Cairo dispute triggers gunfight, reports of deaths

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A Guide To New Homes: Looking At The Bigger Picture

Owning a home is part of the American Dream. Upon reaching that point in life when you are ready to make the big buy, it is important to know how to go about it to avoid making costly mistakes. Expect that the home buying process will be exciting and stressful at the same time, but will be worth it in the end if you make the right moves. Here's a quick guide to help you look at the bigger picture before searching for new homes. Most first time homebuyers often find themselves caught in the whirlwind of finding the perfect house. While the features and fixtures of the structure itself are important, it should not be your immediate priority. It makes more sense to look at the bigger picture before scrutinizing aspects like the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, garage space, and kitchen size.

Location is everything when it comes to new homes for sale. After all, what good are all your dream features if thehouse is in the middle of nowhere? Carefully choosing the community is the first step to a worthwhile investment. Be a smart buyer and keep the following pointers in mind.

City versus the Suburb

Decide whether you want a property in the city or one in the immediately surrounding area. It is the first major decision you have to make and your choice dictates everything else that follows. Think about your budget and the lifestyle you wish to live. Do you want to be close to where the action is all the time? Do you prefer something more laidback but with easy access to a cosmopolitan lifestyle? Answering these questions will help you decide which area to focus on when searching for new homes.

Where you choose to livewillnarrow down your choices in terms of the type of new homes for sale. For example, the city might have more options for condominiums than detached houses, and vice versa for the metro area. This aspect also lays out your options for schools, work, and entertainment.

Economic Stability

General rule of thumb is to buy a home where the economy is flourishing or on the rise. Properties in such locations are good investments because prices are competitive and resale value is high. Thriving cities are also usually host to big industries. This is ideal especially if you seek new job opportunities or career growth to provide for a growing family.

New homes for sale in economically stable locations normally have bigger business districts offering you more choices for entertainment and recreation. Major cities may also be home to bigger school districts providing education across all levels. This is an important inquiry especially if you are interested in a master's or doctoral degree, or want to send your kids to a good school.

Government Services

The last significant concern when choosing a location for new homes is local government services. What's available in terms of hospitals? Does the place have reliable police and fire department services? Are there parks and athletic facilities you can use? These are important aspects most homebuyers tend to overlook. Be a smart buyer and go over all these related aspects before looking into properties one-by-one.

Anna Griffiths is a broker for new homes and helps clients find ideal new homes for sale.

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Romney?s bus tour arrives in rainy Ohio

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'True Blood': Stephen Moyer Talks Anna Paquin, Directing HBO Series

Playing a vampire named Bill Compton may be his day job, but Stephen Moyer has taken on a new role in Bon Temps: directing.

As excited as he was to direct Season 5 of "True Blood," Moyer admitted that getting behind the camera was far from easy.

"I was terrified -- not of being able to do the job, but I was scared of how the other actors would react to me telling them what to do," the actor told USA Today. "[But] they were so supportive. It is a giant family, and there were times when I knew they had my back."

According to Moyer, the only person he got attitude from was his wife Anna Paquin, who plays Sookie Stackhouse on "True Blood."

"I got a bit of sass from the wife," Moyer joked. "She was like, 'Oh, my God, this director is such a diva.'"

Compton isn't the only "True Blood" star who stepped into an unfamiliar role this season. Christopher Meloni, who plays the Vampire Authority guide Roman, made a recent transition from playing a detective on "SVU" to entering the supernatural realm of Bon Temps.

"I don't think you could go farther afield from 'SVU' than joining the world of Bon Temps and the whole 'True Blood' werewolves, werepanthers, faeries and vampires running around. That was what it was," Meloni told TVGuide.com. "I really was just looking for something absolutely completely different than the world that 'SVU' had."

Catch "True Blood" on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.

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    Kristin Bauer van Straten

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Meagan Good and DeVon Franklin: Married!


Life is now great for Meagan Good.

The actress (Think Like a Man, Californication) married preacher and Columbia Pictures VP DeVon Franklin Saturday evening at Triunfo Creek Winery in Malibu, CA, as first reported by People.

Meagan Good Photo

"DeVon makes me better, makes my life fuller and completes my quality of life," Good told the publication. "He's truly on my team and I am truly on his. God revealed my heart to him like nobody else."

Approximately 400 guests attended the ceremony, which featured the star a custom R-Mine gown with a purple train.

The couple started dating during the shooting of Jumping the Broom and we wish them the best of luck!

[Photo: WENN.com]

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Review: New MacBook Pro is revolution for eyeballs, raid on wallet

19 hrs.

I didn't think I would care much about a "Retina" display for a laptop. When I'm using my current laptop in a typical way, a?few feet from my face, I can't see the pixels anyhow.?So what would this revolutionary laptop with?pixels that are invisible to the human eye do for me? Turns out,?it bathes my eyeballs in a spa-like warmth the likes of which I haven't felt since I first stared deep into the high-res face of my first iPhone 4.

Don't call me a fanboy for that one. Just do yourself a favor and stare deep at?a Retina display on an iPhone 4 or 4S, or a competing phone with a ridiculously pixel-dense screen, like HTC's Rezound. When you're looking at the right image or picture, it feels like you can see for miles and miles, and it's relaxing. It's easier on the eyes, because your brain doesn't have to reconstruct reality from a pile of bricks. It simply?sees reality.?

And even at arm's length, like on a laptop monitor,?the difference?is clear. When I was browsing the Mac App Store on the new MacBook Pro, I pulled up iPhoto, and in the splash screen there was a mockup iPhoto?screen, and inside that screen were photos. I could see the detail in each of those tiny thumbnails, as if they were 3x5s sitting on a coffee table.

The other thing that I could tell immediately?about the new?screen is that there's far less glare. I have an anti-glare screen on my 2010 MacBook Pro, but colleagues in my office with standard screens live like vampires, shying away from sunlight, fearing reflections in their screens. When you set the new MacBook Pro next to an older model, you can see that Apple has cut down on glare drastically, and that?the visibility is simultaneously increased by newer?LCD technology that makes for better viewing at wider angles.

I'll shut up about the display now, but there's no downplaying its significance ? and the fact that it's a leading inflater of the price of the?newly redesigned MacBook Pro.

Whether you're seriously considering buying in or just curious about the new gold standard in laptops, you have to understand what's revolutionary about the MacBook Pro and why that will sooner or later become standard, at least in Apple's lineup.?Design and technological?innovations like these aren't meant to be kept at the high end. Just as unibody construction, solid-state memory and Thunderbolt interfaces have worked their way down into Apple's full MacBook line, so too will the glories that are today only found the admittedly expensive ? and hard to find ? new?flagship.

Another of these improvements can be heard in the speakers.

When my wife and I travel with the older MacBook Pro, and watch a movie on it?in a hotel room, we strain to hear dialogue. My wife has flat-out?banned the listening of music on that old laptop, too,?because it's so tinny. Well, the new next-gen MacBook Pro may be skinnier, but trust me, the sound coming out of it is a whole lot?fatter. You can really hear midrange and low-end, and when you crank the volume, the sound gets louder, rather than just peaking out in an ear-crushing way.

Under the hood, things get even more advanced. Instead of a hard drive, or even a typical "solid-state drive," where flash memory is stored in a hard-drive-shaped?enclosure, there is just a board that holds the flash memory, ranging from 256GB to 768GB. Flash memory is not cheap, especially the highest-quality kind needed for performance laptops, and that's why there's an?additional "early adopter tax" here:?Since Apple is hardwiring it?in, you have to pay for the internal memory you'll need?now, rather than wait to upgrade later, when the price inevitably?goes down. (Apple will however be offering RAM upgrades for the new MacBook Pro, according to a check of the Apple Store, and corroborated by support documentation.)

Pricey though it is, the benefit of hard-wired flash memory is exceptional performance: The laptop wakes up instantly when you open the lid, and when that lid is closed, your battery doesn't drain. There's a 7-hour battery life, says Apple, and the stand-by time is an incredible 30?days.

(While I wanted to share with you the significance of this laptop, I am not going to go into further?technical testing here. For an excellent technical review, pay a visit to our friends at Laptop, who have all the charts and graphs you'll need to know just how special this thing is.)

There are, of course, things that might not?excite you about the new MacBook Pro. It's not particularly lightweight, for instance. Weighing in at around 4.5 lbs., it's by no means heavier than the typical premium notebook, but it's not a miracle of lightness, either. In fact, because it has a similar weight and footprint to its predecessor, it's easy to forget about its remarkable thinness.

Another thing that might concern some is the lack of a DVD drive, but I am having a hard time remember the last time I even watched?a DVD, let alone burned one. For those still?interested in shiny silver disc handling, there is a $79 USB?SuperDrive, but it shouldn't be considered as a?precautionary purchase, because my guess is that most people won't need it.

"Need." Look at me. What an awful word to use when discussing this marvel.?Aside from visual artists, medical imaging technicians and mineralogists?? the sort of?professionals?for whom this kind of pixel density comes with immediate pay-off,?not to mention a tax write-off?? there's no way this baby is?a "necessity."

It is bragging right upon bragging right, envelope push upon envelope push, and most people who buy it will be doing it for the same reason they would buy a Mercedes-Benz CLS. To experience the height of quality??To fulfill a personal aesthetic hunger? To show off to friends and strangers alike? It makes no difference: The reason is certainly?not to get you to work and back.

So if you do buy this?? assuming all?other financial?obligations to society are covered, or you have more money than you could ever spend in your lifetime?? I say buy the $3,749 configuration. That maxes out the RAM at 16GB, the internal flash memory at 768GB and the processing speed at 2.7GHz.?Just don't be surprised when, a couple of years from now, you're standing in the coffee shop line?behind some little hipster who has a slim?new MacBook Air with all those specs, and that brag-worthy Retina screen,?and it only cost him $999.

Wilson Rothman is the Technology & Science section?editor at msnbc.com. Catch up with him on Twitter at @wjrothman, and join our conversation on Facebook.

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Hey, kids! Get your stuff sent into orbit

Montana State Univ. / NASA

CubeSats like the one shown in this artist's conception, measuring 4 inches (10 centimeters) on each side, are coming within reach of student experimenters and DIY enthusiasts.

By Alan Boyle

Wanna do some space science? You no longer have to be a professional researcher, or even a grown-up, to get your experiment into orbit. A new program called DreamUp is offering slots on the International Space Station's experimental racks to school groups for as little as $15,500 a pop, and you can use credit-card reward points to help cover the cost.

"We are committed to lowering the barriers for entry to space research," Jeffrey Manber, managing director of NanoRacks, said in a news release announcing the program. "This is a double win. This first-of-its-kind student experiment donation platform will help create a world-class experience for students."

NanoRacks, which has already helped put iPhones and the makings for Scotch whisky into space, is partnering up with the Conrad Foundation on the DreamUp program.


"Some experiments can't be done on Earth because we can't 'turn off' gravity," said Nancy Conrad, the foundation's chairman and the widow of Apollo astronaut Pete Conrad. "DreamUp, powered by our partner NanoRacks, is the ultimate 'plug and play,' helping our next great innovators participate in a scientific research opportunity like no other."

Organizers say American Express Membership Rewards points can be put toward the cost of an experiment, at the rate of $10 for every 1,000 points redeemed. The DreamUp program is open to junior-high students, high-schoolers and college undergraduates from accredited U.S. schools.

Teacher, I shrunk the experiment
The concept follows up on a series of student experiments that have already flown up to the station on NanoRacks' platforms. One of the key players in the project will be Werner Vavken, director of Valley Christian Schools' Applied Math, Science and Engineering Institute in San Jose, Calif. Vavken and his students have built experiments for the space station and taught several other schools to do likewise.

The first lesson that Vavken shares with other schools is that doing space science isn't as hard as it sounds. "I explain this to them, and they think I'm from outer space," he told me. "But they really can do it. The sky is no longer the limit."

NanoRacks / Valley Christian Schools

Team members at Valley Christian High School in San Jose, Calif., design their experimental payload for the International Space Station.

NanoRacks / Kentucky Space / Valley Christian Schools

A NanoLab container holds a plant growth experiment as well as electronic gear.

The key trick is to shrink the experiment: Vavken said the experiments that he and his students build have to fit within a 2-by-2-by-4-inch space (5 by 5 by 10 centimeters). That sounds incredibly challenging, but it can be done. One of the schools he worked with wanted to design an experiment to mix concrete in microgravity?? a task that some thought would cost millions of dollars. Suffice it to say that the eight-student team from Faith Christian Academy in Coalinga, Calif., found a cheaper way.

"They conjured up a way to mix concrete in space, in 16 cubic inches, and they didn't have a $4 million budget," Vavken said. The experiment is due to return to Earth next month aboard a Russian Soyuz craft, and the students will then analyze how zero-gravity concrete differs from the Earth-made equivalent on the molecular level.

Other high-school experiments have been aimed at monitoring?plant growth,?bacterial growth?and food spoilage in microgravity.

"The opportunity for students to do small experiments on the ISS is a powerful motivator in science, technology, engineering and math," Julie Robinson, NASA's chief scientist for the International Space Station, said in this week's news release. "DreamUp will provide the opportunity for top students of all socio-economic levels to fly their experiments to the space station, and the NanoRacks system allows them to be completed without any impact to other research activities."

The revolution continues
NanoRacks' standardized research platforms, known as NanoLabs, are shipped up to the space station on cargo flights. NASA astronauts plug them into the station's power and communication system, and then just let them run for 30 days. The students get the opportunity to interact with the astronauts and check in with their experiment.

"It's really pretty revolutionary for teenagers to conjure this up, get it built and tested, and approved by NanoRacks," Vavken said.

Next year could be even more revolutionary. "We are teaching the kids how to design and launch a satellite from the International Space Station," Vavken said. The CubeSat device, measuring 4 inches (10 centimeters) on each side, could be sent into orbit as early as next February from?Japan's Kibo laboratory, he said.

Vavken acknowledged that the $15,500 cost was "a little pricey," but he said the project could be a game-changer for teens who are interested in math, science and engineering. He recalled the case of one high-schooler who was on the team for a space experiment he helped organize. "She graduated this past year ... and got a four-year, full-ride scholarship to MIT," he said. "Now, I think that's a good payback for a kid in an after-school program."

For more information about the DreamUp program, including a registration form, click on over to the Conrad Foundation website.

But wait ... there's more
Meanwhile, aerospace experts and their corporate partners have just set up a Kickstarter campaign for a citizen-space-science project called ArduSat. They're soliciting donations to cover the anticipated $35,000 cost of building a CubeSat that will contain more than two dozen sensors for orbital observations. "As soon as the funding goal is met, we can move ahead with applications for free launches through various NASA or ESA ride-along programs," the project leaders say.

Organizers of the ArduSat project state their case for Kickstarter backing.

Organizers of the campaign say that ArduSat will be the "first open platform allowing the general public to design and run their own space-based applications, games and experiments, steer the onboard cameras to take pictures on demand, and even broadcast personalized messages back to Earth." If the project gets off the ground, Kickstarter supporters will get the first turns at taking the controls, at a discounted price.

Discover Magazine has partnered with ArduSat to run the Discover Space Challenge, which is soliciting ideas for innovative experiments, games or applications to run on the nanosatellite. The winning team members will be awarded a Team Development Kit that could turn their idea into a reality.

Interested? For more information, check out Phil Plait's spiel on the Bad Astronomy blog, plus Evan Ackerman's report on the DVICE blog.

More about nanosatellites:


Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the?Cosmic Log page?to your Google+ presence. You can also check out?"The Case for Pluto,"?my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

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Possible outcomes in pivotal health care law case

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Some are already anticipating the Supreme Court's ruling on President Barack Obama's health care law as the "decision of the century." But the justices are unlikely to have the last word on America's tangled efforts to address health care woes. The problems of high medical costs, widespread waste, and tens of millions of people without insurance will require Congress and the president to keep looking for answers, whether or not the Affordable Care Act passes the test of constitutionality.

With a decision by the court expected this month, here is a look at potential outcomes:

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Q: What if the Supreme Court upholds the law and finds Congress was within its authority to require most people to have health insurance or pay a penalty?

A: That would settle the legal argument, but not the political battle.

The clear winners if the law is upheld and allowed to take full effect would be uninsured people in the United States, estimated at more than 50 million.

Starting in 2014, most could get coverage through a mix of private insurance and Medicaid, a safety-net program. Republican-led states that have resisted creating health insurance markets under the law would face a scramble to comply, but the U.S. would get closer to other economically advanced countries that guarantee medical care for their citizens.

Republicans would keep trying to block the law. They will try to elect presidential candidate Mitt Romney, backed by a GOP House and Senate, and repeal the law, although their chances of repeal would seem to be diminished by the court's endorsement.

Obama would feel the glow of vindication for his hard-fought health overhaul, but it might not last long even if he's re-elected.

The nation still faces huge problems with health care costs, requiring major changes to Medicare that neither party has explained squarely to voters. Some backers of Obama's law acknowledge it was only a first installment: get most people covered, then deal with the harder problem of costs.

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Q: On the other hand, what if the court strikes down the entire law?

A: Many people would applaud, polls suggest.

Taking down the law would kill a costly new federal entitlement before it has a chance to take root and develop a clamoring constituency, but that still would leave the problems of high costs, waste, and millions uninsured.

Some Republicans in Congress already are talking about passing anew the more popular pieces of the health law.

But the major GOP alternatives to Obama's law would not cover nearly as many uninsured, and it's unclear how much of a dent they would make in costs. Some liberals say Medicare-for-all, or government-run health insurance, will emerge as the only viable answer if Obama's public-private approach fails.

People with health insurance could lose some ground as well. Employers and insurance companies would have no obligation to keep providing popular new benefits such as preventive care with no copayments and coverage for young adults until age 26 on a parent's plan. Medicare recipients with high prescription drug costs could lose discounts averaging about $600.

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Q: What happens if the court strikes down the individual insurance requirement, but leaves the rest of the Affordable Care Act in place?

A: Individuals would have no obligation to carry insurance, but insurers would remain bound by the law to accept applicants regardless of medical condition and limit what they charge their oldest and sickest customers.

Studies suggest premiums in the individual health insurance market would jump by 10 percent to 30 percent.

Experts debate whether or not that would trigger the collapse of the market for individuals and small businesses, or just make coverage even harder to afford than it is now. In any event, there would be risks to the health care system. Fewer people would sign up for coverage.

The insurance mandate was primarily a means to an end, a way to create a big pool of customers and allow premiums to remain affordable. Other forms of arm-twisting could be found, including limited enrollment periods and penalties for late sign-up, but such fixes would likely require congressional cooperation.

Unless there's a political deal to fix it, the complicated legislation would get harder to carry out. Congressional Republicans say they will keep pushing for repeal.

Without the mandate, millions of uninsured low-income people still would get coverage through the law's Medicaid expansion. The problem would be the 10 million to 15 million middle-class people expected to gain private insurance under the law. They would be eligible for federal subsidies, but premiums would get more expensive.

Taxes, Medicare cuts and penalties on employers not offering coverage would stay in place.

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Q: What if the court strikes down the mandate and also invalidates the parts of the law that require insurance companies to cover people regardless of medical problems and that limit what they can charge older people?

A: Many fewer people would get covered, but the health insurance industry would avoid a dire financial hit.

Insurers could continue screening out people with a history of medical problems; diabetes patients or cancer survivors, for example.

That would prevent a sudden jump in premiums. But it would leave consumers with no assurance that they can get health insurance when they need it, which is a major problem that the law was intended to fix.

Obama administration lawyers say the insurance requirement goes hand in hand with the coverage guarantee and cap on premiums, and have asked the court to get rid of both if it finds the mandate to be unconstitutional.

One scenario sends shivers through the health care industry: The Supreme Court strikes down the mandate only, and delegates other courts to determine what else stays or goes.

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Q: What happens if the court throws out only the expansion of the Medicaid program?

A: That severely would limit the law's impact because roughly half of the more than 30 million people expected to gain insurance under the law would get it through the expansion of Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people.

But a potentially sizable number of those low-income people still might be eligible for government-subsidized private insurance under other provisions. Private coverage is more expensive to subsidize than Medicaid.

States suing to overturn the federal law argue that the Medicaid expansion comes with so many strings attached it amounts to an unconstitutional power grab by Washington. The administration says the federal government will pay virtually all the cost and that the expansion is no different from ones that states have accepted in the past.

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Q: What happens if the court decides that the constitutional challenge is premature?

A: The wild card, and least conclusive outcome in the case, probably also is the most unlikely, based on what justices said during the arguments.

No justice seemed inclined to take this path, which involves the court's consideration of a technical issue.

The federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., held that the challenge to the insurance requirement has to wait until people start paying the penalty for not purchasing insurance. The appeals court said it was bound by the federal Anti-Injunction Act, which says that federal courts may not hear challenges to taxes, or anything that looks like a tax, until after the taxes are paid.

So if the justices have trouble coming together on any of the other options they could simply punt.

The administration says it doesn't want this result. Yet such a decision would allow it to continue putting the law in place, postponing any challenge until more of the benefits are being received. On the other hand, it might give Republicans more ammunition to press for repeal in the meantime.

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Online:

Supreme Court: http://tinyurl.com/3zukoc4

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