In the super PAC era, do handshakes even matter? (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Forget kissing babies on the campaign trail. The millions of dollars' worth of political advertisements airing before the early primary elections are turning out to be money well spent: The ads have affected primary results more than other forms of campaigning, including personal appearances by candidates, stump speeches or town hall meetings, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

The AP's study of advertising purchases, campaign stops and demographic data offers the first tangible signs of how new super political action committees, which can spend unlimited amounts of cash to influence elections, are poised to remake presidential politics this year. So far, those groups have paid for at least $10 million in ads ? and GOP voters haven't even decided whom they want to challenge President Barack Obama for the White House.

The ad frenzy already has taken hold in South Carolina, the site of the next Republican primary. In the weeks leading into the contest, campaigns and super PACs have spent millions hammering their opponents. Last week, the Rick Santorum-leaning Red, White and Blue Fund said it was sinking an additional $600,000 in ads statewide; other groups supporting former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry also have reserved airtime.

Recent data from New Hampshire and the Iowa caucuses show just how much influence ads have on voters. Texas Rep. Ron Paul and a super PAC supporting former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman each had about $1.7 million worth of ads in their favor in New Hampshire. Paul and Huntsman respectively placed No. 2 and No. 3 in the state's primary, behind Romney. That's even as Huntsman made the most stops of any candidate in the state. He dropped out of the race Monday.

New Hampshire long has been a place where voters pride themselves on so-called retail politics, where candidates meet voters one-on-one across the state. But the super PACs' growing presence on the airwaves could be threatening that old-fashioned style of campaigning.

Marty Kaplan, a political communications expert at the University of Southern California, said campaigns have found for decades that the more negative they go, the higher they drive up the negative perception of their opponents. "If it wasn't working, they'd do something else," he said.

The AP's examination, which looked at official election results, Nielsen data and Census Bureau estimates, found that ad spending correlated more with election results than other known factors, such as a town's political party makeup and how often a candidate came to visit. Although other less-measurable dynamics may come into play ? like a candidate's personal likability or voters' unforeseen reaction to his past ? Kaplan said the AP's findings are in line with academic studies.

Take Concord, N.H., where Paul made half as many campaign stops as Rick Santorum in recent months. Paul, however, received 23 percent of the vote there compared with Santorum's 9 percent. Paul outspent Santorum about 70 times on ads across the state, with Santorum spending just $22,000.

Candidates and outside groups have spent not only mountains of cash on television; they've also hit their opponents with direct-mail leaflets and Internet ads. The Newt Gingrich-supporting Winning Our Future PAC ? bolstered earlier this month by a $5 million donation from casino mogul Sheldon Adelson ? recently disseminated a 28-minute Web movie and shorter TV spots slamming Romney for his record at a private equity firm.

But as the South Carolina voting nears, the ad campaigns risk backfiring. Robert Driggers, a computer engineer in Summerville, S.C., said he's so turned off by ads that he and his wife sometimes leave the room when they come on. "I've learned that the opposition running those ads are the ones to watch out for," he said, growing suspicious of their motives.

For now, the opposite has proved true. Roughly three-quarters of New Hampshire voters said campaign advertising was a factor in helping them decide whom to support, according to an exit poll conducted for the AP by Edison Research. A majority of Iowa caucus voters shared similar sentiments.

Perhaps fewer cases this election have proved to be more damaging than that of Gingrich, who was assailed by ads from the Romney-leaning Restore Our Future super PAC. Political operatives largely have cited the group's critical ads in Iowa for the former House speaker's poor showing in the state's caucuses. Gingrich finished fourth in the contest, behind Romney, Santorum and Paul.

The heavy influence of super PACs comes amid a handful of federal court cases, including the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling in 2010, that stripped away some limits on campaign contributions. The new super PACs can't coordinate directly with campaigns, but many that are active in this election are staffed by longtime supporters or former aides of the candidates.

Many of the groups' donors will remain secret until Jan. 31, when some of the super PACs are required to report their finances to the Federal Election Commission.

___

Associated Press writer Brian Bakst in Orangeburg, S.C., contributed to this report.

___

Follow Jack Gillum at http://twitter.com/jackgillum

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120117/ap_on_el_pr/us_campaign_finance_super_pac_ads

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AP Exclusive: Border Patrol to toughen policy

SAN DIEGO (AP) ? The U.S. Border Patrol is moving to halt a revolving-door policy of sending migrants back to Mexico without any punishment.

The agency this month is overhauling its approach on migrants caught illegally crossing the 1,954-mile border that the United States shares with Mexico. Years of enormous growth at the federal agency in terms of staff and technology have helped drive down apprehensions of migrants to 40-year lows.

The number of agents since 2004 has more than doubled to 21,000. The Border Patrol has blanketed one-third of the border with fences and other physical barriers, and spent heavily on cameras, sensors and other gizmos. Major advances in fingerprinting technology have vastly improved intelligence on border-crossers. In the 2011 fiscal year, border agents made 327,577 apprehensions on the Mexican border, down 80 percent from more than 1.6 million in 2000. It was the Border Patrol's slowest year since 1971.

It's a far cry from just a few years ago. Older agents remember being so overmatched that they powerlessly watched migrants cross illegally, minutes after catching them and dropping them off at the nearest border crossing. Border Patrol Chief Mike Fisher, who joined the Border Patrol in 1987, recalls apprehending the same migrant 10 times in his eight-hour shift as a young agent.

The Border Patrol now feels it has enough of a handle to begin imposing more serious consequences on almost everyone it catches, from areas including Texas' Rio Grande Valley to San Diego. The "Consequence Delivery System" ? a key part of the Border Patrol's new national strategy to be announced within weeks ? relies largely on tools that have been rolled out over the last decade on parts of the border and expanded. It divides border crossers into seven categories, ranging from first-time offenders to people with criminal records.

Punishments vary by region but there is a common thread: Simply turning people around after taking their fingerprints is the choice of last resort. Some, including children and the medically ill, will still get a free pass by being turned around at the nearest border crossing, but they will be few and far between.

"What we want to be able to do is make that the exception and not necessarily the norm," Fisher told The Associated Press.

Consequences can be severe for detained migrants and expensive to American taxpayers, including felony prosecution or being taken to an unfamiliar border city hundreds of miles away to be sent back to Mexico. One tool used during summers in Arizona involves flying migrants to Mexico City, where they get one-way bus tickets to their hometowns. Another releases them to Mexican authorities for prosecution south of the border. One puts them on buses to return to Mexico in another border city that may be hundreds of miles away.

In the past, migrants caught in Douglas, Ariz., were given a bologna sandwich and orange juice before being taken back to Mexico at the same location on the same afternoon, Fisher said. Now, they may spend the night at an immigration detention facility near Phoenix and eventually return to Mexico through Del Rio, Texas, more than 800 miles away.

Those migrants are effectively cut off from the smugglers who helped them cross the border, whose typical fees have skyrocketed to between $3,200 and $3,500 and are increasingly demanding payment upfront instead of after crossing, Fisher said. At minimum, they will have to wait longer to try again as they raise money to pay another smuggler.

"What used to be hours and days is now being translated into days and weeks," said Fisher.

The new strategy was first introduced a year ago in the office at Tucson, Ariz., the patrol's busiest corridor for illegal crossings. Field supervisors ranked consequences on a scale from 1 to 5 using 15 different yardsticks, including the length of time since the person was last caught and per-hour cost for processing.

The longstanding practice of turning migrants straight around without any punishment, known as "voluntary returns," ranked least expensive ? and least effective.

Agents got color-coded, wallet-sized cards ? also made into posters at Border Patrol stations ? that tells them what to do with each category of offender. For first-time violators, prosecution is a good choice, with one-way flights to Mexico City also scoring high. For known smugglers, prosecution in Mexico is the top pick.

The Border Patrol has introduced many new tools in recent years without much consideration to whether a first-time violator merited different treatment than a repeat crosser.

"There really wasn't much thought other than, 'Hey, the bus is outside, let's put the people we just finished processing on the bus and therefore wherever that bus is going, that's where they go,'" Fisher said.

Now, a first-time offender faces different treatment than one caught two or three times. A fourth-time violator faces other consequences.

The number of those who have been apprehended in the Tucson sector has plunged 80 percent since 2000, allowing the Border Patrol to spend more time and money on each of the roughly 260 migrants caught daily. George Allen, an assistant sector chief, said there are 188 seats on four daily buses to border cities in California and Texas. During summers, a daily flight to Mexico City has 146 seats.

Only about 10 percent of those apprehended now get "voluntary returns" in the Tucson sector, down from about 85 percent three years ago, said Rick Barlow, the sector chief. Most of those who are simply turned around are children, justified by the Border Patrol on humanitarian grounds.

Fisher acknowledged that the new strategy depends heavily on other agencies. Federal prosecutors must agree to take his cases. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement must have enough beds in its detention facilities.

In Southern California, the U.S. attorney's office doesn't participate in a widely used Border Patrol program that prosecutes even first-time offenders with misdemeanors punishable by up to six months in custody, opting instead to pursue only felonies for the most egregious cases, including serial border-crossers and criminals.

Laura Duffy, the U.S. attorney in San Diego, said limited resources, including lack of jail space, force her to make choices.

"It has not been the practice (in California) to target and prosecute economic migrants who have no criminal histories, who are coming in to the United States to work or to be with their families," Duffy said. "We do target the individuals who are smuggling those individuals."

Fisher would like to refer more cases for prosecution south of the border, but the Mexican government can only prosecute smugglers: smuggling migrants is a crime in Mexico but there is nothing wrong about crossing illegally to the United States. It also said its resources were stretched on some parts of the border.

Criticism of the Border Patrol's new tactics is guaranteed to persist as the new strategy goes into effect at other locations. Some say immigration cases are overwhelming federal courts on the border at the expense of investigations into white-collar crime, public corruption and other serious threats. Others consider prison time for first-time offenders to be excessively harsh.

The Border Patrol also may be challenged when the U.S. economy recovers, creating jobs that may encourage more illegal crossings. Still, many believe heightened U.S. enforcement and an aging population in Mexico that is benefiting from a relatively stable economy will keep migrants away.

"We'll never see the numbers that we saw in the late 1990s and early 2000s," said Edward Alden, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Doris Meissner, who oversaw the Border Patrol as head of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service in the 1990s, said the new approach makes sense "on the face of it" but that it will be expensive. She also said it is unclear so far if it will be more effective at discouraging migrants from trying again.

"I do think the Border Patrol is finally at a point where it has sufficient resources that it can actually try some of these things," said Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.

Tucson, the only sector to have tried the new approach for a full year, has already tweaked its color-coded chart of punishments two or three times. Fisher said initial signs are promising, with the number of repeat crossers falling at a faster rate than before and faster than on other parts of the border.

"I'm not going to claim it was a direct effect, but it was enough to say it has merit," he said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-01-17-Border%20Patrol-Zero%20Tolerance/id-48cf57734802463fa06e3dedf305adec

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UK scientists find 'lost' Darwin fossils (AP)

LONDON ? British scientists have found scores of fossils the great evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin and his peers collected but that had been lost for more than 150 years.

Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, said Tuesday that he stumbled upon the glass slides containing the fossils in an old wooden cabinet that had been shoved in a "gloomy corner" of the massive, drafty British Geological Survey.

Using a flashlight to peer into the drawers and hold up a slide, Falcon-Lang saw one of the first specimens he had picked up was labeled 'C. Darwin Esq."

"It took me a while just to convince myself that it was Darwin's signature on the slide," the paleontologist said, adding he soon realized it was a "quite important and overlooked" specimen.

He described the feeling of seeing that famous signature as "a heart in your mouth situation," saying he wondering "Goodness, what have I discovered!"

Falcon-Lang's find was a collection of 314 slides of specimens collected by Darwin and other members of his inner circle, including John Hooker ? a botanist and dear friend of Darwin ? and the Rev. John Henslow, Darwin's mentor at Cambridge, whose daughter later married Hooker.

The first slide pulled out of the dusty corner at the British Geological Survey turned out to be one of the specimens collected by Darwin during his famous expedition on the HMS Beagle, which changed the young Cambridge graduate's career and laid the foundation for his subsequent work on evolution.

Falcon-Lang said the unearthed fossils ? lost for 165 years ? show there is more to learn from a period of history scientists thought they knew well.

"To find a treasure trove of lost Darwin specimens from the Beagle voyage is just extraordinary," Falcon-Lang added. "We can see there's more to learn. There are a lot of very, very significant fossils in there that we didn't know existed."

He said one of the most "bizarre" slides came from Hooker's collection ? a specimen of prototaxites, a 400 million-year-old tree-sized fungi.

Hooker had assembled the collection of slides while briefly working for the British Geological Survey in 1846, according to Royal Holloway, University of London.

The slides ? "stunning works of art," according to Falcon-Lang ? contain bits of fossil wood and plants ground into thin sheets and affixed to glass in order to be studied under microscopes. Some of the slides are half a foot long (15 centimeters), "great big chunks of glass," Falcon-Lang said.

"How these things got overlooked for so long is a bit of a mystery itself," he mused, speculating that perhaps it was because Darwin was not widely known in 1846 so the collection might not have been given "the proper curatorial care."

Royal Holloway, University of London said the fossils were 'lost' because Hooker failed to number them in the formal "specimen register" before setting out on an expedition to the Himalayas. In 1851, the "unregistered" fossils were moved to the Museum of Practical Geology in Piccadilly before being transferred to the South Kensington's Geological Museum in 1935 and then to the British Geological Survey's headquarters near Nottingham 50 years later, the university said.

The discovery was made in April, but it has taken "a long time" to figure out the provenance of the slides and photograph all of them, Falcon-Lang said. The slides have now been photographed and will be made available to the public through a new online museum exhibit opening Tuesday.

Falcon-Lang expects great scientific papers to emerge from the discovery.

"There are some real gems in this collection that are going to contribute to ongoing science."

Dr. John Ludden, executive director of the Geological Survey, called the find a "remarkable" discovery.

"It really makes one wonder what else might be hiding in our collections," he said.

____

Cassandra Vinograd can be reached at http://twitter.com/CassVinograd

____

Online:

http://www.bgs.ac.uk/discoveringGeology/geologyOfBritain/archives/jdhooker/home.html

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120117/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_darwin_fossils

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Lohan returns to court for latest probation update

FILE - In this Nov. 2, 2011 file photo, actress Lindsay Lohan appears for a probation hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court. Lohan returns to a Los Angeles court Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012, to update a judge on her probation progress, which involves therapy sessions and cleanup duty at the county morgue. (AP Photo/Mario Anzuoni, Pool/file)

FILE - In this Nov. 2, 2011 file photo, actress Lindsay Lohan appears for a probation hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court. Lohan returns to a Los Angeles court Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012, to update a judge on her probation progress, which involves therapy sessions and cleanup duty at the county morgue. (AP Photo/Mario Anzuoni, Pool/file)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Lindsay Lohan is returning to court to give a judge her second update on how she's faring under strict new probation requirements.

The hearing on Tuesday is expected to be much like Lohan's last progress update: short and without surprises.

The starlet has been doing cleanup work at the county morgue and attending psychotherapy sessions in an effort to avoid problems with her probation for separate drunken driving and theft cases.

Lohan's spokesman Steve Honig says the actress has made her community service her "primary focus" and is eager for Superior Court Judge Stephanie Sautner to receive the details.

The 25-year-old struggled with her probation until Sautner imposed a series of tough new rules, including monthly meetings with the court, in November.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2012-01-17-People-Lindsay%20Lohan/id-28f23789c7784149bde76d8e7195367a

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Palestinian leader loses VIP status with Israel

FILE- In this Dec. 16, 2006 file photo, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pauses during a speech at his office in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Israel has stripped Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of VIP status and given him a watered-down travel permit that is valid for just two months, Palestinian officials said Sunday, Jan. 15, 2012. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, File)

FILE- In this Dec. 16, 2006 file photo, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pauses during a speech at his office in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Israel has stripped Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of VIP status and given him a watered-down travel permit that is valid for just two months, Palestinian officials said Sunday, Jan. 15, 2012. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, File)

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) ? Israel has stripped Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of VIP status and given him a watered-down travel permit that is valid for just two months, Palestinian officials charged Sunday.

The officials said that Abbas complained about the permit at an internal meeting of his Fatah Party last week.

In a speech, Abbas said the new permit, similar to those required for Palestinian laborers entering Israel, was a reflection of Israel's continued control over the Palestinians, and suggested that Israel was trying to punish him for applying for Palestinian membership in the United Nations.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity Sunday because they were not allowed to brief reporters.

Maj. Guy Inbar, a spokesman for the Israeli agency that issues travel documents to Palestinians, said there has been no change in policy. He said the permit was the result of a technical glitch that should be resolved soon.

"Freedom of movement ... remains exactly the same as it was," Inbar said. "I deny all claims of changes in travel passes of Palestinian officials," he said. "There is no change in position or policy regarding the travel passes of Palestinian officials."

The VIP permit allowed Abbas to travel whenever and wherever he wanted. Palestinian officials acknowledged the new permit has not prevented Abbas, a frequent traveler to world capitals, from moving in and out of the West Bank. On Sunday, Abbas flew to London for talks with British leaders.

Dozens of local Facebook users spread what appeared to be a copy of Abbas' travel permit, in many cases with sarcastic comments about Abbas' weakness. "See you at the checkpoint," wrote one user, identified as Nidal Ahmed.

Adnan Dmiri, spokesman for the Palestinian security forces, said dozens of Palestinian officials have lost VIP cards since the middle of last year ? shortly before Abbas' appeal to the United Nations in September. Israel bitterly opposed the U.N. gambit, saying the Palestinians should be admitted to the world body only as part of a negotiated peace agreement.

"We believe that Israel is using all means to pressure the Palestinian Authority to step away from its political path of resorting to the international community," Dmiri said.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been stalled for more than three years over the issue of Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Early this month, the chief negotiators from the two sides began meeting again in hopes of finding a formula for the formal resumption of talks.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-01-15-ML-Israel-Palestinians/id-0f9a113991654164a916f0d0fb041bf7

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Loretta Swit Sued Over Art Business - Starpulse.com

M*A*S*H star Loretta Swit is facing legal action from investors in her art business who claim she has failed to pay back their money.

The actress, famed for playing Major Margaret 'Hot Lips' Houlihan in the TV show, has set up her own company and she allegedly used a loan of more than $10,000 from a firm called Heath Solutions, Inc to help pay for it.

Bosses at Heath Solutions allege she promised to pay back the money, along with a further $44,000 which they invested to help her develop her company website.

The investors have filed a lawsuit against Swit in a bid to have the cash returned, according to TMZ.com.

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Source: http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2012/01/15/loretta_swit_sued_over_art_business

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Hydromechanical watch concept pumps away the hours for horologists (video)

Vincent Perriard and crew have apparently gone from overseeing the Concord C1 QuantumGravity watch and its fluorescent liquid battery gauge to designing another high end watch that combines mechanical action and fluid measurement with the HYT H1. This hand-wound timepiece has a 65 hour power reserve and displays the time via pumping bellows that push bright green fluorescine past the time markers. A rendered video embedded after the break does more to explain how the watch works, but may not help you figure out its rumored $45k price tag.

Continue reading Hydromechanical watch concept pumps away the hours for horologists (video)

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