T-Mobile says MetroPCS' network transition is ahead of schedule

T-Mobile is more than a little eager to justify its acquisition of MetroPCS. To its relief, there's early evidence that the money was well spent: it says that MetroPCS' switch to a blend of HSPA+ and LTE is ahead of schedule, and it cites the just-started Bring Your Own Phone program as proof. The bigger carrier is already planning to expand MetroPCS' device mix, too. In addition to the recent launches of the Galaxy Exhibit and Optimus L9, T-Mobile's refreshed Galaxy S III is due on June 17th. We won't declare the transition a resounding success just yet, however -- when T-Mobile only expects to finish converting MetroPCS customers by 2015, there's still a lot of ground left to cover.

[Image credit: Jim Carroll, Flickr]

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, T-Mobile

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Source: T-Mobile

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/A4fUStvOsN0/

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Syria lashes out at Egypt decision to sever ties

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) ? Syria said Sunday that Egypt's decision to cut diplomatic ties with his country is "irresponsible," accusing its president of fueling sectarian conflict in Syria and serving a U.S.-Israeli conspiracy to divide the Middle East.

The government statement quoted in state media comes a day after President Mohammed Morsi told supporters at a Cairo rally that his country is severing ties with Damascus and closing its embassy in the Syrian capital.

Morsi, an Islamist who hails from Egypt's powerful Muslim Brotherhood, made the decision as calls proliferate from hardline Sunni clerics in Egypt and the region to launch a "holy war" against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

In his Saturday night speech, Morsi also called for a U.N. endorsed no-fly zone over Syria.

The strongly-worded Syrian statement said on Sunday said Morsi is supporting an idea that would violate its sovereignty, and is "serving the goals of Israel and the United States" in the region.

"Mohammed Morsi joins a choir of conspiracy and incitement led by the United States and Israel against Syria," the statement said.

It also accused Morsi of endorsing calls by hardline clerics calling for fighting in Syria against Assad's regime "to shed Syrian blood instead of directing the compass toward liberating occupied Palestinian lands." The statement added that Morsi doesn't reflect the views of Egyptians, who have longstanding ties with the Syrian people and who have fought alongside them against Israel in wars of the past.

The statement taunted Morsi, whose Brotherhood group is known for its enmity to Israel, for cutting ties with Syria but maintaining them with Israel despite its treatment of the Palestinians and recent airstrikes inside Syria. That policy "exposes the real identity of Morsi and his group," it said.

Since taking office, Morsi has attempted to reconcile his group's traditionally anti-Israel and anti-US positions with the requirements of his role as the leader of Egypt ? the first Arab country to sign a peace deal with Israel in 1979.

Morsi, who took office in June last year, tried to make Syria the focus of his foreign policy project, launching a regional peace initiative that includes rivals Saudi Arabia, a Sunni Muslim country, and Shiite Iran. But the complexity of the Syrian conflict, with now both the United States and Russia supporting different sides of an already gruesome war, has drowned the initiative.

Morsi's decision Saturday comes as the conflict is increasing taking sectarian overtones. The fighting pits Assad's regime ? dominated by a Shiite offshoot and supported by Shiite Iran and Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah guerrillas ? against mostly Sunni rebel fighters backed by Sunni Gulf regimes. Hardline Sunni clerics have called on able-bodied young men to join Syrian rebels in their fight against Assad's regime, and blasted Hezbollah for taking part in the fighting.

Morsi called on Hezbollah to get out of Syria, a view previously expressed by Gulf countries.

In Egypt, Morsi faces a fresh round of street protests later this month by opposition parties who are urging him to step down. His opponents accuse the Islamist leader of monopolizing power and failing to address the country's myriad of social and economic problems.

The Syrian statement seized on Morsi' domestic woes.

"Syria condemns this irresponsible position that reflects an attempt by Morsi to implement the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood," the official said. "Syria is confident that the brotherly Egyptian people will bring down these (Morsi) policies and ... their grave consequences on the region."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syria-lashes-egypt-decision-sever-ties-113804594.html

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NASA tests radio for unmanned aircraft operations

June 17, 2013 ? NASA's communications experts have begun flight testing a prototype radio as part of the agency's contributions toward fully integrating civil and commercial Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) into the National Airspace System (NAS).

This particular radio is one of the first steps to provide the critical communications link for UAS pilots on the ground to safely and securely operate their remotely piloted vehicles in flight even though they are many miles -- if not continents or oceans -- apart.

"So far the tests are going well and we're learning a lot about how this prototype radio operates under various conditions, but we still have much more testing to do on this radio and others that will come," said Jim Griner, a project engineer at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.

Currently there is not a great deal of freedom for civilian uses of UAS over our nation's skies. Police and firefighters, for example, must use off-the-shelf systems and fly under special Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approvals that restrict where and when remotely piloted vehicles can fly.

"There are some pretty good limitations on those operations, but the work we're doing to develop a new command and control radio for the UAS to use will help go beyond that," Griner said.

Built under a cooperative agreement between NASA and Rockwell Collins in Iowa, the current prototype radio is a platform to test operations at certain frequencies with specific radio waveforms that are unique to its particular task -- in this case command and control of a remotely piloted vehicle.

Once testing concludes on the initial prototype, lessons learned will be applied to a second generation test radio, which is now scheduled to be delivered to NASA in September. Additional testing will follow, after which a final prototype design is to be delivered and tested in the 2015-2016 timeframe.

Ultimately the FAA will define the final requirements that will lead to certification of a UAS command and control radio for use in the NAS, but by building and testing prototype units now NASA is helping move the process along.

"Usually the requirements are defined first and then we try to build equipment based on those requirements. This short-circuits a number of years off the traditional process," Griner said.

The prototype radio was delivered to NASA Glenn on Feb. 28 and successfully put through its paces on a laboratory test bench. Flight tests in a NASA S-3 Viking twin-engine jet began in May and are expected to continue in June.

Tests of the prototype radio were preceded by a number of flights of the S-3 in which NASA researchers sought to characterize the way radio frequencies behave at the specific bandwidths assigned to civil UAS operations -- something that had not been done before.

The way radio waves move through the air can be affected by a number of different things, including whether the ground is covered with leafy trees or snow and ice. Mountains, oceans, weather conditions, urban sprawl, skyscrapers and more can cause a change in a radio signal, for a good or bad.

These channel characterization flights began last December with the S-3 flying over areas of Ohio and Pennsylvania while a specially outfitted trailer with a 60-foot deployable antenna mast transmitted signals from the ground below.

With the prototype radio now in hand, the channel characterization and prototype radio tests will overlap a bit as there are plans for a visit to California this month to record data over coastal feature areas that include the ocean, mountains and desert.

NASA's UAS in the NAS Project is part of the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate's Integrated Systems Research Program.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/QaeiXVyAvyk/130617130831.htm

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Court: Ariz. citizenship proof law illegal

U.S. History students from Austin, Minn. High School visit the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, June 17, 2013, in anticipation of key decisions being announced. With a week remaining in the current Supreme Court term, several major cases are still outstanding that could have widespread political impact on same-sex marriage, voting rights, and affirmative action. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

U.S. History students from Austin, Minn. High School visit the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, June 17, 2013, in anticipation of key decisions being announced. With a week remaining in the current Supreme Court term, several major cases are still outstanding that could have widespread political impact on same-sex marriage, voting rights, and affirmative action. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

A police officer keeps watch outside the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, June 17, 2013. With a week remaining in the current Supreme Court term, several major cases are still outstanding that could have widespread political impact on same-sex marriage, voting rights, and affirmative action. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states cannot require would-be voters to prove they are U.S. citizens before using a federal registration system designed to make signing up easier.

The justices voted 7-2 to throw out Arizona's voter-approved requirement that prospective voters document their U.S. citizenship in order to use a registration form produced under the federal "Motor Voter" voter registration law.

Federal law "precludes Arizona from requiring a federal form applicant to submit information beyond that required by the form itself," Justice Antonia Scalia wrote for the court's majority.

The court was considering the legality of Arizona's requirement that prospective voters document their U.S. citizenship in order to use a registration form produced under the federal "motor voter" registration law. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which doesn't require such documentation, trumps Arizona's Proposition 200 passed in 2004.

Arizona appealed that decision to the Supreme Court.

The case focuses on Arizona, which has tangled frequently with the federal government over immigration issues involving the Mexican border. But it has broader implications because four other states ? Alabama, Georgia, Kansas and Tennessee ? have similar requirements, and 12 other states are contemplating such legislation.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the court's ruling.

The Constitution "authorizes states to determine the qualifications of voters in federal elections, which necessarily includes the related power to determine whether those qualifications are satisfied," Thomas said in his dissent.

Opponents of Arizona's law see it as an attack on vulnerable voter groups such as minorities, immigrants and the elderly. They say they've counted more than 31,000 potentially legal voters in Arizona who easily could have registered before Proposition 200 but were blocked initially by the law in the 20 months after it passed in 2004. They say about 20 percent of those thwarted were Latino.

But Arizona officials say they should be able to pass laws to stop illegal immigrants and other noncitizens from getting on their voting rolls. The Arizona voting law was part of a package that also denied some government benefits to illegal immigrants and required Arizonans to show identification before voting.

The federal "motor voter" law, enacted in 1993 to expand voter registration, requires states to offer voter registration when a resident applies for a driver's license or certain benefits. Another provision of that law ? the one at issue before the court ? requires states to allow would-be voters to fill out mail-in registration cards and swear they are citizens under penalty of perjury, but it doesn't require them to show proof. Under Proposition 200, Arizona officials require an Arizona driver's license issued after 1996, a U.S. birth certificate, a passport or other similar document, or the state will reject the federal registration application form.

Arizona can ask the federal government to include the extra documents as a state-specific requirement, Scalia said, and take any decision made by the government on that request back to court.

The case is 12-71, Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc.

___

Follow Jesse J. Holland on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jessejholland

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-06-17-Supreme%20Court-Voter%20Citizenship%20Proof/id-e06644ce315c4ac4b91fd7625692c63f

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Bomb in Syrian capital kills 10 soldiers

BEIRUT (AP) ? A car bomb targeting a checkpoint near a military airport in an upscale neighborhood of the Syrian capital has killed 10 soldiers and wounded 10 others, activists said Monday.

The attack, which took place late Sunday in the Mazzeh district in western Damascus, comes as President Bashar Assad's forces press ahead with an offensive to regain territory they lost to the rebels trying to topple his regime.

The army has scored major victories in key battlefields in western and central Syria in the past weeks, and is now setting its sights on the country's largest city, Aleppo, in the north, parts of which have been opposition strongholds.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday that 10 soldiers died in the attack in Mazzeh and 10 were wounded. The upscale neighborhood houses several embassies and a military airport. The Observatory, which relies on a network of informants inside Syria, did not state how many were deaths or how many were injuries.

Syrian state media confirmed there was a blast near the military airport late Sunday but did not release any casualty figures.

At least 93,000 people have been killed in Syria's conflict since it erupted in March 2011, according to a recent U.N. estimate.

Millions have been displaced and the civil war is increasingly being fought along sectarian lines, pitting Sunni Muslims against Shiites. It is also threatening the stability of Syria's neighbors, including Lebanon and Iraq.

Sunnis dominate the rebel ranks while the Assad regime is mostly made up of Alawites, an offshoot sect of Shiite Islam.

Sectarian divisions deepened in the conflict a few weeks ago, when Lebanon's Iran-backed Shiite militant group Hezbollah joined the fight inside Syria on the regime's side. Earlier this month, Assad's troops dealt a major blow to the opposition forces after they pushed the rebels out of the strategic town of Qusair near the Lebanese border, largely with Hezbollah's help.

The battle for Qusair shifted the balance of power on the battlefield in favor of the Damascus regime, which is now looking to keep the momentum and aims to take back control of Aleppo, the country's commercial hub. The rebels captured parts of the city last summer during an offensive in the north along the border with Turkey.

While the rebels had been able to capture territory from the government in the past month, they have been unable to hold on and govern it effectively because of the regime's superior firepower.

The opposition forces appealed to Western backers for weapons to be sent to them as soon as possible if they are to keep parts of Aleppo, where fighting raged on Monday, the Observatory said.

President Barack Obama authorized lethal aid to the rebels for the first time last Friday, after Washington said it had conclusive evidence that the Syrian regime had used chemical weapons. Syria accused Obama of lying about the evidence, and says he resorted to fabrications to justify his decision to arm the rebels.

Russia, one of Assad's main allies, also criticized Obama decision.

Syria and especially the increasingly opposed positions of the U.S. and Russia over the civil war are expected to be high on the agenda of G-8 leaders meeting in Northern Ireland on Monday. Obama is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The host, British Prime Minister David Cameron, met separately with Putin on Sunday in London, where both said they're hopeful Syria's warring factions can hammer out their differences at upcoming peace talks tentatively planned for next month in Geneva.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bomb-syrian-capital-kills-10-soldiers-091618639.html

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Dumb Out of Context Man of Steel Quote

Yep.

"It's coming through the RSS feeds."

It doesn't make any more sense when you know the context.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/dumb-out-of-context-man-of-steel-quote-513477610

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'True Blood' stars: 'Lots of tears' for major death

TV

Anna Chan TODAY

June 15, 2013 at 9:38 AM ET

HBO

"True Blood" stars Carrie Preston and Todd Lowe both said they were "saddened" at the table read featuring a big death this season.

It's taken six seasons, but "True Blood" is finally going to kill off one of its principal characters this year. New showrunner Brian Buckner made the reveal to Rolling Stone this past week ahead of Sunday's big season premiere.

And according to stars Carrie Preston and Todd Lowe, who play husband and wife Terry and Arlene, it's going to be a huge downer of a death.

"There is a major death. It kind of shocked us at the table read, and is a very emotional moment," Lowe told TODAY.com. "It was just a big surprise. I had gotten the script late and hadn't looked into it. So I was kind of like, 'Oh! Wow! That's different.' It saddened a lot of people."

"We were all very moved by it, and saddened by it," Preston told us. "It kind of brought us together as a cast, in a way that we haven't felt in a while, just as a whole. There were tears. There were lots of tears."

Forget about spoilers regarding which central character will be meeting his or her true death -- lips are tightly zipped on that topic. But Lowe said that the passing "kind of pulls (Bon Temps) together."

Regardless of how this potential game-changer of a death impacts Terry and Arlene, the murder of Terry's commander, Patrick (Scott Foley), in season five will continue to play a role in the couple's life this year.

"It's a vampire show, so the stakes are always high!" Preston joked. "(Terry and Arlene) did something very drastic last season, which is they had to kill somebody -- Patrick. They will be dealing with the ramifications of that. ... What they did last season continues to weigh heavily on them."

"That's drama that's only going to add to his PTSD," Lowe said of his character. "It wouldn't be 'True Blood' without more problems for everybody, specifically Terry. I can say it's another emotional season for me."

Yes, the couple rid their family of the curse and the Ifrit that was after them at the end of last year by offing Patrick, but as Lowe pointed out, just because the curse is over doesn't mean it's truly gone.

"The curse itself is done, but a curse can linger ... in the mind even though the physical manifestation of it is done, but there's other effects of the curse," Lowe said. "So we're going to see some of that."

And despite all the supernatural drama of Bon Temps, Preston said that Terry and Arlene characterize one of the greatest things about "True Blood."

"('True Blood') has gone into the world of the supernatural of course, but it doesn't forget its original origin, which is about relationships that are very human, even if it's the supernatural characters," Preston said. "The show this season definitely rests ultimately in that -- in the emotional relationships between characters -- and even in the premiere episode, you'll see that the show is trying to go back to those origins. ... I think that's the contribution of Arlene and Terry this season, to remind the audience the show is about relationships."

"True Blood" premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO.

Source: http://www.today.com/entertainment/true-blood-stars-lots-tears-over-upcoming-major-death-6C10329826

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