'G.I. Joe' commands No. 1 at box office with $41M

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? After a nine-month delay, "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" deployed to the top spot at the box office.

The action film starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Bruce Willis and Channing Tatum as the gun-toting military toys brought to life marched into the No. 1 position at the weekend box office, earning $41.2 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. "Retaliation" opened Wednesday at midnight, which helped bring its domestic total to $51.7 million.

Paramount postponed the sequel to 2009's "G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra" last May from its original June opening date to convert the film to 3-D. The last-minute switcheroo came just weeks after "Battleship," another movie based on a Hasbro toy, sank at the box office. At that time, Paramount already began its advertising campaign for "Retaliation."

"It certainly vindicates the decision," said Don Harris, the studio's head of distribution. "Any time you make those sorts of moves, people always assume the worst. The truth is I'd seen this movie a long time ago in 2-D, and the movie worked in 2-D. It's not trying to be 'Schindler's List.' This movie is intended to be enjoyed as a big, action spectacle."

Internationally, Harris said "Retaliation" earned $80.3 million, making it the biggest international opening of the year. The film opened in 53 markets outside of the U.S. and Canada, including Russia, South Korea and Mexico.

After debuting in the top spot last weekend, the 3-D animated prehistoric comedy "The Croods" from DreamWorks Animation and 20th Century Fox slipped to the No. 2 spot with $26.5 million in its second weekend. The film features the voices of Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone and Catherine Keener as a cave family on the hunt for a new home.

Among the other new films this weekend, "Tyler Perry's Temptation" starring Jurnee Smollett-Bell and Lance Gross opened above expectations at No. 3 with $22.3 million, while the sci-fi adaptation "The Host" featuring Saoirse Ronan, Max Irons, and Jake Abel as characters from the Stephenie Meyer novel landed at No. 6 in its debut weekend with a modest $11 million.

Overall, the weekend box office was on par with last year when "The Hunger Games" continued to dominate in its second weekend of release with $58.5 million. After a slow start, Hollywood's year-to-date revenues are still 12 percent behind last year, heading into next month when summer movie season unofficially kicks off with "Iron Man 3" on May 3.

"It's getting us back on track after many weekends of down trending box office," said Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst for Hollywood.com. "Last weekend was a turning point with the strength of 'The Croods' and 'Olympus Has Fallen' doing better than expected. We're heading toward the summer movie season on solid footing. It's been a tough year so far."

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. "G.I. Joe: Retaliation," $41.2 million ($80.3 million international).

2. "The Croods," $26.5 million ($52.5 million international).

3. "Tyler Perry's Temptation," $22.3 million.

4. "Olympus Has Fallen," $14 million.

5. "Oz the Great and Powerful," $11.6 million ($22.2 million international).

6. "The Host," $11 million ($6 million international).

7. "The Call," $4.8 million.

8. "Admission," $3.2 million.

9. "Spring Breakers," $2.7 million.

10. "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone," $1.3 million.

___

Estimated weekend ticket sales at international theaters (excluding the U.S. and Canada) for films distributed overseas by Hollywood studios, according to Rentrak:

1. "G.I. Joe: Retaliation," $80.3 million.

2. "The Croods," $52.5 million.

3. "Jack the Giant Slayer," $25.2 million.

4. "Oz the Great and Powerful," $22.2 million.

5. "Dragon Ball Z: Kami to Kami," $7 million.

6. "The Host," $6 million.

7. "Identity Thief," $5.5 million.

8. "Wreck-It Ralph," $4 million.

9. "A Good Day to Die Hard," $3.6 million.

10. "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters," $3.3 million.

___

Online:

http://www.hollywood.com

http://www.rentrak.com

___

Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

___

Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-03-31-Box%20Office/id-fe8c399e2af8425a97b849fb01c8c934

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The South: A near-solid block against 'Obamacare'

ATLANTA (AP) ? As more Republicans give in to President Barack Obama's health-care overhaul, an opposition bloc remains across the South, including from governors who lead some of the nation's poorest and unhealthiest states.

"Not in South Carolina," Gov. Nikki Haley declared at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference. "We will not expand Medicaid on President Obama's watch. We will not expand Medicaid ever."

Widening Medicaid insurance rolls, a joint federal-state program for low-income Americans, is an anchor of the law Obama signed in 2010. But states get to decide whether to take the deal, and from Virginia to Texas ? a region encompassing the old Confederacy and Civil War border states ? Florida's Rick Scott is the only Republican governor to endorse expansion, and he faces opposition from his GOP colleagues in the legislature. Tennessee's Bill Haslam, the Deep South's last governor to take a side, added his name to the opposition on Wednesday.

Haley offers the common explanation, saying expansion will "bust our budgets." But the policy reality is more complicated. The hospital industry and other advocacy groups continue to tell GOP governors that expansion would be a good arrangement, and there are signs that some Republicans are trying to find ways to expand insurance coverage under the law.

Haslam told Tennessee lawmakers that he'd rather use any new money to subsidize private insurance. That's actually the approach of another anchor of Obama's law: insurance exchanges where Americans can buy private policies with premium subsidies from taxpayers.

Yet for now, governors' rejection of Medicaid expansion will leave large swaths of Americans without coverage because they make too much money to qualify for Medicaid as it exists but not enough to get the subsidies to buy insurance in the exchanges. Many public health studies show that the same population suffers from higher-than-average rates of obesity, smoking and diabetes ? variables that yield bad health outcomes and expensive hospital care.

"Many of the citizens who would benefit the most from this live in the reddest of states with the most intense opposition," said Drew Altman, president of the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

So why are these states holding out? The short-term calculus seems heavily influenced by politics.

Haley, Haslam, Nathan Deal of Georgia and Robert Bentley of Alabama face re-election next year. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant is up for re-election in 2015. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is term-limited at home but may seek the presidency in 2016. While they all govern GOP-leaning states, they still must safeguard their support among Republican voters who dislike large-scale federal initiatives in general and distrust Obama in particular. Florida's Scott, the South's GOP exception on expansion, faces a different dynamic. He won just 49 percent of the vote in 2010 and must face an electorate that twice supported Obama.

A South Carolina legislator put it bluntly earlier this year. State Rep. Kris Crawford told a business journal that he supports expansion, but said electoral math is the trump card. "It is good politics to oppose the black guy in the White House right now, especially for the Republican Party," he said.

Whit Ayers, a leading Republican pollster, was more measured, but offered the same bottom line. "This law remains toxic among Republican primary voters," he told The Associated Press.

At the Tennessee Hospital Association, president Craig Becker has spent months trying to break through that barrier as he travels to civic and business groups across Tennessee. "It's really hard for some of them to separate something that has the name 'Obamacare' on it from what's going to be best for the state," he said, explaining that personality driven politics are easier to understand than the complicated way that the U.S. pays for health care.

Medicaid is financed mostly by Congress, though states have to put in their own money to qualify for the cash from Washington. The federal amount is determined by a state's per-capita income, with poorer states getting more help. On average in 2012, the feds paid 57 cents of every Medicaid dollar. It was 74 cents in Mississippi, 71 in Kentucky, 70 in Arkansas and South Carolina, 68 in Alabama. Those numbers would be even higher counting bonuses from Obama's 2009 stimulus bill.

Obama's law mandated that states open Medicaid to everyone with household income up to 138 percent of the federal poverty rate ? $15,420 a year for an individual or $31,812 for a family of four. The federal government would cover all costs of new Medicaid patients from 2014 to 2016 and pick up most of the price tag after that, requiring states to pay up to 10 percent. The existing Medicaid population would continue under the old formula. In its ruling on the law, the Supreme Court left the details alone, but declared that states could choose whether to expand.

Hospital and physician lobbying groups around the country have endorsed a bigger Medicaid program. Becker said he explains on his road show that the Obama law paired Medicaid growth with cuts to payments to hospitals for treating the uninsured. Just as they do with Medicaid insurance, states already must contribute their own money in order to get federal help with those so-called "uncompensated care" payments.

The idea was instead of paying hospitals directly, states and Congress could spend that money on Medicaid and have those new beneficiaries ? who now drive costs with preventable hospital admissions and expensive emergency room visits ? use the primary care system. But the Supreme Court ruling creates a scenario where hospitals can lose existing revenue with getting the replacement cash Congress intended, all while still having to treat the uninsured patients who can't get coverage.

Becker said that explanation has gotten local chambers of commerce across Tennessee to endorse expansion. "These are rock-ribbed Republicans," he said. "But they all scratch their heads and say, 'Well, if that's the case, then of course we do this.'"

In Louisiana, Jindal's health care agency quietly released an analysis saying the changes could actually save money over time. But the Republican Governors Association chairman is steadfast in his opposition. In Georgia, Deal answers pressure from his state's hospital association with skepticism about projected "uncompensated care" savings and Congress' pledge to finance 90 percent of the new Medicaid costs.

Altman, the Kaiser foundation leader, predicted that opposition will wane over time.

Arkansas Republicans, who oppose Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe's call for expansion, have floated the same idea as Haslam: pushing would-be Medicaid recipients into the insurance exchanges. Jindal, using his RGA post, has pushed the Obama administration to give states more "flexibility" in how to run Medicaid.

Deal convinced Georgia lawmakers this year to let an appointed state board set a hospital industry tax to generate some of the state money that supports Medicaid. That fee ? which 49 states use in some way ? is the same tool that Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is using to cover her state's Medicaid expansion. Georgia Democrats and some hospital executives have quietly mused that Deal is leaving himself an option to widen Medicaid in his expected term.

"These guys are looking for ways to do this while still saying they are against 'Obamacare,'" Altman said. "As time goes by, we'll see this law acquire a more bipartisan complexion."

-----

Follow Barrow on Twitter (at)BillBarrowAP.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/south-near-solid-block-against-obamacare-191744666.html

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Exxon pipeline leaks thousands of barrels of oil in Arkansas

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An Exxon Mobil crude oil pipeline ruptured near Mayflower, Arkansas, spilling thousands of barrels of oil, the company said.

Exxon shut the 20-inch Pegasus pipeline, which carries crude oil from Pakota, Illinois, to the Gulf Coast, after the leak was discovered on Friday afternoon. Exxon said a few thousand barrels of oil had been observed.

Local media reported the spill occurred in a subdivision, and city of Mayflower police said the oil had not reached the nearby Lake Conway.

Federal, state and local officials were on site and the company said it was staging a response for a spill of more than 10,000 barrels "to be conservative."

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had categorized the rupture as a "major spill," Exxon said, and 22 homes were evacuated following the incident. Clean-up crews had recovered approximately 4,500 barrels of oil and water.

(Reporting by Matthew Robinson and David Sheppard; Editing by Philip Barbara and Eric Beech)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/exxon-shuts-oil-pipeline-major-pipeline-spill-arkansas-010122537--finance.html

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Business Watch: Small business roundtable coming up | CJOnline ...

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Source: http://cjonline.com/news/business/2013-03-30/business-watch-small-business-roundtable-coming

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10 influential authors who came to the US as immigrants

"Give me your tired, your poor,/?Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" ? from "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, engraved on a plaque on Ellis Island

Though not born on American soil, these 10 authors all became United States citizens. Some were pushed here by political forces, some came for job opportunities, but each brought a new thread to the American tapestry. Today, as the US Congress struggles with the issue of immigration reform, seems an opportune moment to remember the contributions that this talented group has made to American literature and culture.

- Ben Frederick,?Contributor

1. Khaled Hosseini

Khaled Hosseini was born in Afghanistan, moved to Paris, and became a US citizen following the Russian invasion of his native country in 1980. His 2003 novel "The Kite Runner" was on The New York Times bestseller list for over a year. Hosseini's work tends to focus on family, violence, and the greater forces that shape personal lives. "The Kite Runner," about the life of a young Afghani refugee who must confront his traumatic childhood as an adult, was adapted into a movie in 2007. The movie rights have been bought to his second novel, "A Thousand Splendid Suns."

His third book, "And the Mountains Echoed" is due out in May of this year.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/Oix4WvMA6o8/10-influential-authors-who-came-to-the-US-as-immigrants

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5 things to look forward to on 'Game of Thrones'

By Drusilla Moorhouse, TODAY contributor

The third installment of "Game of Thrones" could be one of the most exciting seasons of television we will ever see. Truly, it's impossible to overstate how many punches it will pack into 10 episodes.?

Helen Sloan/HBO

Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister on "Game of Thrones"

Here's what we're most excited to see when HBO's epic fantasy finally returns Sunday. But beware -- if you don't want to know any details about the upcoming season, bow out now.

1. Dragons!
Daenerys Targaryen's babies are all grown up! Those adorable little spark burpers are now full-fledged fire-breathers capable of razing entire villages. Harnessing Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion's power will be one of Khaleesi's biggest challenges as she conquers Qarth en route to reclaiming the Iron Throne.

2. Olenna Redwyne!
Diana Rigg will be magnificent as the "Game of Thrones" acid-tongued equivalent of Maggie Smith's Dowager Countess on "Downton Abbey." If anyone can put nasty King Joffrey in his place, it's the Queen of Thorns, Margaery Tyrell's cunning and opinionated grandmother. The arrival of the Tyrells at the Kings Landing should also prove to be a godsend for Sansa, who's in a precarious position now that Joffrey has broken their engagement to marry Margaery instead. The prickly matriarch will welcome Sansa into the Tyrell ladies circle, mostly to demand the intel on the little monster her granddaughter is about to marry. But Sansa will also figure in her scheme to forge an alliance between the Tyrells and Starks.?

3. Weddings!
It's impossible to tease what's to come without spoiling it for everyone, so we will only say this: Among the royals of Westeros, wedding receptions tend to end very badly. And we're not talking about hangovers. Plan to spend the good part of Monday morning gabbing about it around the office water cooler.

4. Sex?!
Another vow -- to the Night's Watch -- will play an important role in Jon Snow's double-agent storyline beyond the Wall. "The interesting thing to play throughout the season was whether he sticks to his vows or whether he likes the idea of being free, and everything the wildlings can offer him," Kit Harrington told The Clicker at the Seattle premiere of "Thrones." And he acknowledged, "it's pretty tough" to resist Ygritte. And you know, it's awfully cold up north. Brrr.

5. Road Trip!
Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth's trek to Kings Landing -- Catelyn Stark's desperate strategy to exchange the Kingslayer for her daughters (she's unaware it's a singular swap) -- is fraught with peril. But this odd couple, forced to form an uneasy alliance, have such insane chemistry that they could easily carry their own spinoff. One scene in particular will have everyone high-fiving. Plus: Bears!

What else are you looking forward to seeing in season three? Tell us on our Facebook page!

Related content:

Source: http://theclicker.today.com/_news/2013/03/28/17502945-game-of-thrones-season-three-five-things-we-cant-wait-to-see?lite

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New York's First Occupied Shipping Container Home | Inthralld

Shipping Containers are of course a popular building material in this day and age, where people are more green and planning on being more sustainable for the earth. While a majority of what we see as far as homes are concerned are all over the world? New York is a relatively surprising location for such a structure.

The first shipping container home in New York is now occupied by its owners after a myriad of issues and construction restrictions? 5 years after purchasing the plot. The home is equipped with radiant heated flooring, and Super Therm insulation for the colder weather months.

Though there has been much criticism to the overall architecture, interior design and ultimate outcome of the space, the owners have overcome a great feat in dealing with their building restrictions and other issues along the way. There?s always room for improvement, and this home will surely pave the way for other NY based shipping container homes.

Category: Architecture Tags: Custom Design, Green Design, Industrial Design, Shipping Container, Shipping Container Homes, Shipping Container House

Source: http://inthralld.com/2013/03/new-yorks-first-occupied-shipping-container-home/

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Healthy Computing - A Guide to better Computer Ergonomics ...

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://bisnachador4.blogspot.com/2013/03/healthy-computing-guide-to-better.html

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5 things to look forward to on 'Game of Thrones'

By Drusilla Moorhouse, TODAY contributor

The third installment of "Game of Thrones" could be one of the most exciting seasons of television we will ever see. Truly, it's impossible to overstate how many punches it will pack into 10 episodes.?

Helen Sloan/HBO

Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister on "Game of Thrones"

Here's what we're most excited to see when HBO's epic fantasy finally returns Sunday. But beware -- if you don't want to know any details about the upcoming season, bow out now.

1. Dragons!
Daenerys Targaryen's babies are all grown up! Those adorable little spark burpers are now full-fledged fire-breathers capable of razing entire villages. Harnessing Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion's power will be one of Khaleesi's biggest challenges as she conquers Qarth en route to reclaiming the Iron Throne.

2. Olenna Redwyne!
Diana Rigg will be magnificent as the "Game of Thrones" acid-tongued equivalent of Maggie Smith's Dowager Countess on "Downton Abbey." If anyone can put nasty King Joffrey in his place, it's the Queen of Thorns, Margaery Tyrell's cunning and opinionated grandmother. The arrival of the Tyrells at the Kings Landing should also prove to be a godsend for Sansa, who's in a precarious position now that Joffrey has broken their engagement to marry Margaery instead. The prickly matriarch will welcome Sansa into the Tyrell ladies circle, mostly to demand the intel on the little monster her granddaughter is about to marry. But Sansa will also figure in her scheme to forge an alliance between the Tyrells and Starks.?

3. Weddings!
It's impossible to tease what's to come without spoiling it for everyone, so we will only say this: Among the royals of Westeros, wedding receptions tend to end very badly. And we're not talking about hangovers. Plan to spend the good part of Monday morning gabbing about it around the office water cooler.

4. Sex?!
Another vow -- to the Night's Watch -- will play an important role in Jon Snow's double-agent storyline beyond the Wall. "The interesting thing to play throughout the season was whether he sticks to his vows or whether he likes the idea of being free, and everything the wildlings can offer him," Kit Harrington told The Clicker at the Seattle premiere of "Thrones." And he acknowledged, "it's pretty tough" to resist Ygritte. And you know, it's awfully cold up north. Brrr.

5. Road Trip!
Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth's trek to Kings Landing -- Catelyn Stark's desperate strategy to exchange the Kingslayer for her daughters (she's unaware it's a singular swap) -- is fraught with peril. But this odd couple, forced to form an uneasy alliance, have such insane chemistry that they could easily carry their own spinoff. One scene in particular will have everyone high-fiving. Plus: Bears!

What else are you looking forward to seeing in season three? Tell us on our Facebook page!

Related content:

Source: http://theclicker.today.com/_news/2013/03/28/17502945-game-of-thrones-season-three-five-things-we-cant-wait-to-see?lite

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'Waste heat' may economize CO2 capture

Mar. 28, 2013 ? In some of the first results from a federally funded initiative to find new ways of capturing carbon dioxide (CO₂) from coal-fired power plants, Rice University scientists have found that CO₂ can be removed more economically using "waste" heat -- low-grade steam that cannot be used to produce electricity. The find is significant because capturing CO₂ with conventional technology is an energy-intensive process that can consume as much as one-quarter of the high-pressure steam that plants use to produce electricity.

"This is just the first step in our effort to better engineer a process for capturing CO₂ from flue gas at power plants," said George Hirasaki, the lead researcher of Rice's CO₂-capture research team. The researchers hope to reduce the costs of CO₂ capture by creating an integrated reaction column that uses waste heat, engineered materials and optimized components. Hirasaki's team was one of 16 chosen by the Department of Energy (DOE) in 2011 to develop innovative techniques for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

The team's first findings appear in two new studies that are available online this month in the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control.

Power plants fired by coal and natural gas account for about half of the CO₂ that humans add to the atmosphere each year; these power plants are prime candidates for new technology that captures CO₂ before it goes up in smoke. Each of these plants makes electricity by boiling water to create steam to run electric turbines. But not all steam is equal. Some steam has insufficient energy to run a turbine. This is often referred to as "waste" heat, although the term is something of misnomer because low-grade steam is often put to various uses around a plant. Rice's new study found that in cases where waste is available, it may be used to capture CO₂.

Hirasaki, Rice's A.J. Hartsook Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, said employing waste heat is just one example of a number of ways that Rice's team is looking to improve upon a tried-and-true technology for CO₂ capture. That technology -- a two-phase chemical process -- has been used for decades to remove naturally occurring CO₂ from natural gas.

In the first phase of the process, gas is piped upward through a vertical column while an ammonia-like liquid called amine flows down through the column. The liquid amine captures CO₂ and drains away while the purified natural gas bubbles out the top of the column. In the second phase of the process, the CO₂-laden amine is recycled with heat, which drives off the CO₂.

"The CO₂ that comes out of the ground with natural gas is under high pressure, while the CO₂ at power plants is not," Hirasaki said. "There's also a greater volume of CO₂ per unit mass at a power plant than at a natural gas well. For these reasons and others, the amine process must be re-engineered if it is to be cost-effective for CO₂ capture at power plants."

A major challenge in adapting two-phase amine processing for power plants is the amount of heat required to recycle the amine in the second phase of the process. Using existing amine processing technology at power plants is impractical, because amine recycling would require as much as one-quarter of the high-pressure steam that could otherwise be used to drive turbines and make electricity, Hirasaki said. This phenomenon is known as "parasitic" power loss, and it will drive up the cost of electricity by lowering the amount of electricity a plant can produce for sale.

"It has been estimated that the use of current technology for CO₂ capture would drive up the cost of electricity by 70 to 100 percent," said Rice graduate student Sumedh Warudkar, a co-investigator on the Rice University team. "In our study, we examined whether it would be possible to improve on that by using lower-value steam to run the amine recyclers."

To test this idea, Warudkar used a software package that's commonly used to model industrial chemical processes. One variable he tested was tailoring the chemical formulation of the liquid amine solution. Other variables included the type of steam used, and the size and pressure of the reactor -- the chamber where the flue gas flows past the amine solution.

"There's a great deal of optimization that needs to take place," Warudkar said. "The question is, What is the optimal amine formula and the optimal reactor design and pressure for removing CO₂ with low-value steam? There isn't one correct answer. For example, we have developed a process in which the gas absorption and solvent heating occurs in a single vessel instead of two separate ones, as is currently practiced. We think combining the processes might bring us some savings. But there are always trade-offs. The Department of Energy wants us to investigate how our process compares with what's already on the market, and these first two studies are the first step because they will help us identify an optimal set of operating conditions for our process."

The results are encouraging. The research suggests that two elements of Rice's design -- optimized amine formulation and the use of waste heat -- can reduce parasitic power loss from about 35 percent to around 25 percent.

Additional research is under way to develop and test novel materials and a single integrated column that the team hopes can further economize CO₂ capture by increasing efficiency and reducing parasitic power loss.

Study co-authors include Michael Wong, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and of chemistry, and Ken Cox, professor in the practice of chemical and biomolecular engineering. The research is supported by the Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Rice University. The original article was written by Jade Boyd.

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

---

Journal References:

1. Sumedh S. Warudkar, Kenneth R. Cox, Michael S. Wong, George J. Hirasaki. Influence of stripper operating parameters on the performance of amine absorption systems for post-combustion carbon capture: Part I. High pressure strippers. International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, 2013; DOI: 10.1016/j.ijggc.2013.01.050
2. Sumedh S. Warudkar, Kenneth R. Cox, Michael S. Wong, George J. Hirasaki. Influence of stripper operating parameters on the performance of amine absorption systems for post-combustion carbon capture: Part II. Vacuum strippers. International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, 2013; DOI: 10.1016/j.ijggc.2013.01.049

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

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/top_environment/~3/6tZEhtWnOxQ/130329090631.htm

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Food Celebrities Easter Tweets | The Braiser

Tweeting Easter: How Your Favorite Food Celebrities Are Preparing

Easter is either a time to celebrate the resurrection, or a time for a pure, unadulterated candy binge. Maybe we lean a little heavier on the latter option, but when else can you get so many animals modeled in sugar? Whether you?re planning a big Easter get-together, or rounding up your the-bunny-isn?t-real snark, it?s not too late to start the holiday preparations. We?ve found some of the best guides on the Internet in doing either one.

Martha Stewart?s Perfect House Is Perfect:

Peeps + Wine = Best Hangover?

Frohe Ostern from Das Wolfgang Puck:

Nigella Lawson, Makes Us Re-Think That Candy Binge:

Come And Bounce With Us, Francis:

Andrew Zimmern Reminds Us That Jews Have Some Sort Of Holiday Thing, Too:

See, don?t you feel totally prepared now? Happy Easter, internet!

Source: http://www.thebraiser.com/chef-easter-tweets/

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Google pledges to only use open-source related patents defensively

Google has taken to its Open Source Blog today to announce that it is creating a new pledge to never use its patents related to open-source software unless attacked first.

The new pledge, officially named the "Open Patent Non-Assertion Pledge" (or OPN Pledge for short), indicates that unless otherwise attacked by another creator of open-source software, Google will not use its patents against any other entity. The entire pledge runs a few paragraphs (and can be seen at the source link below), but the idea is that Google wants to be able to hold patents to protect itself (and software) from attack while agreeing to not attack themselves. A small excerpt from the pledge reads:

It is Google’s intent that the Pledge be legally binding, irrevocable (except as otherwise provided under “Defensive Termination” below) and enforceable against Google and entities controlled by Google, and their successors and assigns.

Meaning that not only does the pledge apply to Google's own operations, but also those of any company owned or operated by it -- such as Motorola, presumably -- as well as any company that buys or sells patents with Google. The pledge states that any company receiving patents from Google must agree to the terms of the pledge in their own use, and also have similar requirements if it were to ever transfer the patents again to a third entity.

It is worth noting that the OPN Pledge only applies to other entities that are also making open-source software, and makes no mention that Google's patents couldn't be used offensively against one making closed-source software. And while Motorola presumably falls under the category of "entities controlled by Google", because it is technically being run as an independent company we're unsure on how this pledge affects it.

Reiterating that it believes that open internet and open software systems are the best choice for everyone, Google is hoping that the OPN Pledge "will serve as a model for the industry". It also notes the devotion to open-source software by other entities like IBM and Red Hat, which are said to be examples for what the OPN Pledge was built on.

Source: Google Open Source Blog; OPN Pledge

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/3Gb01fYfZEA/story01.htm

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What Would You Like to See Gizmodo Do More Of?

Hello, Gizmodo reader! Let's have a quick talk. Over the next few weeks, we're going to be refining and expanding our areas of coverage. And we want you to help us separate the wheat from the chaff. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/DLfgxO1yhEA/what-would-you-like-to-see-gizmodo-do-more-of

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Is Reid On The Level on Guns? (talking-points-memo)

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Stressful life events may increase stillbirth risk, study finds

Mar. 27, 2013 ? Pregnant women who experienced financial, emotional, or other personal stress in the year before their delivery had an increased chance of having a stillbirth, say researchers who conducted a National Institutes of Health network study.

Stillbirth is the death of a fetus at 20 or more weeks of pregnancy. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 2006, there was one stillbirth for every 167 births.

The researchers asked more than 2,000 women a series of questions, including whether they had lost a job or had a loved one in the hospital in the year before they gave birth.

Whether or not the pregnancy ended in stillbirth, most women reported having experienced at least one stressful life event in the previous year. The researchers found that 83 percent of women who had a stillbirth and 75 percent of women who had a live birth reported a stressful life event. Almost 1 in 5 women with stillbirths and 1 in 10 women with livebirths in this study reported recently experiencing 5 or more stressful life events. This study measured the occurrence of a list of significant life events, and did not include the woman's assessment of how stressful the event was to her.

Women reporting a greater number of stressful events were more likely to have a stillbirth. Two stressful events increased a woman's odds of stillbirth by about 40 percent, the researchers' analysis showed. A woman experiencing five or more stressful events was nearly 2.5 times more likely to have a stillbirth than a woman who had experienced none. Women who reported three or four significant life event factors (financial, emotional, traumatic or partner-related) remained at increased risk for stillbirth after accounting for other stillbirth risk factors, such as sociodemographic characteristics and prior pregnancy history.

Non-Hispanic black women were more likely to report experiencing stressful events than were non-Hispanic white women and Hispanic women. Black women also reported a greater number of stressful events than did their white and Hispanic counterparts. This finding may partly explain why black women have higher rates of stillbirth than non-Hispanic white or Hispanic women, the researchers said.

"We documented how significant stressors are highly prevalent in pregnant women's lives," said study co-author Marian Willinger, Ph.D., acting chief of the Pregnancy and Perinatology Branch of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), one of two NIH entities funding the research. "This reinforces the need for health care providers to ask expectant mothers about what is going on in their lives, monitor stressful life events and to offer support as part of prenatal care."

The NIH Office of Research in Women's Health also funded the study.

"Because 1 in 5 pregnant women has three or more stressful events in the year leading up to delivery, the potential public health impact of effective interventions could be substantial and help increase the delivery of healthy babies," added lead author Dr. Carol Hogue, Terry Professor of Maternal and Child Health at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health, Atlanta.

Dr. Willinger collaborated with colleagues at the NICHD and Emory University; Drexel University School of Medicine, Philadelphia; University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston; Children's Healthcare of Atlanta; Brown University School of Medicine, Providence, R.I.; University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio; University of Utah School of Medicine and Intermountain Healthcare, Salt Lake City; and RTI International, Research Triangle Park, N.C.

Their findings appear in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

The research was conducted by the NICHD-funded Stillbirth Collaborative Research Network (SCRN). The researchers contacted all women delivering a stillbirth as well as a representative portion of women delivering a live birth in defined counties in Georgia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Texas and Utah. The women were enrolled in the study between 2006 and 2008 in 59 community and research hospitals.

Within 24 hours of either a live birth or a stillbirth delivery, the women in the study were asked about events grouped into four categories: emotional, financial, partner-related and traumatic. They answered yes or no to 13 scenarios, including the following:

• I moved to a new address.
• My husband or partner lost his job.
• I was in a physical fight.
• Someone very close to me died.

Some of the stressful events were more strongly associated with stillbirth than were others. For example, the risk of stillbirth was highest:

• for women who had been in a fight (which doubled the chances for stillbirth)
• if she had heard her partner say he didn't want her to be pregnant
• if she or her partner had gone to jail in the year before the delivery

"At prenatal visits, screening is common for concerns such as intimate partner violence and depression, but the questions in our study were much more detailed," said co-author Uma Reddy, M.D., M.P.H., also of NICHD. "This is a first step toward cataloguing the effects of stress on the likelihood of stillbirth and, more generally, toward documenting how pregnancy influences a woman's mental health and how pregnancy is influenced by a woman's mental health."

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NIH/National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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

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Journal Reference:

1. C. J. R. Hogue, C. B. Parker, M. Willinger, J. R. Temple, C. M. Bann, R. M. Silver, D. J. Dudley, M. A. Koch, D. R. Coustan, B. J. Stoll, U. M. Reddy, M. W. Varner, G. R. Saade, D. Conway, R. L. Goldenberg. A Population-based Case-Control Study of Stillbirth: The Relationship of Significant Life Events to the Racial Disparity for African Americans. American Journal of Epidemiology, 2013; DOI: 10.1093/aje/kws381

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/jQJhbOzdTPQ/130327133702.htm

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Why Puma, Natura and Greif track environmental externalities ...

[Editor's note: This is the fourth installment of WRI's five-part blog series, "Aligning Profit and Environmental Sustainability." Each post, which will run on Thursdays over the course of five weeks, will explore solutions to help businesses overcome barriers to better integrate environmental sustainability into their operations.]

David Roberts at the online news organization Grist commented last week on Twitter that "people talk about 'externalities' like they are just bad vibes or something. But that money is real money. Those costs are real costs."

How real is that money? Pavan Sukhdev, author of "The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity" and "Corporation 2020," claims that these "externalities" -- or costs to society from carbon emissions, water use, pollutants and other byproducts of business activities -- are more than $2 trillion.

Putting a financial value on these environmental costs can help businesses make better-informed decisions about how they manage their environmental risk. Not all companies recognize this -- and even fewer actually know how to value these externalities correctly. But a few corporations are starting to show us the way.

Learning from Puma's environmental profit and loss statement

Puma is one company that thinks this is an important issue. While all companies have to develop profit and loss statements, Puma is the first to develop an environmental profit and loss statement. The company valued the environmental impact of its operations and supply chain in 2010 at about $190 million, factoring in impacts like water use, greenhouse gas emissions, land use conversion, air pollution and waste.

The company is now using this statement as a way to drive environmental initiatives, which it views as key to its long-term commercial survival. Puma's environmental profit and loss statement?is helping employees, shareholders and suppliers understand the magnitude of the company's environmental impacts, prioritize which ones to tackle first and incorporate this information into decision-making.

Next page: Natura and Greif use externalities to push sustainability

Source: http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2013/03/28/puma-natura-greif-environmental-externalities

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Part of Berlin Wall removed in pre-dawn operation

BERLIN (AP) ? For nearly 30 years, the Berlin Wall was the hated symbol of the division of Europe, a gray, concrete mass that snaked through neighborhoods, separating families and friends. On Wednesday, it took hundreds of police to guarantee the safe removal of 15 feet (less than 5 meters) of what's left of the wall.

Construction crews, protected by about 250 police, hauled down part of the three-quarter of a mile (1.3-kilometer) strip of the wall before dawn to provide access to a planned luxury apartment complex overlooking the Spree River.

Even though most of the strip remains intact, the move angered many Berliners, who believe that developers are sacrificing history for profit.

The site, known as the East Side Gallery, has become a major tourist attraction, painted by 120 artists with colorful scenes along the gray concrete tiles.

It is the longest remaining portion of the 96-mile (155-kilometer) wall that surrounded Western-occupied West Berlin from 1961 until the peaceful revolution against the communist East German government in 1989. At least 136 people were killed trying to escape over the wall.

The flap over the future of the East Side Gallery flared last month with the announcement that developers wanted to tear away part of the wall. The announcement triggered a series of protests, including one attended by American celebrity David Hasselhoff.

Hasselhoff is remembered here fondly for his song "Looking for Freedom" that became the unofficial anthem of the 1989 revolution.

"It's like tearing down an Indian burial ground," Hasselhoff said during the March 17 protest. "It's a no-brainer."

After the protests, demolition work was suspended while local politicians and the investors looked for alternative access to the apartment site, located in the heart of the German capital.

When no other access route could be found, the main investor, Maik Uwe Hinkel, decided to resume the project. Work began at 5 a.m. Wednesday when few people were out on the streets.

In an emailed statement, Hinkel said the removal of parts of the wall was a temporary move to enable trucks to access the building site. He said that after four weeks of fruitless deliberations with city officials and owners of adjacent property, he was no longer willing to wait.

As word of the demolition spread, small crowds of Berliners turned out to watch although no one sought to block the effort.

"I can't believe they came here in the dark in such a sneaky manner," said Kani Alavi, the head of the East Side Gallery's artists' group. "All they see is their money. They have no understanding for the historic relevance and art of this place."

The irony of Berliners trying to preserve part of what was once a hated symbol of repression reflects a growing public belief that the German capital needs to preserve symbols of its past ? both the good and the bad ? for future generations.

Much of Adolf Hitler's capital was destroyed by Allied bombing and the 1945 Soviet ground assault that ended World War II in Europe.

With the end of the Cold War, however, Germans have worked to preserve other sites, including those that do not flatter the country.

A museum to Nazi atrocities has been built over the site of Gestapo headquarters. Tourists can wander through dungeon-like prisons operated by the Soviets and the East German secret police ? as well as underground complexes built in the west of the city to protect civilians against nuclear attack.

It's all designed to allow new generations to understand the painful history behind a country that is now Europe's economic powerhouse.

"The Berlin Wall is the most significant symbol of the division of Berlin," said Maria Nooke, the deputy director of the Berlin Wall Foundation. "On the one hand it illustrates the repression in East Germany, on the other hand it symbolizes how Germans peacefully overcame that repression."

It took years for Berliners ? both easterners and westerners ? to develop such feelings for the wall.

"After a while, there was a growing need to deal with that part of history and to preserve it for future generations," Nooke said.

In an effort to give visitors and Berliners a taste of life in a divided city, a 70-meter (-yard) stretch of the wall on Bernauer Strasse was restored to its original state, including an East German watchtower from which guards would shoot at people trying to scale the structure.

The East Side Gallery was recently restored at a cost of more than 2 million euros ($3 million) to the city. It is now covered in colorful murals painted by about 120 artists.

Scenes include the famous image of a boxy East German Trabant car that appears to burst through the wall; and a fraternal communist kiss between Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and East German boss Erich Honecker.

"I heard it on the radio, so I quickly took my son to nursery school and then came here," said Jana Voigt, a kindergarten teacher who grew up in East Berlin. "I feel so betrayed that they tore down that piece of the wall while I was asleep. They knew that so many Berliners don't want the wall to be touched."

She said part of the wall needs to be protected for future generations "in order to understand what happened here."

Karl-Heinz Richter was a 17-year-old teenager when he tried to escape from East Berlin three years after the wall was erected. His escape failed and he was jailed.

"What you see happening now is capitalism in its purest form: it's all about money and power, history doesn't matter anymore. That's disgusting." he said. "For me the wall is a holy site. I'm outraged that they would even dare to touch it."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/part-berlin-wall-removed-pre-dawn-operation-185011250.html

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Gay marriage foes draw fire for linking rivals to Nazi propaganda effort (Star Tribune)

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Gay marriage: Supreme Court critiques DOMA

Same-sex marriages are legal in 9 states and the District of Columbia, but the federal government does not recognize those unions. Based on their statements on Wednesday, it appears the majority of the country's Supreme Court justices are questioning the law which bars such unions from federal recognition.?

By Mark Sherman,?Associated Press / March 27, 2013

Plaintiff Edith Windsor of New York waves to supporters in front of the Supreme Court in Washington Wednesday after the court heard arguments on her Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) case.

Carolyn Kaster/AP

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Concluding two days of intense debate, the Supreme Court signaled Wednesday it could give a boost to same-sex marriage by striking down the federal law that denies legally married gay spouses a wide range of benefits offered to other couples.

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As the court wrapped up its remarkable arguments over gay marriage in America, a majority of the justices indicated they will invalidate part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act ? if they can get past procedural problems similar to those that appeared to mark Tuesday's case over California's ban on same-sex marriage.

Since the federal law was enacted in 1996, nine states and the District of Columbia have made it legal for gays and lesbians to marry. Same-sex unions also were legal in California for nearly five months in 2008 before the Proposition 8 ban.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the decisive vote in close cases, joined the four more-liberal justices in raising questions Wednesday about a provision that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman for purposes of federal law.

It affects more than 1,100 statutes in which marital status is relevant, dealing with tax breaks for married couples, Social Security survivor benefits and, for federal employees, health insurance and leave to care for spouses.

Kennedy said the Defense of Marriage Act appears to intrude on the power of states that have chosen to recognize same-sex marriages. When so many federal statutes are affected, "which in our society means that the federal government is intertwined with the citizens' day-to-day life, you are at real risk of running in conflict with what has always been thought to be the essence of the state police power, which is to regulate marriage, divorce, custody," Kennedy said.

Other justices said the law creates what Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called two classes of marriage, full and "skim-milk marriage."

If the court does strike down part of?DOMA, it would represent a victory for gay rights advocates. But it would be something short of the endorsement of gay marriage nationwide that some envisioned when the justices agreed in December to hear the federal case and the challenge to California's ban on same-sex marriage.

Still, the tenor of the arguments over two days reflected how quickly attitudes have changed since large majorities in Congress passed the federal?DOMA?in 1996 and President Bill Clinton signed it into law. In 2011, President Barack Obama abandoned the legal defense of the law in the face of several lawsuits, and last year Obama endorsed gay marriage. Clinton, too, has voiced regret for signing the law and now supports allowing gays and lesbians to marry.

In 1996, the House of Representatives' report on the legislation explained that one of its purposes was "to express moral disapproval of homosexuality." Justice Elena Kagan read those words in the courtroom Wednesday, evoking a reaction from the audience that sounded like a cross between a gasp and nervous laughter.

Kagan's quotation gave lawyer Paul Clement, representing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives that has taken up defense of the law in place of the administration, some uncomfortable moments at the lectern.

"Does the House report say that? Of course, the House report says that. And if that's enough to invalidate the statute, then you should invalidate the statute," Clement said. But he said the more relevant question is whether Congress had "any rational basis for the statute." He supplied one: the federal government's interest in treating same-sex couples the same no matter where they live.

Clement said the government does not want military families "to resist transfer from West Point to Fort Sill because they're going to lose their benefits." The U.S. Military Academy at West Point is in New York, where same-sex marriage is legal, and Fort Sill is in Oklahoma, where gay marriages are not legal.

Opposing Clement was the Obama administration's top Supreme Court lawyer, Donald Verrilli, who said the provision of?DOMA?at issue, Section 3, impermissibly discriminates against gay people.

"I think it's time for the court to recognize that this discrimination, excluding lawfully married gay and lesbian couples from federal benefits, cannot be reconciled with our fundamental commitment to equal treatment under law," Verrilli said.

Both Verrilli and Roberta Kaplan, the lawyer for Edith Windsor, the 83-year-old New York woman who sued over?DOMA, told the court that views about gay people and marriage have shifted dramatically since 1996 when the law was approved.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/FyuO48ux08k/Gay-marriage-Supreme-Court-critiques-DOMA

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Sanctions noose makes it harder for Japan's Koreans to help their own

By Ju-min Park

TOKYO (Reuters) - When the now elderly man left Japan on a Soviet ship in 1960 for North Korea, he thought he was headed to the promised land. In reality, he survived 47 years there thanks only to $1 million in support from his half-brother in Japan.

The man's Korean-born parents decided to migrate to North Korea when he was a teenager, lured by the promise of free education and healthcare in a country that at the time was richer than South Korea in the wake of the 1950-53 Korean War.

Much of the Korean community in Japan is descended from people who were shipped across as forced labor during Tokyo's 35-year colonial rule of the Korean peninsula, which ended with Japan's defeat in World War Two.

In a twist of fate, the man fled back to Japan in 2008 and is now supporting his wife and children in the North. Like other Koreans sending money to the North from either Japan or South Korea, he may find transactions coming under greater scrutiny after new U.N. sanctions were imposed on Pyongyang for its third nuclear test in February.

Speaking to Reuters during an interview in Tokyo, the 66-year-old man declined to be identified for fear of reprisals against his family. He also declined to say exactly why he fled North Korea. He escaped to China in 2007, and arrived in Japan the following year.

He remembered calling his half-brother some years ago when he was in North Korea, thanking him for the money.

"I told my brother that I was sorry (for taking the money), but he said we were grown from the same mother's belly ... I really cried, I was so thankful for his words," said the man. His half-brother had died by the time he arrived in Tokyo.

Even before the February 12 nuclear test, Japan's Finance Ministry appeared to be paying more attention to transfers to North Korea, as the man found out when he tried to send 200,000 yen ($2,100) to Pyongyang through the postal system after North Korea's latest long-range rocket launch in December.

Two days after he made the application, the ministry sent him a letter asking why he wanted to send the money.

"There was a blank space at the bottom to provide reasons for remittances in detail. So I wrote: 'This is not for Kim Jong-un's political fund but to help my poor starving family to live'."

The man said the ministry did not get in touch again, so he assumed the money was sent. Japan's post offices are able to carry out banking functions, such as sending money abroad.

WILL JAPAN TIGHTEN UP ON REMITTANCES?

The latest U.N. sanctions on the regime of North Korean leader Kim tighten financial restrictions, including the illicit transfer of bulk cash, and crack down on its attempts to ship and receive banned cargo. The aim of the March 7 measures is to curtail the North's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Japan's Finance Ministry requires postal remittances above 3 million yen and cash transfers of more than 100,000 yen to be reported to the authorities. For all other countries, the amount is 10 times greater.

A day after the February nuclear test, the Nikkei newspaper said Japan would consider curbs on transfers to North Korea as well as lowering the amount that had to be reported.

A senior Finance Ministry official on Wednesday told Reuters no changes had been made to rules on remittances. It was unclear why the man had to give more details on his transfer, which was far less than 3 million yen.

More than 93,000 ethnic Koreans left Japan for North Korea between 1959 and 1984 under the slogan "Let's go back to the fatherland!", according to researchers in Japan.

That number plunged from the mid 1980s as stories of the grinding poverty in North Korea spread. Meanwhile, South Korea's industrialization was in full swing.

The man's half-brother, a construction worker, sent him a total of 87 million yen ($923,400) while he lived in North Korea, a number he said he added up one day.

Remittances from Japan were as much as an estimated $2 billion a year until the early 1990s, according to a report in 2007 by the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, which studies the North's economy.

North Koreans called the cash flow the "Mount Fuji Stream".

Ethnic Koreans in Japan can still send money, but it is a trickle by comparison.

"MOUNT FUJI STREAM" ALREADY DRYING UP

Japan's bubble economy burst in the early 1990s, hurting the disposable income of ethnic Koreans. At the same time, Tokyo cracked down on what it said were illegal businesses run by a pro-Pyongyang organization called the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, or Chongryon, which had long sent money to North Korea. It has denied such accusations.

The Chongryon, which still exists, played a key role in Japan's socially isolated Korean community in the 1960s and 1970s.

Japan then banned most financial transactions with North Korea in 2006 after Pyongyang's first nuclear test. It also closed a ferry service that delivered goods and money across the 1,000 km (600 mile) sea that separates the two countries.

For the last three years, the Finance Ministry recorded close to $20 million in remittances. Annual flows from North Korean defectors living in South Korea are estimated at $10 million a year, according to researchers in Seoul.

These days, asking travelers to take cash from Japan to North Korea or sending money by post is the usual way. Flights go via China because Japan does not have diplomatic relations with Pyongyang.

The problem now is the same as it was when the man was sent money - it is not clear if relatives get it all.

Lee Young-hwa, an economics professor at Kansai University in the Japanese city of Osaka, sends around 200,000 yen a year to family in the North.

He believes half goes to North Korean officials as a "loyal donation" to the regime. Lee said he also believed most remittances to relatives sent as cash were unreported.

"We have been sending money for about five decades, hoping that the Koreans sent to the North will some day stand on their own feet," said Lee.

"But there's still no sign that they can."

FOOD IS IMPORTANT TOO

North Koreans were especially desperate during a famine in the 1990s, which killed around a million people, according to independent estimates.

"In the 1990s, we had to send goods. Even if you had money, there was no rice so we sent sesame oil, sugar, rice and noodles and rice cakes," said Yang Yong-hi, an ethnic Korean filmmaker living in Japan and whose three brothers went to the North in the 1970s. One is dead but the other two still live there.

The money the 66-year old man received helped him pay for food and medicine for his parents and other siblings as well as a wedding and a house in North Korea for himself. He declined to say where.

During the 1970s and 1980s, instead of yen, he got so called "exchange vouchers".

"Cash went straight into the state's coffers and we could buy goods at a foreign currency store with these exchange vouchers instead," the man said, adding he began to get cash after the 1980s.

Vouchers are still used for North Koreans working at the Kaesong industrial zone, a factory near its border with South Korea. There, South Korean firms pay wages in U.S. dollars and Pyongyang gives the workers both vouchers and its won currency, according to a South Korean lawmaker who has visited the zone.

Leaving his family behind saddens the man, who said he gets by on 140,000 yen from the Japanese government each month.

"I think I am happy now although I am not rich. I love so much being free. I can talk, hear and see whatever I want," he said. ($1 = 94.2200 Japanese yen)

(Additional reporting by Antoni Slodkowski. Editing by David Chance and Dean Yates)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sanctions-noose-makes-harder-japans-koreans-help-own-225745718.html

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