Georgia: Criminal Charges against Tbilisi Mayor Spark Conflict

Tbilisi?s first popularly elected mayor, Gigi Ugulava, one of Georgia?s most powerful politicians, has been charged with embezzlement-misappropriation of budget funds and money laundering.

While the 37-year-old mayor, one of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili?s closest allies, has denied any wrongdoing, the February 23 indictment is another political blow to the president, and puts another yawning crack into efforts by the country?s divided national government to coexist peacefully.

The Georgian Ministry of Finance?s Investigative Service alleges that Ugulava was involved in a convoluted real estate transaction that cost ?the budget? 10 million lari (approximately $6 million) in a bid to place a private national broadcaster, Imedi, which had been critical of Saakashvili, under de-facto government control. Though they have not detailed their reasoning, investigators have termed the alleged misuse of funds ?money laundering.?

The case centers around the city?s sale and subsequent repurchase of a four-hectare plot of land in a popular Tbilisi neighborhood, Rike, that was aggressively promoted for development during Saakashvili's United National Movement's years in power.

The finance ministry maintains that Ugulava helped orchestrate the city?s sale of the land for 7 million lari ($4.24 million), but then had it repurchase the land, two years later, for 17 million lari ($10.3 million) to provide compensation for the alleged Imedi takeover to Georgian-American businessman Joseph Kay, who was then overseeing the station?s operations. Allegedly, 10 million lari from the sale was sent to an offshore account owned by Kay.

Another charge of embezzlement-misappropriation of budget funds stems from a student work program initiated by the Tbilisi city government that investigators maintain was used to pay 4.1 million lari ($2.48 million) to youth activists for Saakashvili?s United National Movement party.

Ugulava has denied the charges categorically, maintaining that the investigation is an attempt by Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili?s Georgian Dream to usurp control of Tbilisi?s city government, and to lay the groundwork for dictatorship.

?I?m ready to prove my innocence,? he told media and supporters on February 23, asserting the day before that if the ?freedom of my country? means going to jail, he is ready to go.

Over the past five months, one former cabinet minister has been jailed, another charged in-absentia, and scores of lower-ranking former officials have been investigated and/or arrested.

At the same time, while UNM politicians remain a majority in the Tbilisi city government, a growing number have left the party over the past several weeks. The party has also lost power in regional governments since last October?s parliamentary election.

The combined effect has sparked growing allegations that the Georgian Dream is more interested in introducing ?political terror? than in working with an opposition or achieving justice.

In a February 22 television interview, President Saakashvili picked up that theme, claiming that the charges against Ugulava are linked to the fact that Prime Minister Ivanishvili, when a private investor, had been ?interested? in the Tbilisi property in question, which was eventually sold to another investor, and that a ?disagreement? with the billionaire had occurred.

For now, however, Uglava?s path does not lead directly to jail: General Prosecutor Archil Kbilashvili told journalists that there is no indication that Ugulava will be arrested at this point. He did note, however, that Saakashvili could be called in for questioning.

In what has been seen as a counter-move against more serious steps deemed likely to come (in particular, the mayor?s resignation from his post pending trial), former Prime Minister Vano Merabishvili, the secretary-general of the UNM, has been named as one of Ugulava?s deputy mayors.

Senior members of the Georgian Dream coalition though, have asserted that no political persecution is taking place, and that the investigation into Ugulava was carried out ?normally.?

The fact that no concrete evidence against Ugulava yet has been released to the public has not, however, hindered the new government and other political parties from assuming the mayor?s guilt ? a practice common in Georgia during the UNM?s years in power as well.

The prime minister weighed in on the case on February 22, telling journalists, without citing grounds, that Ugulava ?spent the people?s money.?

Source: http://www.eurasianet.org/node/66595

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Las Vegas seen as dangerous even as crime drops

FILE - In this Feb. 21, 2013 file photo, law enforcement personal investigate the scene of a multi-vehicle accident and shooting in Las Vegas. Variously known as an adult playground and Disneyland for grown-ups, Las Vegas has worked to brand itself as a place where tourists can enjoy a sense of edginess with no real danger. But a series of high-profile and seemingly random incidents that have left visitors to the Strip dead or in the hospital is threatening Sin City?s reputation as a padded room of a town where people can cut loose with no fear of consequences. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Review-Journal, Jeff Scheid, File) LOCAL TV OUT; LOCAL INTERNET OUT; LAS VEGAS SUN OUT

FILE - In this Feb. 21, 2013 file photo, law enforcement personal investigate the scene of a multi-vehicle accident and shooting in Las Vegas. Variously known as an adult playground and Disneyland for grown-ups, Las Vegas has worked to brand itself as a place where tourists can enjoy a sense of edginess with no real danger. But a series of high-profile and seemingly random incidents that have left visitors to the Strip dead or in the hospital is threatening Sin City?s reputation as a padded room of a town where people can cut loose with no fear of consequences. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Review-Journal, Jeff Scheid, File) LOCAL TV OUT; LOCAL INTERNET OUT; LAS VEGAS SUN OUT

FILE - In this Feb. 21, 2013 file photo, law enforcement personal investigate the scene of a mulit-vehicle accident on Las Vegas Blvd and Flamingo Road. Variously known as an adult playground and Disneyland for grown-ups, Las Vegas has worked to brand itself as a place where tourists can enjoy a sense of edginess with no real danger. But a series of high-profile and seemingly random incidents that have left visitors to the Strip dead or in the hospital is threatening Sin City?s reputation as a padded room of a town where people can cut loose with no fear of consequences. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Review-Journal, Jeff Scheid) LOCAL TV OUT; LOCAL INTERNET OUT; LAS VEGAS SUN OUT

LAS VEGAS (AP) ? Variously known as an adult playground and Disneyland for grown-ups, Las Vegas brands itself as a place where tourists can enjoy a sense of edginess with no real danger.

But a series of high-profile episodes of random violence amid the throngs of tourists is threatening Sin City's reputation as a padded room of a town where people can cut loose with no fear of consequences.

A car-to-car shooting and fiery crash that killed two bystanders and an aspiring rapper Thursday followed a bizarre elevator stabbing and a movie theater parking lot shooting.

Though crime has been falling on the glitzy stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard that houses most of the city's major casinos, tourism officials worry that vacationers and convention planners could begin to steer clear of the town because of a perception of mayhem.

"We are concerned because it can create misperceptions about the safety of the city, the safety of the Strip," said Gary Thompson, spokesman for Caesars Entertainment, which owns 10 resorts in the tourist zone, including Caesars Palace and Paris Las Vegas.

Casinos are particularly worried about convention business, which helps fill rooms and gambling tables between weekends. Corporate planners can swing the market with a few decisions, said Gordon Absher, spokesman for MGM Resorts International.

"And that decision will bring thousands of people," he said. MGM operates several major casino-hotels, including CityCenter, where Thursday's convulsion of violence originated.

Violent crime, which includes murder, rape, robbery and assault, in the city's main tourist hub fell 13 percent in 2012, from 256 to 223 incidents, and is down 11 percent for the first part of 2013, with 50 incidents reported. The number of rapes has fallen by more than a third.

There have been two homicides just off the Strip this year, in addition to the three deaths Thursday, compared to none in the area during the first month and a half of 2012.

Had they taken place elsewhere, the incidents that made headlines in recent weeks would never have become national stories, Thompson said. But when the crime happens in a city that welcomes 40 million visitors a year, people tend to care even if they haven't seen the neon lights in years.

"It's like, 'I was there! I stayed in there in Las Vegas! I walked that part of the Strip!'" he said.

The spate of violence started just before the new year, when a man shot and killed his ex-girlfriend, an Excalibur hotel-casino concierge clerk, before fatally shooting himself.

The following week, a blackjack dealer was wrestled to the ground at the Bellagio with razor blades in both hands. She is charged with killing a 10 year-old girl and then slashing her co-worker's face.

On New Year's Eve, a man allegedly fired a gunshot into the floor of the crowded Circus Circus casino during an argument. A Saudi air force sergeant is accused of raping a 13-year-old boy in the rooms above the same night.

A nighttime shooting outside a Strip movie theater left two people critically wounded earlier this month. Last week, two random men allegedly assaulted a visitor in the elevator at the Mandalay Bay property, tackling him and stabbing him in such a frenzy that they also stabbed each other.

During the same period, Las Vegas courts sentenced a Florida teacher for killing a stranger with a single punch after trading words in a casino bathroom, and heard the case of two law students charged with beheading an exotic bird at the Flamingo casino-hotel.

The shoot-'em-up car chase that closed the Strip for 12 hours Thursday was the most public and deadly incident yet.

A person in a luxury SUV opened fire on an aspiring rapper in a Maserati near one of the busiest intersections on the iconic corridor. As the bullets flew, the Maserati ran a red light and crashed into a taxi, which burst into flames. The taxi driver, a passenger and the rapper were killed, and six people were injured.

Casino executives say they do all they can to keep visitors safe, with armies of guards, networks of high-definition survielence cameras and undercover security workers scattered throughout nearly every major attraction.

"Unless you are a complete idiot, you're not going to want to commit many crimes in or around a casino because you're going to get caught," Thompson said.

But catching a criminal isn't the same as stopping the crime.

Commissioners in Clark County, where Las Vegas is located, are weighing steps to increase safety, including installing additional cameras in public spaces and broadening the sidewalks. In October, they banned potentially dangerous objects including fireworks, knives and toy guns from the Strip.

But real guns remain permissible. Nevada's relaxed gun laws, including the ability to carry them openly, have made Las Vegas an attractive spot for shooting ranges and gun shows.

Some observers think police should step up their presence on the Strip, just as they did after three slayings in 2011.

"Clearly they should be looking into this because they have had a string of incidents now, and while they've all been random incidents, they all did happen," said David Schwartz, the Director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

On Thursday, police spokesman Jose Hernandez said the department had no plans to send additional officers to the Strip, noting that crime remains relatively low for a town that accommodates so many visitors each day.

But with violent crime, as with so much else in Vegas, perception may outweigh reality. As a place built on the promise of letting loose, the city must work extra hard to banish all fear of danger, said Tony Henthorne, a marketing professor at the William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration in Las Vegas.

"It's important for any destination that relies on tourism for a major percentage of its income to appear safe," he said, "and also actually to be safe."

___

Hannah Dreier can be reached at http://twitter.com/hannahdreier

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-02-23-US-Vegas-Safety-Fears/id-6b65add93bf843f9933bfc237e95a672

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Liberal Watchdog Group: 'Fix The Debt' Movement More Astroturf Than Grassroots

The liberal watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy says Fix The Debt ? a key unit in philanthropist Pete Peterson's corps of organizations to battle the national debt ? is a pro-business effort masquerading as a grassroots movement.

In a conference call with reporters Friday, CMD director Lisa Graves called Fix The Debt "an Astroturf supergroup that is exceedingly well funded." The term "Astroturf" refers to groups that appear to be citizen-organized, but actually have their roots at consultants' offices inside the Capital Beltway.

A spokesman for Fix The Debt hotly denies the charge. Jon Romano said CMD got some of its facts wrong, adding, "It is unfortunate that some would rather cast aspersions and misrepresent this view than engage in a constructive conversation about tackling this very real problem. Demagoguing does nothing to protect the most vulnerable."

Fix The Debt is promoting a citizens' petition, with 346,000 names. CMD, which last year used leaked documents to report on the secretive American Legislative Exchange Council, traced the corporate ties and lobbying records of Fix The Debt leaders.

Among the co-founders, co-chairs and steering committee ? 13 people in all ? it found six who sit on corporate boards, including GE, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley; advisers to Goldman Sachs and the private equity firm KKR; and lobbyists for KKR, the Private Equity Growth Capital Council and U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Fix The Debt also has two well-populated advisory groups: a CEO Council with about 90 members, and a Business Leaders Council of about 40.

"They really are posturing as a grassroots movement," says Graves. "They are putting forward this notion of these business leaders not as job creators, but as problem solvers on the economy ? when in fact the record shows that a lot of these companies are actively lobbying to keep tax loopholes open" and to promote other corporation-friendly policies.

CMD's analysis also appears in The Nation, in a package of stories on Peterson's long-running effort to move the national debt to the top of Washington's agenda.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/02/23/172761961/liberal-watchdog-group-fix-the-debt-movement-more-astroturf-than-grassroots?ft=1&f=1014

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Instagram?s Kevin Systrom To Join Us For Disrupt NY 2013

In case you’re not vigorously refreshing our?Disrupt NY?events page like we are, TechCrunch Disrupt?is coming up. We’re receiving a record number of Startup Battlefield applications?and watching the last batch pour in before the deadline on Monday. We’ve also?started to announce some amazing special guests and speakers. Tickets for this year’s show can be found here. From pivot to iconic acquisition, there is perhaps no recent Valley success story more symbolic than that of Instagram and its cofounder Kevin Systrom. His saga, and the fact that he’s a sharp cookie, are why we’re delighted to have this Crunchies 2013 Founder Of The Year join us on the Disrupt NY stage. Systrom will be headlining along with?previously announced speakers Fred Wilson, Ken Lerer, Ben Lerer, Roelof Botha, Ron Conway, David Lee, and Kevin Ryan. Stay tuned for more updates, and remember, if you want to apply for Startup Battlefield, do so before Monday, February 25th. More info on applying can be found here. Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our amazing sponsorship team here?sponsors@techcrunch.com. Kevin Systrom Co-founder, Instagram Kevin Systrom is a co-founder of Instagram, a photo sharing application for the iPhone. He also founded Burbn, an HTML5-based location sharing service. Kevin graduated from Stanford University in 2006 with a BS in Management Science & Engineering?he got his first taste of the startup world when he was an intern at Odeo that later became Twitter. He spent two years at Google?the first of which was working on Gmail, Google Reader, and other products and the latter where he worked on the Corporate Development team. Kevin has always had a passion for social products that enable people to communicate more easily, and combined with his passion for photography, Instagram is a natural fit.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/zKi7Yebk5Dk/

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Sizzling prices heat up wage talks in Argentina

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - A stagnant economy and one of the world's highest inflation rates are making Argentina's annual wage talks thornier than ever this year just as President Cristina Fernandez turns her attention to mid-term elections.

Fernandez, who hails from the left of the Peronist party that has dominated Argentine politics since the late 1940s, has an increasingly difficult relationship with the unions and that is raising the risk of strikes ahead of the October elections.

The combative president has divided Argentina's largest labor federation, the CGT, ostracizing leaders who became critical of her six-year-old government and recruiting more amenable replacements with whom to negotiate.

But a sharp slowdown coupled with inflation forecast by private economists to reach 30 percent this year is exposing cracks in her alliance with government-friendly unionists.

Galloping prices and a rising tax burden are eroding consumers' purchasing power, and even allied union leaders are unwilling to accept a 20 percent ceiling the government and companies want to set for wage claims.

"The unions are going to react," said Sergio Romero, secretary general of the UDA teachers union that belongs to the pro-government wing of the CGT.

"We went to the negotiating table with a flexible approach and what we got was a unilateral response. We expected a bigger effort from the state to improve the education system," he told Reuters. "The government is condemning teachers to survive on 3,000 pesos ($600) a month."

Members of Romero's union want a 30 percent pay rise, a demand shared by the large food industry union, which also belongs to government-friendly CGT ranks.

"It's going to be a different round of pay talks this year. Inflation is higher and the economic recovery has been feeble," said economist Ernesto Kritz, a specialist on employment issues.

Inflation in Latin America's third-biggest economy sped up slightly to 25 percent in 2012, according to private economists, while economic activity grew a meager 1.9 percent, suggesting a decade-long boom has finally sputtered out.

Referring to the upcoming wage negotiations, Fernandez called in January for "a bit of good sense," saying inflation was not "a natural phenomenon, but something that all sectors play a part in."

She seldom mentions the word inflation and dismisses criticism from economists, consumer groups and the International Monetary Fund of the state's official consumer price data, which put last year's inflation rate at just 10.8 percent.

Shunning orthodox monetary policy recipes to cool prices, Fernandez instead forged a two-month price freeze accord with supermarket chains and appliance stores.

Pay talks normally start in February and last until July, with teachers traditionally kicking off the public sector negotiations.

In a sign of what may lie ahead, the education ministry last week made teachers a non-negotiable offer of 22 percent to be paid in three stages over the course of the coming year. They swiftly rejected the raise and called a strike.

Hospital workers in Buenos Aires province, home to nearly 40 percent of the country's population, have vowed to walk off the job on Monday after the cash-strapped provincial government warned it cannot meet their demands.

'UNSUSTAINABLE'

Businesses, meanwhile, say wage hikes that keep pace with inflation are becoming unsustainable as Argentine industry rapidly loses competitiveness.

"Pay rises of 30 percent are just not viable. We need a dose of rationality or else we're likely to lose companies and lose jobs," said Daniel Funes de Rioja, president of the COPAL food industry association.

Although unemployment remains at low levels of about 7 percent, inflation is eating away at living standards and is a growing concern for voters, who will elect almost half of Congress in the October legislative elections.

The vote could determine Fernandez's political future because she will only be able to run for a third consecutive term in 2015 if she gains the two-thirds congressional majority needed to seek constitutional reform.

Fernandez's current approval ratings suggest she could struggle. Her positive image was 30.7 percent in a January survey by the Management & Fit polling firm, up slightly from December but far below the 59.1 percent of February 2012.

The opposition's persistent weakness, however, and the fact that Fernandez also did badly in 2009 mid-term elections before easily winning re-election two years later might help her allies strengthen their grip on Congress.

Much will depend on her success in balancing the conflicting demands of workers and industry on salaries.

"People are worried about mundane issues that affect their everyday lives - wages, prices, inflation ... and this could be played out when it comes to voting," said Mariel Fornoni, a director at Management & Fit.

($1 = 5.03 pesos)

(Writing by Helen Popper; Editing by Kieran Murray and Phil Berlowitz)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sizzling-prices-heat-wage-talks-argentina-165943612--business.html

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Office 2007 & Windows 8

?Office 2007 & Windows 8

Office 2007, Windows 8 Will MS Office 2007 ultimate run under Windows 8?

Software/Hardware used:
Windows 8, MS Office 2007 ultimate

ASKED: February 22, 2013??6:01 AM

Source: http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/itanswers/office-2007-windows-8/

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Human heart tissue development slower than other mammals

Thursday, February 21, 2013

The walls of the human heart are a disorganised jumble of tissue until relatively late in pregnancy despite having the shape of a fully functioning heart, according to a pioneering study.

A University of Leeds-led team developing the first comprehensive model of human heart development using observations of living foetal hearts found surprising differences from existing animal models.

Although they saw four clearly defined chambers in the foetal heart from the eighth week of pregnancy, they did not find organised muscle tissue until the 20th week, much later than expected.

Developing an accurate, computerised simulation of the foetal heart is critical to understanding normal heart development in the womb and, eventually, to opening new ways of detecting and dealing with some functional abnormalities early in pregnancy.

Studies of early heart development have previously been largely based on other mammals such as mice or pigs, adult hearts and dead human samples. The Leeds-led team is using scans of healthy foetuses in the womb, including one mother who volunteered to have detailed weekly ECG (electrocardiography) scans from 18 weeks until just before delivery.

This functional data is incorporated into a 3D computerised model built up using information about the structure, shape and size of the different components of the heart from two types of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scans of dead foetuses' hearts.

Early results from the project, which involves researchers from Leeds, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Nottingham, the University of Manchester and the University of Sheffield, show that the human heart may develop on a different timeline from other mammals.

While the tissue in the walls of a pig heart develops a highly organised structure at a relatively early stage of a foetus's development, a paper from the Leeds-led team published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface Focusreports that the there is little organisation of the human heart's cells until 20 weeks into pregnancy.

A pig's pregnancy lasts about three months and the organised structure of the walls of the heart emerge in the first month of pregnancy. The new study only detected similar organised structures well into the second trimester of the human pregnancy. Human foetuses have a regular heartbeat from about 22 days.

Dr Eleftheria Pervolaraki, Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Leeds' School of Biomedical Sciences, said: "For a heart to be beating effectively, we thought you needed a smoothly changing orientation of the muscle cells through the walls of the heart chambers. Such an organisation is seen in the hearts of all healthy adult mammals.

"Foetal hearts in other mammals such as pigs, which we have been using as models, show such an organisation even early in gestation, with a smooth change in cell orientation going through the heart wall. But what we actually found is that such organisation was not detectable in the human foetus before 20 weeks," she said.

Professor Arun Holden, also from Leeds' School of Biomedical Sciences, said: "The development of the foetal human heart is on a totally different timeline, a slower timeline, from the model that was being used before. This upsets our assumptions and raises new questions. Since the wall of the heart is structurally disorganised, we might expect to find arrhythmias, which are a bad sign in an adult. It may well be that in the early stages of development of the heart arrhythmias are not necessarily pathological and that there is no need to panic if we find them. Alternatively, we could find that the disorganisation in the tissue does not actually lead to arrhythmia."

A detailed computer model of the activity and architecture of the developing heart will help make sense of the limited information doctors can obtain about the foetus using non-invasive monitoring of a pregnant woman.

Professor Holden said: "It is different from dealing with an adult, where you can look at the geometry of an individual's heart using MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) or CT (Computerised Tomography) scans. You can't squirt x-rays at a foetus and we also currently tend to avoid MRI, so we need a model into which we can put the information we do have access to."

He added: "Effectively, at the moment, foetal ECGs are not really used. The textbooks descriptions of the development of the human heart are still founded on animal models and 19th century collections of abnormalities in museums. If you are trying to detect abnormal activity in foetal hearts, you are only talking about third trimester and postnatal care of premature babies. By looking at how the human heart actually develops in real life and creating a quantitative, descriptive model of its architecture and activity from the start of a pregnancy to birth, you are expanding electrocardiology into the foetus."

###

University of Leeds: http://www.leeds.ac.uk

Thanks to University of Leeds for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126956/Human_heart_tissue_development_slower_than_other_mammals

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