance.html

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Murray Fromson: Rembering the Voting Rights Act

The trouble with history is time. Lost time. Too many people tinker with history and if they have no memory, the facts and remembrances of a significant event tend to get lost or twisted.

Take the anniversary of the march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., to which I as an eyewitness as a CBS News correspondent in 1965. I have been reading about the anniversary of that historic event; that is, the showdown at the Edmund Pettus Bridge where the Alabama police attacked the marchers and nearly killed my old friend. Representative John Lewis, the noble Civil Rights leader, by beating him senseless. My late colleague, Nelson Benton, got on the air with the event, and I followed shortly thereafter. Sometime before, an angry bunch of rednecks came up to me and my cameraman, Wendell Hoffman, and spit in his camera lens. We had it carried live on the air to show the disgusting attitude of some Selma residents who opposed the demands of citizens to win passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that President Lyndon Johnson eventually signed into law. That law has stood for 49 years.

Having joined with my colleague, the late Dallas Townsend, in the joint nationwide radio broadcast of the march from Selma, I walked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. at that time and never forgot his ringing declaration as the marchers passed the state capitol building. Governor George Wallace looked out of his office and listened. I find myself disgusted by the southerners and Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia who continue to nit-pick at the legitimacy of the historic legislation that ensures African Americans the right to vote. Those malcontents still can't get it. The Civil War is over. The law stands proud and mighty as testimony that there are certain moments in the life of the nation when the law remains as it was intended to stand. That's what the distinguished panel of federal judges had in mind when they upheld the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That's when we mourned the death of Viola Liuzzo, the volunteer worker from Detroit whose murder I covered by a racist gang on Highway 80. I still grieve for the dedicated people who marched for greater freedom -- people like John Lewis and the late Martin Luther King Jr. I pity those who have forgotten that legacy and the giants who urged the nation toward greater acts of dignity.

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Follow Murray Fromson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/FromsonFile

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/murray-fromson/rembering-the-voting-rights-act_b_2808270.html

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Black hole's super-fast spin revealed

NASA / JPL-Caltech

This artist's concept illustrates a supermassive black hole with millions to billions times the mass of our sun.

By Mike Wall
Space.com

Astronomers have made the first reliable measurement of a supermassive black hole's spin, showcasing a technique that could help unravel the mysteries of these monsters' growth and evolution.

The enormous black hole at the center of the spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is spinning about 84 percent as fast as Einstein's general theory of relativity allows it to, researchers determined. The find demonstrates that at least some supermassive black holes are rotating rapidly ? a claim previous studies had hinted at but failed to confirm.

"It's the first time that we can really say that black holes are spinning," study co-author Fiona Harrison, of Caltech in Pasadena, told Space.com. "The promise that this holds for being able to understand how black holes grow is, I think, the major implication."?

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X-ray light
Supermassive black holes are almost incomprehensibly huge, with some containing 10 billion or more times the mass of our sun. Scientists think one lurks at the heart of most, if not all, galaxies. [Gallery: Black Holes of the Universe]

NGC 1365, located about 56 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Fornax, does indeed harbor a gigantic black hole ? one as massive as several million suns.?And this behemoth is blasting out enormous quantities of energy as it gobbles up gas and other nearby matter, making it an intriguing target for astronomers.

In the new study, researchers analyzed data from two X-ray space telescopes ? the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton observatory and NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR. The telescopes observed NGC 1365 in July 2012.

By zeroing in on the high-energy light emitted by iron atoms, the telescopes were able to trace the motion of the flat, rotating accretion disk that circles NGC 1365's black hole and funnels gas and dust into its greedy maw.

Astronomers found that the emissions were strongly distorted, suggesting that the inner edge of the accretion disk may be quite close to the black hole ? close enough for gravitational effects to wreak havoc with the X-rays streaming from the disk. This in turn implied a rapidly rotating black hole, since general relativity states that the faster a black hole is spinning, the closer its disk can come to it, Harrison said.

That's one interpretation. In the past, some astronomers have put forward a different interpretation of the readings. They suggested that such distortion, which has been observed in accretion disk emissions before, could be caused by clouds of gas that hang between a supermassive black hole and the telescopes observing it. [The Strangest Black Holes in the Universe]?

"This has been a big controversy ? which of the two is going on?" Harrison said.?

How fast a super-massive black hole spins may indicate what it fed on and how often. NASA's NuSTAR X-Ray Telescope is helping to decode the early life story of a nearby active galaxy by timing its rotation and measuring its glow.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

This graphic shows two models for the spin of a black hole. Observations from NASA's NuSTAR probe revealed that the prograde rotation model applied in the case of NGC 1365's black hole - and that suggests that the black hole is spinning at an incredibly fast rate.

Pinning down the spin
The observations from the $165 million NuSTAR telescope, which launched in June 2012, cracked the case.

Using NuSTAR's super-sensitive measurements of high-energy X-rays, the astronomers calculated that if there were gas clouds in the way, they would have to be incredibly thick to produce the observed distortion levels. In fact, they'd have to be so thick as to make the whole idea untenable, at least in the case of NGC 1365's black hole.

"To shine through these thick clouds, the black hole would have to be so bright it would basically blow itself apart," said Harrison, who is the principal investigator for the NuSTAR mission. "So what has to be happening is, what we're seeing is these relativistic distortions. And that means that the disk is coming close to the black hole, which means the black hole must be spinning rapidly."

The research team, led by Guido Risaliti of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics' Arcetri Observatory, calculated this rotation rate to be 84 percent of that allowed by general relativity.

It's tough to comprehend this figure, since it doesn't translate well into miles per hour. One estimate puts the speed at?670 million mph, or 1.08 billion kilometers per hour. In any case, it's safe to say that the black hole is spinning incredibly fast.

"The analogy of an actual velocity is not quite right," Harrison said. "But what you can say is that spinning black holes twist space-time around them. And if you were standing near the black hole, basically your space-time would be twisted, or dragged, around such that you would have to rotate once every four minutes just to be standing still."

The new study was published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

How a black hole grows
Astronomers think that?supermassive black holes acquire most of their spin as they grow, rather than being born with it. So studying their rotation rates can yield insights into how these monsters have evolved over time.

The superfast spin of NGC 1365's black hole, for example, implies that it did not grow via numerous small black-hole mergers, Harrison said, since the odds are very low that many such chaotic events would spin it up in the same direction.?Rather, it's more likely that NGC 1365's central black hole acquired its spin from one major merger, or simply by gobbling material from an accretion disk that has remained stable over the long haul.

The new study represents a first step toward a better understanding of the nature and evolution of supermassive black holes, Harrison said.

"We will make more measurements like this," she said. "Eventually what you'd like to do is have a bigger telescope that can actually measure more distant black holes so we can, using the statistics of the sample, understand how they grow over cosmic time."?

Follow Space.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter?@michaeldwall?or Space.com?@Spacedotcom. We're also on?Facebook?and?Google+.

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Source: http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/27/17123516-black-holes-super-fast-spin-revealed?lite

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