2 giant pandas arrive in their new French home (AP)

PARIS ? Two giant pandas have arrived from China aboard a special plane and are heading to their new home amid the chateaux of central France.

Male Yuan Zi and female Huan Huan are France's first pandas since the death of one more than a decade ago.

The endangered animals get only the best: Their "Panda Express" plane, specially configured for their enclosures, was greeted with applause at the Paris airport.

On loan from China, Yuan Zi ("chubby" in Chinese) and Huan Huan ("happy") will live at the Zoo Parc de Beauval, in the Loire valley, for 10 years.

China has long used "panda diplomacy" to make friends and influence people in other countries. Last month, two pandas from China debuted at Scotland's Edinburgh Zoo.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/pets/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120115/ap_on_re_as/as_china_france_pandas

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Arab troops to Syria? Qatar makes a bold proposal.

? A daily summary of global reports on security issues.

Qatar?s leader has said Arab troops should be sent to Syria to stop the regime?s bloody attacks on dissidents that have killed thousands of people.

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His comments, made to CBS ?60 Minutes? for a segment that will air today, are the first time an Arab leader has suggested military intervention in Syria to stop the government?s brutal 10-month campaign to crush an anti-regime uprising.

His comments come as Syria has continued killing protesters despite the presence of Arab League monitors sent nearly three weeks ago as part of a League plan to end the violence. The UN estimates that at least 5,000 people have been killed since March, when Syria began its attempts to crush an uprising against the regime of President Bashar Al Assad. The UN estimates that 400 people have been killed in the last three weeks, reports the Associated Press.?

In a video posted on the CBS website, CBS?s Bob Simon asked Qatar?s leader Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani if he would be in favor of Arab nations intervening in Syria. ?I think for such a situation to stop the killing, some troops should go to stop the killing,? said the emir.??

Arab and non-Arab leaders have so far shunned suggestions of military intervention in Syria, which is allied with Iran and borders Israel. Some fear the conflict could ignite a larger sectarian crisis. Inside Syria, the conflict has become increasingly militarized.

The head of the Arab League, Nabil Al Arabi, warned Friday that Syria is slipping dangerously closer to civil war, according to the Associated Press. Army defectors have attacked security forces, and some opposition members have taken up arms as well.

Agence France-Presse reports that Amr Moussa, former head of the Arab League and now a presidential candidate in Egypt, said Sunday the Arab League should study the Qatari leader?s proposal. ?This is a very important proposal,? he said on the sidelines of a conference in Beirut.

But an Arab League source in Cairo told Reuters that the League has not received an official request to send troops to Syria.?"There is no official suggestion to send Arab troops to Syria at the current time.... There has been no Arab or a non-Arab agreement on a military intervention in Syria for the time being," said the official, according to Reuters.

Meanwhile, the head of the UN, speaking Sunday at a conference in Beirut, demanded that Mr. Assad stop using violence against Syrians. ?Stop the violence. Stop killing your people. The path of repression is a dead end,? said Ban Ki-moon.

His pleas came as Syria?s state news agency announced?that Assad has issued a general amnesty for ?crimes?committed in the context of the events taking place since March 15, 2011 till the date of issuing the decree.? The news agency says the amnesty applies to those who are accused of breaking laws on peaceful demonstration, carrying unlicensed weapons, and draft evasion. Syrians must ?turn themselves in? by the end of the month to be granted amnesty, said the report.?

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Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/YKIZEnzX9t4/Arab-troops-to-Syria-Qatar-makes-a-bold-proposal

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New Years Eve - University Closed

Description:

At this joyous time of the year, may you and your family have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

The university is closed, however, our online application process and other functionality is available for you to use at your convenience. Have a wonderful holiday season. We look forward to working with you!

Source: http://www.udmercy.edu/calendar/view_entry.php?id=3280&friendly=1&rssuser=__public__&date=20111231

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New Year Ushers in Bright New Era in Lighting, Says Alliance Consumers to Save Money and Energy with Expanded Lighting Options

New Year Ushers in Bright New Era in Lighting, Says Alliance Consumers to Save Money and Energy with Expanded Lighting Options Posted By Betsy Kraat

WASHINGTON, DC--As we usher in a New Year, the first phase of a revolution in home lighting products ? one that promises a bright future at less cost ? will begin as well, says the Alliance to Save Energy.

Lighting likely accounts for 12% of home energy use, but the growing array of energy-efficient options allows consumers across the country to cut those expenses by $50 to more than $100 a year. Many of the new products are already on store shelves in anticipation of the federal standards that begin phasing in on January 1.

The 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush, established the new lighting standards that take effect over three years. In 2012 the law requires manufacturers to offer bulbs that are about 25% more energy efficient than traditional 100-watt incandescent bulbs. The law covers 75-watt bulbs in 2013 and 60- and 40-watt bulbs in 2014.

Lighting manufacturers are ready for the challenge, having been closely involved ? along with energy efficiency groups like the Alliance ? in developing the standards back in 2007. Their new products, including halogen incandescents, compact fluorescents (CFLs) and light-emitting diodes (LEDs), shed light in a range of colors from "warm white" to "cool blue," come in different shapes and sizes and offer different levels of savings.

Those manufacturers, as well as the Alliance and other advocates, are now working to dispel misunderstandings about the standards and to spread the word about the savings they offer.

"There has been some confusion about the impact of the new lighting standards," says Alliance President Kateri Callahan. "Consumers can still purchase incandescent bulbs with the brightness of a 100-watt bulb. The only difference is that those bulbs will be more efficient halogen incandescents that use about 30% less energy. Consumers are also able to choose CFLs and LEDs, which can save them 75% or more on their lighting energy costs. And, the more bulbs they replace with today's efficient ones, the more they will save."

The savings are considerable for the nation at large, too -- as much as $10 billion dollars a year and the amount of electricity generated by 30 large power plants ? about the same amount of electricity used by the state of Indiana every year.

"One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to make your home more energy efficient is by switching to energy-saving light bulbs. As consumers make the switch, we encourage them to look for new labeling and other information to help them make the best choices for their home," added Callahan.

The Alliance to Save Energy is a steering committee member of the LUMEN Coalition, a group of nonprofit organizations, manufacturers, utilities and others committed to educating consumers about their new lighting choices. The LUMENnow.org website can help consumers understand their new lighting options and shows them the results of a lighting makeover in a home.

Source: http://www.greenrealestatedaily.com/news/green.php/2011/12/30/new_year_ushers_in_bright_new_era_in_lig

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A Christian on Hitchens' Atheism and Lowe's Muslim Problem (Time.com)

David Caton owes me one. I interviewed the head of the Florida Family Association last week during his bigoted but successful crusade to get companies like Lowe's to pull ads from All-American Muslim, the Learning Channel reality show about a community of Muslim Americans. Before Caton hung up on me ? he gets angry when you question his complaint that the show presents Muslims in too positive a light and not as crazed radicals plotting to impose Islamic shari'a law from Maine to Monterey ? I corrected his pronunciation of imam, a Muslim cleric, from Eye-mam to the proper Ee-mawm. Later that day, I heard him say it properly on CNN.

But that's all he got right. I concern myself with Caton ? who also likes to hire small planes to haul banners over Orlando warning people that homosexuals visit Disney World ? only for two reasons. One is that a major corporation like Lowe's actually caved to the Evangelical's ugly Islamophobia. The other is that he got his 15 minutes of fame at about the same time that Christopher Hitchens died, on Dec. 15. Hitchens was best known as one of the "angry atheists" for his 2007 best seller God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and narrow-minded fundamentalists like Caton made his work a lot easier. So of course did extremist Muslims, as well as extremist Roman Catholics, Jews, Hindus and all the fanatics who ruin religion the way drunks ruin driving. Which is why Hitchens' attacks on faith, while brilliantly written, could also feel gratuitous. (See "Christopher Hitchens, RIP.")

So it's fitting, at least for the silent majority of Christians who aren't hatemongering zealots but who derive hope and humane inspiration from our beliefs, that Caton and Hitchens should both be in the news during the Christmas season. The holiday's anticommercialization critics are right to argue that Christians spend too much time on outdoor lights at the expense of the inner light kindled by the story of God's incarnation in a manger. I'm as guilty as anyone in that regard. But Caton and Hitchens at least give us Christians a convenient place to start. They prod us on the one hand to assess what isn't Christian ? like demonizing gays and Muslims ? and on the other hand to reaffirm why Christianity and religion itself are a positive and not always poisonous influence in the world.

The crux of the Florida Family Association's campaign is Caton's preposterous claim, as he told me, that "every Eye-mam in this country wants to put the U.S. under shari'a law." Every imam I know here in Miami rejects the idea. "Muslims are only 6 million out of 300 million in this country," one reminds me. "We rely on U.S. law to protect our rights as a minority." They're also a minority who wish Christians well at Christmas: the Koran reverently mentions Jesus and the Virgin Mary almost 60 times. (See "Do Shari'a Courts Have a Role in British Life?")

One way, then, that Christians can practice Jesus' teachings of love, tolerance and charity this yuletide is by resolving to reassure folks like Muslims that we're not like the Florida Family Association. That we're committed to the code of Christmas ? "Peace on earth to people of goodwill" ? trumpeted by the same angels we place atop the trees in our living rooms.

That's also one of the best ways to answer Hitchens as well as other angry atheists like Richard Dawkins and quite a few members of my own hypersecular profession. It's a fairly widely accepted maxim that atheist fundamentalists, as I call them, can be just as intolerant as religious fundamentalists. And the problem they share is that both take religion way too literally. Just as Christian fundamentalists insist on a literal reading of the Bible, angry atheists tend to insist that belief in God qualifies you as a raving creationist. (See "Why Christopher Hitchens Is Wrong About Billy Graham.")

Here's what they refuse to get: Yes, Christians believe that Jesus' nativity was a virgin birth and that he rose from the dead on Easter. But if you were to show most Christians incontrovertible scientific proof that those miracles didn't occur, they would shrug ? because their faith means more to them than that. Because in the end, what they have faith in is the redemptive power of the story. In Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited, an agnostic says to his Catholic friend, "You can't seriously believe it all ... I mean about Christmas and the star and the three kings and the ox and the ass."

"Oh yes, I believe that. It's a lovely idea."

"But you can't believe things simply because they're a lovely idea."

"But I do. That's how I believe."

I'm willing to bet it's how most believers believe. Before Hitchens died at 62 from esophageal cancer, he made a point of declaring he was certain no heaven awaited him. But that swipe at the faithful always misses the point. Most of us don't believe in God because we think it's a ticket to heaven. Rather, our belief in God ? our belief in the living ideal of ourselves, which is something even atheists ponder ? instills in us a faith that in the end, light always defeats darkness (which is how people get through the wars and natural disasters I cover). That does make us open to the possibility of the hereafter ? but more important, it gives us purposeful inspiration to make the here and now better.

With all due respect to the memory of Christopher Hitchens, making the here and now better would be difficult without religion. But it's also hard enough without the un-Christian antics of people like David Caton. As Christmas ought to remind us.

See TIME's 2011 Person of the Year.

See the Top 10 Everything of 2011.

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Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/time_rss/rss_time_us/httpwwwtimecomtimenationarticle08599210292700htmlxidrssnationyahoo/43990682/SIG=12ll164fe/*http%3A//www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2102927,00.html?xid=rss-nation-yahoo

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Fabolous Buries The Competition On New Mixtape

Fab rounds out his There Is No Competition mixtape series with third installment, in Mixtape Daily.
By Rob Markman

Fabolous
Photo: MTV News

Main Pick
Headliners: Fabolous and DJ Drama
Representing: Brooklyn, New York
Mixtape: There Is No Competition III: Death Comes in 3's
Real Spit: Funeral Fab takes no days off — not even Christmas. On Sunday while many were celebrating the holidays with family, Fabolous decided to gift-wrap his latest mixtape and release it online as a free download. There Is No Competition III: Death Comes in 3's is the third installment of the popular series that Fab and DJ Drama started in 2008.

"The theme of There Is No Competition III, it has the subtitle Death Comes in 3's, which plays along in the trilogy of this tape," Fab told Mixtape Daily.

The death-themed tape doesn't disappoint. On "Black City," Fabolous dons appropriate mourning attire and rides Tyga's "Rack City" beat to take shots at his rap competitors. The killing spree continues on the Lloyd Banks-assisted "Get Down or Lay Down" when F-A-B-O spits, "Money over bitches, dirt on top of bitch, n---as/ Put you in ya place, it happens to be a ditch, n---a." The Street Fam general calls upon more rap comrades on "B.E.T," which features Styles P and Jadakiss, and then again on "Unf---witable" with Red Café.

Things begin to get personal on "Death in the Family." Over an eerie-sounding track, Loso partners up with his brother Paul Cain and together they bid farewell to an unnamed former friend. "I be sayin' to myself as I put on the gloves, it hurts when you gotta kill a n---a you love," Fab raps on the hook.

It isn't all slow singing and flower bringing though. Fab and Meek Mill trade witty bars on "You Don't Know 'Bout It," and on "Spend It," Loso hooks up with Trey Songz as they deliver their take on 2 Chainz's underground hit of the same name.

With Fab's sixth studio album, Loso's Way 2, due out next year, TINC III is the perfect way to end a notable year for the Brooklyn MC, who made a killing in the streets.

Joints to Check For
» "Death Comes in 3's" - "It's like the wake; it's like the thing before the funeral. It's just me, a little bit of my sh-- talking, my letting know they're in for a ride with this mixtape."

» "You Don't Know 'Bout It" - "It started out just being a beat that I liked. I heard it, it was a Travis Porter song, actually. I just jumped on it and hit Meek up."

For other artists featured in Mixtape Daily, check out Mixtape Daily Headlines.

Related Artists

• Fabolous

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1676593/fabolous-death-comes-in-3s-mixtape.jhtml

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Great leap forward for China's military? China gets GPS.

China is the third nation to develop its own satellite navigation system, after the US and Russia. While it will be open to the public, analysts worry about its military uses.

Something important was missing from all the fanfare here surrounding Tuesday?s announcement that China had launched a homegrown satellite navigation system to rival the US Global Positioning System (GPS): any mention of what it is really for.

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?The driver for this program is that it is a strategic imperative? for China?s military modernization, says Eric Hagt, an expert on China?s space activities at the Center for Defense Information in Washington.

You would not have learned that from the head of the China Satellite Navigation Office, Ran Chengqi,?who announced that the Beidou system, which means ?Big Dipper? in Chinese, had gone live.

He talked only of civilian uses, such as disaster relief management, or tracking official vehicles.

The Beidou system, however, is clearly designed to do more than keep an eye on the government carpool, foreign analysts say. A sophisticated positional navigation system is essential to pinpoint enemy ships and to guide missiles with precision, Mr. Hagt points out. The newly launched system, he adds, ?is a guarantee for the Chinese that they would have an independent system in place? in case of conflict.

Until now, the Chinese military has relied on GPS. But that is controlled by the US government, which could block Beijing?s access if it wanted to, effectively blinding China?s Army, Navy, and Air Force.

For the moment, the 10 Beidou satellites offer positioning, navigation, and timing services over most of China and the whole of Southeast Asia, Mr. Ran said. The launch of six more satellites next year will extend Beidou?s reach to most of the Asia Pacific region and improve its accuracy to GPS levels. The system is expected to go global in 2020.

Tuesday?s announcement makes China the third nation in the world with its own satellite navigation system, after the US and Russia, whose Glonass satellites are fully operational. The European Union plans to make its own Galileo system operational by 2019.

Like GPS, Beidou will be free, Ran says, hoping that Chinese and foreign companies will build and sell cheap receivers to use its information. Also like GPS, Beidou is thought to have an encrypted military channel, offering more precise information to those that control it, though Ran made no mention of this.

US firms already use GPS alternatives for some purposes; Apple?s iPhone 4S relies on Glonass as well as GPS for its location feature, for example. How widely used Beidou will be by civilian clients, however, is unclear.

?How many people would trust the Chinese over the US or the EU to keep a public channel open if it was not in their interests?? Hagt wonders. ?I don?t know if people would have the same confidence.??

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/1XSO3PO7wiQ/Great-leap-forward-for-China-s-military-China-gets-GPS

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