Today's White House correspondents are not lapdogs

But in the past, they certainly have been

"Why don't you leave him alone?" supporters of President Obama tweet me. "Give the man a break and stop being disrespectful."

"You're all just a bunch of suck-up lefties," opponents of President Obama tweet at me, referring, I presume, to the White House Press Corps. "Why don't you try asking a real question for a change?"

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You can't please everyone. And someone is always going to be mad at the White House Press Corps. But it's all in eye of the beholder. And, as I'll explain, there have been times when both sides have been right.

Conservatives often like to say that White House reporters (who often work for big, conservative companies like News Corp., Time Warner, and Disney) are liberals who just pass along whatever they are spoonfed by Team Obama. In this view, it's all a big love fest between journalists and the president down the hall.

They ask why the "liberal media" ignored the Sept. 11 Benghazi attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Somehow these critics missed the 800+ articles that The Washington Post and New York Times alone have run on the story.

Also: If White House reporters are lapdogs, why does President Obama hold so few news conferences? If we are lapdogs, why doesn't Obama talk more to newspapers and TV networks accused of being "friendlies," like the Times or the Post or MSNBC??And if reporters are so eager to passively be spoonfed everything Obama says, why does he feel it necessary build his own massive network to get his point of view out?

If anything, Obama is press averse to an historic degree. "The way the president's availability to the press has shrunk in the last two years is a disgrace," ABC News White House reporter Ann Compton recently told Politico. Ann should know. She's been at the White House since Gerald Ford was president. "This is different from every president I covered. This White House goes to extreme lengths to keep the press away," she adds.

Today's White House Press Corp. is hardly a lapdog. But in the past, Beltway reporters have been cowed by presidents.?

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Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was paralyzed by polio, served 12 years as president, yet the FDR library in Hyde Park, N.Y., only has three photos of him in a wheelchair. "There was a gentlemen's understanding with the press," says the library's website, that photographs displaying FDR's disability were not published." Think that would happen today?

Similarly, as the Monica Lewinsky scandal showed, reporters today simply won't turn a blind eye to a philandering president. In the 1960s, the press corps did exactly that with John F. Kennedy. While in office, it's believed he slept with a woman who also slept with two Mafia bosses; it's also believed that another mistress was an East German spy. Think a White House reporter would ignore a bombshell like that today?

Of course, it's also true that journalists were obedient little lapdogs on matters far more serious than even Benghazi. After that other September 11 attack (you know, back in 2001), the White House leaned on the press corps big time. Attorney General John Ashcroft said questioning the Bush administration "only aids terrorists" and "gives ammunition to America's enemies," while Press Secretary Ari Fleischer warned that "all Americans... need to watch what they say, watch what they do."

In the run-up to the Iraq war from September 2002 to February 2003,?414 Iraq stories aired on the evening broadcasts of ABC, CBS and NBC News, according to media analyst Andrew Tyndall. More than 9 in 10 of them relied on Bush administration sourcing. Reporters did just 34 stories (8 percent) that required independent questioning of non-administration sources. And talk about not wanting to offend the White House: MSNBC fired its top-rated host, the super liberal Phil Donahue, because, as an internal memo said, Donahue's anti-administration views presented "a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war."

It gets worse still. In a news conference two weeks before the Iraq invasion, President Bush mentioned al Qaeda and the terrorist attacks of September 11 multiple times. No one challenged the connection Bush appeared to be making between al Qaeda and Iraq ? even though intelligence sources by then were publicly questioning the connection.

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That, ladies and gentlemen, is a lapdog press.

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/todays-white-house-correspondents-not-lapdogs-102628988.html

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Exxon Mobil raises dividend 11 pct, to 63 cents

IRVING, Texas (AP) -- Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's most valuable company, says it's raising its dividend by 6 cents, or 11 percent, to 63 cents.

A long slide in Apple Inc.'s share price has allowed Exxon to retake the top spot, as measured by market capitalization. It was worth about $399 billion at Wednesday's close.

The Irving, Texas, company said Wednesday that it has increased its annual dividend for 31 straight years. The next quarterly payment will be June 10 to shareholders as of May 13.

Exxon reports first-quarter results on Thursday. Analysts expect a drop in profit because of lower production.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/exxon-mobil-raises-dividend-11-203431914.html

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Justin Timberlake To Recruit Jimmy Fallon For The Lasik Experience?

Fallon jokes to MTV News that the 20/20 Experience follow-up looks to 'the future' of optometry.
By Jocelyn Vena

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1706312/justin-timberlake-jimmy-fallon-lasik-experience.jhtml

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Afghanistan quake kills at least four, wounds 69

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - An earthquake in Afghanistan's east and flash floods in the north killed at least 33 people on Wednesday as hundreds of traditional mud-brick homes collapsed, officials said.

The 5.7 magnitude quake, which hit before 2 p.m. (0930 GMT) was felt as far away as the Indian capital New Delhi and was the latest in a spate of tremors to shake Asia this month.

The quake was 65 km (40 miles) deep with an epicenter 11 km (seven miles) from Mehtar Lam, capital of the eastern province of Laghman, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

At least 18 people were killed in adjacent Nangarhar and Kunar provinces and the death toll was expected to rise, a spokesman for the Afghan Red Crescent Society said. Some 70 people were injured in Nangarhar alone.

Hundreds of homes collapsed across Kunar and Nangarhar.

Wednesday saw steady rain across most of Afghanistan, which would have weakened the mud-brick dwellings many Afghans live in, according to the National Disaster Management Authority.

The agency did not yet have its own casualty figures.

Rain also caused flash-flooding in the northern province of Balkh earlier on Wednesday, killing 15 people, provincial council member Fazel Hadidi said.

Buildings swayed in New Delhi and panicky people ran into the street in the disputed northern region of Kashmir, where an quake killed about 75,000 people in 2005, most on the Pakistan side. Wednesday's quake was also felt in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.

Last week, a 6.6 magnitude earthquake killed nearly 200 people in southwest China, a few days after another powerful tremor killed 35 people in Pakistan near the border with Iran.

(Reporting by Rafiq Sherad in Jalalabad, Mohammad Anwar in Asababad, Satarupa Bhattacharjya in New Delhi, Fayaz Bukhari in Srinagar and Kathryn Houreld in Islamabad; writing by Frank Jack Daniel and Dylan Welch, editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/earthquake-felt-indias-delhi-kashmir-witnesses-094113969.html

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Microscopic dust particles found in underground railways may pose health risk

Apr. 24, 2013 ? New research from the University of Southampton has found that working or travelling on an underground railway for a sustained period of time could have health implications.

Previously published work suggests that working in environments such as steel mills or welding plants, which are rich in airborne metals, like iron, copper and nickel, can have damaging effects on health. However, little research has been done on the effects of working in an underground railway environment -- a similarly metal-rich environment -- and results of studies that have been conducted are often inconclusive.

New research published in Environmental Science and Technology shows that the small dust particles in the air in an underground railway is quite different to the dust that you breathe in every day and that could have health implications.

Matt Loxham, PhD student at the University of Southampton, explains: "We studied the ultrafine dust (or particulate matter) found in an underground station in Europe. Typically, ultrafine dust is composed of inert matter that does not pose much of a risk in terms of its chemical composition. However, in the underground station we studied, the ultrafine dust was at least as rich in metals as the larger dust particles and therefore, taken together with their increased surface area to volume ratio, it is of potential significance in understanding the risks of working and travelling in the underground. These tiny dust particles have the potential to penetrate the lungs and the body more easily, posing a risk to someone's health."

While coarse dust is generally deposited in the conducting airways of the body, for example nasal passages and bronchi; and the fine dust generally can reach the bronchioles (smaller airways), it is almost exclusively the ultrafine dust which is able to reach the deepest areas of the lungs, into the alveoli, where oxygen enters the blood and waste gases leave, to be exhaled. There is evidence that this ultrafine dust may be able to evade the protective barrier lining the airways (the epithelium), and enter underlying tissue and the circulation, meaning that the toxicity of ultrafine particles may not be limited to the airways but may involve the cardiovascular system, liver, brain, and kidneys.

Mr Loxham adds: "Underground rail travel is used by great numbers of people in large cities all over the world, for example, almost 1.2 billion journeys are made per year on the London Underground. The high level of mechanical activity in underground railways, along with very high temperatures is key in the generation of this metal-rich dust, and the number of people likely to be exposed means that more studies into the effects of particulate matter in the underground railway environment are needed, as well as examining how the levels of dust and duration of exposure might translate to effects on health."

The Southampton team, which included the Geochemistry Group at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton and the Inhalation Toxicology Group at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) in Bilthoven, initially collected airborne dust from a mainline underground station underneath an airport in Europe. The metal content of the dust was analysed and a detailed elemental profile was established for each dust sample. These profiles were then compared to profiles from other dusts analysed at the same time, for example dust from wood-burning stoves and a heavily-trafficked road tunnel, showing that underground particles were very rich in metals, especially iron and copper. The shapes of individual particles were examined and gave clues as to how the particles were generated. The team then showed that the dust was capable of generating reactive molecules which are fundamental to their toxic effects, and that this was dependent on the metal content of the particles and, importantly, occurred to a greater extent as the size of the individual particles decreased. Further work is now being performed to examine the effects of underground dust on airway cells in more detail and the potential mechanisms by which cells may be able to protect themselves.

The study was funded through the Integrative Toxicology Training Partnership studentship provided by the Medical Research Council UK.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/miuz_MLtnK0/130424081330.htm

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Wall Street jumps after recovery from Twitter-led drop

By Chuck Mikolajczak

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks climbed on Tuesday in a broad rally, recovering from sharp declines sparked by a "bogus" Associated Press tweet about explosions at the White House.

A false tweet by hackers of two explosions at the White House that injured U.S. President Barack Obama provoked a steep drop in stocks, before they quickly recovered minutes later.

Thomson Reuters data showed the benchmark S&P 500 index fell 14.6 points, or 0.93 percent, in the space of 3 minutes when the tweet hit the market. With the S&P 500 valued at about $14.6 trillion at the time of the false tweet, the plunge briefly wiped out $136.5 billion of the index's value.

"If that was true that had happened, that's a justified selloff, but because people suffer from information overload, people tend to overreact and don't wait to substantiate things - that is the downside to a 24-7 news cycle," said Jason Weisberg, managing director of Seaport Securities Corp in New York.

"You want instantaneous pricing, you want all the advantages of the technology, well then, you have to live by the negatives that the speed and expediency provide."

The move was a reminder of the May 6, 2010, tumble in markets now known as the "flash crash," when the Dow industrials dropped more than 600 points, eventually piling up a loss of about 1,000 points, in a few minutes before recovering.

Stocks had seen a solid advance before the tweet, lifted by a host of strong corporate earnings, including Travelers Cos Inc , Netflix Inc and Coach Inc .

After the closing bell, Apple Inc climbed 4.9 percent to $425.95 after the iPad and iPhone maker reported second-quarter earnings and unveiled plans to double the amount of capital it returns to shareholders.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 152.29 points, or 1.05 percent, to close at 14,719.46. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> gained 16.28 points, or 1.04 percent, to finish at 1,578.78. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> advanced 35.78 points, or 1.11 percent, to end at 3,269.33.

Netflix Inc shares jumped 24.4 percent to $216.99 while Coach shot up 9.8 percent to $55.55. They were the S&P 500's two biggest percentage gainers.

Shares of Netflix shot higher after the movie streaming service reported earnings that beat expectations and strong subscriber growth. Coach stock leaped after the upscale leather goods maker and retailer reported higher-than-expected quarterly sales.

Travelers Cos helped lift the Dow, up 2.1 percent at $86.35 after the insurer posted earnings that topped expectations and boosted its dividend.

Earnings season has been largely positive, with more than 68.9 percent of S&P 500 companies that have reported results so far beating expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data. Since 1994, 63 percent have surpassed estimates on average, while the beat rate is 67 percent for the past four quarters.

"We are encouraged to see the market focusing on fundamentals, because we had been in a period where the macro trade was pretty much driving things - whatever the global macro event was or political event was seemed to be affecting the movement of the markets for a period of time," said Paul Mangus, head of equity research and strategy at Wells Fargo Private Bank in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The benchmark S&P 500 index has risen 2.4 percent over the past three sessions.

Analysts see earnings growth of 2.3 percent this quarter, up from expectations of 1.5 percent at the start of the month.

Housing stocks ranked among the best performers, after Barclays raised its rating on the homebuilding sector to "positive" from "neutral." The sector also got a lift from encouraging housing data, with U.S. new home sales up 1.5 percent in March.

The PHLX housing sector index <.hgx> rose 3.8 percent, led by a 9.3 percent gain in Toll Brothers to $34.13. Barclays raised its recommendation on Toll Brothers' stock to an "overweight" rating as part of the firm's broader sector call.

Volume was active, with about 6.39 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE MKT and Nasdaq, slightly above the daily average of 6.38 billion. Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a ratio of 4 to 1, while on the Nasdaq, more than three stocks rose for every one that fell.

(Editing by Jan Paschal)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stock-index-futures-signal-mixed-open-100239310--finance.html

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