It's about as far from a Nintendo 3DS or PS Vita as you can get when it comes to the latest in handheld gaming consoles, but the DIY Gamer Kit from Technology Will Save Us comes with one features those devices don't: The satisfaction that you built it yourself. And not only do you have to assemble, wire, and solder the DIY Gamer Kit yourself, you'll also need to program your own games too. Sound like fun?
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Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the State Department in Washington, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the State Department in Washington, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
WASHINGTON (AP) — In the rocky relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan, the mere fact that President Barack Obama and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif are sitting down together at the White House is seen as a sign of progress.
Few breakthroughs are expected on the numerous hot-button issues on their agenda Wednesday, including American drone strikes and Pakistan's alleged support for the Taliban. But officials in both countries are hoping to scale back tensions that escalated after the 2011 U.S. strike within Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden and last year's accidental killing of two dozen Pakistani troops in an American airstrike along the Afghan border.
"We want to find ways for our countries to cooperate, even as we have differences on some issues, and we want to make sure that the trajectory of this relationship is a positive one," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
Obama and Sharif talked on the phone earlier this year, but they have never met in person. Sharif, who served two earlier stints as Pakistan's prime minister, has held face-to-face talks with Secretary of State John Kerry and was scheduled to meet with other top U.S. officials while in Washington this week.
The prime minister's visit to the White House comes one day after Amnesty International released a report providing new details about the alleged victims of U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan, one of them a 68-year-old grandmother hit while farming with her grandchildren. In Pakistan, there is widespread belief that American drone strikes kill large numbers of civilians and Sharif is expected to raise the issue with Obama.
The White House responded to the Amnesty report by defending the drone program, with Carney saying U.S. counterterrorism operations "are precise, they are lawful and they are effective."
Also on the agenda for Wednesday's meeting will be Obama's looming decision on whether to keep any American troops in Afghanistan after the war there formally concludes at the end of next year. Ahead of the U.S. withdrawal, the U.S. is seeking to push through a peace deal with the Taliban and Afghan government.
Pakistan is seen as key to this process because of its historical connection to the Taliban. It helped the group grab power in Afghanistan in 1996 and is widely believed to have maintained ties as a hedge against neighbor and nuclear rival India — an allegation denied by Islamabad.
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Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-10-23-US-United-States-Pakistan/id-b5c7c9065ebf4b1e83d6f8a0a01eff83Though David Beckham has officially retired from soccer, it seems like his daughter, Harper Beckham, is looking to fill his famous cleats. The 2-year-old tot took to the soccer field on Oct. 19 in Los Angeles for her first training as David, 38, and wife Victoria Beckham, 39, cheered her on from the sidelines.
PHOTOS: Harper Beckham's life with dad David Beckham
Harper's brothers, Brooklyn, 14, Romeo, 10, and Cruz, 8, also attended the camp and supported their little sis from close by.
Fashion icon Victoria Beckham shocked many by wearing a casual T-shirt and jeans for a day at the field, and traded her signature stoic pose for a grin when Harper ran over to the sidelines for a hug.
PHOTOS: Victoria Beckham's life as a married mom of four
David spent most of the training photographing his children and was spotted having a chat with the boys' coach -- perhaps giving him a few pointers!
In their down time, the boys played soccer with their father as Victoria looked on smiling.
David currently models for H&M's body wear line and the Beckham family is estimated to be worth more than £200 million.
Very few girls get the recommended 60 minutes of exercise daily. But physical activity could help with school, a study says.
Very few girls get the recommended 60 minutes of exercise daily. But physical activity could help with school, a study says.
Girls who were more physically active at age 11 did better at school as teenagers, a study finds. And the most active girls really aced science.
It's become pretty much a given that children do better academically when they get regular exercise, even though schools continue to cut or even eliminate recess time. But there's surprisingly little hard evidence to back that up.
This investigation used data from a British study that has been following the health of a large group of parents and children since 1991. They measured almost 5,000 children's physical activity at age 11 by having them wear an acclerometer for a week.
Few of the children were getting the recommended 60 minutes a day of moderate to vigorous exercise. Boys clocked 29 minutes a day on average, while girls managed just 18 minutes.
The more active the 11-year-olds were, the better they did on standardized school tests of English, math and science.
The surprise was that physically active girls were much better at science than their peers. That held true for five years, when the children took other standardized tests at age 13 and 16.
"We're not sure why that would be," Josie Booth, a lecturer in developmental psychology at the University of Dundee and lead author of the study, told Shots. It could be important, given that both Europe and the United States are trying hard to get more girls involved in science. "It could obviously be a chance finding," Booth adds. "We'd like to have a chance to look further into it."
The researchers did adjust the results to account for factors that could affect school performance, including including birth weight, current weight, a mother's smoking while pregnant and the family's socioeconomic situation. The results were published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
This study doesn't prove that the increased exercise was what improved the children's test scores, but parents aren't off base in thinking that it could help. Randomized controlled trials have shown that exercise improves brain function in older people, and a few studies have shown that in children, too.
Until Booth or other scientists can manage a randomized trial on girls, exercise and science, we'll have to just hope that bicycling or running will help our daughters become future Nobelists. (I'll hold off on booking my ticket to Stockholm for the awards ceremony.)
"There's certainly an association between more physical activity and better academic achievement," Booth says. "If parents can get their children to meet that goal of 60 minutes a day, it's going to be beneficial for a range of factors."
Copy to ground control, the Irish are coming!!
Niall Horan is just making all sorts of commotions on the interwebs this Tuesday!
First by proposing to Katy Perry and then hijacking an airplane with no word on where he's planning on taking the aircraft.
Maybe he's going to scoop up his lady love right underneath John Mayer's nose!
HA!
The One Direction cutie snapped a photo of himself and two other co-pilots controlling the plane:
Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, introduces the new iPad Air on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2013, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, introduces the new iPad Air on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2013, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks on stage before a new product introduction on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2013, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
Craig Federighi, senior vice president of Software Engineering at Apple, speaks on stage before a new product announcement on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2013, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks on stage before a new product introduction on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2013, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
Craig Federighi, senior vice president of Software Engineering at Apple, speaks on stage before a new product announcement on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2013, in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Apple Inc. is refreshing its iPad lineup in hopes of reclaiming lost ground in the tablet market and slashing the prices of its Mac computers to intensify the pressure on the beleaguered makers of PCs running Microsoft's Windows.
Tuesday's unveiling of Apple's latest products primes the company for a holiday shopping season onslaught aimed at a list of rivals that includes Google Inc., Samsung Electronics, Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
A thinner, lighter and faster-running tablet computer called the iPad Air highlighted the event in San Francisco. Apple Inc. also showed off a souped-up iPad Mini that boasts a faster microprocessor, a high-definition display screen and a higher price than its predecessor.
The iPad upgrades, coming a year after the release of the tablet's previous generation, fell largely in line with analyst expectations.
In a surprise, Apple is introducing slightly revamped MacBook Pros at prices 9 percent to 13 percent below the previous versions. What's more, Apple is giving away its latest Mac operating system — Mavericks — for free, as well as several pieces of software, including programs called iWorks and iLife that provide many of the same tools as Microsoft's Office.
"We are turning the industry on its ear," Apple CEO Tim Cook said of the company's strategy.
Technology analyst Patrick Moorhead predicted the discounted MacBook Pros will force personal computer makers to cut the prices of their machines by at least $100 for the holidays.
And Ovum analyst Jan Dawson thinks Apple's giveaway of the operating system and software programs "is now teaching people to expect both of those things to be free. While this won't disrupt Microsoft's business overnight, it will create further pressure on Microsoft to bring down prices."
If that happens, it would be another blow for Microsoft, which has seen its Windows revenue suffer in recent years as personal computer sales sink amid a shift to smartphones and tablets.
Apple triggered the upheaval with the 2007 release of the first iPhone followed up with the 2010 introduction of the iPad.
While both products have a fierce following, Apple has been losing market share to rivals who primarily make mobile devices running on Google's Android software. As Apple is now doing with its Mavericks software for Macs, Google gives away Android to device makers who can afford to undercut the prices for iPhones and iPads.
Despite the competitive pressure, Apple has steadfastly refused to cut prices on its top-of-the-line products. Instead, it has sold older versions of its Phones and iPads at slight discounts to consumers who are willing to settle for something less than state-of-the-art technology.
The Cupertino, Calif. company is hewing to that philosophy with its latest tablets. The iPad Air will start at $499, just like its predecessors, while the new iPad Mini will sell for $399 — a 21 percent increase from the price of the first Mini. The price of the original Mini, which runs at slower speeds and lacks a high-definition display screen, is falling from $329 to $299.
As it has done for more than year, Apple will continue selling the iPad 2 — a tablet that came out two-and-half years ago — for $399.
"Apple doesn't want to play in the mud with declining prices" on iPads, Moorhead said.
The strategy hasn't been a hit with investors who are unhappy with the Cupertino, Calif. company's slowing growth as it loses sales to lower-priced alternatives. Wall Street also is disillusioned with Apple's lack of another breakthrough product since the death of co-founder and chief visionary Steve Jobs two years ago.
Apple's stock dipped $1.49 to close at $519.87 Tuesday. The shares remain about 25 percent below their peak reached 13 months ago.
The iPad Air's main appeal is a more svelte design and a faster microprocessor, the same kind of chip in the iPhone 5S that Apple released a month ago. The new tablet weighs just 1 pound, compared with 1.4 pounds for the previous version. Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller hailed it as a "screaming fast iPad," noting that it is eight times faster than the original model that came out in 2010.
The iPad Air will go on sale Nov. 1. The new iPad Mini will be available at a still-to-be-determined date later in November.
They are coming out at a time when Apple needs to reassert itself in a tablet market. Google, Amazon.com and Samsung have been winning over consumers with flashy tablets that sell for $200 to $400. None of the rivals boast the 475,000 apps that Apple says are made for the iPad, but that vast selection hasn't mattered to many cost-conscious consumers.
The research firm Gartner Inc. estimates that Android tablets will end 2013 with a 50 percent share of the worldwide market versus 49 percent for the iPad. Just two years ago, the iPad commanded a 65 percent market share compared to 30 percent for Android tablets.
Apple sold 14.6 million iPads during the three months ending in June, down 14 percent from the same time last year. It marked the first time Apple has posted a year-over-year decline in iPad sales.
It might have happened again in the latest quarter ending in September. Although Apple isn't scheduled to report its results for the latest quarter until next Monday, a statistic released at Tuesday's event gave a hint of how the iPad fared in the period.
Cook said Apple's total iPad sales since the device's inception surpassed 170 million units earlier this month. Given that Apple sold 155 million iPads through June, that means fewer than 15 million were sold in the quarter ending in September. Apple sold 14 million iPads in last year's quarter ending in September.
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Ortutay reported from New York.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-10-22-US-TEC-Apple-Event/id-aacb1e53d77d46bda1e6493421b1a5d1
