US seared during hottest year on record by far

Graphic shows the average U.S. temperature for each year since

Graphic shows the average U.S. temperature for each year since

FILE - In this Aug. 16, 2012 file photo, dust is carried by the wind behind a combine harvesting corn in a field near Coy, Ark. A brutal combination of a widespread drought and a mostly absent winter pushed the average annual U.S. temperature last year up to 55.32 degrees Fahrenheit, the government announced Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2013. Breaking temperature records by an entire degree is unprecedented, scientists say. Normally, records are broken by a tenth of a degree or so. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston, File)

FILE - This July 6, 2012 file photo shows Timmy Benson wearing a wet towel on his head as he cools off in a fountain set up outside Busch Stadium before a baseball game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Miami Marlins Friday in St. Louis. Federal meteorologists say America was deep fried in 2012, becoming the hottest year on record by far. The National Climatic Data Center in Ashville, N.C., calculates that the average U.S. temperature in 2012 was 55.32 degrees Fahrenheit. That's a full degree warmer than the previous record of 1998. Normally, records are broken by about a tenth of a degree. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)

FILE - This July 6, 2012 file photo shows six-year-old Alexander Merrill of Sioux Falls, S.D., cooling off in a cloud of mist at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Neb., as temperatures reached triple digits. Federal meteorologists say America was deep fried in 2012, becoming the hottest year on record by far. The National Climatic Data Center in Ashville, N.C., calculates that the average U.S. temperature in 2012 was 55.32 degrees Fahrenheit. That's a full degree warmer than the previous record of 1998. Normally, records are broken by about a tenth of a degree. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)

FILE - In this Friday, June 29, 2012 file photo, senior program manager Scott Walker points to a computer display showing power usage and availability in the Tennessee Valley Authority System Operations Center at TVA headquarters in Chattanooga, Tenn. A TVA official said the utility was equal to the air conditioning load. 2012 was 3.2 degrees warmer than the average for the entire 20th century. Last July was the also the hottest month on record. (AP Photo/Chattanooga Times Free Press, Doug Strickland) THE DAILY CITIZEN OUT; NOOGA.COM OUT

WASHINGTON (AP) ? America set an off-the-charts heat record in 2012.

A brutal combination of a widespread drought and a mostly absent winter pushed the average annual U.S. temperature last year up to 55.32 degrees Fahrenheit, the government announced Tuesday. That's a full degree warmer than the old record set in 1998.

Breaking temperature records by an entire degree is unprecedented, scientists say. Normally, records are broken by a tenth of a degree or so.

"It was off the chart," said Deke Arndt, head of climate monitoring at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., which calculated the temperature records.

Last year, he said, will go down as "a huge exclamation point at the end of a couple decades of warming."

The data center's figures for the entire world won't come out until next week, but through the first 11 months of 2012, the world was on pace to have its eighth warmest year on record.

Scientists say the U.S. heat is part global warming in action and natural weather variations. The drought that struck almost two-thirds of the nation and a La Nina weather event helped push temperatures higher, along with climate change from man-made greenhouse gas emissions, said Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. She said temperature increases are happening faster than scientists predicted.

"These records do not occur like this in an unchanging climate," said Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "And they are costing many billions of dollars."

Global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels ? coal, oil and natural gas ? which sends heat-trapping gases, such as carbon dioxide, into the air, changing the climate, scientists say.

What's happening with temperatures in the United States is consistent with the long-term pattern of "big heat events that reach into new levels of intensity," Arndt said.

Last year was 3.2 degrees warmer than the average for the entire 20th century. Last July was the hottest month on record. Nineteen states set yearly heat records in 2012, though Alaska was cooler than average.

U.S. temperature records go back to 1895 and the yearly average is based on reports from more than 1,200 weather stations across the Lower 48 states.

Several environmental groups, including the World Wildlife Fund, took the opportunity to call on the Obama Administration to do more to fight climate change.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2012 also had the second-most weather extremes on record after hurricane-heavy 1998, based on a complex mathematical formula that includes temperature records, drought, downpours, and land-falling hurricanes.

Measured by the number of high-damage events, 2012 ranked second after 2011, with 11 different disasters that caused more than $1 billion in damage, including Superstorm Sandy and the drought, NOAA said.

The drought was the worst since the 1950s and slightly behind the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, meteorologists said. During a drought, the ground is so dry that there's not enough moisture in the soil to evaporate into the atmosphere to cause rainfall, which leads to hotter, drier air. This was fed in the U.S. by La Nina, which is linked to drought.

Scientists say even with global warming, natural and local weather changes mean that temperatures will go up and down over the years. But overall, temperatures are climbing. In the United States, the temperature trend has gone up 1.3 degrees over the last century, according to NOAA data. The last year the U.S. was cooler than the 20th-century average was 1997.

The last time the country had a record cold month was December 1983.

What has scientists so stunned is how far above other hot years 2012 was. Nearly all of the previous 117 years of temperature records were bunched between 51 and 54 degrees, while 2012 was well above 55.

"A picture is emerging of a world with more extreme heat," said Andrew Dessler, a Texas A&M University climate scientist. "Not every year will be hot, but when heat waves do occur, the heat will be more extreme. People need to begin to prepare for that future."

___

Online:

National Climatic Data Center summary of US weather in 2012, http://1.usa.gov/UHhwpx

NCDC chart showing 2012 versus other years, http://1.usa.gov/13eHTrJ

___

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2013-01-08-Hottest%20Year/id-0f4740bd84d343b2bbde6ab73a37e506

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Apple TV adds rare regional service with Watchever in Germany

Sometimes minor-sounding events presage bigger things to come (and sometimes not), so Cupertino's recent addition of a new subscription service app to Apple TV in Germany, Watchever, made our ears perk up. The service -- which is still rolling out in the country and may not work on all devices, according to its Facebook page -- offers Netflix-like streaming of movies and TV shows in dubbed German or original formats for €9 ($12) per month. More significantly, it marks one of the first times Apple TV has added programming specific to a single region on its streaming service, perhaps marking a new trend we could see elsewhere, too. Apple currently has paid subscription apps like NBA, MLB and WSJ from which it gets a nice cut, so a regional expansion would make financial sense -- particularly in countries that don't know a pop fly from a pop tune.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Apple

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Via: TNW

Source: Watchever (Facebook), (Twitter)

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/JaEP6UBj4-E/

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Twitpic founder quietly relaunches Twitter rival Heello in beta: Like App.net, but free

Entrepreneur Noah Everett, the sole founder of photo and video sharing service Twitpic, has relaunched its ?Twitter clone?, real-time communications platform Heello, in quiet beta.

I?m calling it a quiet beta because, although the site is live and users can log in and send ?pings? through the service already, Heello itself is deeming it a pre-beta launch dry run or something.

In other words, be prepared for some bugs when you use it, even though I honestly haven?t encountered any when trying out the service today.

Heello is positioned as an ?open, real-time sharing platform? that lets you easily share what?s happening through photos, videos and native check-ins to locations, publicly or in private messages (?pings?).

From the website:

?As other social networks are walling themselves off, we are committed to providing an open ecosystem for everyone, with our user?s best interest always in mind.

Also as a user you will always own your data.

Heello is for Developers: We believe that developers are an important part to a successful platform. We want to provide developers with an easy platform and a friendly ecosystem to build on without worry of being pushed off.?

That?s a clear middle finger directed at Twitter. It also makes Heello sound an awful lot like Dalton Caldwell?s App.net project (and Diaspora, remember that?), but free of charge ? at least for now.

Developers who are interested in building stuff on top of Heello?s platform are invited to check out the company?s API documentation.

It?s also worth noting that iOS and Android apps are in the works.

Everett has been working on Heello since 2010, and I thought he?d abandoned the idea when he launched a new venture called Helpmint back in July 2012. Obviously, I was wrong.

Meanwhile, it looks like his longtime compadre Ryan LeFevre is no longer working on Heello or Twitpic. We?ve reached out for more information.

? Heello.com (beta)

Image credit: Thinkstock

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Appetite/~3/8fHEbfI7vNY/story01.htm

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US nuclear submarine hits fishing vessel in Gulf

By Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube, NBC News

WASHINGTON -- A nuclear-powered American attack submarine hit a fishing trawler after it passed through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf on Thursday, a Navy official said.

No one was injured in the incident, which occurred at 5 a.m. local time (9 p.m. ET Wednesday), but the top of the submarine's periscope was shorn off and the sub was forced to use a second periscope, the official said.

The reactor on the nuclear-powered USS Jacksonville was not affected. "There was no damage to the propulsion plant systems and there is no concern regarding watertight integrity," the Navy's Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet said in a statement.

As for the trawler, it may not have even realized it hit the submarine and did not appear to suffer any damage.

The vessel "continued on a consistent course and speed offering no indication of distress or acknowledgment of a collision," the Fifth Fleet said in a statement.

A Navy investigation is underway.

In the past, Iran has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz over its quarrel with United States about its nuclear ambitions.

The U.S. says it keeps a naval presence in the region to maintain security.

Reuters contributed to this report.?

Related stories:
Slideshow: Slices of daily life in Iran
Danger zone then and now: Strait of Hormuz
Reporter's notebook: Journey to the Strait of Hormuz

Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/11/16464911-us-nuclear-attack-submarine-hits-fishing-vessel-in-gulf?lite

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Older heavy smokers should get scanned for lung cancer, says American Cancer Society

Older adults who are heavy smokers or used to be should get screened for lung cancer, according to new guidelines released by the American Cancer Society.

After decades of qualms about the value of lung cancer screening and whether it could help patients, the society says there now is enough evidence to recommend it, but only for current and former heavy smokers ages 55 to 74 -- and after a frank talk about risks and benefits.

"At this time, there is sufficient evidence to support screening provided that the patient has undergone a thorough discussion of the benefits, limitations, and risks, and can be screened in a setting with experience in lung cancer screening," concluded the guideline's authors.

The guidelines were announced Friday and published in the Jan. 11 issue of CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.

The new guidelines are a cautious but exciting step against the world's most deadly cancer, doctors who wrote the advice say.

It is based on a big study in 2011 that found annual, low-dose CT scans - a type of X-ray - could cut the chances of dying of lung cancer by 20 percent and from any cause by nearly 7 percent.

The study only included older people who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for 30 years or the equivalent, such as two packs a day for 15 years. Whether screening would help others isn't known, so scans were not advised for them.

"We're trying to make sure we restrict harm that might come from screening," such as unneeded biopsies and follow-up procedures when scans falsely suggest cancer, said Dr. Richard Wender, family medicine chief at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. Lung cancer is fairly rare before age 55, so "the benefits of screening are going to be less if you start at a younger age."

Wender, a former Cancer Society president, led the guidelines panel. Three of its 20 members have ties to companies that make cancer treatment or imaging products. The scans cost $100 to as much as $400 and are not covered by Medicare or private insurers.

"We believe insurance companies should cover this test for the right people - not for everybody," Wender said.

More than 160,000 people die of lung cancer in the United States alone each year, and the vast majority are diagnosed after the disease has spread. More than 226,000 people are diagnosed each year, according to the National Cancer Institute. http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/lung

Cancer screening has provoked great argument in recent years, especially over when and how often women should get mammograms and whether men should have PSA blood tests to look for prostate cancer.

Some of the most influential guidelines come from a government-appointed panel -- the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force -- but it hasn't considered lung cancer screening since 2004, when it said there wasn't enough evidence to recommend for or against it. An update is in the works now.

The Cancer Society used to recommend screening with chest X-rays but withdrew that advice in 1980 after studies showed they weren't saving lives. Since then, the CT scans have come into wider use, and several medical groups backed limited screening with them.

Many private companies also market CT scans directly to the public, including for some who are at lower risk for lung cancer than the people in major studies have been.

WellStar Health System, a network of hospitals and private doctors in suburban Atlanta, has screened nearly 900 people since 2008. Less than 3 percent were referred for lung biopsies because of suspicious findings, and of those, 70 percent turned out to have lung cancer, said screening coordinator Vickie Beckler.

The system generally follows the advice of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, a group of top cancer centers, but eligibility for scans is "a very fluid area" that's being refined, she said. Patients younger than 50 need a doctor's referral for a scan, but if they want one and have major risk factors, "it should be their prerogative to have access to screening as long as they understand the risks and benefits involved and come to that decision with their physician," she said.

Kathy DeJoseph, 62, of suburban Atlanta, is glad she was screened as part of a study at WellStar. Several years of scans found nothing but last year, one detected cancer.

"I'd have been dead had I not had that scan," she said. "I was very, very lucky."

She also finally quit smoking after 40 years to qualify for lung cancer surgery.

Counseling smokers on how to quit is part of the Cancer Society's guidance. Having a scare from a scan "is a great motivator for people to quit smoking - fear that they might have had lung cancer, that they dodged a bullet, really causes people to change and take a look at their behavior," Wender said.

People also should be told that a normal scan doesn't mean no change is needed.

"The absolute worse thing that would happen" is people thinking "now I'm safe and I can continue smoking," he said.

Source: http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~r/CBSNewsHealth/~3/ZbUwvp0EwWk/

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McChrystal takes blame for Rolling Stone article

FILE - This July 23, 2010, file photo shows Gen. Stanley McChrystal reviewing troops for the last time as he is honored at a retirement ceremony at Fort McNair in Washington. Speaking out for the first time since he resigned, retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal writes in a new memoir that he takes the blame for the Rolling Stone article that ended his Afghan command and army career, including for the unflattering comments attributed to his staff about the Obama administration. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file)

FILE - This July 23, 2010, file photo shows Gen. Stanley McChrystal reviewing troops for the last time as he is honored at a retirement ceremony at Fort McNair in Washington. Speaking out for the first time since he resigned, retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal writes in a new memoir that he takes the blame for the Rolling Stone article that ended his Afghan command and army career, including for the unflattering comments attributed to his staff about the Obama administration. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Speaking out for the first time since he resigned, retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal takes the blame for a Rolling Stone article and the unflattering comments attributed to his staff about the Obama administration that ended his Afghanistan command and army career.

"Regardless of how I judged the story for fairness or accuracy, responsibility was mine," McChrystal writes in his new memoir, in a carefully worded denouncement of the story.

The Rolling Stone article anonymously quoted McChrystal's aides as criticizing Obama's team, including Vice President Joe Biden. Biden had disagreed with McChrystal's strategy that called for more troops in Afghanistan. Biden preferred to send a smaller counterterrorism and training force ? a policy the White House is now considering as it transitions troops from the Afghan war.

McChrystal adds the choice to resign as U.S. commander in Afghanistan was his own.

"I called no one for advice," he writes in "My Share of the Task," describing his hasty plane ride back to Washington only hours after the article appeared in 2010, to offer his resignation to President Barack Obama. McChrystal was immediately replaced by his then-boss, Gen. David Petraeus.

McChrystal devotes a scant page-and-a-half to the incident that ended his 34-year military career and soured trust between the military and media. The book, published by Portfolio/Penguin, an imprint of Penguin Group USA, comes out Monday.

The closest McChrystal comes to revealing his regret over allowing a reporter weeks of unfettered access with few ground rules comes much earlier in the book. "By nature I tended to trust people and was typically open and transparent. ... But such transparency would go astray when others saw us out of context or when I gave trust to those few who were unworthy of it."

McChrystal does try to explain the tensions that helped lead to Obama's decision to accept his resignation. At the center was the wrangle over McChrystal's recommendation for 40,000 more U.S. troops in Afghanistan ? and conflicting guidance.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates told McChrystal to request the number he thought he needed. White House staff signaled that the newly election president wanted to keep the levels down.

McChrystal describes how he presented his war goal to the White House as "defeat the Taliban" and "secure the population," and was advised to lower his sights to "degrade" the Taliban.

Obama approved the addition of 30,000 troops, while simultaneously announcing a withdrawal date of 2014. McChrystal did not challenge those decisions, though he says he worried the timetable would embolden the Taliban.

"If I felt like the decision to set a withdrawal date would have been fatal to the success of our mission, I'd have said so," he writes.

As for the Rolling Stone fallout, a Pentagon inquiry into the magazine's profile cleared McChrystal of wrongdoing and called into question the accuracy of the June 2010 story. The review, released in April 2011, concluded that not all of the events at issue happened as reported in the article.

Rolling Stone issued a statement saying it stood behind freelance writer Michael Hastings' story, which it called "accurate in every detail."

There is no bitterness or score-settling with the White House staff that had pushed for his departure over the article. McChrystal and the White House moved beyond the matter, and first lady Michelle Obama invited McChrystal to serve on the board of Joining Forces, a White House initiative for troops and their families.

The book details the general's rise through the ranks, from his time as a West Point cadet to serving in the 82nd Airborne Corps and earning his Special Forces Green Beret, and then commanding a battalion of the 75th Ranger regiment.

McChrystal describes only briefly an incident that nearly ended his career years earlier: allegations of a cover-up involving the friendly fire incident that killed football-star-turned-Army Ranger Pat Tillman. McChrystal approved a Silver Star for valor, with a citation that stated Tillman had been cut down by "devastating enemy fire."

But as reports came in from the troops at the scene, McChrystal realized Tillman may have died by fratricide. He sent an oblique warning to his superiors that President George W. Bush should delete mention of enemy fire from his remarks, when presenting the award to Tillman's family at his memorial service.

McChrystal told the investigators that he believed Tillman deserved the award, and that he wanted to warn top U.S. military and political leadership that friendly fire was a possibility. The Pentagon later cleared him of wrongdoing.

In the book, McChrystal writes only that he followed "standard practice" to quickly process a Silver Star for Tillman's actions on the battlefield, in time to present it to the family at the memorial service. He does not explain the incident further.

The man portrayed in the Rolling Stone article as arrogant comes off as far more down to earth in the book.

McChrystal writes of his doubts when he was asked to take charge of the military's top counterterrorism unit, the Joint Special Operations Command. He worried the troops would reject him because he had not served in any of its elite units such as the Army's Delta Force or the Navy's SEAL Team 6.

He says he helped JSOC evolve from a disconnected organization that was slow to catch targets early on in Iraq, because the operators lacked the manpower or communications equipment to analyze intelligence they gathered quickly enough. It eventually grew into closely networked teams that worked with the CIA and FBI and others to take down up to a dozen targets a night in Afghanistan, with intelligence gathered from the first target leading to the others.

At the request of Pentagon security reviewers, the former general made famous by his command at JSOC doesn't use that term, instead substituting "Task Force 714" for JSOC, "Green team" for Delta, and "Blue" for SEAL Team 6.

Those are part of the changes the general agreed to make, because those units and their missions are classified, according to two U.S. officials briefed on the security review. They spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The review process delayed the release of the book, which had been scheduled to come out in December. Pentagon officials decided to give the book another read, after a member of the Navy SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden released an account of the raid without submitting the manuscript for a security review.

McChrystal said he "accepted many suggested changes and redactions, some reluctantly, particularly where public knowledge of facts and events has outpaced existing security guidelines," in order to "keep faith with the comrades I had served alongside."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-01-05-McChrystal%20Book/id-7a0b13875f1b43a5af18b9d1aded5a91

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How to Generate your own Creative Writing Prompts ... - Mega Store

Creative writing exercises are usually what beginning writers require, in order to get their creative juices flowing. Today we are going to review what creative writing practice could do for you and also how you can get in touch with the creative genius inside yourself. We are also going to outline how to create your own writing prompts in the future.

Exactly what can creative writing exercises provide for you? Expressing creativity is a fantastic way to get in touch with your individual personality, as well as touch the lives of others. Creative writing permits us to bring a fictional world of opportunities into our personal lives. On a deeper degree, it also helps us to much better understand the world we live in, and also the attributes of the human race.

Whether it is for your own personal satisfaction, or to share with tons of followers (or anywhere between!), diving into the world of creation is fulfilling for both the reader as well as the writer. Creative writing exercises can aid you in unlocking your creative potential by providing you with a jump-start. All too typically writers complain of dealing with writer?s block, and occasionally we simply need that stimulation to enhance the creative process.

When you are offered a creative writing prompt it is a possibility for you to open the creative genius within. In historical times, it was once thought that writers were not really writing the books themselves, but it was in reality ?creative beings?, commonly called ?creative geniuses?, that lived in parallel worlds that would pass the stories to the world via the authors. There is food for thought right here pertaining to where the creative mind arises from, but that is a story for another day!

The most vital part about unlocking your very own creative genius is to loosen up and allow the story to unfold inside your mind. Attempting to take too much control can easily suppress the creative process and hinder the quality. When you relax, try to place yourself in the thoughts of another person. This can easily be the first character that pops into your head, or you may choose the sort of individual you would like to explore.

Once in the imaginary mind of that personality, allow yourself to come into their world, as if in a dream. Try to feel what they are feeling. Is it hot or cold? Are they comfortable and relaxed? Are they full or hungry? Just what type of clothing do they have on?

Then go through all 5 senses thinking very carefully about what they may hear, see, taste, and smell.With your eyes still closed begin moving about in their world. Examine the setting you are in, the items around you, the time of day, and also other people that may be around.

Before you interact with other characters in this exercise, pay more attention to the detail in the setting. This allows you to deepen the creative process before becoming distracted by the action.

If you would like more information about Creative Writing Exercises , or you?d like more Creative Writing Prompts visit www.howtowriteabookadvice.net today. This article, How to Generate your own Creative Writing Prompts is released under a creative commons attribution license.

Source: http://boyajianmarc.com/writing/2013/01/04/how-to-generate-your-own-creative-writing-prompts/

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