Pope calls Argentine kiosk owner to cancel newspaper delivery -

Pope calls Argentine kiosk owner to cancel newspaper delivery - 


Buenos Aires, Argentina, Mar 21, 2013 / 12:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis surprised the owner of a kiosk in Buenos Aires with a telephone call to send his greetings and explain that he will no longer need a morning paper delivered each day.

Around 1:30 p.m. local time on March 18, Daniel Del Regno, the kiosk owner’s son, answered the phone and heard a voice say, “Hi Daniel, it’s Cardinal Jorge.”

He thought that maybe a friend who knew that the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires bought the newspaper from them every day was pulling a prank on him.

“Seriously, it’s Jorge Bergoglio, I’m calling you from Rome,” the Pope insisted.

“I was in shock, I broke down in tears and didn’t know what to say,” Del Regno told the Argentinean daily La Nacion. “He thanked me for delivering the paper all this time and sent best wishes to my family.”

Del Regno shared that when Cardinal Bergoglio left for Rome for the conclave, he asked him if he thought he would be elected Pope. 

“He answered me, ‘That is too hot to touch. See you in 20 days, keep delivering the paper.’ And the rest is, well, history,” he said.

“I told him to take care and that I would miss him,” Del Regno continued. “I asked him if there would ever be the chance to see him here again. He said that for the time being that would be very difficult, but that he would always be with us.”

Before hanging up the phone, he added, the Pope asked him for his prayers.

Daniel’s father, Luis Del Regno, said they delivered the paper to the former cardinal’s residence every day.

On Sundays, he said, the cardinal “would come by the kiosk at 5:30 a.m. and buy La Nacion. He would chat with us for a few minutes and then take the bus to Lugano, where he would serve mate (tea) to young people and the sick.”

Among the “thousands of anecdotes” the elder Del Regno remembers is one involving the rubber bands that he put around the newspapers to keep them from being blown away when they were delivered to the cardinal.

“At the end of the month, he always brought them back to me. All 30 of them!” 

He said he gets goose bumps whenever he thinks about Pope Francis’ simplicity.

“In June he baptized my grandson, it was an amazing feeling,” Del Regno said. “I know what he’s like. He’s one of a kind.”

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So It Begins: Darpa Sets Out to Make Computers That Can Teach Themselves -

So It Begins: Darpa Sets Out to Make Computers That Can Teach Themselves - 


The Pentagon’s blue-sky research agency is readying a nearly four-year project to boost artificial intelligence systems by building machines that can teach themselves — while making it easier for ordinary schlubs like us to build them, too.

When Darpa talks about artificial intelligence, it’s not talking about modeling computers after the human brain. That path fell out of favor among computer scientists years ago as a means of creating artificial intelligence; we’d have to understand our own brains first before building a working artificial version of one. But the agency thinks we can build machines that learn and evolve, using algorithms — “probabilistic programming” — to parse through vast amounts of data and select the best of it. After that, the machine learns to repeat the process and do it better.

But building such machines remains really, really hard: The agency calls it “Herculean.” There are scarce development tools, which means “even a team of specially-trained machine learning experts makes only painfully slow progress.” So on April 10, Darpa is inviting scientists to a Virginia conference to brainstorm. What will follow are 46 months of development, along with annual “Summer Schools,” bringing in the scientists together with “potential customers” from the private sector and the government.

Called “Probabilistic Programming for Advanced Machine Learning,” or PPAML, scientists will be asked to figure out how to “enable new applications that are impossible to conceive of using today’s technology,” while making experts in the field “radically more effective,” according to a recent agency announcement. At the same time, Darpa wants to make the machines simpler and easier for non-experts to build machine-learning applications too.

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Snake Blamed for burning down home -

Snake Blamed for burning down home - 


Authorities believe a homeowner's response to finding a 
snake in her yard may have led to the fire that destroyed her house 
Wednesday.
The fire sparked at a home on Will Smith Road in the Liberty Eylau area of Bowie County, TX just before 7 p.m.

"While cleaning up, she saw snake, threw gasoline on the snake, lit 
the snake on fire," said Deputy Randall Baggett with the Bowie County 
Sheriff's Office. "The snake went into the brush pile and the brush pile
caught the home on fire."
Despite the efforts of several fire departments that responded to the
scene, the flames completely engulfed the home. It is a complete loss. A
neighboring home was also damaged on one side.
The fire remains under investigation. 

There has been no word from officials on whether charges will be filed.

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http://www.wdam.com/story/21757245/snake-blamed-for-burning-down-home

Man impersonating pilot reached plane's cockpit at Philly airport -

Man impersonating pilot reached plane's cockpit at Philly airport - 


Philadelphia police have arrested a French national after he allegedly posed as an airline pilot and gained access to the cockpit on a US Airways flight Wednesday.
MyFoxPhilly.com reports that 61-year-old Philippe Jernnard is accused of impersonating a pilot while boarding the Florida-bound flight at Philadelphia International Airport.
After being a denied a seat in business class Jernnard allegedly boarded the plane and told the flight crew he was a pilot with Air France, according to the report.
"He had an Air France shirt. He had an Air France bag. He had some identification that looked like he was a crew member from Air France," Philadelphia police Capt. Michael Murphy told the station.
Jernnard reportedly ended up in the cockpit jumpseat behind the captain but was escorted off the plane after when he failed to produce proper credentials, police told the station.
No passengers were in danger and the flight took off on time, according the the report. The FBI has launched an investigation into the incident.
Jernnard is charged with criminal trespass, forgery-alter writing, tampering with records, false impression and providing false identification to law enforcement, the report states. He is being held with bail set at $1 million.


Read more: - 
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/03/22/pilot-impersonator-reaches-plane-cockpit-at-philly-airport/

1 in 10 U.S. Deaths Blamed on Salt -

1 in 10 U.S. Deaths Blamed on Salt - 


On the heels of a study linking sugary drinks to 25,000 U.S. deaths a year, new research suggests salty food is even more dangerous.
The new study, by the same Harvard research team, linked excessive salt consumption to nearly 2.3 million cardiovascular deaths worldwide in 2010. One in 10 Americans dies from eating too much salt, the researchers found.
“The burden of sodium is much higher than the burden of sugar-sweetened beverages,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health and author of both the salt and sugary drink studies. “That’s because sugar-sweetened beverages are just one type of food that people can avoid, whereas sodium is in everything.”
Mozaffarian and colleagues used data from 247 surveys on sodium intake and 107 clinical trials that measured how salt affects blood pressure, and how blood pressure contributes to cardiovascular disease like heart attacks and stroke.
“From that we could determine the health effects of sodium,” he said, adding that one out of three deaths due to excessive sodium occurred before age 70. “It’s really affecting younger adults, not just the elderly.”
The study, presented today at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting in New Orleans, adds to mounting evidence that packaged and processed foods containing high levels of salt for flavor and shelf life can take a heavy toll on cardiovascular health.
“It’s really amazing how pervasive it is,” Mozaffarian said of salt. “For the average person, it’s very hard to avoid salt – you have to be incredibly motivated, incredibly educated, have access to a range of foods and do all the cooking yourself.”
But not everything is easy to whip up at home, Mozaffarian added. Bread and cheese are the top two sources of sodium in the U.S.
“It’s everywhere,” he said.
For the study, the researchers set the ideal level of salt consumption at 1,000 milligrams per day – less than half of the upper limit recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and less than a third of the average American intake.
The Salt Institute took issue with the unrealistic threshold.
“This misleading study did not measure any actual cardiovascular deaths related to salt intake, since, by the authors’ own admission, no country anywhere in the world consumes the low levels of salt they recommend,” Morton Satin, vice president of science and research for the Virginia-based institute said in a statement.
Satin also stressed that Mozaffarian’s research is yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, and said it “reveals an agenda far more rooted in sensationalist politics than in science.”
“The Salt Institute does not consider this misleading modeling exercise helpful in furthering our knowledge of the role of salt on our health,” Satin said. “On the contrary, it is disingenuous and disrespectful of consumers.”
Mozaffarian said he plans to submit the study for publication later this year, and stressed that politics has nothing to do with it.
“We have no vested interest in what the research shows,” he said. “This is not sensational. The point is to objectively look at the impact of salt using the best possible science, and that’s what we have done.”
Mozaffarian said he hopes the study will impel policy makers to set sodium limits in prepared foods and make it easier for Americans to lower their salt intake. In the meantime, however, some smart shopping can help.

“One way you can have more control is to shop the perimeter of the supermarket,” said ABC News’ chief health and medical editor Dr. Richard Besser. “That’s where you will find fresh fruits and vegetables, meats and dairy products.  When you cook with these ingredients you have control over how much salt you take in.”
Another tip: Read food labels. Table salt is listed as sodium chloride.
“You might be surprised at all the foods that have hidden salt,” Besser said.

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