First Lady expands her 'Pinterest' to tap latest online trend

Michelle Obama’s got three boards and 15 pins and if you don’t know what that means, you clearly aren’t following one of the latest trends exploding online: Pinterest.



Wednesday morning, the first lady popped up as a participant on the fast-growing social media site, which allows users to post, or “pin,” images they like to various themed “boards” they create. Pinterest users who follow them may post comments under the pins, or “repin” photos they like to their own Pinterest pages. Naturally, there is optional Twitter and Facebook linkage.
So far, Obama’s boards are “Around the White House,” “Great Memories” and “Father’s Day.”
Obama, it appears, is collaborating with the president’s re-election team. “This account is run by the Obama 2012 campaign staff,” her page says. “Pins from the First Lady are signed –mo.” Hours after launching her page, Obama had 4,957 followers.
Pinterest was launched in 2009 in the very state that has spawned many a presidential campaign: Iowa. (Founder Ben Silbermann was in West Des Moines, to be precise). In January, ComScore reported Pinterest had 11.7 million users, making it one of the fastest growing social network sites ever.
One might have expected the social-media savvy White House to beat the opposition to a website like this, but Ann Romney has been on Pinterest for three months. The wife of President Obama’s presumptive challenger Mitt Romney uses Pinterest to share recipes, favorite books and moments with her family.
Romney has eight boards with 66 pins and 7,519 followers. Her boards include “Patriotic,” “Things I love” and “Inspiration.” She offers a recipe for “healthy” peanut butter chocolate eggs, and recommends as a favorite book Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” whose love-tormented heroine comes to a self-induced and untimely end.
For many users, most of whom are women, Pinterest functions as a kind of aspirational wish-book for fashion looks, home design and food.

 
 
For the Obamas and Romneys, it has become another form of outreach on the virtual campaign trail, joining Facebook and Twitter as modes of communication for the candidates and their spouses.
With its focus on photographs, Pinterest helps them impart a homey, folksy vibe at a moment when the campaigns have been engaging in a war of words about which candidate is less sympathetic to the problems of everyday Americans.
Michelle Obama has posted family portraits and photos of herself crouched at work with children in her White House garden and of a tender moment in a service elevator with her husband on inauguration night. There is also a photograph of the first lady in a tug of war with the comedian Jimmy Fallon, underneath a White House portrait of George Washington.
“Jimmy was a gracious loser,” she wrote.
Under the photo, a commenter wrote, perhaps sarcastically, “I’m pretty sure President Washington would be very proud to see what his happening just below his photo!”

France should act on diesel cancer link

France should rein in tax policies favoring diesel engines after a World Health Organisation review found a clear link between their exhaust emissions and cancer, the country's environment minister said.

 

The French auto market, which was 72 percent diesel last year, should reduce its dependence on the fuel, Nicole Bricq told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Paris on Wednesday.
"The national vehicle fleet is completely unbalanced," said Bricq, who took office last month following the election of Socialist President Francois Hollande.
Tax policies had encouraged this imbalance and should now be adjusted, Bricq said.
"I'm in favor, and the competent ministers will have to be convinced," she said. "This study comes at an opportune moment for us to make changes."
European countries have favored diesel partly because cars using it are more fuel-efficient than similar gasoline-powered vehicles and emit less carbon dioxide.
Bricq was speaking a day after the WHO's cancer research agency said its review of all relevant published science had removed earlier doubts about the carcinogenic effects of diesel exhaust.
France levies a tax of 43 euro cents per liter on diesel and 61 cents on petrol, according to industry data for 2011, leading to a similar difference in prices at the pump.
The country's main automakers, PSA Peugeot Citroen and Renault are among the most reliant on diesel sales in their home market and the rest of Europe, analysts say.

 

Peugeot said it was still waiting for a full copy of the WHO findings before responding. Since 2010, all its vehicles have been equipped with filters that leave no detectable trace of cancer-causing particles or benzopyrene molecules in their exhaust, spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mounier said.
Renault declined to comment, but other automakers and industry bodies have attacked the findings.
"We're convinced that this blanket judgment is completely unjustified for modern diesels," said Eckehart Rotter, a spokesman for Germany's VDA car manufacturing association.
Volkswagen, the biggest European automaker by deliveries, and which is currently seeking to increase its U.S. diesel sales, said the study "does not reflect the diesel technology that has been on the market since 2004".
The WHO cancer agency, which had first classified diesel exhaust as "probably carcinogenic to humans" in 1988, said on Tuesday it had removed the "probably" from that rating on the basis of its review.
The rating on petrol exhaust was also reviewed and left unchanged as "possibly carcinogenic", two risk categories below diesel.

Car bombs targeting Shiite pilgrims kill more than 60 people in Iraq

A coordinated wave of car bombs struck Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad and several other cities Wednesday, killing at least 66 people and wounding more than 200 in one of the deadliest days in Iraq since U.S. troops withdrew from the country.

 

The bloodshed comes against a backdrop of political divisions that have raised tensions and threatened to provoke a new round of the violence that once pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war. Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, but they bore the hallmarks of Sunni insurgents who frequently target Shiites in Iraq.

 A wave of car bombs struck Shiite pilgrims in several cities across Iraq on Wednesday, killing at least 65 people and wounding more than 200 in one of the deadliest attacks since U.S. troops withdrew from the country. (June 13)

Associated Press

For the first time, people responding to a global survey are more likely to view China and not the United States as the world’s leading economic power.

Wednesday’s blasts were the third this week targeting the annual pilgrimage that sees hundreds of thousands of Shiites converge on a golden-domed shrine in Baghdad’s northern neighborhood of Kazimiyah to commemorate the eighth century death of a revered Shiite saint, Imam Moussa al-Kadhim. The commemoration culminates on Saturday.
Puddles of blood and shards of metal clogged a drainage ditch at the site of one of the bombings in the city of Hillah, where hours before pilgrims had been marching. Soldiers and dazed onlookers wandered near the charred remains of the car that had exploded and ripped gaping holes in nearby shops.
Most of the 16 separate explosions that rocked the country targeted Shiite pilgrims in five cities, but two hit offices of political parties linked to Iraq’s Kurdish minority in the tense north. Authorities had tightened security ahead of the pilgrimage, including a blockade of the mainly Sunni area of Azamiyah, which is near the twin-domed Shiite shrine.
The level of violence has dropped dramatically in Iraq since peaking in 2006-2007 as the country faced a Sunni-led insurgency and retaliatory sectarian fighting that broke out after the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. But Iraqis still face near-daily attacks and Shiite pilgrimages are often targeted.



 Political divisions also have only deepened, paralyzing the country since the Americans withdrew all combat troops in mid-December.
Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been accused of trying to monopolize power, and tensions spiked after Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi — the highest-ranking Sunni in Iraq’s leadership — was charged with running death squads. The government began his trial in absentia since al-Hashemi was out of the country, drawing allegations the charges were part of a vendetta by the Shiite-led government.
The political stagnation has set back hopes for stability in Iraq and stalled efforts to rebuild the country after eight years of U.S. occupation.
“These violent acts reflect the depth of the political crisis in the country and the escalation of political differences among blocs,” said politician Abdul-Sataar al-Jumaili of the Sunni political bloc Iraqiya.
Baghdad military command spokesman Col. Dhia al-Wakeel said the attacks were intended to reignite all-out sectarian bloodshed, “but Iraqis are fully aware of the terrorism agenda and will not slip into a sectarian conflict.”

Greek radical Tsipras is no working class hero

*  Greek leftist leader vows to cancel Greek bailout
*  Tsipras running neck and neck in Sunday vote
*  Questions over his leadership skills remain




Alexis Tsipras, the radical Greek leftist who wants to cancel a bailout deal keeping the country afloat if he wins elections on Sunday, is no working class hero.
Born into a comfortable middle class family, Tsipras has a post-graduate degree in engineering but worked only briefly in construction before turning to full-time politics and being handed the SYRIZA party leadership on a platter four years ago.
Since then he has transformed an obscure fringe party into one of the two strongest forces in Greek politics, catapulted into second place in inconclusive elections last month by public rage at tough conditions tied to the 130 billion euro bailout.
For critics, his political career forged in student protests in the 1990s does not give Tsipras the background to govern a country. In 2001, he tried to take part in anti-G8demonstrations in Genoa, one of the emblematic moments of the anti-globalisation movement, but was stopped by Italian police.
His defenders say experienced politicians have run Greece into the ground and new blood is needed.
"So what if he doesn't have the experience?" said SYRIZA deputy Panagiotis Kouroublis. "If he can run a party, he can run a country. Greece has suffered from people who promised one thing and did another."
Tsipras has vowed to scrap the bailout deal but keep Greece in the euro, a task European leaders say is impossible. He has promised to nationalise banks, stop privatisations and freeze any austerity measures demanded by international lenders.
This has struck a chord with Greeks brought to their knees by five years of an austerity-driven recession and despairing at decades of scandals involving mainstream politicians who still enjoy impunity.
SYRIZA is now running neck and neck with the pro-bailout conservative New Democracy party of Antonis Samaras, 61, in a race that may decide whether Greece stays in the euro.
Greece's youngest party leader at 37, Tsipras has had a relatively easy ride to head a leftist movement whose older members suffered persecution or exile from the 1967-1974 period of military rule back to the Nazi occupation of World War II.
By contrast Tsipras has known only life under a democracy. He was born a few days after the military junta fell into an Athens family which owned a small construction business.

HANDLING SUCCESS
Tsipras refused to join a coalition government with other parties after the inconclusive May 6 election, prompting Sunday's repeat vote which opinion polls show he may win.
SYRIZA's performance last month surprised Tsipras as much as the rest of the world, which watched in amazement as Greece's debt crisis turned into a political stalemate threatening the euro currency and shaking world markets.
Party members who rushed to congratulate Tsipras for his success said he had reacted with disbelief: "Are you serious? This is for real?" he was quoted as asking when he discovered SYRIZA had won 16.8 percent in a highly fragmented field.
Analysts said he handled well the transformation of his party from a group that tacitly tolerated anarchists and other far-leftists to one backed by large swathes of the population. Polls showed SYRIZA's support rose about 10 percentage points since the last election.
"Most of his supporters voted for SYRIZA for the first time. The social make-up of the party changed and he managed that well," said Costas Panagopoulos, head of ALCO pollsters.
But Tsipras has done less well in managing his personal success. "He appeared a little arrogant, like the victory was a given," Panagopoulos said. "He has no experience in managing a country and nobody knows how he will do."
Tsipras moderated his rhetoric after the May election, saying he wanted to re-negotiate with lenders rather than scrap the bailout, but soon returned to his more radical speeches.
"As of Monday, the evil forces of internal graft and the foreign loan sharks will stop drafting bailout plans," he said on Tuesday.



Analysts said the hardening of positions may signal he is not ready to govern and would rather wait for the election after Sunday's vote, which he may win outright. A New Democracy-led coalition may not last long with a strong SYRIZA in opposition.
Friends say he is more nervous than he looks. "He used to love slow mornings," said one aide. "Now he jumps up before his alarm clock goes off."
A former Communist party youth member, he joined the SYRIZA coalition of 12 radical leftist groups, including environmentalists and human rights activists, and ran for mayor of Athens in 2006. He didn't win but his strong showing lifted him to the top of the party ranks.
A LEADER AT 33
In 2008, his mentor and then SYRIZA leader Alekos Alavanos virtually handed him the helm at the age of 33, raising more than a few eyebrows among the veteran leftists.
When he attended his first official reception at the presidential palace, he brought as his date a young woman from Sierra Leone, to show the plight of immigrants in Greece.
His youthful looks and refusal to wear a tie to the most formal of events make him stand out in a room of older, traditional politicians.
Tsipras has one child and expecting a second with his partner Betty. The two have not married, in defiance of traditional Greek society. He has openly backed gay marriage and gay adoption.
"He often interrupts party meetings to go pick up his kid," Kouroublis said. "He's very human. He really listens to what you have to say and takes it into account."
While his appeal among Greeks is obvious, foreign politicians view him with scepticism. Greece's partners have issued warnings that unless austerity commitments are met, the financial lifeline will be cut off.
"Foreigners are using a carrot and stick approach with him," an aide said on condition of anonymity. "They won't let Greece go bankrupt and will surely hand us the next loan installment."
A quick European trip after the May 6 election showed Tsipras's main weakness is in dealing with foreign partners.
In France, he said newly-elected Socialist President Francois Hollande had better keep his promises on moderating austerity or he would become a "Hollandreou", alluding to the downfall of former Greek socialist premier George Papandreou.
Critics said it was unwise to alienate a potential good friend of Greece in the euro zone.
Another issue Tsipras must deal with at home is his party being flooded with former socialist trade unionists, bent on stopping reforms and protecting special interests.
"Everyone who wants things to stay as they are is now going to Tsipras," said a former government official. "It's becoming the coalition of the drachma."
Political analysts say the people who rushed to SYRIZA will be easily disappointed and may abandon him if he lets them down.
"His mandate will be to renegotiate the bailout deal and keep Greece in the euro. If he wins he will realise the problem. His image will collapse," said analyst John Loulis. "Public opinion is not in love with Tsipras, it's angry with the others."

Pakistan route cut-off costs U.S. $100 mln a month

Pakistan's closure of supply routes to the Afghan war is costing American taxpayers $100 million a month, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Wednesday, as he recommended possibly setting conditions on future U.S. aid to Islamabad.

 

Panetta's decision to disclose what had been a closely guarded figure at the Pentagon appeared to be another sign of frustration with Pakistan and will do little to generate sympathy for that country in Congress, which is wrestling with ways to scale back the U.S. budget deficit.
Asked during a Senate budget hearing whether he would recommend halting aid to Pakistan, Panetta said: "I'd be very careful about just shutting it down."
"What I would do is look at conditions for what we expect them to do," Panetta said, without elaborating. He agreed to help write a letter to Congress with his recommendations for how to proceed with aid for the Pakistani military and government.
The comments came less than a week after Panetta, using unusually harsh language, said during a trip to Kabul that the United States was reaching the limits of its patience with Pakistan because of the safe havens it offered to insurgents fighting in neighboring Afghanistan.
The American war effort there has become far more costly, Panetta said on Wednesday, because of Pakistan's decision last November to ban trucks from carrying supplies to NATO forces in landlocked, neighboring Afghanistan.
That forced NATO to use longer, more costly routes through countries to the north of Afghanistan.
"It's very expensive because we're using the northern transit route in order to be able to draw-down our forces and also supply our forces," Panetta said.
"The amount is about ... $100 million a month because of the closure of those (Pakistani routes)."
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to Reuters that the $100 million figure represented the additional cost of using the northern routes rather than moving supplies on the ground through Pakistan.

 

Pakistan shut down the supply routes to protest a cross-border NATO air attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. That strike further fanned national anger over everything from covert CIA drone strikes to the U.S. incursion into Pakistan last year to kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
The United States on Monday announced it was withdrawing its team of negotiators from Pakistan without securing a deal to re-open the routes, publicly exposing a diplomatic stalemate and deeply strained relations between the uneasy allies.
One of the sticking points in the negotiations has been Pakistani demands that the United States apologize for the November strike, something the Pentagon has been unwilling to do. But Panetta acknowledged at the hearing that the apology wasn't the only issue.
"They're asking not only for that, but there are other elements to the negotiation that are also involved that have to be resolved," Panetta said.

Wave of attacks hit pilgrims

A WAVE of coordinated attacks have rocked Iraq during a major religious commemoration, killing at least 72 people and wounding more than 250.



The attacks, which came as Shitte pilgrims flocked to a shrine to mark the anniversary of the death of Imam Musa Kadhim, a revered imam in Shiite Islam, were the deadliest in Iraq since August 15, 2011 when 74 people were killed.
The targeting of Shiite pilgrims was a stark reminder of Sunni-Shiite violence which tore Iraq apart in 2006-2007 and was condemned by parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi, who termed it an attempt "to provoke sectarian strife."
Baghdad was hit by 10 bomb attacks and two shootings that killed at least 28 people and wounded dozens more, according to an interior ministry official and a medic.
The deadliest attack in Baghdad saw a car bomb explode in the Karrada neighbourhood where pilgrims were eating breakfast in tents.
Human remains were scattered across the street, while cars and shops in the area were damaged.
The attack, in which a medical official said 16 people died and 32 were wounded, appeared aimed at the Shiite pilgrims as they headed in their tens of thousands to Imam Kadhim shrine in the northern neighbourhood of Kadhimiyah.
Another car bomb on the outskirts of Kadhimiyah, which an interior ministry official and a medic said killed seven people, left a hole two metres deep in a street, damaged cars and destroyed a number of makeshift houses.
"I could not see for more than two metres because of the smoke and dust," said a resident, Abdul Zahra Abdul Saad, adding that the blast occurred at about 5:00 am local time (12pm AEST).
"I took out three people: two children and an old woman. They were all dead," he said.
Coordinated attacks took place across other centres, including in the central city of Hilla, where a police captain and doctor Ali al-Khafaji at the main hospital said two car bombs killed 20 people and wounded 51 others.
Ten people, meanwhile, were killed in a wave of attacks in and around Baquba, north of Baghdad, security and medical officials said.
In the northern city of Kirkuk, three car bombs killed two people and wounded at least 17 more, the interior ministry official and doctor Nabil Hamdi Mushnaq of Kirkuk hospital said.
Marwan Ibrahim, a 34-year-old journalist who has worked for AFP since 2003, was wounded by a car bomb while reporting on the attacks in Kirkuk.
In other incidents, five people were killed and 30 wounded in two car bombs in Balad, north of Baghdad, including one which targeted the local headquarters of the Shiite endowment.
Car bombs in Al-Azizyah, south of Baghdad, and in the restive northern city of Mosul killed a total of four people, while 24 people were wounded in a blast near the holy city of Karbala in central Iraq.
And west of Baghdad, insurgents killed two policemen in an attack on a checkpoint near Fallujah, while a magnetic "sticky bomb" killed a health directorate employee in Heet, police Lieutenant Colonel Haidar al-Jaafari said.
Along with the security forces, the Shiite majority in Iraq has been a main target of Sunni Arab armed groups since the US-led invasion of 2003 toppled now -executed dictator Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime.
Yesterday's attacks come during a political row that has seen opponents of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki mounting an attempt to oust him, but so far failing due to a lack of votes.
Mr Maliki's opponents have for months accused him of monopolising decision-making and moving toward dictatorship.
A statement on Mr Maliki's website yesterday said that he had warned during a meeting against "political differences that ... may negatively affect the security situation."
The Iraqiya bloc, one of the parties pushing for Mr Maliki to be unseated, said that it "holds the government and he (Maliki) who controls ... the security forces fully responsible for establishing security."
Violence across Iraq has declined dramatically since the 2006-2007 peak but attacks remain common, especially in Baghdad. A total of 132 Iraqis were killed in May, official figures show.

The Once and Future Mac desktop: sorting fact from rumor post-WWDC

Did we officially get new Mac Pros this week, or is that next year? And did someone mention an updated iMac?



Amid much back-and-forth this week on the future of Apple'sMac Pro, iMac, and Mac Mini desktops, it seems worth recapping what we know for sure, as well as what we don't.

Fact: Apple updated the Mac Pro on Monday, albeit with a minor CPU tweak.
Shortly after the end of Apple's World Wide Developer's Conference keynote speech, Apple added its new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops to its online store. Above each laptop's picture, you will still find a little "new" icon, indicating the updated systems. Surprisingly, the Mac Pro also had a "new" icon above it as well, despite no mention of a new model from Apple during the keynote.
What was so "new" about Apple's workstation? Simple. In the $2,499 Mac Pro, Apple updated the 2.8GHz Intel Xeon W3530 chip with the 3.2GHz Xeon W3565, a chip with the same "Bloomfield" CPU technology as the original. Anticipated updates like Ivy Bridge, USB 3.0, and Thunderbolt all went unaccounted for. Instead, Apple gave its Mac Pros just a minor CPU speed bump.
The "new" tag has since come down from the Mac Pro Apple store listing.


Fact: Apple has confirmed that a full Mac Pro update/redesign is due in 2013.
On Monday, June 11, The New York Times' David Pogue wrote the following from WWDC:
Many Apple observers also wonder if Apple thinks that desktop computers are dead, since not a word was said about the iMac and Mac Pro. An executive did assure me, however, that new models and new designs are under way, probably for release in 2013.
The last sentence of that paragraph was later amended:
An executive did assure me, however, that new MacPro designs are under way, probably for release in 2013.
Later, Apple CEO Tim Cook himself then confirmed the 2013 Mac Pro update via an e-mail to a customer, saying:
Although we didn't have a chance to talk about a new Mac Pro at today's event, don't worry as we're working on something really great for later next year.
Forbes later confirmed the authenticity of Pogue's claim with Apple PR. Macworld verified the Cook email.

Official status unknown: Updated iMac, Mac Mini
In the revised Pogue quote, the Times or Pogue himself clarified the final sentence, making it explicit that Apple is only going on the record about an updated Mac Pro. Forbes, which took the first version of Pogue's article and ran with the headline "Apple Confirms New Mac Pros and iMacs in 2013," has since updated to: "Apple Says New Models, Designs for Mac Pro In Works, Due in 2013 (Update)."
Forbes also ran a correction: "Apple corrects to say desktop updates for 2013 applies only to Mac Pro and not iMac."
With that clarification, we have no concrete information about a new iMac. I've seen no rumors about a new Mac Mini.



Prediction: Ivy Bridge iMacs in a month or two
Apple has updated the iMac line with Intel's latest CPU every year since it switched over from the Power PC G5 chip in 2006. The release dates have not been consistent the last few years: October 20, 2009; July 27, 2010; May 3, 2011; but given that Intel's Ivy Bridge CPUs use the same motherboard sockets as the iMac's current Sandy Bridge CPUs (LGA 1155 on desktops, Socket G2 for mobile chips), the barriers to updating are slim.
Further, with Windows 8 and a whole assortment of Windows all-in-ones due this fall, skipping Ivy Bridge when it can switch so easily simply wouldn't make good competitive sense.
In other words, I'd expect to see new iMacs later this summer or early fall with identical designs to the current models, Ivy Bridge CPUs, and USB 3.0 ports. Will it have a Retina display? Unknown. Apple had the only 27-inch all-in-one for two years before its Windows competition, suggesting an exclusive contract. Another such deal might be the only way it would see a return on an even higher resolution iMac display. Apple can pull those strings if anyone can, but I'm more confident in an Ivy Bridge update.
What about the Mac Mini?
Apple hasn't been afraid to let the Mac Mini skip a CPU generation. I wouldn't expect much news on this front for a while.