Mom: Substitute teacher duct-taped kid's mouth shut

By NBC News staff

A mother in Louisiana is pursuing legal action against a substitute teacher she says put duct tape across her child?s mouth.

Michelle Droody says it took her a week to figure out why her 9-year-old son, a student at J. Wallace James Elementary School in Lafayette, La., was so upset.

?He just told me he didn?t want to go back to school no more,? Wallace told KATC TV in Lafayette. ?And he didn?t want to be friends with anybody in his class or school.?

Only after school officials interviewed about 100 students did Droody learn that a substitute teacher used red duct tape, normally used for arts and crafts projects, to quiet her son.


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Dr. Pat Cooper, superintendent of Lafayette Parish Public Schools, confirmed the incident to KATC, which happened Sept. 12, and said the substitute treated the student both ?outside the boundaries of [their] discipline matrix? and ?outside the boundaries of common sense.?

Cooper said the teacher had been disciplined.

?We fell like we?ve taken the necessary disciplinary action against that teacher, but the parent always has the right to take additional charges.

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Droody said she intends to pursue further criminal charges.?

?Now he has to face these same kids for the rest of the year that were sitting there laughing at him, the embarrassment and the shame that goes along with having someone you?re supposed to respect that comes and duct tapes your mouth shut in front of everybody," Droody said.

Lafayette Police Department Public Information Officer Paul Mouton told NBC News police were contacted by the school, and a report has been filed and police are actively investigating the incident.

?If investigators determine that enough probable exists, the detective in charge will issue a warrant and have the substitute teacher arrested,? Mouton said. ?If there?s not enough cause, the case will be submitted for review.??

This isn't the first time a teacher has tried to quiet a student by using duct tape.?

A third-grade teacher in Albuquerque was placed on administrative leave last October for allegedly duct-taping the mouths of two students to keep them quiet. A first grade teacher in Massachusetts was fired after she duct-taped 20 students, although she insisted the duct tape was tied to a book her students read earlier in the year.?

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Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/20/13986637-mom-substitute-teacher-duct-taped-kids-mouth-shut?lite

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How To Find A High Quality Commercial Real Estate Agent |

TIP! Keep your rental commercial properties occupied. Vacancies cost you money, because you have to pay for maintenance and upkeep without drawing income from them.

If you want to invest in commercial property, there are a lot of good reasons to do so. No matter what you reason, you should be able to articulate a clear investing goal based on solid facts. The more you know about commercial real estate, the more you can make. Expand on what you already know, or learn something new with the following tips.

Real Estate

TIP! Take note of the environmental condition of a property you are looking at. It is your responsibility to ensure that your property is free from environmental waste or safety hazards.

If a real estate company insinuates that their commercial lease form is boilerplate, call their bluff and read the form line by line. It is not uncommon for real estate brokers to include detailed, confusing terms and clauses into the lease. If you pay close attention to the content of the lease, you will be far less likely to encounter difficulties stemming from the lease document.

TIP! Always be on the lookout for sellers who are motivated. You have to look for them, especially those who need to sell below the market value.

Location is the most important factor in choosing a commercial property to buy. When investing in a property, consider what type of neighborhood it is located in. You also want to look for a neighborhood that is solid and growing. You?ll want to choose an area that is on the upswing and will continue growing for at least a decade into the future.

TIP! Try feng shui in your home office as well as commercial real estate buildings. Feng shui is about open spaces and de-cluttering: buyers will find this very interesting as well as appealing.

Before buying a piece of commercial property, decide what you intend to do with the property once you buy it. One important thing to have clear up front is whether you are thinking of using it for your personal business or if you, instead, want to lease out the property. Having specified objectives prior to seeking out a commercial property saves you time and labor, since foresight and vision narrow down your search.

TIP! When choosing brokers with whom to work, find out the amount of experience they have dealing with commercial properties. Look for brokers who specialize in the type of commercial property that you?re purchasing or selling.

Prior to selecting a real estate broker, determine what kind of negotiating tactics they have. Find out about their experience and training. In addition, you should ensure that the methods they employ are ethical and that they know how to go about obtaining the best deals. Ask for examples of negotiations they have participated in previously. Tell them you want to know about both positive and negative experiences.

TIP! When you first begin investing in properties, you may need to sacrifice a lot of your personal time. The time aspect of the investment includes finding the property and making any repairs to the property.

Check the company?s reputation for customer service before you deal with them. If you don?t do this, you might get taken advantage of or wind up paying much more money over time.

TIP! Go on some tours of places you might want to buy. When looking at a property that you are thinking of purchasing, it?s a good idea to have a licensed contractor accompany you.

Keep your focus on the largest issues when writing your letters of intent. Keep it simple and save the smaller issues for later in the negations. Doing it this way will allow the negotiations to be less intense and get them to agree faster.

TIP! In the beginning phases of your career as an investor, limit yourself to working with a single type of investment. You want to only choose one property type to give your undivided attention to.

When deciding between two viable commercial properties, it is best to think on a larger scale. Acquiring enough money to finance a 10 or 20 unit apartment complex can be huge undertaking. Generally, this is similar to the principle of purchasing in bulk; if you purchase more units, you will end up getting a better price per unit.

Take digital photographs of the unit. Make certain your photos highlight specific defects such as carpet spots, wall holes and bathroom discolorations.

Commercial Real Estate

TIP! A property to be rented out commercially should be one that is soundly built and simple in design. Tenants will be interested by buildings that look well-cared for.

As pointed out in this article?s beginning, there are many situations that make it advantageous for you to look into commercial real estate investments. Each will require that you delve further to learn as much as possible. By using the advice in this article, you may find great success in commercial real estate.

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Source: http://www.dustinrm.com/how-to-find-a-high-quality-commercial-real-estate-agent/

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Romney says he supports '100 percent in America'

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney participates in a Univision "Meet the Candidates" forum with Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas in Coral Gables, Fla., Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney participates in a Univision "Meet the Candidates" forum with Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas in Coral Gables, Fla., Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney participates in a Univision "Meet the Candidates" forum with Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas in Coral Gables, Fla., Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Rebecca Fernandez of Miami protests outside of the University of Miami where Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was attending a Meet the Candidates forum held by Univision, Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012, in Coral Gables, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

MIAMI (AP) ? Facing tough questions about his commitment to all Americans, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney declared Wednesday that his campaign supports "the 100 percent in America."

Romney was responding at a televised forum to questions sparked by his remarks last spring that, as a candidate, "my job is not to worry about" the 47 percent of Americans who don't earn enough to pay income taxes and are likely to support President Barack Obama. He also described them as people who are "dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe they are entitled" to a wide range of benefits.

In the days since the magazine Mother Jones posted the secretly taped comments to donors, the Romney campaign has tried to fend off criticism that the Republican candidate was writing off nearly half the country or was disdainful of them.

Earlier in the day, Romney tried to draw a distinction between himself and Obama. "The question of this campaign is not who cares about the poor and the middle class. I do. He does," Romney said at an Atlanta fundraiser. "The question is who can help the poor and the middle class. I can. He can't."

Romney has said he was talking on the video about support for his campaign, a point he returned to Wednesday at the Miami forum hosted by the Spanish-language TV network Univision.

"I know that I'm not going to get 100 percent of the vote and my campaign will focus on those people we think we can bring in to support me, but this is a campaign about helping people who need help," Romney said.

"My campaign is about the 100 percent in America," he said.

The forum, which was broadcast nationally in Spanish from a swing state that could help decide the presidential contest, was an opportunity to court Hispanics. That growing voting bloc overwhelmingly supported President Barack Obama four years ago.

However, the televised session initially focused on the caught-on-tape remarks, the latest in a string of missteps on domestic and foreign policy for the Republican candidate seven weeks out from Election Day.

Speaking to Romney in Spanish, the Univision hosts peppered him with questions about the video before turning to his reluctance to clarify his immigration policy and to his support for Arizona's controversial immigration law.

Romney backed away from his support earlier in the year for policies that would promote "self-deportation" of illegal immigrants. He said he supported policies that might give legal status to young illegal immigrants who serve in the military or pursue higher education.

"We're not going to round up people around the country and deport them," he said. "We need to provide a long-term solution."

He declined to detail his solution, despite being pressed by the hosts.

Romney assailed Obama for failing to deliver campaign promises to overhaul the nation's immigration system.

"He never tried to fix the immigration system," Romney said of the Democratic incumbent. "I will actually reform the immigration system and make it work for the people of America."

The Obama campaign responded by arguing that Hispanic voters have reason not to trust Romney.

"On critical issues, he continued to refuse to answer any of the tough questions or provide any specifics on what he'd do as president," Obama campaign official Stephanie Cutter said in a statement.

Obama is scheduled to participate in the same forum on Thursday.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2012-09-19-Romney/id-e3fb2674db9149a4bfc572d44d31c69f

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3 Internet Marketing Secrets That Will Drastically Grow Your ...

Quality Web Hosting

3 Internet Marketing Secrets That Will Drastically Grow Your Business in the Next 90 Days!

Nobody wants to fail at anything in life. Internet marketing is no different. In this article I am going to equip you with the knowledge necessary to building a successful internet marketing business. If you practice and implement these three internet marketing secrets I will almost guarantee your success in this industry in the next 90 days.

Secret #1- The power of branding. Many people come into this industry because they hear about the large amounts of money that people are making. They find what they think is a great product and they go out there and start marketing it. The problem with this is that people do not like to be sold to. People like to follow leaders and will do anything that those leaders will tell them.

This is one of the absolute best internet marketing secrets simply because you already own the greatest product that you could sell. By branding yourself as a leader, mentor, and guru you literally attract people to you that want to join you in a business or buy your product. How would it feel to wake up to emails from 5 people saying that they joined your business?

Any book that Oprah suggests in her book club quickly becomes a number one best seller. She can do this because she has developed name recognition. People will do whatever she says, buy whatever she says to buy, and they will do it without her having to do much work.

Secret # 2- The Power of Duplication. So now that you have developed name recognition, and are attracting people into your business, you need to show people how to do the same thing that you have done. You need a system, a system that can be easily duplicated. By showing people how to do exactly what you did to generate leads you are literally investing in yourself. By showing them how to succeed, you increase your retention rate (which increases your residual income), and you brand yourself as a leader to your prospects.

Secret #3- An auto responder campaign. Adding valuable information to people on a constant basis is a must if you want to succeed in this industry. Once you start driving traffic and generating leads, you will soon find that there is not enough time in the day to give everyone the attention that they deserve. That is unless you have an effective auto responder campaign.

An auto responder campaign is one of the greatest internet marketing secrets because it can do two great things for you.

1. It can market to people and give them valuable information on complete auto-pilot (without you being there). 2. You can make money off of people without them ever joining your primary business opportunity.

One of the greatest internet marketing secrets is the ability to make money without people joining you in your primary business. There are certain tools that make the life of an internet marketer easier. Once you are giving away valuable information in your campaign, and then mention these products it becomes easy to sell things to people.

You can be relaxing with friends and family, on vacation, or even sleeping while people are reading your emails, and buying the products that you recommend.

There are tons more internet marketing secrets, but with these three you will be well on your way to success. Make sure that you check out the link below to learn more internet marketing secrets.

Learn tons more about the internet marketing secrets that are secretly making a handful of people very wealthy at [http://pluggedinmarketing.com]. You will also learn how to avoid the common mistakes that people make so that you do not waste your hard earned time and money.

Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dayton_Anderson

Source: http://internet-marketing-guide.org/3-internet-marketing-secrets-that-will-drastically-grow-your-business-in-the-next-90-days/

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Farm values faring well despite drought: Bank of the West

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - Farmland values appear to be holding strong and farm balance sheets remain solid despite a devastating drought that wreaked havoc on corn and soybean crops, dried up waterways and scorched pastureland in parts of the United States, one of the largest lenders to U.S. agriculture said.

"We're watching it pretty closely ... but we're certainly bullish on the industry," Roger Sturdevant, executive vice president of Bank of the West and head of its agribusiness banking division, told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

Bank of the West has about $62 billion in assets and is ranked the second-largest bank lender to U.S. agriculture, with about $3.2 billion in agricultural loans.

Current loan/lease commitments for agribusiness at the bank, which has customers across the country with an emphasis on the western and Midwestern regions, are over $6.5 billion, with outstanding balances of over $4 billion.

Times are hard for U.S. cattlemen, who have been forced to liquidate herds for lack of adequate pasture and water due to the historic drought that gripped more than half the nation this summer. Corn farmers have seen typical yields cut in half or worse by scorching heat and limited rainfall, while dairies and poultry and swine producers have struggled to find affordable feed for their animals.

Still, Sturdevant said farmers and ranchers generally appear to be holding up and are headed for some relief in 2013.

Grain producers are faring the best, he said. High prices for wheat, corn and soybeans, coupled with a broad crop insurance safety net for producers who lost crops to the drought, should see those farmers end the year with healthy incomes.

Many livestock producers facing a squeeze should see a return to profitable margins in the first and second quarters of 2013 as tight meat supplies drive demand - and prices - higher, Sturdevant said.

"At some point, product demand will support higher prices sufficient to cover increased feed costs," he said, adding that pork and poultry producers are faring better than beef producers as cattle prices are expected to remain higher than chicken or pork.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is forecasting a drop of about 2 percent in total red meat and poultry production next year.

NO FEAR

Many industry experts have expressed concerns about a land price bubble that could pop at any time, but Sturdevant said he did not fear this due to low farm debt and the fact that rising values are largely tied to solid fundamental factors of strong demand, particularly for corn, and high grain prices.

Farmland values have skyrocketed in many parts of the country, particularly in the U.S. Midwest and Plains, where strong demand for corn and soybeans has been driving double-digit gains in land valuations.

For the first half of the year, farmland values were up sharply over a year ago in those regions, but the rate of growth appears to be slowing.

"It's probably still too early to tell, but so far we're not seeing (a major slowdown)," said Sturdevant.

More will be known as farmland sales typically pick up after the fall harvest, he said, adding that turnover of farmland is currently running about half the normal rate.

Sturdevant said this year's drought underscored how critical water is to farm lending.

"Every loan we make we have a discussion about access to water, the cost of water, water rights, etc," he said. "It's going to be increasingly important as it becomes more scarce. Water is key."

(Reporting by Carey Gillam; Editing by Joseph Radford)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/farm-values-faring-well-despite-drought-bank-west-022231152--sector.html

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Lease Option Real Estate Investing: Advantages and Disadvantages ...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A real estate lease option contract is a combination of two documents. Generate a Massive Responsive List. The lease part of the contract is where the owner agrees to let you lease their property, while you pay them rent for a ...

Source: http://realestateinvestingfacts.com/blog/6477/lease-option-real-estate-investing-advantages-disadvantages/

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Beats Pill Bluetooth speaker spotted at FCC and HMV: take one and call Dr. Dre in the morning

Beats Pill Bluetooth speaker spotted at FCC and HMV take one and call Dr Dre in the morning

The Beats by Dr. Dre badge has usually been attached to headphones and the occasional laptop or smartphone. We've never really seen it attached to dedicated speakers, however, and that's where both an FCC filing and a sighting at UK retailer HMV's online store raise a few eyebrows. The House that Dre Built appears on the edge of launching the Beats Pill, a Bluetooth wireless speaker with four drivers and a shape that more than explains the medicinal name. While we don't know just how much of that signature Beats thump we'll get, we do know from the FCC that the Pill can serve as a speakerphone, carries an aux-in jack and will last for a typical 8.5 hours on its USB-rechargeable lithium-ion battery. There's also signs of a red version of Beats' Mixr headphones coming at the same time. HMV has publicly scoured its pages of any trace of a ship date or price for the Pill, but cached copies point to a £170 ($276) price and a release around September 28th -- not necessarily trustworthy figures, but they may be in the ballpark. Our only question is whether or not we'll get a dose of the Pill in the US.

[Thanks, Germaine]

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Beats Pill Bluetooth speaker spotted at FCC and HMV: take one and call Dr. Dre in the morning originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Sep 2012 09:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Another XMRV shoe drops: PLoS Pathogens study linking prostate ...

Less than 24 hours after the publication of a study showing no link between XMRV, aka xenotropic murine leukemia-related virus, and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), the authors of a a study claiming a link between the virus and prostate cancer have has been retractedit. The move comes along with the publication of a new study showing that no such link exists.

Here?s the notice, from PLoS Pathogens:

Retraction: Urisman A, Molinaro RJ, Fischer N, Plummer SJ, Casey G, et al. (2006) Identification of a Novel Gammaretrovirus in Prostate Tumors of Patients Homozygous for R462Q RNASEL Variant. PLoS Pathog 2(3): e25. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.0020025

In light of the findings from a recent study ?In-Depth Investigation of Archival and Prospectively Collected Samples Reveals No Evidence for XMRV Infection in Prostate Cancer? and others in the field, the editors of PLOS Pathogens have issued a retraction of this study. The association of XMRV with prostate cancer has now been thoroughly refuted. Although the original finding of a novel gammaretrovirus, XMRV, with the use of a pan-viral detection microarray is valid, and sequencing and phylogenetic characterization of the virus still stands, the editors agree that it is clear that XMRV found in this study is laboratory-derived and there is no association of XMRV with prostate cancer. As a result the paper was retracted from PLOS Pathogens on September 18th, 2012.

The ?recent study? to which the authors refer is quite recent, in fact: It was published yesterday, September 18, in PLoS ONE. It shares a number of authors with the now-retracted PLoS Pathogens paper, which has been cited 346 times, according to Thomson Scientific?s Web of Knowledge. One of the authors of both papers ? the Cleveland Clinic?s Robert Silverman ?? also co-authored the now-retracted Science paper linking XMRV to chronic fatigue syndrome.

In a blog post accompanying the study, a PLoS ONE editor, Gilda Tachedjian, explains why this is the ?final chapter? in the story alleging a link between XMRV and prostate cancer:

Despite the controversies in the CFS field, at that time the XMRV prostate cancer story remained an open question. ?Fast forward to early 2012 ? and over a 100 publications later ? XMRV was accepted by the majority of the scientific community to be a contaminant with no role in causing prostate cancer. This was due to several studies published in late 2010 and early 2011 demonstrating that XMRV was a laboratory-generated virus (Paprotka et al 2011) and that highly sensitive nucleic acid detection assays were not detecting a bone fide infection of XMRV or related viruses in humans, but instead contamination from a variety of sources including mouse DNA, XMRV plasmid DNA, and XMRV from infected cell lines (see reviews by Sfanos et al 2012 and Groom and Bishop 2012).

Why was the new PLoS ONE study important? Tachedjian continues:

In the context of these findings, this study in PLOS ONE by Lee and colleagues is significant because it has allowed the authors who originally reported the association of XMRV with prostate cancer to set the record straight.? Using careful molecular detective work, they found that the original archived prostate cancer tissue was negative for XMRV although the archival extracted RNA from the original study was positive for XMRV.? They also failed to demonstrate the presence of XMRV in new prostate cancer samples. In addition, they discovered that the source of XMRV contamination in the archival extracted RNA was from an XMRV-infected cell line used in the laboratory.? The inability to confirm their original findings published in PLOS Pathogens represents the final chapter that closes the book on XMRV and its role as a naturally acquired human infection associated with prostate cancer. The PLOS Pathogens paper is retracted today.

Update, 10:45 a.m. Eastern, 9/19/12: As a commenter notes, the notice refers only to the editors, not the authors. We?ve contacted the corresponding authors ? many of whom, as we point out, are also authors of the PLoS ONE study overturning their findings ? and the editor of PLOS Pathogens, to ask whether the authors agreed to this retraction, and will update with anything we find out.

Update, 4:30 p.m. Eastern, 9/19/12: This article has been updated to include information from a nice story by Martin Enserink at Science. It turns out the retraction caught the authors by surprise and was not at their request. Neither the authors nor the journal have responded to our request for comment.

Update, 5:45 pm Eastern, 9/19/12: Kasturi Haldar, the editor of PLoS Pathogens, tells us the journal acted after not hearing back from the authors:

PLOS Pathogens is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE: http://publicationethics.org) and we follow their guidelines in reviewing any situation in which the literature may need to be corrected. The decision to retract the original 2006 paper was made in consultation with a large group of PLOS Pathogens? senior editors. The authors were contacted by email on August 27th regarding our decision, and were asked to comment on the retraction text and suggest changes. We did not receive a reply, and decided to move forward with the retraction in conjunction with the PLOS ONE publication yesterday, September 18th.

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Source: http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/another-xmrv-shoe-drops-plos-pathogens-prostate-cancer-study-retracted/

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Myanmar democracy icon meets with Hillary Clinton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi warned on Tuesday that reforms in her country had cleared only the "first hurdle" and said she supported an easing of U.S. sanctions as part of a broad partnership with Washington.

The Nobel laureate said the economic sanctions were a useful tool for putting pressure on Myanmar's military government in the past, but now the people need to consolidate democracy without outside help.

"I do support the easing of sanctions, because I think that our people can start taking responsibility for their own destiny," she said at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington on the opening day of a two-week tour of the United States.

"I do not think we should depend on U.S. sanctions to keep up the momentum of our movement to democracy. We have to work at it ourselves and there are very many other ways in which the United States can help us," said Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi did not specify which of the complex web of sanctions that Washington began phasing out this year she wanted removed. State Department officials did not indicate that she had made any formal requests on sanctions during talks on Tuesday with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"We are going to do this in a measured way as we see progress, and the secretary did lay out the list (of what more needs to be done)," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters after the meeting.

"We will continue to watch that and make our decisions as we see more progress," she added.

GUARD AGAINST BACKSLIDING

Suu Kyi, who won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for championing democracy in opposition to a military junta that held her under house arrest for years, began her tour with talks with Clinton and a speech hosted by the USIP and the Asia Society.

"We have crossed the first hurdle but there are many more hurdles to cross," she said in the speech, her first public appearance in the United States.

Clinton told the same event Myanmar still "had a lot of work to do."

"Political prisoners remain in detention. Ongoing ethnic and sectarian violence continues to undermine progress toward national reconciliation, stability and lasting peace," she said.

Suu Kyi's followers and the quasi-civilian government needed to work together to heal past wounds and "guard against backsliding because there are forces that would take the country in the wrong direction if given the chance," said Clinton.

She later visited the office of Radio Free Asia, a U.S.-funded broadcaster, and addressed the conflict between ethnic Rakhines and Muslim Rohingyas that in June erupted in violence that killed 80 people and displaced thousands.

"Hate and fear are very closely related," Suu Kyi told RFA's Burmese language service in an interview.

"You have to remove the roots of hatred ? that is to say you have to address these issues that make people insecure and that make people threatened," RFA quoted her as saying.

Suu Kyi, whose last stay in the United States was in the 1970s as a United Nations employee, will visit the large emigre community from her country in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and make a series of public speeches from New York to California.

Her U.S. tour will coincide with a visit by Thein Sein, Myanmar's reformist president, who heads to New York on September 24 to address the U.N. General Assembly.

GEOPOLITICS AND MYANMAR

Thein Sein, a former junta general, was scheduled to meet U.S. officials on the sidelines of U.N. meetings and his aides said he would try to convey Myanmar's urgent need for the import ban and other American sanctions to be eased.

Suu Kyi's election to parliament in April helped to transform Myanmar's pariah image and convince the West to begin rolling back sanctions after a year of dramatic reforms, including the release of about 700 political prisoners in amnesties between May 2011 and July.

The 67-year-old Suu Kyi, striking a professorial tone in her first U.S. speech, said the rapid normalization of U.S.-Myanmar ties over the past 18 months was "particularly illustrative of the dimensions of geopolitics and history."

Many people around the region are asking, she said, whether U.S. engagement with Myanmar - a country of 64 million people that lies between China and India - "was aimed at containing the influence of China in Asia."

She said Myanmar's engagement with the United States did not mean that Myanmar-U.S. ties "in any way can be seen as a hostile threat to China" and that she sought good ties with both countries as well as with India.

BIG TEST IN 2015

Before Suu Kyi arrived in the United States on Monday, Myanmar announced a pardon of more than 500 prisoners in an amnesty that included at least 80 political detainees, according to activists.

The announcement, seen as a step that could strengthen the former military state's growing bonds with Washington, did not make clear if any of the 514 were political prisoners, but two activist groups who monitor dissidents jailed in Myanmar said more than 80 were given presidential pardons.

The U.S. State Department reacted cautiously to news of the amnesty, repeating its call for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners.

John Sifton, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said he wanted to hear more from Suu Kyi about a looming showdown in the next election in 2015, which will determine whether the generals who have run the country since 1962 will peacefully hand over power to civilians.

"You can be a politician or you can be a human rights activist who speaks frankly, but I don't think you can be both," he said.

"The full and frank assessment of human rights groups is that she's not prepared to play a very critical role with the government, nor does she speak the underlying truth about the political situation - the huge test that's coming up in 2015," added Sifton.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Quinn; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Eric Walsh)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/myanmar-democracy-icon-suu-kyi-begins-key-u-144102166.html

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Panasonic teases 42.5mm f/1.2 and 150mm f/2.8 MFT lenses, slated for release by 2014

Panasonic teases 425mm f12 and 150mm f28 MFT lenses, slated for release by 2014

Panasonic further reinforced its commitment to the Micro Four Thirds form factor when it released the Lumix GH3 mirrorless camera today, but the company also announced the development of a pair of prime lenses, set to ship next year or in 2014. Details are spotty at this point (limited to what you see in that slide above, in fact), but you can expect a 42.5mm f/1.2 optic (85mm equivalent) and a 150mm f/2.8 lens, which offers a 35mm equivalent of 300mm. There wasn't even a hint of pricing, but we'd expect both of these offerings to be quite costly, though they'll likely be significantly less expensive than DSLR equivalents.

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Panasonic teases 42.5mm f/1.2 and 150mm f/2.8 MFT lenses, slated for release by 2014 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Sep 2012 07:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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