Angolans invest in Portugal's sinking banks

Enviado por AlJazeeraEnglish em 13/01/2012

Once Angola was an impoverished part of the Portuguese empire, now its oil wealth means its citizens are queuing to buy banks, vineyards, and property.

There are many Africans in Lisbon, as they come from the former colonies, but the ones with serious money to spend are the ones from Angola. Next to the Russians and Chinese, they are the favourite clients of the luxury goods stores.

Portugals banks, many in difficulty, have become prime targets for Angolan investors.

The growth in economic ties between Portugal and Angola works both ways. Angola is now one of the largest destinations for Portuguese exports in the entire world, and thousands of Portuguese are emigrating to Angola every month to look for work.

Al Jazeera's Barnaby Philips reports from Lisbon, Portugal.

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#rio : Depressão e pânico são sintomas mais comuns entre vítimas de Teresópolis

Além dos atingidos pelas chuvas, pessoas que trabalharam em resgates também precisam de ajuda psicológica.

13 de janeiro de 2012 | 14h 18

Sintomas de estresse pós-traumático, a depressão e a síndrome do pânico são os principais distúrbios psicológicos que atingem as pessoas afetadas pelas enchentes e pelos desmoronamentos ocorridos em Teresópolis um ano atrás, segundo a Secretaria da Saúde do município.
Segundo as autoridades, o número de consultas realizadas pelos psicólogos da prefeitura aumentou de 534 em janeiro do ano passado para 1.323 em dezembro. Destes atendimentos, 541 foram de crianças e adolescentes.
Somente os seis psicólogos voluntários que trabalhavam para o município realizaram 1.123 atendimentos entre fevereiro e dezembro de 2011.
Também entre janeiro e dezembro do ano passado, os psiquiatras que trabalham para a Secretaria da Saúde atenderam 779 novos pacientes, em um total de 12.596 consultas.
De acordo com a psicóloga Daniela Matera, que trabalha na área de saúde mental da Secretaria da Saúde, a gravidade dos distúrbios pode depender tanto da intensidade da experiência por que passou o paciente, quanto da estrutura emocional da pessoa e da pré-existência de sintomas.
"Geralmente quem passa por isso recebe um acolhimento no início, mas depois precisa de algo mais. O processo de reconstrução do lar é fundamental, e para quem perdeu a família, a situação é mais grave, diz ela."

"As pessoas podiam já ter algum tipo de transtorno, que acabou emergindo com a tragédia", diz.
A coordenadora de Saúde Mental da Secretaria, Cláudia Jaconianni, afirma que muitos pacientes que já recebiam tratamento do município tiveram suas terapias reavaliadas e redirecionadas, por terem sido atingidos pelo desastre.
Ela diz que alguns grupos de terapia, por exemplo, foram reconfigurados e tiveram pacientes realocados, para garantir a maior eficácia do tratamento.
Crianças
Para Cláudia, as crianças normalmente respondem melhor aos tratamentos psicológicos e psiquiátricos.
"O adulto precisa ir atrás de uma casa, de um trabalho, precisa buscar o auxílio-moradia, enquanto com a criança o tratamento é mais fácil, porque ela tem menos atribuições", afirma.
A coordenadora acredita que o acompanhamento psicológico fará com essas crianças se tornem adultos melhores do que aqueles que passaram pela tragédia.
Hoje a gente chega a ver as crianças confortando seus pais quando chove. Elas realmente acabam lidando melhor com esse tipo de situação."
Ação em rede
O encaminhamento de pacientes à área de saúde mental da Secretaria de Saúde de Teresópolis ocorre muitas vezes por ação de agentes comunitários, que levam os casos aos Postos de Saúde da Família instalados no município.
No caso das crianças que apresentem problemas com os estudos, a coordenadora de saúde mental da Secretaria diz que é obrigação da escola encaminhar o aluno à Divisão de Educação Especial da Secretaria de Educação, que faz uma triagem e avalia os casos passíveis de tratamento.
"A gente trabalha com uma rede, e essa rede tem que funcionar. Se um médico dá irregularmente uma receita de remédios controlados, ou se a escola não encaminha um aluno com problemas, isso quebra o processo. As pessoas sabem de suas obrigações", diz Cláudia.
A coordenadora diz que, às vezes, a busca por solucionar um problema pode levar ao conhecimento de outro.
"Em um dos casos, fomos investigar uma criança que tinha problemas na escola, e descobrimos que o próprio pai dela tinha crises de pânico, então ele acabou sendo encaminhado para o tratamento psicológico."


Além dos moradores e pacientes atingidos pelo desastre, as próprias pessoas responsáveis por prestar ajuda acabam precisando de auxílio.

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video : One Direction - One Thing

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Iraq’s Secret War Files (WikiLeaks Special)

Military and War 288 Comments

In the biggest official files leak in history nearly 400,000 Iraq war logs reveal the massive scale of civilian deaths and new torture allegations following an investigation by Channel 4′s Dispatches.

Channel 4 News has accessed the data in the classified documents via The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and WikiLeaks.

The only TV doc to have advance access to the biggest Wikileaks release ever. This is what really happened during the Iraq war, not what the US PR machine of the time wanted us to believe. The reality behind the civilian death count; al-Qaeda’s fictitious presence; torture, torture and more torture. A wall of truth revealing unprecedented levels of unwarranted aggression.

Dispatches, Channel 4′s flagship current affairs strand, exposes the full and unreported horror of the Iraqi conflict and its aftermath, revealing the true scale of civilian casualties and allegations that even after the scandal of Abu Ghraib, American soldiers continued to abuse prisoners.

And that US forces did not systematically intervene in the torture and murder of detainees by the Iraqi security services. The programme also features previously unreported material of insurgents being killed while trying to surrender.

Watch the full documentary now

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Google evangelists release bible of good Android design

by Stephen Shankland January 13, 2012 6:20 AM PST

Google's Android design guide is designed to help programmers help users.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Google doesn't reject apps from the Android Market just because they're ugly.
But that doesn't mean the company doesn't care--especially now that Matias Duarte has seized the spotlight as director of Android user experience. So, absent the banhammer, Google is trying gentler persuasion to get others besides itself to care about designs that look and work well in the Ice Cream Sandwich era.
For that reason, Google released an Android design guide for ICS, aka Android 4.0. As my colleague Kent German observes, Google's accommodating ways have led to an inconsistent user experience and varying app quality; perhaps this guide lead programmers down the One True Path.
Perhaps programmers should know intuitively that they should present alerts with short, direct, informal prose. Or that a long press now means select an item, not trigger a menu of actions. Perhaps, but I doubt it. If nothing else, there's an army of new programmers jumping into mobile coding who need all the help they can get.
Programmer Dion Almaer called the Android guide "Much-needed help to make sure your ice cream sandwich doesn't melt all over your users."
Mission accomplished?
Duarte, in an interview in Wired, called the guide the second part of the ICS launch and said, "I can feel like it's finished. Like ICS is truly complete."
Complete? There's only one phone shipping that uses it, and Samsung's Galaxy Nexus is expensive. The design guide is helpful, but coaxing programmers to implement its tenets is another matter altogether. Even eager coders will require time to adjust to the new look.

Google doesn't want any iOS-style or Windows-style objects creeping into Android apps.

(Credit: Google)

Maybe Duarte meant that Google has completely laid the Android 4.0 foundations. Because in the real world, ICS has barely begun.
Duarte has been making the rounds last year ever since Google released Android 4.0 trying to convince the world that good design is a priority for Google and that it will pay off for those in the Android world. A public-relations road show is only so helpful, though.
Ice Cream Sandwich has won praise as the best Android version to date, but ICS' success hinges on more than just the apps and underlying OS that Google has released: People spend a lot of time using third-party apps. The guide could help make Android more consistent and easier to use--and therefore more competitive with Apple's iOS.
There's plenty of vagueness in the guide: "Make the user feel safe, happy, and energized," for example, or, "Android apps empower people to try new things and to use apps in inventive new ways."
But a certain amount of aspirational guidance is perfectly appropriate, and the guide has lots of more concrete advice, too, for things like when to display notifications and sizing elements with density-independent pixels (dp).

What's Android's back button supposed to do? Google explains.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Room for improvement
I still see plenty of room for improvement. I can see people being confused whether they should look to the navigation bar and action bars to get things done. I've found the back button handy on Android, but it behaves unpredictably for me sometimes, and there's no forward button to undo your action. Now ICS introduces the up button as well as the back button, only the up button points left, not up. Perhaps Google should have gone all the way and ditched the back button altogether. Perhaps the idea of dropping the original design so completely in favor of something so iOS-like stuck in Google's craw.
Well, at least programmers have a better idea of what to do. Overall, the guide is helpful as a resource for programmers.
Perhaps as important, it tells users that Google is trying to help them, too.

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How to Use Your Smartphone to Remotely Send Downloads to Your Home Computer

remote control

By Adam Dachis

Jan 13, 2012 8:00 AM

Sometimes you come across a file you want to download but all you've got is your smartphone. Perhaps it's a standard file, perhaps it's a torrent. Whatever the case may be, it's relatively simple to get your smartphone to tell your home computer to get started on that download from afar. Here's how.

Remotely Download Web-Hosted Files

If you want to download a file to your computer that's hosted somewhere on the web, this is the method you want to use. All you need is an account with Dropbox (our favorite file-syncing tool) and a web browser on your smartphone. To download that file to your home computer from the comfort of your phone, just follow these steps (or watch the video to the left):

1. Grab the URL of the file you want to download on your smartphone.
2. Open any web browser on your smartphone and head over to urldroplet.com.
3. Enter the URL in URL Droplet's only text field and click the "Log In" button.
4. Log into your Dropbox account and grant access to URL Droplet.
5. When you're back on the main URL Droplet page, scroll down to the bottom of the screen and see if the file is listed as queued. If not, just add it again via URL Droplet's only text field and click the "Save" button.
6. It'll take a few minutes for the file to show up in your Dropbox, but when it does it'll be in the root folder and you can use it when you get back to any computer that's syncing your Dropbox folder.

Pretty easy! If you want to see a walkthrough, watch the video above.
Alternatively, if you want to do this with a native iPhone app, download Drop It ($1). For another option, your could set If This Then That to add, for example, emailed file URLs to your Dropbox (learn how to use it with our guide).

Remotely Download Torrents

There are a few ways to remotely download torrents, and we have a bunch of guides to help you do it. If you want to stick with the same basic method outlined above, you can send .torrent files remotely to your Dropbox folder. For a little more control, though, you might prefer just using uTorrent's mobile interface to remotely schedule torrents instead:

1. Grab a copy of uTorrent (if you don't have one already).
2. Open up uTorrent and edit its Preferences/Settings.
3. Go to the "Remote" tab and check the box next to "Enable uTorrent Remote".
4. Enter a unique computer name and a password. If your computer name is accepted and isn't in use by anyone else, you'll be asked to answer a new security question. Fill in your answer and press okay.
5. Go to remote.utorrent.com in your smartphone's web browser and log in with your computer's name and password.
6. Press the + button to add a new torrent via URL.

That's all there is to it! For a more detailed walkthrough, see our recent guide to monitoring your BitTorrent downloads from any computer or mobile device.

Remotely Download Files from Usenet

Using your smartphone to tell your home computer to remotely download files from Usenet is really easy to do. You just need the right app, SABnzbd+ running on that home computer, and the port SABnzbd+ runs on (8080 by default) forwarded to that computer via your router's admin software. Then you can use the relevant app for your smartphone to remotely schedule downloads. That's the process in a nutshell. Here's the step by step:

1. Presumably you've already got a Usenet account and set up SABnzbd+, but if not you need to do that.
2. Forward port 8080 (or whatever port you're using) to the IP address of the computer running SABnzbd+. If you don't know how to do this, read our port forwarding guide.
3. Now you need an app for your smartphone. If you're using an iPhone, download myNZB ($3). For Android, download, NZBAir ($5), sabdroidplus (Free), NZBDroid (Free, $1), or one of the many other options.
4. Once you've downloaded your NZB-adding app of choice, go into SABnzbd+ on your computer, grab your API key. You can find it by choosing Config -> General, then scrolling down the page to find the "API Key", and copy it. You can either do this directly on your phone or do it on your computer and send the API key to your phone via email (or whatever method you prefer).
5. Go into the settings on the app you chose and enter your SABnzbd+ credentials. This will generally include your username, password, and API key. On the iPhone, you'll find this in the myNZB settings in the Settings app—not in the myNZB app. On Android, the location will vary a little because we're not talking about a multiple apps, but you'll find the settings you're looking for by pressing the menu button on your device.

Now you're all set up! You can now use your SAB-compatible app to search for and schedule Usenet downloads with ease.

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Skype 5.5 Beta Brings a Redesigned Call UI, Other Improvements to Mac OS X

Mac: The newest Skype beta isn't an enormous update, but it does change the (previously very cluttered) call UI into something a bit more usable.
Before, the call screen seemed overloaded with buttons that were difficult to decipher, while now the interface looks a bit cleaner and easier to use. It also adds the ability to accept incoming calls with or without video, and (as always) adds improvements to call quality and stabilization. Hit the link below to read more, or check out the beta for yourself to see what's new.

Skype 5.5 for Mac Beta Provides Improved Call UI and More | Skype Blog

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Plextor's new external DVD burner works with TVs, no computer required

By Michael Gorman posted Jan 13th 2012 10:47AM

Plextor's been plenty busy this week, announcing its new M3 Pro SSD and PlexEasy external DVD burner, but the company's not done unveiling new products just yet. Plextor's newest offering is another external DVD burner, the easily remembered PX-612U. Like the PlexEasy, it connects via USB and works with TVs and media streamers without needing a PC. That's possible thanks to some secret sauce called PlexTV (not to be confused with the media client), which acts as a code translator to make the PX-612U's output mimic a HDD. It'll be available the first quarter of this year, for an as-yet-unknown number of dollars.

Show full PR text

Plextor Introduces New DVD/CD Writer with PlexTV

The PlexTV feature enables TV Compatibility via USB connection.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Fremont, CA, January 12, 2012- Plextor (www.goplextor.com), leading developer and manufacturer of high-performance digital media and storage equipment, announces the release of its latest External Slim DVD/CD Writer, PX-612U, with PlexTV at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas today.

PlexTV is a new feature enabling Plextor's DVD/CD drive to work with televisions, media players, and other USB-enabled devices. The external drive connects directly to the desired display via USB cable and the user is able to access information stored on a CD or DVD without a PC. PlexTV will be available exclusively with the PX-612U during the first quarter of 2012.

Currently, HDTVs are compatible with a wide variety of devices via USB connection, including hard drives, cameras, and flash drives, but they do not support optical disk drives built for computers. PlexTV enables the use of Plextor's PX-612U drive with these previously unsupported devices by translating signal output to mimic a hard drive.

"It seems counter-intuitive that a USB-supported DVD Drive wouldn't work with a TV, but it has to do with the code that the devices use to communicate," explains Kathy Huynh, Product Marketing Manager. "PlexTV uses a code translator to make the PX-612U appear as a hard drive to the television, making the two devices compatible."

Developing a head-turning innovation such as PlexTV is a Plextor tradition. Plextor has delivered generations of best-in-class and award-winning products since the early Nineties, including CD-R/RW, DVD±R/RW and Blu-ray optical disk drives, digital video converters and multimedia products, and solid state drives.

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#rio : Homenagem a Sérgio Cabral

Augusto Nunes, colunista do site de VEJA, comenta a comparação feita
pelo governador do Rio de Janeiro, Sérgio Cabral, entre as chuvas na
região serrana do Rio e o furacão Katrina.

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Yoani Sánchez pide ayuda a la presidenta de #Brasil - #Cuba

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Plantronics Clarity Fortissimo speakerphone hands-on (video)

Household, Misc. Gadgets

By Joseph Volpe posted Jan 13th 2012 10:10AM

Hands-On

Music aficionados will recognize the term "fortissimo." It's used to signify belting out the tunes as loud as humanly possible, which is exactly what Clarity is hoping to achieve with its speakerphone that uses the name. The Clarity Fortissimo is geared toward those who are mobility-challenged, offering a massively loud 95dB speaker, huge buttons, voice activation, Bluetooth and DECT connectivity, and a large touchscreen display. The Fortissimo offers Plantronics' Vocalyst technology, which has the ability to push emails, messages and even social network updates. It also has a dedicated button that automatically dials Clarity's support center, where a rep can then program the phone remotely for you. Expect to see the Fortissimo available this spring -- we were quoted April / May -- and will retail for $500. We have images and video after the break.

Plantronics Clarity Fortissimo hands-on

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Gigabit wireless for everyone: Wilocity demos first 60GHz wireless devices

• By David Cardinal on January 11, 2012 at 7:00 am
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When WiFi was first introduced, the ability to move even a few megabits per second of data wirelessly at low cost between computers was considered amazing. Since then, with the advent of video streaming, HDTV, and terabyte hard drives full of images and videos, a few or even a few hundred megabits per second (Mbps) has become a bottleneck in the modern home or office.
The Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig for short) is about to change all that with its multi-gigabit per second standard for low-cost wireless communications. This week, at CES 2012, Wilocity announced and demoed the first chipsets to implement the WiGig standard across a variety of devices including laptops, keyboards, mice, TVs, and wireless hard drives — and their availability to OEM customers for designing into products. Amazingly, all these devices can communicate with each other at seemingly infinite speeds with WiGig. Gigabyte files were transferred in only a few seconds — dozens of times faster than on even the best current WiFi network.
The new standard, labeled as 802.11ad, provides for over 5 gigabits per second (Gbps) per pair of devices, and by using a very cool way of shaping the actual radio waves, pairs of devices don’t interfere with each other the way they do on traditional WiFi bands. Pictured right is the image of a demo I watched with a full 1080p movie playing on a wireless device across to a laptop, which in turn was re-broadcasting it in realtime wirelessly to a display. It ran without missing a beat, even when they spun the laptop around and hid it under the furniture. Wilocity also demoed a wireless connection to an SSD hard drive enclosed in stereo furniture which maxed out at over 1Gbps, as measured at the operating system level using a Windows disk drive benchmarking utility.
Initially, WiGig will likely be integrated as a high-end upgrade for WiFi on new laptops and other computers — with the chips only costing a few dollars more in quantity than current WiFi chips, and also supporting backwards compatibility with current 802.11 standards and even Bluetooth. Best yet, they are designed to be form factor compatible with current WiFi modules. Over time it is likely other devices will get connected this way too. One obvious market is high-performance peripherals for ultrabooks, netbooks, tablets, and phones, which don’t have the connector space or power to support wired devices.
WiGig is not the only possible upgrade path for current 802.11n solutions. There is also an 802.11ac standards effort, which updates “n” to higher speeds, but is confined to the same bands — unlike WiGig which uses the wide-open 60GHz band — and has many of the same limits, making WiGig a favored choice for anyone building with an eye on the future. The higher frequency used has led to concerns about line of sight issues, but the units Wilocity demonstrated today ran flawlessly through walls, cabinets and office furniture.
While WiGig may be just around the corner for early adopters, it isn’t here quite yet. Wilocity is sampling parts to its customers now, and expects there to be products using their parts later this year. Wilocity is only the first of what will eventually be many vendors supporting the WiGig standard, so whether it is their chips that wind up in our computers or someone else’s, it is looking increasingly likely that homes and offices will have access to a lot more bandwidth within the next year or two.
Read more at Wilocity

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Limbaugh: Perry Like Fidel Castro (Guess Who Owns Clear Channel?)

Rush Limbaugh compared Rick Perry to Fidel Castro for his attacks on fellow 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney relating to his experiences with Bain Capital. The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur explains how Clear Channel is co-owned by Bain.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/rush-limbaugh-rick-perry-fidel-castr...

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Mirror Mirror' First Look: Snow White Gets a Makeover (Exclusive Photos)

1:44 PM PST 1/12/2012 by Borys Kit

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David Strick

Lily Collins saves the prince on sets magically transformed by Tarsem Singh, with Julia Roberts, Nathan Lane and Armie Hammer by her side.

This story originally appeared in the January 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter.

our editor recommends

'Mirror Mirror' First Look: Snow White Gets a Makeover (Exclusive Photos)

Alan Menken to Compose Score for Relativity's Snow White Film 'Mirror Mirror'

'Mirror Mirror' Trailer Featuring Julia Roberts, Lily Collins Debuts; Tries Comedic Twist

It was the dog days of summer 2011, but Lily Collins found herself running through a forest covered in snow.
EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: First Look at Relativity's Snow White Project, 'Mirror Mirror,' Starring Lily Collins
Collins, then a semi-unknown actress whose biggest previous role had been as Sandra Bullock's daughter in The Blind Side, had scored the lead opposite Julia Roberts' evil queen in Relativity's then-untitled update of the Snow White story.
This particular scene, in which Collins is pursued by Nathan Lane in a carriage through a vast Montreal soundstage, required her to get physical, employing the four months of sword training she took for the role and shaking off the timid stereotype of Snow White that audiences remember from the story-books and 1937 Disney animated classic.
"She is modernized and doesn't stay a victim," says Collins, 22, the daughter of rocker Phil Collins. "She can take control of her destiny and is the princess saving the prince."
Mirror Mirror, opening March 16 and also starring Armie Hammer as the prince, is the first of two high-profile Snow White re-imaginings that will hit theaters this year. The movie, budgeted at $80 million, began in early 2010, when screenwriter Josh Pate saw an Annie Leibovitz photo of a model dressed as Snow White and showed it to his producer friend Bernie Goldmann (300). Believing the fairy tale might make for a good live-action movie, the duo turned to Goldmann's wife, Melissa Wallack, to tackle the script, which she based on early tellings of the European tale.
PHOTOS: Kristen Stewart Vs. Lily Collins Projects: Anatomy of a Snow White Smackdown
Relativity quickly won a bidding war for the project (with Brett Ratner originally attached to direct), and Mirror picked up a sense of urgency when Universal announced a competing project, Snow White and the Huntsman.
"I know it seems like a race [to theaters]," says Goldmann, "but on the inside, it was an immediate commitment. From the first day, Relativity said, 'We are making this movie,' and they never varied from this course."
Still, what followed was a dramatic game of Hollywood hopscotch. Relativity's Ryan Kavanaugh pushed up the release date of Mirror to March 16 from June 29 only days after Universal moved Huntsman up six months to June 1. Tarsem Singh (Immortals) hopped into the director's chair for the 14-week shoot when Ratner stepped aside, turning the movie into an "all stage" production. Singh crafted the movie's many environments exclusively on soundstages with the help of digital effects and elaborate costumes from Oscar winner Eiko Ishioka (Bram Stoker's Dracula). The result, producers hope, is a whimsical family film with modern sensibility.
"It's an animated movie come to life," says Goldmann. "You can only do that with the greenscreen effect."
Click here to see 23 exclusive behind-the-scenes photos from the film.

 

PHOTO GALLERY:

View Gallery First Look at Relativity's Snow White Project, 'Mirror Mirror,' Starring Lily Collins (Exclusive Photos)

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View Gallery 'Mirror Mirror': Julia Roberts, Lily Collins Enchant in Relativity's Snow White Project

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