Wishing u very very Happy New Year 2011

Turkey Temperature

With Thanksgiving just a few days away, it is time to start preparing for this special day and of course, the delicious food we are going to eat! Something that can’t be missing in the Thanksgiving dinner tables across the USA is the roasted turkey.  No matter if you like it stuffed or unstuffed, the turkey is a symbol of this day.

We have already told you in past days how to calculate the turkey cooking time, but still there are a lot of people who want to know what temperature to cook a turkey.

Well, for turkey, you should know that it can’t be cooked in a temperature lower than 325º F.  Poultry must follow this rule when going into the oven, especially for potential food safety issues.

By using a meat thermometer, you’ll be able to know when the turkey is ready.  Just wait until it reaches 180º F in the high or 170º F in the breast.

If you are going to cook the turkey wrapped in foil, you will need to use higher temperature.  450º F must be set in the oven. Remember that you must open the foil to give the turkey the golden brown color that looks delicious on the table. If it is enclosed on an oven cooking bag, it is best to set the temperature at 350º F.

I hope this information has been good to you, so you can start enjoying Thanksgiving! Got any tips on cooking turkey? Share them here!

Black Friday Amazing Laptop Deals

ASUS U35JC-A1

The slim, sleek 13.3-inch U35Jc-A1 has incredible features that take you far beyond standard entertainment notebooks. With the ASUS Super Hybrid Engine, battery life is maximized up to 10 hours¹ between charges. Plus, the U35Jc-A1 can seamlessly turn on the NVIDIA GeForce 310M graphics via NVIDIA Optimus Technology for casual gaming and resource-demanding tasks and then automatically turns off the rest of the time – conserving battery life. Super size your multimedia with any HDMI-enabled HDTV that simplifies HD audio and video connectivity for a complete cinematic experience. The U35Jc-A1 is powered by the Intel Core i3 processor that’s smarter and faster with Intel Hyper-Threading Technology for enhanced multitasking. And under 1-inch thick with a brushed aluminum finish, you can easily carry it with you without showing smudges or fingerprints.
The U35Jc-A1 features Express Gate, Altec Lansing speakers, 4GB DDR3 system memory, 500GB hard drive, 0.3 megapixel webcam, and Windows 7 Home Premium.

Key Features

• Up to 10 hours of battery life¹ with ASUS Super Hybrid Engine that uses exclusive hardware and software to maximize battery life for the task at hand
• Intel Core i3-370M processor gives you smarter multitasking performance
• Slim, brushed aluminum design for easy, smudge-proof portability
• 13.3-inch LED-backlit HD display for crisp visuals without compromising battery
• NVIDIA GeForce 310M graphics with 1GB DDR3 VRAM delivers great HD entertainment performance
• NVIDIA Optimus Technology instantly switches between powerful NVIDIA and energy-efficient Intel graphics to save battery life
• HDMI connectivity streams uncompressed HD audio and video to your HDTV or LCD via a single cable
• Express Gate for instant access to Internet, music, Skype, and more

World Series Game 3

1. Moreland delivers

It took 50 seasons, but History finally befriended the Texas Rangers last night. This was the honest-to-goodness History, the tell-your-grandkids kind of History that has filled encyclopedias worth of memories for franchises such as the Yankees, Red Sox, Giants and, good gosh, even the teal-covered Marlins.
The Rangers had none of it. Theirs was a lower-case history of obscurity, trivia and, too often, even comedy. When the players were introduced in San Francisco for Game 1 of this World Series, for instance, they were met by Giants fans with the insulting reaction of nothingness. There was nothing to dislike about the Rangers, nothing to fear.
You could make a case that the two most iconic moments in franchise history were worthy not of Cooperstown but of blooper reels: Jose Canseco heading a flyball over the outfield wall in Cleveland for a home run and Nolan Ryan ramming his bare-fisted knuckles over the scalp of Robin Ventura. Great moments if you're a fan of slapstick, but baseball?
One pitch changed all of that. Facing a must-win game in the franchise's first-ever home World Series game last night, and batting in the second inning with two outs and two on, Mitch Moreland drove a fastball from Jonathan Sanchez into the happiness of the rightfield seats for what was an immutable 3-0 lead.
It was the greatest home run in Texas Rangers history.
Never heard of Mitch Moreland? You're not alone. Sanchez never addressed him by name after the game, calling him several times "the first baseman," as in "I made a good pitch to the first baseman. It wasn't a bad pitch. I made a good pitch to the first baseman."
Can you blame him? Moreland, 25, had started only four times this year against lefthanders and never had hit a home run against one. (Sanchez had never allowed a three-run homer to a lefty.) He was so buried in the minors behind Justin Smoak and Chris Davis this year that the Rangers had him playing the outfield -- until the day Texas traded Smoak for Cliff Lee and his Triple-A manager told him to start working at first base.
Moreland is a guy whose stock in trade was his ability to grind out at-bats and to throw a baseball so hard that the Rangers thought a few years ago about using him as a pitcher. Indeed, Moreland, who can throw 93 mph, throws harder than Sanchez. He was hitting ninth in the order last night, and Sanchez was so happy to face him that with a runner on third and two outs he pitched around Bengie Molina, the number eight hitter, just to get to Moreland.
"I wanted to pitch around him," Sanchez said. "I got the lefty coming up next. I didn't want to give Bengie a pitch to hit with two outs."

Giants vs. Rangers

San Francisco leads series 2-1

Game 3 Recap Box Score Photos 4 2

Game 4: @TEX Sun., Oct. 31, 8:20 p.m. ET, FOX

Game 5: @TEX Mon., Nov. 1, 7:57 p.m. ET, FOX

Game 6: @SF Wed., Nov. 3, 7:57 p.m. ET*, FOX

Game 7: @SF Thur., Nov. 4, 7:57 p.m. ET*, FOX

Mitch Moreland got the Rangers on the board in the second inning with a three-run homer off Giants starter Jonathan Sanchez.

Christian Petersen/Getty Images

"One run," Molina said, "changes the game there."
There was one hitch to Sanchez's plan. The pitcher who gave up the fewest hits per nine innings in baseball this year, and who held batters to a .124 batting average after getting a second strike, pitched to Moreland as if trying to solve a Rubik's cube. The at-bat went on for nine maddening pitches. After getting that second strike, Sanchez tried four straight off-speed pitches -- two breaking balls and two changeups -- and Moreland fouled off every one of them, sometimes by the slimmest of margins.
That's when Sanchez came up with an idea: throw a fastball inside to get him off the off-speed stuff in order to set up another slider away for the out pitch. Sanchez never got to throw that last slider. Moreland somehow reacted to the first fastball that he had seen in five pitches and hammered it.
"Honestly," he said, "I just wanted to see it and hit it. That's all I was trying to do."
It must be mentioned that Sanchez's fastball was a shadow of its former self, just as it was in his flameout against the Phillies in the NLCS. He was pushing the ball up there at 88 and 89 miles an hour, several ticks down from his Grade A heater and lacking its signature late life. It's something to file away if this World Series happens to get to a seventh game, when Sanchez's turn comes up again.
With that one swing, Moreland turned around that pitch and the series. The Rangers still trail, two games to one, but as Molina said, "This was a huge game for us. We were down 2-0. It gives us the edge right now. We come to the park tomorrow fired up."
For the next two games, the Rangers remain at home, where, unlike at AT&T Park, their fly balls carry beyond the outfield wall. And now, thanks to Moreland, they have befriended History. The double Vlad Guerrero hit in NLCS Game 6 was a huge hit, but that was not a must-win situation and it wasn't the World Series. No, this moment was something much bigger. The moment belonged to Moreland. And now it belongs to generations of Rangers fans.

2. O'Day, Molina avert crisis

The second most important pitch of the game was a 3-and-2 pitch from Texas reliever Darren O'Day to Buster Posey, representing the tying run that the plate with two outs in the eighth inning. The pitch tells you everything you need to know about how important Molina is to this team and how important Angels manager Mike Scioscia is to Molina.
Posey had mounted a brave at-bat against O'Day, climbing from an 0-and-2 hole to the full count. Closer Neftali Feliz was throwing in the bullpen. It was a monumental intersection in the game. A home run ties the game at 4. A walk brings the go-ahead run to the plate, and possibly Feliz into a rare eighth-inning emergency spot. (Feliz obtained more than three outs for a save only twice this year.)
"You don't want the winning run coming up there," third baseman Michael Young said. "The kid [Posey] had a great at-bat. If he gets on base there, you don't know what happens. Maybe Feliz does comes in. Who knows?"
Molina put down signs for a fastball and also a slider, both of them away. O'Day shook off both of them. Molina called for time and jogged to the mound.
"What do you want here?" Molina asked O'Day.
"I want it inside," the pitcher replied.
"I want it away," Molina said.
"Okay."
And that was it. No argument. No further discussion. The catcher's word was gold.
O'Day had faced Posey in college. He remembered how Posey took an outside pitch and popped it over the rightfield wall for a home run. "Metal bat, 300 feet to right," O'Day said. But he remembered it nonetheless.
"My mom reminded me," he said.
But if Molina said to go away, away it would be, no matter what memories O'Day had from college.
"They're down two runs," Molina explained. "I don't want to make a mistake middle in because then the game is tied. If he makes a mistake away, chances are the game isn't tied."
It's old-school wisdom: don't get beat inside late because mistakes there turn into home runs; mistakes away turn into walks or singles.
"I learned a lot from Mike Scioscia," Molina said. "He was the guy who gave me a chance to play and took me under his wing and taught me."
There was one more thing to do: execute the pitch. It's one thing for Molina to call the pitch, but quite another for O'Day to throw it will conviction.
"[Pitching coach] Mike Maddux gave us T-shirts with that word; it's in here somewhere," O'Day said, flipping through his locked for the red one that said, if a bit inelegantly: "X-ecute with Conviction."
O'Day X-ecuted perfectly, snapping off a slider that broke obediently to the outside edge of the strike zone. Posey couldn't put a good swing on it, and grounded out. Disaster averted, the Rangers and Molina made the right call.

3. Tough decision for Bochy

You're Bruce Bochy. Your power-hitting left fielder is 0-for-9 in the World Series with eight punchouts, including four in four trips to the plate in Game 3. The leftfielder also is a liability on defense. So are you putting Pat Burrell in the lineup for Game 4?
The Giants manager wasn't ready to make out his lineup card immediately after Game 3, but neither did he give an assurance that Burrell would be starting tonight.
To his credit, Burrell faced the media quickly after the game and made no excuses.
"I'm getting pitches to hit and not doing anything with them," he said.
Then he was asked how he would feel if Bochy benched him for Game 4 against Rangers starter Tommy Hunter.
"I'd be disappointed," he said. "Could I blame him? Probably not. I'm not exactly swinging the bat well."
Compounding matters for Bochy, his choice for Game 3 DH, Pablo Sandoval, did nothing in three trips to the plate. Bochy could wind up with a new leftfielder and a new DH for Game 4, perhaps running Aaron Rowand and Travis Ishikawa into the lineup.
Bochy has been excellent this postseason about getting off cold hitters and pitchers (Sandoval, Mike Fontenot, Sergio Romo, Ramon Ramirez.) But this is his biggest test yet. Burrell is notoriously streaky and can run into a mistake out of the blue and pop it out of the park. Or he could be four more punchouts waiting to happen. It's Bochy's toughest test yet when it comes to lineup construction.

4. Lewis still going strong

Chalk one up for the old-school method of use-it-or-lose-it when it comes to pitchers maintaining arm strength and health. It's no secret that Colby Lewis revived his career by going to Japan for two seasons. But Lewis also adopted the in-season throwing regimen of the Japanese, which included running up big pitch counts and throwing often between starts.
Asked what methods he took to the big leagues from Japan, Lewis replied, "A lot of throwing. ... Throwing 120, 125 pitches a night definitely helped me. I definitely didn't do a lot of what they do in spring training. Guys would throw 100-pitch bullpens. But once the season started I threw a lot. My third start of the year, my first year over there, I threw 138 pitches. Over there you just keep pitching as long as you're getting people out."
Lewis is now 227 1/3 innings deep into this year, easily a career high, and yet his stuff is still firm. He is 3-0 this postseason with a 1.71 ERA.

5. Final thoughts

Red-hot Cody Ross is to the postseason what Jose Bautista was to the regular season: don't even try sneaking a fastball by him in the zone. ... Not something for baseball to brag about: Game 3 took nine minutes short of three hours -- and still was the shortest World Series game in nine years. ... Give credit where it's due: the umpires have done a terrific job this postseason, and home plate umpire Bill Miller kept the standard high in Game 3. ... There is a nine-year-old Texas kid who is dressing up as manager Ron Washington for Halloween, having shaved a bald spot into his head and popped a toothpick into his mouth. The players swear he's a miniature dead-ringer and want the kid to deliver the ball to the mound before Game 4 -- as long as he doesn't curse like Washington. The players are still buzzing about his pep talk before ALDS Game 5. "When it was over," Young said, "we were all running to get our bats and run up to the plate to hit."

Google Trend - Price Is Right

Somehow I always imagined that my biggest ever operation will take place in a hall at the Ritz, “says Della Gilmore, Con artist extraordinaire, with me in the evening gown of crushed velvet. . . and involve a minor member of European royalty, who looked like Cary Grant. “

Unfortunately, Della its most ambitious sting occurs in a much less glamorous circumstances: the search for the Tasmanian tiger in the Chicago National Park Wilson.

Until now, Dell’s spoils, were insignificant. But then Daniel Metcalfe, a beautiful and well-to-patron of science strange promises her a quarter million dollars. All she has to do is spend a weekend with him, showing him how to track the tiger. The only problem is that Dell has never been camping or hiking, and knows nothing about science.

Comic image of a little bit crazy people something to Tony Jordan is doing well. Her first novel, Addition, longlisted in 2009 Award Miles Franklin, is a quirky romantic comedy showing dear recluse suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder. This time, Jordan entertains us with a bubbly version of the borderline personality disorder.

Della, merry martyr, comes from a large family crooks who live in ramshackle house full of trap doors and hidden passages. Dell’s first job was at age 10 years and it has survived “her mind” since then, posing as other people, with a drawer full of fake passports and costumes for all occasions. In operation it is a tiger Dr. Ella Canfield, Harvard scholar and wacky evolutionary biologist who need someone to finance their studies.

But Dell was never meant to keep the ACT UP for the weekend, as she had to pull a fast one for such an attractive brand. It had to be quick work. But suddenly she was more than the head. Thus, her entire extended family pitches in: cousins of the parade, as students, aunts and uncles became unsuspecting bushwalkers, her brother, intervenes at the last minute, as an employee of Telstra.

All this requires a lot of orchestration, and we watch with bated breath. Will she cope with this?

In this game there is no place of chance and there is no place for love. Therefore, when Dell is falling behind Metcalfe she knows the plan will be wrong. Can she keep her feelings under control? And if he is hunky catch it suspects it to be, she must steal his money? Della so busy trying to keep the show on the road and hide its true face, that it takes some time before she realizes that Metcalfe is also hiding something.

This novel is not your average novel. Delia’s dream is not about getting a man, but get less money in difficult fashion. It is detrimental to a cynic when it comes to attractive, wealthy men, and we are given the impression that she really just non-traditional female careers.

My father says that the very rich to surround themselves with objects that increase in value. . . The house contains, among other things, the landscape Streeton. . . antique dining table. . . and Daniel Metcalf. It also costs more every year.

Alliance Air Show

 

"This show is buttoned-up," said Tucker, who flies the Oracle Challenger, a cherry-red high-performance biplane. "There are not many air shows that put so much care and thought into enhancing the visitor experience. And this area has such a great aviation history and culture that the fans are sophisticated about what you do."

The Fort Worth Alliance Air Show, on Saturday and Sunday, typically attracts more than 100,000 people a weekend. Mother Nature appears ready to give organizers and performers ideal conditions, which isn't always the case for an outdoor event in late October.
"It's going to be absolutely perfect weather -- cool mornings, warm afternoons," said Dave Pelletier, a spokesman for Hillwood Development, which developed and manages the airport.
Since much of North Texas has caught Texas Rangers fever, Pelletier made sure to note that the air show won't conflict with Games 3 and 4 of the World Series in Arlington.
"You can come out with the family and spend the day and still get home for first pitch," he said.
Proceeds from the show benefit local charities, including the USO.
The headliner is the Navy's Blue Angels flight team in one of its final performances of 2010, although Lockheed Martin employees might suggest that the headliner is a flight demonstration of the F-22 Raptor, the Air Force's most prized jet and one partly produced in Fort Worth.
Other military acts include an F-16 Viper demonstration team, the Army Golden Knights parachute team and numerous warbirds from the Cavanaugh Flight Museum in Addison.
Tucker, a veteran of air shows since 1976, will be one of the civilian acts, along with longtime Dallas resident Jan Collmer in the Fina Extra 300L.

"This show is like the Indy 500, the Fourth of July and Top Gun all rolled into one," Tucker said.
Greg Poe, flying the ethanol-powered Fagen MX2 aircraft, is also performing this weekend after a busy few days of flying essay-winning middle-schoolers over the North Texas prairie.
Poe visited middle schools in the Keller and Northwest school districts, speaking to them about green energy, aviation and drug addiction. He lost a teenage son to heroin several years ago and sponsors an essay contest to motivate children.

"The air show has become a means for him to tell his story to young people," said Greg Gibson, team coordinator for Poe.

Daylight Saving Time 2010 - Canada

 

Daylight Saving Time 2010: Time Change in Fall – When is Daylight Saving Time? This is the question of many as they seek on the day when they should adjust their clocks and watches. Daylight Saving Time (DST) is the practice of temporarily advancing clocks so that afternoons have more daylight and mornings have less. Typically clocks are adjusted forward one hour near the start of spring and are adjusted backward in fall. This practice is being done primarily to conserve energy.

So now that fall is approaching, when should the time change in fall begin? When is Daylight Saving Time? For all residents of US and Canada, effective Sunday, November 7, 2010 the clocks fall back to Standard Time. The official change will occur at 7.30 PM IST (6 AM EST). During Standard Time, clocks are turned backward an hour, effectively moving an hour of daylight from evening to morning. Daylight Saving Time will return on March 14, 2011 in the US and Canada.

It is important to note however that some US states and territories, including Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Marianas, do not observe Daylight Saving Time

Meanwhile, in the UK, the clocks fall back to Standard Time effective Sunday, October 31, 2010. The official change will occur at 6.30 AM IST (1.00 AM GMT). Daylight Saving Time will return on March 28, 2011 in the UK.

Costume of Little Vampire

Some recent controversy was stirred up in Salt Lake City, Utah when an ad of a woman wearing a vampire costume was posted on fifteen buses in that area.

Allegedly, the woman is wearing a little black vinyl dress exposing most of her cleavage on the display.

Residents in that area started to complain about the cleavage baring ad and local personnel decided to cover the attention grabbing area with a piece of black vinyl.

The natives who were once restless are now satisfied with the action that has been taken.

Whether or not the ad was embarassing to the woman is still a mystery.

Muff Cabbage And Ashley Anderson

Now that the last rescuer of the Chilean Miners has been brought back to the surface , we can turn to silly issues like Muff Cabbage and Ashley Anderson, the new urban terms.

What?

"Muff Cabbage" refers to a term used in the South Park episode that aired Wednesday, and is also called "pink cabbage." According to forum postings, the reference to "Vagina, pussy, and cockpit" came from fans of the TV show, who then went to Urbandictionary and installed the term:

Vagina, pussy, cockpit.
"I really want to stuff her cabbage."
"His douglas fits my cabbage nicely."
"We're going out looking for cabbage."
"She wanted me to go down on her, so I slapped her in the face with my douglas and said, '*****, I'm not eating your rotten cabbage!'"
"I smashed her cabbage so hard there was cabbage juice on the ceiling. And my douglas."

Okay!

As for "Ashley Anderson" that's not a woman but an Internet virus. It's sent via email as an attachment that, when downloaded, can damage your computer. Just don't download any strange files from emails that come from people you don't know, or are something you don't need.

Just where the "Ashley Anderson" virus came from is not known, but it's spreading. It's even a MySpace page, complete with a fake music download. Whatever you do, don't go there and touch it!

Update - Chilean Miner Mistress, Wife at Rescue

Chilean Miner mistress at rescue is a shocking headline. According to the news report below, 5 mistresses of various Chilean miners showed up at the rescue site. There is one particular miner whose wife learned of his affair the day the mine collapsed. The world has watched that story unfold, but what’s shocking is he’s far from alone.

FIVE LOVERS showed up at the Chilean mine rescue. If this had happened in the United States, they might as well have had Jerry Springer offering the newscasting at the scene, as a full-on throw down would likely ensue.

Perhaps the men had the time to think about their families and what was really important while they were down in the mine. Perhaps some are selfish and wish to indulge in their indiscretions once again.

Below is the coverage of the tale of at least 5 mistresses who showed up at the Chile Miner rescue operation.

Update - Chilean Miner Mistress, Wife at Rescue

Chilean Miner mistress at rescue is a shocking headline. According to the news report below, 5 mistresses of various Chilean miners showed up at the rescue site. There is one particular miner whose wife learned of his affair the day the mine collapsed. The world has watched that story unfold, but what’s shocking is he’s far from alone.

FIVE LOVERS showed up at the Chilean mine rescue. If this had happened in the United States, they might as well have had Jerry Springer offering the newscasting at the scene, as a full-on throw down would likely ensue.

Perhaps the men had the time to think about their families and what was really important while they were down in the mine. Perhaps some are selfish and wish to indulge in their indiscretions once again.

Below is the coverage of the tale of at least 5 mistresses who showed up at the Chile Miner rescue operation.

ISPs fighting IP lookup requests

UK Internet providers have now banded together to challenge anti-P2P law firms who try to turn thousands of IP addresses into customer names—and a London court will hear their objections to the entire process.

The ISPs were burned last month when a massive e-mail leak from the top anti-P2P firm in the UK, ACS Law, exposed their own spreadsheets of customer names matched to the pornographic films they allegedly downloaded. The revelation of this embarrassing (and unproven) behavior was compounded by the fact that several of the ISPs were taking no security precautions, instead e-mailing their Excel spreadsheets unencrypted and without passwords.

PlusNet's Chief Operation Officer Richard Fletcher apologized last week to customers. "We are investigating how we came to be sending unencrypted data as we have robust systems for managing data," he said. But the blame, in his view, lies largely elsewhere: "We are extremely angry with ACS Law for allowing this to happen."

PlusNet, along with other ISPs like BSkyB, showed up in a London court yesterday to challenge the newest "Norwich Pharmacal Order" (NRO). NROs allow companies like ACS Law and rival firm Gallant Macmillan to take their lists of allegedly infringing IP addresses to ISPs and ask for a lookup; the orders function much like subpoenas in similar US cases.

First impressions : Windows Phone 7 London

At the Windows Phone 7 launch event in London today, all four (or five, depending on how you count) UK networks had a presence, as did Samsung, HTC, and LG. All three companies will have handsets available on October 21st. Relative cellphone newcomer Dell will also have a handset available at launch.

Across the world, HTC announced five handsets: HD7, 7 Mozart, 7 Surround, 7 Trophy, and 7 Pro. The HD7, 7 Mozart, and 7 Trophy are launching in the UK on the 21st, and the 7 Pro should arrive early next year. Company representatives said that the final phone, the 7 Surround, may or may not see a UK launch.

The HD7 will be exclusive to O2, the Mozart will be exclusive to Orange, and the Trophy will be exclusive to Vodafone. HTC gave no indications of which carriers would receive the Pro.

HTC's lineup

As is going to be a recurring theme with Windows Phone 7 handsets, the phones were more similar than they were different. The HD7 had a glorious 4.3" screen, and the Mozart had an 8 megapixel camera. Aside from that, there was little to significantly differentiate the models. All of them felt solid, though the two smaller phones felt uncannily light.

What HTC does do to differentiate is bundle applications. Each HTC handset is preloaded with a bunch of HTC-developed custom applications. There's HTC's now familiar weather software, a post-it note-taking program, audio and photo enhancing programs, and a stock ticker program. All can be pinned to the home screen, or accessed via HTC's hub application.

The HTC hub

Adding a kind of cine camera appearance using the Photo Enhancer

Apart from apps, another area that the hardware companies can differentiate is the camera application. Though the basic operation of the camera is standard across all the phones, companies can add their own effects and processing; for example, they can offer different metering modes, ISO ratings, or autofocus modes, and they can include special effects. HTC, for example, has a solarize feature.

HTC's phones all included Dolby Mobile and SRS Surround audio processing, which should in principle make them better for listening to music and watching videos than any of their competitors.

LG is launching its Optimus 7 exclusively with Vodafone. There was no word on whether the 7Q—the same phone but with a hardware keyboard—would launch, or if so, when it would launch.

Afghanistan aid worker may been killed by US rescuers

At first, NATO blamed a Taliban bomb for the death of a captive British aid worker during an American rescue attempt in eastern Afghanistan.

Two days later, the coalition changed its account, saying Monday that U.S. forces may have detonated a grenade that killed Linda Norgrove during the operation to free her.

British Prime Minister David Cameron defended Friday's rescue mission, saying his government authorized it only after learning that Norgrove's life was in grave danger. The U.S. military, which carried out the raid because the aid worker was being held in a region under American command, said it would investigate the incident with British cooperation.

In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen emphasized that "whatever happened, I would like to stress that those who are responsible of course are the captors."

The U.S.-led NATO force has historically been slow to acknowledge friendly-fire deaths in Afghanistan. Drawn-out investigations mean findings can come weeks or months after an incident. But an increased focus on preventing civilian deaths has led NATO over the past year to push for quicker reporting on mistakes.

Norgrove, 36, from Scotland's Isle of Lewis, worked on a U.S.-funded aid project for Development Alternatives Inc., a Bethesda, Maryland-based organization. She was abducted in an ambush on Sept. 26 while driving toward Asadabad, the capital of Kunar province, according to Afghan officials. She was to oversee projects in the area.

Three Afghan colleagues were also captured in the ambush but all were later released.

Norgrove died Friday night -- nearly two weeks after being captured -- when U.S. special forces stormed the Taliban compound where she was being held in Kunar province.

In its initial statement Saturday, NATO said Norgrove was killed when captors detonated a bomb during the attack.

But then the rescue mission leader saw surveillance footage of the incident, had discussions with other team members and decided "it was not conclusive what the cause of her death was," said Lt. Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman at NATO headquarters in Kabul.

When the rescue team assaulted the Taliban hideout, they came under fire from within the compound as well as from an overwatch position nearby, Dorrian said Monday.

"It was a very high elevation area, very very challenging terrain," Dorrian said. All six gunmen who fought back against the U.S. force were killed, along with Norgrove. He said women and children in the compound were not injured and that no one on the U.S. rescue team was wounded

Dorrian did not provide details on how long the fighting lasted, the size of the force or what weaponry they used.

In London, Cameron said that the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, informed him that Norgrove was possibly killed by a grenade detonated by a member of the rescue team.

Cameron said he told Norgrove's family of the "deeply distressing development," and defended the decision to attempt the risky rescue mission.

"We were clear that Linda's life was in grave danger and the operation offered the best chance of saving her life," Cameron told reporters at a news conference at 10 Downing St.

"I want to assure Mr. and Mrs. Norgrove that I will do everything I possibly can to establish the full facts and give them certainty about how their daughter died," he added. Norgrove's father, John, said the family had no comment.

Cameron said Norgrove's family had been kept informed of the decision, which was made by Foreign Secretary William Hague with his full support.

Hague, in a statement before the House of Commons, said Norgrove's captors intended to "pass her further up the Taliban command chain."

He said intensive efforts to locate Norgrove began immediately after her abduction, including increased military operations in the area where she was taken and leaflet drops offering a reward for information about her whereabouts.

Hague said he had authorized a rescue operation from day one but bad weather prevented an earlier rescue attempt

Norgrove had worked in Afghanistan for years on various aid projects, spoke the language and was "dedicated to Afghanistan," according to a statement released by her employer. Her projects mainly involved working with farmers or on environmental protection programs.

She had donned a burqa -- a body-covering robe worn by many Afghan women -- for the trip during which she was kidnapped, local police said.

It wasn't the first time in Afghanistan that an operation to rescue an abducted Briton ended in bloodshed. In September 2009, Stephen Farrell, a reporter for The New York Times, and Sultan Munadi, an Afghan journalist and interpreter who worked regularly with the Times and other news organizations, were taken hostage when they went to cover the aftermath of a NATO airstrike that killed scores of civilians in northern Afghanistan.

Munadi and a British commando died in the raid that rescued Farrell, a Briton. British forces said they had to leave Munadi's body behind because they were coming under such heavy fire.

Chile miners coping advice from NASA

With 33 miners trapped deep underground, Chile is seeking advice from NASA on how to keep them mentally and physically fit for the months it may take to rescue them.

"We received a request from the Chilean government about advice related to our life science research," John Yembrick, a NASA spokesman, told SPACE.com Wednesday.

The U.S. space agency, which routinely trains astronauts to cope with the isolation of months-long International Space Station missions, is providing survival tips to Chilean officials, who are able to communicate with the miners trapped 2,300 feet (700 meters) below the Earth's surface. The rescue mission could take up to four months, according to press reports.

NASA officials are currently in a meeting to discuss further details.

"Right now, we're still waiting to find out what specific questions they have for us, and how best we can assist," Yembrick said.

The small gold and copper mine in the northern Chile collapsed Aug. 5. On Sunday rescuers were able to dig a 6-inch-wide tunnel to reach the miners, the Houston Chronicle reported. But it could take four months to complete the rescue, which involves drilling a 2-foot-wide (0.6- meter) tunnel through 2,200 feet (670 meters) of solid rock.

The trapped miners have been able to live so far off of limited food and water supplies in an area the size of a large living room. A physician on the rescue team said that the miners started out eating two spoonfuls of tuna, a sip of milk and a biscuit every 48 hours, the Houston Chronicle reported.

"Psychologically speaking, we have to try to keep them on the right track and not give them false hope that it will be a short rescue," the Reuters news agency quoted Chile's Mining Minister Laurence Golborne as saying.

As time passes, NASA may be able to suggest ways for the miners to cope with the tough physical and psychological conditions.

Physicians have recommended that the miners do regular exercises to prevent muscle atrophy as they await extraction, Reuters reported.

Chile mine rescue : an engineering showcase

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As the engineers hugged family members and said goodbye to one another, several carried flags for Geotec Boyles Bros. SA, the company that operated the drill. Someone threw company baseball caps and T-shirts to the crowd.

Companies are aiming to capitalize on the global media coverage of the historic rescue effort. The miners have now survived longer below ground than the victims of any other known mine collapse. They will come up through the deepest rescue chute ever drilled. And more than 1,000 reporters, representing every continent, are on hand to document the event.

IN PICTURES: Chile mine collapse

UPS, the US shipping company, brought a 13-ton drilling tool from Pennsylvania in less than 48 hours. The company boasted of its achievement in a blog post on its Web site. Around the drills themselves, corporate banners join the ubiquitous Chilean flag. Lettering on a pickup truck from a local wiring company reads: "Communicating with the San Jose miners." Steel company Techint has had a camera crew on the scene all week to document the use of the company's tubes in the rescue shaft.

Excitement around the mine rescue has been growing as preparations speed to a close. Welders put a 24-inch steel pipe into the hole early
this morning. The main rescue capsule was then lowered almost to the bottom and raised back up.

"Not even dust fell off the walls" of the passage, Mining Minister Laurence Golborne told reporters. The capsule wasn't sent all the way down so no one would be tempted to jump in, Golborne said.

Big winners

So far, the big publicity winners have been Geotec and its equipment manufacturers -- Center Rock Inc. made the drill bit and Schramm Inc. made the truck-mounted drill. The T-130, as the Schramm rig is known, has become a bit of a celebrity. Families chanted and cheered as it left the drilling site today.

"We have had no greater mission" than helping the miners, Schramm said on its Web site.

Precision Drilling Corp., the Canadian company whose rig continues to drill a backup rescue shaft, has been giving updates on its Web site. The company had little presence in South America before Chilean authorities contacted it about drilling a large-diameter hole.

The corporate involvement reaches into every aspect of the rescue effort. With plenty of time to fill and, for months, very little to show, Chilean television carried live interviews with the maker of a portable oxygen tank.

Zephyr Technologies, the Annapolis, Maryland-based maker of the remote monitors of vital signs that miners will wear during their
ascent, has workers on the scene.

As a publicity opportunity, "it's certainly good to get it out there for similar situations or scenarios that are not so extreme," said Ben
Morris, who works at Zephyr.

One company keeping a lower profile is Compañia Minera San Esteban Primera, the owner of the San Jose mine, where the miners are trapped. The owners aren't taking calls.

For Cupcake Bakers, Business is Booming - any Recession ?

Where many small businesses are feeling the pinch of the economic downturn, some sweet niches, like cupcakes, are doing phenomenally well. Cupcakes offer tangible proof that good things come in small packages; and more and more entrepreneurs are managing to turn their batter into ‘dough’ by opening cupcake bakeries, even in an economy where most recipes for staying in business are failing to rise.

It’s easy to see why small businesses based on small indulgences are booming and popping up all over the map. The beautiful, bite-sized confections are savored by the stomach and the soul, tapping into the emotional core of the public with every nibble. People are waiting in long lines outside cupcake bakeries across the country to enjoy these guiltless indulgences which offer a reminiscent walk down the memory lane of childhood, while making the present moment so much sweeter — for both consumer and baker alike.

The Washington Post reported on the cupcake bakery trend, quoting Paul Sapienza, vice president for the Retail Bakers of America, who declared of cupcakes, “They are cute. They are an economic treat, which helps out in the recession. They are a little decadent, so you get cake, frosting and sometimes filling all at the same time.” The article also claimed that cupcakes were a fad which were sure to wane in popularity sooner than later — but the craze continues today, even more so than a year ago when the article was written.

In a more accurate and prophetic piece, The New York Times also ran an article on the boom of cupcake businesses and their popularity over a year ago, offering the spot-on statistic that “nationwide, cupcake sales, according to the market research firm, Mintel, are projected to rise another 20 percent over the next five years at a time when other baked goods are expected to grow in the single digits.” Cupcakes became trend worthy in the mid 90′s after New York’s Magnolia Bakery was featured on both Sex and the City and Saturday Night Live. Steve Abrams of the wildly popular Magnolia Bakery calls the company, “the godmother of the modern cupcake craze.”

Since then, cupcakes and bakeries have multiplied by the dozens as entrepreneurs continue to jump on the bake-wagon. And the cupcake business continues to become an even more savvy and specialized niche market. Such is the case with bakeries like Babycakes in New York City which offers “all-natural, organic and delicious alternatives free from the common allergens: wheat, gluten, dairy, casein and eggs” for those with “persnickety diets.”

Babycakes is not only getting a piece of the pie by selling cupcakes, they are also cornering a growing market by gearing their treats toward an ever-growing amount of consumers who are on gluten-free and vegan diets. Demand for such alternative-friendly diet made delicacies is high and at $4.25 a pop for a Babycakes cupcake, profits are sure to soar. The founder of Babycakes, Erin McKenna, also capitalizes on her recipes by selling a cookbook sharing her trade secrets and telling readers how to make their own vegan and gluten-free cupcakes and baked goods at home, further driving her brand to the forefront.

The world’s cupcake obsession has even been tapped by television executives hoping to catapult network ratings by airing shows about entrepreneurs who are building their empires atop perfectly poised dollops of frosting. The Food Network has a new prime time show,

Cupcake Wars wherein cupcake bakery owners rival each other to determine who can make the best cupcake based on several criteria. TLC chronicles the lives of two sisters who opened a successful cupcake bakery together on D.C. Cupcakes, and WEtv follows the journey of best friends and business partners who are trying to build a cupcake empire together in The Cupcake Girls. And celebrities are even endorsing the sweet treats: Katie Holmes gives out Sprinkles cupcakes as gifts on a regular basis, and after Oprah received Sprinkles cupcakes from Barbra Streisand as a gift, she purchased enough for her entire studio audience to enjoy.

It has been well documented that sales of chocolate, ice-cream, shoes and lipstick rise when times are tight. In tough economic times, consumers typically cut back spending but allow for a small amount of spending on little items that make them feel good — what trend analysts call ‘small indulgences’. Sweet, rich and relatively inexpensive, cupcakes obviously fit this bill. Cupcakes provide instant gratification and they make ordinary moments seem celebratory. They are enjoyed in the same vein as those ever popular Starbucks lattes we all feel we deserve and want to treat ourselves to even when money is tight. And if cupcake bakeries follow in Starbucks’ footsteps, bakers and entrepreneurs gambling with the trend will certainly be living la dolce vita.

Ukraine's Unstoppable Export Business "Prostitution"

On a hot Sunday night, a car pulls over in the port of Odessa, southern Ukraine. About 30 girls swarm around it, posing in the glare of its headlights. The driver's window rolls down, and a female pimp — known by the girls, almost lovingly, as a Mamachka — leans inside to negotiate a price. Within a minute, two girls have hopped into the car, and the rest go back to chatting and dragging on their cigarettes. Business is brisk, but the girls look bored. For them, this is basically downtime.

"The real action is in the Emirates, Dubai or Antalya," says Masha, a stick-thin 19-year-old who teeters a little on her heels. "Don't be confused," she says. "Nobody takes us by the hair and drags us onto the ships." She gestures over at the mouth of the port. "Those are like the gates to freedom for a lot of us," she says. "Yeah, like the Statue of Liberty," adds another girl, and the group of them erupts into laughter.

It took less than a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union for Odessa to become a hub for the international sex trade. The conditions were just about perfect. The bustling port on the Black Sea was an easy gateway from the poorest parts of Ukraine, Romania and Moldova to western Europe and the Arab states. Organized crime was rampant, Odessa's dirt-poor police were known to be corruptible, and seven decades of living behind the Iron Curtain had created a generation of provincial girls as ignorant of the outside world as they were desperate for its opportunities.

But the prostitutes who pass through Odessa these days do not harbor the naive dreams of their predecessors from the '90s. And so the sex trade through Odessa has hardened in the past few years into something more jaded and much more difficult to stop. "Reporters always come here demanding to see the victims," says Olga Kostyuk, deputy head of the charity Faith, Hope, Love, which provides assistance to Odessa's sex workers. "They want to see the men, the pimps, the manipulators behind all of this. But things are not so simple now."

For one thing, there aren't many pimps left in this city of one million people, at least not the men who engaged in the most vicious forms of sex trafficking. As recently as 2006, their most common method of recruitment was to send scouts into the nearby towns to lure girls back to the port with false promises of work abroad — as a dancer in Paris or a waitress in Dubai — and then force them into prostitution. But most of these modern-day slaves traders are gone — these days, few of the prostitutes who pass through Odessa have been tricked into joining the trade. "Now the typical situation is that an experienced girl gets off the plane from Turkey covered in gold, diamonds and furs, and goes back to her home village," says Svetlana Chernolutskaya, a psychologist who has counseled prostitutes in Odessa for years. "She finds the girls who are in a tough spot, and tells them how much money they can make turning tricks in a foreign country."

The poverty and general hopelessness in many villages of eastern Ukraine, Moldova and Romania now run so deep — especially in the wake of the financial crisis — that the promise of a job as a prostitute abroad is enough to get the vast majority of trafficked women to sign up voluntarily. They follow the Mamachki to foreign resorts or big cities in western Europe, where the prevalence of sex workers from the ex-Soviet Union has earned them a nickname: Natashas. The girls work the streets and hotel lobbies until they get deported or homesick. After a few weeks off in Odessa or wherever they call home, they're shipped out again. The cycle ends when they earn enough to retire or, as more often happens, when they get too old for the job — which in this business can be as young as 26.

The forced prostitution of women through coercion or violence is still a global tragedy (although statistics vary, U.N. and U.S. observers agree that the victims number in the hundreds of thousands each year). But the dozen aid workers and prostitutes TIME spoke to in Odessa said that sex trafficking through the city has moved away from being an industry run on fear to one driven by voluntary, if desperate, participation. Many think this is because the practice of forcing women into prostitution was drawing too much attention from the police and media. But most of them believe it's just down to cynicism setting in. Even in the most isolated backwoods of Eastern Europe, few girls still have illusions about opportunities in the West — about the real Statue of Liberty — "so they take what they can get," says Natalia Savitskaya, a counselor for Faith, Hope, Love.

Whatever the causes of this change in Odessa's sex trade, it presents a new set of challenges for the people trying to tackle it. Officially, the number of trafficked women who go through the city each year has dropped by more than half since a peak in 2006. But that is not because their numbers are really going down, says Kostyuk of Faith, Hope, Love: "The girls see themselves as victims of fate, but not of deception, so they don't ask for help." Which makes them almost impossible to track.

Last year, Kostyuk's charity responded with a new approach. Instead of patrolling for the sex slaves who used to stumble off the ships in the port, battered and lost, Faith, Hope, Love now tries to provide guidance to drug addicts and runaways who are at risk of turning to prostitution. Still, says Kostyuk, "The trend in trafficking isn't going down, because the more intensely we work to stop them, the better they seem to adapt."

Efforts to stem Odessa's sex trade are further complicated by the semi-official relationship the female pimps enjoy with local law enforcement. Over a traditional Odessan meal of steamed crawfish, a lieutenant colonel in the internal affairs department tells TIME that police offer protection to the Mamachki for a monthly fee. "It's a big feeding trough for a lot of the officers, all very organized, like a local institution," he says. As if to prove the point, two police cars creep by the crowd of girls standing in the port, but don't stop. It seems that until their countries can offer these girls something more than poverty, corruption and disillusion, the export of Natashas will remain one of Odessa's signature trades.

Why Young Italians Are Leaving

It's not the type of advice you would usually expect from the head of an elite university. In an open letter to his son published last November, Pier Luigi Celli, director general of Rome's LUISS University, wrote, "This country, your country, is no longer a place where it's possible to stay with pride ... That's why, with my heart suffering more than ever, my advice is that you, having finished your studies, take the road abroad. Choose to go where they still value loyalty, respect and the recognition of merit and results."

The letter, published in Italy's La Repubblica newspaper, sparked a session of national hand-wringing. Celli, many agreed, had articulated a growing sense in his son's generation that the best hopes for success lie abroad. Commentators point to an accelerating flight of young Italians and worry that the country is losing its most valuable resource. And with reforms made all but impossible by Italy's deep-rooted interests and topsy-turvy politics — a schism in the ruling coalition seemed this summer to threaten Silvio Berlusconi's government once again — many are starting to wonder if the trend can be reversed. "We have a flow outward and almost no flow inward," says Sergio Nava, host of the radio show Young Talent and author of the book and blog The Flight of Talent, which covers the exodus.

The motives of those leaving haven't changed much since the last wave of economic migrants struck out to make their fortunes a century ago. But this time, instead of peasant farmers and manual laborers packing themselves onto steamships bound for New York City, Italy is losing its best and brightest to a decade of economic stagnation, a frozen labor market and an entrenched system of patronage and nepotism. For many of the country's most talented and educated, the land of opportunity is anywhere but home.

Take Luca Vigliero, a 31-year-old architect. After graduating from the University of Genoa in 2006 and failing to find satisfying work at home, he moved abroad, working first for a year at Rem Koolhaas' Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam and then accepting a job in Dubai in 2007. In Italy, his résumé had drawn no interest. At Dubai's X Architects, he was quickly promoted. He now supervises a team of seven people. "I'm working on projects for museums, villas, cultural centers, master plans," he says. "I have a career." Escape from Italy has also allowed Vigliero to fast-track his life plans. He and his wife had a son in September; had they remained in Italy, he says they would not have been able to afford children this soon. "All my friends in Italy are not married, they have really basic work, they live with their [parents]," he says. "Here, there's a future. Every year, something happens: new plans, new projects. In Italy, there's no wind. Everything is stopped."

Italy doesn't keep track of how many of its young professionals are seeking their fortunes abroad, but there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that the number is rising. The number of Italians ages 25 to 39 with college degrees registering with the national government as living abroad every year has risen steadily, from 2,540 in 1999 to about 4,000 in 2008. The research-institute Censis estimates that 11,700 college graduates found work abroad in 2006 — that's one out of every 25 Italians who graduated that year. According to a poll by Bachelor, a Milanese recruitment agency, 33.6% of new graduates feel they need to leave the country to take advantage of their education. A year later, 61.5% feel that they should have done so.

It's not hard to see why. Italy's economic woes have fallen hard on the shoulders of the country's youth. According to figures published in May by the National Institute of Statistics, 30% of Italians ages 30 to 34 still live with their parents, three times as many as in 1983. One in 5 young people ages 15 to 29 has basically dropped out: not studying, not training, not working. "We're condemning an entire generation into a black hole," says Celli.

Jobs for the (Old) Boys

Italians without college education often get by working in the black economy, doing all sorts of jobs, but university graduates — or more generally, those with higher aspirations — have a tougher time finding work that fits their qualifications. The unemployment rate among Italian college graduates ages 25 to 29 is 14%, more than double the rate in the rest of Europe and much higher than that of their less-educated peers.

Italians have a word for the problem: gerontocracy, or rule by the elderly. Too much of the economy is geared toward looking after older Italians. While the country spends relatively little on housing, unemployment and child care — expenditures the young depend upon to launch their careers — it has maintained some of the highest pensions in Europe, in part by ramping up borrowing. This imbalance extends into the private sector, where national guilds and an entrenched culture of seniority have put the better jobs out of reach for the country's young.

Italy has always suffered under a hierarchical system, with the young deferring to authority until it's their time to take the reins. "You are not considered experienced based on your CV, on your ability or according to your skills, but just based on your age," says Federico Soldani, 37, an epidemiologist who left Pisa in 2000 and now works in Washington, D.C., for the Food and Drug Administration. "When you are under 40, you are considered young."

The system worked — to a certain extent — as long as the economy was growing. Patience paid off as jobs opened to whoever was next in line. But with the extended slump, the labor market has seized up. "The queue is not moving forward anymore," says Soldani. Entry to some professions — like the lucrative position of public notary — is so limited that the job has become all but hereditary. In a country where success is built on relationships and seniority, only the friends and children of the elite have a chance to cut the line.

For the rest, it means that jobs are scarce, underpaid and stripped of responsibility. When Filippo Scognamiglio, 29, secretary of the Italian MBA Association NOVA, compared net salaries for the same position at the same multinational in the U.S. and Italy, he found that an Italian with an M.B.A. who chose to stay home would earn just 58% of what they would abroad. "It's easier to be successful in the United States if you have the talent and the desire to put in the effort than it is in my country," he says. As a consequence, Scognamiglio, who graduated from Columbia Business School this year, chose to pay off the Italian company that had sponsored his degree in order to accept a job in the U.S. "It's a 70,000-euro ($90,000) vote [for the prospects of a career abroad]," he says.

But it's not just better pay that attracts Italy's young emigrants: it's also the opportunity to escape dull jobs that involve mainly rote tasks and flattened career trajectories. "If you're young in Italy, you're a problem; in other countries, you're seen as a resource," says Simone Bartolini, 29, a creative copywriter in Sydney. He left Rome in 2007, following a change of management at his advertising firm, when his new boss told him, "We will put sticks in your spokes." He was good to his word. "Every idea was turned down," says Bartolini. "Everything was a no. As soon as I made a mistake, I was under the light." In comparison to Australia, where Bartolini has launched a successful career, Italy simply had no use for his drive. "They need executors," says Bartolini. "They don't need thinkers."

Old Problems, Old Solutions
Young Italians know better than to look to the state to solve their problems: the country's politics is if anything even more stagnant. A long succession of ruling coalitions have been too busy wrestling among themselves to take on entrenched interests. The current regime is a case in point. Prime Minister Berlusconi came to power in 2008 after the previous left-wing government tried to institute a raft of reforms that would have passed without comment in just about any other country: deregulating the country's taxicabs, allowing supermarkets to sell nonprescription drugs, permitting private companies into public transport. The reforms foundered on a series of strikes, setting the government on a path to failure a year and a half later.

Now Berlusconi's government is facing a crisis of its own, a power struggle between the Prime Minister and his former ally, Gianfranco Fini, the speaker of Italy's lower house. Fini, who commands a breakaway faction of parliamentarians, has been clashing with Berlusconi over a series of reforms. For now, the two men seem to have put aside their differences — Fini supported the government in a vote of no confidence last month — but tensions between the two are already rising over proposed changes to the criminal-justice system that would free Berlusconi from tax-fraud and corruption trials. In the meantime, Italians are stuck with a government that could collapse at any moment and leaders consumed with positioning themselves for the next election.

Italy's political culture is sclerotic. It has failed to produce young reform-minded leaders like Barack Obama, David Cameron or Nicolas Sarkozy. Berlusconi is 74 years old and serving his third term as Prime Minister, and the country's crop of political players hasn't been updated since the early 1990s, when a series of corruption and Mafia scandals upended the electoral landscape. No wonder young Italians want no part of it.

No Way Home
The Italian exodus wouldn't be so damaging if the departed could be persuaded to return with their foreign experience. And indeed, after years of ignoring the problem, the government has begun to try to do just that. "It's like judo: you transform a risk into a strength," says Guglielmo Vaccaro, a parliamentarian who has promoted a bill that would offer tax breaks to Italians who return after spending at least two years abroad. Vaccaro estimated that the state spends well over $130,000 to provide a young person with a college education, money that can be recouped if its citizens can be persuaded to invest their skills at home.

It's not like the country's young want to stay away: Italians are famously attached to their homeland. Most of the people interviewed for this story said they would love dearly to go home. "Your DNA, your self, everything you breathe, everything you eat is very tied to the city where you're born," says Giovanni Chirichella, 34, a native Milanese who works as a human-resources manager at GE Energy in Houston. "Many Italians across the world, they're basically homesick for the rest of their lives."

But while Italy's young migrants usually set out with the intention of returning with a few years of foreign experience on their résumés, they often find the re-entry more difficult than they imagined. Over the past year, Elena Ianni, 32, a marketing manager at the Royal Bank of Scotland in London, has sent her résumé to the top 100 companies and recruitment agencies in Italy. She spent her Easter break knocking on doors in Milan. Every night, when she gets home from work, she checks the online job listings. In London, where she receives unsolicited calls from headhunters, Ianni has turned down two job offers during the same period. But her country doesn't seem to want her. "I've been told exactly these words," she says. "'You're a young woman, and you won't be taken seriously here.'"

So the country is caught in a vicious circle. The economy will continue to fade as long as it stifles innovation by excluding its young. Meanwhile, every young person driven away is one less voice calling for reform. Silvia Sartori, 31, tried returning to Treviso after working in Asia for four years. After a fruitless year of job-hunting, she went back to China, where she now manages a $3 million European Commission grant for green construction. "It's something in Italy I would never get, unless I was 45 and somebody's daughter or cousin or mistress," she says. "I gave Italy a second chance," she says. "They burned it." Italy may not have many more chances to preserve its most precious resource.

BP Oil Spill Claim Technician Challenges

A technician on Thursday challenged BP's claim about how long it would have taken to install additional numbers of a key device the oil giant had been warned was essential to prevent a severe gas flow problem in its Gulf well that later blew out.

Centralizers make sure the casing is running down the center of the well bore. If the casing is cemented off-center, there is a risk of an imperfect seal that could allow oil and gas to escape.

BP installed only six, against a Halliburton recommendation to install 21

One issue in a federal investigative panel's probe of the rig explosion and massive oil spill that followed is whether BP cut corners to reduce costs. The well project was nearly $60 million over budget at the time the centralizer warning was raised.

Four days before the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, a BP well team leader asserted it would take 10 hours to install the additional 15 centralizers. But technician Daniel Oldfather told the joint U.S. Coast Guard-Bureau of Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement investigative panel it would have taken him only four to eight hours to do the job.

Oldfather, who works for oilfield services firm Weatherford, flew to the rig on April 16 with the 15 centralizers on board, but a pallet of screws and epoxy was missing. He testified that a BP engineer told him when he arrived that the missing materials would be sent out on a boat and arrive later the same day.

Oldfather said the materials never arrived and that he was told the next day the job had been canceled. He said he was never told why and he never raised any objections over any safety concerns because it was BP's decision to make.

BP drilling engineering team leader Gregory Walz testified later Thursday that he ultimately agreed with the decision to run only six centralizers because he believes the risk of a gas flow problem could be resolved by spacing the existing centralizers out and through the use of foam cement.

His statement came even though he had earlier sent an e-mail to well team leader John Guide telling him he could easily arrange for the extra 15 centralizers to be delivered to the rig. And, Walz later asked another colleague to do just that.

He testified that even though the extra centralizers were on the rig, they were not the type he envisioned and therefore he was worried about using them. Walz said engineers made a judgment call about "which risk to take on."

There were assertions by lawyers at the hearing that BP was under pressure to finish the plugging of its Macondo well so that the Deepwater Horizon could be used for another well job in the Gulf. But Walz testified that the Macondo well would get done when it was ready and no one was rushing.

Board members referred to performance evaluations of BP employees that seemed to reward them for being able to reduce costs on projects.

However, Guide testified Thursday that money was not a factor when it came to safety.

"It's a business, yes, so there is a consideration of monetary things," Guide told the panel. "But even though you could phrase it that way, safety was always the No. 1 priority. Safety was never compromised in the operation."

The testimony was part of the panel's fifth session of hearings aimed at determining the cause of the explosion and how regulation, safety and oversight can be improved.

The explosion killed 11 workers and led to more than 200 million gallons of oil spewing from BP PLC's undersea well. BP owned the well and was leasing the rig from owner Transocean Ltd.

Smart Phones : iPhone vs. Android

It's possible to sum up the tech industry's engine of progress in four words: Apple vs. everybody else. That's been true for a quarter-century in the personal-computer realm, where the Apple product in question is the Mac and everybody else consists of Windows PC makers. And now it's happening with smart phones, a product category increasingly defined by intense competition between Apple's iPhone and the gaggle of manufacturers who have embraced Google's Android software.

Unlike the Mac-PC wars, the battle between the iPhone and Android is in its early stages. Both Apple and Google and its hardware partners are trying to dominate the market in exactly the right way: by building the best possible phones. Consumers benefit whether they buy an iPhone or an Android handset from a company such as HTC, Motorola or Samsung.

Android is clearly spurring Apple to step up its already impressive game. Since June, it has given iOS, the software that powers the iPhone, one sweeping overhaul and one smaller but meaningful update. It plans to deliver another fairly significant new version in November, with features like built-in printing capabilities. That's a shift from past Apple practice, which involved cramming nearly every meaningful improvement into one yearly megaupgrade. It's also reminiscent of Android's evolution over the past 12 months, during which Google has released versions 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2.

Apple may be moving more quickly than ever, but it's still uniquely responsible for what Steve Jobs has called "the whole widget." It designs the iPhone hardware, it writes the software, it provides the default services for buying music and movies. Even the central processor inside the iPhone 4 is an Apple product. The result is the smoothest, most consistent experience to be found on any smart phone. It's no coincidence that the one aspect of the phone that it has the least control over — the AT&T network — is the one that provokes the most grumbling among iPhone users.

Ultimately, deciding to buy an iPhone is all about buying into Apple's vision of the one perfect smart phone. Android, by contrast, is about finding the right smart phone for you. Want a phone with a real QWERTY keyboard or a jumbo-size screen? Sorry, iPhone no can do — but Android can. You can even get Android with a slide-out keyboard and a big screen. Or — if you're willing to commit to a two-year contract — one that costs a penny.