CIA remembers those lost in covert operations

FILE - In this May 23, 2002, file photo, the American flag is reflected off of a marble slab of the CIA memorial wall containing stars in the lobby of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Va. While the nation remembers its military war dead on Memorial Day 2012, the CIA marked the loss of colleagues in the hidden, often dangerous world of espionage, adding a new star to the CIA?s memorial wall and more than a dozen names to the agency?s Book of Honor. The new star carved into the agency?s memorial wall was for Jeffrey Patneau, a young officer killed in a car crash in Yemen in September 2008. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Pool)

FILE - In this May 23, 2002, file photo, the American flag is reflected off of a marble slab of the CIA memorial wall containing stars in the lobby of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Va. While the nation remembers its military war dead on Memorial Day 2012, the CIA marked the loss of colleagues in the hidden, often dangerous world of espionage, adding a new star to the CIA?s memorial wall and more than a dozen names to the agency?s Book of Honor. The new star carved into the agency?s memorial wall was for Jeffrey Patneau, a young officer killed in a car crash in Yemen in September 2008. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Pool)

This undated photo provided by Corinne Collie shows Leslianne Shedd. The CIA is remembering those lost in the hidden, often dangerous world of espionage, including adding more than a dozen names to its hallowed Book of Honor. The addition of 15 names to the CIA's Book of Honor means family members can openly acknowledge where their loved ones worked when they died. Shedd was lost when hijackers forced down her plane over the Indian Ocean, killing more than 125 people. "Everybody who was on the plane with her who survived said she was not at all scared," her sister Collie told The Associated Press on Saturday, May 26, 2012. "She was saying it's all going to be okay, holding the hand of the person sitting next to her." (AP Photo/Corinne Collie)

(AP) ? The CIA is remembering those lost in the hidden, often dangerous world of espionage, adding a new star to the intelligence agency's memorial wall and more than a dozen names to its hallowed Book of Honor.

The new star carved into the wall is for Jeffrey Patneau, a young officer killed in a car crash in Yemen in September 2008.

"Jeff proved that he had boundless talent, courage and innovativeness to offer to our country in its fight against terrorism," said CIA Director David Petraeus at a private ceremony at CIA headquarters this past week.

Petraeus' tribute was the first public identification of Patneau. The stars on the memorial wall at headquarters in Langley, Va., bear no names.

Yemen, the ancestral homeland of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, was the site of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 American sailors. Patneau was part of the fight against militants in the country in a tense year in which the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa was attacked.

With the addition of the star for Patneau, the wall now commemorates the lives of 103 Americans who died in service of the CIA, "never for acclaim, always for country," Petraeus said at the annual event attended by hundreds of employees and family members of those lost. The rememberance came just days ahead of Memorial Day, when the nation remembers its military veterans and those who died in war.

The addition of 15 names to the CIA's Book of Honor means family members can openly acknowledge where their loved ones worked when they died.

Leslianne Shedd was lost when hijackers forced down her plane over the Indian Ocean, killing more than 125 people.

"Everybody who was on the plane with her who survived said she was not at all scared," her sister, Corinne Collie, told The Associated Press on Saturday. "She was saying it's all going to be okay, holding the hand of the person sitting next to her."

Collie says the agency approached her family a year ago, saying it was now possible to acknowledge her death ? likely meaning the cases she had worked on had been wrapped up, or staff she worked with had either retired or were no longer in harm's way. Collie said being able to share what her sister did has been a relief.

"To lose a sister and not be able to talk about the full picture of who she was has been hard," said Collie of Tacoma, Wash.

"The biggest relief is my parents ... get to acknowledge and brag about her, especially my dad," she said.

Like Shedd, most of those honored were killed in the clandestine war on terrorism, the list reading like a grim roll call of terrorist acts of the last three decades. Matthew Gannon was among the victims of the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Molly Hardy was killed in the August 1998 suicide bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. She urged others to take cover as she was hit by the blast from an al-Qaida car bomb.

Jacqueline Van Landingham was killed in a terrorist attack in Pakistan in 1995. The CIA did not disclose how she died.

CIA officers face constant threat in Pakistan, hunting and hunted by the Taliban and al-Qaida. They often play a cat-and-mouse game with Pakistan's intelligence service, sometimes able to work with them and sometimes forced to work around them to gather intelligence on al-Qaida's militant diaspora. U.S. officials say it gets support from elements of the Pakistani government.

Five of those remembered were victims of the April 1983 suicide bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut that killed 63 people.

Among the CIA officers lost was Phyliss Nancy Faraci, "one of the last four Americans evacuated from the Mekong Delta when Saigon fell" during the Vietnam War, according to CIA spokesman Todd Ebitz. Faraci had volunteered to work in war-torn Beirut.

Deborah Hixon, a young officer fluent in French who volunteered for a temporary posting there, also died in the attack. Frank Johnston was a 25-year agency veteran who had accepted the assignment though he was close to retirement.

Paramilitary officer James Lewis, who had joined the CIA after his military career, and his wife, Monique Lewis, also were killed. Lewis was "only hours into her first day as an Agency officer when the bomber struck," Ebitz said.

___

Dozier can be followed on Twitter (at)kimberlydozier.

___

On the web:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/additional-publications/cia-memorial...

http://www.ciamemorialfoundation.org/

Associated Press

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SEC Baseball Tournament: Kentucky Wildcats 1 vs. Mississippi St. Bulldogs 2 - Postgame

The Kentucky Wildcats went down to the Mississippi St. Bulldogs 2-1 in Hoover, Alabama this afternoon in the SEC baseball tournament semifinal. The Wildcats were trying to reach the SEC tournament final for the first time since it has been in Hoover, but they fail in a tightly-contested game.

Kentucky played well, but they just could not put together enough hits in succession to get any runs across. Kentucky managed eight hits in the game, but stranded runners on base inning after inning, particularly in the later innings. It was an incredibly frustrating game for Kentucky, including stranding the tying run at third in the ninth with the leadoff batter and Freshman of the Year, Austin Cousino, at the plate, when Cousino popped out to shortstop to end the game. Corey Littrell is charged with the loss, the win probably goes to Nick Routt who worked 3.1 innings for the Bulldogs.

Three times in the last three innings, the Wildcats had the tying run in scoring position, but simply couldn't plate a run. Credit MSU's pitching staff, who really got the job done and now have played five straight days to get into the final. Despite the victory on Thursday, it seems that John Cohen still owns Gary Henderson from a coaching standpoint. A frustrating loss for Kentucky, but they will almost certainly host a regional, although they will equally certainly not receive a national seed in the upcoming NCAA tournament.

Star-divide

The star of the game today for Kentucky had to be J.T. Riddle, who went 3 for 4 with a home run. He hit his final ball hard that could have brought home a run, but it was caught near the warning track for the third out in the 8th.

Overall, Kentucky's pitching staff did a great job as well, this was just one of those tough, one-run games that you hate to see either team lose if you don't have a partisan affiliation. MSU had two harmless errors, although their last one could have been costly as it put a runner on third with 2 outs in the 9th. But overall, this was a cleanly played game, and even the errors were cases of very difficult plays that the players couldn't quite pull off.

Congratulations to the Bulldogs, who will face the Florida Gators or Vanderbilt Commodores tomorrow in the SEC Tournament final. The Wildcats will go home, lick their wounds, and get ready for the big one.

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5 surprises in Egypt's presidential election

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Humongous Volkswagen-sized turtle fossils discovered

In addition to its colossal size, the turtle would have been equipped with massive, powerful jaws, meaning it could've eaten just about anything in its range.

By Jeanna Bryner,?LiveScience Managing Editor / May 18, 2012

This is a reconstruction of Carbonemys preying upon a small crocodylomorph.

Artwork by Liz Bradford

Enlarge

A turtle the size of a small car once roamed what is now South America 60 million years ago, suggests its fossilized remains.

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Discovered in a coal mine in Colombia in 2005, the turtle was given the name?Carbonemys cofrinii, which means "coal turtle." It wasn't until now that the turtle was examined and described in a scientific journal; the findings are detailed online today (May 17) in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology.

The researchers say?C. cofrinii?belongs to a group of side-necked turtles known as?pelomedusoides. The turtle's skull, roughly the size of an NFL football, was the most complete of the fossil remains.

In addition to its colossal size, the turtle would have been equipped with massive, powerful jaws, meaning it could've eaten just about anything in its range, from mollusks (a?group that includes snails) to smaller turtles and?even crocodiles, the researchers noted.

Its all-encompassing appetite as well as its need for a large range to satiate its food requirements may explain why no other turtle of this size has been found at the site. [Gallery: The World's Biggest Beasts]

"It's like having one big snapping turtle living in the middle of a lake," study researcher Dan Ksepka, of North Carolina State University, said in a statement. "That turtle survives because it has eaten all of the major competitors for resources."

While the researchers have found bite marks on the remains of other side-necked turtles in the area, suggesting they were preyed upon by crocodilians, such predators would not have messed with this coal mine turtle. "In fact smaller crocs would have been easy prey for this behemoth," Ksepka said.

The researchers also discovered?a turtle shell?nearby that they believe belonged to the same species; the shell would've been large enough to double as a kiddy swimming pool, they noted, as it measured some 5 feet 7 inches (172 centimeters) across.

"We had recovered smaller turtle specimens from the site. But after spending about four days working on uncovering the shell, I realized that this particular turtle was the biggest anyone had found in this area for this time period ? and it gave us the first?evidence of gigantism?in freshwater turtles," Edwin Cadena, also of North Carolina State, said in a statement.

In fact, this big turtle appeared 5 million years after the dinosaurs vanished, at a time when gigantism was relatively common in this part of South America. For instance, the largest snake ever discovered, measuring 45 feet (14 meters) long and called?Titanoboa cerrejonensis,?lived there, also about 60 million years ago.

A combination of factors, including abundant food, fewer predators, vast habitat and climate change, would have worked together to allow turtles and other animals to balloon to such relatively gargantuan sizes, the researchers suggest.

For instance, the warm weather would've been beneficial for such ectotherms that rely on their surroundings to regulate their body temperature.

"The environment seems to have been tropical based on fossil plants found at the site," Ksepka told LiveScience. "And the turtle appears to have been adapted to spending most of its time in the water, though coming ashore to lay eggs would be part of its life cycle."

Another turtle discovered in this coal mine may have evolved an adaptation to protect itself from these giants; the turtle, called Cerrejonemys wayuunaiki,?sported an extra-thick shell, about the thickness of a high-school textbook.

The research, funded by the Smithsonian Institute and the National Science Foundation, will be detailed in the June 2012 print issue of the Journal of Systematic Paleontology.

Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter?@livescience?and on?Facebook.

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Outsourcing Your Small Business IT Support - The Next Big Thing

?

According to a 2010 report, the average IT cost for small and medium businesses was over $120,000 per year. That's a large chunk of change just to make your business run smoothly. Just imagine if some of that money could be put toward securing new clients or developing new product initiatives. However, without IT staff you could suddenly find your business in a bind when something goes wrong or new systems need to be updated. Well one solution that some small and medium sized businesses are turning to, is?IT outsourcing. Check out these reasons on why you should consider doing the same.

Cost Savings

Outsourcing to IT professionals, costs you far less than employing an in-house group. Aside from salaries, you won't have to cover medical or pension benefits.

Additionally, you don't have to pay to train any staff members by sending them to costly seminars or conferences to keep up with the latest technology. You will no longer have to provide in-house employees offices and places to work. Finally, because so much of the hardware is off-site, you'll have less equipment costs for your business.?

Efficiency?

Even the best in-house employee can only work so many hours in a week. But when you participate in small business IT outsourcing, you have professionals on duty 24/7. Additionally, because people are always on call, quicker response time?s means that your business can get back to full operation faster. That translates to more cash for your bottom line. Finally, you eliminate the risk of overwhelming in-house staff because the outsourcing company will have plenty of professionals to work on your systems when needed. This is especially important for businesses that have seasonal spikes in their sales.

Reliability?

Small business IT outsourcing also lends itself to reliability because you'll get reports and statements of the actions taken to update and maintain your systems. Additionally, because you'll pay a flat monthly fee for the IT services, the IT portion of your budget will always be predictable. This allows you to perform better ROI projections for your business.?

Expanding the Business?

Chances is the primary focus of your company is not IT. Therefore, by outsourcing to an?IT support company, you'll be able to focus your financial resources and the talent of your employees on building and expanding your business. Small business IT outsourcing is exceedingly effective when you're trying to break into new markets as well. Instead of having to open a large office in a faraway location with a full staff including an IT department, you can simply outsource the IT portion and build the new location with only the employees required.

When you really stop to think about it for a moment, outsourcing your IT has many benefits that will not only allow your business to thrive, but to also bolster the bottom line.?

?

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Microsoft set to release Office for iOS and Android tablets in November

BGR has learned from a reliable source that Microsoft is currently planning to release the company?s full Office suite for not only Apple?s iPad, but for Android tablets as well. The company is targeting November of this year for both launches. Additionally, our source has seen Microsoft Office running on an iPad first-hand and has said that it looks almost identical to the previous leak from The Daily a few months back, despite the fact that?Microsoft flat out denied that the app was authentic. It is also plausible that Microsoft Office will be coming to the iPhone and iPod touch rather than only the iPad, as we?re told the loading screen in the app clearly said ?Office for iOS? and not just iPad.

Get more from BGR.com: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook

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A revolution in digital healthcare

Today we?re excited to announce another groundbreaking competition in our Life Sciences Prize Group: The $2.25 million Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE.

Dr.-Peter-DiamandisThere are so many rapid advances in health technology today, it?s hard to keep up with the dizzying pace. We are living during an age where small teams are empowered exponentially to develop growing technologies that can solve problems that were once only solvable by governments and large corporations. And yet many frustrating barriers remain in the way of all this progress.

That?s where the Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE fits in.?

The glaring inefficiencies and high costs of the U.S. healthcare system (and healthcare systems around the globe) have been pressing issues for many years.? In the U.S., the total spent annually on the healthcare system is more than $2 trillion, which accounts for more than 15% of the nation?s gross domestic product.? Health sensors have the capacity to ease this economic burden.? A number of social and medical trends could be managed better with new technologies, including obesity, chronic diseases, and aging, among others. ?

Our goal is to revolutionize health sensors and sensing technologies. Ultimately, it?s nothing less than revolutionizing healthcare.

This competition could not have been launched ten years ago; probably not even five years ago.? Today, technologies such as A.I., Wireless Sensing, Cloud Computing, Lab-On-A-Chip, and digital imaging are advancing exponentially. And now we need to expand sensor and sensing technology beyond disease management to areas like public health and fitness.? Giving consumers 24/7, real-time data about their health that they can access anytime and anywhere can change the way they think about ? and improve ? their own health. Because health happens every minute of every day, wherever you are, whether it?s convenient or not.

This competition is truly global; the team that wins this X CHALLENGE could come from anywhere in the world.? We are looking for best in class technology from multiple disciplines: medicine, mobile and sensor/sensing technology. To win, a team must show advancements in technology, privacy and security, standardization, system reliability, and applications.

And there?s another element to the Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE that will make it interesting to watch unfold: It?s likely that the solutions developed as part of the competition may also be integrated into a team?s effort to win the recently announced $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE, the competition to put healthcare in the palm of your hand. These two competitions will run on roughly parallel tracks over three years, with distinct but complementary goals.

I personally am looking forward to watching these technologies advance for the benefit of us all.

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