Apr 29, 2011
Mar 5, 2011
Rick Scott Rejects Obama Administration's Last-Ditch Pitch On High-Speed Rail
Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Rick Scott Rejects Obama Administration's Last-Ditch Pitch On High-Speed Rail
HuffPost Reporting: Sam Stein
Posted: 3/04/11 10:38:50 AM | Updated: 3/04/11 10:43:50 AM
WASHINGTON -- Putting a formal end to attempts to satisfy his concerns with the project, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) has rejected a last-ditch effort by the Department of Transportation to build a portion of a national high-speed rail system in his state.
Scott had what an official described as a "not long" phone conversation with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood on Friday morning, informing LaHood that he would continue to refuse $2.4 billion in federal funds for the project. The money will likely now be available to other states.
LaHood met with Scott earlier this week while he was in Washington for a conference of governors, attempting to satisfy Scott's concerns with the project following his rejection of it the previous week. At that time, Scott had insisted that overruns could end up costing his state more than $3 billion.
That meeting set the end of the week as the deadline for Scott's final answer to LaHood. Scott relayed during a 9 a.m. call Friday that he was not budging.
"[The Governor] spoke with US DOT Secretary LaHood this morning and informed him that Florida will focus on other infrastructure projects and will not move forward with any federal high speed rail plan," Scott spokesman Brian Burgess said.
The move puts Scott at odds with a bipartisan group of lawmakers in his own state, including several who launched a longshot lawsuit against the governor in an attempt to secure the money without his approval. That suit was dismissed on Friday morning.
Shutting down the project may also put Florida at a severe disadvantage against other states who now stand to benefit from Scott's refusal of the rail funds.
A senior official with the Department of Transportation told The Huffington Post that DOT "now plans to evaluate our options for making this $2.4 billion available to states eager to develop high-speed rail corridors, where the business case is strong, in regions across the United States."
New York, California, and several other states have already petitioned LaHood's office for Florida's funds.
"The Obama Administration's bold high-speed rail plan will not only create jobs and reinvigorate our manufacturing sector in the near term, it is a crucial and strategic investment in America's future prosperity," LaHood said in a statement. "I know that states across America are enthusiastic about receiving additional support to help bring America's high-speed rail network to life and deliver all its economic benefits to their citizens."
Feb 4, 2011
There's a lot of hubbub around McDonald's food today, and it's not because people are "lovin' it." It's Corporate Accountability International's 
Feb 3, 2011
Taco Bell says, 'Thank you for suing us' to beef claims - Jan. 28, 2011
Taco Bell says, 'Thank you for suing us' to beef claims - Jan. 28, 2011
Taco Bell: 'Thanks for suing us'
"We start with USDA-inspected quality beef (88%)," Taco Bell said in an ad signed by company president Greg Creed. "Then add water to keep it juicy and moist (3%). Mix in Mexican spices and flavors including salt, chili pepper, onion powder, tomato powder, sugar, garlic powder and cocoa powder (4%). Combine a little oats, caramelized sugar, yeast, citric acid and other ingredients that contribute to the flavor, moisture, consistency and quality of our seasoned beef."
Creed said the company's beef content information was on their website prior to the filing of the lawsuit.
He would not say whether the lawsuit has impacted sales, noting that Taco Bell's quarterly earnings will be released next week. 
Microsoft: Google Worried About Bing - Search Engines - News & Reviews - eWeek.com
Image via WikipediaMicrosoft: Google Worried About Bing
By: Nicholas Kolakowski
2011-02-03
Article Rating:
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2011-02-03
Article Rating:
/ 3 Microsoft keeps firing back at Google accusations that Bing copies its Web-search results, with an executive claiming Google is worried about Bing's progress.
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Google accusing Bing of copying its Web-search results, blogged a Microsoft executive Feb. 2, is possibly motivated by the search-engine giant’s fears of losing ground to its upstart rival.
“We do not copy results from any of our competitors. Period. Full stop,” Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft’s onlineservices division, wrote on the Bing Community blog. “We have some of the best minds in the world at work on search quality and relevance, and for a competitor to accuse any of these people of such activity is just insulting.”
In a widely circulated Feb. 1 posting, the blog Search Engine Land detailed what it called the “sting operation” against Bing, which apparently began after Google executives grew suspicious of how closely some of Bing’s search results mirrored their own. After finding terms with no matches on either search engine, the company apparently created “honey pot” pages that appeared on top of search results for those terms. When a small portion of Bing search results seemed to mirror Google’s forced pages, the latter began leveling accusations.
“Our testing has concluded that Bing is copying Google Web-search results, and Microsoft doesn’t deny this,” Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow, wrote in a Feb. 1 e-mail to eWEEK. “At Google, we strongly believe in innovation and are proud of our search quality. We look forward to competing with genuinely new search algorithms out there, from Bing and others—algorithms built on core innovation, and not on recycled search results copied from a competitor.”
The sniping continued into the Feb. 1 roundtable discussion at the Farsight Summit, where Microsoft Corporate Vice President Harry Shum and Google Principal Engineer Matt Cutts seemed determined to verbally shred one another into bite-sized pieces.
“It’s almost like a map maker who constructs a fake street and sees if that street gets copied,” is how Cutts described Google’s operation to the audience.
But Shum seemed unwilling to accept the accusations. “It’s not like we actually copy anything; it’s more that we learn from the customers who willingly share data with us,” he shot back, “where we actually learn from the customers from what kind of queries they type.” Bing Bar and similar features are capable of feeding that sort of data to Microsoft.
In his blog posting, Mehdi reiterated Shum’s argument.
“In simple terms, Google’s ‘experiment’ was rigged to manipulate Bing search results through a type of attack also known as ‘click fraud,’” he wrote. “As we have said before and again in this post, we use clickstream optionally provided by consumers in an anonymous fashion as one of 1,000 signals to try and determine whether a site might make sense to be in our index.”
But why would Google go to such lengths? Mehdi has the answer—or at least some deliberately leading questions.
“In October 2010, we released a series of big, noticeable improvements to Bing’s relevance. So big and noticeable that we are told Google took notice and began to worry,” he wrote. “Then, a short time later, here come the honey-pot attacks. Is the timing purely coincidence? Are industry discussions about search quality to be ignored? Is this simply a response to the fact that some people in the industry are beginning to ask whether Bing is as good or in some cases better than Google on core Web relevance?”
Jan 30, 2011
Complete preliminary results show 99% vote to split in Southern Sudan - CNN.com
Image via WikipediaComplete preliminary results show 99% vote to split in Southern Sudan - CNN.comComplete preliminary results show 99% vote to split in Southern Sudan
January 30, 2011 3:09 a.m. EST
Sudan's north and south have been at war for two decades in a conflict that killed 2 million people
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Preliminary but complete results show almost 99% voted for a split
- Sudan's north and south have been at war for two decades
- The conflict left 2 million people dead
(CNN) -- Nearly 99% of Southern Sudanese voted to split from the north, organizers reported Sunday, marking the first complete preliminary results.
With 100% of votes counted, an overwhelming 98.83% voted to split, the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission said on its website.
Sudan's north and south have been at war for two decades in a conflict that killed 2 million people.
The referendum on whether to declare independence from the government based in the north is part of a 2005 peace agreement that helped end the conflict. The war pitted a government dominated by Arab Muslims in northern Sudan against black Christians or animists in the south.
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A majority of Sudan's oil reserves are in the south, another flashpoint in the war.
Several million voters cast ballots, including expatriates in the United States and seven other countries.
The south would become a new nation in July if the vote is validated and no other obstacles emerge.
"If there is no appeal, the final results will be announced on February 7," said Justice Chan Reec Madut, deputy chairman of the commission. "But if there is an appeal or appeals, they have to be discussed, and the final announcement will then be on February 14."
The commission said it faced various challenges during the vote, including time, funding and the complexity of the law.
"The law itself was framed in an unclear way with much repetition. ... It was shaky," said Muhammad Khalil, the commission chairman.
Nevertheless, Khalil said, the referendum commission, which included southern Sudanese and northern Sudanese members, made "decisions in accord."
Khalil said the commission did not have much time to conduct its work.
"It was conceived by those who signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that the referendum process would take 42 months," he said. "By the time the referendum commission was established, we had four months."
Funding was also a challenge, Khalil said.
"The international funding was generous, but not made available for Sudanese expertise," he said. "If we had more funding, we would have included more Sudanese experts to give the referendum an added national face."
Logistical difficulties included residents delivering election materials to other counties by foot, officials said.
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