Taliban: 'Puppet regime' blind to truth about 16 deaths

Eklil Hakimi, Afghan ambassador to the U.S., says his country is working to resolve all issues related to a recent massacre.
Eklil Hakimi, Afghan ambassador to the U.S., says his country is working to resolve all issues related to a recent massacre.
  • Afghanistan's ambassador: "We do trust the United States"
  • U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has offered a full investigation
  • The March 10 shooting further strained U.S.-Afghan relations
  • The soldier accused of the massacre is awaiting trial

Washington (CNN) -- Afghanistan trusts the U.S. investigation into the massacre of 16 Afghan civilians allegedly at the hands of a U.S. soldier, the Afghan ambassador to the United States said, even as the Afghan leader said relations between the countries are at the "end of the rope."

The soldier accused in the March 10 attack was flown back to the United States last week and is being held in at the U.S. military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, pending trial.

Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales is suspected of leaving his outpost and killing 16 people, including nine children, in two villages as they slept.

The incident has further poisoned an already-strained bilateral relationship between the two countries. Afghan President Hamid Karzai said after the shooting that relations with the United States are now at the "end of the rope."

The shooting spree came just weeks after U.S. troops burned Qurans at their Afghan base, sparking outrage and fierce protests across Afghanistan.

"We do trust the United States and we do know how important this relationship is, and we are working as a partner to resolve all the issues as a partner," Ambassador Eklil Hakimi told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.

Hakimi said both incidents are tragic, but he acknowledged they come after more than 10 years of a U.S. presence in his country that has claimed the lives of more than 1,700 U.S. troops, according to the official U.S. military count.

"We do understand sacrifices that our allies, especially our main allies, the United States -- that they have suffered quite a lot, those men in uniform, those women in uniform," Hakimi said. "Those are the things that we are grateful (for) and we are appreciating that."

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta promised Karzai a full investigation and said the United States will bring the shooter to justice.

"He accepted that and hoped that it could be a transparent process so that the Afghanistan people would see that the U.S. is indeed going to not only prosecute this individual but ensure he's held accountable," Panetta said after meeting Karzai on Wednesday.

"I also indicated to him that we take these kinds of incidents seriously. We need to look at just exactly was involved here that caused this terrible crime," Panetta said. "Was it related to combat stress? Other factors? We need to pay attention to those so it won't happen again."

The shooting prompted Karzai to demand that foreign troops pull back from their outposts in Afghan villages and confine themselves to military bases. In his meeting with Panetta, Karzai also demanded that the transfer of security responsibilities from Washington to Kabul be accelerated.

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_topstories/~3/bv-zQbxRmQ4/index.html

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Picture of the day: Fighters love to hang out on top of Radio City Music Hall

Oh, it's nothing big. Just some UFC fighters hanging out on top of Radio City Music Hall's marquee in New York City. It's totally normal for Pat Barry, Josh Koscheck, Nate Diaz, Jim Miller, Johny Hendricks, Lavar Johnson and Alan Belcher to put on matching t-shirts and stand around on top of New York icons. After this*, they went to the top of the Empire State Building, went shopping at Macy's, and ate a hot dog from a street vendor. They didn't allow UFC president Dana White on the rest of their adventure because he wasn't wearing a matching shirt.

*OK, nothing from the asterisk on actually happened, but the world would be a better place if it did.

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/picture-day-fighters-love-hang-top-radio-city-161547424.html

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Modern Family's Ty Burrell Stars in Mr. Peabody & Sherman

Ty BurrellThe star of one of my favorite TV shows has just landed a leading role in the animated comedy, Mr. Peabody & Sherman. DreamWorks Animation announced Ty Burrell (an Emmy winner for playing 'Phil Dunphy' in Modern Family) will provide the voice of the world's smartest dog, Mr. Peabody, while Max Charles (The Amazing Spider-Man) will lend his voice to the character of Mr. Peabody's pet boy, Sherman.

...

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Source: http://movies.about.com/b/2012/03/16/modern-familys-ty-burrell-stars-in-mr-peabody-sherman.htm

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Add playback hotkeys to Amazon Cloud Player with a Chrome extension

Sure, Amazon's Cloud Player works -- as long as you're in the U.S. or willing to do some tinkering -- but it's fairly simplistic at the moment. There are plenty of features missing which we'd like to see added -- but since Cloud Player is a Web app we don't have to wait for Amazon!

Google Chrome users, for example, can add playback hotkeys with an extension called keyMazony. Once installed, you'll have keyboard control of your Amazon Cloud Player queue. keyMazony commands will work as long as you're in the same Chrome window as Cloud Player, even if its tab doesn't have focus. The key combinations are customizable as well -- just make sure you don't set up a combo that conflicts with another extension or Chrome's built-in keyboard shortcuts.

Add playback hotkeys to Amazon Cloud Player with a Chrome extension originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/31/add-playback-hotkeys-to-amazon-cloud-player-with-a-chrome-extens/

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SXSW 2012: Mike Birbiglia On The Challenges Of Making 'Sleepwalk With Me'

After winning the Best Of NEXT audience award at the Sundance Film Festival in January, comedian Mike Birbiglia's "Sleepwalk With Me" was so popular at the South By Southwest Film Festival in Austin, that organizers had to turn fans away at each of its screenings last week. Too bad for them: "Sleepwalk With Me," Birbiglia's directorial debut, is a charming bit of indie dramedy that manages to combine elements of "Annie Hall," "Funny People," and even "Goodfellas" into one heartfelt story about relationships and nocturnal activity.

Based on Birbiglia's one-man, off-Broadway show -- which also spawned a book, comedy album and segment on "This American Life" -- "Sleepwalk With Me" follows Matt (Birbiglia), a struggling comic at a crossroads in life: his eight-year relationship with Abbie (Lauren Ambrose) is drifting into dead-shark territory, and his REM behavior disorder is getting more and more out of hand. Funny and filled with great character beats, "Sleepwalk With Me" is an assured debut from the 33-year-old comic, but its success didn't happen overnight.

"We ended up leaving a situation where our script was owned by a company that didn't really think it was done; that's how they described it," Birbiglia told Moviefone at SXSW. "'It's not done yet.' We're like, 'No, no, it's done.' They're like, 'No, it's not.' We were in a little bit of a stalemate, because we're the artists making it."

Birbiglia and his co-writers -- his brother, Joe, "This American Life" host Ira Glass, and stage veteran Seth Barrish -- ended up getting together with Bedrock, a production company that the writer-director calls "extremely artist friendly." That environment allowed Birbiglia and his collaborators to flourish, but the shoot wasn't as effortless as the final product which appears onscreen.

The comic spoke to Moviefone about the ups and downs of the production, how his comedy background helped during the editing process, and why you should never say "I don't know" on a film set.

How long were you working on the screenplay?
The screenplay took like two years to write. I have to say, part of the reason we ended up making it was, I was just antsy to make it. So much of my process is trial and error, so much of it is writing something in a day and often putting it on stage that night. So the Hollywood idea of like having 95 scripts in the bullpen -- I don't really want to be in the bullpen, it's just not where I want to live my life. I want to be a starting pitcher and if i throw some bad games, I'll learn from it and get better.

OK, well how do you reconcile that trial-and-error approach with directing a feature film, especially an independent one like this where you don't have the luxury of time?
I made a lot of mistakes early on. The biggest thing I learned -- and, whenever I say this, Jacob always points out, that I made this mistake for like, one day; it felt like 10 years that I was making this mistake -- is that you can't really say the phrase, "I don't know" on a film set. In theater, it's welcomed, it's encouraged. "I don't know" is an invitation to explore. Everybody asks questions like, "Yeah, what is that about?" On movie sets, you say "I don't know" and everybody is grabbing coffee; they're like, "Well, if he doesn't know, it's at least going to be another 40 minutes." And then we're not going to make our day, and then we're going to be behind, and it's going to cost us $30,000. That was a really hard thing to reconcile. A lot of my comedy and my personality is based on sort of comedic ambivalence [laughs], and my process is based on ambivalence. I think in a good way. But I had to learn that feature film process and, at certain points, I got hit pretty hard by the process. I was sleep deprived, I was up against a wall, and we were being kicked out of locations, and we were just trying to get the whole movie in the can.

I was so impressed with how you used voice over in the film -- especially because it's a technique that has such a high rate of failure.
I think the reason why it ultimately worked in the film is that it called upon my skills as a comedian, doing trial and error. So like, me and [editor] Geoffrey Richman would just be in the edit together and we'd say, "Well, what if it had voice over at this moment? What if it had voice over at that moment?" And we just pull out the microphone and we'd record it, just scratch audio, and we'd just drop it in. That's a very strange thing, a very unusual luxury to have. To be like, "What about this? What about this?" The editing process was really fun because it's not as pressure-filled as the production is, because if you go an hour long, you're not going into penalties and overtime for a 40-person crew. You're not being kicked out of your location. There were a lot of late nights and kind of "What if, what if, what if?" which was really good for the film, because it played to my strengths, and me and Seth and Ira's strengths.

Another thing that really stood out: your performance. You're ostensibly playing yourself -- which is hard in itself -- and you had to balance acting with your duties as a first-time filmmaker. Not the easiest of tasks, I imagine.
Pretty early on in the process I brought on Seth [Barrish] who directed plays, my one-man show. He's a real kind of acting guru. He wrote a book about acting, he's an artistic director of a theater company in New York called the Barrow Group, so he teaches acting. I really wanted him to guide my performance and really just keep an eye on it. He and I worked together for a long time, we know how each other works and thinks really well. So, my fear during the film and editing the film was not that I would mess up colossally, but that I would mess up in small, key places which would have a ripple effect on the film. Moments where you really have to bring it as an actor to make people believe they're experiencing this with you. If not, you're just setting yourself up for people just jumping on your performance. Like, "This is ridiculous! This guy should have gotten another actor!" [Laughs] That kind of thing. So, Seth was extraordinary in that way.

It really feels like a team effort. How do you feel about the finished film?
It just feels like we created thing thing that even we don't fully quite understand. Everyone else sees the film as this movie that's happening, and whenever I look at the screen, I see the production designer. I see the costume designer. I see the make-up artist. It actually stresses me out to look at the screen [laughs], because there's just so much happening in every frame that is part of this massive team that put his movie together.

There's something about movies where there's so many artistic elements that are occurring simultaneously that you can't even fully wrap your brain around what it is that's connecting with audience. All you can do is try to connect with the audience, and then at a certain point you go, "Well, I hope this works."

IFC picked up "Sleepwalk With Me" for distribution. Look for it in theaters this year.

Related on HuffPost:


Source: http://news.moviefone.com/2012/03/17/sxsw-2012-mike-birbiglia-sleepwalk-with-me_n_1355615.html

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Torus is an impressive 3D Tetris game powered by HTML5

torus
As far as Tetris goes, most variations look quite similar. You're usually looking at a "wall" of bricks directly from the front. Torus takes that notion and throws it away; as you might have guessed from the name (or screenshot), this Tetris clone is played on a ring-like 3D surface.

You rotate the ring itself with the arrow keys, while a Tetris-like piece slowly (excruciatingly slowly, in fact) descends from the top. As soon as you make a solid line, it disappears.

Not all pieces are Tetris-like; some of them wouldn't really work with a regular Tetris game but are a good fit for Torus' 3D format.

Torus is ideal for playing at the office, because it has absolutely no soundtrack. The game is dead-quiet. It's also very very slow (slow enough for me to mention it twice in one post) so you can safely look away for a moment and then keep playing. Also, as soon as the game loses focus, it automatically pauses.

Bottom line: It's an impressive demo of the power of HTML5; if it were a bit faster, it would have some serious addictive potential.

Torus is an impressive 3D Tetris game powered by HTML5 originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 17 Feb 2011 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/02/17/torus-is-an-impressive-3d-tetris-game-powered-by-html5/

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Report: Volkswagen confirms late 2013 launch date for all-electric Golf

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Volkswagen Golf Blue-e-motion

As we said when we first drove the Volkswagen Golf Blue-e-motion, Volkswagen is taking its time getting into the all-electric game. Given the tremendous ups and downs that electric vehicles and EV start-up companies are going through, maybe making sure you have a car where everything is working smoothly - to say nothing about getting the infrastructure in place - isn't such a bad idea. And it now seems like VW is confident enough in its Golf EV, which is undergoing testing in California, to push up its estimated release date from 2014 to late 2013.

Sure, technically, that could be a difference of just one day, but we don't think that's what VW of America president Jonathan Browning meant when he confirmed next year's U.S. release date with Automotive News. Late 2013 is also when the car will go on sale in Europe. A plug-in hybrid Golf is supposed to go on sale in 2015.

Even though VW is getting ready to move into electric vehicle territory, it is well behind other automakers. Perhaps that's why it is also a bit less optimistic about the potential success of plug-ins. The automaker expects just three percent of its new vehicles to be EVs or hybrids by 2018. You can read our second spin in the Golf blue e-motion here.

Volkswagen confirms late 2013 launch date for all-electric Golf originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 16 Mar 2012 08:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.autoblog.com/2012/03/16/volkswagen-confirms-late-2013-launch-date-for-all-electric-golf/

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Evoluce Win&I brings Kinect gesture controls to Windows 7

evoluce win&i windows 7 gesture control kinect
We've been looking at some pretty cool Kinect and Windows interactions for a while now, but we were hoping that the release of an official SDK would lead to even more coolness. Evoluce has stepped up, and is now offering Win&I -- a full-featured gesture control system for Windows 7.

The company claims that a range of up to four meters is supported, which should be perfect for just about any home theater setting. In the video embedded after the break, you can see an Evoluce demonstrator flip through a photo album, pan through a map, rearrange application windows, browse the Web, and control media playback. Two versions of Win&I are offered -- the home version goes for about 20 Euros, the business version for 40.

Anyone else having fun pretending his stance is a little "Iron Man"? We're tempted to put a repulsor on that hand.

Continue reading Evoluce Win&I brings Kinect gesture controls to Windows 7

Evoluce Win&I brings Kinect gesture controls to Windows 7 originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 01 Apr 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/01/evoluce-winandi-controls-windows-7-with-a-kinect-sensor/

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City Tech Presents Comic Ballet ?I ? BOB?

Slapstick comedy and fast-paced action will engage audiences at ?I ? BOB -- The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Guy,? a full-length comic ballet being staged by Drama Desk Award-nominated Parallel Exit on Thursday and Friday, March 22 and 23, 7:30 p.m., and on Saturday, March 24, 2 p.m., at New York City College of Technology.

Source: http://www1.cuny.edu/mu/forum/2012/03/16/city-tech-presents-parallel-exit%e2%80%99s-comic-ballet-%e2%80%98i-%e2%99%a5-bob%e2%80%99/

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UFC on FX 2 weigh-in: Joe Benavidez?s new physique

The flyweight era is upon us. A mini-tournament starts tonight in Australia on the UFC on FX 2 card. Joe Benavidez and Demetrious Johnson are the huge favorites in the 125-lbs. showdowns, but we'll find out if their first legitimate weight cut in years will affect their performance.

Both Johnson and Benavidez were far from true bantamweights. Johnson didn't look too much different down at 125, but there was definitely some mass missing on Joe B.

The main event fighters made weight as well. That's always a challenge for Thiago Alves. Last night, he looked as good as ever down at 170.5. Alves balloons up between fights and has missed weight for three previous fights.

UFC on FX 2 weigh-in:

MAIN CARD (FX)
Thiago Alves (170.5) vs. Martin Kampmann (170.5)
Joseph Benavidez (125.5) vs. Yasuhiro Urushitani (125.5)
Demetrious Johnson (125.5) vs. Ian McCall (125.5)
Court McGee (184.5) vs. Constantinos Philippou (185.5)

PRELIMINARY CARD (FUEL TV)
Aaron Rosa (205.5) vs. James Te Huna (206)
Nick Penner (203.5) vs. Anthony Perosh (205)
Cole Miller (146) vs. Steven Siler (146)
Andrew Craig (185) vs. Kyle Noke (185)
Jake Hecht (171) vs. T.J. Waldburger (170)
Daniel Pineda (146) vs. Mackens Semerzier (146)

PRELIMINARY CARD (Facebook)
Shawn Jordan (245.5) vs. Oli Thompson (235)

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/ufc-fx-2-weigh-thenew-bodies-mighty-mouse-180859121.html

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