Daily Archives: October 10, 2012

Nine states launch religious freedom caucuses

Posted: October 10, 2012 at 6:25 pm

WASHINGTON Legislative leaders from nine states Tuesday, citing a growing polarization on the issue of religious freedom, announced the formation of state religious freedom caucuses. There are plans to have similar legislative caucuses in all 50 states by the end of 2013.

The first wave of caucuses are headed by legislative leaders in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Tennessee. A caucus in Utah is anticipated to be announced in January, although its local leaders haven't been publicly identified.

The Ethics and Public Policy Center's American Religious Freedom Program is heading up the caucus effort to provide resources and expertise to state lawmakers who want to set state-specific religious freedom policy.

The program is targeting states with a strategy to combat threats to religious liberty on the ground level and help create a thoughtful, less polarized approach to resolving differences that will inform federal officials.

"A high percentage of laws are made in state houses, not by Congress, and a high percentage of religious freedom threats materialize in states," said Tim Schultz, state legislative policy director for ARFP. "But states have not been as quick to recognize that this is something they will have to confront."

The exceptions are representatives from the nine states on-hand for a teleconference announcing the caucuses.

"Legislative caucuses focused on religious freedom will help ensure that each statehouse is a bulwark against overreaching government officials and policies that would corrupt or curtail those freedoms," said Kansas Republican Rep. Lance Kinzer, who is chairman of the Legislature's Judiciary Committee.

Schultz said Kansas is where a Jehovah's Witness and Medicaid recipient was denied state help for an alternative treatment because her faith prevented her from having a blood transfusion. It took two years for the courts to finally rule in her favor.

Schultz said those types of cases typically are what religious liberty advocates find on the state level and hope to address through the state caucuses through legislation. He said lawmakers and the public often place religious liberty disputes in the realm of Congress or the courts, or identify with the issue in cases of prayer or Christmas displays in public places.

"Those are actually establishment clauses cases. But the new threat is in the (free) exercise clause of the First Amendment and threaten people's ability to practice their faith outside the walls of the church, synagoge or mosque. States have been a little bit slower to see these threats materialize," he said.

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Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico Launches beIN SPORT

Posted: at 6:25 pm

MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

beIN SPORT, the new independent 24-hour global network dedicated to live and exclusive coverage of the worlds best international sports, today announced that Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico will offer the network to sports fans.

Liberty Cablevisions customers will now see beIN SPORTs exclusive coverage of all the top soccer leagues and tournaments from Europe and South America, including games from Spains La Liga, Italys Serie A, Frances Ligue 1, South American World Cup Qualifiers and Copa America 2015.The network will also carry the away games for the U.S. Mens National Soccer Team in the qualifying rounds of the 2014 World Cup.

beIN SPORTs English and Spanish networks will be available as part of Libertys basic service package on standard definition channels 94 and 95, respectively. The networks will also be part of the cable providers premium HD package on channels 224 and 225. In addition to its linear TV networks, select beIN SPORT content will be available on demandvia Liberty Cablevisions website.

beIN SPORT is a new, unprecedented sports network that guarantees first row access to the electrifying stars and unmatched play of international competition with games that cant be seen on any other channel, said Yousef Al Obaidly, managing director ofbeIN SPORT. Our original and exclusive programming is designed to let viewers be in the game and feel they are part of the international sports community. Once they experience our network, we know Puerto Rican sports fans wont want to miss a minute of their favorite teams and players.

About beIN SPORT

beIN SPORT, the English-language 24/7 international sports network, and beIN SPORT en Espaol are the multi-platform sports destinations that brings to the passionate fan all the live game action, news and analysis of the top leagues around the planet, as well as exclusive and never available-before content. From American, European and Latin American live games to general sports news and in-depth analysis, beIN SPORT guarantees first row access to top leagues and major sports properties through TV, on-line and mobile platforms with games that cant be seen on any other channel. For more information, please visit http://www.beinsport.tv and follow us on Twitter @beINSport1USA for breaking news and real-time updates.

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Liberty Silver Comments on SEC Order of Suspension

Posted: at 6:25 pm

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Oct. 10, 2012) - Liberty Silver Corp. (LSL.TO)(LBSV) ("Liberty Silver" or the "Company") today is providing further commentary on the Order of Suspension of Trading (the "Order") imposed by the US Securities Exchange Commission ("SEC") on Friday, October 5, 2012. The Company has been in contact with regulatory authorities in both Canada and the US, and is currently working diligently to resolve the matter. Pursuant to the Order the Company's shares will remain halted on the OTCBB until 11:59 pm EDT, on October 18th, 2012. The Company believes that it is in compliance with all applicable disclosure and regulatory requirements, and is firmly committed to being fully compliant and transparent in the Company's governance. The Company will work closely and cooperatively with the SEC to resolve this matter as soon as possible for the benefit of our shareholders. As additional information becomes available, the Company will use its best efforts to communicate that information to our shareholders.

About Liberty Silver

Liberty Silver Corp. is focused on exploring and developing mineral properties in North America. The company is committed to creating value for its shareholders by advancing its projects using its mitigated risk approach to production, developing new resources on its existing properties, and acquiring new properties with potential to expand their resource base. The Trinity Silver property in Pershing County, Nevada is the company's flagship project. Liberty Silver has the right to earn a joint venture interest in the 10,576 acre Trinity property from Renaissance Gold Inc. For more information, go to http://www.libertysilvercorp.com.

Cautionary Statements

This News Release includes certain "forward-looking statements". These statements are based on information currently available to the Company and the Company provides no assurance that actual results will meet management's expectations. Forward-looking statements include estimates and statements that describe the Company's future plans, objectives or goals, including words to the effect that the Company or management expects a stated condition or result to occur. Forward-looking statements may be identified by such terms as "believes", "anticipates", "expects", "estimates", "may", "could", "would", "will", or "plan". Since forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results relating to, among other things, results of exploration, project development, reclamation and capital costs of the Company's mineral properties, and the Company's financial condition and prospects, could differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements for many reasons such as: changes in general economic conditions and conditions in the financial markets; changes in demand and prices for minerals; litigation, legislative, environmental and other judicial, regulatory, political and competitive developments; technological and operational difficulties encountered in connection with the activities of the Company; and other matters discussed in this news release and in filings made with securities regulators. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of the Company's forward-looking statements. These and other factors should be considered carefully and readers should not place undue reliance on the Company's forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time by the Company or on its behalf, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

The Toronto Stock Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein.

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Liberty Silver Comments on SEC Order of Suspension

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Limits of free speech tested as anti-Islam pastor is coming back to Dearborn

Posted: at 6:22 pm

As Quran-burning pastor Terry Jones returns to Dearborn today for another rally against Islam, the issue of free speech is back under the spotlight in metro Detroit.

Jones, who sparked international protests from Muslims over the burning of Islam's holy book, intends to protest outside Edsel Ford High School, claiming that Muslim students are bullying non-Muslim students. David Mustonen, spokesman for the Dearborn Public Schools, characterized Joneses' assertions as "not accurate."

Even so, Dearborn's police chief and mayor say they will allow the Gainesville, Fla., preacher to speak on a sidewalk outside the school this afternoon and will guarantee his civil liberties while ensuring an orderly day for students.

"We ... know that free speech is so treasured" in America, said Dearborn Mayor Jack O'Reilly Jr. "It can be offensive. It can hurt us emotionally, but until it causes physical harm or a true physical threat, it is a permissible activity. And so we respect that."

In the last year, free speech has become contentious in Dearborn, which has the highest concentration of Arab Americans in the nation. Several incidents led to legal cases.

Among them:

Christian missionaries trying to convert Muslims at the annual Arab International Festival in June sued the city over their right to preach to Muslims.

Last month, the Christian group Bible Believers sued the Wayne County Sheriff's Office in federal court for allegedly failing to protect its members after young Muslims threw water bottles at them because they were angry about a pig's head and anti-Islam signs the Christians brought to the festival.

Jones sued the city in April, saying officials wrongly barred him from protesting outside the Islamic Center of America mosque.

In June, Mike Mohamad Agemy, 47, of Dearborn was accused of trying to use his SUV to run over members of the Bible Believers outside the Islamic Center.

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SpaceX CRS-1 Launch to International Space Station – Video

Posted: at 3:13 am

07-10-2012 20:30 Liftoff of Falcon 9 and Dragon from Launch Complex 40 in Cape Canaveral, Fl. October 7, 2012.

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SpaceX hurtles toward space station as NASA dreams big

Posted: at 3:13 am

SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft was successfully launched Sunday, and by Wednesday morning the International Space Station crew should be greeting it with open arms.

NASA's Sunita Williams, ISS commander, and Japanese colleague Aki Hoshide will stretch out the station's robotic arm to install the Dragon on Wednesday at 4:22 a.m. (7:22 a.m. Eastern), according to NASA. The Dragon will be attached to the station for 18 days before heading back to Earth, splashing down in the Pacific off Southern California.

PHOTOS: Awesome images from space

SpaceX's billionaire CEO, Elon Musk, said: "We still have a lot of work to do... as we guide Dragon's approach to the space station. But the launch was an unqualified success."

Meanwhile, NASA is gearing up for another space-station first -- a yearlong mission by two astronauts that will give researchers a chance to better study the effects of extended time in space on the human body.

Earlier this month, the space agency and its international partners agreed to send one U.S. astronaut and one Russian cosmonaut on the yearlong expedition. The pair will travel in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in a voyage to begin spring 2015.

SPACE QUIZ: Blue moons, meteors and more

There have been people aboard the space station for 12 years now, which has given researchers "valuable, often surprising" insight on how microgravity affects human bones and muscles, eyesight, strength and other physical factors, NASA says.

Now scientists want to know more, with the long-term goal of going farther and deeper into space.

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SpaceX hurtles toward space station as NASA dreams big

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U.S., Russia to launch first year-long space station flight

Posted: at 3:13 am

An American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut will spend a full year aboard the International Space Station in 2015-16, twice as long as current crews, to collect medical data on long-duration spaceflight that will help pave the way for eventual flights to deep space destinations, NASA said Friday.

Assigning two lab crew members to a yearlong flight also is expected to free up seats aboard Russian Soyuz ferry craft for two additional space tourists or representatives of other nations that might not otherwise fit into the normal space station crew rotation.

In their latest contract with NASA, the Russians charge more than $60 million a seat for Soyuz flights to and from the space station. While a space tourist presumably would pay less, the money would give the cash-strapped Russian program a welcome boost.

The Russians launched eight "spaceflight participants" to the station between 2001 and 2008, including one who flew twice. They paid between $20 million and $50 million per flight.

It is not yet known who will be assigned to the yearlong station flight, when they will be announced or who might fill the additional Soyuz seats. But Space Adventures, a company that has brokered past tourist visits to the space station, has scheduled a news conference Oct. 10 in Moscow with singer Sarah Brightman.

However that plays out, the astronaut and cosmonaut who will stay up for a year likely will launch in March 2015 aboard the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft, sources said, accompanied by a Russian spacecraft commander who would stay aboard the lab for a normal six-month tour.

Under that scenario, the next Soyuz in the rotation, TMA-17M, would launch with a normal three-person station crew the following May. The Soyuz after that, TMA-18M, would take off that Fall with a Russian commander and two paying customers, sources said, either tourists, researchers representing nations not normally in the rotation or a combination of the two.

The spaceflight participants would spend about two weeks aboard the lab complex and return to Earth aboard the Soyuz TMA-16M spacecraft with the same commander that ferried the long-duration crew to orbit the previous March. The long-duration crew members would return to Earth in March 2016 aboard the Soyuz TMA-18M spacecraft with the commander who ferried the commercial fliers to orbit.

Other scenarios are possible. The NASA statement provided no details on how the crew rotation might play out and there was no immediate word from the Russians. However it plays out, senior NASA managers believe the flight is crucial for plans to eventually send astronauts on missions to deep space targets ranging from nearby asteroids to Mars.

"In order for us to eventually move beyond low Earth orbit, we need to better understand how humans adapt to long-term spaceflight," Mike Suffredini, the space station program manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in a statement late Friday.

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SpaceX capsule chasing space station in orbit

Posted: at 3:13 am

A privately built robotic spacecraft is doggedly chasing down the International Space Station and remains on track for an early-morning arrival Wednesday to deliver a half-ton of supplies.

The Dragon space capsule is making the first commercial cargo delivery to the space station for NASA under a billion-dollar deal with the private spaceflight company SpaceX, which launched the spacecraft from Florida atop its Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday night.

"The Dragon spacecraft continues to look great, and all systems are performing nominally," SpaceX officials said in a mission update Tuesday.

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The space capsule is expected to rendezvous with the International Space Station early Wednesday. Astronauts inside the station will use a robotic arm to capture the Dragon capsule and attach it to an open docking port so it can be emptied of the nearly 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms) of supplies and gear inside.

If all goes well, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide will capture Dragon at 7:22 a.m. EDT (1122 GMT). NASA will broadcast the event live on NASA TV and online. You can watch the Dragon docking webcast live here beginning at 4 a.m. EDT (0800 GMT).

Satellite trackers also have one last chance to see Dragon in the night sky tonight before it docks at the space station. But you have to know when and where to look. For tips on spotting Dragon and the station as they fly overhead your location, see: " How to Spot SpaceX's Dragon in Night Sky."

The Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX is one of two companies with commercial NASA contracts to launch unmanned cargo missions to the space station. SpaceX has a $1.6 billion deal for at least 12 Dragon cargo flights, while the Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. has a $1.9 billion agreement to provide NASA at least eight delivery flights using its own Antares rockets and Cygnus spacecraft.

The current Dragon cargo flight is the first of the company's 12 contracted flights, though SpaceX did launch a test flight to the station in May. It is slated to return to Earth on Oct. 28 carrying about 2,000 pounds of scientific experiments and station gear. Orbital Sciences, meanwhile, is gearing up for its first Antares rocket test later this year.

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SpaceX Dragon Capsule Chasing Space Station in Orbit

Posted: at 3:13 am

A privately built robotic spacecraft is doggedly chasing down the International Space Station and remains on track for an early-morning arrival Wednesday (Oct. 10) to deliver a half-ton of supplies.

The Dragon space capsule is making the first commercial cargo delivery to the space station for NASA under a billion-dollar deal with the private spaceflight company SpaceX, which launched the spacecraft from Florida atop its Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday night (Oct. 7).

"The Dragon spacecraft continues to look great, and all systems are performing nominally," SpaceX officials said in a mission update today (Oct. 9).

The space capsule is expected to rendezvous with the International Space Station early Wednesday. Astronauts inside the station will use a robotic arm to capture the Dragon capsule and attach it to an open docking port so it can be emptied of the nearly 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms) of supplies and gear inside.

If all goes well, NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide will capture Dragon at 7:22 a.m. EDT (1122 GMT). NASA will broadcast the event live on NASA TV and online. You can watch the Dragon docking webcast live here beginning at 4 a.m. EDT (0800 GMT).

Satellite trackers also have one last chance to see Dragon in the night sky tonight before it docks at the space station. But you have to know when and where to look. For tips on spotting Dragon and the station as they fly overhead your location, see: "How to Spot SpaceX's Dragon in Night Sky."

The Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX is one of two companies with commercial NASA contracts to launch unmanned cargo missions to the space station. SpaceX has a $1.6 billion deal for at least 12 Dragon cargo flights, while the Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. has a $1.9 billion agreement to provide NASA at least eight delivery flights using its own Antares rockets and Cygnus spacecraft.

The current Dragon cargo flight is the first of the company's 12 contracted flights, though SpaceX did launch a test flight to the station in May. It is slated to return to Earth on Oct. 28 carrying about 2,000 pounds (907 kg) of scientific experiments and station gear.Orbital Sciences, meanwhile, is gearing up for its first Antares rocket test later this year.

With NASA's space shuttle fleet retired, the space agency is depending on private space taxis for ferrying cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station. SpaceX, which is upgrading Dragon to carry crew, is one of four private spaceflight companies that have received funding from NASA to develop new manned spacecraft.

Visit SPACE.com this week for complete coverage of SpaceX's first Dragon cargo flight to the International Space Station.

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Researchers develop new tool for making genetic engineering of microbial circuits reliably predictable

Posted: at 3:13 am

Fluorescence microscopy images of cells containing various plasmid pairs which were constructed with the help of a tna element adaptor and logic gates driven by two, three or four RNA inputs that linked to ribosome binding sites.

(Phys.org)Synthetic biology is the latest and most advanced phase of genetic engineering, holding great promise for helping to solve some of the world's most intractable problems, including the sustainable production of energy fuels and critical medical drugs, and the safe removal of toxic and radioactive waste from the environment. However, for synthetic biology to reach its promise, the design and construction of biological systems must be as predictable as the assembly of computer hardware.

An important step towards attaining a higher degree of predictability in synthetic biology has been taken by a group of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) under the leadership of computational biologist Adam Arkin. Arkin and his team have developed an "adaptor" that makes the genetic engineering of microbial components substantially easier and more predictable by converting regulators of translation into regulators of transcription in Escherichia coli. Transcription and translation make up the two-step process by which the coded instructions of genes are used to synthesize proteins.

"Application of our adaptor should produce large collections of transcriptional regulators whose inherent composability can facilitate the predictable engineering of complex biological circuits in microorganisms," Arkin says. "This in turn should allow for safer and more efficient constructions of increasingly complex functions in microorganisms."

Arkin is the director of Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division and the corresponding author of a paper describing this work in Nature Methods. The paper is titled "An adaptor from translational to transcriptional control enables predictable assembly of complex regulation. Co-authoring this paper were Chang Liu, Lei Qi, Julius Lucks, Thomas Segall-Shapiro, Denise Wang and Vivek Mutalik.

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When a bacterial translational regulator is fused to a tna element adaptor, it is able to also regulate transcriptional elongation.

"Much of the regulatory potential of a bacterium is contained in the five-prime untranslated regions (UTRs), which control the expression of physically adjacent downstream genes and have become attractive platforms for a parts-based approach to synthetic biology," Arkin says. "This approach, in which integrated engineered regulatory parts respond to custom inputs by changing the expression of desired genes, must satisfy two criteria if it is to have long-term success. First, the regulatory parts must be easily engineered in a way that yields large homogenous sets of variants that respond to different custom inputs, and second, the parts must be composable such that they can be easily and predictably assembled into useful higher-order functions."

In the five prime UTRs of bacteria, two primary types of regulators can serve as starting points for designing new parts those that regulate transcriptional elongation, in which cellular inputs are linked to the process by which a sequence of DNA nucleotides is transcribed into a complementary sequence of RNA; and those that regulate translation, in which a ribosome translates the RNA message into a protein. Transcriptional elongation regulators meet the second criterion by featuring versatility and composability that makes them ideal for building custom regulatory functions. Translational regulators meet the first criterion by being easier to engineer and relatively common to all bacteria.

"Our solution for meeting both criteria was to develop an adaptor based on tryptophanase, the catabolic operon for tryptophan that converts regulators of translational initiation into regulators of transcriptional elongation," Arkin says. "Because our adaptor strategy bypasses the otherwise restrictive tradeoff between criterion one and criterion two, we believe it will have a crucial role in the long-term development of five prime UTRs as platforms for the design and integration of custom regulatory parts."

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