Bill Gates: Steve Jobs "did something better than I did" in designing the iPad

Bill Gates says that even though Microsoft came up with the idea of a tablet well before Apple, Steve Jobs "did something better than I did" in Apple's design for the iPad. He adds, though, that he believe the Microsoft Windows 8 Surface tablet "will change the rules" of computing.

Gates said all that and more during a lengthy interview with Charlie Rose last night. Much of the interview was about Gates's philanthropic work, but Gates also spent some time talking about computing, particularly PCs and tablets.

Rose asked Gates about Microsoft's work on its unsuccessful slate tablet years befor the iPad was released. Gates said that Microsoft's work on tablets was:

"Way too early...a few things could have been done differently...?

To learn more and to read the entire article at its source, please refer to the following page, Bill Gates: Steve Jobs "did something better than I did" in designing the iPad- Computerworld Blogs

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This US summer is 'what global warming looks like'

The Squirrel Creek Fire burns along the ridge line of Sheep Mountain on Monday, July 2, 2012, southwest of Laramie, Wyo. Crews in Wyoming faced erratic winds and dry, fire-fueling conditions Monday as they fought three large forest fires that have forced hundreds of evacuations across the state. (AP Photo/The Casper Star-Tribune, Alan Rogers)

The Squirrel Creek Fire burns along the ridge line of Sheep Mountain on Monday, July 2, 2012, southwest of Laramie, Wyo. Crews in Wyoming faced erratic winds and dry, fire-fueling conditions Monday as they fought three large forest fires that have forced hundreds of evacuations across the state. (AP Photo/The Casper Star-Tribune, Alan Rogers)

A tree sitting atop a vehicle offers free firewood in Falls Church, Va., Monday, July, 2, 2012, as cleanup continued after Friday's storm, Around 2 million utility customers are without electricity across a swath of states along the East Coast and as far west as Illinois as the area recovers from a round of summer storms that has also caused at least 17 deaths. (AP Photo/Matthew Barakat)

Giovanny Alvarez, a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, leaves after delivering mail to a residence in Washington, Monday, July 2, 2012, damaged by the powerful storm that swept through the region Friday. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? If you want a glimpse of some of the worst of global warming, scientists suggest taking a look at U.S. weather in recent weeks.

Horrendous wildfires. Oppressive heat waves. Devastating droughts. Flooding from giant deluges. And a powerful freak wind storm called a derecho.

These are the kinds of extremes climate scientists have predicted will come with climate change, although it's far too early to say that is the cause. Nor will they say global warming is the reason 3,215 daily high temperature records were set in the month of June.

Scientifically linking individual weather events to climate change takes intensive study, complicated mathematics, computer models and lots of time. Sometimes it isn't caused by global warming. Weather is always variable; freak things happen.

And this weather has been local. Europe, Asia and Africa aren't having similar disasters now, although they've had their own extreme events in recent years.

But since at least 1988, climate scientists have warned that climate change would bring, in general, increased heat waves, more droughts, more sudden downpours, more widespread wildfires and worsening storms. In the United States, those extremes are happening here and now.

So far this year, more than 2.1 million acres have burned in wildfires, more than 113 million people in the U.S. were in areas under extreme heat advisories last Friday, two-thirds of the country is experiencing drought, and earlier in June, deluges flooded Minnesota and Florida.

"This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level," said Jonathan Overpeck, professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona. "The extra heat increases the odds of worse heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfire. This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about."

Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in fire-charred Colorado, said these are the very record-breaking conditions he has said would happen, but many people wouldn't listen. So it's I told-you-so time, he said.

As recently as March, a special report an extreme events and disasters by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of "unprecedented extreme weather and climate events." Its lead author, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University, said Monday, "It's really dramatic how many of the patterns that we've talked about as the expression of the extremes are hitting the U.S. right now."

"What we're seeing really is a window into what global warming really looks like," said Princeton University geosciences and international affairs professor Michael Oppenheimer. "It looks like heat. It looks like fires. It looks like this kind of environmental disasters."

Oppenheimer said that on Thursday. That was before the East Coast was hit with triple-digit temperatures and before a derecho ? an unusually strong, long-lived and large straight-line wind storm ? blew through Chicago to Washington. The storm and its aftermath killed more than 20 people and left millions without electricity. Experts say it had energy readings five times that of normal thunderstorms.

Fueled by the record high heat, this was one of the most powerful of this type of storm in the region in recent history, said research meteorologist Harold Brooks of the National Severe Storm Laboratory in Norman, Okla. Scientists expect "non-tornadic wind events" like this one and other thunderstorms to increase with climate change because of the heat and instability, he said.

Such patterns haven't happened only in the past week or two. The spring and winter in the U.S. were the warmest on record and among the least snowy, setting the stage for the weather extremes to come, scientists say.

Since Jan. 1, the United States has set more than 40,000 hot temperature records, but fewer than 6,000 cold temperature records, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Through most of last century, the U.S. used to set cold and hot records evenly, but in the first decade of this century America set two hot records for every cold one, said Jerry Meehl, a climate extreme expert at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. This year the ratio is about 7 hot to 1 cold. Some computer models say that ratio will hit 20-to-1 by midcentury, Meehl said.

"In the future you would expect larger, longer more intense heat waves and we've seen that in the last few summers," NOAA Climate Monitoring chief Derek Arndt said.

The 100-degree heat, drought, early snowpack melt and beetles waking from hibernation early to strip trees all combined to set the stage for the current unusual spread of wildfires in the West, said University of Montana ecosystems professor Steven Running, an expert on wildfires.

While at least 15 climate scientists told The Associated Press that this long hot U.S. summer is consistent with what is to be expected in global warming, history is full of such extremes, said John Christy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He's a global warming skeptic who says, "The guilty party in my view is Mother Nature."

But the vast majority of mainstream climate scientists, such as Meehl, disagree: "This is what global warming is like, and we'll see more of this as we go into the future."

___

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on extreme weather:

http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/

U.S. weather records set:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/records/

___

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2012-07-03-Weird%20Weather/id-5b045c95974544ec9a97b57ed4aa7b1b

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Rifts split Syria's opposition at Cairo meeting

Exiled Syrian opposition figures meet in New Cairo, Egypt, Tuesday, July 3, 2012. The Arab League chief urged exiled Syrian opposition figures to unite at a meeting as a new Western effort to force President Bashar Assad from power faltered. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

Exiled Syrian opposition figures meet in New Cairo, Egypt, Tuesday, July 3, 2012. The Arab League chief urged exiled Syrian opposition figures to unite at a meeting as a new Western effort to force President Bashar Assad from power faltered. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

Exiled Syrian opposition figures meet in New Cairo, Egypt, Tuesday, July 3, 2012. The Arab League chief urged exiled Syrian opposition figures to unite at a meeting as a new Western effort to force President Bashar Assad from power faltered.(AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

Egyptian security stands guard as a waiter carries away a tray from a Syrian opposition meeting in New Cairo, Egypt, Tuesday, July 3, 2012. The Arab League chief urged exiled Syrian opposition figures to unite at a meeting as a new Western effort to force President Bashar Assad from power faltered. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

FILE - In this Wednesday, July 22, 2009 file photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrian President Bashar Assad, right, meets with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria. Syrian President Bashar Assad said he regrets the shooting down of a Turkish jet by his forces, and that he will not allow tensions between the two neighbors to deteriorate into an "armed conflict," a Turkish newspaper reported Tuesday, July 3, 2012. (AP Photo/SANA, File) EDITORIAL USE ONLY

FILE - In a March 30, 2011 file photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrian President Bashar Assad, addresses the Parliament, in Damascus, Syria. A Turkish newspaper says Assad, speaking in an exclusive interview, has expressed regret over the shooting down of a Turkish jet by his forces. (AP Photo/SANA, file) EDITORIAL USE ONLY

CAIRO (AP) ? Syrian opposition groups struggled to form a united leadership Tuesday at a meeting in Cairo that exposed the vast disagreements that have prevented them from effectively leading the uprising against President Bashar Assad.

The conference ended late Tuesday with an agreement on two documents, both of them vague. One provides a general outline to guide the opposition through a transitional period, while the other lays out the fundamental principles envisioned for a post-Assad Syria.

The delegates agreed in general terms on support for the Free Syrian Army, the dissolution of the ruling Baath Party and the exclusion of Assad or other senior regime figures from a place in the transition.

But they failed to reach an agreement on forming a unified body to represent the opposition.

Arguments were rife among the roughly 250 conference participants over key questions, including whether to ask for foreign military intervention to halt the violence and what role religion would play in a post-Assad Syria.

In other developments Tuesday, Assad told a Turkish newspaper that he regretted that Syria shot down a Turkish warplane last month, and a U.S.-based human rights group said the Damascus regime was running a network of torture centers across the country, citing victims' accounts of beatings, sexual assaults and electric shocks.

Opposition group members interviewed at the Cairo conference by The Associated Press brought into sharp relief their vast disagreements on issues not addressed in the draft charter, suggesting it papered over the divisions that have prevented them from presenting a united front to the international community.

"It's very dangerous at this point," said Abdel-Aziz al-Khayyar, who spent 14 years in Syrian prisons and is now part of the Syrian National Coordination Body. "If we fail to unify as the opposition, it is the greatest gift to the regime."

Since the March 2011 start of the uprising that activists say has killed about 14,000 people, Syrian exiles have organized scores of organizations to collect aid, distribute information and lobby the international community.

But all along, infighting has hampered their ability to court international support. And most groups are led by exiles who have lived outside Syria for years or decades, giving them little credibility with activists inside the country.

Indeed, many inside Syria resent the exile leadership, saying they have taken the glory without sacrificing to face the regime.

"We only recognize those who are working inside the country," Jamal Akta, a rebel commander in the northern Syrian city of Ariha, said recently. "We'll only recognize those people outside when they are standing in the ranks with us, when we see something tangible from them, real help, not words."

Syria's uprising began in March 2011 with protests calling for political reforms that Assad's security forces violently quashed. The dissent grew, and many in the opposition have since taken up arms against the regime, transforming the uprising into an armed insurgency. Activists say more than 14,000 people have been killed.

The vast differences among opposition groups were clearly on display at the Cairo conference, hosted by the Arab League, where participants argued late into the evening over the wording of a document meant to define their movement.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington applauded the conference for bringing together a broad range of opposition elements, and she said there was "significant progress" on "a political vision statement and a transition plan."

However, the meeting failed to resolve many large issues facing the opposition after 15 months of deadly violence.

The two largest opposition groups at the meeting distrust each other. Members of the Syrian National Council accused the Syrian National Coordination Body, known as the NCB, of being too close to the regime. For its part, the NCB accuses the SNC of being a front for the Muslim Brotherhood and Western powers.

Late Tuesday, it appeared that efforts to bring all groups under a unified leadership might collapse - not least of which because Kurdish activists walked out over how the draft charter spoke of their minority.

Sheik Morshid el-Huznawi, one of the Kurds to storm out, declared the conference a "failure."

Even members of the same group disagreed on key issues.

Al-Khayyar, the former prisoner, dismissed those calling for foreign military intervention as "voices that are not very important ... waiting for the world to give its kids to die for our cause."

Another member of the NCB, Abdel-Basit Hamo, said foreign help was welcome.

"When you're drowning and someone gives you a hand, do you ask whose hand it is first?" he asked.

Others disagreed on the role of religion in a post-Assad Syria.

"The revolution came out of the mosques, so with my respect to minorities, we want a civil state but we must also remember that more than 80 percent of Syria is Muslim," said Abdel-Ilah al-Mulham, a tribal leader from the besieged city of Homs and an SNC member.

He said he opposed laws that made men and women equal, saying this counters Islamic law in issues such as divorce and inheritance.

At one point, one attendee broke down in tears outside the meeting room.

"Thousands of martyrs and they can't unite?" said Thaer Al-Hajy, part of a group called the Syrian Revolution Coordination Union. "We are sitting here in hotels and they are down there dying."

One independent activist said all agreed that Assad must go, but that there are many different views of what follows.

"These are sensitive issues that go back to people's ideologies," said Ziad Hassan, 28. "It could take two years, not two days, to get over our differences."

International diplomacy has failed to stop the bloodshed in Syria. A peace plan put forward by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan has collapsed, with the almost 300 U.N. observers sent to monitor a cease-fire stuck in their hotels because of continued violence.

On Saturday, world powers endorsed a new plan that calls for the formation of a transitional government with full executive powers. But at the insistence of Syrian ally Russia, the plan does not bar Assad from taking part - making it a nonstarter for the opposition.

In a rare interview with Turkey's Cumhuriyet daily newspaper, Assad spoke about the Annan plan for the first time, saying he was "pleased" that the decision about Syria's future was left to its people.

"The Syrian people will decide on everything," he said.

Assad also said he regretted that Syrian forces had shot down a Turkish fighter jet on June 22. Syria says the jet was flying low inside Syrian airspace. Turkey says it was shot down in international airspace after briefly straying over Syria.

"I say 100 percent, I wish we did not shoot it down," Assad said. But he stopped short of apologizing, saying Syria fired in self-defense.

Meanwhile, New York-based Human Rights Watch said Assad's security forces are running more than two dozen torture centers across Syria.

Interviews with more than 200 regime defectors and former detainees revealed more than 20 torture techniques, including sexual assault, acid attacks, punching staples into skin, tearing out fingernails, beatings with sticks and electric shocks to genitals and other body parts, the group said.

It said the apparently state-sanctioned torture constituted a crime against humanity and called on the U.N. Security Council to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

___

Hubbard reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara, Turkey, Matthew Lee in Washington and Sarah El Deeb in Cairo contributed reporting.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-07-03-ML-Syria/id-c6c16fa1ff7849eca44a5eb274a10eef

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German spy agency faces shake-up in neo-Nazi case

BERLIN (AP) ? The case horrified Germany, a nation where the Hitler era still casts a long shadow: a small band of neo-Nazis suspected of killing ethnic Turks and others in a seven-year terror spree, undetected by security forces until a botched bank robbery brought down the group last year.

Now, Germany's domestic spy agency faces awkward questions about a possible cover-up after revelations that an official destroyed files related to the investigation of the neo-Nazi group. The case prompted the government to announce this week that the agency's head for the past 12 years will take early retirement.

Before he leaves, a parliamentary committee wants to question Heinz Fromm and the official responsible for the files on Thursday about whether the material was destroyed by mistake or deliberately.

The case had already proven deeply embarrassing to the agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, because of the failure to solve the killings of eight Turkish small businessmen and a Greek between 2000 and 2006 and a policewoman in 2007.

For years, authorities suspected organized crime rather than racist violence. Only when two suspected founding members were found dead last November after a botched bank robbery did the so-called National Socialist Underground's activities come to light.

Even though only a handful of people have been identified as active members of the group, the case shocked Germans: While concern about far-right violence flares periodically, there had never previously been anything like the campaign of murder attributed to the group. Nazi symbols and propaganda have been banned in Germany since the end of World War II.

Critics contended that as authorities concentrated on Islamic terror, they ignored the danger of ultra-right extremists. Relatives of victims said police tried to pin the murders on organized crime, drugs or ethnic rivalries, but never examined the possibility of right-wing terror.

The emergence of the ring prompted authorities to examine whether the group was linked to other unsolved crimes targeting immigrants; they suspect that it was behind a 2004 nail bomb attack in Cologne that injured 22 people, mostly of Turkish origin.

The failure to identify the Nationalist Socialist Underground despite nearly seven years of assassinations has served as a wake-up call to improve cooperation between Germany's tangle of federal and state-level security organizations ? a system that has its roots in a desire to prevent any one authority having too much power after the repression of the Nazi era.

But the system also means different organizations are sometimes unaware of information uncovered by others, a problem which the U.S. found among American security agencies after the 9/11 attacks.

The German domestic intelligence agency, which recruits and oversees informers in extremist organizations, has faced much of the criticism over the neo-Nazi group.

That redoubled when it emerged last week that an official at the agency destroyed seven files, shortly after the lid blew in November on the National Socialist Underground and federal prosecutors asked other agencies to hand over information on the case.

Those files documented efforts years ago to recruit informers in another far-right organization to which the alleged National Socialist Union members once belonged.

But top lawmakers of all parties represented in Germany's parliament told reporters Wednesday after consulting some 45 classified files, including a partial reconstruction of the seven destroyed files, at the intelligence agency that no member of the NSU group or their close aides had been among the agency's informants.

"This was an important step to strip conspiracy theories of their founding," said center-left opposition lawmaker Eva Hoegl. The Social Democrat added, however, that lawmakers will need more time to fully evaluate the files.

"We should have gotten those files long ago," said committee chairman Sebastian Edathy. "I don't understand why that had not happened," he said, vowing to grill the intelligence chief in Thursday's hearing on why the agency failed to share them with the parliamentary inquiry earlier.

Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich and lawmakers have said it was unclear whether parts of those documents were destroyed out of incompetence or as part of a cover-up.

A senior lawmaker with the opposition Greens, Volker Beck, said the intelligence agency "must now prove its necessity and capability through reforms and stronger democratic oversight."

The head of Germany's equivalent of the FBI, the Federal Criminal Police Office, told the parliamentary inquiry last week that "we failed." Joerg Ziercke pointed to complications in the federal set-up as a major factor.

Earlier this year, authorities set up a new center that brings together national agencies and representatives of the 16 states' separate intelligence and police forces to share information that might be of use in combating far-right crimes ? something that was done years ago for Islamic extremism. In addition to the federal Parliament, some state legislatures have set up inquiries.

At the domestic intelligence agency, "there is a need for change and that will be done," Friedrich said.

"We must of course think fundamentally about the way this agency works," he said. "I think it always makes sense from time to time to think about the construction, work and mentality of authorities ? whether it is up to date, whether things have to be changed."

On Tuesday, the regional government in Thuringia ? the home state of the alleged group members ? announced the removal of the head of its own intelligence agency. Thomas Sippel "no longer has the confidence" of the state legislature, regional interior minister Joerg Geibert said.

Adding to the embarrassment, it was not top-level intelligence but simple police work that uncovered the group's existence. After a failed bank robbery in the central city of Eisenach, police tracked the group's suspected founders, Uwe Boehnhardt and Uwe Mundlos, to a mobile home which was on fire when the authorities arrived. Both were found dead there in an apparent murder-suicide.

A third alleged core member, Beate Zschaepe, turned herself in and remains in custody pending trial.

Police found the murdered policewoman's service weapon in the mobile home, then discovered a pistol used in the businessmen's killings at a burned-out apartment used by the group and allegedly torched by Zschaepe.

Investigators also found copies of a propaganda video featuring pictures of the victims and a cartoon image of the Pink Panther standing next to a placard proclaiming "Germany Tour, 9th Turk Shot."

Zschaepe is accused of founding and membership in a terrorist organization. She has kept silent on the case while prosecutors prepare formal charges.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/german-spy-agency-faces-shake-neo-nazi-case-062420099.html

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Abuse during childhood may contribute to obesity in adulthood

ScienceDaily (July 2, 2012) ? Investigators from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and Boston University's Slone Epidemiology Center report research findings that may shed light on influences on obesity during adulthood. Appearing in the journal Pediatrics, the study found an association of severity of sexual and physical abuse during childhood and adolescence with obesity during adulthood.

The findings were based on the ongoing Black Women's Health Study, which has followed a large cohort of African-American women since 1995. Information provided in 2005 by more than 33,000 participants on early life experiences of abuse was assessed in relation to two measures of obesity: body mass index of 30 kg/m2 or more as a measure of overall obesity and waist circumference greater than 35 inches as a measure of central obesity.

The risk of obesity in 2005 by either measure was estimated to be approximately 30 percent greater among women in the highest category of physical and sexual abuse than in women who reported no abuse. The association was dampened but not fully explained by allowance for reproductive history, diet, physical activity and depressive symptoms, which might have been intermediates between abuse and weight gain.

According to the researchers, the findings add to growing evidence that experiences during childhood may have long-term health consequences. "Abuse during childhood may adversely shape health behaviors and coping strategies, which could lead to greater weight gain in later life," explained Renee Boynton-Jarrett, MD, the lead investigator of the study and a pediatric primary care physician at Boston Medical Center. She also noted that metabolic and hormonal disruptions resulting from abuse could have that effect and that childhood abuse could be a marker for other adversities. "Ultimately, greater understanding of pathways between early life abuse and adult weight status may inform obesity prevention and treatment approaches." Boynton-Jarrett cautioned that further studies are needed to clarify just which factors are responsible for the association of abuse with obesity and noted there is a consensus that pediatric providers should screen for abuse.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Boston University Medical Center, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Rene?e Boynton-Jarrett, Lynn Rosenberg, Julie R Palmer, Deborah A. Boggs and Lauren A. Wise. Child and Adolescent Abuse in Relation to Obesity in Adulthood: The Black Women?s Health Study. Pediatrics, Volume 130, Number 2, August 2012 DOI: 10.1542/peds.2011-1554

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120702134736.htm

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Privately devout Romney worships with his family

WOLFEBORO, N.H. (AP) ? Every year, Mitt Romney and his family spend a week at his estate on the picturesque Lake Winnipesaukee. They go boating, play games ? and attend church, an expression of the faith that's fundamentally shaped the Republican presidential candidate.

Romney, the first Mormon to clinch the presidential nomination of a major party, attended services Sunday with his wife, Ann, five sons, five daughters-in-law and eighteen grandchildren. They made up nearly a third of the congregation that gathered in the small, nondescript building that houses this tiny resort town's branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

The Romney clan has attended the church in Wolfeboro many times before ? only now the family patriarch carries the distinction of being President Barack Obama's Republican challenger.

Not that church leaders or worshipers mentioned the new reality as, one by one, they stood at a podium to offer testimony, a custom in Mormon churches on the first Sunday of every month. Among those testifying: one of the many Romney grandchildren.

"My name is Chloe Romney and I'm visiting here from California," the candidate's middle-school-age granddaughter said from the church's lectern, a pink flower in her hair. "I know that my family loves me and I like to go to church."

The family's devotion to the Mormon faith is a part of Romney's life that the electorate rarely sees. Romney himself almost never mentions it in public. And his campaign typically bars the media from seeing him participate in a religion with which many Americans are unfamiliar. But it's a part of his life that could help him connect with an American public that's only just now starting to get to know him ? one that includes many church-goers.

Romney's campaign doesn't tell reporters when Romney is going to church. But the Wolfeboro branch is open to visitors and an Associated Press reporter attended the same sacrament service the Romney family attended. It featured bread with water instead of wine, a variation on communion that allows for the Mormon prohibition on drinking alcohol.

And it provided a rare glimpse into his practice of a faith that has permeated every aspect of Romney's life: his childhood, his college years and time as a missionary, his marriage, his life in Boston, even his business career.

Mormonism began in the 1830s when, according to believers, an angel presented another book of scripture to Joseph Smith, the church's founder, called the Book of Mormon. With 14.4 million members, the church is among the fastest growing in the world, supported by a full-time missionary force of about 55,000 young people. Romney has been an active Mormon all his life, so involved in the church at one point that he rose to a rank equivalent to a bishop. He eventually presided over a group of congregations.

During his presidential campaign, the demands of Romney's faith can dictate how he spends his time; it requires as many as three hours nearly every Sunday for services. According to people familiar with his private schedule, Romney goes to church nearly every week. His faith also helps drive his fundraising; a significant amount of money comes from wealthy Mormon donors. And Mormon households across the country often housed campaign aides as they moved from state to state during the GOP primary.

When Romney does talk about his faith, he discloses little and usually focuses on his time as a missionary in France. He offered a forceful explanation of the role of faith in his own life during a recent speech at Liberty University that was aimed at bridging differences with evangelicals, many of whom are skeptical of Mormon theology.

"Culture ? what you believe, what you value, how you live ? matters," Romney said during the May speech that avoided all direct references to Mormonism. "What we have, what we wish we had ? ambitions fulfilled, ambitions disappointed, investments won, investments lost, elections won, elections lost ? these things may occupy our attention, but they do not define us."

This week's Sunday service was a cornerstone of a week that will see all 30 members of the Romney clan pack into the family's sprawling lakefront estate.

They'll gather for family dinners, waterski on the lake, paddleboard off the beach and discuss family affairs, all traditions the family has been developing at this home for more than a decade.

This year, questions about whom Romney will choose as his vice presidential running mate hang over his vacation ? though there was little sign of politics after church on Sunday, as Romney relaxed barefoot on his back deck with youngest son Craig and eldest Tagg, who held one of his recently born twin sons. On the lawn below, a team of photographers set up lights in preparation for the annual family picture.

Earlier, at the service, Romney sat next to his wife, with grandchildren occupying the rest of the row. He sang along during the service's three hymns, holding his iPad underneath his navy blue hymnal. Some of the kids ? who range in age from a few weeks old to 16 years ? grew restless during the long service. At different points, several walked over to receive a kind smile and quiet word from their grandfather.

As the first section of the service concluded, Romney and the congregation sang all the verses of "America the Beautiful," a song the candidate often quotes on the campaign trail. Many attendees departed while others prepared for the second portion of the service, a Sunday school for adults.

While church leaders moved to close partitions to prepare for the school, Romney chatted at length with others who had come to the service, including several who wore "Romney" pins on their lapels.

Romney has been visiting Wolfeboro for decades, first coming here with his father, George Romney, to visit the J.W. Marriott family. The Marriott family played a significant role in building the Mormon church in Wolfeboro several decades ago.

The branch president, Matthew Jensen, said there are now more than 60 Marriott family members who will appear in Wolfeboro ? and at church ? sometime in the summer. They haven't arrived yet, so the Romneys have the largest contingent.

___

Follow Kasie Hunt on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/kasie

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/privately-devout-romney-worships-family-075740853.html

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R. Kelly Blames 'The Notebook' For His Divorce

Singer claims in new autobiography that 2004 Ryan Gosling weeper made him realize his marriage was over.
By Gil Kaufman

R. Kelly's "Soulacoaster"
Photo: Smiley Books

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1688959/r-kelly-blames-notebook-his-divorce.jhtml

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