Sequester storm gathers over D.C. economy

John W. Schoen , NBC News ? ? ? 6 hrs.

Let the sequester begin.

President Barack Obama on Friday signed an order that starts putting into place federal spending cuts that could begin forcing layoffs of federal workers. Obama signed his directive, entitled "Sequestration Order for Fiscal Year 2013," after he and congressional leaders failed to come up with an alternative budget plan.

The nation's capitol and nearby Virginia and Maryland will likely feel the worst of the impact. States heavily-reliant on federal spending - as far away as New Mexico - are also in for some rough weather.

With half of the roughly $85 billion in cuts targeting the Pentagon, the impact will be heavily concentrated in D.C., Virginia and Maryland, where defense spending accounted for about 10 percent of the three states? combined economies in 2010, according to a report last month from Wells Fargo economists Mark Vitner and Michael Brown.

?Cuts in nondefense outlays would likely trigger significant furloughs, layoffs at civilian contractors and generally less business for supporting services, including law firms, caterers, airlines and hotels,? the report said.

Related story: As meeting yields no breakthrough, Obama blames 'dumb' cuts on GOP

The law mandating spending cuts gives federal agencies until the end of the fiscal year to complete them, but the Defense Department has already notified its 800,000 civilian employees of possible furloughs, and private defense contractors have already begun cutting back.

Virginia, where many defense contractors have set up shop near the federal money spigot, is squarely in the cross-hairs of the impending budget cuts. The state is home to 174,000 federal workers, 19 military facilities (including both the Pentagon and the country?s largest naval base in Norfolk), 90 federal offices, 550 federal government-leased or -owned properties, and 25,000 federal government contractors.

Last month, Republican Gov. Robert McDonnell wrote a letter to President Barack Obama warning that his state stands to lose $4.2 billion in economic output over five years - or 0.6 percent of total state gross domestic product - if the cuts take full effect.

?In the event that you and the Congress take no action and allow sequestration to proceed, we are estimated to lose approximately 82,000 direct jobs at federal agencies and contractors, and an additional 82,000 indirect jobs supported by business and personal spending that will be impacted by the cuts,? McDonnell wrote.

The federal cuts, in turn, have forced the Old Dominion to tighten its own belt; McDonnell?s proposed budget for next year includes $2.3 billion spending cuts, including deep cuts to K-12 education and health and human services

Maryland is also bracing for the coming storm. Democratic Gov. Martin O?Malley unveiled a budget in January that boosts the state?s Rainy Day Fund from 5 percent to 6 percent of the state?s $16 billion general fund. Though Maryland's economy relies about as heavily as Virginia's on federal spending, the state has done a better job battening down the budget hatches with more than $1 billion in reserves to blunt the impact of further federal cutbacks.

The budget pain for the region began two years ago, after the flow of federal dollars to the greater DC economy began drying up. Federal spending in the area - including the northern Virginia and Maryland suburbs - fell by 8.4 percent in the two fiscal years ending last October, according to the George Mason University Center for Regional Analysis.

Since peaking in July 2010, federal employment has declined by 2.3 percent. Despite the cuts, the unemployment rate in D.C. stood at 8.4 percent in December, down from a peak of 10.4 percent at the end of the recession. Virginia's jobless rate was 5.6 percent, down from a post-recession peak of 7.4 percent; Maryland?s was 6.7 percent in December, down from 8.0 percent. The national rate was 7.8 percent in December.

While the regional Washington economy is ground zero for the sequester budget shock, the pain of spending cuts will be felt as far away as Alaska.

The biggest losers of defense dollars, for example, would be California, Texas and Virginia, which each took in more than $30 billion last year, according to the Pew Center on the States.

Some smaller states are also big spending targets. While defense accounted for more than 8 percent of Virginia?s economy in 2011, Pentagon spending made up 6 percent of Mississippi?s economy and 5.5 percent of Connecticut?s, according to the Pew Center.

Hawaii, home to the U.S. Navy?s Pacific Fleet, also could see layoffs and reduced income growth, according to the Wells Fargo economists.

?In addition, Alaska with its Air Force, Army and Naval operations would also be disproportionately impacted from defense cuts,? they said.

The effect would also be concentrated in cities that benefit from heavy defense spending, including Huntsville, Ala., San Diego and St. Louis

The pain could be blunted if Congress eventually breaks the stalemate that produced the painful package with the explicit purpose of forcing compromise on a more rational alternative. Analysts say that ? at about half percent of U.S. GDP - the depth of the cuts need not be so painful. But because Congress mandated that agencies wield the budget axe blindly across all spending, they have no discretion in deciding where to make the cuts.

Once the furloughs begin, Congress can expect the phones to start ringing. Some of the loudest complaints will likely come from large defense companies and other large contractors with operations spread across many states. Those calls from voters are often more effective than conventional lobbying efforts, Neal Dihora, a defense industry analyst at Morningstar, said.

?The whole job loss angle is a whole lot stronger from a company?s perspective,? he said. ?It?s a lot better to rally the employee base than to throw a lot of money in a handful of Congressmen?s pockets.?

State governors have haven?t had much luck lately lobbying for more aid from Washington, which currently provides about one-quarter of state and local revenues, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Since the 2009 federal stimulus package dried up two years ago, states have scrambled to stabilize their budgets which ? unlike the federal government ? have to be balanced every year. The sequester will inflict even more pain.

The 2011 Budget Control Act ? which created the sequester time bomb when enacted in August 2011 - has cut federal funding for a wide range of state and local services, including education, water treatment, law enforcement, and others, to the lowest level in four decades as a share of the economy. If the full impact of the sequester cuts take effect, states will lose another $6 billion in federal funding, according to the CBPP.

Information from Reuters was included in this report.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/economywatch/sequester-storm-gathers-over-d-c-economy-1C8641474

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Car bomb kills over 50 near Damascus ruling party office

BEIRUT (Reuters) - A car bomb killed more than 50 people and wounded 200 in central Damascus on Thursday when it blew up on a busy highway close to ruling Baath Party offices and the Russian Embassy, state media and activists said.

Syrian television showed charred and bloodied bodies strewn across the street after the blast, which it described as a suicide bombing by "terrorists" battling President Bashar al-Assad. It said 53 people were killed.

Central Damascus has been relatively insulated from almost two years of unrest and civil war in which around 70,000 people have been killed across the country, but the bloodshed has shattered suburbs around the capital.

Rebels who control districts to the south and east of Damascus have attacked Assad's power base for nearly a month and struck with devastating bombs over the last year.

The al Qaeda-linked rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra, which claimed responsibility for several of those bombs, says it carried out 17 attacks around Damascus in the first half of February, including at least seven bombings.

Activists said most of the victims of Thursday's attack in the city's Mazraa district were civilians, including children, possibly from a school behind the Baath building.

Opposition activists reported further explosions elsewhere in the city after the explosion which struck shortly before 11 a.m. (0900 GMT).

One resident in the heart of the capital heard three or four projectiles whistling through the sky, followed by explosions. At least one of them landed in a public garden in the Abu Rummaneh district, she said, but no one was hurt.

EMBASSY DAMAGED

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors violence via a network of sources inside Syria, said the Mazraa car bomb was detonated at a checkpoint close to the Baath Party building, located about 200 meters (660 feet) from the Russian embassy.

It said 56 people were killed, of which at least 15 were from Syria's security forces and the rest civilians. Eight other people were killed by a car bomb in the Barzeh district of northeast Damascus, one of several explosions which followed the Mazraa attack.

Russia's Itar-Tass news agency quoted a diplomat as saying the Mazraa blast blew out windows at the Russian Embassy, but no employees were wounded. "The building has really been damaged ... The windows are shattered," the diplomat said.

The vehicle was carrying between 1 and 1.5 metric tons (1.65 tons) of explosives, Damascus Governor Bishr Sabban told Reuters.

A correspondent for Syrian television said he saw seven body bags with corpses at the scene. He counted 17 burnt-out cars and another 40 that were destroyed or badly damaged by the force of the blast, which ripped a crater 1.5 meters deep into the road.

Syrian TV said security forces had detained a would-be suicide bomber with five bombs in his car, one of them weighing 300 kg (440 pounds).

In the southern city of Deraa, where the uprising against Assad erupted in March 2011, warplanes bombed the city's old district for the first time in nearly two years of conflict, killing 18 people, activists said.

A rebel officer in the Tawheed al-Janoub brigade which led a rebel offensive this week in Deraa said there were at least five air strikes on the city on Thursday.

"The (rebel) attacks on several major checkpoints in the Hay al-Saad neighborhood and its declaration as a liberated area have prompted this response," said Abdullah Masalmah, an activist from the city, via Skype.

Fighting has intensified in southern Syria in recent weeks, leading to a sharp increase in refugee flows to neighboring Jordan, according to officials. A Jordanian military source said 4,288 refugees arrived in the last 24 hours alone.

Nayef Hawatmeh, head of the Damascus-based Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was lightly wounded by an explosion in a mosque next to his office, a DFLP official said.

Talal Abu Tharifa told Reuters in Gaza that glass fragments had caused a slight wound to Hawatmeh's hand.

(Additional reporting by Marwan Makdesi in Damascus, Laila Bassam and Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza and Alissa de Carbonnel in Moscow; Editing by Andrew Roche)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/explosion-central-damascus-casualties-reported-092416397.html

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New technology for producing hydrogen

Feb. 13, 2013 ? The PhD thesis of Aingeru Remiro-Eguskiza, a chemical engineer of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), deals with the quest for a process to produce hydrogen from bio-oil that has a lower impact on the environment than the process using current routes.

The gradual increase in the price of crude oil and the negative environmental consequences that its use entails are putting us on the threshold of a change of energy model that will need to be tackled over the coming decades. Faced with the obvious necessity of finding an energy alternative that will replace fossil fuels in the near future at least partially and in a gradual way, hydrogen is emerging as one of the alternatives.

Currently, hydrogen is obtained through various methods that require separating the hydrogen from other chemical elements like carbon (in fossil fuels) and oxygen (from water). The methods used for this purpose are not viable from an environmental or economic perspective, respectively, as far as the large-scale production of hydrogen is concerned.

The aim of this thesis was to contribute towards the laboratory scale development of a process for producing hydrogen from bio-oil by means of catalytic reforming using water vapour. Bio-oil is a heterogeneous mixture of wood-based oxygenated products, the catalytic transformation of which routinely entails problems of operability and deactivation of the catalyst. This is because when it is being heated, a fraction of the compounds that make up the bio-oil form a solid residue (the so-called pyrolytic lignin) which collects on the inlet pipes of the reactor and in the reactor itself. The bio-oil used for the research in the thesis was developed at an IK4-Ikerlan plant.

An in-house designed reaction unit

To solve the problems caused by the use of bio-oil, an in-house designed reaction unit was used and which comprises two stages: the thermal and the catalytic stages. In the thermal stage (in which the bio-oil is heated) the controlled deposition of the pyrolytic lignin takes place and this minimizes the operational problems and the deactivation of the catalyst. That way the compounds obtained in the thermal stage are more susceptible to being transformed.

In addition, a third stage has been incorporated into the process: the CO₂ capture intended to intensify the production of H2 increases its purity and cuts the associated contaminating emissions. The process involves using an adsorber in the reaction bed and which is designed to capture the CO₂. "When the CO₂ is eliminated from the reaction bed, we are encouraging the displacement of the reaction equilibriums and, as a result, a greater yield and a greater output of hydrogen are obtained," explains Remiro.

In this context, he stresses that improvement in the CO₂ capture in the reaction bed was verified when extremely pure hydrogen, close to 100%, was obtained and at a lower operating temperature with respect to the process minus the CO₂ capture.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/pSvpPY2qvY4/130213082336.htm

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Obama's Treasury pick Lew to be grilled on Citi bonus, U.S. debt (reuters)

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2013/2/11/The-Family-Jewels-Building-a ... - Old Town Home

Over the last several weeks we've been sharing all of the various aspects of our master bedroom renovation work. Though the project took quite a bit of time from start to finish, it's one of the projects in our house that has truly transformed the cold and uninviting space into one that's warm and welcoming. From the added space of custom closets, to the calming and serene wall color, ceiling color, and fabric choices, it's a place that Alex and I look forward to laying our head each night, and waking up each morning.

As we mentioned in past posts, the addition of our closets to the previously underutilized chimney wall solved a significant storage problem in our room. Now our clothes, my shoes, and even our extra storage tubs have a place to stay neat and organized. However, there's one very critical storage item that wasn't solved with the closet build -- my collection of necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and other miscellaneous bobbles I've picked up at thrift stores, antique stores, Ann Taylor Loft (there's one on the way home from work, I'm powerless to resist), and various other places. Yep, things just got real, I'm talking about?jewelry?storage.?

At this point you've seen all of the various after photos of our bedroom, as well as the interior shots of our closet, but have you been able to pick out my?jewelry?storage from these photos? It's been hiding in plain sight all along. Here's a refresher. See if you can spot it.

Can you see it yet? No? Any guesses? Take a closer look.

Okay, here you go, I'll let you in on my little secret.

Yep, that's right folks, the mirror between the bedroom and bathroom door is actually concealing all of my costume jewelry. This little hidden cabinet creation came to me a while back when I realized my previous jewelry storage solution was particularly lacking in both form and function. My previous setup primarily consisted of shoving all of my stuff into a few wooden and cardboard jewelry boxes that I then shoved under my socks and underwear in my dresser drawers. Given my Type A need to organize and understand exactly what I have when planning my outfits, this configuration left something to be desired.

At one point I proposed a solution to Alex that was a challenge of sorts. I think I said something along the lines of "can you build me a jewelry cabinet?" I'm pretty sure his willing husband response was, "Yeah, sure I can." (Don't you love his optimism?) I followed that up with the next logical question of "how long do you think it will take?" Though his voice said, "Meh, a few days," his verbal response didn't matter, I could see it in his eyes, it was not days or weeks, but probably months at least. I appreciate my husband for all of his creativity, DIY skills, and drive, but his ability to properly estimate a project's timeline is, how do I put this gently and accurately...severely lacking.

In my quest to both achieve my desire for?organized?jewelry storage and my need to accomplish the task while I'm still young enough to wear said jewelry, I began researching other options. During my nights of Internet sleuthing I stumbled across a somewhat ideal solution from a organizational perspective, named the "Safekeeper Mirrored Jewelry Cabinet."

This cabinet seemed just about perfect. It has storage for earrings, bracelets, necklaces, glasses, and even pockets and cubbies for miscellaneous items. The various compartments satisfied all of my storage desires while allowing a tremendous amount of room for future growth. What more could a girl want? The only problem with this cabinet is I didn't want my jewelry cabinet sitting out in the middle of our room. So I took my photos to Alex and presented my next challenge, "Can you use this as a basis for the storage but somehow integrate it into our room?" After a bit of arguing that he could build the same thing for so much less money and at a higher quality, he eventually agreed, it was an excellent starting point for our needs and he could use the cabinet as a built in item, but make it unique to our room. Okay, problem solved and challenge accepted.

The place that I first saw this cabinet had it for sale for about $300. This was extremely steep given that we weren't planning to use the whole thing and that it isn't made of solid cherry or mahogany. Alex and I started searching for deals and eventually found one on eBay for just $110 including shipping. When it arrived we got to work.?

Since our room's walls are plaster on brick on two of four walls, and the third wall is a party wall between our house and our neighbor's, we really only had one place where we could locate the cabinet as an in-wall unit, and that was largely taken by the two doors to the room. Given our limitations, we found a good location that satisfied our needs and allowed us to conceal the whole unit. We cut a hole in the wall and had an amazing stroke of luck. The stud Alex expected to be in the way and we'd need to work around was mysteriously missing. It seems the walls had been altered at some point in the past and there simply wasn't a stud behind the plaster/drywall that occupied the area.

We put a support stud in place on both the side and bottom of the cabinet and popped the bad boy into the wall with two nails through either side of the cabinet.?

We had removed the mirror from the front and weren't sure if we were going to use it on the final install. Since this cabinet was going to live inset into the wall, we really needed something that offered a bit more overlay around the?perimeter?of the cabinet, but what that thing was exactly, I wasn't sure.

It wasn't until we were out at Luckett's Antique Store on one fateful day when I saw my mirror waiting for us. We had long debated if we should use a traditional dressing mirror or something more visually interesting. We had hoped to find something with dimensions that would conceal the entire cabinet, but also knew our specific dimensions made this very difficult. When we found this mirror its dimensions were nearly perfect, just a little short and narrow, its style was something that I loved, and one of the mirrors had a small and barely noticeable crack, which meant it was significantly marked down, score! We snapped it up and brought it home that day.

The mirror itself is actually three dimensional. Each four triangle section makes a pyramid that protrudes from the base several inches. The frame of the mirror is steel and is painted in a manner to make it looks weathered.

A short while after we brought it home Alex began work on the custom panel and frame for my angular and interesting decorative mirror find. He determined the ideal dimensions for the door and necessary overlay based on the side of the mirror, the size of the opening, and the location between the two doors. He also had to?accommodate?the light switch to the right of the location. It wasn't an easy calculation, so I'm very glad he and his anal retentive math skills were on the job.

Alex built the base of the mirror/door from 1/2" plywood and used a few wood screws to hang the mirror using the hanger holes on the rear of the mirror. The plywood allowed us to mount the mirror in a manner that would cover the entire cabinet and properly position the door in the area between the two passage doors. The end result looks completely integrated, but we can remove the mirror from frame at any time simply by loosening screws and sliding it out.

He then used a combination of two moldings to wrap the plywood, as well as a few pieces of 1/4" trim to form a border on the rear of the door. This effectively disguised the plywood and made a true frame for the mirror.

This also allowed me to carefully pry the black fabric panel from the rear of the cabinet's original mirror and affix it to the back of the newly built door. Alex finished off the whole install with a pair of European cabinet hinges that helps the door extend away from the wall as it opens. Without these hinges, the overlay of the left side of the door would gouge the wall.

He inset one side of the hinges into the door panel using a standard European hing drill bit, and then attached the business end of the hinge as a surface mount to the interior of the cabinet. We had to clear away a little bit of foam padding on the ring section to make it work, but it's a minor sacrifice to make this functional.

The end result is the?jewelry?cabinet of my dreams (to complement the closet of my dreams) neatly concealed behind a visually interesting piece of wall art. When I show off this little feature to people who visit our house they're usually shocked, excited, and a little bit jealous, all understandable.

It still brings a smile to my face every morning when I open the cabinet to pick out the bracelet or necklace I plan to wear for the day, and every evening when I hang my earrings or when Alex puts his cufflinks away after a fancy night out. ?

What do you think of our cabinet? Did you ever think there was anything more to the mirror on the wall than just an interesting mirror on the wall? Do you have a creative jewelry cabinet or storage solution that you're particularly fond of? I'd love to hear about any cool thing's you've done. Perhaps we could incorporate it in a future project.

Source: http://www.oldtownhome.com/2013/2/11/The-Family-Jewels-Building-a-Concealed-Jewelry-Cabinet/index.aspx

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Congratulations to winner of the January ChattanoogaNow family ...

Ross's landing and the Tennessee Aquarium in downtown Chattanooga

Jillian Dedmon is the winner of the January ChattanoogaNow family entertainment package, the monthly giveaway that can entertain your family for an entire year.

She receives:

* Membership to Hunter Museum of American Art.

* 10 tickets to Creative Discovery Museum.

* 10 tickets to Tennessee Aquarium.

* 10 tickets to Imax 3D Theater.

* 10 tickets for the River Gorge Explorer.

* 4 beer tickets per week at Nightfall.

* 2 VIP badges to the Riverbend Festival.

* 2 VIP badges to the Southern Brewers Festival.

* 2 tickets to Chattanooga Symphony & Opera?s ?Big Band Fever? Pops concert, featuring trumpeter Doc Severinsen, on Feb. 16.

* 2 tickets to Houston Museum?s Antiques Show & Sale Feb. 21-24.

* 2 tickets to String Theory at the Hunter Museum on Feb. 14.

* 2 tickets to each show at Track 29 in 2013.

* A two-night stay at The Chattanoogan hotel.

Don?t miss your chance to win more great prizes in February. Visit www.ChattanoogaNow.com/win to enter today.

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Source: http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/feb/06/congrrats-winner-january-chattanooganow-family-ent/

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Altidore wants to move on from racist chants

MIAMI (AP) ? Jozy Altidore wants to move on from last week's racist chants directed at him during a Dutch Cup game.

"It was an unfortunate event and very disappointing for everybody involved," Altidore said Monday in remarks released by the U.S. Soccer Federation. "I've spoken on it, and I felt I let all my thoughts out in that moment. I just hope that we can all just be better and that it never happens again."

Altidore told The Associated Press last week that when spectators made monkey chants during AZ Alkmaar's 5-0 win over Den Bosch on Jan. 29, it was a stain on all. The referee wanted to stop the match but Altidore, who is black, and his teammates persuaded him not to.

"Anytime it happens I think we all should be ashamed," Altidore told the AP. "It's very embarrassing for everybody, you know, because at the end of the day we are, as a society, trying to move forward. So when that happens I think everybody takes a loss."

Altidore practiced with the U.S. national team on Monday ahead of its World Cup qualifier Wednesday in Honduras.

"We are very pleased with how Jozy reacted ? very professional, very mature ? and we gave him a big compliment for that," U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann said.

The 23-year-old forward has a career-high 20 goals for his club this season.

"I've been feeling good on the field. I've been getting myself in front of the goal and trying to create chances for myself and my teammates," he said. "I'm just excited for the opportunity if I play against Honduras to try and do the same thing I've been doing at Alkmaar."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-02-04-SOC-US-Altidore/id-d4903284226a4a21bcc11f6ba55ba645

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