The United States claimed a 2-1 victory over South Africa at the Hopman Cup mixed team competition on Sunday.
Venus Williams rallied to defeat Chanelle Scheepers 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, before Kevin Anderson leveled for South Africa with a 7-6 (0), 7-6 (5) win over John Isner.
The U.S. clinched the match with a 6-3, 6-2 win in mixed doubles.
Later Sunday, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga saved three set points before overcoming Fernando Verdasco 7-5, 6-3 to give France a 1-0 lead over Spain. Anabel Medina Garrigues next faces Mathilde Johansson, with mixed doubles to follow.
Williams took time to settle against an opponent who rallied well and hit the ball deep. But after conceding her serve at love to leave Scheepers serving for the first set, the American looked increasingly comfortable and aggressive.
After taking the second set when her opponent double-faulted, she then swept to a 4-0 lead in the third on her way to closing out the match.
Isner held the only break point of the first set for a 4-2 lead but missed his return. In the second set, Isner fought off three break points at 3-2 and another at 4-3, but again fell short in the tiebreaker.
Williams was playing for the first time since winning the Luxembourg event in mid-October and was satisfied with her performance.
"I was just trying to find some rhythm out there," Williams said. "She's obviously a really good player having maintained a top 40, top 50 ranking the last couple of years. She played a match yesterday too so had an extra advantage. It felt good out there.
"I'm not expecting to be perfect now but I'm thinking that my game will get better every match. I think the (mixed) doubles will help as well to hone everything. More than anything I was just so excited to be out there playing and I'm ready to go for it."
Despite health problems that have limited her schedule, Williams is looking forward to the challenges and opportunities that the new season presents.
"Last year was so awesome for me, getting to the Olympics. I was extremely happy with last year and I moved up quite a few spots," she said. "This year is just about building on it and putting myself into position to play deep into the draws."
As one of the leading healthcare providers in the Atlanta area, our client focuses on quality care for their patients and superior customer service with a personalized touch.? They have a reputation for discovering technological breakthroughs while providing daily services.? They recently received international recognition for their Citrix virtualization solutions, and are also known for their exceptional treatment of employees, which supports a comfortable learning environment creating a higher potential for success in your technology career.
Our client has a very stable, growing group with currently 400-500 physical Servers and 700-800 virtual. They also just added 3,000 concurrent users. All 2003 and 2008 enterprise data centers are up to date with all the latest versions. They also have a lot of work with global patient records and buying other hospitals and outpatient clinics. ?
Key Requirements:
IT virtualization with Citrix
Must be strong in MS technologies
Must have strong skills in XenDesktop, XenApp, and XenServer
Must have strong infrastructure skills
VMware skills are desired if candidates have solid MS with VMware skills
Must have solid, above-administrator level skills in the Windows-server family of operating systems including performance tuning, automation, and Scripting
Proven experience architecting
Multiple years of experience operating in a large enterprise environment (greater than 5 locations and 500+ users)
At least 5 years experience implementing and supporting Active Directory 2000/2003 including services such as DHCP, DFS, DNS, and WINS
At least 5 years experience implementing and supporting file systems in a clustered environment
Must have a strong background in TCP/IP and related network protocols including functional understanding of network hardware
Detailed knowledge of the Windows security model and processes
Significant experience in the design and deployment of Group Policies
Experience implementing Windows File and Print Clusters
Proposes and implements system enhancements that will improve the performance and reliability of the Windows, Citrix, and SQL environments
Comprehensive knowledge of Windows Resource Kit/Sysinternals tools
Must demonstrate excellent interpersonal, communication, and presentation skills
Must be able to troubleshoot network communication issues for Client Server applications
Knowledge of commonly used concepts, practices, and procedures
Must demonstrate strong business acumen and ability to relate to business leaders' issues
Ability to create automated processes using scripts, tools, etc. to streamline production support
Ability to identify system improvements, plan and implementDesired Skills:
Synergis is a woman-owned company that serves a myriad of clients across nearly all industries, from start-ups to Fortune 100 companies.? The outcomes of these relationships are demonstrated in a growing list of more than 300 clients and industry recognitions by Inc. magazine and the Atlanta Business Chronicle. ?
From its foundation in 1997, Synergis has been successfully recruiting and placing IT professionals in all areas of information technology.? Recently named the Best Place to Work in Atlanta by the Atlanta Business Chronicle, Synergis has been successfully recruiting and placing IT professionals for over 10 years. For more information about Synergis, please visit the company website.
Synergis is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer.
Activation (455), Anti-virus (48), Application servers (217), Billing systems (939), Carrier managed (316), Cloud computing (527), Content/software downloads (268), Customer relationship management (426), Data Integrity (187), Denial-of-service attacks (77), Digital content (1590), Element management systems (116), Encryption (187), Endpoint security (113), Fault management (154), Firewalls (148), Grid networking (122), IMS (1204), IMS Control Layer (48), IMS Service Layer (48), Interactive advertising (365), Intrusion detection & prevention (134), Inventory management (250), IP software (462), IP technologies (1582), IPSec VPN (869), Managed Services (220), Media gateways (405), Mediation systems (295), Messaging (353), Middleware (152), MPLS (1873), MPLS (707), OSS (3732), OSS test & measurement (1170), Performance monitoring (512), Planning tools (123), Policy control (527), Product Management (129), Provisioning (709), QOS (377), Revenue assurance & fraud management (452), Security (2100), Service delivery platforms (SDPs) (425), Service management (393), Service-oriented architectures (376), Services (3293), SSL VPN (931), Telepresence (283), URL filtering (84), User authentication (108), Vendor managed (224), Web gateways (83), Web services (183), XML (57)
Video
Broadcast (Mobile TV, etc.) (274), Broadcast video equipment (including encoding) (832), Cable TV chips (405), Compression (MPEG-2 and MPEG-4) (349), Content protection (465), Digital rights management (474), DVRs (978), Gaming consoles (90), Internet Video (1651), IPTV (4008), Middleware & business support systems (1227), Mobile TV (467), Network DVR (159), P2P (285), Satellite (641), Set-top boxes (2165), Stored video servers (448), Telepresence (283), TV (4938), Video equipment (2785), Video services (5023), Video software (1676), Videophone (224), VOD (3291)
Sorry sight ? remains of an elephant killed by poachers.
ARCHERS POST, Kenya: Julius Lokinyi was one of the most notorious poachers in this part of Kenya, accused of single-handedly killing as many as 100 elephants and selling the tusks by the side of the road in the middle of the night.
But after being hounded by his village elders, he made a remarkable transformation. Lokinyi stopped poaching and joined a grassroots squad of rangers - essentially a conservation militia - to protect the wildlife he once slaughtered.
Now he gets up at dawn, slurps a cup of sugary tea, tightens his combat boots and marches off with other villagers, some of whom had never picked up a gun before, to fight poachers. From Tanzania to Cameroon, tens of thousands of elephants are poached each year, more than at any time in decades, because of Asia's growing demand for ivory.
Scientists say at this rate African elephants could soon go the way of the wild American bison.
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But in this stretch of northern Kenya destitute villagers have seized upon an unconventional solution that, if replicated elsewhere, could be the key to saving thousands of elephants across the continent, conservationists say.
In a growing number of communities people are banding together, grabbing shotguns and assault rifles and risking their lives to confront heavily armed poaching gangs.
It is not unusual for a visitor to pay $US700 ($670) a night to sleep in a tent and absorb the sights, sounds and musky smells of big game. Much of the money is contractually bound to go directly to impoverished local villages, which use it for everything from buying water pumps to sending their children to college.
Surprisingly, many jobs in the safari industry can pay as much as poaching.
Though the ivory trade may seem lucrative, it is often like the Somali pirate business model, with the entry-level hijacker getting just a minuscule cut of the million-dollar rewards. While 500 grams of ivory can fetch $US1000 on the streets of Beijing, Lokinyi, despite his long poaching career, was broke.
Villagers are also turning against poachers because the illegal wildlife trade fuels crime, corruption, instability and fighting between communities.
''This isn't just about animals,'' said Paul Elkan, a director at the Wildlife Conservation Society, who is trying to set up community ranger squads in South Sudan modelled on the Kenyan template. ''It's about security, conflict reconciliation, even nation building.''
The US government is throwing its weight behind such community conservation efforts, contributing more than $US4 million to Kenya. But there are obvious risks.
In Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other African countries home-grown militias initially mustered to protect communities have often turned into predators themselves.
''It's pretty hopeless to stop elephant poaching in Africa unless you get local buy-in,'' said Iain Douglas-Hamilton, who runs Save the Elephants.
''But implementing this is a different matter. If you don't do it carefully, you'll have people killing each other.''
Lokinyi and the other scouts said they had killed several poachers and had the pictures to prove it. They were unconcerned about taking a human life to protect an elephant's.
It is difficult to measure the success of the community ranger programs, but Kenya's poaching levels have declined drastically from the slaughter days of the 1970s and '80s, when thousands of elephants were poached each year.
This year, Kenyan authorities said, about 350 elephants have been poached, triple the number in 2008 - but those are just the confirmed kills, and many carcasses are never discovered.
These days Lokinyi sports his crisp camouflage fatigues with pride and patrols the same scratchy kilometres of thorn bush he used to stalk, now using his bushcraft to predict where the poachers will strike next. He went through a redemption ritual earlier in the year during which goats were slaughtered and fat smeared over his body. He moved into a new home and even acquired new ceremonial parents, elders who took him in. ''I've done many bad things,'' Lokinyi said.
WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama says 50 US troops have been deployed to the African country of Chad to help evacuate US citizens and embassy personnel from the neighbouring Central African Republic's capital of Bangui in the face of rebel advances toward the city.
Obama informed congressional leaders of Thursday's deployment in a letter yesterday citing a "deteriorating security situation" in the Central African Republic.
The evacuation of the US diplomats comes in the wake of criticism of the Obama administration's handling of diplomatic security at its consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The ambassador and three other Americans were killed in a September 11 attack.
In the Central African Republic, rebels have seized at least 10 northern towns. Yesterday, they continued their advance, seizing the city of Sibut, 183 kilometres from Bangui.
The Gillmor Gang ? Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor ? toast marshmallows around the social campfire as the PostApocalypse prepares to ring in a new year. It?s all tweetness and light as @scobleizer sketches out the differences between just plain friends, close friends, and notification friends in the latest Facebook interface.
For those of us who are too busy avoiding Downton Abbey spoilers unsuccessfully, the business of tweaking filters has gotten way too complicated for amateurs. Our best hope remains the blending of email, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and the rest into one notification stream multiplexed across our various devices. And in the end, the filter you make is equal to the love you take.
@stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @kevinmarks, @kteare
Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
Steve Gillmor is a technology commentator, editor, and producer in the enterprise technology space. He is Head of Technical Media Strategy at salesforce.com and a TechCrunch contributing editor. Gillmor previously worked with leading musical artists including Paul Butterfield, David Sanborn, and members of The Band after an early career as a record producer and filmmaker with Columbia Records? Firesign Theatre. As personal computers emerged in video and music production tools, Gillmor started contributing to various publications, most notably Byte Magazine,...
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Robert Scoble is an American blogger, technical evangelist, and author. He is best known for his popular blog, Scobleizer, which came to prominence during his tenure as a technical evangelist at Microsoft. Scoble joined Microsoft in 2003, and although he often promoted Microsoft products like Tablet PCs and Windows Vista, he also frequently criticized his own employer and praised its competitors like Apple and Google. Scoble is the author of Naked Conversations, a book on how blogs are changing...
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Keith Teare is the CEO and founder of just.me Inc and a Founder at the Palo Alto incubator, Archimedes Labs. Teare has a track record as a serial entrepreneur with big ideas and has achieved significant returns for investors. History (a) The EasyNet Group: Founded in 1994 as one of the first ISP?s in Europe, Teare was CTO and co-founder. It went public on the AIM exchange in London in 1996 and was trading at a valuation of more than $1...
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Kevin Marks is a software engineer. Kevin served as an evangelist for OpenSocial and as a software engineer at Google. In June 2009 he announced his resignation. From September 2003 to January 2007 he was Principal Engineer at Technorati responsible for the spiders that make sense of the web and track millions of blogs daily. He has been inventing and innovating for over 17 years in emerging technologies where people, media and computers meet. Before joining Technorati,...
LIBERAL, Kansas (Reuters) - Real estate agent Mark Faulkner recalls a day in early November when he was putting up a sign near Ulysses, Kansas, in 60-miles-per-hour winds that blew up blinding dust clouds.
"There were places you could not see, it was blowing so hard," Faulkner said.
Residents of the Great Plains over the last year or so have experienced storms reminiscent of the 1930s Dust Bowl. Experts say the new storms have been brought on by a combination of historic drought, a dwindling Ogallala Aquifer underground water supply, climate change and government farm programs.
Nearly 62 percent of the United States was gripped by drought, as of December 25, and "exceptional" drought enveloped parts of Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
There is no relief in sight for the Great Plains at least through the winter, according to Drought Monitor forecasts, which could portend more dust clouds.
A wave of dust storms during the 1930s crippled agriculture over a vast area of the Great Plains and led to an exodus of people, many to California, dramatized in John Steinbeck's novel "The Grapes of Wrath."
While few people believe it could get that bad again, the new storms have some experts worried that similar conditions - if not the catastrophic environmental disaster of the 1930s - are returning to parts of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas and Colorado.
"I hope we don't talk ourselves into complacency with easy assumptions that a Dust Bowl could never happen again," said Craig Cox, agriculture director for the Environmental Working Group, a national conservation group that supports converting more tilled soil to grassland. "Instead, we should do what it takes to make sure it doesn't happen again."
Satellite images on December 19 showed a dust storm stretching over an area of 150 miles from extreme southwestern Oklahoma across the Panhandle of Texas around Lubbock to extreme eastern New Mexico, said Jody James, National Weather Service meteorologist in Lubbock. Visibility was reduced to half a mile in places, stoked by high winds, he said. At least one person was killed and more than a dozen injured in car crashes.
"I definitely think these dust storms will become more common until we get more measurable precipitation," James said.
'DIRTY 30S'
The Great Plains is a flat, semi-arid, area with few trees, where vast herds of buffalo once thrived on native grasses. Settlers plowed up most of the grassland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to create the wheat-growing breadbasket of the United States, encouraged by high commodity prices and free "homestead" land from the government.
The era known as the "Dirty 30s" - chronicled by Ken Burns in a Public Broadcasting Service documentary that aired in November - was when a 1930s drought gripped the Great Plains and winds carried away exposed soil in massive dust clouds.
Bill Fitzgerald, 87, a farmer near Sublette, Kansas, remembers "Black Sunday" on April 14, 1935, when a clear, sunny day in southwest Kansas turned black as night by mid afternoon because of a massive cloud of dust that swept from Nebraska to the Texas panhandle.
"My older brother and I were in my dad's 1927 or '28 Chevy truck a mile north and a mile west of the house and we saw it rolling in," Fitzgerald said. "It was about 10 p.m. when it cleared enough for us to go home."
Farming practices have vastly improved since the 1930s. Farmers now leave plant remnants on the top of the soil and less soil is exposed, to preserve moisture and prevent erosion.
Irrigation beginning in the 1940s from the Ogallala aquifer, a huge network of water under the Great Plains, also made land less vulnerable to dust storms.
DRYING UP
But the Ogallala aquifer is drying up after years of drawing out more water than was replenished.
Many farmers have had to drill deeper wells to find water. Others are giving up on irrigation altogether, which means they can no longer grow crops of high-yielding and lucrative corn. They will instead grow wheat, cotton or grain sorghum on dry land, which depends completely on natural precipitation in an area that typically gets 20 inches of rain a year or less.
Near Sublette, Kansas, farmer Gail Wright said he would probably give up irrigating two square miles of his land and would plant wheat and grain sorghum instead of corn because of the diminishing aquifer. Drilling deeper wells would cost $120,000 each, Wright said.
"When we drilled those wells in the 1960s and 70s, we were doing 1,500 or 1,600 gallons per minute," said Wright. "Now, they are down to anywhere from 400 to 600 gallons per minute. We probably pumped out 200 feet of water."
Another farmer in Sublette, 79-year-old Lawrence Withers, whose family farms land his grandfather settled in 1887, is resigned to a future without irrigation.
"We have pumped 170 feet off the aquifer, that's gone. There's just a little tick of water at the bottom," he said.
The Ogallala supplies water to 176,000 square miles (456,000 square km) of land in parts of eight states from the Texas panhandle to southern South Dakota. That amounts to about 27 percent of all irrigated land in the nation, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The volume of water in the aquifer stood at about 2.9 billion acre feet in 2009, a decline of about 9 percent since 1950, according to the Geological Survey. About two-and-a-half times as much water was drawn out in the 14 years ended 2009 as during the prior 15-year period, data shows.
The water may run out in 25 years or less in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and southwest Kansas, although in other areas it has 50 to 200 years left, according to the Geological Survey.
Rationing has been imposed on irrigation in the region but it may be too little too late.
"It's a situation where across the Plains the demand far exceeds the annual recharge," said Mark Rude, executive director of the Southwest Kansas Groundwater Management District.
RECORD DROUGHT
The worst drought in decades has exacerbated the situation. The semi-arid area around Lubbock, which typically gets about 19 inches of rain a year, received less than 6 inches in 2011, the lowest ever recorded. This year was better but still far below normal at 12.5 inches, meteorologist James said.
Climate change is also having an impact on the region, said atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe, co-director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.
"It is definitely hotter in the summer and drier in the summer because of climate change," she said.
The average annual temperature in Lubbock has increased by one full degree over the last decade, according to National Weather Service data, and the average amount of rainfall has fallen during summer months by about .50 inch over the decade.
Some say government policies are making things worse.
Federal government subsidized crop insurance pays farmers whether they produce a crop or not, encouraging farmers to plant even in a drought year.
Another subsidized U.S. government program that pays farmers to take sensitive marginal land out of crop production and put it into grassland is gradually shrinking.
In a possible case of history repeating itself, high commodity prices are encouraging farmers to break up the land and plant crops when the 10-year conservation contracts with the government expire, said environmentalist Cox. This is similar to what happened in the 1920s when vast areas of grassland were plowed up.
The government also has imposed restrictions on how much land can go into conservation reserves to save money at a time of massive U.S. budget deficits, he said.
The amount of land in conservation reserves has declined by more than 2.3 million acres over the last five years in five states of the Great Plains - Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico, according to U.S. Agriculture Department data.
If most of that land is plowed up for crops it could lead to more dust storms in the future.
"I think you are probably going to see increased erosion if that happens," said Richard Zartman, Chairman of the Plant and Soil Science Department at Texas Tech, adding that it was unlikely to get as bad as the Dust Bowl days.
(Additional reporting by Greg McCune and Christine Stebbins; Editing by Claudia Parsons)
Challenge : A small Indian company was struggling with this business and was not clear on the path forward direction and actions. They hired us to frame a business plan and assist them in executing to turnaround the business.
?Action Plan : An initial assessment on Market ( size & trend), Channel (distribution & end customers), Competition ( price, product, presence), Suppliers ( materials, machines, labor), Government ( regulations) was done in association with the client. Based on the outcome from this research and analysis, the business proposal was done- which included giving them :
?a projection over next 5 years for uPVC market in the relevant geography,
this showed some healthy trends due to high rate of construction and
penetration of uPVC in traditional windows market replacing other traditional products like Al, Wood
coming up of major builders in the region meant higher usage of these windows and a more discerning customer, moving up from price consideration alone
the market survey revealed that while the market was competitive there was a space for one local brand to emerge as the leader provided they could differentiate themselves analysis on market attractiveness and competitiveness was done to figure out the right sales & marketing strategy.
Organization SWOT revealed certain internal processes and systems to be realigned as per market needs.
Results
The discussions brought a lot of insight for the client in many ways as they had a better grip of market size and directions (as a result of quantification of opportunity) . This helped them align to making changes in line with market needs. Based on these inputs a business plan was prepared for next 5 years, which clearly identified the revenue, profitability and cash flows potential from the business. The market opportunity plan have been drawn up and getting aligned with all stakeholders. This will be followed with the 3 year business plan and execution.
MANKATO, Minn. (AP) ? Minnesota State University, Mankato, head football coach Todd Hoffner, who was cleared of child pornography charges last month that stemmed from videos found on his cellphone of his naked children clowning around after a bath, is suing to keep the police investigative reports sealed.
Hoffner has been taken off administrative leave, but he hasn't been reinstated as head coach and is facing a 20-day, unpaid school suspension in January for unspecified reasons. He sued the state and Blue Earth County earlier this month in an effort to keep the police reports private, after a Twin Cities television station asked to see them. The lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order that would keep anyone from disseminating the investigative file.
District Court Judge Krista Jass ruled last week that the reports will remain private until they can be reviewed, the Mankato Free Press reported (http://bit.ly/ZFYA0c ),
Jass ordered prosecutors to gather all investigative reports and turn them over to Hoffner's attorney, Jim Fleming. He'll be allowed to file a sealed list of information that he believes should be kept from the public. After receiving Fleming's list, Jass will decide what should remain sealed.
Fleming said in a court affidavit that releasing the information would harm Hoffner.
"Plaintiff Mr. Hoffner has an ongoing investigation relative to his employment as a head football coach at (MSU)," Fleming's affidavit said. "Release of private non-public data could irreparably harm (Hoffner) with respect to that investigation that a civil lawsuit for damages would not fully compensate."
Hoffner was charged with child porn possession in August after school officials found videos of his naked children on his work-issued cellphone, which he had turned in to be repaired. Jass dismissed the criminal charges last month after concluding that the short videos of his children acting silly after a bath were not child porn and showed nothing illegal.
Last week, the university said it was suspending Hoffner without pay for 20 days starting Jan. 7. In its announcement, the university didn't say why it was suspending Hoffner, and school officials have declined to specify the reason.
An attorney for the union representing Hoffner has said the suspension is being challenged. The university also said last week it is still investigating a complaint against Hoffner.
Fleming told the newspaper that he wants the information sealed to protect Hoffner's privacy. Investigators went through computer files and took pictures of items in his house.
"We're not hiding anything from anybody," Fleming said.
___
Information from: The Free Press, http://www.mankatofreepress.com
LONDON (AP) ? British scientists have called off the hunt for exotic life in an ice-bound Antarctic lake after their mission was hit by a technical hitch.
Researchers with the British Antarctic Survey had hoped to drill into Lake Ellsworth, which they believe has been frozen over for hundreds of thousands of years, in the hope of finding microbial life forms that might provide new insight into the evolution of life on Earth. They also hoped the lake floor's sediments might yield a new record of the Earth's climate.
But the project had to be called off following difficulties with drilling. A statement posted to the survey's website on Thursday said the operation had been canceled, and it was not clear if or when the scientists would try again.
FILE - In this Dec. 11, 2012, file photo, Brooklyn Nets guard Deron Williams (8) and head coach Avery Johnson chat during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the New York Knicks at the Barclays Center in New York. Johnson was fired on Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012, general manager Billy King announced. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens, File)
FILE - In this Dec. 11, 2012, file photo, Brooklyn Nets guard Deron Williams (8) and head coach Avery Johnson chat during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the New York Knicks at the Barclays Center in New York. Johnson was fired on Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012, general manager Billy King announced. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens, File)
FILE - In this Dec. 15, 2012, file photo, Brooklyn Nets head coach Avery Johnson, left, reacts to a call during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Chicago Bulls in Chicago. Johnson was fired on Thursday, Dec. 27, 2012, general manager Billy King announced. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
Brooklyn Nets head coach Avery Johnson reacts to a call during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Milwaukee Bucks, Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2012, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Coach of the month in November, out of a job by New Year's.
The Brooklyn Nets have elevated expectations this season, and a .500 record wasn't good enough. Coach Avery Johnson was fired Thursday, his team having lost 10 of 13 games after a strong start to its first season in Brooklyn.
"We don't have the same fire now than we did when we were 11-4," general manager Billy King said at a news conference in East Rutherford, N.J. "I tried to talk to Avery about it and we just can't figure it out. The same pattern kept on happening."
Assistant P.J. Carlesimo will coach the Nets on an interim basis, starting Friday night with a home game against Charlotte. King said the Nets might reach out to other candidates, but for now the job was Carlesimo's. The GM wouldn't comment on a report that the team planned to get in touch with former Lakers coach Phil Jackson.
King said the decision to dismiss Johnson was made by ownership after a phone discussion Thursday morning. Owner Mikhail Prokhorov had expressed faith in Johnson before the season.
"With the direction we were going we felt we had to make a change," King said.
Johnson was in the final year of a three-year, $12 million contract.
"It's a really disappointing day for me and my family. It's my wife's birthday. It's not a great birthday gift," Johnson said. "I didn't see this coming. But this is ownership's decision. It's part of the business. Fair or unfair, it's time for a new voice and hopefully they'll get back on track."
The Nets have fallen well behind the first-place New York Knicks, the team they so badly want to compete with in their new home. But after beating the Knicks in their first meeting Nov. 26, probably the high point of Johnson's tenure, the Nets went 5-10 and frustrations have been mounting.
"Our goal is to get to the conference finals," King said. "We started out good and then we stumbled. We have to get back to playing winning basketball. It's the entire team. It's not like golf, where Tiger Woods can blame the caddie. It takes five guys on the court and they're all struggling. We have to figure out the ways to get back to winning. I don't know what happened. I'm not sure. But unfortunately, it did happen."
The Nets were embarrassed by Boston on national TV on Christmas, then were routed by Milwaukee 108-93 on Wednesday night for their fifth loss in six games.
Star guard Deron Williams recently complained about Johnson's offense, and Nets CEO Brett Yormark took to Twitter after the loss to Celtics to voice his displeasure with the performance.
King said the change was not made because Williams was unhappy, and he added the point guard himself has to play better.
Johnson also stood by Williams.
"From Day One, I always had a really good relationship with him. I don't think it's fair for anyone to hang this on Deron," Johnson said. "We were just going through a bad streak, a bad spell. It's not time for me to be down on one player. That would be the easy way."
Brooklyn started the season 11-4, winning five in a row to end November, when Johnson was Eastern Conference coach of the month. But he couldn't do anything to stop this slump, one the Nets never anticipated after a $350 million summer spending spree they believed would take them toward the top of their conference.
Johnson has been the Nets' coach for a little more than two seasons. He went 60-116 with the Nets, who moved from New Jersey to Brooklyn to start the season. Johnson coached the Dallas Mavericks to a spot in the NBA Finals in 2006.
"You don't always get a fair shake as a coach," Johnson said. "I'm not the owner. If I were the owner, I wouldn't have fired myself today. But life is not always necessary fair. It's a business and in this business, the coach always gets blamed."
This is the NBA's second coaching change this season following the dismissal of Mike Brown by the Los Angeles Lakers.
Johnson arrived in New Jersey with a 194-70 record, a .735 winning percentage that was the highest in NBA history, but had little chance of success in his first two seasons while the Nets focused all their planning on the move to Brooklyn.
They looked to make a splash this summer when they re-signed Williams and fellow starters Gerald Wallace, Brook Lopez and Kris Humphries, traded for Atlanta All-Star Joe Johnson, and added veteran depth with players such as Reggie Evans, C.J. Watson and Andray Blatche.
Johnson didn't have a contract beyond this season but seemed to have the confidence of Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire who before the season said he had faith in "the Avery defense system."
Some thought the Nets would finish as high as second in the East behind defending champion Miami, and the predictions seemed warranted when the Nets started quickly amid much fanfare. But all the good publicity faded in recent weeks once the losing started.
Williams, who has struggled this season, stirred the waters when he expressed his preference for the offense he ran under Jerry Sloan in Utah before a loss to the Jazz. Williams and Johnson, nicknamed "Brooklyn's Backcourt" and expected to be one of the best in the NBA, have shot poorly and rarely meshed.
The Nets were embarrassed near the end of their 93-76 loss to Boston, when fans exited early amid a chant of "Let's go Celtics!"
"Nets fans deserved better," Yormark tweeted after the game. "The entire organization needs to work harder to find a solution. We will get there."
Not under Johnson, though.
The Nets should be able to entice a big-name coach with Prokhorov's billions and the chance to play in a major market at Barclays Center, the $1 billion arena that has drawn praise in the city and from visiting teams.
Carlesimo has previous NBA head coaching experience in Portland, Golden State and Seattle/Oklahoma City. He has a career coaching record of 204-296 in the regular season and 3-9 in the playoffs.
"Right now, P.J. is our coach and I told him to coach the team like he'll be here for the next 10 years," King said.
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AP Sports Writer Tom Canavan in East Rutherford and AP freelancer Jim Hague contributed to this report.
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) ? A massive explosion ripped through a warehouse full of fireworks in Nigeria's largest city on Wednesday, sparking a fire that threatened surrounding city blocks and sending a plume of thick smoke high into the sky.
The blast happened around 9 a.m. in the Jankara area of Lagos Island, a neighborhood of narrow streets and tall cement buildings holding shops and housing people sometimes a dozen to a room in the megacity of Lagos. The force of the explosion echoed miles away and shook windows.
It was immediately unclear if anyone was inside of the building at the time of the explosion. An Associated Press journalist saw members of the Nigerian Red Cross treating people with minor cuts and bruises a few blocks from the site. Dr. Femi Oke-Osanyintolu, Lagos state's emergency manager, told the AP he wasn't immediately aware of any casualties.
"While security agencies (will) investigate and determine the real cause of the explosion and fire outbreaks, casualty figures are yet to be determined," said Yushau Shuaib, a spokesman for Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency. "Some residents who were injured while attempting to assist in putting off the fire have been taken to hospital for treatment."
Rubble-strewn streets surrounding the burning building were covered in the spent shells of fireworks. Several police officers and security officials found large, mortar-like fireworks in the building, the kind wired to explode as part of a large arrangement put on by professionals.
Nigerians commonly shoot off fireworks and firecrackers to mark Christmas and the New Year, with hawkers roaming in traffic with fistfuls of the small explosives to sell to passing drivers. Local government officials have tried to ban fireworks this year, in part due to safety and in part due to the fear they can cause in a nation where a radical Islamist sect is carrying out shootings and car bombings. Nevertheless fireworks have exploded across the country in recent days to mark the holiday season.
Immediately after the blast Wednesday, thousands quickly filled the streets surrounding the still-burning buildings. Others ran away as fireworks continued to explode inside. A half-dozen firefighters arrived at the scene with two trucks and locals also ran fire hoses from the trucks to nearby buildings to try and beat back the flames.
The trucks quickly ran out of water. One man even scooped up water from a puddle with a bowl in an attempt to fight the blaze. One firefighter briefly fought with a young man who took his firefighting helmet off his head and ran away into the swarming crowd. The firefighter shrugged and went back to his truck as the building continued to burn.
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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .
[unable to retrieve full-text content]8 to 10 portions of water each day might seem like a great deal but our physiques actually need much water to remain healthy inside and outside. ... Health and Fitness Tips | Weight Loss | Skin Care | Hair Care | Anti Aging ...
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Between 40 and 50 percent of Americans pledge to make New Year?s resolutions each year, and health-related goals consistently rank among the most popular. People make these resolutions to look or feel better in the coming year, but there are also significant long-term pain prevention benefits.
You might be surprised to learn that maintaining a proper weight and basic level of fitness is crucial to protect your spine and major joints from excessive strain, wear and tear.? In fact, people who are overweight are at greater risk for low back pain, sleep disorders, spinal disc pain and joint pain, due to added weight-related strain on the spine and joints such as the knees, hips and ankles. It makes sense if you think about it; more weight means more pressure and strain that can cause pain.?
?Losing weight is the best way to decrease obesity-related pain, but there are certainly other things to consider,? said Satvinder Dhesi, MD, a physician with Advanced Pain Management in Milwaukee. ?The ability to lose weight requires individuals to be both healthy and active. There are many elements that can help people reduce stress and become more active, including: physical therapy, interventional pain procedures, supportive shoes, walking assistance devices and even investing in a supportive mattress.?
Along with decreasing pain or one?s risk for long-term chronic pain, other weight loss benefits include:
By losing 5-10 percent of body weight, blood pressure is lowered and LDL (?bad?) cholesterol is reduced.
Lowering body weight can improve sleep apnea and other sleep problems.
90 percent of all diabetes, 80 percent of heart disease and 60 percent of cancers are preventable with healthier lifestyles and normal body weight.
?We encourage everyone to choose healthier eating and exercise habits in the New Year,? said Dr. Dhesi. ?Weight loss is really the first step in an overall healthier life.?
So as you think about your New Year?s Resolutions this year, consider the pain reducing benefits of losing weight.
What are your resoultions for 2013? Tell us your thoughts!
In this Saturday, Dec. 22, 2012 photo, Judy Neiman holds a photo of her daugher, Sydnee, in front of her 2006 Cadillac Escalade at her home in West Richland, Wash. Sydnee died in late 2011 after Neiman accidentally backed over her with the SUV. Although there is a law in place that calls for new manufacturing requirements to improve the visibility behind passenger vehicles, the standards have yet to be mandated because of delays by the U.S. Department of Transportation. (AP Photo/Kai-Huei Yau)
In this Saturday, Dec. 22, 2012 photo, Judy Neiman holds a photo of her daugher, Sydnee, in front of her 2006 Cadillac Escalade at her home in West Richland, Wash. Sydnee died in late 2011 after Neiman accidentally backed over her with the SUV. Although there is a law in place that calls for new manufacturing requirements to improve the visibility behind passenger vehicles, the standards have yet to be mandated because of delays by the U.S. Department of Transportation. (AP Photo/Kai-Huei Yau)
In this Saturday, Dec. 22, 2012 photo, Paul and Judy Neiman hold a photo of their daughter, Sydnee, in her bedroom at their home in West Richland, Wash. Sydnee died in late 2011 after Judy accidentally backed over her with her SUV. Although there is a law in place that calls for new manufacturing requirements to improve the visibility behind passenger vehicles, the standards have yet to be mandated because of delays by the U.S. Department of Transportation. (AP Photo/Kai-Huei Yau)
In this Saturday, Dec. 22, 2012 photo, Judy Neiman holds a photo of her daugher, Sydnee, in front of her 2006 Cadillac Escalade at her home in West Richland, Wash. Sydnee died in late 2011 after Neiman accidentally backed over her with the SUV. Although there is a law in place that calls for new manufacturing requirements to improve the visibility behind passenger vehicles, the standards have yet to be mandated because of delays by the U.S. Department of Transportation. (AP Photo/Kai-Huei Yau)
FILE - In this Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2011 file photo, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood speaks about the Toyota recalls at the Transportation Department in Washington. A 2008 law calls for new manufacturing requirements to improve the visibility behind passenger vehicles to help prevent fatal backing crashes, which the government estimates kill some 228 people every year _ 110 of them children age 10 and under - and injures another 17,000. But almost five years later, the standards have yet to be mandated because of delays by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which faced a Feb. 28, 2011, deadline to issue the new guidelines for car manufacturers. LaHood has pushed back that deadline three times - promising in February that the rules would be issued by year?s end. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
In this Saturday, Dec. 22, 2012 photo, Judy and Paul Neiman pose for a photo as she holds a photo of their daughter, Sydnee, next to a garden dedicated to her in West Richland, Wash. Sydnee died in late 2011 after Judy accidentally backed over her with her SUV. Although there is a law in place that calls for new manufacturing requirements to improve the visibility behind passenger vehicles, the standards have yet to be mandated because of delays by the U.S. Department of Transportation. (AP Photo/Kai-Huei Yau)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? In the private hell of a mother's grief, the sounds come back to Judy Neiman. The SUV door slamming. The slight bump as she backed up in the bank parking lot. The emergency room doctor's sobs as he said her 9-year-old daughter Sydnee, who previously had survived four open heart surgeries, would not make it this time.
Her own cries of: How could I have missed seeing her?
The 53-year-old woman has sentenced herself to go on living in the awful stillness of her West Richland, Wash., home, where she makes a plea for what she wants since she can't have Sydnee back: More steps taken by the government and automakers to help prevent parents from accidentally killing their children, as she did a year ago this month.
"They have to do something, because I've read about it happening to other people. I read about it and I said, 'I would die if it happens to me,'" Neiman says. "Then it did happen to me."
There is, in fact, a law in place that calls for new manufacturing requirements to improve the visibility behind passenger vehicles to help prevent such fatal backing crashes, which the government estimates kill some 228 people every year ? 110 of them children age 10 and under ? and injures another 17,000.
Congress passed the measure with strong bipartisan backing, and Republican President George W. Bush signed it in 2008.
But almost five years later, the standards have yet to be mandated because of delays by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which faced a Feb. 28, 2011, deadline to issue the new guidelines for car manufacturers. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has pushed back that deadline three times ? promising in February that the rules would be issued by year's end.
With still no action, safety advocates and anguished parents such as Neiman are asking: What's taking so long to remedy a problem recognized by government regulators and automakers for decades now?
"In a way, it's a death sentence, and for no good reason," said former Public Citizen president Joan Claybrook, who once directed the federal agency responsible for developing the rules.
The proposed regulations call for expanding the field of view for cars, vans, SUVs and pickup trucks so that drivers can see directly behind their vehicles when in reverse ? requiring, in most cases, rearview cameras and video displays as standard equipment.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, charged with completing the new standards, declined requests to discuss the delays. Spokeswoman Karen Aldana said the agency would not comment while the rulemaking process was ongoing but was on track to meet LaHood's latest cutoff date. In a letter to lawmakers in February, LaHood said his agency needed more time for "research and data analysis" to "ensure that the final rule is appropriate and the underlying analysis is robust."
Others insist the issue is money, and reluctance to put any additional financial burdens on an industry crippled by the economic crisis. Development of the new safety standards came even as the Obama administration was pumping billions of dollars into the industry as part of its bailout package.
"They don't want to look at anything that will cost more money for the automobile industry," said Packy Campbell, a former Republican state lawmaker from New Hampshire who lobbied for the law.
NHTSA has estimated that making rear cameras standard on every car would add $58 to $88 to the price of vehicles already equipped with dashboard display screens and $159 to $203 for those without them.
The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a lobbying group that represents automakers, puts the total cost to the industry at about $2 billion a year. Last December, the group met with White House budget officials to propose a less expensive alternative: reserving cameras for vehicles with extra-large blind zones and outfitting the rest with curved, wide-angle exterior mirrors.
The alliance declined comment, but earlier this year the group's vice president, Gloria Bergquist, told The Associated Press that it urged the government to explore more options as a way to reduce the costs passed on to consumers.
"There are a variety of tools that could be used," she said, adding that automakers also were concerned that the cumulative effect of federal safety regulations is driving up the average price of a new car, now about $25,000.
Industry analysts also question whether cameras are needed on smaller, entry-level class cars with better rearview visibility.
"It may just be a couple hundred dollars, but it can grow pretty significantly if you are talking about ... an inexpensive car that was not originally conceived to have all these electronics and was only going to have a simple car stereo," said Roger Lanctot, an automotive technology specialist.
Before the delays, all new passenger vehicles were to carry cameras and video displays by September 2014. The industry has now asked for two more years after the final rules are published to reach full compliance.
Despite its resistance, the industry on its own has been installing rearview cameras, a feature first popularized two decades ago in Japan and standard on nearly 70 percent of new cars produced there this year. In the United States, 44 percent of 2012 models came with rear cameras standard, and 27 percent had them as options, according to the automotive research firm Edmunds.
Nine in 10 new cars had console screens available, according to market research firm iSuppli, which would put the price of adding a camera on the low end of the NHTSA's estimates.
These backing crashes are hardly a new phenomenon. Emergency room doctors, the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the NHTSA have produced dozens of papers on the problem since the 1980s.
Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, started looking into the issue in the 1990s after noticing toddlers showing up in hospital databases of injured child pedestrians. They found that many of those children had been killed or hurt by vehicles backing out of home driveways.
In 1993, the NHTSA sponsored several studies that noted the disproportionate effect of backup accidents on child victims. One report explored sensors and cameras as possible solutions, noting the accidents "involve slow closing speeds and, thus, may be preventable." Still another 1993 report estimated that 100 to 200 pedestrians are killed each year from backing crashes, most of them children.
Three years later, Dee Norton, a reporter at The Seattle Times, petitioned the NHTSA to require improved mirrors on smaller commercial trucks and vans after his 3-year-old grandson was killed by a diaper delivery truck that backed over him.
The NHTSA started looking into technology as a solution, but in one proposal ? issued in November 2000 ? it noted that sensors, cameras and monitors were still expensive and promised to later reevaluate the feasibility of such emerging technologies.
Adding to the scrutiny were studies by Consumer Reports magazine, which started measuring "blind zones" to determine how far away a toddler-sized traffic cone had to be before a driver looking though the rear window could see it. The research found an overall trend of worsening rear visibility ? due in part to designs favoring small windows and high trunk lines, said Tom Mutchler, the magazine's automotive engineer.
"Cameras are basically the only technology that is going to let you see something right behind the bumper," he said.
With a growing body of research, better statistics and inaction by regulators, advocates such as Janette Fennell, president of a safety group called Kids and Cars, and Sally Greenberg, then with Consumers Union, turned to Congress for a solution.
In 2003, U.S. Rep. Peter King, R-New York, introduced the Cameron Gulbransen Kids and Cars Safety Act, named for a 2-year-old Long Island boy whose pediatrician father backed over him in their driveway. Five years later, it finally became law.
While no one doubts that cameras could help reduce deaths, they aren't regarded as a perfect solution either.
One recent study by a researcher at Oregon State University found that only one in five drivers used a rearview camera when it was available, but 88 percent of those who did avoided striking a child-sized decoy.
In its proposed rule, the NHTSA estimated that rearview video systems could substantially reduce fatal backing crashes ? by at least 95 a year ? and result in at least 7,000 fewer injuries.
Judy Neiman's 2006 Cadillac Escalade didn't have any cameras installed. They weren't added as an optional package until the following model year. Instead, her vehicle was equipped with a "rear parking assist system" ? bumper sensors, an alarm and lights that are supposed to go off within five feet of objects or people.
Neither Neiman nor the 10-year-old neighbor boy who had accompanied her and her daughter to the bank on Dec. 8, 2011, would recall hearing any alert, according to a police report.
Sydnee was carrying her purple plastic piggy bank and account book, so she could deposit $5 from her weekly allowance. After the transaction, Neiman slid behind the wheel and waited for the children. She heard the door slam, then saw the boy sitting on the right side of the back seat as she put the car into reverse.
She figured Sydnee was seated behind the driver's seat. Instead, the boy had gotten in first, telling Sydnee to go around and get in from the left side. He would later tell a police investigator that the girl had dropped her piggy bank on her way around the SUV.
Even if she were upright, at 4-feet-3-inches tall, Sydnee would have been practically invisible through the rear window, the bottom edge of which was a few inches taller than she was.
As the first anniversary of her daughter's death passed, Neiman hoped that sharing her story might spare other parents from enduring the pain she feels every day.
She tortures herself by replaying a conversation she had with Sydnee the summer before she died. Her daughter always had taken her heart condition, a congenital defect, in stride. She never complained or showed fear, despite her many surgeries.
Then one night Sydnee started crying, and she wouldn't tell her mother what was troubling her until the next morning.
"She said, 'I don't want to die, Mom,' and when she died, that's all I could think about. She didn't want to die," Neiman says. "She survived four open heart surgeries. If God had taken her at that time, I could accept it. But who could take her with her being hit by my car? And my hitting her?"
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Associated Press writer Joan Lowy in Washington, D.C., contributed to this story.
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Between 40 and 50 percent of Americans pledge to make New Year?s resolutions each year, and health-related goals consistently rank among the most popular. People make these resolutions to look or feel better in the coming year, but there are also significant long-term pain prevention benefits.