Tuesday, April 16, 2013

China criticizes US force strengthening in Asia

BEIJING (AP) ? In its latest account of national defense efforts, China said Tuesday that the United States is destabilizing the Asia-Pacific region by strengthening its military alliances and sending more ships, planes, and troops to the area.

The U.S. policy known as the "pivot" to Asia runs counter to regional trends and "frequently makes the situation tenser," the Defense Ministry said in its report on the state of China's defense posture and armed forces.

"Certain efforts made to highlight the military agenda, enhance military deployment and also strengthen alliances are not in line with the calling of the times and are not conducive to the upholding of peace and stability in the region," spokesman Yang Yujun told reporters at a news conference marking the report's release.

"We hope that the relevant parties would do more to enhance the mutual trust between countries in the region and contribute to peace and stability," Yang said.

China has consistently criticized Washington's deployment of additional ships and personnel to Asia, along with increasing cooperation both with treaty partners, including Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, as well other countries such as Vietnam that aren't traditional allies.

The U.S. is winding down its fighting in Afghanistan and calls the restructuring a natural reallocation of resources to the world's most economically dynamic region.

Beijing, however, sees it as specifically designed to contain China's diplomatic, military, and economic rise, and has sought to reassure Asian nations that China poses no threat to them. Despite that, China's fast-growing military and increasingly firm assertions of its territorial claims have concerned many countries, pushing them to seek stronger relations with the U.S., the region's traditional military superpower.

The pivot will see 60 percent of the Navy's fleet be deployed to the Pacific by 2020. Singapore will be home to four new U.S. Littoral Combat Ships designed to fight close to shorelines, while Indonesia is looking to buy a broad range of American hardware and take part in joint maneuvers. The Philippines is seeking to host more U.S. troops on a rotating basis and Australia has agreed to allow up to 2,500 Marines to deploy to the northern city of Darwin.

Meanwhile, in the face of natural disasters and North Korean threats, U.S. military relations with treaty partners South Korea and Japan are closer than ever.

In its report, the Defense Ministry again sought to assuage concerns about its more than 500 percent increase in defense spending over the past 14 years. China's defense budget is now the second largest in the world after the U.S., allowing it to acquire everything from better submarines and missiles to state-of-the-art fighters, aircraft carriers and electronic warfare systems, and helping spawn an arms race across Asia.

Much of the report was devoted to the military's contribution to U.N. peacekeeping efforts and disaster relief, portraying the People's Liberation Army as a force for regional and global stability.

Yet it also asserted the PLA's role as a guarantor of China's core interests, vowing to tolerate no violation of those.

"'We will not attack unless we are attacked, but we will surely counterattack if attacked. Following this principle, China will resolutely take all necessary measures to safeguard its national sovereignty and territorial integrity," the report said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/china-criticizes-us-force-strengthening-asia-064629411.html

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Saturday, April 13, 2013

Coding boot camps promise to launch tech careers

Student David Wen works during a class at Dev Bootcamp in San Francisco, Tuesday, April 2, 2013. Dev Bootcamp is one of a new breed of computer-programming schools that?s proliferating in San Francisco and other U.S. tech hubs. These ?hacker boot camps? promise to teach students how to write code in two or three months and help them get hired as web developers, with starting salaries between $80,000 and $100,000, often within days or weeks of graduation. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Student David Wen works during a class at Dev Bootcamp in San Francisco, Tuesday, April 2, 2013. Dev Bootcamp is one of a new breed of computer-programming schools that?s proliferating in San Francisco and other U.S. tech hubs. These ?hacker boot camps? promise to teach students how to write code in two or three months and help them get hired as web developers, with starting salaries between $80,000 and $100,000, often within days or weeks of graduation. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Shereef Bishay, co-founder of Dev Bootcamp, center, talks with student Ryan Guerrettaz during a class at Dev Bootcamp in San Francisco, Tuesday, April 2, 2013. Dev Bootcamp is one of a new breed of computer-programming schools that?s proliferating in San Francisco and other U.S. tech hubs. These ?hacker boot camps? promise to teach students how to write code in two or three months and help them get hired as web developers, with starting salaries between $80,000 and $100,000, often within days or weeks of graduation. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

A shrine with photos of Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Craig Barrett and others is shown at the Dev Bootcamp office in San Francisco, Tuesday, April 2, 2013. Dev Bootcamp is one of a new breed of computer-programming schools that?s proliferating in San Francisco and other U.S. tech hubs. These ?hacker boot camps? promise to teach students how to write code in two or three months and help them get hired as web developers, with starting salaries between $80,000 and $100,000, often within days or weeks of graduation. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

A group presents during a class at Dev Bootcamp in San Francisco, Tuesday, April 2, 2013. Dev Bootcamp is one of a new breed of computer-programming schools that?s proliferating in San Francisco and other U.S. tech hubs. These ?hacker boot camps? promise to teach students how to write code in two or three months and help them get hired as web developers, with starting salaries between $80,000 and $100,000, often within days or weeks of graduation. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

A sign for Dev Bootcamp is shown at their office in San Francisco, Tuesday, April 2, 2013. Dev Bootcamp is one of a new breed of computer-programming schools that?s proliferating in San Francisco and other U.S. tech hubs. These ?hacker boot camps? promise to teach students how to write code in two or three months and help them get hired as web developers, with starting salaries between $80,000 and $100,000, often within days or weeks of graduation. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

(AP) ? Looking for a career change, Ken Shimizu decided he wanted to be a software developer, but he didn't want to go back to college to study computer science.

Instead, he quit his job and spent his savings to enroll at Dev Bootcamp, a new San Francisco school that teaches students how to write software in nine weeks. The $11,000 gamble paid off: A week after he finished the program last summer, he landed an engineering job that paid more than twice his previous salary.

"It's the best decision I've made in my life," said Shimizu, 24, who worked in marketing and public relations after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley in 2010. "I was really worried about getting a job, and it just happened like that."

Dev Bootcamp, which calls itself an "apprenticeship on steroids," is one of a new breed of computer-programming school that's proliferating in San Francisco and other U.S. tech hubs. These "hacker boot camps" promise to teach students how to write code in two or three months and help them get hired as web developers, with starting salaries between $80,000 and $100,000, often within days or weeks of graduation.

"We're focused on extreme employability," said Shereef Bishay, who co-founded Dev Bootcamp 15 months ago. "Every single skill you learn here you'll apply on your first day on the job."

These intensive training programs are not cheap ? charging $10,000 to $15,000 for programs running nine to 12 weeks ? and they're highly selective, typically only admitting 10 to 20 percent of applicants. And they're called boot camps for a reason. Students can expect to work 80 to 100 hours a week, mostly writing code in teams under the guidance of experienced software developers.

"It's quite grueling. They push you very hard," said Eno Compton, 31, who finished Dev Bootcamp in late March. Compton is finishing his doctorate in Japanese literature at Princeton University, but decided he wants to be a software engineer instead of a professor.

"For people who are looking to get involved in software in a big way and don't want to set aside four years for a computer-science degree, this nine-week program is a terrific alternative," Compton said.

One San Francisco school called App Academy doesn't charge tuition. Instead, it asks for a 15 percent cut of the student's first-year salary. Graduates who can't find jobs don't have to pay, but so far nearly all of them have.

"When I started it, people thought we were crazy. Why would you do something like that? But in practice it's worked out well so far," said Ned Ruggeri, who co-founded App Academy last summer.

Over the past year, more than two dozen computer-coding schools have opened or started recruiting students in cities such as New York, Chicago, Toronto, Washington and Cambridge, Mass. The programs are attracting students from a wide range of backgrounds, from college dropouts to middle-aged career changers. Most students haven't formally studied computer science, but have tried to learn to code on their own.

Alyssa Ravasio, who graduated from UCLA with a liberal arts degree in 2010, worked at tech startups but was frustrated because she didn't know how to write software, so she signed up for Dev Bootcamp.

"What we've learned in the last nine weeks would have taken at least a year, if not years, on my own," Ravasio said. "I knew I wanted to learn how to code, and I tried to on my own before and it was really hard and really frustrating."

But as more boot camps open, backers worry low-quality programs could hurt the reputation of the pioneer schools and drive away potential students and recruiters.

"I worry about the explosion of Dev Bootcamp copycats," said Michael Staton, a venture capitalist at Learn Capital. "If they mess up, they kind of ruin it for everybody. Then students have to worry about whether these schools can actually deliver on their promise."

The coding academies are helping meet the seemingly insatiable demand for computer programmers in the U.S. tech industry, which has been lobbying Congress to issue more visas for engineers and other skilled immigrants.

The boot camps are launching at a time when many recent college graduates are struggling to find jobs that pay enough to chip away at their hefty student loan debts.

The new schools say they are teaching students the real-world skills that employers want but colleges have failed to provide. "Our school is a lot shorter, cheaper and more applicable to the work they'd like to do than universities," said Shawn Drost, who co-founded Hack Reactor in San Francisco six months ago.

This intensive-learning model can also be used to train workers for other professions for less time and money than what traditional colleges require, Staton said. "We think this is the beginning of a really large movement that will happen across industries," he said.

Bishay, an Egyptian-born engineer who sold his first software company to Microsoft in 2001, started Dev Bootcamp as an experiment. He wanted to see how quickly he could teach his friend and other non-techies how to write code.

"I used about 10 percent of what I learned in college in my first job, and I figured I could teach that 10 percent in two and a half months," Bishay said.

Dev Bootcamp has trained about 400 students, and 95 percent of them have been hired as software developers with an average salary of about $80,000, Bishay said. It's now opening a campus in Chicago.

The school doesn't just teach technical skills. It teaches students how to work in teams, communicate better and interview for jobs. On graduation day, it invites tech recruiters to meet students at a "speed-dating" job fair.

"Finding engineering talent is a big challenge right now, and Dev Bootcamp is addressing a really important problem," said Felicia Curcuru, who was recruiting engineers for FundersClub, a San Francisco company that connects investors with tech startups. "There are not enough people studying computer science."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-04-12-Techie%20Boot%20Camp/id-a524bd16a9ab4c9c85d0e6d35a03e4f3

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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Moroccan actor in Bible mini-series amused by conservatives likening his Satan to Obama

CASABLANCA, Morocco - Mehdi Ouazzani isn't the devil, but he has played one on TV ? only he didn't realize that some thought he looked like President Barack Obama while he was at it.

A veteran Moroccan actor with decades of film experience, Ouazzani was bemused to wake up one morning and find that his role in The History Channel's popular five-part miniseries "The Bible" had become the latest way for conservative commentators in the United States to needle the president.

"One morning somebody called me and said 'you have to look at your email' and I was so surprised," Ouazzani told The Associated Press in Casablanca before jetting off to the remote desert town of Erfoud, where he's playing a police inspector in a German crime drama.

"For someone like me, a simple unknown actor, to find himself in a controversy like this ? even though it's nonsense ? it makes me known around the world, so it's something positive," he said with a chuckle.

With grey hair pulled back in a ponytail, an expressive face and a slim Errol Flynn-style pencil moustache, Ouazzani doesn't look a great deal like America's 44th president ? but then he doesn't resemble a stereotypical Satan very much either.

It was only after an hour and a half of makeup and a heavy hooded robe in Morocco's blazing desert that Ouazzani became the figure on a mountain top tempting Jesus.

It's this new look that laid the stage for the Obama comparisons.

After the episode aired in mid-March, conservative firebrand commentator Glenn Beck tweeted to millions of his followers : "Does Satan look EXACTLY like Obama? Yes!" The cry was taken up by others and provoked a fierce response from Obama's supporters that compelled the History Channel to announce it had "the highest respect" for Obama, and "it's unfortunate that anyone made this false connection."

Part of the resonance of the controversy was the sheer success of the miniseries, which had 13 million viewers for its first episode ? beating out even "American Idol." The final episode, featuring the passion of Christ, aired on Easter, March 31, and had 11.7 million viewers ? competing handily with the season finale of cable favourite "The Walking Dead."

Conservative television personalities Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity were still talking about it weeks later on their shows, with Hannity telling "The Bible" executive producer Roma Downey that he, too, thought the program's Satan resembled Obama.

In a statement, Downey maintained that she and fellow producer and husband Mark Burnett "have nothing but respect and love our president, who is a fellow Christian," adding that "false statements such as these are just designed as a foolish distraction to try and discredit the beauty of the story of the Bible."

It's not Ouazzani's first tour through the pages of Christianity's holy book. He appeared in the 2006 mini-series "Ten Commandments" and the 2000 production "In The Beginning," as well as a string of other biblical productions in the 1990s.

Previous film productions have taken advantage of this North African country's stark deserts and lush palm groves to recreate ancient Palestine. "I've seen several different Jesuses and Judases and I've played Satanic characters before, I played Judas."

Still, Ouazzani found playing Satan this time quite a challenge, as he tried to convey intensity with little more than his eyes, delivering the devil's grim temptations to Jesus in sepulchral tones.

"I have a very expressive face, when African or Moroccan people talk, we talk with our faces," he said, describing his scenes as the prince of darkness playing opposite Portuguese actor Diogo Morgado's Jesus. "Satan taught me how to manage my close-ups, because Satan didn't feel anything, didn't suffer anything."

Ouazzani's face lights up as he talks about the filming, displaying little real-life resemblance to his gloomy character in the movie.

Ouazzani praised the producers and the professionalism on the set, which dealt with its own set of challenges, including Morocco's ample desert serpent population.

"Before you go to the set, there was a special person who knows about serpents and scorpions and they go through and clean everything," said Ouazzani, describing how one of the snake wranglers even caught one in the middle of production.

"He came into the middle of the set, he looked around and then went running and took up a snake from under the sand with his hand," he said.

Ouzzani said working on a series like "The Bible" has been particularly enjoyable because it gives him a taste of the Hollywood system ? something many Moroccan actors yearn to do.

"Hollywood is the only cinema where I really feel like an actor," he said, "the rest feels do-it-yourself."

While dozens of American productions have been shot in Morocco, including "Gladiator," ''Kingdom of Heaven," ''Blackhawk Down," ''The Bourne Ultimatum" and most recently the TV series "Game of Thrones," they feature comparatively few Moroccan actors.

Ouazzani ascribes being cast to luck and knowing the right people ? but speaking French, Spanish, Italian, English and Arabic hasn't hurt. He credits his time as a flight attendant for the national airline, Royal Air Maroc, with putting him in daily touch with people from all over the world.

He started acting in his 20s and has appeared on the Spanish stage, played a police inspector in French movies, and will play a terrorist leader in an upcoming Spanish film about the 2011 bombing of a tourist cafe in Marrakech.

And who knows, maybe a chance comment by a conservative commentator will open the gates to Hollywood.

"Some good has come out of this," he said, adding with a twinkle in his eye: "Before, I knew who Obama was, and now he knows me, and if he has time I'd like to invite him and his family for couscous in Morocco."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/moroccan-actor-bible-mini-series-amused-conservatives-likening-110044753.html

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Tuesday, April 2, 2013

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