Syrians play down military intervention after chemical weapons' talks ...

DAMASCUS, April 28 (Xinhua) -- Despite mounting talks of possible military intervention in Syria following recent U.S. statements about Syria's use of chemical weapons, most Syrians downplayed their significance and considered them as no more than new pressure cards on the Syrian administration.

"I don't think it's a serious threat... They simply want to raise the ceiling of bargaining, especially as the government has showed over more than two years a defiant attitude and didn't bow to their pressures," said Alya, 39-year-old housewife.

U.S. President Barack Obama has warned Syria that using chemical weapons would be a "game changer," as he faces rising pressure at home and abroad to intervene in the country's bloody civil war.

But speaking Friday, a day after U.S. officials said they suspected the use of the deadly agent sarin in small-scale attacks in Syria, Obama warned that Washington must act prudently, and establish exactly if, how and when such arms were used.

Obama, who had previously told Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that the use of chemical weapons would cross a "red line," promised a "vigorous" U.S. and international probe into the latest reports.

Syria has denied the accusation, and Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zouebi told Russian television Saturday that the U.S. and British accusations are a "barefaced lie."

Syria's permanent representative to the United Nations, Bashar Jaafari, said that imposing a no-fly zone cannot be done without a unanimous resolution by the UN Security Council.

His comments came in the context of a response to the words of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry about the imposition of no-fly zone in the event of proven use of chemical weapons.

Jaafari said in an interview with a Lebanese TV channel that raising the issue of chemical weapons in Syria is one of the pressures exerted on the Syrian people and the government alike for obtaining political concessions.

A senior U.S. senator said on Sunday that a group of nations should get troops ready to invade Syria in order to secure possible stocks of chemical weapons.

Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, said that an international force must "be ready operationally" to go in and prevent Islamic fighters involved in Syria's civil war from getting their hands on chemical weapons.

Syrians have growing confidence that the crisis in the country would be solved only through political channels owing to Russia and Iran's firm backing of the government. They are fully convinced that the United States couldn't act without Russia's approval as any military intervention requires a unanimous UN resolution.

"Has he (Obama) got finally Russia's assurances that it will not veto once again a UN resolution on Syria?" said Munir, an engineer.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly said that he would defend the Syrian government even if the fighting moves to Moscow's streets and pledged that he will not allow the Libyan scenario to be repeated in Syria.

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said on Saturday that claims that chemical weapons have been used in Syria should not become a pretext for a foreign military intervention in the country.

"If there is serious evidence of the use of chemical weapons in Syria, it should be presented immediately and not concealed," said Bogdanov, Putin's Middle East envoy, during a visit to Beirut.

"If they are able to intervene in Syria, they would have done that a long time ago," Munir said. "The Americans are aware that Syria, with the support of its allies, would respond and the first target would be Israel, America's main ally in the region."

The chemical weapons' frenzy flared last month when Syria filed a complaint to the UN asking the international body to send a technical team to investigate the rebels' use of chemical weapons in northern Syria.

Last December, Syria warned that rebels could use chemical weapons in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad's forces, but insisted the regime will never unleash such arms on its own people.

Related:

Full story

[Video] World community treats Syria chemical weapons issue cautiously

BEIJING, April 28 (Xinhuanet) -- In Syria?? two-year civil war, more than 70,000 people have died and more than 2.5 million have been made refugees. The United States has so far only offered non-military aid to rebels, but one added element could change the equation: proof of chemical weapons.

Syrian rebels say these civilians outside Aleppo last month were victims of Sarin Gas-a deadly nerve agent. U.S. President Barack Obama has said use of chemical weapons in Syria would mark a red line for his policy, and this week the administration said it believes-"with varying degrees of confidence"-that chemical weapons are in use against the Syrian people. Riding this momentum, a spokesman for the rebels appealed for action. Full story

News Analysis: U.S., Syria cautious on alleged chemical weapons use to avoid worsening situation

WASHINGTON/DAMASCUS, April 27 (Xinhua) -- U.S. allegations about the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian army in some areas of the Mideastern country "do not have any credibility," Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said Friday.

Al-Zoubi's remarks came a day after the White House said the Syrian government has used chemical weapons in its conflict with the opposition forces. Full story

Syria says rebels may obtain chemical weapons from Turkey: minister

DAMASCUS, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said that the chemical weapons used by rebels in a northern Syrian town were probably from Turkey, the state-run SANA news agency reported Saturday.

The remarks were made during al-Zoubi's visit to Moscow. He said the missile which targeted the northern town of Khan al-Assal in Aleppo province was launched from a rebel-held place, which was not far from the Turkish borders. Full story

Assad's use of chemical weapons would be "game changer": Obama

WASHINGTON, April 26 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government led by President Bashar al-Assad would be a "game changer," although he meanwhile cautioned such intelligence assessments were still "preliminary."

"It's obviously horrific as it is when mortars are being fired on civilians and people are being indiscriminately killed, to use potential weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations crosses another line with respect to international norms and international law," Obama said before meeting with Jordanian King Abdullah II at the White House.

Source: http://english.sina.com/world/2013/0428/586305.html

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Rick Perry Disgusted By "Booming Business" Cartoon

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/04/rick-perry-disgusted-by-booming-business-cartoon/

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Actor Jeffrey Wright busted for DWI in NYC

Neilson Barnard / Getty Images

Actor Jeffrey Wright attends the Tribeca Film Festival 2013 after party for "A Single Shot" on April 26 in New York City.

By Brandi Fowler and Marcus Mulick, E! Online

It's safe to say Jeffrey Wright's weekend didn't get off to the best start.?The 47-year-old "Hunger Games: Catching Fire" ?actor was busted for DWAI (driving while ability impaired) in New York City early Saturday morning, E! News has confirmed.

Catching Fire casting: Jeffrey Wright wires into Hunger Games sequel

According to the NYPD, officers pulled Wright over after they saw him driving erratically, and detected an alcohol odor coming from his vehicle.

Wright was arrested after officers conducted a field sobriety test and he failed it.

The thesp, known for his roles in "Casino Royale" and "Angels in America," will play Beetee in the second installment of the "Hunger Games" ?franchise.

The film is set to hit theaters Nov. 22.

Jeffrey Wright isn't the only star that's gotten into trouble. Check out our gallery.

?

Source: http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2013/04/28/17957780-jeffrey-wright-busted-for-dwi-in-new-york?lite

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When pizza and gaming collide | GamesRadar

By the early 90s, Raphael, Leonardo, Donatello, and Michelangelo were the foremost experts on footclan shredding, sewer living, and pizza eating. It was only a matter of time before one of the major pizza chains hitched their ovens to TMNT's rising star, and lo and behold it was Pizza Hut who called dibs.

1990's TMNT: The Arcade Game port for the NES not only featured Pizza Hut logo throughout its backgrounds, but the game's manual included Pizza Hut coupons to help kids recreate their own ?Pizza Time!? in real life. Sadly, those coupons have long since expired, but Pizza Hut lives on forever in every copy of the TMNT arcade port.

Source: http://www.gamesradar.com/when-pizza-and-gaming-collide/

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Daily Chronicle | Are lesbians more accepted than gay men?

CHICAGO ? It may be a man?s world, as the saying goes, but lesbians seem to have an easier time living in it than gay men do.

High-profile lesbian athletes have come out while still playing their sports, but not a single gay male athlete in major U.S. professional sports has done the same. While television?s most prominent same-sex parents are the two fictional dads on ?Modern Family,? surveys show that society is actually more comfortable with the idea of lesbians parenting children.

And then there is the ongoing debate over the Boy Scouts of America proposal to ease their ban on gay leaders and scouts.

Reaction to the proposal, which the BSA?s National Council will take up next month, has been swift and often harsh. Yet amid the discussions, the Girl Scouts of USA reiterated their policy prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation, among other things. That announcement has gone largely unnoticed.

Certainly, the difference in the public?s reaction to the scouting organizations can be attributed, in part, to their varied histories, including the Boy Scouts? longstanding religious ties and a base that has become less urban over the years, compared with the Girl Scouts?.

But there?s also an undercurrent here, one that?s often present in debates related to homosexuality, whether over the military?s now-defunct ?Don?t Ask, Don?t Tell? policy or even same-sex marriage. Even as society has become more accepting of homosexuality overall, longstanding research has shown more societal tolerance for lesbians than gay men, and that gay men are significantly more likely to be targets of violence.

That research also has found that it?s often straight men who have the most difficult time with homosexuality ? and particularly gay men ? says researcher Gregory Herek.

?Men are raised to think they have to prove their masculinity, and one big part about being masculine is being heterosexual. So we see that harassment, jokes, negative statements and violence are often ways that even younger men try to prove their heterosexuality,? says Herek, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis, who has, for years, studied this phenomenon and how it plays out in the gay community.

That is not, of course, to downplay the harassment lesbians face. It can be just as ugly.

But it?s not as frequent, Herek and others have found, especially in adulthood. It?s also not uncommon for lesbians to encounter straight men who have a fascination with them.

?The men hit on me. The women hit on me. But I never feel like I?m in any immediate danger,? says Sarah Toce, the 29-year-old editor of The Seattle Lesbian and managing editor of The Contributor, both online news magazines. ?If I were a gay man, I might ? and if it?s like this in Seattle, can you imagine what it is like in less-accepting parts of middle America??

One of Herek?s studies found that, overall, 38 percent of gay men said that, in adulthood, they?d been victims of vandalism, theft or violence ? hit, beaten or sexually assaulted ? because they were perceived as gay. About 13 percent of lesbians said the same.

A separate study of young people in England also found that, in their teens, gay boys and lesbians were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By young adulthood, it was about the same for lesbians and straight girls. But in this study, published recently in the journal Pediatrics, gay young men were almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.

At least one historian says it wasn?t always that way for either men or women, whose ?expressions of love? with friends of the same gender were seen as a norm ? even idealized ? in the 19th century.

?These relationships offered ample opportunity for those who would have wanted to act on it physically, even if most did not,? says Thomas Foster, associate professor and head of the history department at DePaul University in Chicago.

Today?s ?code of male gendered behavior,? he says, often rejects these kinds of expressions between men.

We joke about the ?bro-mance? ? a term used to describe close friendships between straight men. But in some sense, the humor stems from the insinuation that those relationships could be romantic, though everyone assumes they aren?t.

Call those friends ?gay,? a word that?s still commonly used as an insult, and that?s quite another thing. Consider the furor over Rutgers University men?s basketball coach Mike Rice, who was recently fired for mistreating his players and mocking them with gay slurs.

If two women dance together at a club or walk arm-in-arm down the street, people are usually less likely to question it ? though some wonder if that has more to do with a lack of awareness than acceptance.

?Lesbians are so invisible in our society. And so I think the hatred is more invisible,? says Laura Grimes, a licensed clinical social worker in Chicago whose counseling practice caters to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender clients.

Grimes says she also frequently hears from lesbians who are harassed for ?looking like dykes,? meaning that people are less accepting if they look more masculine.

Still, Ian O?Brien, a gay man in Washington, D.C., sees more room for women ?to transcend what femininity looks like, or at least negotiate that space a little bit more.?

O?Brien, who?s 23, recently wrote an opinion piece tied to the Boy Scout debate and his own experience in the Scouts when he was growing up in the San Diego area.

?To put it simply: Being a boy is supposed to look one way, and you get punished when it doesn?t,? O?Brien wrote in the piece, which appeared in The Advocate, a national magazine for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities.

Joey Carrillo, a gay student at Elmhurst College in suburban Chicago, remembers trying to be as masculine as possible in high school. He hid the fact that he was gay, particularly around other athletes. As a wrestler, he says he never wanted to hear someone say, ?Oh, THAT?S why he wrestles.?

In fact, though more gay and lesbian athletes are coming out in college, gay male professional athletes in major sports have waited to do so until they have left their sport, one of the more recent being Robbie Rogers, an American soccer player who played professionally in England. There have been reports that gay male athletes who are currently playing may be on the verge of going public.

But women have already done so with little backlash.

U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe, for instance, came out right before she played in last year?s Olympics. WNBA star Seimone Augustus and the league?s No. 1 draft pick, Brittney Griner, are some of the more recent female athletes to follow suit.

In Hollywood in recent years, both openly gay men and lesbians have had successful careers. And when it comes to television and movies, it appears there are more high-profile gay male characters.

Still, while many see the two dads on the ?Modern Family? sitcom as groundbreaking, others have a sense that the societal discomfort with gay men as parents is at the root of many of the jokes.

?A good portion of that is for comedic effect,? says Don Todd, a 32-year-old father in a two-dad family in Orange, Calif. He doesn?t think most people would think it was as funny if the characters were two moms.

Herek, the researcher at UC-Davis, has, in fact, found in surveys that heterosexuals think lesbians would be better parents than gay men.

Nancy Dreyer, a mother in a two-mom family, has noticed this in her own life.

?With gay male friends of ours who have kids, people will say, ?My gosh, who takes care of this baby?? ? as if they?re not capable,? says Dreyer, whose 57 and lives in suburban Boston.

The assumption, she says, is that men aren?t nurturing. And if they?re too nurturing, she says, people get suspicious, noting that no one has ever questioned her and her partner about their ability to raise their son, who?s now in college.

She?s noticed the different ways society treats gay men and lesbians, partly because she has a brother, Benjamin Dreyer, who?s gay. The Dreyer siblings say it?s difficult to compare their experiences because Benjamin came out in college, and Nancy in her early 30s.

So he was the first to tell their parents. ?They yelled at me. They took you to dinner,? Benjamin Dreyer, who?s 54 and works in publishing in New York City, now jokes with his sister.

Truth was, as a young gay man coming of age as the AIDS epidemic took hold, his parents simply worried, and with good reason, his sister says.

There?s little doubt, they both say, that AIDS influenced the perception of gay men.

Benjamin Dreyer says he dealt with societal bias by avoiding it, and surrounding himself with people he knew would be supportive, including his parents, eventually.

But he?s also realizing how quickly the need to do that is disappearing. He was surprised and pleased, for instance, when he attended his nephew?s high school graduation last year. There, he saw a gay male graduate with his boyfriend, open and accepted by all his peers.

?It?s mind-boggling,? Benjamin Dreyer says. ?It?s wonderful.?

Carrillo, too, decided to live openly when he arrived at Elmhurst College. He joined a fraternity and even painted a rainbow ? a common symbol of the gay community ? on his fraternity paddle. To his surprise, there was some backlash from a couple of his straight fraternity brothers who feared people would think their fraternity was the ?gay fraternity.?

?There?s a long way to go,? says Carrillo, who graduates next month. But he still feels hopeful.

?Honestly, I see it ? everywhere there?s progress.?

___

Martha Irvine is an AP national writer. She can be reached at mirvine(at)ap.org or at http://twitter.com/irvineap

There are 33 hours, 6 minutes remaining to comment on this story.

Source: http://www.daily-chronicle.com/2013/04/27/are-lesbians-more-accepted-than-gay-men/ao2g0gn/

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93% No

All Critics (99) | Top Critics (31) | Fresh (92) | Rotten (7)

"No" is a picture that perches precariously on the cusp of a paradox.

A cunning and richly enjoyable combination of high-stakes drama and media satire from Chilean director Pablo Larrain.

A mesmerizing, realistic and often hilarious look at the politics of power and the power of ideas ...

A political drama, a personal drama, a sharp-eyed study of how the media manipulate us from all sides, No reels and ricochets with emotional force.

It's a funny look at the way the media warp public opinion, and a curiously hopeful one.

On every level, "No" leaves one with bittersweet feelings about democracy, love and the cost of compromise.

A bitingly funny, fascinating and moving portrait of Pinochet's fall that's smartly shot and superbly performed.

"NO" is an inspirational political drama in which the people are roused by the visual to overcome the vicious.

... features a fine performance by Gael Garc?a Bernal as young ad exec Ren? Saavedra, who didn't, at first, quite realise what he was in for when he decided to assist in the bringing down of military dictator Augusto Pinochet.

No is a great historical document as to how one very important revolution started with a commercial.

The understated performance by Bernal was inspiring, as was the pic.

It's not easy material but it's truly fascinating, and expertly done.

An extremely perceptive and intriguing examination of the effect that media hype and spin have on the political process.

...a bitter and knowing meditation on media manipulation and political subversion.

Larrain deftly mixes social satire and historical drama.

All historical and little drama.

Larrain does a fine job of making No look and sound authentic to its time period, although the VHS-quality photography, all washed-out with colors bleeding together as camcorders did in the '80s, is an occasional irritant.

Silliness is on the side of the angels in a brilliant and highly entertaining film that's part political thriller, part media satire.

It's clear that the language of advertising has become universal, and that political commodities can be sold like soap. But toppling a dictatorship? Now there's a story.

A reflection of a moment in time, made in the image of that moment.

Bernal deftly explores the layers of the character's complexity, including his political apathy.

"No" is filmmaking of the first order.

Old technology plus the packaging of a revolution add up to a Yes

Freshens up a decades-old story with vibrant humor and a good sense of storytelling.

No quotes approved yet for No. Logged in users can submit quotes.

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/no_2012/

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Pay More Attention To Business Online With Domain Names

In order to combat the prevalent competition, all internet based businesses should pay special attention to their online domain names, which serves as the first real handshake with the target customers. Those looking to register a domain name must make sure that the title is catchy, easy to remember, relevant with the business objectives and ideas, besides being identifiable with the consumers. The websites for companies are a given as the organizations, in the modern world of the internet, do not seem to have a way of existence without having a website against their names. Therefore, all of them buy domain name and hence the uniqueness of it is not appreciated as much.

In case that option is not open to you, you could explore some of the other members of your social or professional network and find for references for the website from where you plan to buy domain name. If your social network is large enough, you would sure be able to get some information. Moreover, the offerings of the website have to also be taken into consideration. For instance, that short listed domain might be not available because it could have been already registered, purchased already, dormant or some other reasons. In that case, one might have to pay little more for those special case domain names, or will have to settle for some other and register a domain name of a secondary choice.

Therefore, this clearly suggests that no or little strategic planning goes into deciding the domain name before people actually buy domain name. The problem is not only in the lack of analysis of the name and its effectiveness; it is also in the analysis of the websites which provide such domains. Going with a reputed and trusted provider of domain names will always hold one in good stead. We can buy domain name for business online just like asp hosting or mssql hosting.?

Source: http://www.beyourownbossie.com/blog/pay-more-attention-to-business-online-with-domain-names.htm

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