NY man dubbed No. 1 deadbeat parent pleads guilty

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. (AP) ? A New York man once dubbed by prosecutors as the government's most wanted deadbeat parent pleaded guilty Thursday to owing more than $1.2 million to three children from two failed marriages.

Robert Sand, 50, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Central Islip on Long Island to two counts of failing to pay child support. Assistant U.S. Attorney Alan Bode said in court that the child support orders, which were issued on Long Island, have been in arrears since at least 2002.

The figure cited by Bode includes interest and penalties. The prosecutor declined to comment to reporters after the court proceeding.

Sand told the judge he fled first to Florida and then to Thailand Sand's attorney, Glenn Obedin, said his client had grown tired of living on the run and contacted authorities late last year.

Sand left Thailand, where he had worked in an assortment of odd jobs, and flew to the Philippines. He was arrested and then deported from the Philippines in November 2012 because he lacked proper identification, prosecutors said. He was sent to Los Angeles, where he was arrested by federal marshals, and then extradited to New York, where he has been held without bail since December.

"He had enough and wanted to come back and have the opportunity to make it right," Obedin told reporters after the court proceeding on Long Island.

Sand faces up to four years in prison when he is sentenced in May.

"Neither court orders nor the familial bond meant anything to him as he fled to avoid his obligations," U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said in a statement.

The two mothers of Sand's three children were not in the courtroom for Thursday's proceeding, but Obedin has said he has contacted them and claimed their priority is for Sand to be free to earn a living so he can repay his debt. As part of the plea agreement, Sand is required to make full restitution. He waived his right to appeal the guilty plea.

Obedin said Sand has worked in the past as a car salesman and has an offer to work in that field when he is released.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ny-man-dubbed-no-1-deadbeat-parent-pleads-211554997.html

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China's Killer Drones Didn't Kill a Drug Lord, but Obama's Drones Could Have

Today's news that Chinese authorities now have advanced navigation and weaponry to kill suspected criminals in a manhunt was as notable for what China can do ? target a Myanmar drug kingpin suspected in the killing of 13 Chinese soldiers, unmanned, and from above ? as for what it didn't: actually assassinate him with a drone. A look inside China's search for the notorious Naw Kham?in today's?Global Times?reveals that a plan "to?use an unmanned aircraft to carry 20 kilograms of TNT to bomb" the hideout of the Golden Triangle's most wanted gang lord "was rejected, because the order was to catch him alive," as Liu?Yuejin,?director of China's Public Security Ministry's anti-drug bureau, told the paper. But those with an eye on President Obama's foreign policy and targeting killing program say that the U.S. Justice Department's recently leaked and much critiqued "white paper" justifying drone targets would have allowed for China, if it used America's new legal boundaries with its own killer technology, to execute Kham from the sky.

RELATED: Women at the Olympics, Syrians in Iraq, and Discarded Pianos

As Foreign Policy's J. Dana Stuster writes, China could argue that going after Kham could is not unlike the way the "United States justified targeting al Qaeda militants tied to the bombing of the USS?Cole?with drone strikes, beginning Abu Ali al-Harithi in 2002 (well before the white paper was authored)." Stuster adds that a strike also could have been justified based on the argument that no one was helping to capture Kham:?

Much like the U.S. official rationale as for strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, China could have either sought Naypyidaw's support [in Myanmar] or credibly claimed that the government was "unwilling or unable to suppress the threat posed by the individual being targeted," in the words of the Obama administration's?white paper?on its own targeted killing program.?

The ultimate decision by Chinese law enforcement ? one of restraint ? gains context when you realize just how wanted Kham had become.?The New York Times's Jane Perlez outlines his notoriety:

China?s law enforcement officials were under pressure from an outraged public to take action after 13 Chinese sailors on two cargo ships laden with narcotics were killed in October 2011 on the Mekong River. Photos of the dead sailors, their bodies gagged and blindfolded and some with head wounds suggesting execution-style killings, circulated on China?s Internet.

It was one of the most brutal assaults on Chinese citizens abroad in recent years. Naw Kham, a member of Myanmar?s ethnic Shan minority and a major drug trafficker, was suspected in the killings.

To be sure, just because China didn't rain fiery death from above?this time doesn't mean that the Kham hunt hasn't proved that China?can. The latest Chinese military technology was on display in November at an air show, with two new models very similar to U.S. Predator and Reaper drones. The?Wing Loon drone, pictured above, comes in at a fraction of the cost of its Reaper cousin, and as Perlez notes, the?CH-4 model can cover the distance over an area in dispute between China and Japan. So it appears that China has finally caught up to U.S. drone technology, if not exactly its ambitious justifications for using it ? not even in one of the greatest manhunts known to the Far East. As the?Times's "kill list" reporter Scott Shane asked?of the drone arms race in the midst of China's catching-up ? and the Kham manhunt ? in 2011,?"If China, for instance, sends killer drones into Kazakhstan to hunt minority Uighur Muslims it accuses of plotting terrorism, what will the United States say?"?Well,?we might have the beginnings of an answer now.?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/chinas-killer-drones-didnt-kill-drug-lord-obamas-171427047.html

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$100M Calif. mansion has unusual sale requirement

HILLSBOROUGH, Calif. (AP) ? As if the $100 million asking price wasn't deterrent enough, the owner of a mansion for sale in a ritzy San Francisco suburb says the buyer can move in only after his death.

The unusual arrangement is for a 16,000-square-foot Mediterranean-style home on more than 45 acres in Hillsborough.

The San Mateo County Times reports (http://bit.ly/VyKCcz ) the owner, 76-year-old Christian de Guigne (deh GHEEN-yay) IV, was born and raised in the home and doesn't plan to turn it over to the new owner until he dies.

Sotheby's International Realty agent Gregg Lynn says the arrangement was common for property traded up until the 20th century. He called the estate a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Another home nearby recently sold for $117.5 million.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/aa9398e6757a46fa93ed5dea7bd3729e/Article_2013-02-21-US-Mansion-Sale-Unusual-Deal/id-a8302bf1724c41dfa0f5038d19aaf537

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Eye movements reveal reading impairments in schizophrenia

Feb. 18, 2013 ? A study of eye movements in schizophrenia patients provides new evidence of impaired reading fluency in individuals with the mental illness.

The findings, by researchers at McGill University in Montreal, could open avenues to earlier detection and intervention for people with the illness.

While schizophrenia patients are known to have abnormalities in language and in eye movements, until recently reading ability was believed to be unaffected. That is because most previous studies examined reading in schizophrenia using single-word reading tests, the McGill researchers conclude. Such tests aren't sensitive to problems in reading fluency, which is affected by the context in which words appear and by eye movements that shift attention from one word to the next.

The McGill study, led by Ph.D. candidate Veronica Whitford and psychology professors Debra Titone and Gillian A. O'Driscoll, monitored how people move their eyes as they read simple sentences. The results, which were first published online last year, appear in the February issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Eye movement measures provide clear and objective indicators of how hard people are working as they read. For example, when struggling with a difficult sentence, people generally make smaller eye movements, spend more time looking at each word, and spend more time re-reading words. They also have more difficulty attending to upcoming words, so they plan their eye movements less efficiently.

The McGill study, which involved 20 schizophrenia outpatients and 16 non-psychiatric participants, showed that reading patterns in people with schizophrenia differed in several important ways from healthy participants matched for gender, age, and family social status. People with schizophrenia read more slowly, generated smaller eye movements, spent more time processing individual words, and spent more time re-reading. In addition, people with schizophrenia were less efficient at processing upcoming words to facilitate reading.

The researchers evaluated factors that could contribute to the problems in reading fluency among the schizophrenia outpatients -- specifically, their ability to parse words into sound components and their ability to skillfully control eye movements in non-reading contexts. Both factors were found to contribute to the reading deficits.

"Our findings suggest that measures of reading difficulty, combined with other information such as family history, may help detect people in the early stages of schizophrenia -- and thereby enable earlier intervention," Whitford says.

Moreover, fluent reading is a crucial life skill, and in people with schizophrenia, there is a strong relationship between reading skill and the extent to which they can function independently, the researchers note. "Improving reading through intervention in people with schizophrenia may be important to improving their ability to function in society," Titone adds.

Other co-authors on the study are Christopher C. Pack of the Montreal Neurological Institute and Ridha Joober and Ashok Malla of McGill's Department of Psychiatry and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by McGill University.

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. Veronica Whitford, Gillian A. O'Driscoll, Christopher C. Pack, Ridha Joober, Ashok Malla, Debra Titone. Reading impairments in schizophrenia relate to individual differences in phonological processing and oculomotor control: Evidence from a gaze-contingent moving window paradigm.. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2013; 142 (1): 57 DOI: 10.1037/a0028062

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/B6Xe9mcc1Ks/130219121451.htm

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Windows 8 still has Windows Basic theme

CSharp., on Today, 20:44, said:

It's more of a bug than a feature really. I think MDI child windows in general have the Windows basic theme in Windows 8.

Still that means they haven't removed the theme.

Detection, on Today, 20:42, said:

Easier probably, and 99% of Win 8 users wouldn't have a clue it was even there, let alone want to enable it

Maybe but they could surely notice that part of the application is themed differently and might be curious on how to enable it.

Source: http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1137586-windows-8-still-has-windows-basic-theme/

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'Argo' Blu-Ray Exclusive: The Story Behind The Rescue

With the Oscars happening this Sunday, there's no better time to revisit one of the upcoming ceremony's front-runners than now. We're talking, of course, about "Argo," director and star Ben Affleck's drama based on the true story of the rescue of six American men and women in Tehran after the fall of the Shah. There's [...]

Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2013/02/19/argo-blu-ray/

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26 injured as snow sparks crashes on I-95

By John Newland, Staff Writer, NBC News

Another round of howling winds and blowing snow punished parts of New England, with at least 26 people hurt in collisions that forced the closure of busy Interstate 95 on Sunday.

More than a dozen collisions damaged 30 cars along a two-exit stretch of I-95 near West Haven, Conn., NBCConnecticut.com reported. Police closed both sides of the East Coast's primary north-south route for two hours.

As the storm system pushed north, it left a stretch along the northern border from upstate New York to the east coast of Maine bracing for bitterly cold wind chills and more snow, according to the National Weather Service. Eastern Maine faced a blizzard warning until 4 p.m. ET Monday.

Winds were predicted to gust up to 50 mph, causing wind chills approaching 30 degrees below zero. Blowing snow was likely to create white-out conditions and produce drifts up to several feet high, the weather service said.?

More from NBCConnecticut.com

The second blizzard in as many weeks is hitting the Northeast. NBC's Lester Holt reports.

In addition to Maine, parts of New York, Vermont and New Hampshire were under similar advisories, with wind chills of nearly 30 below possible in higher elevations.

Weather.com predicted that the wind would be a much bigger problem than snow, with only an additional inch or two expected. Such snows are "not particularly heavy by New England standards," weather.com said, but poor visibility and bitterly cold air presented real dangers.

More from Weather.com

No widespread flight cancellations were reported by 6 a.m. ET Monday, according to FlightAware.com. However,?the weather system on Sunday contributed to more than 200 U.S. and Canadian flight cancellations. Particularly hard hit was Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, where 84 flights were canceled. The storm dropped flurries as far south as Charleston, N.C.

Elsewhere, the Northern Plains was experiencing the nation's harshest winter weather.

The weather service issued blizzard warnings for parts of North Dakota and Minnesota, with wind gusts up to 45 mph and snowfall of up to 10 inches expected through Monday evening. The nearly 3 million inhabitants of Minneapolis-St. Paul were forecast to just miss the worst of the weather.?

Related:

High winds, snow hit New England

Clobbered Northeast begins to dig out

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Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/18/17002245-26-injured-as-snow-sparks-crashes-on-i-95-in-connecticut?lite

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