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Prosecutors: 4th man recruited in NYC bomb plot (AP)

NEW YORK ? Federal prosecutors have quietly added a new wrinkle to their case against a New York City man charged in one of the most serious terror plots since the Sept. 11 attacks.

In a revised indictment filed last week in Brooklyn, Adis Medunjanin was hit with a new allegation that he ? along with former high school classmates Najibullah Zazi and Zarein Ahmedzay ? tried to recruit someone identified only as John Doe to travel to Pakistan "to wage violent jihad."

It was the first time the government has linked a fourth person in the U.S. to what evolved into an al-Qaida-sanctioned scheme to pull off what prosecutors call three "coordinated suicide bombing attacks" on Manhattan subway lines. Lawyers for Medunjanin are now demanding that the government reveal the identity of the man before he turns up as a possible witness at a trial set for March.

"We want to know who John Doe is," defense attorney Robert Gottlieb said Thursday.

A pretrial hearing is scheduled next week to take up the issue. The defense also plans to oppose a request by prosecutors for an anonymous jury, Gottlieb said.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn declined to comment Thursday.

Medunjanin, 27, has pleaded not guilty to conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction, providing material support to a terrorist organization and other charges.

Prosecutors allege that Medunjanin, Zazi and Ahmedzay tried to recruit the fourth man before the three went to Afghanistan in 2008 to join the Taliban and fight U.S. soldiers. They instead were recruited by al-Qaida operatives, who gave them weapons training in their Pakistan camp and asked them to become suicide bombers, authorities say.

The new indictment doesn't say what became of the fourth man.

After returning, Zazi, a former Denver airport shuttle driver, cooked up explosives and set out for New York City around the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. After becoming suspicious he was being watched by law enforcement, he abandoned the plan and returned to Colorado.

Zazi and Ahmedzay have since admitted in guilty pleas that they wanted to avenge U.S. aggression in the Arab world by becoming martyrs. Both could testify against Medunjanin at trial.

In papers filed Wednesday, prosecutors argued that jurors at Medunjanin's trial should be kept anonymous for their safety.

"Given the nature of the allegations, the involvement of al-Qaeda, a foreign terrorist organization with global reach and a history of targeting civilians in New York City, and the virtual certainty of substantial media and public attention, a fair trial requires empaneling an anonymous jury and the other requested protective measures," prosecutors wrote.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/terrorism/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120119/ap_on_re_us/us_nyc_terror

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Toddler's cuss word on 'Modern Family' draws ire (AP)

LOS ANGELES ? An anti-profanity crusader on Tuesday asked ABC to pull this week's "Modern Family" episode in which a toddler appears to use a bleeped curse word.

"Our main goal is to stop this from happening," said McKay Hatcher, an 18-year-old college student who founded the No Cussing Club in 2007. "If we don't, at least ABC knows that people all over the world don't want to have a 2-year-old saying the `F-bomb' on TV."

"We hope they know better," said Hatcher. He's asking his club's members, whom he said number 35,000 in the United States and about three-dozen other countries, to complain to ABC.

ABC has yet to respond, he said Tuesday. The network had no comment, a spokeswoman said.

In the episode titled "Little Bo Bleep" airing 9 p.m. EST Wednesday, 2-year-old Lily shocks parents Mitchell and Cameron (Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Eric Stonestreet) with her first expletive.

The dads, who are preparing Lily to serve as flower girl in a wedding, now have an added parenting challenge.

The tot is played by Aubrey Anderson-Emmons, who says the word "fudge" during taping. It will be bleeped on the air and her mouth will be obscured by pixilation, and viewers will get the impression that her character used the actual F-word.

Steven Levitan, creator and executive producer of the sitcom with Christopher Lloyd, told the Television Critics Association last week that he's "proud and excited" about the F-word plotline that ABC was persuaded to allow.

"We thought it was a very natural story since, as parents, we've all been through this," Levitan said to EW.com. "We are not a sexually charged show. It has a very warm tone so people accept it more. I'm sure we'll have some detractors."

The program, which won the Emmy Award for best comedy last fall, was named best musical or comedy series at Sunday's Golden Globes ceremony.

Hatcher, who is from South Pasadena and attends Brigham Young University in Rexburg, Idaho, said he began his anti-profanity club in 2007 when he noticed how rampant cursing was at his school and how it was linked to bullying.

"If kids are accountable for their choices, then adults should be as well," and that includes media, he said.

TV profanity was an issue before the Supreme Court last week, which heard arguments about whether regulating curse words and nudity on broadcast stations is sensible when cable and satellite services offer channels with few restrictions. A decision is expected by late June.

___

Online:

http://www.abc.go.com

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tv/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120118/ap_en_tv/us_tv_modern_family_expletive

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Inventory lists 19,232 newly discovered species during latest count

ScienceDaily (Jan. 18, 2012) ? More than half of the 19,232 species newly known to science in 2009, the most recent calendar year of compilation, were insects -- 9,738 or 50.6 percent -- according to the 2011 State of Observed Species (SOS) report released Jan. 18 by the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University.

The second largest group in the 2009 numbers was vascular plants, totaling 2,184 or 11.3 percent. Of the 19,232 in the total count, seven were birds, 41 were mammals and 1,487 were arachnids -- spiders and mites.

And, according to this latest report, there was a 5.6 percent increase in new living species discovered in 2009, compared to 2008.

The annual SOS report card on the status of human knowledge of Earth's species summarizes what is known about global flora and fauna. The 19,232 species described as "new" or newly discovered during calendar year 2009 represent about twice as many species as were known in the lifetime of Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who initiated the modern system of plant and animal names and classifications more than 250 years ago, said the report's author, Quentin Wheeler, an ASU entomologist and founding director of the species institute.

"The cumulative knowledge of species since 1758 when Linnaeus was alive is nearly 2 million, but much remains to be done," Wheeler said. "A reasonable guess is that 10 million additional plant and animal species await discovery by scientists and amateur species explorers."

Additionally, recent macrogenomic surveys of DNA from terrestrial and marine environments have revealed "enormous and previously unsuspected levels of genetic diversity that corresponds in some not-yet-understood way to species diversity," explained Wheeler.

"It has been speculated, for example, that marine microbial species alone could number 20 million," he said.

With those staggering numbers as a backdrop, statistics, or "species bites," from the latest report note that:

? Almost 24 percent of the new vascular plant species discovered in 2009 were in the monocot order Asparagales, which includes orchids, hyacinths, irises, daffodils, amaryllis, allium, aloe and, of course, asparagus.

? Year to year, the largest order of newly discovered insects is the beetles, and, 2009 was no exception. Overall, 3,485 new beetle species (Coleoptera) were officially described including rove beetles (568), ground beetles (421), long-horned beetles (369), leaf beetles (356) and scarabs (288).

? Only 41 new living mammal species were officially described in 2009 and of those, 83 percent were either bats (44 percent) or rodents (39 percent).

? Almost 90 percent (133) of the new living amphibian species described in 2009 were frogs.

? There was almost five times more fossil bird species (34) newly described in 2009 than living birds (seven).

? Typical of most years, the largest number of new fish species was in the order Perciformes and 29 percent of those were in the families Gobiidaw (22) and Cichlidae (11). Gobies include some of the tiniest fish on Earth, and the cichlids include some of the most popular aquarium fish, including the angelfish and damselfish.

? Of the 626 newly described living crustacean species, 224 (31.8 percent) were in the order Decapoda, which includes crayfish, crabs, lobsters, prawns and shrimp.

? The Colubridae is the largest family of snakes and in 2009, almost 65 percent of the newly described living snakes were colubrids. In addition to 31 new snakes, new reptile species (living) included 38 lizards, 29 geckos, 12 iguanas, five chameleons and two turtles.

? More than 13 percent of the new fungus species (living) described in 2009 were gilled mushrooms in the order Agaricales (178). Of the mushrooms, more than one-fifth (21.3 percent) were in the family Marasmiaceae, which includes shiitake mushrooms.

In addition to the living species discovered during 2009, there were 1,905 fossil species, with insects and spiders accounting for 25.6 percent.

"As the number of species increases, so too does our understanding of the biosphere," said Wheeler, a professor in the School of Sustainability and a Senior Sustainability Scientist in the Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU. "It is through knowledge of the unique attributes of species that we illuminate the origin and evolutionary history of life on our planet. As we find out where species live and how they interact, we increase our ability to understand the function of ecosystems and make effective, fact-based decisions regarding conservation."

This is the fourth year for the annual State of Observed Species report compiled by the International Institute for Species Exploration. In addition to the 2011 report, the institute is also releasing a Retro SOS -- a decade of species discovery in review -- 2000-2009. The Retro SOS notes that from 2000 through 2009, there were 176,311 newly discovered species.

"It is particularly instructive to understand the tempo and patterns of discovery in recent years," said Wheeler, adding, "Given this data, it is interesting to ponder underlying causes of trends."

The "obvious lesson" from compiling this data, according to Wheeler, is that all nomenclatural acts, including descriptions of new species, must be mandatorily registered going forward. "In the animal world it takes about two years to mine the international literature for evidence of newly named species. The current lack of registration requirements simply compounds the problem of an already massive backlog," he said.

The report notes there are increasing calls for more aggressive and visionary approaches to mapping the species of the biosphere. "The adaptation of cyberinfrastructure to eliminate bottlenecks in the practice of taxonomy has created an opportunity to vastly accelerate species exploration," said Wheeler, who uses the SOS report and the annual naming of the top 10 new species each May, as ways to draw attention to this mission.

The SOS report and the Retro SOS are filled with statistics and charts, including a colorful word cloud. Sara Pennak, assistant director for partnerships and public outreach at the institute, prepared the data synthesis and analysis for the reports, which are available online at http://species.asu.edu.

Partners in this effort include: Algae Base. MycoBank, International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), Thomson Reuters Zoological Record, International Plant Names Index, UniProt and Taxatoy.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/htmxrLKKrNc/120118173248.htm

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Romney can take risks. He's rich.

Mitt Romney is casting his campaign as a defense of free enterprise, hard work, and risk-taking. Easy for him to say: the higher you go on the economic ladder, the easier?it is?to make money without taking any personal financial risk at all. The lower you go, the bigger the risks.

Mitt Romney is casting the 2012 campaign as ?free enterprise on trial? ? defining free enterprise as achieving success through ?hard work and risking-taking.? Tea-Party favorite Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina says he?s supporting Romney because ?we really need someone who understands how risk, taking risk ? is the way we create jobs, create choices, expand freedom.? Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donahue, defending Romney, explains ?this economy is about risk. If you don?t take risk, you can?t have success.?

Skip to next paragraph Robert Reich

Robert is chancellor's professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Clinton. He has written 13 books, including 'The Work of Nations,' 'Locked in the Cabinet,' and his most recent book, 'Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future.' His 'Marketplace' commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.

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Wait a minute. Who do they think are bearing the risks? Their blather about free enterprise risk-taking has it upside down. The higher you go in the economy, the easier?it is?to make money without taking any personal financial risk at all. The lower you go, the bigger the risks.

Wall Street has become the center of?riskless free enterprise. Bankers risk other peoples? money. If deals turn bad, they collect their fees in any event. The entire hedge-fund industry is designed to hedge bets so big investors can make money whether the price of assets they bet on rises or falls. And if the worst happens, the biggest bankers and investors now know they?ll be bailed out by taxpayers because they?re too big to fail.

But the worst examples of?riskless free enteprise are the CEOs who rake in millions after they screw up royally.

Near the end of 2007, Charles Prince resigned as CEO of Citgroup after announcing the bank would need an additional $8 billion to $11 billion in write-downs related to sub-prime mortgages gone bad. Prince left with a princely $30 million in pension, stock awards, and stock options, along with an office, car, and a driver for five years.

Stanley O?Neal?s five-year tenure as CEO of Merrill Lynch ended about the same time, when it became clear Merrill would have to take tens of billions in write-downs on bad sub-prime mortgages and be bought up at a fire-sale price by Bank of America. O?Neal got a payout worth $162 million.

Philip Purcell, who left Morgan Stanley in 2005 after a shareholder revolt against him, took away $43.9 million plus $250,000 a year for life.

Pay-for-failure extends far beyond Wall Street. In a study released last week, GMI, a well-regarded research firm that monitors executive pay, analyzed the largest severance packages received by ex-CEOs since 2000.

On the list: Thomas E. Freston, who lasted just nine months as CEO of Viacom before being terminated, and left with a walk-away package of $101 million.

Also William D. McGuire, who in 2006 was forced to resign as CEO of UnitedHealth over a stock-options scandal, and for his troubles got pay package worth $286 million.

And Hank A. McKinnell, Jr.?s, whose five-year tenure as CEO of Pfizer was marked by a $140 billion drop in Pfizer?s stock market value. Notwithstanding, McKinnell walked away with a payout of nearly $200 million, free lifetime medical coverage, and an annual pension of $6.5 million. (At Pfizer?s 2006 annual meeting a plane flew overhead towing a banner reading ?Give it back, Hank!?)

Not to forget Douglas Ivester of Coca Cola, who stepped down as CEO in 2000 after a period of stagnant growth and declining earnings, with an exit package worth $120 million.

If anything, pay for failure is on the rise. Last September, Leo Apotheker was shown the door at Hewlett-Packard, with an exit package worth $13 million. Stephen Hilbert left Conseco with an estimated $72 million even though value of Conseco?s stock during his tenure sank from $57 to $5 a share on its way to bankruptcy.

**

But as economic risk-taking has declined at the top, it?s been increasing at the middle and below. More than 20 percent of the American workforce is now ?contingent? ? temporary workers, contractors, independent consultants ? with no security at all.

Even full-time workers who have put in decades with a company can now find themselves without a job overnight ? with no parachute, no help finding another job, and no health insurance.

Meanwhile the proportion of large and medium-sized companies (200 or more workers) offering full health care coverage continues to drop ? from 74 percent in 1980 to under 10 percent today. Twenty-five years ago, two-thirds of large and medium-sized employers also provided health insurance to their retirees. Now, fewer than 15 percent do.

The risk of getting old with no pension is also rising. In 1980, more than 80 percent of large and medium-sized firms gave their workers ?defined-benefit? pensions that guaranteed a fixed amount of money every month after they retired. Now it?s down to under 10 percent. Instead, they offer ?defined contribution? plans where the risk is on the workers. When the stock market tanks, as it did in 2008, the 401(k) plan tanks along with it. Today, a third of all workers with defined-benefit plans contribute nothing, which means their employers don?t either.

And the risk of losing earnings continues to grow. Even before the crash of 2008, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics at University of Michigan found that over any given two-year stretch about half of all families experienced some decline in income. And the downturns were becoming progressively larger. In the 1970s, the typical drop was about 25 percent. By late 1990s, it was 40 percent. By the mid-2000s, family incomes rose and fell twice as much as they did in the mid-1970s, on average.

What Romney and the cheerleaders of risk-taking free enterprise don?t want you to know is the risks of the economy have been shifting steadily away from CEOs and Wall Street ? and on to average working people. It?s not just income and wealth that are surging to the top. Economic security is moving there as well, leaving the rest of us stranded.

To the extent free enterprise is on trial, the real question is whether the system is rigged in favor of those at the top who get rewarded no matter how badly they screw up, while the rest of us get screwed no matter how hard we work.

The jury will report back Election Day. In the meantime, Obama and the Democrats shouldn?t allow Romney and the Republicans to act as defenders of risk-taking free enterprise. Americans need to know the truth. The only way the economy can thrive is if we have more risk-taking at the top, and more economic security below.

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. This post originally ran on www.robertreich.org.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/1p8Z_QHhCcs/Romney-can-take-risks.-He-s-rich

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Qaeda militants seize Yemen town, Norwegian kidnapped (Reuters)

SANAA (Reuters) ? Al Qaeda militants have seized a small town southeast of Yemen's capital Sanaa Sunday in another setback to efforts to restore order after President Ali Abdullah Saleh formally handed over power following almost a year of mass protests against his rule.

A police source and witnesses said the militants met little resistance from a small police force when they entered the town of Radda in al-Baydah province, 170 km (105 miles) from Sanaa, Saturday night, seizing an ancient citadel and mosque.

The capture of Radda expanded al Qaeda control outside the southern province of Abyan, where they have taken over several towns since the uprising against Saleh began.

Saleh signed a deal brokered by Yemen's Gulf neighbors in November under which he shifted formal power to his deputy. But he has not yet left the country and continues to wield a great deal of power through relatives' control of security forces, raising concern about the integrity of the deal.

"I call again on President Saleh to abide by the terms of the agreement," U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said in Beirut during a Middle East visit, noting that a U.N. mediator had been "at the heart of negotiations" with Saleh.

The anti-Saleh unrest has emboldened groups linked to al Qaeda's Yemen-based regional wing, which the United States has called the most dangerous branch of the militant network.

The United States and Saudi Arabia, the world's No. 1 oil exporter, are keen for the Gulf-backed power transfer deal to work, fearing that a vacuum in Yemen may give al Qaeda space to thrive near key oil and cargo shipping lanes in the Red Sea.

U.N. EMPLOYEE KIDNAPPED BY TRIBESMEN

Underscoring the continued lawlessness in Yemen, a Norwegian working for the United Nations was kidnapped in Sanaa at the weekend, Norway's foreign ministry said.

A tribal source said the Norwegian was abducted by tribesmen from oil-producing Maarib province demanding the release of a suspect accused of killing two members of the security forces.

Residents in Radda, which has a population of around 60,000, said the militants who took over the town were led by Tareq al-Dahab, who had been handed over by Syria to Yemen recently after being detained while trying to slip into Iraq.

Dahab is a brother-in-law of a U.S.-born, Yemen-based Muslim cleric linked to al Qaeda killed in an air strike last year.

Yahia Abu Usba, deputy head of the Yemeni Socialist Party and a Saleh critic, said security forces appeared to have done little to prevent militants entering Radda. He said al Qaeda would target Maarib Province next, bringing it closer to Sanaa.

But Abdo al-Janadi, a spokesman for Saleh's General People's Congress (GPC), rejected the charges and he in turn accused opposition elements involved in the power transfer deal of collusion with the militants.

"There is a link between the Islah and al Qaeda," he said, referring to the Islamist al-Islah party, a member of the bloc.

The United States and Saudi Arabia backed Saleh through much of his autocratic 33-year rule, fearing that any vacuum would be exploited by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, based in Yemen. As street protests intensified against Saleh, however, they endorsed the Gulf-brokered deal for Saleh to step down.

Under the plan, the opposition and the GPC shared out cabinet posts between them, forming a unity government to steer the country toward presidential elections in February.

But little headway toward reinstating order on the ground has been made since then.

In Sanaa Saturday, a 48-hour deadline given to armed opponents and supporters of Saleh to withdraw after months of street fighting passed but there was little change in the armed face-off, according to residents.

Fighting against Islamist militants in the south has continued, forcing about 97,000 people to flee. More than 300,000 others have been displaced by tribal rebellion in north Yemen, according to U.N. estimates.

A local official said the bodies of two soldiers were found in an area some 80 km (50 miles) east of the Abyan provincial capital Zinjibar Sunday. He said he believed the two had been abducted by al Qaeda to the area where they were killed.

(Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari, additional reporting by Erika Solomon in Beirut and Victoria Klesty in Oslo; Writing by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Isabel Coles and Mark Heinrich)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/crime/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120115/ts_nm/us_yemen

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US general fights alcoholism after public collapse (AP)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. ? Retired Brigadier General Stanley Cherrie flew into machine gun fire, lost a leg to a landmine and directed tanks against Iraqi forces in his long Army career. When he walked into a reunion of top brass looking shaky and then collapsed, another side of his military life was revealed: years of hard drinking had grown into alcoholism that nearly killed him.

Cherrie's breakdown in front of his comrades, who had gathered to mark the 20th anniversary of Operation Desert Storm, triggered his turn to rehabilitation from a habit that started a generation earlier. Now the man who commanded troops in Kuwait and Bosnia despite the prosthetic leg he got in Vietnam is sharing his story, in part as an example for a new cohort of soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I always knew I drank too much. In retrospect, I was the poster boy. If you wanted to build a functional alcoholic, you would follow my model," said Cherrie, 69, speaking for the first time about his struggle.

The turning point came at a reunion of officers who planned Operation Desert Storm, the 1990 military campaign that ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's invading forces from Kuwait. Minutes after sitting down to eat, Cherrie collapsed at the table. The Army's highest ranking doctor, Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker, was on hand and treated Cherrie before an ambulance whisked him to a nearby emergency room.

At the hospital, Cherrie's daughter asked to speak to Schoomaker in private. Then she disclosed a family secret: Her father was an alcoholic, and years of drinking had taken a toll.

It was the beginning of Cherrie's long journey back to sobriety from a thirst that began in Vietnam, where the young officer stepped on a land mine that blew apart his right leg, right hand and part of his left heel.

Despite the injury, Cherrie managed to stay in the military at a time when disabled soldiers were routinely discharged, working his way up the ranks to command troops in Desert Storm and later Bosnia.

As he comes to grips now with the pain he caused his family, he has another even more daunting challenge: caring for his wife, Mary Ellen, who is battling a degenerative arthritic condition. High school sweethearts, they have been married 46 years.

His fight for sobriety also helps illustrate a larger problem ? as troops return home from Iraq and Afghanistan, many have turned to alcohol to help relieve the pain.

Schoomaker, who headed the Army medical command from 2007 until December, says drinking remains a problem in the military, but there are efforts to change that. Three years ago, for example, the Army created a pilot program at six bases that allows soldiers to seek outpatient drug and alcohol treatment without telling their commanders.

"The culture has shifted dramatically, where alcohol use is openly discouraged in a public kind of way. But it's not in any shape or form been eliminated," he said.

For his part, Cherrie is using his experience to help others.

"I think Stan wants to get his story out because when he screws up he wants people to know it as a learning experience," said his friend John Harris, a retired lieutenant colonel. "He's not looking for sympathy. He's not looking for notoriety. He's looking at it as: `How can my story help someone (else) who is going through a similar situation.'"

____(equals)

Cherrie's wife, Mary Ellen, first noticed her husband's drinking after his first tour of duty in Vietnam.

A helicopter pilot, Cherrie seemed to encounter enemy fire on every mission, and won a Silver Star for taking out a .50 caliber enemy machine gun on top of a building during the Tet Offensive in January, 1968. After skirmishes, some soldiers would return to makeshift bases carved in the Vietnamese jungles and drink alcohol to unwind, Cherrie recalled.

It was a practice that continued when Cherrie returned from his deployment. At an Army base in Germany, Cherrie would sit around at night drinking with other pilots talking about firefights.

"They turned to alcohol for relief," she said. "They were talking about everything they had just seen. And pilots were always called back. There was this great pressure: When am I going to be called back again?"

For Cherrie, the call came three years later and he returned to Vietnam in 1971. A month into his tour, Cherrie stepped on a landmine. He was transferred to the amputee ward of Valley Forge Veterans Hospital in Pennsylvania and thought he would be forced to leave the military because of his injuries.

Without the Army, Cherrie thought he would be lost. As a child, Cherrie played war games with friends in the fields surrounding his southern New Jersey home. He grew up in a staunchly patriotic community where everyone, including his father, told stories about serving in World War II. Even when Cherrie played baseball and football at Rutgers University, he thought about the military, participating in ROTC. When he graduated from Rutgers in 1964, he enlisted.

His hopes of staying in the Army were buoyed by Maj. Frederick Franks Jr., who visited the hospital and stopped by Cherrie's bed to offer encouraging words. Cherrie later discovered that Franks' left leg was amputated below the knee.

Cherrie was optimistic: If Franks could stay in the military and return to combat without a leg, he could do it, too.

___(equals)

Mary Ellen wasn't sure about her husband's decision. She was proud of his physical recovery, but knew he had to prove to the Army that he was still physically fit. Even with a prosthetic leg and mangled hand, he kept up, and was assigned to an infantry unit at Fort Benning, Ga.

But she could see changes in his personality. Yes, he was still the outgoing, charismatic officer. But he was drinking more and more, especially on weekends.

It was all part of the old military culture, his friend John Harris said.

"On Friday nights, you went to the officers' club, and anytime you had a party it was centered around the consumption of large quantities of alcohol," he said. "Some would perceive if you weren't half drunk and raising hell and jumping off of tables and carrying on in the officers' club, you didn't have a `warrior spirit.'"

Mary Ellen said her husband never drank at work or did anything to interfere with his career.

"But at the officers' club or home, it was a different story," she said.

___(equals)

Cherrie was making all the right career moves. He graduated with master's degree in public administration and landed a job on the staff of Frederick Franks, who by then was a lieutenant colonel on the fast track to becoming a general.

He used his experience in 1990, when Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait, threatening the stability of the entire Middle East. Franks was one of the generals who helped draw up the plans to liberate Kuwait, and Cherrie, now a lieutenant colonel himself, was a key member of his staff.

After the war, Cherrie was promoted to brigadier general. Preparing to retire, Cherrie received a new mission: Help lead United Nations troops trying to keep peace in Bosnia. When that mission was complete, he retired near Fort Leavenworth, Kan., in 1998 after 34 years of service.

Cherrie was hired by Cubic, a defense contractor, and volunteered with community groups.

But his drinking began to spin out of control. After work, he would go out with friends. Other nights, he would sit at home and drink a pint or more of gin. Mary Ellen and other family members pleaded with him to stop.

___(equals)

By late 2010, Cherrie had left Cubic, and was contacted about the reunion of the VII Corps Desert Storm Veterans Association.

After Desert Storm, VII Corps was deactivated, and the unit's colors were stored at Fort Leavenworth. Franks asked Cherrie to escort the colors to the February gathering.

Now 70, Mary Ellen couldn't go because of her health, so Cherrie asked his daughter, Victoria Cherrie, to accompany him. He needed help, too, because his own health had been deteriorating.

A few days before he left, Cherrie decided he wouldn't touch alcohol. Maybe that would help him feel better. But the morning of the event, he was shaky and dizzy. At a memorial service, his friends were shocked at his appearance.

"I had not seen Stan look that bad ever," said retired Major Gen. Alan "Bud" Thrasher. "I said, `Stan, what in the world is going on?'"

Cherrie said he hadn't been feeling well for a while. Thrasher told Cherrie he would ask Schoomaker, who lived at the base, to examine him.

And before dinner that night, Schoomaker talked to Cherrie in the lobby of the officers' club.

"He looked like he suffered from a chronic illness of some kind," Schoomaker said. "It wasn't clear what kind."

Schoomaker asked Cherrie if he regularly drank alcohol, but he denied it. He asked Cherrie to go to Walter Reed hospital the following day for an examination. Cherrie reluctantly agreed and returned to the ballroom.

About five minutes later, as the waiters were beginning to serve dinner, Cherrie collapsed, falling out of his chair. Victoria began screaming, and cradled his head on the floor as his faced turned purple.

When they reached the emergency room, Victoria turned to Schoomaker and asked to speak to him alone.

"My dad really hasn't been explicit with you," she said softly, and disclosed the details of his drinking.

Victoria's confession set off a chain of events that led to Cherrie entering an alcohol treatment program.

At first Cherrie refused, and became defiant. He said he didn't have an alcohol problem. He said he had to get back to take care of Mary Ellen. But then Schoomaker said the words that finally got through.

"Stan, you have a choice: You can go to rehab or you can take another drink and die."

___(equals)

Victoria called her mother and told her the news. After all these years of pleading with Cherrie to stop drinking, he was headed to an eight-week inpatient alcoholic and drug rehabilitation program in Alabama.

Mary Ellen was thrilled about the treatment, and saddened because she knew collapsing in the room was one of the most embarrassing moments of his life. But it probably saved him.

The road to sobriety was difficult. After detoxification, Cherrie learned how his drinking had hurt his family over the years: how they had to walk on eggshells and how his wife had to protect their children because he could become combative at any time.

As part of the program, family members sent his counselor letters that Cherrie had to read aloud for the first time in a group therapy session.

In Victoria's, she detailed the negative effects his alcoholism had on her life. His daughter, Jennifer, and his wife wrote similar letters. But his son Brian refused, saying if he had something to say to his father, he would do it in person.

"It was very difficult to hear these things," said Cherrie, his voice trailing off.

He decided that if he made it through the program, he wasn't going to hide his disease. He would talk to people about it. Maybe he could help someone who was thinking about seeking help.

Nearly a year later, Cherrie hasn't had a drink.

The struggle hasn't been made any easier with his wife's illness.

For years, Mary Ellen doted on her husband. She moved from city to city with their growing family while he took new assignments. She raised their three children while he worked late.

Now, Cherrie spends a good part of his days taking care of her. He makes her tea in the morning and makes sure she's comfortable.

Mary Ellen has noticed.

"He has been more tolerant. He certainly is waiting on me hand and foot. He really is. Probably too much," she said.

She also understands why he's sharing his story. It's a continuation of something he's been doing quietly for years: mentoring wounded soldiers, helping them get adjusted to civilian life.

"He has learned a lot and he can share that with other people," Mary Ellen said. "If he can help young soldiers in that respect ? not to let anything get out of control ? he would be doing good work."

For his part, Cherrie said he's not sure why he drank so much, and refused to blame it on the Army or his injuries. Before the military, he rarely drank at all. Not even when he attended Rutgers and went to parties. But since his treatment, he has received positive feedback from friends.

"They say: `You did the right thing. You sought help.' But hey, look ... I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but when God nearly kills you and you have a seizure in front of 300 of your high-ranking best friends, it's time to do something," he said.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iraq/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120114/ap_on_re_us/us_general_s_journey

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Boxer is a Free DOS Game Emulator for your Mac [Mac Downloads]

Boxer is a Free DOS Game Emulator for your MacMac: Computer games have come a long way since the days of Doom, Zork, Tie Fighter, and Castle Wolfenstein, but many of us who grew up with those games would like to replay them. Boxer is a free app that will let you play any DOS game on your Mac.

After installing the app you can download any DOS game and import it into the app by dragging it into the import window in Boxer. You'll never see a terminal window.

Options include using a joystick, locking your mouse pointer so it can't accidentally mess up your game, and rendering the graphics four different ways: original, fast smoothing (MAME), Fancy Smoothing (HQx), and with added TV Scanlines. You can also switch from full-screen to the 4:3 aspect ratio that PC monitors at that time used.

If you're a retro gamer or just want to try out some of the games you parents keep talking about you may want to give Boxer a spin. Note that there are two different versions of the app?one is for Mac OS X 10.5 and up and the other is for 10.4 and below. The app comes with four games: Commander Keen 4 and demos of Epic Pinball, Ultima Underworld, and X-COM: UFO Defense.

Boxer | via Addictive Tips

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/9Yaj8ass8Qo/boxer-is-a-free-dos-game-emulator-for-your-mac

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Rukus solar-powered Bluetooth sound system hands-on

Remember that Rukus solar-powered Bluetooth sound system we just told you about a few minutes ago? Well, we just got a little bit of hands-on time with the thing. The speaker set was plugged in, of course -- there's not a heck of a lot of natural lighting in the Venetian hotel, here in Vegas. Also, for the record, in spite of the model's rather boastful name, the speaker couldn't really get all that loud, sadly -- though that's sort of the curse of the Bluetooth speaker system, we suppose. It also often comes with the territory for portable systems, and the Ruckus, again, in contrast to its name, is reasonably compact and portable. We fiddled with the volume and bass buttons, but the speaker didn't get all that much louder than the roaring crowd around us.

The decision to include an e-ink display was a pretty novel one -- its uses aren't quite as broad as an LCD, but it's hard to deny that it was extremely readable, as it no doubt would be in direct sunlight, as the company claims. And let's face it, if you use the solar panel as intended, you're gonna have this thing outside in the sun a lot, right? The Ruckus will run you $150 when it drops in Q2, just in time for you to actually want to go outside again.

Rukus solar-powered Bluetooth sound system hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 08 Jan 2012 19:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/61hZ2rnbFYI/

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