8 people found dead in Texas home: media

WASHINGTON - Police found the bodies of five children and three adults in a Texas home after a standoff that ended with a man's surrender, US media reported Sunday.

The eight people were found in a Houston-area house after deputies from the Harris County Sheriff's Office were called to the residence at about 9:00 pm on Saturday, spokesman Thomas Gilliland told the KHOU news channel.

A 49-year-old man inside the house began shooting after deputies forced their way into the home, KHOU reported.

The officers pulled back and began negotiating with the man, who eventually surrendered.

KHOU reported that a man in the home was wanted on a warrant for aggravated assault on a family member.

No additional information was immediately available and a call to the sheriff's office early Sunday went unanswered.

source: interaksyon.com

Jennifer Aniston weds Justin Theroux in LA: reports

LOS ANGELES | Former “Friends” star Jennifer Aniston has married her longtime boyfriend Justin Theroux at their Los Angeles-area home in a secret ceremony that took the media and many of the couple’s guests by surprise, celebrity media reported on Thursday.

People magazine and Us Weekly, citing unidentified sources, said the couple, who have been dating for four years, exchanged vows in front of some 70 family members and friends at their Bel-Air home on Wednesday.

Representatives of the couple did not return requests for comment. But celebrity news website TMZ.com posted photos of a stage, an outdoor dance floor, dining tables and a large cake being brought into the house that Aniston and Theroux share in Bel-Air, a posh hilltop neighborhood of Los Angeles.

“Guests were told it was a birthday party for Justin. Jen and Justin wanted to surprise guests and guests were certainly surprised,” People magazine reported, citing a source.

“Jen has been very good at keeping her wedding planning secret. Only her closest confidants knew that the party was actually a surprise wedding.”

Aniston, 46, whose first marriage to actor Brad Pitt ended in divorce 10 years ago, met actor and “Tropic Thunder” screenwriter Theroux, who turns 44 next week, in 2008, and the couple announced their engagement in 2012.

People and Us Weekly said guests at the wedding included Aniston’s “Friends” costar Lisa Kudrow, comedians Ellen DeGeneres and Chelsea Handler, TV’s “America’s Got Talent” judge Howard Stern and British actress Emily Blunt.

Aniston has forged a lucrative film career in romantic comedies such as “Marley & Me” and “Just Go with It,” since the hit TV comedy “Friends” ended in 2004, having made her a global star.

Her love life, including romances with musician John Mayer and actor Vince Vaughn, has been the focus of intense celebrity media speculation since the split with Pitt, who went on to strike up a relationship with Angelina Jolie. Pitt and Jolie married quietly in France in August 2014.

source: interaksyon.com

Stress may sabotage diets by short-circuiting self-control

People are less likely to resist tasty, unhealthy foods when they’re under stress because the promise of immediate reward trumps longer-term goals to eat well, a Swiss study suggests.

Using brain scans, researchers found that circuits in the brain associated with reward are amped up and those linked to self-control are dialed down in participants under stress. The more stressed people felt themselves to be, the stronger the effect.

“We find that stress increases reward signaling and thus may boost a craving for getting the instantaneously rewarding option,” which ties in with earlier studies of stress and decision circuits in the brain, said lead author Silvia U. Maier at the University of Zurich.

“The more stressed you feel, the less likely you become to override your own taste preferences when we present you with a really tricky challenge, say: your favorite chocolate bar versus a portion of broccoli,” Maier told Reuters Health by email.

“You could say it’s almost like stress is turning up the dial on signals about taste, and turning down the signal on health goals,” she said.

For the study, the researchers recruited 51 young adult men who reported making an effort to eat a healthy diet and exercise regularly, but also still enjoyed junk foods with some frequency.

First, each participant used a computer questionnaire to rate images of 180 food items for healthiness, tastiness and their overall appeal.

Then 29 of the men were randomly selected to undergo the stress induction procedure, in which they immersed a hand in an ice bath for three minutes while they were videotaped and monitored. Social evaluation is one of the most potent human stressors, Maier noted.

All the participants were put in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner, which measures brain activity by mapping blood flow changes in the brain, and asked to complete several seven-minute computer-based decision trials, selecting from pairs of the foods they had previously rated on healthiness and taste.

In addition to the fMRI measures, the researchers also collected saliva samples from the men to measure the stress hormone cortisol.

As reported in Neuron, the researchers found that men who had undergone the stressful situation were more likely to favor taste rather than health in their food choices, compared to the men who had not been stressed.

“What's exciting about this work is that it identifies specific mechanisms for how stress affects self control: by amplifying the influence of short-term rewards on choices, and by impairing the influence of a brain region known to be important for self-control,” said Molly Crockett, an expert in neuropsychology at University College London in the U.K.

“When you're faced with an unhealthy food that's not very tempting, stress won't affect your self control much,” Crockett, who was not part of the new research, told Reuters Health by email. “But when you're faced with your most favorite tempting foods, stress will make it more difficult to resist those temptations.”

In studies of rats, a high-fat diet appears to blunt the stress response, and some researchers speculate that humans may change their diets to “self-medicate” the stress response in the brain, although that is still a hypothesis, Maier said.

“One very stressful day will most likely not sabotage your diet completely if the stress ends after this day and you return back to your routine of eating a healthy, balanced diet,” she said. “However, we find that even moderately stressful events may promote these lapses of self-control, and moderate stress may occur more often during your day or week.”

One way to combat this effect is to use pre-commitment, removing temptations before they occur, for example removing snacks, cigarettes or alcohol from the home if you know you will have trouble resisting later, Maier said.

SOURCE: bit.ly/1P6Cr0S Neuron, online August 5, 2015.

source: interaksyon.com

Taylor Swift lets Aussie seniors ‘shake it off’

SYDNEY | Pop star Taylor Swift has leapt to the aid of a Sydney theater company suffering an “artistic emergency” by giving the cast of 70-somethings permission to dance to her chart-topper “Shake it Off”.

Sydney’s Belvoir Theatre took to Twitter with the hashtag “greygrey4taytay” to appeal to the American singer for permission to use the song in a play due to open Wednesday night.

“I’m facing an artistic emergency I hope you can help with,” theater director Anne-Louise Sarks tweeted to the singer on Tuesday morning.

She was referring to the play “Seventeen” about 17-year-olds on their last night of high school but played by actors in their 70s.

In the production’s show-stopper scene, the cast dance to “Shake it Off” — and they had learned all the word to the song — yet at the last minute they had been denied permission to use it, reportedly by the song’s publishers.

“Is there anything at all you can do?!!” Sarks pleaded.

The response was quick with the singer giving the green light via Twitter: “Permission granted. Good luck with your opening night.”

Swift is a global superstar with more than 61.5 million followers on Twitter but her work was largely unknown to the cast of “Seventeen” until they began rehearsing the play, which was written specifically for them.

“These actors weren’t, until these rehearsals, familiar with Taylor Swift — or much pop music — so we introduced them to this track, they learned all the words — it was kind of a big process,” Sarks told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

“So it was quite a big deal to get denied those rights at the last minute.”

She later said on Twitter that Taylor’s support for artists was “a thing to behold”.

source: interaksyon.com

Singers Gwen Stefani, Gavin Rossdale to divorce: reports

LOS ANGELES | Singer Gwen Stefani has filed for divorce from rockstar husband Gavin Rossdale after 13 years of marriage, several news reports said on Monday.

In her divorce petition, Stefani, 45, cited irreconcilable differences and asked for joint custody of the couple’s three children, 9-year-old Kingston, 6-year-old Zuma and 1-year-old Apollo, celebrity websites TMZ and People.com said.

Rossdale, 49, filed his response at the same time and also asked for joint custody, TMZ reported.

Neither Stefani nor Rossdale’s attorneys immediately responded to emails seeking comment.

The couple has been together for about two decades, meeting when Stefani’s band No Doubt toured with Rossdale’s band Bush in 1995, People.com reported. They dated for six years before they wed in 2002.

“While the two of us have come to the mutual decision that we will no longer be partners in marriage, we remain partners in parenthood and are committed to jointly raising our three sons in a happy and healthy environment,” the couple told the website in a statement.

source: interaksyon.com

Asian stocks near 2015 lows on China economy worry, dollar strong

HONG KONG - An index of Asian shares outside Japan fell close to this year's lows thanks to a deepening selloff in commodities and concerns over slowing growth in China, while the dollar held its ground against a basket of currencies.

China's factory activity shrank more than initially estimated in July, contracting by the most in two years as new orders fell, according to a private survey that dashed hopes that the economy may be steadying.

"We believe the stock market panic in early July chilled economic activity, which is what the manufacturing PMIs picked up," ING economist Tim Condon said in a research note ahead of the Caixin PMI release.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell more than 1 percent before paring losses to be down 0.9 percent. The biggest losers were financials and cyclicals. The index's low for this year was on July 8.

Stock markets across the region declined with Japan's Nikkei down 0.5 percent and South Korea's Kospi falling 0.9 percent.

"We believe the macro environment remains challenging for emerging market assets amid headwinds of low commodity prices, concerns over China and a looming Fed tightening cycle," Barclays strategists wrote in a daily note in clients.

Recent flows data confirm that trend. Net foreign selling from emerging Asia has reached nearly $10 billion over the past two months with only India seeing some tiny inflows.

Although outflows have pummeled stock markets from Korea to Taiwan, valuations suggest more downside is likely.

While recent weakness in stocks has made emerging market valuations more attractive than those of developed market counterparts, they are twice as expensive as Asian financial crisis lows, according to research from Julius Baer.

On Wall Street on Friday, the Dow lost 0.3 percent and the S&P 500 shed 0.2 percent, due to a drop in energy shares.

In currencies, the dollar on Monday held broadly steady at 123.97 yen. The euro was steady at $1.1097.

While recent dollar moves have been buffeted by U.S. economic data, the broader trend was on the upside after the Federal Reserve last week left the door open for a possible interest rate increase in September.

The U.S. dollar has rallied 7.75 percent so far this year against the world's main trading currencies, after a 12.8 percent rise last year.

And "the dollar's recent rally may just be getting started," according to research from the BlackRock Investment Institute.

"Since the 1970s when the Bretton Woods fixed-currency regime ended and currencies began floating, a typical dollar rally has lasted roughly six to seven years," according to Russ Koesterich, BlackRock global investment strategist, who noted dollar rallies tend to be self-reinforcing, leading to greater inflows into U.S. assets in expectation of further dollar appreciation.

That traditionally is also a headwind for emerging markets, which have an inverse relationship to the dollar.

Commodities too are singing the emerging market blues.

Crude oil continued to flounder after posting its biggest monthly drop since 2008 in July on China's stock market slump and signs that top Middle East producers were pumping out crude at record levels.

U.S. crude was down 0.7 percent at $46.81 a barrel after losing 21 percent in July.

Copper prices fell 10 percent in July, the worst month since January and are now at their lowest levels since June 2009.

Overall the Reuters commodity index fell 10.8 percent in July, its biggest monthly fall since September 2011.

Reflecting the economic slowdown in China and sluggish growth in Europe and the Americas, international trade is also slowing.

Bonds were the sole bright spot.

The benchmark 10-year note yield held firm at 2.21 percent while 10-year Japanese bond yields stabilized at 0.41 percent.

source: interaksyon.com

Rapper Snoop Dogg stopped in Italy airport with $422,000 in cash

ROME | Italian police stopped California rapper Snoop Dogg on Friday as he prepared to board a private plane bound for Britain with $422,000 in cash in his Louis Vuitton luggage, said an Italian lawyer representing the entertainer.

In the European Union, the maximum amount of undeclared cash one can take on board a plane is 10,000 euros ($10,986.00). Snoop Dogg, who has been touring Europe after releasing the album “Bush” earlier this year, will have to pay a fine, said Andrea Parisi, his lawyer.

“We clarified everything from a legal point of view. The money came from concerts he had performed around Europe. There was no crime; it was just an administrative infraction,” Parisi told Reuters on Saturday.

Half of the cash was given back to Snoop Dogg, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, while the other half is being held by Italian authorities until the amount of the fine is determined, Parisi said.

source: interaksyon.com

BMW, Apple in courtship with an eye on car collaboration

FRANKFURT/SAN FRANCISCO — BMW and Apple may rekindle a courtship put on hold after an exploratory visit by executives of the world’s top maker of electronic gadgets to the headquarters of the word’s biggest seller of premium cars.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook went to BMW’s headquarters last year and senior Apple executives toured the carmaker’s Leipzig factory to learn how it manufactures the i3 electric car, two sources familiar with the talks told Reuters.

The dialogue ended without conclusion because Apple appears to want to explore developing a passenger car on its own, one of the sources said.

Also, BMW is being cautious about sharing its manufacturing know-how because it wants to avoid becoming a mere supplier to a software or internet giant.

During the visit, Apple executives asked BMW board members detailed questions about tooling and production and BMW executives signaled readiness to license parts, one of the sources said. News of the Leipzig visit first emerged in Germany’s Manager-Magazin last week.

“Apple executives were impressed with the fact that we abandoned traditional approaches to car making and started afresh. It chimed with the way they do things too,” a senior BMW source said.

The carmaker says there are currently no talks with Apple about jointly developing a passenger car and Apple declined to comment. However, one of the sources said exploratory talks between senior managers may be revived at a later stage.

It is too early to say whether this will be a replay of Silicon Valley’s Prometheus moment: The day in 1979 when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs visited Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center where the first mouse-driven graphical user interface and bit-mapped graphics were created, and walked out with crucial ideas to launch the Macintosh computer five years later.

BMW has realized next-generation vehicles cannot be built without more input from telecoms and software experts, and Apple has been studying how to make a self-driving electric car as it seeks new market opportunities beyond phones.

Staff changes

Since the visit, there has been a reshuffle at the top of BMW, with Harald Krueger, appointed BMW Chief Executive in May, in favor of establishing his own team and his plans for BMW by year end, before engaging in new projects, a person familiar with his thinking told Reuters.

A further complication was the departure of BMW’s board member for development Herbert Diess, who played a leading role in initial discussions with Apple. He defected to Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) in December.

Diess, who declined to comment for this piece, oversaw the development of BMW’s “i” vehicles which are built using light weight carbon fiber, using a radical approach to design and manufacturing.

Car technology has become a prime area of interest for Silicon Valley companies ranging from Google Inc (GOOGL.O), which has built a prototype self-driving car, to electric car-maker Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA.O).

Diess has said the German auto industry needs to undergo radical change because consumers are demanding more intelligent cars and anti-pollution rules mean the next generation vehicles will increasingly be low emission electric and hybrid variants.

In 2030, only two generations of new cars away in auto manufacturing time scales, only a third of vehicles will be powered by a conventional combustion engine alone, experts predict.

“It means that in two cycles we will shut down two thirds of our engine manufacturing,” Diess told a panel discussion in July last year, adding that the value chain for new electric cars is already shifting, with vehicle batteries made mainly in Asia.

“The second part is that the car will become intelligent, part of the Internet,” Diess continued. “And the strong players in this area are in the United States, in the software development area. We will surely need to find alliances in this field.”

Germany has two years to prove that it can hold its own against new entrants when it comes to shaping the future of luxury vehicles, Diess said.

Them and us

Carmakers including BMW have already developed next generation self-driving cars, vehicles which need permanent software updates in the form of high-definition maps allowing a car to recalculate a route if it learns about an accident ahead. The technology is moving ahead faster than the legal and regulatory rules which would allow large-scale commercial availability.

Earlier this year, BMW’s new R&D chief Klaus Froehlich said his company and Apple had much in common, including a focus on premium branding, an emphasis on evolving products and a sense of aesthetically pleasing design.

Asked, in general terms, whether a deeper collaboration beyond integration of products like the iPhone would make sense, Froehlich initially said BMW would not consider any deal that forces it to open up its core know-how to outsiders.

“We do not collaborate to open our eco systems but we find ways, because we respect each other,” Froehlich told Reuters.

BMW will keep in mind the needs of the customer, and what the company’s core strengths are, when it considers the merits of entering any strategic collaboration, Froehlich added.

Peter Schwarzenbauer, BMW’s management board member in charge of the Mini brand as well as digital services declined to comment on possible talks with Apple in an interview earlier this year.

But he said: “Two worlds are colliding here. Our world, focused on hardware and our experience in making complex products, and the world of information technology which is intruding more and more into our life.”

The winners will be those companies that understand how to build intelligent hardware, he said, adding it made sense for carmakers and tech firms to cooperate more closely.

“We need to get away from the idea that it will be either us or them … We cannot offer clients the perfect experience without help from one of these technology companies,” Schwarzenbauer said. That dialogue is well underway, he stressed.

With $202.8 billion in cash, Apple has the resources to enter the automotive market on its own, said Eric Noble, president of the Car Lab, a consulting firm in Orange, Calif.

The tech giant would have an edge on the dashboard, its CarPlay infotainment system connecting iPhones to cars, but would be at square one with the rest of the car, Noble said.

If Apple decided to sell a car it could make sense to find a partner to help with industrial scale production, retail and repair, since demand for such a vehicle could be high.

There are no estimates for potential Apple car sales but the brand and its products command a loyal following. So if only 1 percent of Apple’s annual iPhone customers decided to order a car, it would need to make 1.69 million vehicles.

That’s more than the 434,311 vehicles Jaguar and Land Rover produced last year. Even BMW Group, which made just over 2 million cars last year, would struggle to free up capacity.

source: interaksyon.com

Hip-hug hostel

Creak… Squeak… The spring bed above me started moving ever so slightly. A hint of a rhythmic rattle. Slowly at first — just a steady to and fro — then the pace quickened and the pace was more definite and the sounds of the springs on the bed were forceful. It was a cheaper hostel so the bed squeaked loudly and the upper bunk bed was only an arm’s reach from my head, very close to me. I could hear the heavy breathing of the sleeper above me climb to full volume, in tune with the rapid shaking of the springs… then, silence. Finished. And since it was two in the morning, I was relieved — until a few minutes later when the steady, slow chirping of the bunk bed springs started their rhythm again.

The scene played all night, and by the fifth episode, I could not help myself from whispering,  “ Please… enough!” It was 5 a.m. and the bunkmate was too far into the beat; he could not stop.

Welcome to the world of hostels in Edinburgh, Scotland. After spending four months in many hostels, I have become a pro at meeting people from different countries. Some would describe hostels as a place where one can rent a bed, usually a bunk bed, and guests are free to behave as they wish. Sleeping dormitory-style, there are no mother superiors to regulate, and with a majority of guests under the age of 30, the forms of acceptable conduct are very flexible. Strangers have beds beside one another, men and women mixed in a room. Prices vary, with a four-bunk bedroom in Scotland charging about 19 British pounds on weekends and a dorm with 16 bunk beds costing 12 pounds per night on weekdays. Shared bathrooms, kitchens and lounges are designed to give guests an atmosphere whereby one can meet and be met.

Castle Rock has 300 beds and windows looking out onto the Edinburgh Castle. Cowgate Hostel, another favorite, swings with its 120 beds set up apartment-style. Many tourists are new college graduates, or candidates writing their theses for their doctorates; then there are the elders; very few bring children. Each guest averages two nights before they move on to their next adventure. In such an atmosphere, close friendships are made quickly, knowing there are only hours before it is time to say goodbye.

Every day is different and more so in a hostel where one is exposed to 12 strangers upon waking up. A plan to cook breakfast turned into bop dancing in the kitchen with Misha, an art student who is preparing to take her master’s in Switzerland. The Swiss subsidize their universities so citizens have free education. Her boyfriend had just graduated from an art school in New York. Together they have been hitchhiking for three weeks around the northern part of Scotland, getting off wherever the scene takes their fancy and climbing mountains whenever they please. Staying in a hostel where they can have a proper shower and a bed serves as a refreshing change for backpackers like them.

One afternoon, three adventurous, fully made-up ladies walked into the kitchen and asked if they could switch my music from Chopin’s mellow piano symphony to their contagious rhythmic beat. What started as a session to prepare for dinner became a booty-bumping, swirling dance led by these beautiful girls from Fife, an area in Scotland; we jiggled our bodies for over two hours as we danced the butt dance to the bass sounds which came from my Samsung phone.

That’s hostel life. A lady whom I came to call Turkish Delight transferred from the room we were in and moved into another dorm where a man she had been eyeing was staying.  By morning, they were sharing the same bed.

Just beside them, three Brazilian students were discussing their plans. It turns out that they joined a one-year course to learn how to speak English. Brazilians are also fortunate because all they have to do is send a letter of acceptance from any learning institution and their government will pay the tuition fees.

It’s easy to start a conversation in hostels: “Where are you from? Where are you going? How long are you staying…?” And after taking the effort to translate into their language whatever greeting we give, the friendship begins. Somehow, guests end up helping one another: sharing food, lending shampoo and letting each other know how to move around and where to go. 

Bathroom use is the tricky part. Hovering over the loo (the British term for the toilet) — well, “hovering over the loo” is literally the act of floating above the toilet seat. One needs to use his or her wits to conquer the loo problem. In every hostel, there are some toilets and showers that work better than others. Learning the timing of when to use the bathrooms is also a useful skill. The cleaners wait until most of the guests finish using the showers before they start to clean. I wait for the cleaners to do the bathrooms before I shower.

Every day there is a story to tell and this one is particularly memorable. It was Saturday early morning, about 5 a.m.  Many partygoers were trickling into their beds, complete with makeup and tattered jeans, struggling to creep up silently on the wooden bunk beds. This time the handmade wooden beds were solid — no creaking platforms — when suddenly I heard a THUMP. Oh, no! The thought that one of these youngsters had fallen off her bed from a drunken state concerned me. “Are you all right?” I whispered into the dark cold room.

There were 16 beds in this room and no light shone. “Are you all right?” I again asked the girl whose moans aroused my hesitant concern. Then, in the dark, I heard a Scottish lad saying, “You are so tight.” (Note: “Tight” can mean two things here: the Brits use it to describe someone who’s drunk; or else, it can mean something else…) Anyway, he repeated this about 10 times — that is when I knew that the lady had survived and the loud thump was not someone falling off the bed. Soon enough, the male voice repeated over and over again: “I am sorry… I am sorry…”

Next morning, I saw a foil of king-size condoms near the bed. Unopened.

source: philstar.com

WATCH | 1,000 musicians perform ‘Learn to Fly’ to lure Foo Fighters

The Foo Fighters have two concert dates in Italy later this year — Casalecchio Di Reno on November 13 and  Turin the next day. They are now keen to include a stop at the northern city of Cesena now that a video of 1,000 Italian musicians simultaneously performing a cover of their hit “Learn to Fly” has gone viral.

The video is a crowd-funding event organized by Fabio Zaffagnini for the sole purpose of enticing the Foo Fighters to come and perform in Cesena, 322 kilometers north of Rome, near the Adriatic Sea. As of this posting, the video has already amassed over 2 million views since it was uploaded to YouTube Thursday.

Immediately, the Foo Fighters responded on Twitter with a message of appreciation: “Che bello, Cesena.” (How beautiful, Cesena.)

source: interaksyon.com