PFT: Browns willing to deal McCoy for cheap?

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Bills TE Pete Metzelaars is trying to get his pupils to embrace blocking;??Blocking comes down to heart and will, it really does,? Metzelaars said. ??Are you willing to put the effort in? ?Are you going to work hard at it and take pride in doing it? ?If you?re going, ?Whoa, whoa, whoa, I?m a receiver,? it?s hard to get you to block.?

Dr. Van Nostrand is visiting the Dolphins? home stadium on Saturday.

Jets coach Rex Ryan admits he didn?t realize?the team had an issue in the locker room last season.

To promote team building, the Patriots went through offseason workouts with no numbers on their jerseys.

The newborn baby of Ravens QB Joe Flacco has a Twitter page.

Steelers RB Baron Batch likes to paint, but he?s surely hoping the doctor who fixed his knee was a ligament artist.

Browns QB Colt McCoy shouldn?t quit his day job. ?(Assuming he doesn?t get fired from it.)

Bengals CB Dre Kirkpatrick, after exclusively working in press coverage at Alabama, is learning how to backpedal.

The company that had been paid $1.2 million per year to manage Everbank Field since 1992 is willing to slash its price to $150,000. ?(Which raises a valid question: ?Who in the hell negotiated these deals for Jacksonville in the past?)

Titans RB Chris Johnson is comparing himself to LeBron James;??He just gives me motivation to bounce back for this year, to see the things he came back and did and prove the naysayers wrong,? Johnson said. ?So I kind of look at him as a guy like me.?

Colts coach Chuck Pagano told his players to stay out of trouble during their time off before training camp.

WR Mike Sims-Walker is still waiting to be signed by the Texans. ?Or anyone else.

Broncos LB Von Miller was named the Colorado Athlete of the Year. ?(The guy who likely would have been the first choice no longer lives or works there.)

Single-game tickets to Chiefs games will go on sale July 18.

The Raiders and S Tyvon Branch, who signed his one-year franchise tender, continue to work on a long-term deal;??Nobody?s slamming the phone on each other so that?s positive,? G.M. Reggie McKenzie said.

The third annual Philip Rivers 5K Celebrity Walk and Fun Run was held on Saturday. ?(Proceeds may or may not go to the search for a cure for rabies.)

Cowboys coach Jason Garrett told his team to ?make great decisions? during their time off (and he may or may not have been looking at Dez Bryant when he said it).

Don Banks of SI.com believes Vince Young?s dream may be realized?by the Eagles, a year late.

The Giants employees who don?t wear helmets and pads got their Super Bowl rings on Friday.

Redskins offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan says WR Santana Moss ?came in possessed.? ?(It makes it easier to track those deep balls if you can spin your head all the way around.)

CB Charles Tillman doesn?t care much for math problems based on the Bears losing to the Packers.

Lions coach Jim Schwartz doesn?t care about QB Kellen Moore?s height;??It?s well documented that he doesn?t have the strongest arm, he doesn?t have the prototypical size but once you get out on the field you don?t get extra points for being 6-foot-4, you get 7 points for moving the ball and getting it into the end zone, and that?s what he has done so far in camp.?

In the third week of OTAs, Vikings S Harrison Smith finally moved from the second-team to the first.

With help from starter Aaron Rodgers, QB Graham Harrell is solidifying his spot as the primary backup in Green Bay.

It?s official: ?Saints owner Tom Benson now owns the New Orleans Hornets.

Panthers WR Steve Smith is hosting his annual youth football camp.

With Mike Nolan now the defensive coordinator in Atlanta, the safeties could have a bigger role.

Bucs WR Vincent Jackson has a plan for the offseason;??Obviously you want to take a little rest for a short amount of time,? Jackson said. ??But the biggest thing is just to stay on top of things.? You don?t want to lose what we?ve built here. . . . ?[K]eep yourself in physical shape, be ready to go conditioning-wise and mentally stay in it.?

Rams coach Jeff Fisher is ?pleased? with where the team is after the conclusion of the offseason program.

A golfer wearing Niners gear shot an 80 on the first day of the U.S. Open.

The new rookie wage scale has helped the Cardinals end a long history of first-round holdouts.

Tarvaris Jackson gets the first turn at quarterback once the Seahawks open training camp.

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US deserter in Sweden steps forward after 28 years

A U.S. Air Force deserter who has lived secretly in Sweden since 1984 has revealed his identity and contacted his family in the United States who were overwhelmed to hear he was still alive, a Swedish newspaper reported at the weekend.

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Dagens Nyheter said David Hemler had deserted aged 21 while serving at a U.S. Air Force base in Germany, after getting involved with a pacifist church and becoming disillusioned with the policies of former President Ronald Reagan.

He hitchhiked via Denmark to Sweden where he settled down, living under an assumed name for the last 28 years and not revealing his true identity to anyone.

"I never planned on not telling the truth in the beginning. I intended to come to Sweden until I felt better (after his experience in the airforce), I expected a week or so," Hemler told the newspaper in a video on its website.

Now aged 49, he is married to a woman from Thailand, has three children and works for a Swedish government agency, but would not let the newspaper print his assumed name.

After his desertion, he became one of the U.S. Air Force's eight most wanted fugitives, according to the newspaper, and had expected at any time to be arrested by military police with both Interpol and Europol looking for him.

Hemler told the newspaper he had missed his parents after he deserted but went on to have a child and had not wanted to be separated from her.

He had decided to come forward after his third daughter turned two and could go to day care, so his wife would be better able to cope if he was arrested.

He first contacted his U.S. family four weeks ago, speaking to his brother Thomas who was in Massachusetts at the time on a business trip.

"DREAM SCENARIO"

"I heard immediately it was David, even if he had a strange European accent after all these years," Thomas Hemler, who lives in New Jersey, was quoted on Sunday as saying.

He said he had asked questions to confirm the man was indeed his brother David. Members of his family in the United States are now planning to visit him in Sweden.

The website of the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations lists Hemler, who was born in Pennsylvania, as having deserted on February 10, 1984 from the 6913th Electronic Security Squadron in Augsburg, Germany.

Its Air Force Fugitives page shows a photo of Hemler as a young man, and a photo digitally enhanced to show how he might look aged 47.

The newspaper said Hemler was registered in Sweden as a citizen of an unknown country who was born in Zurich.

His lawyer, Emma Persson, told Reuters he had approached her firm for legal advice about a month ago.

"My opinion is that he will not lose his permanent residence permit in Sweden, it is very unlikely," she said. She also thought it unlikely he would be extradited to the United States.

A U.S. embassy spokesman declined to comment on the case.

"My dream scenario is that the responsible authorities realize I have already been punished quite severely for my actions ... I have been living 28 years in lies," Hemler said.

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Former Goldman Sachs director convicted

NEW YORK (AP) ? A former Goldman Sachs director accused of feeding confidential information to a corrupt hedge fund manager has been convicted of conspiracy and three counts of securities fraud.

A jury acquitted Rajat Gupta on two other securities fraud counts. Gupta's adult daughters hugged and wept as the verdict was read. He showed no visible reaction.

The 63-year-old Gupta ? born in India, educated at Harvard and well-known in corporate America ? has been the most prominent defendant prosecuted so far in a wide-ranging probe of alleged insider trading in the hedge fund industry by investigators armed with wiretaps. Both his trial and that last year of former billionaire Raj Rajaratnam pulled back the curtain on how the two longtime friends and Wall Street titans navigated the turbulent waters of the 2008 economic meltdown.

The pair had "public sides of success," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Reed Brodsky said at closing arguments at the closely watched white-collar trial. "But concealed from the public was a different side ? a side that committed crimes."

The prosecutor argued that secret recordings of phone calls between the two men showed that Gupta was so brazen about sharing Goldman board secrets it sounded like "he was talking about what happened at a Yankee game yesterday."

Defense attorney Gary P. Naftalis countered that the FBI wiretaps, phone records and other evidence presented by the government had only created the "illusion" that legitimate business dealings were somehow sinister.

"That is a gambit that can bamboozle people into thinking something was proven when it wasn't," Naftalis told the jury.

Rajaratnam, founder of the $7 billion Galleon hedge fund, was sentenced last October to an 11-year prison term on an insider-trading conviction. Less than a month later, Gupta was charged in a separate case built on the some of the same wiretap and other evidence.

Allegations that Gupta conspired with a convicted white-collar criminal represented a fall from grace: The defendant is a former chief of McKinsey & Co., a highly regarded global consulting firm that zealously guards its reputation for discretion and integrity. He also is a onetime director of the huge consumer products company Procter & Gamble Co.

During the trial that began on May 20, the government highlighted a Sept. 23, 2008, phone call it said was made from Gupta to Rajaratnam. The call came only minutes after Gupta had learned during a confidential conference call about how Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway planned to invest $5 billion in Goldman ? a blockbuster deal that wouldn't be announced until the stock market closed at 4 p.m.

"That news was going to be very good news for Goldman Sachs," another prosecutor, Richard Tarlowe said in closing arguments. "The average ordinary investor had no way of knowing that. ... Until the announcement, it was confidential."

Records showed that moments after the phone call ended at 3:55 p.m., Rajaratnam purchased $40 million in Goldman stock ? an 11th hour trade that ended up making him nearly $1 million.

The hedge fund manager's assistant, Caryn Eisenberg, testified at trial that it was the only call her boss received on his private line that day between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m.

"That evidence is devastating for the defendant. ... If you believe Ms. Eisenberg, it's over ? the defendant is guilty," Tarlowe said.

Also played at trial was a wiretap of a July 2008 phone call during which Rajaratnam grilled Gupta about whether the Goldman Sachs board had discussed acquiring a struggling bank, like Wachovia, or an insurance company.

"Have you heard anything along that line?" Rajaratnam asked Gupta.

"Yeah," Gupta responded. "This was a big discussion at the board meeting."

In another recorded phone call in 2008, Rajaratnam told one of his traders that he had got a tip "from someone who's on the board of Goldman Sachs" that Goldman was facing an unexpected quarterly loss.

Prosecutors argued the sequence of events ? the phone calls, the subsequent trades and Rajaratnam's boasting about his inside connection ? could not be dismissed as mere coincidence. Gupta, they said, was motivated to help Rajaratnam because he had a financial stake in some of the hedge fund manager's business ventures.

"What was good for Raj Rajaratnam was good for Mr. Gupta," Brodsky said.

Naftalis countered that most the evidence was specific to the "secret world" of Rajaratnam and not about Gupta.

"I sometimes wondered whether Raj Rajaratnam was the man on trial," he said. His client, he added, was a victim of "pure guilt by association."

.

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Affairs of politics and heart mark French election

PARIS (AP) ? Back-room deals, black lists and bitter duels. Political and personal intrigue has wormed its way into Sunday's final round of French legislative elections. President Francois Hollande's Socialist Party is battling to ensure a solid majority and fulfill his vows to boost growth in Europe and redefine the presidency as one beholden to the people.

Barring surprises, the Socialists and their allies should win enough seats to control the crucial 577-seat lower house of parliament, after a strong showing in the first round a week ago. To get there, the party is trying to fend off conservatives who dominated parliament under former President Nicolas Sarkozy.

They're also trying to shame those in the mainstream right who are cutting vote-getting deals with the extreme right, anti-immigrant National Front, which is conniving for its first real presence in parliament in more than a quarter century.

"The right no longer knows where it lives. It no longer knows what it is," said Economy Minister Pierre Moscovici this week on France 2 TV. "It's lost its markers, its identity, its values."

One unexpected hitch for the Socialists flew straight out of Hollande's most inner circle: His live-in companion's tweet this week in support of a dissident candidate in western France, a not-so-subtle attack on the Socialist Party's official candidate ? the president's ex-partner and mother of his four children, Segolene Royal.

Royal is portrayed in the French press as the nemesis of a jealous Valerie Trierweiler, whose tweet on Tuesday upended the image Hollande has been trying to project: that of a "normal" leader intent on keeping the public and private spheres separate.

That stance is meant to set Hollande apart from the brash Sarkozy, who grabbed headlines with his complicated private life while building up a presidency that critics said was too centered on his own personality and his rich friends' interests. Hollande defeated him in the May 6 presidential vote, amid voter frustrations with Sarkozy's handling of the economy and the presidency.

The tweet also dealt a blow to Royal, whose chances of winning her parliamentary race were already shaky. Polls suggest that Royal, a former presidential candidate, will lose to dissident Socialist Olivier Falorni by a wide margin, a defeat that would leave her without a job in politics.

Far more grave is the perception that the moral ramparts built to ensure that the anti-immigration National Front remains a political pariah are being chinked away by conservative politicians. Sarkozy's conservative UMP party is struggling to hold onto seats, and many candidates are angling for far-right votes to defy polls and win.

Polling firms have calculated the National Front could get up to three seats in the National Assembly, a symbolic victory. The party's leader, Marine Le Pen ? who is running in a former coal mining region in northern France ? says one seat would be a victory since the party hasn't had a real parliamentary presence since 1986. In that year, 35 lawmakers were elected under a voting system that favors smaller parties ? but the system was abolished two years later. Le Pen thinks pollsters underestimate the National Front's potential.

The newly robust anti-immigration party, which wants to abandon the euro currency and stop immigration, is on a roll. Le Pen has revamped the party to bury its reputation as racist and anti-Semitic inherited under the reign of party founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Daughter Marine placed a solid third in spring presidential elections and its candidates ranked third in last Sunday's first round of parliamentary voting.

Sarkozy has disappeared into the shadows but he and his Union for a Popular Movement, or UMP, are being blamed for blurring the lines between the mainstream and extreme right by taking up some National Front themes, including the need to preserve France's national identity or try to ensure a low profile for Muslims.

Socialist Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault accuses the conservatives of creating a "strategic alliance" with the National Front.

"There is no alliance," UMP leader Jean-Francois Cope said in an interview published Friday in the daily Le Figaro.

"The French must understand that if the left gets all the power Sunday, it's like signing a blank check for five years," Cope said.

The Socialist Party already controls the Senate and most regional and local governments, and adversaries say the majority it expects on Sunday would amount to a "Socialist state" in France.

Any candidate who won support of more than 12.5 percent of registered voters in the first round advances to Sunday's runoff, and many districts have three-way races, including several with National Front candidates.

Nadine Morano, a former Sarkozy minister battling for a parliamentary seat in the eastern Moselle region, has publicly reached out to National Front voters "who share our values, my values."

"I don't hear extremist words coming from their mouths," she said this week on TF1, in the company of former Prime Minister Francois Fillon on a campaign outing.

For Le Pen, the isolation wall "has imploded."

The conservatives "have evolved under the pressure of their voters and their base," Le Pen was quoted as saying Wednesday in the online publication Le Telegramme." A very large majority of UMP voters feel close" to National Front's views.

The anti-Racism group SOS Racism denounces deal-makers as the "candidates of shame."

Says the No. 2 in the Socialist Party, Harlem D?sir: "The extreme right is advancing inside UMP like in Swiss cheese."

___

Cecile Brisson in Paris contributed to this report.

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Want a Retina MacBook Pro? It'll take a month or so

5 hrs.

The latest object of adoration in the tech world is Apple's new MacBook Pro, with its sleek exterior and high-resolution display. But it's proving hard to find: as stock runs low, online orders are not expected to ship for three to four weeks, and stores are getting limited inventory.

Is it a ploy by Apple to keep their luxury item scarce and desirable? Or can they literally just not make them fast enough? As much as Apple's savvy market tactics might suggest the former, in all likelihood they really are just in short supply. Even Apple Stores can't get enough ? one store in Seattle reported that they'd received only a handful of the laptops, and even then they were strictly?for display purposes. Customers looking to buy would be helped through the online purchasing process.

Blame the Retina display. This type of high-quality display, both in the MacBook and previously in the iPad, has been nothing but trouble for manufacturers. Samsung, Sharp, LG and others have all been aiming at producing the high-resolution panels, but the amount they could successfully create was limited. Why, only they could tell you, but it most likely has to do with the precision needed to create the tiny sub-pixel machinery ? no easy task even for less advanced displays.

The other parts of the laptop aren't nearly so thin on the ground. Apple famously has control over a huge amount of the world's advanced aluminum milling lines, so the unibody construction is no problem. The flash memory, RAM, CPU and graphics chips may be in a custom configuration, but they aren't themselves exotic ? just fairly high-quality off-the-shelf parts.

Chances are that every factory that can reliably manufacture Retina displays is working literally around the clock to produce as many as physically possible. And after Apple's initial stockpile ran out, that amount just isn't enough.

As demand tapers off and more factories are added to the process, the wait should be reduced. But how long that will take is anyone's guess. In the meantime, you can find them on eBay ? for a hefty markup, naturally.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

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Wounded warrior seeks to represent America ? again

Dan Koeck for msnbc.com

Lt. Brad Snyder lost his sight in an IED explosion in Afghanistan last September. The Navy officer is now training to represent the U.S. at the London 2012 Paralympics.

By Bill Briggs

Even in the water, amid a furious race to win back his confidence, the blind swimmer needs a cane.

Actually, Lt. Brad Snyder relies on two canes to avoid the sort of ugly collisions he has suffered?repeatedly on dry land.

At one end of the pool, his swimming coach stands above Snyder?s starting block, clutching a walking cane affixed with a tennis ball. As Snyder nears that hard edge, his coach leans down, extends the cane and taps the Navy officer on the back of his head with the ball, alerting him to abruptly finish his stroke and execute a flip turn. At the opposite end of the lane, Snyder?s brother, Mitchell, is armed with the same device and the same task.


?Any communication between the tapper and the swimmer is illegal -- other than: ?You?re close to the wall!? ?said Mitchell Snyder, 25, a former college swimmer. ?Of course, you?re natural instinct is to tell him how he?s doing. You?re the one who can see the clock and see the whole pool. You want to tell them where they?re at in the race. But I don?t give him any extra signals.?

The tap is merely one of the tactics and tools that Brad Snyder -- blinded last September by an Afghan bomb blast -- now uses to swim competitively in utter darkness. During each length of every race, he silently tracks his stroke count to hold a steady clip. He occasionally brushes a finger or shoulder, lightly, against the lane marker to verify his location. And, oddly, he must wear blacked-out goggles, by rule, over both of his blue prosthetic eyes.?

Through Saturday, the former Naval Academy swimmer is vying for one of 14 roster spots at the U.S. Paralympic Swimming Trials in Bismarck, N.D. If Snyder, 28, equals or nears a current world-best time in one of his five events, he?ll join the American team bound for the 2012 London Paralympics, held later this summer.

Wearing one of his old college caps with the Navy star on one side and the American flag on the other, he?s racing to again represent his country, this time on the international sports stage. He?s racing to help restore his self-image as a fully capable man -- a sacred piece of himself he lost when the IED detonated in his face. He?s racing to deliver a deeper message about thriving amid life?s occasional rough waters.?

Editor's note: This is the second installment that chronicles Lt. Brad Snyder's efforts to earn a spot on Team USA's roster for the 2012 London Paralympics.?Read the first story here.

Racing the clock
?All sorts of people have contacted me on Facebook, or by e-mail, or they come up to me in person and say, ?You really inspired us, just by the fact that you?ve moved forward, that you don?t let this thing slow you down.? I want them to see that, hey, you can go out (despite this type of wound) and excel at something -- become a really good writer, or a good cook; it doesn?t matter,? Snyder said. ?Hopefully, we can utilize this as a platform.?

That platform, he understands, will become far larger if he makes the 2012 U.S. Paralympic team. But getting to London is all about minutes, seconds and tenths of seconds -- the fewer of those during his heats, the better. And as a swimmer without sight, ensuring a brisk time is all about maintaining tight direction: the straighter he goes, the quicker he touches the finish line.

But, much like his delicate job in Afghanistan and Iraq -- dissecting and dismantling homemade explosives -- haste in the pool can be Snyder?s enemy.

When he swims fast and tries to increase his (arms?) turnover rate, he ends up almost pin-balling in the lane -- one side to the other, one side to the other -- ricocheting off that lane line,? said his coach, Brian Loeffler. ?If he gets going too much and crashes into a lane line, he can just be stopped in the water and lose all forward progress.?

When he swam for Navy in the early 2000s, Snyder?s initial style was to dive in and sprint -- no other strategy, no clean technique, just winning on pure guts. Eventually at the Naval Academy, he began to hone his strokes, evening his pace and becoming more efficient. Now, he and Loeffler are focused on keeping each 50-meter race length (or ?split,? in pool jargon), as even as possible to all other trips up and down the pool -- both in terms of his times and his stroke counts.

Lt. Brad Snyder, blinded by an IED explosion in Afghanistan, is now training for the London 2012 Paralympics.

That physical symmetry allows Snyder to better hold his course and avoid side-swiping the lane markers.

?When he can keep a long, steady stroke, he has a real good rhythm,? said Loeffer, the head swimming coach at Loyola University in Baltimore. He also will serve as one of the assistant swim coaches for the U.S. Paralympic team. ?We?ve got to find a balance between that kind of speed but also being able to be real straight in the water.?

Golden vision
Snyder?s best shot at making the American team, he believes, will come in the 400-meter freestyle. At the Bismarck trials, he?ll also aim to notch qualifying times in the 50-meter and 100-meter freestyle heats as well as the 100-meter butterfly and 200-meter individual medley.

For each heat, he?ll don special goggles ? not, however, to boost his pace. Swimmers competing in the Paralympics? fully blind division?must wear the black, plastic eye covers to ensure that they can?t see even a glimmer of light.?That would give those swimmers an advantage in a sport that takes itself as seriously as any Olympic endeavor.

?When I swam in my last Paralympic-sanctioned meet, every time I got out of the pool after racing, an official came over and looked at my goggles to make sure he couldn?t see through them,? Snyder said. ?But there?s another reason for them. If one of the prosthetic eyes comes out, my goggle would catch it. I wouldn?t have to ask someone to go search the pool for my eye.?

But behind those artificial eyes, Snyder has begun to visualize a blissful finish ? especially if he makes the U.S. team. The final men?s Paralympic swimming roster will be announced on Sunday.

?I really hope to bring attention to the wounded warriors (fellow servicemen and servicewomen hurt in Afghanistan and Iraq). And I hope my story maybe gives people some perspective,? Snyder said.

?You know how people get upset about silly things, like they get all fired up in rush hour? Well, let?s give them a story they can rally behind and say, hey it?s not that bad, maybe I should probably calm down a little bit.?

If Snyder earns a Paralympic slot, his best race ? the 400-meter freestyle ? is scheduled in London for Sept. 7. That means exactly one year to the day that the U.S. sailor lost his sight after stepping on a battlefield bomb, he?ll be wearing American colors, swimming for gold.?

COMING MONDAY: Did Lt. Brad Snyder make the U.S. men?s Paralympic swimming team??

Bill Briggs is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com and author of ?The Third Miracle.??

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13th century volcano mystery may be solved

Indonesia implicated as location of biggest eruption in last seven millennia

Web edition : Thursday, June 14th, 2012

SELFOSS, Iceland ? One of the biggest mysteries in volcanology may finally have a solution. An eruption long thought to have gone off in the year 1258, spreading cooling sulfur particles around the globe, happened the year before in Indonesia, scientists report.

Until now, researchers have known a big volcano went off somewhere in the world around that time, but they didn?t know exactly where or when.

The new report still remains something of a mystery. Franck Lavigne, a geoscientist at Panth?on-Sorbonne University's Laboratory of Physical Geography in Meudon, France, showed data and close-up photographs of the remains of the perpetrator volcano on June 14 at an American Geophysical Union conference on volcanism and the atmosphere. But he declined to name the specific volcano, saying he had agreed with his international colleagues not to identify it until the work is published in a peer-reviewed journal.

?We have new and solid evidence for the biggest volcanic eruption in 7,000 years,? Lavigne said.

Consensus in the meeting hallways was that he showed pictures of Indonesia. Lavigne would say only that Indonesia has more than 130 active volcanoes.

Scientists know a big eruption must have happened in the mid-13th century because ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica dating to that time contain huge amounts of sulfur. Tree rings, historical records and other evidence also show that the planet cooled soon thereafter. Big volcanic eruptions can spew sulfur particles into the upper atmosphere, where they spread around the globe and reflect sunlight, temporarily chilling the planet.

Leading candidates for the 1258 eruption have included Mexico?s El Chich?n, which also erupted in 1982, and Quilotoa in the Ecuadorean Andes. But the chemical composition of rocks from those volcanoes, among other factors, don?t really match the 1258 sulfur from ice cores.

At the meeting, Lavigne showed geochemical analyses of rocks from his mystery volcano. They matched the chemistry of the polar sulfur almost perfectly. The rocks come from a caldera, the collapsed remains left behind after a large volcanic eruption drains an underground magma chamber.

Newly unearthed historical records and other evidence show that climate changes were already happening in the region by the winter of 1257-1258, Lavigne said. ?We think the eruption may have been in the late spring or summer of 1257,? he said. That?s nearly a year earlier than previously thought.

Computer simulations suggest the eruption sent pumice flying into the air more than 40 kilometers high, showering debris for tens of kilometers around. The eruption would have ranked a 7 on the volcanic explosivity scale that measures an eruption?s magnitude. That scale tops out at 8.

Still, volcanologists have spent decades looking for the source of the 1257/1258 eruption. It?s not yet clear whether Lavigne will be able to marshal enough evidence to convince everyone else.


Found in: Earth and Earth Science

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Vizio's 24- and 27-inch Ivy Bridge all-in-ones get official: on sale today for $898 and up

Vizio's 24 and 27inch Ivy Bridge allinones get official on sale today for $898 and up

Vizio recently announced that its first PCs -- the ones we glimpsed at CES back in January -- will ship in June. From our previous hands-on time, we already knew that the company's 24- and 27-inch all-in-ones sport 1080p screens and include HDMI passthrough for using them as HDTVs even with the PC portion turned off. And the company clearly drew on its TV know-how to turn out desktops with nice and thin profiles: the power supply is integrated into the subwoofer, and the pivoting neck is a single piece of aluminum connected to an invisible hinge.

At the company's press event in NYC today, the all-in-ones got extra official -- as in, we have complete specs and pricing info. Both the 24- and 27-inch models feature Intel Ivy Bridge processors, NVIDIA Kepler GeForce GPUs (the base configurations ship with Intel HD Graphics 4000), 1920 x 1080 displays and 2.1 surround sound audio with SRS Premium Sound HD. Storage options start at 500GB of space (for the smaller model) and top out at a 1TB hard drive paired with a 32GB SSD. The PCs include dual HDMI inputs and ship with a remote control (hence Vizio's TV background). The 24-inch model will start at $898, while the 27-incher goes for $1,098 and up.

As with Vizio's just-announced laptops, the desktops include a "V key" on the wireless keyboard, with shortcuts to media services like Hulu Plus, Vudu andI Netflix. Interestingly, none of these will come pre-installed, though the company said the services will offer special deals for Vizio PC owners. The PCs are now available online and at retailers such as Costco, Target and Walmart.

Edgar Alvarez contributed to this report.

Continue reading Vizio's 24- and 27-inch Ivy Bridge all-in-ones get official: on sale today for $898 and up

Vizio's 24- and 27-inch Ivy Bridge all-in-ones get official: on sale today for $898 and up originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Jun 2012 17:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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