Leftists poised for victory in French elections

French citizens prepare their vote in a polling station during legislative election in Louveciennes, 12 kms (7,5 mls) west of Paris, Sunday, June 17, 2012. French voters are choosing a new parliament Sunday that will determine how far Socialist President Francois Hollande can go with his push for economic stimulus in France an around a dept-burdened stagnant Europe. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

French citizens prepare their vote in a polling station during legislative election in Louveciennes, 12 kms (7,5 mls) west of Paris, Sunday, June 17, 2012. French voters are choosing a new parliament Sunday that will determine how far Socialist President Francois Hollande can go with his push for economic stimulus in France an around a dept-burdened stagnant Europe. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

French former Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal casts her vote for the legislative elections, Sunday, June 17, 2012, in La Rochelle, west of France. Royal is facing a Socialist Party opponent in the second round election, and will determine the makeup of the new parliament. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon)

Gilbert Collard, a National Front Party candidate for French legislative elections, casts his vote during the second round of French legislative elections, in Gallician, near Nimes, southern France, Sunday, June 17, 2012. (AP Photo/Claude Paris)

French far-right leader and National Front Party candidate for French legislative elections, Marine Le Pen is seen after voting for the second round, Sunday, June 17, 2012 in Henin-Beaumont, northern France. French Legislative elections determine the makeup of the new parliament. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

PARIS (AP) ? French voters are choosing a new parliament Sunday that will determine how far Socialist President Francois Hollande can push for economic stimulus in France and around a debt-burdened, stagnant Europe.

The left is in the spotlight and expected to take the driver's seat of the 577-seat National Assembly after Sunday's second round of legislative elections.

Hollande's Socialists dominated the first round last week and pollsters predict they will win the most seats in the lower house. That would wrench it from the hands of former President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservatives, who have led it for a decade.

The campaign focused on local issues but will determine the country's political direction, which has Europe-wide importance. France is the second-biggest economy in the eurozone and, along with powerhouse Germany, contributes heavily to bailouts to weaker nations and often drives EU-wide policy.

Turnout in the French voting was 21.4 percent at midday, comparable to the 2002 and 2007 legislative elections, with some voters not bothering to cast ballots because so many were predicting a Socialist victory.

The elections come after a hasty new bailout for Spanish banks, and the same day as crucial voting in Greece. The Greek elections may determine whether the country stays in the euro, with repercussions for all the other 16 countries that use the joint currency.

After budget-tightening in France under Sarkozy that leftists warned would send France back into recession, Hollande is pushing for government-sponsored stimulus to encourage growth - and has met opposition from German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the two try to stem Europe's crisis.

Hollande's Socialist government has pledged to reduce the deficit, but markets are worried about higher spending when France's debts are so high.

Hollande, a moderate and mainstream leftist who is committed to European unity, is hoping to get an absolute majority of 289 seats for the Socialists to avoid having to make concessions to the Euro-skeptic far left.

Claire Morel said she voted for the Socialist candidate in her well-off Paris district "because I've been waiting for change for a long time. ... Also I wanted to support Francois Hollande, the government and its projects."

Pascal Albe, a voter from the working class Paris suburb of Ivry-sur-Seine, said that though he generally votes for the right, Hollande should have a Socialist-led parliament. "Otherwise the country will be paralyzed, and especially now, we don't need that," he said.

Voting stations close in big cities at 8 p.m. (1800GMT). Polling agency projections of the results are expected soon afterward, and official results are expected late Sunday night.

Political and personal intrigue ? and the resurgent far right ? have marked the campaign. The anti-immigrant National Front, which wants to abandon the euro and stop immigration, is wrangling for its first real presence in parliament in more than a quarter century.

Sarkozy's conservative UMP party is struggling to hold onto seats, and many candidates are angling for far-right votes.

National Front leader Marine Le Pen has revamped the party to try to shed its reputation as racist and anti-Semitic inherited under 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.

But the French parliament system is such that the party is not expected to get more than three or four seats.

Any candidate who won support of more than 12.5 percent of registered voters in the first round advanced to Sunday's runoff, and many districts have three-way races. Some 46 million voters are casting ballots for individual candidates at 65,000 voting stations nationwide. Only 36 National Assembly candidates won seats outright in the first round; the remaining 541 seats were up for grabs Sunday.

Associated Press

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China 'one step closer' to constructing space station (+video)

A trio of Chinese astronauts, including the country's first woman in space, successfully docked with an orbiting test module.

By Clara Moskowitz,?SPACE.com / June 18, 2012

This artist's illustration from a China space agency video shows the Tiangong 1 space laboratory, a prototype module for the country's planned space station.

China Manned Space Engineering Office

Enlarge

Chinese astronauts docked two spaceships in orbit for the first time Monday (June 18), marking a vital milestone in the country's quest to build a manned space station in Earth orbit.

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'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { ad_unit += ''; } } document.getElementById("ad_unit").innerHTML += ad_unit; google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_client = "pub-6743622525202572"; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_feedback = "on"; google_ad_type = "text"; google_adtest = "off"; google_image_size = '230x105'; google_skip = '0'; // --> A Chinese spacecraft carrying three astronauts docked with an orbiting module, in which they'll live and work for several days. 'CBS This Morning' co-host Charlie Rose reports.

The three-person crew of the?Shenzhou 9 spacecraft, which includes the China's first female astronaut, arrived at the country's Tiangong 1?("Heavenly Palace") test module in orbit and joined the two craft to complete the successful docking. The maneuver is the first manned docking for China, making it the third nation, after the United States and Russia, to achieve such a feat.

"We are one step closer to our destination of constructing a future space station," an official with China's space program said during a broadcast on the state-run CNTV news network. "This is the first successful crew transportation mission for China."

Shenzhou 9 and the?Tiangong 1 space module?docked in an automatic mode during Monday's successful link-up, with the Chinese astronauts (called taikonauts) to stay in orbit for about 13 days. Later this week, the Shenzhou 9 crew will undock their spacecraft from Tiangong 1 and then re-dock in a manual mode in another test, Chinese space officials have said.

Shenzhou 9 lifted off?on a Chinese Long March 2F rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China's northern Gansu province Saturday (June 16). [Launch Photos: China's Shenzhou 9 Mission]

The mission is notable not just for the docking, but for the fact that this crew includes China's first female taikonaut. People's Liberation Army pilot Liu Yang is flying with repeat astronaut Jing Haipeng and rookie Liu Wang.

After Monday's successful docking, Jing entered the Tiangong 1 module first and waved to a TV camera to flight controllers on Earth. Liu Wang followed Jing inside the module while Liu Yang remained inside the Shenzhou 9 capsule performing final checks.

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Concrete Contractor Abbotsford, bc - Choose Concrete Contractor in ...

You had been waiting long enough for the construction of the pool in your backyard where you had just dreamt to spend lazy afternoons in the cool water or have a great family time with some neatly arranged deck chairs by the pool while enjoying the fresh air. But when it actually took place, there was nothing more than disappointment on your face. The laying of the concrete has not been good and it has already started to show cracks on the surface. What a disaster and dreadful end to a surprise most awaited. Who is to blame for this? You or the contractor who has handled the job? Partially both. As the client, it was your responsibility to look for an experienced concrete contractor in Abbotsford, bc rather than passing the job on to some amateur.

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A good concrete contractor in Abbotsford bc, knows the importance of laying down the perfect base. The initial stages of concrete laying is very crucial for its longevity. It requires a steady hand, clear concepts and ideas and the right tools to carry out the job flawlessly. Concrete contractors should be equipped with compactors for grading, leveling, compacting of the gravel base in preparation for forming and concrete placing.

Once the preparation work is handled, the contractor should also be able to carry out any kind of demolition work that is required. Any experienced concrete contractor in Abbotsfod bc, will be well equipped with sledge hammers, jack hammers, hydraulic breakers for mini-bobcats to large bobcan and mini-hoe to suit large areas as well as small or hard to reach places.

Next is the crucial step of laying or placing the concrete. If you are working with a good contractor you will realize the difference from the finished work. A concrete contractor who has had hands on experience will have power and hand tools to tackle concrete placement needs including power screed, laser levels, string lines and aluminum screeds for critical slopes and levels.

The last part or the finishing touch is laid down by sealing. Any good concrete contractor in Abbotsford, bc who has worked with concrete before will know the use of different kind of base sealers which are helpful in protecting and beautifying various kinds and finishes of concrete. To top it all, the contractor will also carry out an acid wash or pressure wash the concrete to clean prior to sealing.

For a long living concrete, it is therefore vital that the contractor who handles it knows the nature of it. A strong hand is what is required for shaping decorative and structural concrete at its best.

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Hunter-Reay wins IndyCar race at Milwaukee

Ryan Hunter-Reay gives a thumbs-up after winning the IndyCar auto race at the Milwaukee Mile in West Allis, Wis., Saturday, June 16, 2012. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

Ryan Hunter-Reay gives a thumbs-up after winning the IndyCar auto race at the Milwaukee Mile in West Allis, Wis., Saturday, June 16, 2012. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

Ryan Hunter-Reay celebrates as confetti flies after he won the IndyCar auto race at the Milwaukee Mile in West Allis, Wis., Saturday, June 16, 2012. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

Ryan Hunter-Reay holds up a U.S. flag after winning the IndyCar auto race at the Milwaukee Mile in West Allis, Wis., Saturday, June 16, 2012. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

Ryan Hunter-Reay celebrates after winning the IndyCar auto race at the Milwaukee Mile in West Allis, Wis., Saturday, June 16, 2012. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

Ryan Hunter-Reay (28) drives through a turn during the Izod IndyCar Series auto race at the Milwaukee Mile in West Allis, Wis., Saturday, June, 16, 2012. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

WEST ALLIS, Wis. (AP) ? As long as his boss went to the trouble of bringing IndyCar racing back to the Milwaukee Mile, Ryan Hunter-Reay figured he might as well bring home the winner's trophy.

Hunter-Reay took the lead from Helio Castroneves on the 142md lap, didn't cough it up on a couple of restarts and held on to the IndyCar race Saturday at the Milwaukee Mile.

It was a doubly sweet win for Michael Andretti, who fields cars for Hunter-Reay as a team owner and served as the event promoter for the race.

"It really is amazing," Hunter-Reay said. "Milwaukee has been so important to IndyCar for so long, and I think this is a huge event for Milwaukee. These two belong together. So I really thank Michael for sticking his neck out, coming back here and really doing it the right way."

It was the sixth career victory and first this season for Hunter-Reay. He also won at Milwaukee in 2004 in the now-defunct Champ Car Series, starting from the pole and leading every lap.

Tony Kanaan was second, followed by James Hinchcliffe, Oriol Servia and E.J. Viso.

Scott Dixon had to serve a drive-through penalty for jumping a restart and finished 11th. He questioned the penalty immediately afterward ? and as it turns out, he was right.

"I'm actually very excited to see what the hell they're talking about," Dixon said. "I'm disappointed."

IndyCar race director Beaux Barfield acknowledged after the race that officials made a mistake. He said a failure in their timing and scoring system caused them to look at the wrong replay.

What officials looked was a replay of a previous restart that was waved off by officials at the time and didn't count. Dixon did commit a potential infraction on that restart ? but he didn't do so on the subsequent restart that ended up counting and should not have been penalized.

"It was obviously the wrong call, based on the reality of the situation," Barfield said.

Barfield took responsibility for the mistake, and said Chip Ganassi Racing officials were "very gracious" when presented with an explanation. Barfield said there wasn't anything officials can do to undo the mistake.

Last year's Milwaukee winner, Dario Franchitti, started from pole position and dominated the early stages of the race. But he fell back in the field and then spun out and hit the wall on lap 195.

Franchitti tangled with Ryan Briscoe shortly before he spun, and said afterward that contact might have broken something on his car.

"I was on Ryan's inside, but he just kept coming down there," Franchitti said. "I just don't think his spotter told him I was there."

Points leader Will Power finished 12th. Hinchcliffe moved up to second in the points.

It was a boost for the historic but financially troubled Milwaukee track, which has been hosting racing since 1903 but originally was left off the 2012 IndyCar schedule after not hosting any major racing events in 2010 and drawing a lackluster crowd for IndyCar last year.

Milwaukee was put back on this year's schedule after Andretti agreed to serve as the race's promoter ? and Andretti announced just before Saturday's race that the event would return in 2013.

"We're going to be back here next year, and hopefully for a long time after that," Andretti said.

Despite the race being a late addition to the schedule ? and then a rain delay that pushed the start back ? the race drew a significantly better crowd than last year.

Franchitti was untouchable in the early stages of the race, leading the first 60-plus laps before making his first pit stop. The race went green until Simona de Silvestro spun on lap 67, bringing out a caution.

Franchitti was shuffled back to fourth on the restart, after a few drivers were on pit road when the caution came out ? including Viso, who took the lead on the restart.

Justin Wilson then blew an engine on lap 94, pulling to the inside wall and scrambling to get out of the car when it briefly caught fire. It was a tough reversal of fortune for Wilson, who won last week at Texas.

After a round of pit stops under caution, Castroneves ? who didn't pit after Wilson's incident ? took the lead.

With Castroneves' tires later wearing out, Hunter-Reay waited for the right moment, then passed him for the lead on lap 142.

"We pounced," Hunter-Reay said. "We were right there ready to go when somebody slipped up."

Kanaan is known for his aggressiveness on restarts, but said he was just worried about not getting passed on restarts and defending his position during Saturday's race.

"Do you even know how to do that?," Hinchcliffe asked jokingly in the post-race news conference.

Kanaan took the good-natured ribbing in stride, answering, "I do not know how to do that."

Associated Press

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U.N. suspends Syria monitoring as violence rages

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Escalating violence in Syria forced United Nations observers to suspend operations on Saturday, in the clearest sign yet that a peace plan brokered by international mediator Kofi Annan has collapsed.

Chief monitor General Robert Mood said the fighting posed a threat to his unarmed observers, one of whose patrols was fired upon four days ago, and prevented them from carrying out their mandate to oversee Annan's widely ignored April 12 ceasefire.

The Norwegian peacekeeper blamed both government troops and rebels for the relentless conflict, in which President Bashar al-Assad's forces are trying to crush an increasingly well-armed insurgency which grew out of a 15-month-old wave of protests.

"There has been an intensification of armed violence across Syria over the past 10 days," Mood said.

"The lack of willingness by the parties to seek a peaceful transition, and the push towards advancing military positions is increasing the losses on both sides."

Diplomats say Mood is expected to brief the United Nations Security Council on Monday or Tuesday about the unrest in Syria, which the head of U.N. peacekeeping described this week as a full-scale civil war.

The United States said it was consulting with international partners on "next steps" and called on Syrian authorities to uphold commitments to Annan's peace plan "including the full implementation of a ceasefire".

British Foreign Secretary William Hague condemned Assad's government for failing to halt the killing and said the worsening instability "calls into serious question the viability of the U.N. mission" in Syria.

Despite their condemnation of Assad, Washington and its Western allies have shown no appetite for a Libya-style military intervention, while veto-wielding U.N. Security Council members Russia and China have shielded Damascus from U.N. sanctions.

U.S. President Barack Obama will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Mexico, but expectations are low for any progress to break their deadlock on Syria.

Mood said the violence posed "significant risks" to the 300 unarmed members of the UN Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS), who have been operating there since late April.

"In this high-risk situation, UNSMIS is suspending its activities. UN observers will not be conducting patrols and will stay in their locations until further notice," Mood said, noting the decision would be reviewed on a daily basis.

Last Tuesday shots were fired at a car carrying U.N. observers who were turned away from the town of Haffeh by angry Assad supporters throwing stones and metal rods at their convoy. Three U.N. cars were also damaged in May when they were caught up in an attack that killed 21 civilians in Khan Sheikhoun.

Syria's Foreign Ministry said it had been informed of Mood's decision on Friday evening and told him it understood his concern for the safety of the monitors, blaming the attacks on rebels fighting government forces.

Since the start of the ceasefire deal the "armed terrorist groups" - the label Damascus gives to anti-Assad fighters - had escalated their "criminal activities, which have often targeted the U.N. observers", said a foreign ministry statement quoted by state news agency SANA.

HOMS BOMBARDED

Many hundreds of people, including civilians, rebels and government forces, have been killed in the two months since Annan's ceasefire deal was supposed to come into effect.

But the violence has increased sharply this month, with rebels formally abandoning any commitment to Annan's ceasefire and government forces using attack helicopters and artillery to pound opposition strongholds into submission.

The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 50 civilians were killed on Saturday, most of them in army shelling on the eastern suburbs of Damascus.

Activists uploaded video footage of around 10 bloodied bodies discovered in Saqba, a town on the capital's eastern fringes. Some victims appeared to have been killed with knives.

In a sign government forces were also suffering heavy losses, SANA reported on Saturday military funerals for 24 soldiers and members of security forces.

Syria restricts access to international media, making it hard to verify accounts by activists and authorities.

Activists also reported gunfire in the Mezze neighborhood of the capital, and bombardment of rebel strongholds in the central city of Homs which they said killed five people.

"There has been heavy shelling in Homs since early morning," a local activist who declined to be named said by Skype.

"Since 4 a.m. (0100 GMT) there was mortar and artillery shelling of Khalidiya, Old Homs, Jouret al-Shiyah and Qusur districts," he said

The British-based Observatory, which monitors violence in Syria through a network of local sources, said 1,000 families were surrounded in the Homs districts under fire from Assad's forces on Saturday.

Dozens of wounded people were in danger because of lack of medical equipment, it said.

France said on Friday night it was seriously concerned about what it said were reports of an imminent large-scale operation against Homs.

"The bloody repression led by Syrian authorities, which is intolerable and has caused tens of deaths in recent days, must come to an end," a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said.

"Bashar Al Assad's regime continues to violate commitments under the Annan plan and threatens international peace and security. Sooner or later, the Security Council will have to reckon with the consequences."

The United Nations says Syrian forces have killed 10,000 people in a crackdown on protest against Assad's rule which broke out in March last year, inspired by uprisings across the Arab world which have toppled four autocratic leaders.

Syrian authorities blame the violence on foreign-backed Islamists who they say have killed at least 2,600 police and soldiers.

State television reported on Saturday security forces had killed a man it said was behind several car bombings in Damascus since December which killed scores of people.

It described Walid Ahmad al-Ayyesh as the "right-hand man of the leader of the Nusra front", a Sunni Islamist group which claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying he had overseen rigging the vehicles with explosives.

Ayyesh was killed when security forces stormed an apartment in Damascus province.

(Additional reporting by Nicholas Vinocur in Paris, Matt Spetalnick in Washington and Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations; editing by Andrew Roche)

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Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 caught on video bearing Telcel wallpaper

The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 is rightly so an interesting, and anticipated device. First shown off at Mobile World Congress back in February, what we're seeing here, and ultimately we're supposedly seeing at launch, is something different to the initial device we went hands on with. There's talk of the Note 10.1 going quad-core, as well as there having been a slight design change with a slot for the S-Pen being included now.

We thought the launch was getting closer only to be told that Amazon made a boo-boo. There is though a new, unofficial, video out there on the interwebs, of the Note 10.1 bearing a Telcel wallpaper. If nothing else on that front, it gives a bit of a clue as to one place it'll be heading when it eventually is released.

It's a pretty detailed video, and we won't spoil it for you. All the text is -- expectedly being Telcel anyway -- in Spanish, but reading isn't really necessary. The one spoiler we will throw in, is that at one point in the video, there is clearly a phone dialer on the screen. Absolutely enormous phone anyone? 

via GigaOM

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Do Brain Scans of Comatose Patients Reveal a Conscious State?

News | Mind & Brain

Scans allow a researcher to communicate with people previously written off as unreachable and offer hope in identifying those who might respond to rehabilitation

By David Cyranoski and Nature magazine ?| June 15, 2012

Image: U.S. National Institute on Aging, Alzheimer?s Disease Education and Referral Center

In this groundbreaking adventure into the worlds of psychopaths, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton argues that there is a fine line between a brilliant...

Read More??

From Nature magazine

Adrian Owen still gets animated when he talks about patient 23. The patient was only 24 years old when his life was devastated by a car accident. Alive but unresponsive, he had been languishing in what neurologists refer to as a vegetative state for five years, when Owen, a neuro-scientist then at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues at the University of Li?ge in Belgium, put him into a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine and started asking him questions.

Incredibly, he provided answers. A change in blood flow to certain parts of the man's injured brain convinced Owen that patient 23 was conscious and able to communicate. It was the first time that anyone had exchanged information with someone in a vegetative state.

Patients in these states have emerged from a coma and seem awake. Some parts of their brains function, and they may be able to grind their teeth, grimace or make random eye movements. They also have sleep?wake cycles. But they show no awareness of their surroundings, and doctors have assumed that the parts of the brain needed for cognition, perception, memory and intention are fundamentally damaged. They are usually written off as lost.

Owen's discovery, reported in 2010, caused a media furore. Medical ethicist Joseph Fins and neurologist Nicholas Schiff, both at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, called it a ?potential game changer for clinical practice?. The University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, soon lured Owen away from Cambridge with Can$20 million (US$19.5 million) in funding to make the techniques more reliable, cheaper, more accurate and more portable ? all of which Owen considers essential if he is to help some of the hundreds of thousands of people worldwide in vegetative states. ?It's hard to open up a channel of communication with a patient and then not be able to follow up immediately with a tool for them and their families to be able to do this routinely,? he says.

Many researchers disagree with Owen's contention that these individuals are conscious. But Owen takes a practical approach to applying the technology, hoping that it will identify patients who might respond to rehabilitation, direct the dosing of analgesics and even explore some patients' feelings and desires. ?Eventually we will be able to provide something that will be beneficial to patients and their families,? he says.

Still, he shies away from asking patients the toughest question of all ? whether they wish life support to be ended ? saying that it is too early to think about such applications. ?The consequences of asking are very complicated, and we need to be absolutely sure that we know what to do with the answers before we go down this road,? he warns.

Lost and found
With short, reddish hair and beard, Owen is a polished speaker who is not afraid of publicity. His home page is a billboard of links to his television and radio appearances. He lectures to scientific and lay audiences with confidence and a touch of defensiveness.

Owen traces the roots of his experiments to the late 1990s, when he was asked to write a review of clinical applications for technologies such as fMRI. He says that he had a ?weird crisis of confidence?. Neuroimaging had confirmed a lot of what was known from brain mapping studies, he says, but it was not doing anything new. ?We would just tweak a psych test and see what happens,? says Owen. As for real clinical applications: ?I realized there weren't any. We all realized that.?

Owen wanted to find one. He and his colleagues got their chance in 1997, with a 26-year-old patient named Kate Bainbridge. A viral infection had put her in a coma ? a condition that generally persists for two to four weeks, after which patients die, recover fully or, in rare cases, slip into a vegetative or a minimally conscious state ? a more recently defined category characterized by intermittent hints of conscious activity.

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