The Ultimate District-by-District Guide to Election Night

We’re gearing up for what is certain to be a very exciting and — given that there are a number of crucial races on the West Coast, particularly for the Senate — very long Election Night.

Among other things, we’re hoping to be able to update our House and Senate takeover projections as the night progresses. While we almost certainly won’t be updating our forecasts for individual seats, and we definitely won’t be “calling” any races until The New York Times does, we do hope to provide some forecast of the overall number of seats that Republicans are most likely to win in each chamber, and their probability of taking over both the House and the Senate. These top-level projections would be updated a couple of times an hour as the returns roll in.

In the process of preparing our model to do this, I’ve started to hone in on the seats that are likely to tell us the most about the disposition of the House as Election Night progresses.

In particular, what I’ve done is to take all 435 House seats and sort them in order of the margin we project in each one — from the Republican Ron Paul’s district, the Texas 14th, which we expect him to win by about 65 points, to the Democrat José E. Serrano’s New York 16th in the Bronx, where he should be re-elected by 70 points or so.

The outcomes of lopsided races like Mr. Paul’s and Mr. Serrano’s aren’t likely to be terribly exciting to many people other than Mr. Paul, Mr. Serrano and their immediate families. But a tremendous number of House seats are competitive this year.

In a series of charts below, I’m going to list what our forecasting model considers to be the roughly 150 most competitive House races, as of Saturday afternoon. This obviously casts a very wide net; it’s basically every race in which we expect the two candidates to finish within 20 points of each other.

The charts are organized by the time that we should expect to see returns starting to trickle in from each state. There are few judgment calls involved here, based on the past experiences of The Times’s data team, as some states have multiple poll closing times. As veteran election-watchers know, Indiana and Kentucky, where most polls close at 6 p.m. Eastern time, should be the first states to begin reporting results. Alaska, meanwhile, won’t start releasing vote totals until 1 a.m. Eastern, after people in the Aleutian Islands have had their chance to vote.

The House seats are further divided into three columns. The seats that reflect the G.O.P.’s path of least resistance to taking over the House are in the leftmost column. If the Republicans won exactly the seats in the left-hand column, but no others, they would gain a net of 39 seats from Democrats, and control the House, 218-217. This basically involves those seats where the Republican candidate is favored by 3 or more points by our model.

Seats where the G.O.P. could begin to build on their majority are in the middle column. These are seats that Republicans they are favored to win by our model, but by fewer than 3 points. If Republicans won each of these seats, their gains would total a net of 59.

(A technical note: our simulations have the Republicans picking up an average of 53-54 seats, rather than 59. This is because the forecasts are somewhat asymmetric: there are 14 seats in which we have the Republican favored by 0 to 2 points, versus 6 seats like this for Democrats. Our official forecast looks at these races probabilistically — that is, if our model has the Republican projected to win by 0.01 points, his winning chances are 50 percent and some very small fraction. We don’t “call” the race for him. But if we do allocate all of the toss-up seats to one or another party, no matter how trivial its lead, we’re showing Republicans as favorites to win a net of 59 seats from Democrats.)

Finally, the seats in the far-right column reflect the tsunami possibility: those that Republicans would need to win to achieve a gain of 60 seats or more.

Each competitive race is represented by a little box that contains several key pieces of information. For the most part, this should be pretty self-explanatory:

The one thing that I’d like to draw your attention to is the statistic in parenthesis in the lower left-hand corner of the box: this is what we call the magic number. What this statistic indicates is how many seats we’d expect the Republicans to gain on the Democrats over all if they won this particular seat and all seats in which we have them favored by a larger margin.

In this particular example, for instance — the New York 19th congressional district, in which we have the Republican Nan Hayworth favored by 3 points — the magic number is 43. That means that if Republicans won this seat — and all other seats in which they were favored by more than 3 points, but none of the seats in which we had them favored by fewer than 3 points — they would finish with a gain of 43 seats on Democrats over all on the night. Another way to look at the magic number is that it’s the number of seats we’d expect Republicans to win nationwide if they won this particular district by exactly 1 vote (and we had no information about what had taken place in any other district).
Occasionally, the magic number will be negative; these are seats that, if the G.O.P. lost them, would imply that it were actually going to lose seats in the House overall.
What you should be looking for is whether Republicans are consistently winning seats with magic numbers in the 60s, 70s, 80s or higher. If so, they could be in for a very big night. Conversely, if Democrats are holding onto seats with magic numbers in the teens, 20s, or 30s, that means they are overperforming their forecasts and could hold the House.
By consistently, by the way, I do mean consistently: individual districts are fairly hard to forecast, and so Republicans almost certainly will pick off a few seats with very high magic numbers, and Democrats will almost certainly hold on to some with very low ones, regardless of what is happening elsewhere in the country.
You should also be watching the margin of victory in each district, particularly for districts in which enough of the vote has been counted that The Times has called the race. Our forecasts are calibrated to an overall Republican gain of between 50 and 60 seats. If they’re consistently winning their races by a larger margin than our model expects, that means their gains are likely to be somewhere beyond 60 seats. If they’re underachieving their margins, on the other hand, it may be below 50 seats, and Democrats might hold the House.
One reason we do try to be so precise with our forecasts — projecting a margin of victory in each race rather than putting them into broad categories like “toss-up” and “lean Republican” — is exactly so that it can serve this benchmarking function. It’s not that we know exactly what is going to happen on Tuesday; quite to the contrary, we think other forecasters are being incautious in not acknowledging the degree of uncertainty inherent to forecasting this House election.
But we can show you the blood, guts and entrails of roughly what a Republican gain of about 55 seats would look like, if that turns out to be the number: it would look something like this.
All right, that’s enough buildup. Let’s show you what to look for beginning at 6 p.m., when we’ll begin to see the first results from Indiana and Kentucky.
Baron Hill’s seat, the Indiana 9th, has long been one of the most competitive in the country. I don’t think you should get too swept up in the results of any one particular congressional district — not when there are 435 of them in every corner of the country. But Mr. Hill, a middle-of-the-road Democrat who ordinarily performs strongly in his fairly rural, somewhat Republican-leaning district, but who voted for the health care bill and the stimulus, is in a position that is fairly typical for Democratic incumbents around the country this year. Also, the district has a magic number of 41, which means that it’s right at the cusp of what Republicans would need to take over the House. If they fail to win it, that could be the first sign that they’re liable to do a hair worse than expected. If they win it by a margin in the high single digits or the double digits, however, it could suggest that a lot of Democratic incumbents, many of whom are less skilled than Mr. Hill at understanding how to run a strong campaign in their districts, are going to be in trouble.

Joe Donnelly, in the Indiana 2nd district, is one Democrat whose polls have held up fairly well in spite of the Republican wave. Our model has him favored by just 2 points, however, and if he were to lose, that would be a good early sign for Republicans.
Indiana’s 8th district, vacated by Brad Ellsworth, is very likely to be a Republican pickup. If they’re having trouble winning it, that’s a reasonably bad sign for them.
Indiana’s 7th and 3rd congressional districts are not likely to be especially competitive. If these races wind up within the single digits, something really weird might be afoot.
I’d be a little bit more cautious about reading too much into the two Kentucky districts on our chart, the 6th and the 3rd, just because Kentucky is a fairly idiosyncratic state to begin with, and both the polling and the Senate race have been strange there. Still, John Yarmuth’s 3rd district, which encompasses Louisville, reflects a strong potential upside case for the G.O.P. if they were to win it.

Bombs Were Designed to Destroy Planes, U.S. Believes

John O. Brennan, the president’s chief counterterrorism adviser, said Sunday that American authorities believe now that the two bombs found inside cargo packages were designed to blow up the airplanes carrying them, even though they were addressed to locations “associated with synagogues” in Chicago.

“We’re looking at the potential that they would have been detonated en route to those synagogues aboard the aircraft as well as at the destinations,” he said in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “But at this point we, I think, would agree with the British that it looks as though they were designed to be detonated in flight.”

His analysis came as investigators on three continents conducted forensic studies of two bombs shipped inside computer printers from Yemen and intercepted Friday in Britain and Dubai. American officials said evidence was mounting that the top leadership of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, including the radical American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, was behind the attempted attacks.

One of the bombs traveled on two passenger planes within the Middle East before arriving in Dubai. A spokesman for Qatar Airways said that the package arrived first at the Qatar Airways hub in Doha, Qatar, on one of the airline’s flights from the Yemeni capital of Sana. It was then shipped on a separate Qatar Airways passenger plane to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where it was discovered by authorities late Thursday or early Friday.

A woman identified as Hanan Samawi, 22, an engineering student at Sana University, who was thought to have delievered the packages to the FedEx and United Parcel Service offices in the capital city of Sana, was detained on Saturday but released on Sunday, according to Abdelrahman Barman, a lawyer who was in contact with her family.

Friends who had spoken to the family said she was told by security officials that her phone number and a copy of her photo identification were found on the package. Ms. Samawi’s mother was detained Saturday as well, but family friends said that was only because she insisted on accompanying her daughter.

During questioning, the shipping agent for one of the parcel services said she was not the women who left off the package, leading authorities to conclude that her identification had been used by someone else.

Mr. Brennan appeared on the major Sunday news programs: CNN’s “State of the Union,” “Fox News Sunday,” ABC’s “This Week with Christiane Amanpour,” NBC’s “Meet the Press” and CBS’s “Face the Nation.” On two of the shows, he said that it remained unclear whether those behind the devices had planned for the explosives to be detonated while in the air or after arriving in Chicago.

But in his appearance on “Face the Nation,” he said emphatically that it was designed to be detonated “in flight.” The packages did not appear to need someone to “physically detonate them,” he said on CNN, indicating that a remote or automatic detonation was possible.

Mr. Brennan said on “Meet the Press” that it was not clear whether those behind the attempted bombing had known, or could have known, whether the packages would be carried on cargo or passenger planes.

He said that authorities were not assuming that they had located all the packages involved in the attempted attack. The bombs were sophisticated and expertly constructed, American officials said Saturday, further evidence that Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen is steadily improving its abilities to strike on American soil.

Investigators said that the bomb discovered at the Dubai airport in the United Arab Emirates was concealed in a Hewlett-Packard desktop printer, with high explosives packed into a printer cartridge to avoid detection by scanners.

“The wiring of the device indicates that this was done by professionals,” said one official involved in the investigation, who like several officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the inquiry was continuing. “It was set up so that if you scan it, all the printer components would look right.”

The bomb discovered in Britain was also hidden in a printer cartridge.

The terror plot broke publicly in dramatic fashion on Friday morning, when the two packages containing explosives and addressed to synagogues or Jewish community centers in Chicago were found, setting off an international dragnet and fears about packages yet to be discovered. It also led to a tense scene in which American military jets escorted a plane to Kennedy International Airport amid concerns — which turned out to be unfounded — that there might be explosives on board.

American officials said their operating assumption was that the two bombs were the work of Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, Al Qaeda in Yemen’s top bomb-maker, whose previous devices have been more rudimentary, and also unsuccessful. Mr. Asiri is believed to have built both the bomb sewn into the underwear of the young Nigerian who tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight last Dec. 25, and the suicide bomb that nearly killed Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief, Mohammed bin Nayef, months earlier. (In the second episode, American officials say, Mr. Asiri hid the explosives in a body cavity of his brother, the suicide bomber.)

Just as in the two previous attacks, the bomb discovered in Dubai contained the explosive PETN, according to the Dubai police and Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security. This new plot, Ms. Napolitano said, had the “hallmarks of Al Qaeda.”

The Department of Homeland Security issued a cable saying that the packages may have been linked to two Yemeni schools with heavy populations of foreign students. If true, that would suggest that foreign students might have been involved in the plot, as in the attempted bombing of a commercial jetliner in Detroit last Dec. 25 by a Nigerian trained in Yemen.

But the schools, listed as the Yemen-American Institute for Language-Computer Management and the American Center for Training and Development, do not appear to exist. There is a school in Sana called the Yemen American Language Institute, but it is sponsored by the U.S. State Department. Its director, Aziz al Hadi, said in a telephone interview that the school “has never used FedEx or U.P.S.” and does not help foreigners to obtain visas. The school does not have a reputation for attracting religiously conservative students, unlike some other language schools in Yemen.

Many Yemenis responded to the news of the package plot, and of Ms. Samawi’s arrest, with skepticism, saying they believed the whole affair could be a fabricated excuse for the United States to intervene militarily in Yemen. About 100 students protested in front of Sana University on Sunday, chanting “Freedom, freedom for Hanan!”

A friend and fellow student of Ms. Samawi, Yahya al Hammadi, said that prior to her arrest on Sunday, Ms. Samawi was having trouble with her own computer and asked some friends to help.

“How is it possible she could do all these things they say, and she can’t fix her own computer?” Mr. Hammadi said.

Obama administration officials said they were discussing a range of responses to the thwarted attack. The failed attack on Dec. 25 created an opportunity for the White House to press Yemen’s government to take more aggressive action against Qaeda operatives there, and some American officials believe the conditions are similar now.

Joseph Berger reported from New York and Robert F. Worth from Beirut, Lebanon. Reporting was contributed by Laura Kasinof from Yemen and Brian Knowlton from Cincinnati.

BEIJING - China has launched its official online mapping service, Map World, as Google Inc has yet to apply for a Web mapping license in the country.

BEIJING - China has launched its official online mapping service, Map World, as Google Inc has yet to apply for a Web mapping license in the country.

The State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping (SBSM) officially unveiled the free online map service on Thursday.

The service will provide "comprehensive geological data", said Xu Deming, director of the SBSM, at the launch ceremony.

Map World, the government-backed service, will "allow users to fly over mountains and plains around the world and search restaurants and traffic information across the country, free of charge", he said.

Users can enter Map World directly through www.tianditu.cn or www.chinaonmap.cn and search for two and three-dimensional images across the world, without client installations like Google Earth.

The service features images of satellite remote sensing with a resolution of 500 meters but this is enhanced to 2.5 meters for the Chinese map and 0.6 meters for maps of more than 300 Chinese cities.

"It took about two years to prepare the service with all the satellite images taken from 2006 to 2010," Jiang Jie, director of the database department of the National Geomatics Center under the SBSM, told China Daily on Thursday.

But the technology and website construction are still at a preliminary stage. Service providers have more than 80 virtual machines to support the operation with the ability to handle 10 million requests daily, while Google Earth has thousands of virtual machines, Jiang said.

"Our map service is expected to update the geological data about twice a year, but Google Earth can update its information every couple of minutes, through satellites," Jiang said.

"In the near future, Map World will grow to be a famous Chinese brand for online map services with proven reliability," Xu Deming said.

Regulations on updating data are still under discussion, Min Yiren, deputy director of the SBSM, said.

"All the mapping information has been permitted by the SBSM and related national security departments," Min said.

Restrictions on Internet mapping have been implemented in China to avoid disclosure of State secrets and block uncertified maps.

The SBSM introduced a regulation in May that required companies providing online map and location services in China to apply for approval.

To date, around 70 to 80 companies have applied and 31, including Nokia, Baidu, Alibaba, Sina and Tencent, have been granted licenses, Song Chaozhi, deputy director of the SBSM, told China Daily earlier.

Qualified online map service providers are required to keep servers that store map data inside the Chinese mainland and must have no record of information leakage in any form over the past three years.

The launch of Map World will "decrease the development and research cost" for providing commercial geological information "and regulate the Internet mapping market", Min said.

One user in Beijing, surnamed Cui, told China Daily on Thursday that Map World can even locate the 7-Eleven, and Weiduomei, a well-known bakery, near her place of work.

Wang Xing contributed to this story.

前三季度GDP增长10.6% 我国经济下行风险减小

制图：刘先云　熊健　数据来源：国家统计局
在统计局公布第三季度数据的前夕，央行突然宣布加息。此举让各方对三季度国民经济的表现多了几分猜测，对宏观调控政策的变化多了几分揣测。
10月21日，国家统计局新闻发言人盛来运公布前三季度国民经济数据，10.6%的GDP（国内生产总值）增速是一个相当不错的表现，但一直以来让人担心的增长下行、物价上行问题似乎未见明显逆转。盛来运在发布会上重点解答了这些热点。
经济向好势头进一步巩固，就业形势好于预期
今年前三个季度GDP分别增长了11.9%、10.3%和9.6%，增速逐季下滑如何看待？特别是三季度的表现如何评价？
虽然GDP的增速在三季度继续下滑，但盛来运认为，下滑有企稳的态势，对当前国民经济运行态势的总体研判仍然保持“继续朝着宏观调控的预期方向发展，经济向好的势头进一步巩固。”主要表现在：农业生产形势较好，粮食初步预计再获丰收；工业生产保持较快增长，消费、投资、进出口三大需求也保持较快增长；就业形势好于预期；居民收入稳定增长；物价也保持基本稳定。另外，经济增长的质量也比较高，财政收入、企业的利润都保持较快增长。8、9月份，制造业采购经理指数连续两个月出现回升，给人们传递了乐观的信息。
增速回落主因是去年基数较高，但三季度GDP增速下滑出现企稳态势
盛来运对第三季度的情况做了具体分析。首先，GDP增速的回落还是由于去年基数较高。去年我国GDP增速一季度是6.5%，二季度是8.1%，三季度是9.6%，基数的抬高一定程度上拉低了今年同比增长速度。三季度增速虽然还是下滑，但幅度在收窄。二季度GDP增速比一季度下滑了1.6个百分点，而三季度增速比二季度只下滑了0.7个百分点。
其次，经济增速的回落是政府主动采取宏观调控措施的结果。今年为了推动结构调整，各地政府加大了节能减排的力度，一些高耗能行业的工业增加值的回落速度比较快。例如，今年三季度六大高耗能行业的工业增加值的增速是10.5%，比二季度的15.1%回落了4.6个百分点。
盛来运认为，从实体经济的表现，从三大需求的表现来看，三季度经济出现了企稳的态势。规模以上工业的增长速度在6至9月这四个月基本上保持在13%—14%之间，而且增长速度有向近三年的平均增速收敛的迹象。投资、消费、进出口等方面也出现高位企稳的势态。前三季度，全社会固定资产投资的增长速度是24%，只比上半年回落了1个百分点。社会消费品零售总额增长速度波动幅度更小，基本上在18%左右波动，前三季度的波动幅度都没超过1个百分点。进出口的同比增速虽然回落得比较快一点，但这主要是受去年基数不断抬高的影响。
9月份CPI攀上23个月来新高，食品和居住价格上涨影响最大
继8月居民消费价格指数（CPI）走上22个月新高后，9月份CPI又攀上23个月新高，达到3.6%，环比上涨0.6%。这意味着，即便是20日加息后，ＣＰＩ涨幅依然高于２．５０％的一年期存款利率和３．２５％的两年期存款利率。
从影响9月份物价的翘尾因素和新涨价因素看，与上个月相比，前者的影响略有下降，而后者的影响略有扩大。由于去年的CPI是前低后高，对今年9月份CPI产生的翘尾影响是1.3个百分点，占当月CPI同比涨幅的36%。新涨价因素在9月份CPI涨幅中占64%。
盛来运解释到，新涨价因素的影响主要来源于食品价格的上涨和居住价格的上涨，这两个因素对CPI的上涨贡献了90%。由于自然条件的不利影响，9月部分农产品价格继续上涨，鲜菜价格同比上涨了18%，肉禽及其制品价格同比上涨了5.4%，粮食价格同比上涨了12.1%。
针对今年最后3个月的物价走势，盛来运的分析是，既有影响价格上行的因素，也有影响价格下行的压力。上行因素主要来自两个方面：一是国际大宗商品的价格，近期美元贬值刺激了国际大宗商品价格的大幅上涨，对国内会产生一定的输入性通胀的压力；二是劳动力成本一定程度的上涨，还有原材料价格的上涨，假如企业无法利用技术创新来消化这部分成本压力，那么一部分成本有可能会向后续的产业传导。
尽管存在价格上行压力，仍有望完成全年宏观调控预期目标
影响价格下行的因素也有几个方面。一是今年初步预计秋粮增产较多，粮食的增产一定程度上为保持粮价的稳定打下了坚实的基础。二是绝大多数工业品供过于求的基本面没有改变。三是翘尾因素的影响在后几个月将继续逐渐走低。
虽然物价略高于早先预期，但盛来运表示，从年初到现在，国际大宗商品的价格一直在高位波动，国内也是自然灾害频发、重发，对农产品、食品的生产、流通产生了很大的影响。在今年复杂严峻的国内外环境下，能实现国民经济10%以上的增长，物价保持3%左右的水平是非常了不起的。今年以来，经济活力比较强的“金砖四国”的其他3个国家，经济增长速度均比中国低，但价格水平都比中国高。例如，巴西9月份的CPI上涨4.7%，俄罗斯9月份的CPI上涨7%，印度8月份CPI上涨9.9%。这说明国家今年在管理通胀预期方面采取的措施是有力的、有效的，也是得当的。
“初步判断，尽管存在价格上行压力，如果后期通胀预期管理得当的话，完成全年的宏观调控预期的目标仍然是有希望的。”盛来运说。

来源：人民网 编辑：段若兰

Officials Push to Bolster Law on Wiretapping

WASHINGTON — Law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, citing lapses in compliance with surveillance orders, are pushing to overhaul a federal law that requires phone and broadband carriers to ensure that their networks can be wiretapped, federal officials say.

"Has the nation already gone past the tipping point to being a surveillance state? Probably not quite yet, but it won't be that much longer."

The officials say tougher legislation is needed because some telecommunications companies in recent years have begun new services and made system upgrades that caused technical problems for surveillance. They want to increase legal incentives and penalties aimed at pushing carriers like Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast to ensure that any network changes will not disrupt their ability to conduct wiretaps.

An Obama administration task force that includes officials from the Justice and Commerce Departments, the F.B.I. and other agencies recently began working on draft legislation to strengthen and expand the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act, a 1994 law that says telephone and broadband companies must design their services so that they can begin conducting surveillance of a target immediately after being presented with a court order.

There is not yet agreement over the details, according to officials familiar with the deliberations, but they said the administration intends to submit a package to Congress next year.

Albert Gidari Jr., a lawyer who represents telecommunications firms, said corporations were likely to object to increased government intervention in the design or launch of services. Such a change, he said, could have major repercussions for industry innovation, costs and competitiveness.

“The government’s answer is ‘don’t deploy the new services — wait until the government catches up,’ ” Mr. Gidari said. “But that’s not how it works. Too many services develop too quickly, and there are just too many players in this now.”

To bolster their case that telecom companies should face greater pressure to stay compliant, security agencies are citing two previously undisclosed episodes in which investigators were stymied from carrying out court-approved surveillance for weeks or even months because of technical problems with two major carriers.

The disclosure that the administration is seeking ways to increase the government’s leverage over carriers already subject to the 1994 law comes less than a month after The New York Times reported on a related part of the effort: a plan to bring Internet companies that enable communications — like Gmail, Facebook, Blackberry and Skype — under the law’s mandates for the first time, a demand that would require major changes to some services’ technical designs and business models.

The push to expand and the 1994 law is the latest example of a dilemma over how to balance Internet freedom with security needs in an era of rapidly evolving — and globalized — technology. The issue has added importance because the surveillance technologies developed by the United States to hunt for terrorists and drug traffickers can be also used by repressive regimes to hunt for political dissidents.

An F.B.I. spokesman said the bureau would not comment about the telecom proposal, citing the sensitivity of internal deliberations. But last month, in response to questions about the Internet communications services proposal, Valerie E. Caproni, the F.B.I.’s general counsel, emphasized that the government was seeking only to prevent its surveillance power from eroding.

Starting in late 2008 and lasting into 2009, another law enforcement official said, a “major” communications carrier was unable to carry out more than 100 court wiretap orders. The initial interruptions lasted eight months, the official said, and a second lapse lasted nine days.

This year, another major carrier experienced interruptions ranging from nine days to six weeks and was unable to comply with 14 wiretap orders. Its interception system “works sporadically and typically fails when the carrier makes any upgrade to its network,” the official said.

In both cases, the F.B.I. sent engineers to help the companies fix the problems. The bureau spends about $20 million a year on such efforts.

The official declined to name the companies, saying it would be unwise to advertise which networks have problems or to risk damaging the cooperative relationships the government has with them. For similar reasons, the government has not sought to penalize carriers over wiretapping problems.

Under current law, if a carrier meets the industry-set standard for compliance — providing the content of a call or e-mail, along with identifying information like its recipient, time and location — it achieves “safe harbor” and cannot be fined. If the company fails to meet the standard, it can be fined by a judge or the Federal Communication Commission.

Surprise Interest Rate Move by China Roils Markets

BEIJING — China’s central bank unexpectedly announced Tuesday that it would raise interest rates for the first time in nearly three years, apparently in the hopes of dampening inflation and cooling off this country’s hot property market.

The move had an immediate effect on markets worldwide, sending stocks lower on exchanges in Europe and the United States as investors weighed the effect on China’s continued economic growth and its ability to serve as an engine for a global recovery. The major Wall Street stock indexes were down sharply.

Oil prices, also sensitive to the world economic outlook, fell by more than 2 percent.

In its announcement, the Chinese central bank said that effective immediately, it would raise the benchmark one-year lending and deposit rates by 0.25 percentage points. Deposit rates will rise to 2.25 percent, and a key lending rate will climb to 5.56 percent.

The move is the latest indication that China is struggling to fight stubborn inflation, soaring housing prices and an overly buoyant economy that is pumping out exports and resulting in the accumulation of huge amounts of foreign exchange reserves.

Analysts said they were surprised by the decision, because a bank official had suggested just days ago that no rate increase was needed. Still, late Tuesday the bank announced the first rate increase here since 2007. Analysts said it was one of the strongest signals yet that Beijing is having difficulty managing the country’s growth.

But some analysts doubts the move is strong enough to slow things down here.

“This move is symbolically huge, as it is the first rate hike for this cycle,” Dong Tao, a Hong Kong based economist at Credit Suisse wrote in an e-mail after the decision late Tuesday. “Yet it may only have limited impact on the real economy because overall rates are still at excessively low level. This move probably will dampen sentiment in the property sector and equity market in the short run. However, we think excess liquidity will still prevail, if this is just a one-off rate hike.”

In Washington, the Federal Reserve declined to comment, in keeping with its policy of not remarking on the actions of other central banks.

The decision to raise the rates came after a surge in bank lending in September, reports of higher property prices last month and indications that inflation may have risen sharply in September, after a big jump in August.

Some economists believe that China should raise the value of its currency as a way to fight inflation by making imports cheaper. But the government worries that allowing its currency, the renminbi, to appreciate too quickly could create dislocations in the nation’s huge exports sector, which employs tens of millions of migrant workers.

So China is trying to use other measures that could slow growth, tame lending and encourage consumers to save more money.

While many countries are struggling to find growth, China has been one of the prime engines of global growth.

A powerful economic stimulus package and aggressive lending by state-run banks had helped China recover from the global financial crisis that hit in late 2008. But heady economic growth and large infrastructure and building programs seemed to put too much fire in the economy. And so since early this year the government has been trying to moderate growth and restrain inflation, which has pushed up food prices and created social anxieties.

Beijing is also trying to slow the flow of “hot money,” or speculative investments, entering as investors try to speculate on the anticipation of a strengthening Chinese currency.

Strong exports and speculative capital are flooding the country with foreign money and pumping extra money into the economy. And signals that the Federal Reserve will pump more money into the United States economy is leading to fears that some of this money will flow into China and create even more problems with inflation and asset prices.

Sewell Chan contributed reporting from Washington.

¿Sables de luz a la venta? (Lightsabers)

Veamos: "Que la Fuerza te acompañe", "Eso no es una luna, es una estación espacial", "El círculo está completo", "Luke, yo soy tu padre", "Gobernaremos juntos la galaxia", etcétera. Después de escuchar esas frases, si un fan no sufre una oleada de furor y toma un palo de escoba, moviéndolo de lado a lado imitando un sable de luz, o tiene sangre muy fría o no es un verdadero fan. Sin embargo, esto va más allá de cualquier sobredosis de ciencia ficción. Estamos hablando de un láser, que tiene toda la apariencia de un sable de luz, con una potencia de 1 Watt (el número no parece mucho, pero no se dejen engañar), capaz de quemar la piel y causar un daño irreversible a los ojos. Completamente portátil, sin mayores complejidades de recarga de las que podríamos encontrar en un teléfono móvil, y a un precio más que accesible: Apenas doscientos dólares.
La reacción a través de la red ha sido impresionante, y muy polarizada. Mientras que una gran cantidad de usuarios están evaluando comprar este nuevo láser portátil, expertos en la materia no cesan de remarcar lo extremadamente peligroso que podría ser este artefacto. Se han mencionado situaciones de riesgo como un uso accidental del láser apuntando a la cabina de un piloto o a bordo de un coche. Por otro lado, el Instituto de Estándares de Comercio del Reino Unido destacó que un artefacto de esta clase no debería estar disponible para el público en general, y su utilización debería estar estrictamente enfocada al ambiente industrial. Sin embargo, debido a que el láser se fabrica en Hong Kong, no pueden hacer nada para impedir su venta a través de Internet. En otras palabras, cualquiera con una tarjeta de crédito y el dinero suficiente, puede comprar este láser, ahora.

El nombre del "juguete" es Spyder III Pro Artic, y tiene un poder mil veces superior a un puntero láser promedio. Según el fabricante, un láser de este tipo costaba miles de dólares hace menos de un año, pero los extraordinarios avances en la tecnología necesaria han logrado reducir los costos de forma significativa, lo cual ya era posible apreciar a través de la red en diferentes sitios de "Hágalo usted mismo", con múltiples tutoriales publicados para crear un láser de características similares. Incluso pueden encontrarse algunos vídeos en YouTube sobre gente quemando plástico y madera con láser. Tal vez no sea un sable de luz al cien por ciento, ni tampoco haga el sonido característico del sable al atravesar el aire, pero todo indica que los potenciales clientes están conformes con dos cosas: Se parece mucho, y corta. Tal vez podamos ver alguna demo en vivo por YouTube, será cuestión de tiempo nada más.

Gorro que evapora el sudor

En NeoTeo no solo nos interesa la tecnología de los ordenadores, gadgets y robots, sino también la que puede mejorar tu calidad de vida de muchas otras maneras.
Como por ejemplo la ropa, que lentamente incorpora tecnologías de alto rendimiento para mejorar el desempeño en situaciones extremas. Y así como surgen los equipos de ski mas livianos y cálidos, ya que estamos en verano hoy vamos mostrarte el "Gorro que evapora sudor". Se trata de un gorro diseñado con el sistema Hydroweave, que combina una capa hidrofílica (que atrae el agua) y otra hidrofóbica (que repele el agua). De este modo se puede "cargar" el gorro con agua fresca antes de utilizarlo.
La capa que evapora el agua irá eliminando el sudor de tu cabeza hacia afuera de la gorra, mientras que el agua retenida en la capa hidrofílica refrescará tu cabeza.
Su costo es de apenas 18 euros, sumamente atractivo si eres de aquellos que gustan del tekking y de los paseos al aire libre, aún en zonas cálidas.

Crea texto 3D en cortos pasos (Photoshop)

PASO 1 - Creamos el documento y comenzamos.
Para el documento podemos elegir cualquier tamaño. En este caso, he usado 1024 x 780px.

■Con la fuente que desees, escribe tu texto y luego Rasterízalo como se muestra en la imagen a continuación.
Yo utilicé la fuente Avenger que se encuentra en el pack de archivos fuente.


Sobre la capa de Texto, rasteriza.
Cambiamos la perspectiva del texto para crear el efecto de que éste está acostado sobre una superficie.

■Sobre la capa rasterizada del texto, presiona CTRL + T y luego click secundario sobre el texto para abrir el menú de herramienta Transformar.
■Escoge Perspectiva
■Mueve el texto desde las puntas superiores hasta crear la perspectiva deseada.

Creamos la perspectiva.
PASO 2 - Creamos el efecto 3D.
Ahora la técnica que es el corazón de esta composición, y por la cual este tutorial me ha gustado mucho.

Crearemos el 3D a partir de duplicar copiosamente nuestra capa de texto. ¿Cómo? De la manera que se crea en la vida real: acumulando placas.

■Sobre la capa de texto, mantenemos presionado CTRL + ALT y apretamos la flecha "Arriba" en el teclado para generar una nueva duplicación.
■Hacemos lo mismo entre 20 y 25 veces hasta tener el tamaño deseado.
■Luego nombramos como Arriba a la capa que nos quede en el tope supremo.

Nuestro texto adquiere altura y profundidad.
■Luego seleccionaremos el resto de las capas de texto y las combinaremos (CTRL + E) en una a la que llamaremos Abajo.
■Vamos a hacer doble click en la capa Abajo y en Estilos de Capa.
■Seleccionamos Superposición de Degradado y en Degradado elegimos un color como el que tengamos nuestra fuente. Pero en una punta más claro y en otra más obscuro.
■En Estilo escogemos Reflejado.
■Escala 150%

Superposición de degradado.
Para continuar debemos duplicar 3 o 4 veces la capa Arriba. Esta vez lo haremos al revés, hacia abajo. "CTRL + ALT + TECLA ABAJO"

Luego combinamos esas copias en una a la que llamaremos Medio. Obviamente, situamos esa capa entre las dos que ya teníamos.

En esta capa vamos a crear un brillo.

■Vamos a Estilos de Capa y escogeremos Superposición de colores y pondremos un color Blanco con 20% de Opacidad.

Superposición de colores para el brillo.
PASO 3 - Detalles en el 3D
En este paso crearemos una líneas que harán de articulación de nuestras letras. Con estas aristas, daremos más realismo y acentuaremos el efecto.

■Creamos una nueva capa y la nombramos como líneas.
■La situamos arriba de la capa Abajo.
■Escogemos un pincel rígido de 1px con una dureza de 100%.
■Dibujamos las líneas partiendo del vértice superior como se muestra en la captura.
■Manteniendo la tecla SHIFT, arrastramos hacia abajo hasta completar la letra.

Creamos aristas separadoras.
■Una vez que completamos todas las líneas, como se marca en círculos verdes en la siguiente captura, cambiamos a 20% la opacidad de la capa.

Pinta con cuidado las aristas.
PASO 4 - Sombras.
Para dibujar unas sombras vamos a usar una técnica muy rápida y efectiva.

■Creamos una capa nueva y la nombramos Iluminaciones.
■La situamos entre la capa Líneas y la capa Abajo.
■Con un pincel negro de 20 a 30px pintamos en los paredes de las letras donde creas que deben haber sombras.
■Si no te das cuenta, puedes usar como referencia la siguiente imagen.

Performous: Rock Band gratis de código abierto

Todos tenemos un músico dentro. Algunos son capaces de dejarlo salir más fácilmente que otros, pero en este punto en especial, estoy convencido de tener razón. Si alguna vez has hecho un "air guitar" mientras escuchabas una canción, lo entiendes a la perfección, y como sabemos muy bien que en algún momento has hecho indefectiblemente un air guitar, bueno... sólo es cuestión de sumar. Otros prefieren ser más vocales, con la clásica "performance bajo la ducha", y nunca falta el percusionista improvisado con botellas y cacerolas. Repito: Todos tenemos un músico dentro. Y esta es probablemente la única circunstancia que ha convertido tanto a la serie Guitar Hero como a los títulos basados en la franquicia Rock Band, en un éxito absoluto. Probablemente el único problema de esos juegos es su disponibilidad. De la misma forma que hay ciertos títulos exclusivos para ordenador (no sólo por una cuestión de marca, sino también por el estilo de juego), las consolas también tienen su propio repertorio, y conectar batería, guitarra y micrófono parece estar mejor asociado a una consola que a un ordenador... al menos en teoría.
Ahí afuera hay miles de jugadores que quieren acceder a títulos como el Rock Band, pero sólo cuentan con ordenador. Lo mismo sucedió en su momento con el Guitar Hero, y el resultado fue nada menos que el excelente Frets on Fire. Una vez más, el código abierto sale a cubrir el vacío, a través de Performous, un título compatible con Linux, Windows y OS X. Tal y como lo muestra el vídeo, el juego es perfectamente compatible con la batería, la guitarra y el micrófono, por lo cual es posible tener una sesión completa de música si se dispone de los instrumentos. Las canciones disponibles están bajo licencia CC, pero Performous es compatible con las canciones en formato Frets on Fire, lo que significa que prácticamente cualquier tema puede ser incluido en el juego. Sólo se necesitan algunas búsquedas en Google para llenar a Performous con canciones que, más allá de las inevitables cuestiones de licencia, probablemente no llegarían jamás a los juegos oficiales.
Performous se encuentra actualmente en desarrollo, y la versión para Linux es probablemente la más "estable" de todas. Se han hecho muchos avances en la versión para Windows, y el último "nightly build" es de mayo pasado, con varios bugs corregidos. Aún así, es probable que se encuentren algunos bordes filosos, pero no se trata de nada que el tiempo no pueda solucionar. Si lo que buscas específicamente es el modo guitarra, tal vez Frets on Fire entregue una mejor experiencia de momento, pero de ninguna manera podemos descartar a Performous. Muchos lo han promocionado como un juego de karaoke, pero creemos que tiene el potencial suficiente como para convertirse en el "Rock Band" de ordenador que todos queremos.

Enlaces
Sitio oficial: http://performous.org/

Pick&Zip: Descarga imágenes de Facebook

Mientras que algunas personas sólo tienen un puñado de fotos dentro de su perfil de Facebook, otros usuarios cargan miles de imágenes en la red social. Para algunos es simplemente una cuestión de organización, para otros un método de promoción, o nada más que el deseo personal de colgar todas sus fotos en la Red. Colocarlas en Facebook es relativamente sencillo, pero la historia es diferente cuando uno desea descargarlas. Presionar el botón secundario y escoger "Guardar" para cada fotografía puede convertirse en una pesadilla si el contador de imágenes está en los tres o cuatro dígitos. Siempre existe algún momento en el que un usuario tiene la necesidad de recuperar sus fotos, especialmente si decide abandonar a la red social por alguna razón.
Primero debes ingresar a Facebook desde el sitio, y autorizarlo como aplicación
Pick&Zip es un sitio que ofrece como servicio en línea la automatización de la descarga de imágenes en Facebook. Sólo es necesario autorizar a Pick&Zip como aplicación, escoger las imágenes y proceder a la descarga. El sitio puede colocar las imágenes dentro de un archivo Zip para más comodidad, pero también es posible obtener las imágenes dentro de un archivo PDF para un visualización más lineal. Pick&Zip también puede descargar las imágenes que nuestros contactos estén compartiendo en la red social. Probablemente este sea el punto más delicado de la herramienta. Mientras pueda ser utilizado con nuestras propias imágenes no debería ser mucho problema, pero lo cierto es que con Pick&Zip, cualquiera de nuestros contactos puede descargar todas nuestras fotos. Claro que, con sólo colgar las fotos en la red social estamos otorgando autorización para visualizarlas, pero si la idea es que las fotos sólo puedan ser accedidas por su dueño, el usuario deberá ajustar los parámetros de privacidad en cada álbum.
Esta clase de herramientas puede generar cierta preocupación, pero en realidad, Pick&Zip es uno de los servicios más inocuos disponibles que funcionan dentro de la red social. Los datos que registra son los mismos que pueden encontrarse en cualquier otro servicio, como número de IP, el tipo de navegador que utilizamos y cantidad de clics para obtener ganancias de publicidad, pero no conserva nada en lo referente al contenido de los perfiles de Facebook. Y por supuesto, funciona, por lo que cualquier usuario podrá recuperar rápidamente todas sus imágenes sin tener que descargar una por una manualmente. Ingresa a Facebook desde el sitio de Pick&Zip, escoge las imágenes, y descarga. Eso es todo.

Enlaces
Pick&Zip: http://www.picknzip.com/

Sony Ericsson PC Suite 6.007.00, Todo lo que Necesitas Para tu Sony Ericsson

Transfiere archivos, edita imágenes, crea mensajes MMS… todo directamente desde el Escritorio de Windows con este kit de herramientas oficiales para móviles Sony Ericsson.
Incluye: File Manager, Image Editor, MMS Home Studio, Mobile Networking Wizard y Sync Station
File Manager: es un gestor de archivos que te permitirá navegar por la memoria de tu teléfono móvil e intercambiar archivos con tu PC.
Si quieres retocar imágenes, podrás hacerlo con Image Editor. Un práctico editor con el que podrás cortar, aumentar, rotar y modificar el brillo o el contraste de tus fotos.
Con MMS Home Studio podrás crear mensajes MMS directamente desde tu PC y transferirlos, para enviarlos, a tu teléfono móvil.
Mobile NetWorking Wizard es lo que necesitas para crear conexiones telefónicas a redes vía telefónica.
Y, por último, con Sync Station podrás sincronizar la agenda, los contactos, las notas e incluso los emails de Outlook Express con tu teléfono móvil.
Resumiendo, si lo que quieres es comunicar tu PC con tu teléfono móvil Sony Ericsson, necesitas este kit de aplicaciones oficiales.
Enlace para descargas:

http://rapidshare.com/files/267305078/Sony.Ericsson.PC._Suite.6.007.00.rar

Quisple: Reproductor de música vía YouTube

Hay muchas formas de escuchar música en la Red. Lentamente, descargar archivos MP3 se está convirtiendo en algo irrelevante. Los servicios actuales de compra y reproducción en línea cuentan con cada vez más usuarios, y la tendencia no parece declinar. Pandora en los Estados Unidos, Spotify en Europa, y Grooveshark en casi todo el mundo, pueden cubrir las demandas de prácticamente cualquier usuario, mientras que a la hora de comprar audio, iTunes es la primera opción a considerar. Sin embargo, también está YouTube. Más allá de que sea un sitio de vídeos, a los usuarios no les importa siempre y cuando puedan acceder a la música de sus artistas preferidos. Son cada vez más los músicos que, más allá de sus reservas a la hora de volcar sus creaciones a la Red, utilizan a YouTube como importante herramienta de publicidad, y como una ruta de acceso extremadamente rápida a sus seguidores.
Comprendemos que la imagen es demasiado simple, pero así es la interfaz de Quisple, sin excesos ni controles adicionales
Si la idea es simplemente acceder al audio en los vídeos de YouTube, existen muchas opciones disponibles, pero Quisple, más allá de tener algunos bordes filosos, cumple con esto a la perfección. La interfaz es muy simple, y sólo basta con escribir el nombre del artista y la canción en la caja de búsqueda. Su precisión a la hora de encontrar y reproducir aquello que se buscó es bastante buena, pero no deben olvidar que YouTube posee una cuota significativa de "vídeos basura" que pueden llegar a afectar el funcionamiento de Quisple. El programa también tiene la opción de "abrir la canción" en un navegador web, para comprobar de dónde ha tomado el audio. Es posible guardar listas de reproducción, y también configurar a Quisple para iniciarse junto a Windows.
Apretamos un poco las clavijas con "Stranger in the Crowd" de Elvis, pero Quisple respondió muy bien
El programa se encuentra en una versión muy temprana, por lo que es muy probable que encuentren algunos detalles sin resolver. En primer lugar, Quisple no tiene botón de pausa. Si detienen la música, comenzará desde el principio después. Otro punto es que no reconoció el comando para cerrar la ventana desde la barra de tareas de Windows 7, pero eso es algo estrictamente relacionado con la interfaz, y no afecta su funcionamiento general. Lo último que nos queda por mencionar es que, para acceder a la descarga de Quisple, hay que registrarse. Aparentemente, el desarrollador de Quisple planea formar alguna clase de mini red social a través de la cual se compartan las listas de reproducción, aunque realmente debería haber algún enlace directo, sin necesidad de registro. La competencia es dura entre aplicaciones similares, pero mantendremos un ojo sobre Quisple

Listen Up! Albúm Oficial de la Copa Mundial de la FIFA 2010

Listen Up! The Official 2010 FIFA World Cup Album es el disco oficial de la Copa Mundial de Fútbol de 2010, que se llevará a cabo en Sudáfrica. En este álbum se presentarán canciones de varios cantantes, entre ellos africanos, latinoamericanos, etc. Los cantantes fueron seleccionados por un grupo de la Copa 2010 de la FIFA. Los cantantes se presentarán en varias plataformas de Sudáfrica, así como en los partidos de inauguración y clausura de la Copa Mundial de Fútbol de 2010, ambos celebrados en Johannesburgo.

Lista de canciones
1. Sign Of A Victory – R.Kelly con Soweto Spiritual Singers (04:13)
2. Waka Waka (This Time For Africa) – Shakira con Freshlyground (03:22)
3. Viva Africa – Nneka (03:32)
4. One Day – Matisyahu con Nameless (03:28)
5. Shosholoza 2010 – Ternielle Nelson, Jason Harman, UJU, Louise Carver (03:42)
6. Ke Nako – J Pre, Wyclef Jean, Jazmine Sullivan, B. Howard (04:04)
7. Move On Up – Angélique Kijdo y John Legend (03:07)
8. Spirit Of Freedom – Judy Bailey con Uju (03:53)
9. Game On – Pitbull, TKZee an Dario G (03:19)
10. Maware Maware – Misia con M2j y Francis Jocky (03:40)
11. As Máscaras – Cláudia Leitte y Lira (03:11)
12. Hope – Siphiwo con Nelson Mandela y Anne Dudley (03:50)

enlace de dscargas: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QP6FPABJ
contraseña www.intercambiosvirtuales.org

USB Disk Security v5.3.0.36, Protección Segura Para Memorias USB

Protección contra virus en memorias USB
USB Disk Security es una utilidad que protege el PC local de infecciones procedentes de memorias USB.
USB Disk Security instala un protector residente en el PC que activa un análisis cada vez que se conecta un dispositivo USB.
USB Disk Security también ofrece USBscan, un análisis bajo demanda de unidades USB, repara el Registro y permite eliminar aplicaciones que cargan cada vez que arrancas tu sistema operativo.

Enlace de descarga: http://rapidshare.com/files/396323744/USB.Disk.Security.5.3.0.36.Incl.Serial.rar.html

Condorito – 40 años de humor

Son 40 años que comienzan en 1949. De un día para otro, llegó a las páginas de OKEY, una revista muy famosa de la época. En cuatro décadas, CONDORITO ha protagonizado miles de historietas, publicadas en revistas y libros en toda Latinoamérica.
Ha sido personaje de la TV y su figura ha ayudado a promocionar otros productos. Hoy, como una forma de celebrar el cumpleaños de CONDORITO, eternamente joven y siempre lleno de nuevas ideas, les presentamos esta edición extraordinaria de los 40 años.
En esta edición está lo mejor de lo mejor, desde el año 1949 hasta hoy. Cabe destacar que esta edición fue publicada en el año 1989, y ahorita está siendo retomada en internet por ser considerado como un icono de nuestra cultura, estamos por el año 2009, y es un placer compartir con ustedes este material. Disfrútenlo y difúndanlo, que la cultura es libre de autonomía y de derechos.

Enlace de descarga: http://rapidshare.com/files/204877234/Condorito_40_A_os.exe
Contraseña: jamespoetrodriguez

Garfield y su Pandilla (3D) (2009) DVDScreener Castellano

Garfield, el gato más perezoso del planeta, se ve envuelto en una aventura galáctica en la que la supervillana Vetvix ha atacado el planeta Dorkon y se ha apoderado de un invento que le ayudará a conquistar el universo. Garfield y sus amigos se unen para impedírselo.

descargar en este enlace http://ivpaste.com/view.php?id=99825
Password: www.intercambiosvirtuales.org

Blur PC 2010 (Español)

Blur, la experiencia de carreras definitiva, te desafía a una acción electrizante en la que una masa de coches lucha por llegar a la meta. Utiliza un arsenal de potenciadores, como rayos, escudos, aceleradores por nitro, minas terrestres y más para llegar el primero. Tú eliges cómo y cuándo usar tus potenciadores en una carrera en la que el desenlace nunca está decidido. El argumento de Blur se desarrolla por medio de una interfaz social basada en la comunidad, que incluye un modo multijugador en línea y otro con pantalla dividida para 4 jugadores. Blur es sinónimo de carreras vertiginosas y potenciadores: una batalla intensa e impredecible hasta el final.
• Potenciadores: recoge potenciadores y úsalos, de manera independiente o en combinación, para acabar con tus rivales.
• Carreras realistas: colisiones salvajes, entornos de competición alucinantes en escenarios reales y coches fotorrealistas.
• Red social: la interfaz de interacción social, además de conducir el argumento, va evolucionando a medida que compites en diferentes carreras, haces amigos, enemigos y admiradores y te pones en contacto con otros corredores, tanto en el juego como en la vida real.
• Multijugador: ofrece modos de juego competitivos y cooperativos para un máximo de 20 corredores y 4 jugadores a pantalla dividida.

Enlace para descargar http://ivpaste.com/view.php?id=100004
Contraseña: tooth