Tag Archives: New Orleans

News, Politics, Government

American Airlines Unveils Embraer 175 Regional Jet Design

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By Grant Martin, Contributor

As the bankrupt American Airlines continues to revitalize its fleet and prepare for a merger with US Airways, the carrier today introduced a new airplane into its livery: the 175. The Brazillian-made small regional jet will be operated by Republic Airways and will initially fly out of Chicago to New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Albuquerque. As the airline receives further orders, service will be expanded around the country and eventually to other departing airlines. …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

Articles of Interest

Keyshia Cole’s Husband, Daniel Gibson, Defends Himself In Wake Of Battery Arrest

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By The Huffington Post News Editors

Performer Keyshia Cole’s husband, NBA player Daniel “Boobie” Gibson, has spoken up about his arrest this week, telling the media that he got into trouble only because he was defending his wife from a “disrespectful” man.

Gibson, who last played for the Cleveland Cavaliers, surrendered to police Monday after being charged with second-degree battery. The 27-year-old is accused of “breaking another man’s jaw with a punch during an argument at a nightclub” in New Orleans, The Associated Press reports. The altercation reportedly took place in early July.

As TMZ notes, Gibson has spoken up in defense of his behavior. He told the celebrity news website that his wife had been performing at an event in New Orleans when a man approached her and spoke to her in a “disrespectful” way.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post

Recipes

Iced Coffee on the Road

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By Sara Bonisteel I’ve been drinking cold-brew iced coffee year-round since college, and so when I travel, it is always a challenge to find a suitable substitute that is as smooth and strong as my coffee back home. I like cold coffee. I like it because it takes less time to consume than hot coffee. Caffeination comes quickly. I use a Toddy maker at home (shown bottom right). It’s basically a plastic bucket with a filter in the bottom that holds a pound of coffee grounds and 10-12 cups of water. You let it steep overnight and filter the coffee concentrate into a glass carafe that can sit in the fridge for up to two weeks. You’re supposed to water down the concentrate before adding milk and/or sugar. I’ve been drinking it so long that I drink the concentrate watered down with just milk. One of my big complaints with ordering an iced coffee from anywhere besides my home (or the coffeeshops of New Orleans) is that it’s often made from hot coffee that’s just refrigerated. Which tastes exactly how you’d expect it too … like stale, acidic coffee. Yesterday’s brew. A three-month stint in London–where the coffee culture in the late 1990s was basically packets of Nespresso freeze-dried crystals–forced me to learn to like *gasp* espresso over ice. In a pinch, I’ll drink a few shots of this bitter brew, cut with a little skim milk. I still do this at turnpike Starbucks when necessary. But lately, I’m finding that there are more good coffee options out there for iced-coffee lovers on the go. By far my favorite is Cool Brew, a cold coffee concentrate sold at grocery stores in Louisiana. The 500ml container makes 16 coffees, and if it weren’t for TSA travel restrictions on liquids, I would bring back bottles and bottles. This is as good or better than most coffeeshop cold brews. (And it’s available online.) Barnies CoffeeKitchen recently released Pronto!, an individual serving concentrate that comes in seven flavors. The portable sleeves make it an easy win for road trips. The packets work out to be about a dollar a piece. A third option is finding the local coffee chain in the region where you’re traveling. Growlers of cold brew travel well in a cooler, and will get you caffeinated faster than that hot sludge they’re serving at the gas station. Are you a cold-brew fan? How do you cope while traveling? (All photos by Sara Bonisteel except for Cool Brew)

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Source: Epicurious

Linux

Raspberry Pi’s Eben Upton: Open Source Lessons from Wayland

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By libbyclark

Eben Upton Raspberry Pi

In less than two years the Raspberry Pi has sold more than 1 million units and become widely used and adored among DIY hackers and embedded professionals alike. It began in 2006 as a modest idea to provide a low-cost educational computer for students to tinker with. Now the $25 Linux-based single-board computer is the basis for all kinds of gadgets from near-space cameras, to open source spy boxes, to the PiGate, a full-scale Stargate replica.

During that time the board’s creators have also gotten a fast education on open source software development and the process of collaboration, said Raspberry Pi Foundation Executive Director Eben Upton. He’ll share some of those valuable lessons during his keynote talk at LinuxCon and CloudOpen North America in New Orleans, Sept. 16-18, where he’s also planning a new demonstration of the Pi’s prowess.

Here, Upton talks about some of the open source projects the Pi Foundation is involved in; their choice of the Wayland display manager; their focus on media performance; their efforts to expand computer science education and literacy; and his favorite Pi projects.

Can you give us a preview of your LinuxCon keynote?

I’m not a natural open source guy. No one would mistake me for being a classic open source fan. I find it interesting to the extent it’s useful to me. So I’ve come to RasperryPi as a bit of a novice, with not so much experience in running a project that’s deeply intertwined with the open source community. I’ve made a lot of mistakes so I’ll talk about what I’ve learned.

I thought we could ship a platform that basically works and the open source community will take care of the rest. There are some areas they’ll do a great job, particularly things that have a lot of eyes on a problem and are able to attract the attention of a particular expert. The other things aren’t so great, particularly around desktop acceleration. We’ve had to go out and pay contractors who are able to move that stuff forward for us. It’s been a learning process of finding what those categories are — the things for the community and those for the foundation.

How is the Pi Foundation involved in open source projects?

We’ve been supporting a number of open source projects. We make a little money every time we sell a Pi and have a little pot of money we spend on things deemed important to the mission of the foundation.

There are some bits of Linux infrastructure not well optimized for our platform so there’s been a low level of work paying people to write fast implementations of audio codings, for example.

Higher level stuff we’ve been doing are things like Wayland, accelerated web browsing. Things that are tying us into the way the desktop experience is evolving under Linux.

What are you working on right now?

We’re pushing on support for Wayland. It’s the future of Linux desktop graphics. It’s a clean-break architecture. It’s obviously somewhat controversial, there’s a feeling that there’s …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Linux Foundation

News, Politics, Government

Michelle Obama Empowers Latino Community at Nation Council of La Raza Conference

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By Kelly Miterko

First Lady Michelle Obama delivers remarks at the National Council of La Raza annual conference

Ed Note: This is a cross post from the blog of letsmove.gov. You can find the original post here.

Speaking to over 1,800 attendees at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) Annual Conference yesterday, First Lady Michelle Obama exclaimed, “Food is love… it’s how we pass on our culture and heritage as meals become family traditions and recipes are passed on from generation to generation.”

First Lady Michelle Obama delivers remarks at the National Council of La Raza annual conference at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, July 23, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

But, said Obama, pointing to health issues like the rise of diabetes, “while food might be love, the truth is that we are loving ourselves and our kids to death.”

Significant racial and ethnic disparities in obesity prevalence among U.S. children and adolescents are a reality. Currently, nearly 40 percent of Hispanic children in this country are overweight or obese. Hispanic kids ages nine to 13 are only half as likely to participate in organized physical activity outside school. And, unhealthy products are being disproportionately targeted towards our nation’s Latino communities.

As the largest national Hispanic and civil rights advocacy organization in the United States, NCLR recognizes that Latino families face higher rates of hunger, food insecurity, and obesity and has taken a leadership role in trying to address these issues. NCLR’s Comer Bien (Eat Well) Initiative encourages the work of the First Lady’s Let’s Move!Initiative, and provides access to nutritious food through federal food assistance programs, resources, and nutrition education to Latino parents and their families. Additionally, NCLR has been a tremendous advocate and partner on key initiatives like MiPlato (MyPlate) and La Mesa Completa (USDA’s SNAP program).

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at The White House

Articles of Interest

Louisiana Wetlands Erosion Made Worse By Oil And Gas Industry, Flood Board Alleges In Lawsuit

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By The Huffington Post News Editors

NEW ORLEANS — The oil and gas industry has cost Louisiana hundreds of acres of coastal land that serve as a natural buffer against flooding from hurricanes, officials in charge of New Orleans-area flood protection say in a lawsuit seeking to hold dozens of companies responsible.

Corrosive saltwater from a network of oil and gas access and pipeline canals has killed vegetation and swept away mountains of soil, the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East’s board of commissioners claims in the lawsuit, which it filed Wednesday in Orleans Parish Civil District Court. The wetlands are considered a crucial buffer against hurricanes because they can help keep floodwaters from storm surge at bay.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post

Articles of Interest

'That's Me:' Dems Laud Obama on Trayvon

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By Polly Davis Doig

President Obama’s remarks on the Trayvon Martin verdict reverberated around the talk shows today, with Democrats saying Obama hit close to home when he spoke of “being followed in a department store,” reports Politico . “That’s me on a daily basis, and especially when I’m home in New Orleans and I’m… …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home

This Day in History

Today in History for 21st July 2013

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Historical Events

1934 – 113anddeg;F (45anddeg;C), near Gallipolis, Ohio (state record)
1960 – Francis Chichester arrive in NY aboard Gypsy Moth II, setting record of 40 days for a solo Atlantic crossing
1974 – 29th US Women’s Open Golf Championship won by Sandra Haynie
1984 – USSR performs underground nuclear Test
1985 – Judy Clark wins LPGA Boston Five Golf Classic
1997 – The fully restored USS Constitution (aka “Old Ironsides”) celebrates her 200th birthday by setting sail for the first time in 116 years.

More Historical Events »

Famous Birthdays

1815 – Stewart Van Vliet, Bvt Major General (Union Army), died in 1901
1817 – John Gilbert, painter/illustrator
1826 – James Gillpatrick Blunt, Major General (Union volunteers)
1856 – Louise Blanchard Bethune, 1st US woman architect
1899 – Hart Crane, US, poet (Bridge)
1926 – Paul Burke, New Orleans, actor (Thomas Crown Affair) [or Jan 21]

More Famous Birthdays »

Famous Deaths

1938 – Owen Wister, American author (b. 1860)
1946 – Gualberto Villarroel, President of Bolivia (b. 1908)
1975 – Fie Carelsen, actress (Malle Gevallen), dies at 85
1993 – Henk Kersting, bureau chef (Associated Press-WW II), dies at 88
1995 – Edwin “Russell” House, saxophonist, dies at 65
1996 – Francis James Claude Piggott, soldier, dies at 85

More Famous Deaths »

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at HistoryOrb.Com – This Day in History

News, Politics, Government

Renting? Cities To Get The Most Bang For Your Buck

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By Zillow, Contributor

Kansas City isn’t just topping charts for its barbecue this summer — it’s also where renters can get the most for their money. According to Zillow’s latest analysis, Kansas City is one of 10 big cities offering the best combination of: Current rental prices Price per square foot Low year-over-year changes in cost of rent Low cost of rent compared with the cost of buying a home If you’re looking to rent, this could mean the difference between a 2-bedroom with a private patio and a 500-square-foot studio. And for prospective buyers facing the current rise in home values and low for-sale inventory, renting in one of these cities may present an attractive alternative. Here’s a look at homes for rent in the top 10 places where you can get the biggest bang for your buck. No. 10: Mikwaukee, WI 1922 N 52nd St, Milwaukee, WI For rent: $1,500 per month Specs: 1,145 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 1.25 baths Extras: Professional landscaping, outdoor living space, laundry, 2-car detached garage No. 9: New Orleans, LA 3109 General Taylor St, New Orleans, LA For rent: $1,100 per month Specs: 1,094 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 1 bath Extras: Front porch, off-street parking, pets on case-by-case basis, tenant-maintained yard No. 8: Columbus, OH 136 Columbian Ave, Columbus, OH For rent: $800 per month …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

Linux

LinuxCon Program Announced: Join the Most Technical Mardi Gras Parade In History

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By amcpherson

I’m pleased to announce the schedules for LinuxCon and CloudOpen happening this September in New Orleans. We had more submissions than ever and narrowing them down was probably the most difficult process we’ve ever had. And yes we will have a parade from the conference to one of the parties; I bet it will have more C developers marching than any other Mardi Gras parade in history.

The full schedule can be found here.

I want to thank the Linux Plumbers Conference Committee and the Cloud Open Program Committee for helping us shape this conference. For the first time, we’ve developed a joint track with the Linux Plumbers Conference committee to offer deeply technical content focused on core development. By working together we can provide great technical conference sessions at LinuxCon while Plumbers can concentrate on solving the really hard issues facing Linux and other upstream projects via its collaborative sessions.

Here are a handful of my favorites for this year:

LinuxCon North America

* The Changing Kernel Development Process, by Jonathan Corbet, LWN.net

* A Practical Tutorial to Open Sourcing Proprietary Technology, by Ibrahim Haddad, Samsung

* Will Parallel Programming Ever Become Routine, presented by Paul E. McKenney, IBM

* Case Study: Doing a Live Upgrade of Many Thousand Servers at Google from an Ancient Red Hat Distribution to Recent Debian-Based One, presented by Marc Merlin, Google

* Tutorial: High Availability Solutions for MySQL and MariaDB, presented by Max Mether, MySQL AB

* Efficient and Large Scale Program Flow Tracing in Linux – Alexander Shishkin, Intel

* Power Management in the Linux Kernel: Current Status and Future, by Rafael J. Wysocki, Intel OTC

CloudOpen North America

* Everything I Know About the Cloud, I Learned from Game of Thrones, by Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier, Citrix

* Building a Secure Cloud, presented by Matthew Garrett, Nebula

* QEMU 2.x and Beyond: The Foundation of the Open Cloud, presented by Anthony Liguori, Open Virtualization Development Lead at IBM Linux Technology Center

* What Two DBAs Wish They had Known Before Virtualizing on OpenStack, by Mason Morris and Doug Liming, SAS

* Lessons Learned Building a Hybrid Cloud Service, by Noa Resare, Senior Engineer at Spotify Systems

* The New Cloud Factory: Building Web Scale Using Open Source on the Internet Assembly Line – Thomas Hatch, SaltStack

* The State of the Stack – Randy Bias, Cloudscaling

CloudOpen has evolved as the place to learn about all the open source projects that comprise the cloud.

We’re also hosting two new events this year to increase participation for newcomers. We’ll host a Newcomers Reception on Sunday night, the eve of opening day for both LinuxCon and CloudOpen. We also invite women attending the event to join us for the Women in OSS Luncheon. This is an opportunity for women to network and share their experiences at the event.

We’re also hoping to give back this year to our host city of New Orleans and are partnering with a local nonprofit called Fuel the Future. This group provides meals and after school programs …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Linux Foundation

Articles of Interest

Charlotte Hornets Name Approved By NBA: Bobcats Are No More

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By The Huffington Post News Editors

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Charlotte is the home of the Hornets once again.

The NBA unanimously approved Charlotte’s nickname change from Bobcats to Hornets on Thursday at the league’s Board of Governors meeting. The original Hornets built a supportive fan base in Charlotte from the time they entered the league in 1988 until they moved to New Orleans in 2002.

But the new owners in New Orleans have changed the team’s name to the Pelicans. That opened the door for owner Michael Jordan to bring the Hornets name back to Charlotte. The change will take place after the 2013-14 season.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post

News, Politics, Government

Arrest in girl's death, body found in trash can

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A suspect in the stabbing death of a 6-year-old girl whose body was found in a trash can only days after she disappeared from a suburban New Orleans apartment has confessed to the killing, a sheriff said Wednesday.

Matthew Flugence, 20, was captured Tuesday night after authorities received tips he had been sighted, said Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand. Flugence was booked on a first-degree murder charge in the death of Ahlittia North.

“We began interviewing Matthew through the evening and he admitted to the murder of Ahlittia North,” Normand said at a news conference.

The 6-year-old had been put to bed Friday night and was found missing early Saturday from an apartment where she lived with her mother and stepfather in the Jefferson Parish community of Harvey, near New Orleans.

An intense search, including canvassing of hundreds of apartments, began soon after the girl was reported missing and a pool of blood was subsequently found outside nearby apartments. When DNA testing revealed it to be that of the missing girl, the search was stepped up in that area late Monday.

Normand has said the child’s body, which had multiple stab wounds, was found around midnight Monday in a trash can that had already been searched once.

On Wednesday, Normand declined to answer when asked where the body had been kept from the time the girl was killed, believed to be early Saturday, and the time it was found.

Normand said Flugence was carrying a knife when he was arrested and that he later identified it as the murder weapon.

Flugence’s brother, Russell Flugence, 21, had been arrested a day earlier on an obstruction of justice charge for allegedly withholding information in the case.

Normand said numerous loose ends remain, including determining whether anyone else may have helped Matthew Flugence or harbored him.

The girl disappeared some time after her parents put her to bed late Friday. A blanket and the girl’s toothbrush also were gone. There was no sign of forced entry at the apartment, Normand said.

“His story is that she was outside of the apartment in the very early morning hours of Saturday,” Normand …read more

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

Articles of Interest

Lil Wayne’s ‘God Bless Amerika’ Video Seems Timely (VIDEO)

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By The Huffington Post News Editors

Lil Wayne released the video for “God Bless Amerika” on Monday night, a clip full of images of Wayne’s native Hollygrove, New Orleans. The community, still devastated by 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, serves as a poignant reminder of the failures of America’s government to rehabilitate impoverished communities that were damaged by the monstrous storm.

The video suggests that it’s not all that hard to draw a line from Kanye West’s criticism at the time (“George Bush doesn’t care about black people”) to the continued travesty that is the reality of life on the ground in Hollygrove.

The “God Bless Amerika” video made waves when it was being filmed because Wayne appeared to be stomping on an American flag. Though such an act wouldn’t necessarily have been out of line with the thematic elements of the song, it turns out that rapper was honest when he said the fallen flag wouldn’t be depicted in the final product.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Manchester United: 10,000 Times Better Than the Green Bay Packers

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By Rich Smith, The Motley Fool

Filed under:

On Saturday, Jan. 12, 2013, the Green Bay Packers lost their chance at the Super Bowl. Playing before a sellout crowd at Candlestick Park against the San Francisco 49ers, the Packers gave up a playoff record 579 total yards, succumbing to a team that went on to claim the NFC Championship but eventually lost the Super Bowl to the Baltimore Ravens at an eventful game in New Orleans.

Three months later and an ocean away, another “football” team, British soccer club Manchester United , had a different story to tell. On Monday, April 22, 2013, Man Utd claimed their 20th league title, beating Aston Villa 3-0 to win the English Premier League Championship .

Man Utd now enters the hunt for a place in next season’s European Champions League, while the Packers must go back to the drawing board, and start again at 0-0 in the race for Super Bowl XLVIII. That fact alone tells you why Man Utd is probably a better “football” team than the Packers.

But here’s the real revelation: Manchester United is also a better investment than the Packers.

Football fans vs. profits fanatics
That’s right. Manchester United and the Green Bay Packers aren’t just “football teams” that you can cheer for. They’re also “companies” that you can invest in. But they’re very different kinds of companies.

You may recall how, Green Bay announced in December of 2011 that it was opening up its team to new buyers, offering to sell up to 880,000 Packers shares to the public for $250 apiece. Well, less than a year later, Man Utd decided to open itself up to public ownership as well, holding an initial public offering of its stock at an offer price of $14 a share.

Eight months later, those Manchester United shares sell for nearly $18 apiece — a 28% gain. Not bad … but get a load of how Packers shares have performed. Since their third public offering back in 1950, shares of the Packers have increased in price 10,000 times, from a split-adjusted price of $0.025 per share, to the 2011 asking price of $250. That looks like a pretty hefty profit. It looks like the Packers are outperforming Man Utd.

But looks can be deceiving.

The problem with Packers, according to its prospectus, is that despite the rise in value of the team, and of its stock, investors in Green Bay “should not purchase [GB] stock with the purpose of making a profit.” Why not? Because each share of the Green Bay Packers comes burdened with “transfer restrictions and redemption rights.”

The effect of these rights is to prevent anyone who bought a Green Bay share back in 1950 from ever realizing a dime of profit on the 10,000% appreciation of that share’s value today. Any time a Green Bay shareholder tries to sell a share today, “the Corporation has a right of first refusal to repurchase [GB] Stock at a price of $0.025 per share.”

In

Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

News, Politics, Government

6 months after Sandy, thousands homeless in NY, NJ

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Six months after Superstorm Sandy, tens of thousands of people in New York and New Jersey remain homeless and communities are still struggling to recover.

But progress has been made as well. New boardwalks will be ready for summer, and homes are being elevated even as ruined ones are bulldozed.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says some people are doing just fine while others are facing “horrendous” obstacles to recovery.

The federal government has paid billions in flood insurance claims and housing assistance in the two states, with more to come.

Lynda Fricchione (frik-ee-OHN’), whose Toms River, N.J., home was ruined, says a trip to New Orleans showed her people and communities can recover from terrible storms.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox US News

News, Politics, Government

Mississippi becomes third state to sue BP for oil spill

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Mississippi has become the third state to sue BP PLC over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Attorney General Jim Hood announced Friday that Mississippi had filed suits in federal and state court. The move comes one day before the three-year statute of limitations expires for claims related to the April 20, 2010 explosion and subsequent spill.

Hood says he wanted to settle, but says BP refused to negotiate. He also says the oil company refused to waive the statute of limitations.

A spokeswoman for BP didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Louisiana and Alabama sued BP earlier and are participating in a federal trial in New Orleans to determine the liability of BP and its contractors. Mississippi hadn’t been participating because it hadn’t sued.

From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/national/~3/28MNwtJhjkU/