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Sunday, March 24, 2013

EU chief to try to get last-minute Cyprus deal

The Cypriot, left, and EU flag are seen at the Cypriot delegation building in Brussels on Sunday, March 24, 2013. The EU says a top official will chair a high-level meeting on Cyprus in a last-ditch effort to seal a deal before finance ministers decide whether the island nation gets a 10 billion euro bailout loan to save it from bankruptcy. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

Bank employees protest outside the ministry of finance on Saturday, March 23, 2013. Thousands of bank employees took part in a protest that ended outside the Cypriot parliament. Politicians in Cyprus were racing Saturday to complete an alternative plan raising funds necessary for the country to qualify for an international bailout, with a potential bankruptcy just three days away. Banner at right reads: "Who voted for you members of parliament? The Troika?" (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Bank employees protest outside the ministry of finance on Saturday, March 23, 2013. Thousands of bank employees took part in a protest that ended outside the Cypriot parliament. Politicians in Cyprus were racing Saturday to complete an alternative plan raising funds necessary for the country to qualify for an international bailout, with a potential bankruptcy just three days away. Banner at left reads: We fight not only for our jobs but also for people's savings" and banner at right reads: "Dimitriadis resign, you and your consultants". (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

A bank employee holds a placard that reads in Greek: ''Bums, Traitors, Politicians, Same'' protest on Saturday, March 23, 2013. Thousands of bank employees took part in a protest that ended outside the Cypriot parliament. Politicians in Cyprus were racing Saturday to complete an alternative plan raising funds necessary for the country to qualify for an international bailout, with a potential bankruptcy just three days away. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

Bank employees protest in Nicosia, on Saturday, March 23, 2013. Thousands of bank employees took part in a protest that ended outside the Cypriot parliament. Politicians in Cyprus were racing Saturday to complete an alternative plan raising funds necessary for the country to qualify for an international bailout, with a potential bankruptcy just three days away. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

BRUSSELS (AP) ? A top European official will chair a high-level meeting on Cyprus on Sunday afternoon in a last-ditch effort to seal a deal before finance ministers decide whether the country gets a 10 billion euro bailout loan to save it from bankruptcy.

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Finance Minister Michalis Sarris were flying to Brussels early Sunday. The day of talks could prove critical ? not only for the future of their small island nation, but for that of the 17-nation eurozone, as well.

Spokesman Preben Aamann could not confirm who would participate in the meeting, but said it would be led by European Council President Herman Van Rompuy. The Council is the gathering of 27 EU heads of state and government.

Cyprus said European Council President Jose Manuel Barroso would also participate in the meeting led by Van Rompuy. The Council is the EU's executive arm.

Following that session, Anastasiades will meet with Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, Christodoulides said.

Cyprus has been told it must raise 5.8 billion euros ($7.5 billion) in order to secure the loan from the IMF and other eurozone countries. The IMF, European Central Bank and European Commission will determine whether any plan put forward by Cyprus ? or negotiated in the Van Rompuy meeting ? meets that requirement.

The requirement is that Cyprus' debt, including any new bailout loan, be sustainable over the long run, considering the size of the country's economy.

To avoid bankruptcy or the collapse of its banking system, Cyprus needs significantly more than the 10 billion euros the international creditors are willing to lend it. For that reason, the country must somehow raise ? and not through borrowing ? the additional money.

The original plan, agreed to in marathon negotiations, called for a one-time "levy" on all bank depositors in Cypriot banks. The proposal ignited fierce anger among Cypriots and failed to garner a single vote in the Cypriot Parliament.

Any new proposal would have to be approved Sunday evening by the Eurogrop, the gathering of finance ministers from the 17 EU countries that use the euro currency.

If Cyprus or its banks were to collapse, officials fear that a lack of confidence could spread to other countries that use the euro, triggering higher borrowing costs or capital flight from those countries.

___

Don Melvin can be reached at https://twitter.com/Don_Melvin

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-03-24-Cyprus-Financial%20Crisis/id-96634a5408424bf9b9e033655219a7fd

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Russian tycoon found dead in Britain: Is it suicide?

Russian tycoon found dead: Boris Berezovsky was found in his Surrey, England, home, dead. Cause of death is not known yet. But there is speculation that the once-wealthy Russian tycoon committed suicide.

By David Clark Scott,?Staff writer / March 23, 2013

Boris Berezovsky in 2008 as he arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice in London for his hearing against Roman Abramovich. United Kingdom police have said that Berezovsky has been found dead Saturday March 23, 2013.

AP Photo/Sang Tan, File

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Boris Berezovsky, once a wealthy Russian oligarch, was found dead in his home in Surrey, England.

Skip to next paragraph David Clark Scott

Online Director

David Clark Scott leads a small team at CSMonitor.com that?s part Skunkworks, part tech-training, part journalism.

Pitbull, Aguilera kick off Kids Choice Awards

Singer Ke$ha arrives at the 26th annual Nickelodeon's Kids' Choice Awards on Saturday, March 23, 2013, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Khloe Kardashian arrives at the 26th annual Nickelodeon's Kids' Choice Awards on Saturday, March 23, 2013, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Todd Williamson/Invision/AP)

Big Time Rush, from left, James Maslow, Kendall Schmidt, Logan Hendewrson, Kendall Schmidt, and Carlos Pena, Jr. arrive at the 26th annual Nickelodeon's Kids' Choice Awards on Saturday, March 23, 2013, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Sofia Grace, right, and Rosie arrive at the 26th annual Nickelodeon's Kids' Choice Awards on Saturday, March 23, 2013, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Pitbull felt the slime at the Kids Choice Awards.

The rapper and Christina Aguilera launched the 26th annual awards extravaganza Saturday with their duet "Feel This Moment." The pair was joined by young backup dancers resembling the smooth-headed rapper and blonde diva. At the end of the performance, Aguilera smashed a button, covering Pitbull and the dancers in the show's signature green goo.

Early winners at the viewer-voted ceremony honoring kids' favorites in film, music, sports and TV included Adam Sandler as favorite voice from an animated movie for "Hotel Transylvania," race car driver Danica Patrick as favorite female athlete and "The Hunger Games" as favorite movie and book.

"Always be nice to your parents," Sandler told the crowd of screaming kids. "Always be nice to your teachers."

"Transformers" star Josh Duhamel is serving as host of the slime-filled ceremony at University of Southern California's Galen Center. One of his first acts as host was dumping goop on Los Angeles Lakers player Dwight Howard.

"I guess that's what we call a slime dunk!" Duhamel said.

Duhamel said a record-breaking 350 million votes had been cast for the show.

___

Online:

http://www.nick.com/kids-choice-awards/

___

Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-03-23-Kids'%20Choice%20Awards/id-01a69214a96c41babd38633f67fbd4cd

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Saturday, March 23, 2013

Global nitrogen availability consistent for past 500 years, linked to carbon levels

Friday, March 22, 2013

A Kansas State University research team has found that despite humans increasing nitrogen production through industrialization, nitrogen availability in many ecosystems has remained steady for the past 500 years. Their work appears in the journal Nature.

"People have been really interested in nitrogen in current times because it's a major pollutant," said Kendra McLauchlan, assistant professor of geography and director of the university's Paleoenvironmental Laboratory. "Humans are producing a lot more nitrogen than in the past for use as crop fertilizer, and there is concern because excess levels can cause damage. The mystery, though, is whether the biosphere is able to soak up this extra nitrogen and what that means for the future."

Nitrogen is a key component of the ecosystem and the largest regulator of plant growth. It determines how much food, fuel and fiber the land can produce. It also determines how much carbon dioxide plants remove from the atmosphere, and it interacts with several components of the climate system. Excessive amounts of nitrogen in ecosystems contribute to global warming and impairment of downstream ecosystems.

McLauchlan worked with Joseph Craine, research assistant professor in biology; Joseph Williams, postdoctoral research associate; and Elizabeth Jeffers, postdoctoral research associate at the University of Oxford. The team published their findings, "Changes in global nitrogen cycling during the Holocene epoch," in the current issue of Nature.

In the study the team also looked at how nitrogen availability changed thousands of years ago.

Roughly 15,000 years ago, the Earth began to warm, melting many glaciers and ice sheets that covered the landscape. Researchers found that Earth experienced an 8,000-year long decline in nitrogen availability as temperatures rose and carbon and nitrogen became locked up in soils. According to researchers, how the nitrogen cycle responded to these ancient global changes in carbon dioxide could be a glimpse into the future.

"What happened in the past might be a dry run for Earth's future," Craine said. "By looking at what happened millennia ago, we can see what controlled and prevented changes in nitrogen availability. This helps us understand and predict how things will change in the future."

The team collected and analyzed data from the sediment records of 86 lakes scattered across six continents. The lakes were distributed between tropical and temperate zones. With the data, the team was able to compare past and present cycling in various regions.

Researchers found that once most of the glaciers and ice sheets had melted around 11,000 years ago, the Earth continued to experience a global decline in nitrogen that lasted another 4,000 years.

"That was one of the really surprising findings," Craine said. "As the world was getting warmer and experiencing higher carbon dioxide levels than it had in the past, just like we are currently experiencing, the ecosystems were starting to lock carbon in the soils and in plants, also like we are seeing today. That created a long decline in nitrogen availability, and it scrubbed nitrogen out of the atmosphere."

McLauchlan said the most surprising finding, however, was that although humans have nearly doubled the amount of nitrogen to the ecosystems, globally nitrogen levels have remained stable at most sites for the past 500 years.

One reason may be that plants are using more nitrogen than they previously have, keeping nitrogen levels consistent with those thousands of years ago even though humans continue to add carbon dioxide and nitrogen to the atmosphere, McLauchlan said.

"Our best idea is that the nitrogen and carbon cycles were linked tightly back then and they are linked tightly today," McLauchlan said. "Humans are now manipulating both nitrogen and carbon at the same time, which means that there is no net effect on the biosphere."

The balance may be only temporary, McLauchlan said.

"Based on what we learned from the past, if the response of plants to elevated carbon dioxide slows, nitrogen availability is likely to increase and ecosystems will begin to change profoundly," McLauchlan said. "Now more than ever, it's important to begin monitoring our grasslands and forests for early warning signs."

###

Kansas State University: http://www.k-state.edu

Thanks to Kansas State University for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127403/Global_nitrogen_availability_consistent_for_past_____years__linked_to_carbon_levels

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Genetic analysis saves major apple-producing region of Washington state

Public release date: 22-Mar-2013
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Contact: Kirk Reinbold
Kirk.Reinbold.2@nd.edu
574-631-1470
University of Notre Dame

In August 2011, researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture were presented with a serious, and potentially very costly, puzzle in Kennewick, Wash. Since Kennewick lies within a region near the heart of Washington state's $1.5 billion apple-growing region, an annual survey of fruit trees is performed by the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) to look for any invading insects. This time the surveyors discovered a crabapple tree that had been infested by a fruit fly that they couldn't identify.

It was possible that the fly's larvae, eating away inside the crabapples as they grew toward adulthood, belonged to a relatively harmless species that had simply expanded its traditional diet. In that case, they posed little threat to the surrounding apple orchards in central Washington.

But the real fear was that they represented an expansion in the range of the invasive apple maggot fly, known to biologists as Rhagoletis pomonella. If so, then this would trigger a costly quarantine process affecting three counties in the state.

"In one of the world's leading apple-growing regions, a great deal of produce and economic livelihood rested on quickly and accurately figuring out which one of the flies was in that tree," says Jeffrey Feder, professor of biological sciences and a member of the Advanced Diagnostics & Therapeutics initiative (AD&T) at the University of Notre Dame. "And for these flies, it can sometime turn out to be a difficult thing to do."

As Feder and his team, including graduate student Gilbert St. Jean and AD&T research assistant professor Scott Egan, discuss in a new study in the Journal of Economic Entomology, the WSDA sent larvae samples to Wee Yee, research entomologist at the USDA's Yakima Agricultural Research Laboratory in Wapato, Wash. One larva was sent to Notre Dame for genetic analysis. The study sought to compare Notre Dame's genetic analysis to Yee's visual identification after the larvae had developed into adults. Fortunately, the fly identified, Rhagoletis indifferens, is not known to infest apples. The Notre Dame group further demonstrated that it is possible to genetically identify the correct fly species within two days, compared to the four months required to raise and visually identify the fly.

A separate study led by the Feder lab details how the apple maggot fly was recently introduced into the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S., likely via larval-infested apples from the East. The flies have subsequently reached as far north as British Columbia, Canada, and as far south as northern California. So far, though, the apple maggot has not been reported infesting any commercial apple orchards in central Washington.

"The correct identification of the larvae infesting crabapple trees saved the local, state and federal agencies thousands of dollars in monitoring, inspection and control costs," Yee said. "The cost to growers if the apple maggot had been found to be established in the region would have been very substantial (easily over half a million dollars), but the rapid diagnostic test developed at Notre Dame suspended the need to proceed with the rulemaking process, saving staff and administrative costs."
The Feder team is continuing to refine the genetic assays to develop a portable test that would be valuable in apple-growing regions, as well as ports of entry where fruit infested by nonlocal insect species can be rapidly detected, to prevent the spread of the insect.

###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Genetic analysis saves major apple-producing region of Washington state Public release date: 22-Mar-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Kirk Reinbold
Kirk.Reinbold.2@nd.edu
574-631-1470
University of Notre Dame

In August 2011, researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture were presented with a serious, and potentially very costly, puzzle in Kennewick, Wash. Since Kennewick lies within a region near the heart of Washington state's $1.5 billion apple-growing region, an annual survey of fruit trees is performed by the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) to look for any invading insects. This time the surveyors discovered a crabapple tree that had been infested by a fruit fly that they couldn't identify.

It was possible that the fly's larvae, eating away inside the crabapples as they grew toward adulthood, belonged to a relatively harmless species that had simply expanded its traditional diet. In that case, they posed little threat to the surrounding apple orchards in central Washington.

But the real fear was that they represented an expansion in the range of the invasive apple maggot fly, known to biologists as Rhagoletis pomonella. If so, then this would trigger a costly quarantine process affecting three counties in the state.

"In one of the world's leading apple-growing regions, a great deal of produce and economic livelihood rested on quickly and accurately figuring out which one of the flies was in that tree," says Jeffrey Feder, professor of biological sciences and a member of the Advanced Diagnostics & Therapeutics initiative (AD&T) at the University of Notre Dame. "And for these flies, it can sometime turn out to be a difficult thing to do."

As Feder and his team, including graduate student Gilbert St. Jean and AD&T research assistant professor Scott Egan, discuss in a new study in the Journal of Economic Entomology, the WSDA sent larvae samples to Wee Yee, research entomologist at the USDA's Yakima Agricultural Research Laboratory in Wapato, Wash. One larva was sent to Notre Dame for genetic analysis. The study sought to compare Notre Dame's genetic analysis to Yee's visual identification after the larvae had developed into adults. Fortunately, the fly identified, Rhagoletis indifferens, is not known to infest apples. The Notre Dame group further demonstrated that it is possible to genetically identify the correct fly species within two days, compared to the four months required to raise and visually identify the fly.

A separate study led by the Feder lab details how the apple maggot fly was recently introduced into the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S., likely via larval-infested apples from the East. The flies have subsequently reached as far north as British Columbia, Canada, and as far south as northern California. So far, though, the apple maggot has not been reported infesting any commercial apple orchards in central Washington.

"The correct identification of the larvae infesting crabapple trees saved the local, state and federal agencies thousands of dollars in monitoring, inspection and control costs," Yee said. "The cost to growers if the apple maggot had been found to be established in the region would have been very substantial (easily over half a million dollars), but the rapid diagnostic test developed at Notre Dame suspended the need to proceed with the rulemaking process, saving staff and administrative costs."
The Feder team is continuing to refine the genetic assays to develop a portable test that would be valuable in apple-growing regions, as well as ports of entry where fruit infested by nonlocal insect species can be rapidly detected, to prevent the spread of the insect.

###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uond-gas032213.php
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?The Business Of Literature Is Blowing Shit Up? | TechCrunch

If you love books?heck, if you even like ?em?run, don?t walk, and read this magnificent, magisterial essay by Richard Nash on their past, present and future. It?s long. Don?t be frightened. But even if the Internet has shredded your attention span, at least scroll down to its epic final paragraph. Go on. I?ll wait.

It?s been a rotten decade for book publishers, newspapers, and anyone else clinging to that 15th century technology called the printing press. Marc Andreessen has advised the mighty New York Times to ?burn the boats? and shut down their presses. His partner Ben Horowitz claimed last year that ?babies born today will probably never read anything in print.?

Meanwhile, Borders is dead, the tablet is killing the e-reader, and Barnes & Noble?s Nook has gone from investor darling to dead-weight albatross. The ?Big Six? publishers may seem to be surviving nicely, but check out this graph:

Transformation amid booksellers

If publishers are at war with Amazon, the undisputed king of e-commerce?and they certainly think they are?then that remarkable trend does not bode well for them.

Authors aren?t doing so well either. ?For large parts of the year it only takes a few hundred copies a day, not a few thousand, to get to the top of Amazon?s daily charts.? ?My novel shot to the top of the site?s bestseller list last summer. You won?t believe how little I got paid.?

Nowadays, when authors dream of financial success, they dream more of Hollywood or TV adaptations than slots on the New York Times bestseller list. Movies and television have held up remarkably well under the onslaught of the Internet, thanks largely to ever-more-lucrative foreign markets, while book publishing has quietly become far more hit-and-miss than Hollywood. Last year each book in E.L. James? Fifty Shades Of Grey trilogy sold more than 15 million e-book copies. Only one other book, Gillian Flynn?s Gone Girl, broke a million. Which is more than it sold in print, incidentally.

For the last five years, in the face of this spreading transformation, the publishing industry has been caught in a tawdry and depressing spiral of denial and decay, constantly attempting to reject new media, new technologies, and new business models until they can fight back no more. (Disagree? Name some publisher-driven innovations.) Evan Hughes? recent Wired piece is the latest in a long line of eulogies. If it seems incredibly musty and tired to you, you?re not alone. I?m faintly amazed that it was published in Wired in 2013; my own contribution to the genre dates back to 2007.

That?s why Nash?s essay is such a breath of revolutionary air. The publishing industry will never be the same, but why can?t it be better? Why can?t a whole new model of publishing be created, rather than this false dichotomy between ?published? and ?self-published?? So the king is dying; well, long live the king!

The Internet opens up new ways of connecting with readers that authors have never dreamed of before? and that publishers seem to barely even consider. Take Wattpad. A few months ago they put a couple of my novels up on their site for free. (They did ask permission, even though they didn?t need to; after the rights to the books in question had reverted from their initial publishers, I released them under a Creative Commons license.)

And I?m delighted that they did. A cool million chapter-views of my back-catalog hacker thriller Invisible Armies later, I know far more about how people read the book than I ever did before:

Hughes seems to be arguing that authors will choose to self-publish. Charles Stross disagrees:

Yes, I could do it. But it?d suck up a huge amount of time I would prefer to spend doing what I enjoy (writing) and force me to do stuff I do not enjoy (reading contracts, accounting, managing other people). The only sane way to do it would be to hire someone else to do all the boring crap on my behalf. And do you know what we call people who do that? We call them publishers.

Indeed. But wait: why do all of those people have to work under the same corporate aegis? Why can?t Stross hire a separate editor, copy editor, publisher and marketer? Why must their end-product be viewed as a thing that is complete and engraved in stone, rather than a living beast amenable to A/B testing and weeks-to-months of optimization, like a Broadway play in previews? If a book isn?t a sheaf of papers any more?and given that the bestselling e-books are now outselling the sheaves, it clearly isn?t?then what is it?

I?ll take a swing at that one: a book is a story told in the size and shape that fits most deeply and tightly into the human brain. Everyone keeps waiting for Amazon Singles and short stories to take off, and waiting, and waiting. But I believe novels will remain the dominant form of written storytelling so long as our brains remain substantially unchanged.

Maybe the existing system of publishers and booksellers will collapse. Maybe our collective ability to filter the good from the bad will be challenged. Maybe, as more and more books are written, and more and more made available for free, full-time authors will become an endangered species.

Doesn?t really matter. Books will remain, and because they?re books, because they?re that razor-barbed size and shape, they?ll remain a genuinely powerful and subversive medium. Richard Nash is right: whatever tidal wave of change comes next, whatever economic system or sociopolitical order, you can bet that books, in one form or another, will be at its disruptive heart.

Image credit: Booksplosion, by azrasta, on Flickr.

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/23/the-business-of-literature-is-blowing-shit-up/

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Friday, March 22, 2013

Obama to push Harriet Tubman site closer to becoming national park

President Obama is expected to create five new national monuments Monday, including one to honor Harriet Tubman and another for a famous black officer in the Army.

By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo,?Staff writer / March 22, 2013

Slaves depicted in an Underground Railroad sculpture in Battle Creek, Mich., are led to freedom by Harriet Tubman and local abolitionist Erastus Hussey. A part of Maryland's Eastern Shore, where Tubman was born, is expected to be named a national monument Monday.

Carlos Osorio/AP/File

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Swamps along the Eastern Shore of Maryland and a modest house in Wilberforce, Ohio, may not look like much ? until they?re seen through the lens of history.

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The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National?Monument?in Maryland and the Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National?Monument in Ohio are among the five places expected to be designated as national monuments by President Obama on Monday. Both will shed new light on African-Americans? contributions to the American story.

The Charles Young monument, which includes one of his homes, recognizes the famous leader of segregated black Army regiments during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Colonel Young was the third African-American cadet to graduate from West Point and be commissioned as an Army officer. He served in the American West and around the world and later became a professor at Wilberforce University, according to the website of the National Park Service.

?It?s really a significant step that the president is taking: Designating that as a national monument really protects that home ? and preserves an important part of American history,? says Charles Wash, director of the National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center in Wilberforce.

The two-story home is currently in disrepair and hasn?t been open to the public for years, Mr. Wash says. Young?s fraternity, Omega Psi Phi, has offered it to the government. Passers by can read a plaque on a boulder in front of the house that the museum imported from Sequoia National Park. Young and his troops spent the summer of 1903 clearing and extending a road there ? accomplishing more in one summer than others had done over the previous three summers, according to the National Park Service.

Young ?was more than just a soldier, he was a renaissance man,? Wash says.

Young maintained friendships with two other famous figures, W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. From his manuscripts it?s clear that ?he often put the good of the country above racial issues,? Wash says. He turned down an offer to lead the NAACP because he wanted to continue to serve in the military during World War I, he adds.

The Harriet Tubman monument in Maryland will help people imagine what it must have been like for the famous abolitionist to flee slavery in 1849. Tubman was born on Maryland's Eastern Shore and escaped slavery by wading through the swamps, eventually reaching Philadelphia. She would return 13 times to free her family and others, according to the Conservation Fund, which has donated a 480-acre property adjacent to Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge for the monument.

The property includes the former home site of Jacob Jackson, a free black who helped Tubman rescue family members.

Tubman served in the Union Army during the Civil War, led the Underground Railroad, and went on to advocate for civil rights and women?s rights.

?Journeys along the Underground Railroad were a dangerous scramble across wilderness and through populated areas, and success required heroes like Harriet Tubman to know the land, travel swiftly, and repeatedly take risks,? wrote Bill Crouch, the Conservation Fund?s Maryland director, in an e-mail to the Monitor. The Fund, he wrote, ?is thrilled to honor Tubman?s heroism? and thankful to the president, Interior Secretary Ken?Salazar, the governor of Maryland, and ?all the others who have worked for years to preserve these lands.?

As national monuments ? which the president has the authority to name under the Antiquities Act of 1906 ? the sites would be managed by the National Park Service and could still be designated in the future as national parks.

Indeed, efforts to establish a national park to honor Harriet Tubman have been supported in recent years by US senators from Maryland and New York, as well as civil rights and women?s groups.

?Harriet Tubman was a courageous fighter, and tireless in her commitment to fight for those who could not fight for themselves. Designating a national monument is an important step as we move towards the establishment of National Historic Parks to commemorate her heroic works,? Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D) of Maryland said in a statement Friday.

Out of 80,000 sites on the National Register of Historic Places (which includes national monuments), only 3 percent focus on the stories of minorities and women, according to a 2012 press release from Senator Mikulski?s office.

The other sites to be announced by Mr. Obama Monday are R?o Grande del Norte National Monument?in New Mexico, First State National?Monument?in Delaware, and San Juan Islands National?Monument?in Washington State.

The 1,100-acre Delaware site is the first step toward creating a national park in Delaware, the only state without a national park, the Associated Press reports.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/Db8aZ0gbtWQ/Obama-to-push-Harriet-Tubman-site-closer-to-becoming-national-park

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Sunday, March 24, 2013

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