Legend, 2 Chainz, MC Lyte honored at Hip-Hop Ball

John Legend is seen at the Hip-Hop Inaugural Ball on Sunday, Jan. 20, 2013 in Washington. (Photo by Larry French/Invision/AP)

John Legend is seen at the Hip-Hop Inaugural Ball on Sunday, Jan. 20, 2013 in Washington. (Photo by Larry French/Invision/AP)

Rosario Dawson is seen at the Hip-Hop Inaugural Ball on Sunday, Jan. 20, 2013 in Washington. (Photo by Larry French/Invision/AP)

2 Chainz is seen at the Hip-Hop Inaugural Ball on Sunday, Jan. 20, 2013 in Washington. (Photo by Larry French/Invision/AP)

Doug E. Fresh is seen at the Hip-Hop Inaugural Ball on Sunday, Jan. 20, 2013 in Washington. (Photo by Larry French/Invision/AP)

Swizz Beatz is seen at the Hip-Hop Inaugural Ball on Sunday, Jan. 20, 2013 in Washington. (Photo by Larry French/Invision/AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? John Legend believes hip-hop played its part in helping Barack Obama become president, and he's proud at how the genre has matured over the years.

"I think hip-hop had a role in making sure we elected a black president in America because we made it so that black people were in people's homes ... through our music and through our culture," the R&B crooner said Sunday night at the Hip-Hop Inaugural Ball.

"I think it made Barack Obama and more people like him possible, so I'm really thankful for hip-hop and the role it plays in society," he continued.

Legend was awarded the humanitarian award at Sunday's event, and it was one of many honors handed out at the Harman Center for Arts.

Hip-hop pioneers MC Lyte and Doug E. Fresh were both given lifetime achievement awards. Fresh even hit the stage, beat boxing while comedian-actor-singer Wayne Brady cooed Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On?" At one point, Brady even busted out his own rhymes.

Rapper Yo Yo earned a roaring cheer when she hit the stage to honor MC Lyte; Lil Mama also paid tribute to the "Ruffneck" rapper.

2 Chainz, who had a breakthrough year with his Grammy-nominated solo debut and multiple rap hits, earned the street soldier award for encouraging young voters as a spokesperson for the Hip-Hop Caucus' "Respect My Vote!" campaign.

"Doing my thing on the charts is one thing, but to be getting honored on another avenue, it just feels like a blessing," he said in an interview. "I'm keeping my head leveled and staying humble."

Actress Rosario Dawson won the vanguard award for her work as chairman of the Voto Latino organization.

"It's time to step out of the shadows. It's time to not just be talked about by other people, it's time to take the leadership ourselves and that first step of leadership is voting," Dawson said of the importance of the Latino vote.

Rappers Swizz Beatz and Meek Mill also earned honors at the event, attended by a few hundred hip-hop fans, including model Tyson Beckford, former NBA star Dikembe Mutumbo and Victor Cruz of the New York Giants. La La Anthony and Terrence J hosted the ball.

British singer Marsha Ambrosius also delivered a rousing performance, and playful jokes about Obama.

"I got a call from the president and he asked me to perform his favorite song," she said before singing the R&B jam "Hope She Cheats on You (With a Basketball Player)."

Then she sang "Butterflies," a song she co-wrote for Michael Jackson's 2001 "Invincible" album.

"This might have been his favorite," she said.

___

Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MusicMesfin

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-01-21-Inauguration-Hip-Hop%20Ball/id-7a6b45fc16c24f0b8a4a31b32c8dd48a

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Death toll climbs past 80 in siege in the Sahara

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) ? The death toll from the terrorist siege at a natural gas plant in the Sahara climbed past 80 on Sunday as Algerian forces searching the refinery for explosives found dozens more bodies, many so badly disfigured it was unclear whether they were hostages or militants, a security official said.

Algerian special forces stormed the plant on Saturday to end the four-day siege, moving in to thwart what government officials said was a plot by the Islamic extremists to blow up the complex and kill all their captives with mines sown throughout the site.

In a statement, the Masked Brigade, the group that claimed to have masterminded the takeover, warned of more such attacks against any country backing France's military intervention in neighboring Mali, where the French are trying to stop an advance by Islamic extremists.

"We stress to our Muslim brothers the necessity to stay away from all the Western companies and complexes for their own safety, and especially the French ones," the statement said.

Algeria said after Saturday's assault by government forces that at least 32 extremists and 23 hostages were killed. On Sunday, Algerian bomb squads sent in to blow up or defuse the explosives found 25 more bodies, said the security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

"These bodies are difficult to identify. They could be the bodies of foreign hostages or Algerians or terrorists," the official said.

In addition, a wounded Romanian who had been evacuated died, raising the overall death toll to at least 81.

"Now, of course, people will ask questions about the Algerian response to these events, but I would just say that the responsibility for these deaths lies squarely with the terrorists who launched a vicious and cowardly attack," British Prime Minister David Cameron said. Three Britons were killed and another three were feared dead.

On Monday, Philippine Foreign Affairs officials said six Filipinos were among the hostages killed. Spokesman Raul Hernandez told reporters that 16 Filipinos have been accounted for and four others are still missing.

The dead hostages were also known to include at least one American and French workers. Nearly two dozen foreigners by some estimates were unaccounted for.

It was unclear whether anyone was rescued in the final assault on the complex, which is run by the Algerian state oil company along with BP and Norway's Statoil.

Two private Algerian TV stations and an online news site said security forces scouring the plant found five militants hiding out and learned that three others had fled. That information could not be immediately confirmed by security officials.

Authorities said the bloody takeover was carried out Wednesday by 32 men from six countries, under the command from afar of the one-eyed Algerian bandit Moktar Belmoktar, founder of the Masked Brigade, based in Mali. The attacking force called itself "Those Who Sign in Blood."

The Masked Brigade said Sunday the attack was payback against Algeria for allowing over-flights of French aircraft headed to Mali and for closing its long border with Mali. In an earlier communication, the Brigade claimed to have carried out the attack in the name of al-Qaida.

Armed with heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, missiles and grenades, the militants singled out foreign workers at the plant, killing some of them on the spot and attaching explosive belts to others.

Algeria's tough and uncompromising response to the crisis was typical of its take-no-prisoners approach in confronting terrorists, favoring military action over negotiation. Algerian military forces, backed by attack helicopters, launched two assaults on the plant, the first one on Thursday.

The militants had "decided to succeed in the operation as planned, to blow up the gas complex and kill all the hostages," Algerian Communications Minister Mohamed Said told state radio.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said the terrorists had tried to blow up the plant on Saturday but managed only to start a small fire. "That's when they started to execute hostages, and the special forces intervened," Eide said. Norway's Statoil said five Norwegians were still missing.

An audio recording of Algerian security forces speaking with the head of the kidnappers, Abdel Rahman al-Nigiri, on the second day of the drama indicated the hostage-takers were trying to organize a prisoner swap.

"You see our demands are so easy, so easy if you want to negotiate with us," al-Nigiri said in the recording broadcast by Algerian television. "We want the prisoners you have, the comrades who were arrested and imprisoned 15 years ago. We want 100 of them."

In another phone call, al-Nigiri said that half the militants had been killed by the Algerian army on Thursday and that he was ready to blow up the remaining hostages if security forces attacked again. An organization that monitors videos from radicals posted one showing al-Nigiri with what appeared to be an explosive belt around his waist.

The Algerians' use of forced raised an international outcry from some countries worried about their citizens.

But French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Sunday on French television: "The terrorists ... they're the ones to blame."

David Plouffe, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said that al-Qaida and al-Qaida-affiliated groups remain a threat in North Africa and other parts of the world, and that the U.S. is determined to help other countries destroy those networks.

Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Plouffe said the tragedy in Algeria shows once again "that all across the globe countries are threatened by terrorists who will use civilians to try and advance their twisted and sick agenda."

___

Ganley reported from Paris. Associated Press writers Paul Schemm in Rabat, Morocco, and Lori Hinnant in Paris also contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/death-toll-climbs-past-80-siege-sahara-203148338--finance.html

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Atari US files for Ch. 11 to separate from parent

NEW YORK (AP) ? Video game maker Atari's U.S. operations have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in an effort to separate from their French parent company.

In a statement, Atari says the move is necessary to secure investments it needs to grow in mobile and digital gaming.

Atari's U.S. operations have shifted to focus on digital games and licensing, including developing mobile games, and have become a growth engine for its owner. France's Infogrames Entertainment first took a stake in Atari in 2000. It acquired the remaining stake in 2008 and changed its name to Atari S.A.

But the U.S. operations have been better performing than the rest of the company. In fiscal 2012 digital and licensing revenue both grew significantly and contributed 70 percent of revenue, while sales in bricks-and-mortar stores declined.

In December, Atari S.A. said a credit agreement it entered into with investor BlueBay would lapse at the end of the year and the company was seeking other ways to raise capital. It added that it expects to report a "significant loss" for fiscal 2012.

Atari, which turned 40 last year, was a videogame pioneer with games like "Pong" and "Centipede," but has changed owners several times amid financial problems. In its filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York, Atari said it had $1 million to $10 million in assets and $10 million to $50 million in debt. It is seeking approval for $5.25 million in debtor-in-possession financing from private investment firm Tenor Capital Management.

Atari said it expects to sell its assets or confirm a restructuring plan within the next three to six months.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-01-21-Atari-Bankruptcy/id-f2ef7aa27c944291aa0b8e572255ebb6

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Cluster mission indicates turbulent eddies may warm the solar wind

Jan. 8, 2013 ? The sun ejects a continuous flow of electrically charged particles and magnetic fields in the form of the solar wind -- and this wind is hotter than it should be. A new study of data obtained by European Space Agency's Cluster spacecraft may help explain the mystery.

The solar wind is made of an electrically-charged gas called plasma. One theory about the wind's puzzling high temperatures is that irregularities in the flow of charged particles and magnetic fields in the plasma create turbulence, which, in turn, dissipates and adds heat to its surroundings. Using two separate sets of data sent back by Cluster, an international team of scientists has probed the spatial characteristics of this turbulence in more detail and at smaller scales than ever before. They saw evidence that the turbulence evolved to form very small "current sheets" -- thin sheets of electrical current that separate regions of rotated magnetic field.

"For the first time, we were able to obtain direct evidence for the existence of current sheets at these very small scales, where dissipation of magnetic energy into heat is thought to occur," said Melvyn Goldstein, project scientist for Cluster at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Goldstein is a co-author of a paper on these results that appeared in the Nov. 9, 2012, issue of Physical Review Letters.

This solar wind is a non-stop gale of plasma, mainly protons and electrons, which originates in the sun's searingly hot lower atmosphere. It blasts outward in all directions at an average speed of about 250 miles per second. The outflow is so energetic that it pulls along the sun's magnetic field. The solar wind travels across the entire solar system, until it reaches the boundary with interstellar space. The plasma cools as it expands during its outward journey. However, the amount of cooling is much less than would be expected in a constant, smooth flow of solar particles since the density is so low that the particles cannot be receiving extra heat from the most common method on Earth: collisions.

By providing the first observations of these small current sheets, the Cluster data help confirm that such sheets may play an important role in the dissipation of the turbulence -- meaning that as the turbulence cascades from larger disturbances to smaller ones, energy is taken out of the magnetic field and added to its surroundings as heat. The current sheets are more or less two-dimensional. They may are also be sites where the magnetic field lines reconnect and break, resulting in a transfer of energy to both particle heating and particle flows. Such magnetic reconnection occurs in many regions in the universe including in the solar wind, inside the sun and other stars, and in Earth's magnetic environment, the magnetosphere. Finding direct evidence for magnetic reconnection at these scales is difficult with the present instrumentation, however, and resolution of that question may have to await the launch of NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission in 2014, a mission that will focus on reconnection in the magnetosphere.

The team's study made use of the high time resolution of the Spatio Temporal Analysis Field Fluctuation (STAFF) magnetometer, which is carried on each of the four Cluster spacecraft. STAFF is capable of detecting rapid variations in magnetic fields, which means that very small spatial structures can be recognized within the plasma.

The scientists examined two sets of STAFF observations. The first data were obtained on Jan. 10, 2004, when two Cluster spacecraft (C2 and C4) were separated along the solar wind flow direction by only 12 miles apart, while the two other spacecraft were much further away. At that time, STAFF was operating in rapid burst mode, during which it recorded 450 measurements of the magnetic field per second. Additional data were obtained by a single spacecraft (Cluster 2) on March 19, 2006.

"During the 2004 observation, both spacecraft were so close that they observed almost simultaneously the same structure in the solar wind as it passed them by. The magnetic field data showed the typical signature of a current sheet crossing," says Silvia Perri of the Universit? della Calabria, Italy, who is the lead author of the paper. At that time, the solar wind was flowing at about 350 miles per second. The current sheet event lasted only 0.07 seconds for both satellites and this corresponds to a spatial size of about 25 miles.

"This shows for the first time that the solar wind plasma is extremely structured at these very small scales," says Perri. "It is clear that we are seeing a release of energy approaching smaller and smaller scales, which may contribute to the overall heating of the solar wind."

For more information about NASA's MMS Mission, visit: http://mms.gsfc.nasa.gov/

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No debt-ceiling deal? U.S. could delay tax refunds (Star Tribune)

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