Daughter says Mandela 'still there', raps media 'vultures'

By Siphiwe Sibeko

PRETORIA (Reuters) - Nelson Mandela's eldest daughter lambasted foreign media "vultures" for violating her father's privacy as he lay critically ill in hospital, and said the former South African president was still clinging to life on Thursday.

Makaziwe Mandela's outburst came as anxiety increased over the faltering health of the 94-year-old anti-apartheid hero, admired across the world as a symbol of resistance against injustice and oppression and then of racial reconciliation.

President Jacob Zuma canceled a scheduled trip to neighboring Mozambique on Thursday because of the gravity of Mandela's condition, but a mid-afternoon official update said his health had improved.

"He is much better today than he was when I saw him last night. The medical team continues to do a sterling job," Zuma said in a statement. Mandela remained critical but was now "stable", it added.

Makaziwe was sanguine about her father's chances after nearly three weeks of treatment in a Pretoria hospital for a lung infection.

"I won't lie, it doesn't look good," she told state broadcaster SABC. "But as I say, if we speak to him, he responds and tries to open his eyes. He's still there".

Having run the gauntlet of camera crews and reporters at the hospital, Makaziwe criticized what she said was the "bad taste" of the foreign media and intrusion into the family's privacy.

"There's sort of a racist element with many of the foreign media, where they just cross boundaries," she said.

"It's truly like vultures waiting when the lion has devoured the buffalo, waiting there for the last of the carcass. That's the image we have as a family."

Her criticism followed several sharp rebukes from Zuma's office of some foreign media reports that have given alarming details of Mandela's condition.

Spokesman Mac Maharaj declined to comment on the latest report by a major U.S. TV news network that Madiba, as he is affectionately known, is on life support. He said this was part of Mandela's confidential relationship with his doctors.

Makaziwe compared the massive media attention on Mandela, who has been in and out of hospital in the last few months with the recurring lung infection, with the coverage of the death in April of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

"We don't mind the interest but I just feel it has gone overboard. When Margaret Thatcher was sick in hospital, I didn't see this kind of media frenzy around Margaret Thatcher," she said. "It is only God who knows when the time to go is."

OBAMA: MANDELA A "PERSONAL HERO"

Mandela's fourth hospitalization in six months has led to a growing realization among South Africans that the man regarded as the father of their post-apartheid "Rainbow Nation" will not be among them forever.

"Mandela is very old and at that age, life is not good. I just pray that God takes him this time. He must go. He must rest," said Ida Mashego, a 60-year-old office cleaner in Johannesburg's Sandton financial district.

In Pretoria and the sprawling Johannesburg township of Soweto, the ruling African National Congress bussed in hundreds of supporters to start a nocturnal vigil for Mandela, the 101-year-old liberation movement's most famous leader.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who is due to visit South Africa this weekend, said his thoughts and prayers were with the Mandela family and South Africa's 53 million people.

Speaking in Senegal, his first stop on a three-nation African tour, Obama said Mandela was a "personal hero". "Even if he passes on, his legacy will linger on," he said.

Pretoria dismissed concerns about disruptions to Obama's schedule, saying it was "getting ready" to welcome the United States' first black president to the historic Union Buildings, where Mandela became South Africa's first black president 19 years ago.

Mandela is revered for his lifetime of opposition to the system of race-based apartheid rule imposed by the white minority government that sentenced him to 27 years in jail, more than half of them on the notorious Robben Island.

He is also respected for the way he preached reconciliation after the 1994 transition to multi-racial democracy following three centuries of white domination.

Mandela stepped down in 1999 after one five-year term in office. Since then he has played little role in public life, dividing his time in retirement between his home in the wealthy Johannesburg suburb of Houghton and Qunu, the village in the impoverished Eastern Cape province where he was born.

(Additional reporting by Pascal Fletcher and Ed Cropley in Johannesburg, Peroshni Govender in Pretoria and Jeff Mason, Bate Felix in Dakar,; Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Pravin Char)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/south-africa-waits-mandelas-condition-worsens-061819187.html

mega millions jackpot black panther party frank martin pink slime eagle cam trayvon martin case affordable care act

W.Va. higher ed panel approves tuition increases

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- In-state tuition is increasing at least 6 percent at five West Virginia higher education institutions.

The Higher Education Policy Commission approved tuition increases on Tuesday for the 2013-2014 academic year at Bluefield State College and West Virginia, West Virginia State, Fairmont State and Shepherd universities, media outlets reported.

The increases range from 6 percent at WVU to 9 percent at West Virginia State. The average increase is $380.

Tuition also is going up at other state schools but those increases are less than 5 percent. The commission's approval is required if tuition increases exceed 5 percent.

Marshall University's tuition and fees will increase 4.8 percent.

"It is not comfortable in the state of West Virginia to have tuition increases ...," commission Secretary Kathy Eddy said, "but I think they made their case."

Two commission members, Secretary of Education and the Arts Kay Goodwin and state Superintendent of Schools Jim Phares, voted against the increases.

"I'm not so worried about (universities) as I am about their students and their families and their loans. But in the very near future, we're going to see those institutions failing because of their student loan default rates," Goodwin said. "I think we only add to the problem when we increase tuition rates."

Phares also is concerned about student debt.

"I'm concerned that students entering college have difficulty matriculating through the college system and ultimately have a huge debt," he said. "The percent of completers are mismatched with the needs of the workforce. Not enough are graduating with the skills and knowledge they need."

Commission chairman David Hendrickson said all the schools took a hard line in an attempt to keep the increases as low as possible.

"There's not any fluff in any of these budgets ... It's really tight across the institution," he said.

All state colleges and universities are facing a 9 percent cut in state funding for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/w-va-higher-ed-panel-160452357.html

ohio state football cyber monday lupus iCarly banana republic gap Victoria Secret

News Summary: Pope names Vatican bank commission

TAKING ACTION: Pope Francis took a key step Wednesday toward reforming the troubled Vatican bank, naming a five-person commission of inquiry to look into its activities amid a new money-laundering probe and continued questions about the very nature of the secretive financial institution.

WHAT ELSE: Last year there were revelations in leaked documents that told of dysfunction, petty turf wars and allegations of corruption in the Holy See's governance.

CHANGE AT THE TOP: Francis, who has made clear he has no patience for corruption and wants a "poor" church, has already named a separate commission of cardinals to advise him on the broader question of reforming the Vatican bureaucracy.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/news-summary-pope-names-vatican-180120267.html

shell houston open mega millions winners anthony davis toure patti smith lottery winners lottery winners

Snowden Is Both A Hero And A Traitor - Business Insider

Altered screenshot

Americans are split on whether the leaks of classified National Security Agency (NSA) documents by ex-Booz Allen employee Edward Snowden is serving public interest or simply spilling U.S. secrets.

The answer is that there are strong arguments for both.

On the one hand, the 30-year-old NSA contractor exposed the first concrete evidence of the NSA's domestic surveillance apparatus when he gave Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald ?thousands? of documents, including a top secret court order compelling Verizon to give the NSA all of the call data in its systems.

The Verizon leak enabled the American Civil Liberties Union, a Verizon customer, to file a lawsuit charging that the NSA's mass collection of metadata violates Americans' constitutional rights of free speech, association, and privacy.

There is a precedent for that charge ? in July the court that oversees NSA spying ruled that the agency's domestic dragnet violated the Fourth Amendment's restriction against unreasonable searches and seizures "on at least one occasion."

The documents have also corroborated claims made by previous whistleblowers, and raise serious questions about the constitutionality of what appears to be a widespread warrantless surveillance with weak oversight.

"As a constitutional matter, the Supreme Court has long held that, where an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy, search and seizure may occur only once the government has obtained a warrant, supported by probable cause and issued by a judge," Georgetown law professor Laura K. Donohue wrote in the Washington Post. "Americans reasonably expect that their movements, communications and decisions will not be recorded and analyzed by the government" (emphasis added).

Therefore, given that a whistleblower is "a person who informs on someone engaged in an illicit activity," Snowden appears to fit that definition in the case of NSA domestic surveillance practices.

AP/Rick Bowmer

The NSA's new data center in Bluffdale, Utah

On the other hand, Snowden's?leaks of NSA cyber espionage targeting civilian targets in China don't expose illicit activity, and only serve to embarrass the U.S. government and its premier covert intelligence gathering organization.

Here's what Dr. Wolff Heintschel von Heinegg, an international expert on laws governing cyber conflicts and cyber warfare, told Business Insider:

"All of the targets [Snowden] was referring to [in reference to the NSA hacking China] either espionage or some other interference with the cyber infrastructure in another state. ... That doesn't mean everything was 'lawful,' but under international law there is no prohibition of espionage."

Dr. von Heinegg noted that if any of the NSA hacks on Chinese universities, hospitals, and private businesses caused damage in real life ? e.g. patients dying ? that would at least be a violation of the prohibition to inflict serious damage on another state (but short of an act of war).

Snowden's leaks to China, along with evidence of cyber espionage by China against the U.S., do reveal a vicious circle of cyber spying between the two countries ? but that's how espionage works.

Dr. von Heinegg explains why this leak by Snowden doesn't amount to whistleblowing:

"Let's be quite clear: Intruding into another state's systems in order to figure out what's in there ? that's simply espionage, everybody's doing it. ... The answer of international law [regarding espionage] is: 'Don't get caught while you're doing it on foreign territory.' That's all."

He added that spying is spying, whether it's a "diplomat" with wigs or rooms full of hackers, and that "only the means are different" from what occurred during the Cold War.

Consequently, Snowden's leaks to China suggest?"that his actions aren't motivated by loyalty to his country, but, instead, by a personal view of how the world should work," as Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget wrote recently.

In this way Snowden can be seen as vindictive, un-American, and downright na?ve.

So everybody is right.

Snowden is a whistleblowing hero for providing evidence?of?what is widely considered as an?unnecessary and?unconstitutional?mass surveillance of the American people.

He is also a "kid" (his lawyer's words) who betrayed his country by leaking classified but not necessarily unlawful NSA methods that?could be of great value to a foreign intelligence services who want to better understand the agency's spying capabilities.

Given the clear contradiction, championing one side or another reveals much more about the person making the judgment than it does about Edward Snowden.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/everybody-is-right-about-edward-snowden-2013-6

Girl Meets World Jason Babin Nolan Daniels angus t. jones monday night football monday night football SEC Championship Game 2012

Lastline Raises $10M From Redpoint Ventures And E.Ventures For Its Malware Protection Service

Lastline, a service that offers a range of solutions for protecting businesses from malware, just announced that it has raised a $10 million funding round led by Redpoint Ventures and e.ventures. The service, which provides organizations with a way to protect themselves from "persistent threats (APTs),targeted attacks and zero-day threats in real time," was founded in 2012 by a team of computer science professors from the University of California, Santa Barbara and Northeastern University.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/w29C8KiaFAE/

primary results dale earnhardt jr michigan primary daytona 500 winner cleveland plain dealer john scott barry sanders

Roadside bomb hits Iraqi minibus carrying pilgrims

BAGHDAD (AP) ? Iraqi officials say a roadside bomb has hit a minibus carrying Shiite pilgrims to the holy city of Karbala, killing three.

Police and hospital officials say the bus was struck Tuesday about 55 kilometers (35 miles) south of Baghdad while it was traveling between the towns of Musayyib and Iskandariyah. They say another 15 were wounded.

Tens of thousands of Shiites are massing in the holy city of Karbala, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Baghdad, for the annual festival of Shabaniyah marking the anniversary of the birth of the ninth-century Shiite leader known as the Hidden Imam.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information to journalists.

Iraq is weathering its deadliest outburst of violence since 2008.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/roadside-bomb-hits-iraqi-minibus-carrying-pilgrims-101417133.html

marchmadness mike d antoni nba trade rumors desean jackson 2012 ncaa tournament schedule laurent robinson dantoni

Rising Interest Rates Won't Stop Housing ... - AOL Real Estate

By


CNBC
? | Posted Jun 5th 2013 1:30PM

Updated Jun 5th 2013 5:45PM

By Paul Toscano

The housing recovery is on a normal trajectory and gradual increases in interest rates won't slow it down, Lennar CEO Stuart Miller told CNBC on Wednesday. Miller, whose company is one of the nation's largest homebuilders, said the notion that the most recent Case-Shiller report signals a growing bubble in housing is a "knee jerk" reaction by the investment community. He said the housing recovery is behaving as it should. With interest rates at historic lows, Miller expects that as rates move up, slight increases "are not going to stop the progress forward" of the housing recovery.

"Housing continues to find its rebound and gain strength," he said. "Over the past five years, we have under-constructed for a growing household formation that has been stymied by economic downdrafts."

Miller estimates that the country needed 1.25 million to 1.5 million homes per year over the past few years, but instead only about 500,000 homes were constructed. "We're going to have to catch back up in order to serve the needs of a growing population," he said. "We have to make up for the deficit we've had in the past years."

The key force is a tight supply of housing exacerbated by a lack of land availability, he said. "What you're seeing with the builders is an inability to really get the land that we need to be able to build the homes to meet the demand," he said. "So you have inventories that are very, very low, and that is driving prices up."

Miller also said that the cost of commodities for builders is a "mixed bag" and that prices of homes are rising faster than costs. "I don't think you can read a lot from costs," he said, adding that although costs of raw materials are going down, other factors, like labor, are getting more expensive. "We're starting to see a real recovery in housing that is not likely to be pulled back," he said.

See more on CNBC:
No-Money-Down Mortgages in Martha's Vineyard
CNBC Explains: Underwater Mortgages
Reverse Mortgages Backfiring on Seniors

More on AOL Real Estate:
Find homes for rent.
Find out how to calculate mortgage payments.
Find homes for sale in your area.
Find foreclosures in your area.

Follow us on Twitter at @AOLRealEstate or connect with AOL Real Estate on Facebook.

Source: http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2013/06/05/interest-rates-housing-recovery/

forgetting sarah marshall taraji p. henson shuttle discovery bonnie raitt internal revenue service intc tupac