CK Food Guide

In Western countries, women's shirts did not fall out of fashion until the early 20th century, when they were generally replaced by brassieres, panties, girdles, and full slips.

Since the late 1980s, the corset has experienced periodic revivals, which have usually originated in haute couture and which have occasionally trickled through to mainstream fashion. These revivals focus on the corset as an item of outerwear rather than underwear. The strongest of these revivals was seen in the Autumn 2001 fashion collections and coincided with the release of the film Moulin Rouge!, the costumes for which featured many corsets as characteristic of the era.

Sexy High Heels

WASHINGTON — Four years ago, Jamie Leigh Jones , a 20-year old Texas contract employee working in Iraq , was drugged, stripped, beaten and gang-raped by her co-workers on her fourth day in country. She finally managed to get a phone call out from the shipping container where she was being detained — by her employer, KBR, then a Halliburton company.

That call to her father led to a call to her congressman, Rep. Ted Poe , R- Texas , and her rescue after Poe had the State Department locate her. But Jones' attempts at justice — and restitution — were blocked by a little-noticed compulsory arbitration clause in the contracts of private employees working for federal government contractors.

Now, a move by Congress last week, jumpstarted by Sen. Al Franken , D- Minn. , would protect contract employees by ensuring they have legal recourse.

The provision is in the defense appropriations bill that the Senate approved Saturday after the House passed it Wednesday. It only needs the president's signature to become law.

"This amendment makes all the hard times that I have gone through, when going public with such a personal tragedy, worth every tear shed from telling and retelling my horrific experience," Jones said after the Senate first acted on the bill in October. Jones most recently testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in October: "I know this amendment will save so many in the future."

Jones herself is not directly affected by the amendment. But after a hard-fought four-year battle, she won the right to sue her attackers and the company under a ruling in September by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals . Her case is expected to go to trial next year.

"The congressional amendment tracks the Fifth Circuit decision," said Poe. For Poe, a former Texas district judge who chairs the House's Victims' Rights Caucus and who has been one of Jones' strongest advocates, the new law is a milestone.

Under the congressionally approved provision, the federal government would not be able to do business with companies with $1 million or more in contracts that deny court hearings for victims of assault, false imprisonment or emotional distress. Victims of assault would be able to sue the employers of the alleged attacker, as well as the attacker. The Defense Department can apply a waiver for national security reasons.

Jones, now married and with a child — who she named after Poe — is a teacher, lives in a Houston suburb and advocates for victims through a foundation that bears her name.

Franken was the prime mover behind the legislation, which came about this fall after he was moved by her story.

" Jamie Leigh Jones is a strong, courageous woman, who used her own horrific experience to inspire change," said Franken in a statement.

"I am honored to know her, and honored to have been a part of her cause," Franken said. "I came to Washington to stand up for folks like Jamie Leigh , and stand up to the powerful interests that too often silence their voices."

The provision had a contentious debate in the Senate , where it passed in October 68-30 — engendering a vocal critique of the 30 all white, all male "no" voters, including Sen. John Cornyn , R- Texas . Cornyn, a former Texas Supreme Court judge, said that he was a strong advocate for victims but he was opposed to a provision that would benefit trial lawyers.

All 17 female senators voted for the amendment.

"This kind of violent crime should not be obscured by politics or partisanship," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison , R- Texas . "The fact is, a Texas woman serving our country in Iraq was brutally sexually assaulted. She deserves to have her day in court."

ON THE WEB

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Follow the latest politics news at McClatchy's Planet Washington

LONDON – More than 2,000 people were stranded beneath the English Channel for up to 16 hours when their Eurostar trains came to a halt in a tunnel, leaving many of them without food, water — or any idea of what was happening.
In the end, they all emerged safe on Friday night, but some suffered claustrophobia or panic attacks, and many passengers complained that Eurostar staff members had done little to help them through the ordeal, which forced some to walk part of the dark tunnel, 24 miles (38 kilometers) of which is under water.
Eurostar's executives have offered apologies, refunds, free travel and more, but the company has canceled all passenger services through the Channel Tunnel until Monday in a bid to figure out what happened.
"It was just pandemonium," said Lee Godfrey, who was returning to London from Disneyland Paris with his family when it was caught in the tunnel. He said people suffered asthma attacks and fainted after the train's power went out, cutting off light and air vents.
"People were very, very panicky," he told BBC radio, complaining of poor communication and saying that some passengers had to open the emergency doors themselves.
Godfrey's was one of four trains that were stuck in the tunnel Friday evening for reasons that remain unclear.
Eurostar officials have speculated that the quick transition from the icy cold of France, which is suffering some of its worst winter weather in years, to the relative warmth of the tunnel could have interfered with the trains' electrical systems. But the company's chief operating officer, Nicolas Petrovic, said Eurostar will have to investigate why the trains broke down.
"We've never seen anything like that at Eurostar," Petrovic told France-Info radio on Saturday.
The company has canceled regularly scheduled services until Monday for test runs.
"We don't want a repeat of last night," Eurostar spokesman Paul Gorman said.
Some passengers were evacuated by being taken through the darkened train tunnel onto shuttles. Others were left aboard two trains that were linked together and pushed to London by smaller diesel trains.
Parisian Gregoire Sentilhes described confusion as authorities struggled to evacuate passengers.
"We spent the night inside the tunnel," he said. "At 6 a.m. we were taken out of the train by firefighters. We walked for around a mile (1.6 kilometers) with our luggage. We went into another Eurostar train and we were trapped on it, going back and forth inside the tunnel."
He said passengers were suffering panic attacks, lacked anything to drink and didn't know what was happening. Some also complained about chaotic and poorly-organized efforts to get them home.
That confusion extended into Saturday evening.
Early Saturday Eurostar announced it was sending stranded passengers home from London in three special trains — only to cancel the service a few hours later. Two trains dispatched from Paris also canceled — one broke down shortly after leaving the tunnel, while another was stopped at Lille in northern France.
Chief Executive Richard Brown said the company was "very, very sorry that so many passengers were inconvenienced last night and this morning due to weather conditions in northern France. We are working hard to get passengers home. We will give them full refunds and another ticket."
Eurostar provides train service linking London to Paris and Brussels. It is usually thronged with holiday travelers this time of year.

The train service's reputation for safe operation suffered a setback in September, 2008, after a fire broke out as one of the trains entered the 50 kilometer (30 mile) tunnel. Service was cut back for five months as extensive damage was repaired.

On Saturday, travel for motorists hoping to cross the English Channel on ferries and via the Channel Tunnel was also badly disrupted. Police in Kent, England, warned drivers not to travel to the port of Dover except in emergencies because of massive traffic snarls caused by problems in the tunnel and in the French port of Calais.

Police put in motion a contingency plan to allow up to 2,300 trucks hoping to cross the English Channel to park on highways until the situation improves. Red Cross workers provided hot drinks and water to motorists trapped in their cars for up to 12 hours.

___

Associated Press Writer Cecile Brisson in Paris contributed to this report.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Wyoming trailed by 11 points in the fourth quarter. Its offense was led by a freshman quarterback, its defense was facing the nation's leading rusher.
Time to worry? Not these comeback Cowboys.
Freshman Austyn Carta-Samuels threw three touchdown passes, the last a 13-yarder to David Leonard in the second overtime Saturday, and Wyoming rallied past Fresno State 35-28 in the New Mexico Bowl.
"Same old deal for all of us," Carta-Samuels said. "We knew we could do it."
The first of 34 bowls was a high-scoring matchup that was decided at the end by defense.
Wyoming (7-6) stopped the nation's leading rusher, Fresno State's Ryan Mathews, on three rushing attempts from the 1 in the first overtime. The Bulldogs (8-5) tried a quarterback sneak on third down, and Mathews came up short again on fourth down.
"If you can't put it in from the 1-yard line, you have to give a lot of credit to the defensive stand by Wyoming," Bulldogs coach Pat Hill said. "We had our chances."
The Cowboys, who won four times this season after rallying in the fourth quarter, scored on the first possession in double overtime, then held Fresno State on downs.
"Another typical game by the Wyoming Cowboys," first-year coach Dave Christensen said. "We kept everybody in their seats."
Wyoming fans spilled out of the stands to celebrate as the school band played "Cowboy Joe." This was Wyoming's first bowl appearance since 2005, and it capped a winning season for Christensen after the Cowboys were picked to finish last in the Mountain West.
Mathews, who led the nation in rushing average at 151.3 yards per game, finished with 144 yards on 31 attempts with two touchdowns. But he had a big fumble midway through the fourth quarter, setting up Carta-Samuels to lead a 19-play drive that tied it.
Wyoming lineman Mitch Unrein, picked the defensive MVP, stripped the ball.
"I got my hand on it. It kind of rolled away from him," Unrein said. "It was right on my chest. I said to myself, 'I can't believe that just happened.' I got up and I was showing the refs. They didn't believe me. They were like, 'No way.'"
Officials initially ruled Mathews was down but reversed the call after a replay.
Wyoming's Ian Watts kicked a 37-yard field goal with 20 seconds left in regulation. After the Cowboys stopped Mathews in the first overtime, Watts was wide left a 40-yard field try that would have won it.
Christensen said there was no disappointment on the sideline.
"These kids don't change much," he said. "I don't know if it's belief or they don't know any better. They walked down to the end of the field. We scored a touchdown, then we stopped them."
Carta-Samuels, the Mountain West's freshman of the year, was chosen the game's offensive MVP after he completed 17 of 31 attempts for 201 yards passing with one interception.

He led the Cowboys back after Mathews' 5-yard TD run put the Bulldogs up 28-17 with 13:59 remaining. Carta-Samuels found Leonard on an 11-yard TD pass, then connected with Greg Bolling for a 2-point conversion that got Wyoming to 28-25 with 10:15 to go.

"I guarantee after that their defense didn't want to come out on the field again to try and stop us," Carta-Samuels said.

Fresno State, trying to build on the lead, was driving when Mathews fumbled at Wyoming's 26. The Cowboys took over with 8:08 remaining and converted twice on fourth downs — including a daring fake punt — on the march that ended with Watts' 37-yard field goal.

"We told our guys, 'You've got to believe,'" Christensen said. "Being behind is nothing new for this football team."

SAN JOSE, Calif. – San Jose police are testing head-mounted cameras to record interactions with the public.
The test using 18 patrol officers comes as citizens' groups criticize the department for too often using force during arrests.
Officers are to turn on the cameras every time they talk with anyone. They download the recordings after every shift.
The cameras are the size of a Bluetooth cell phone earpieces and attach by a headband above the ear.
San Jose is the first major American city to try the devices, made by Arizona-based Taser International. Taser is paying for the experiment, but the price could be high if San Jose equips all 1,400 officers.
Each kit costs $1,700, plus a $99 per officer monthly fee. That's $4 million department-wide each year.
___
Information from: San Jose Mercury News, http://www.sjmercury.com

SYDNEY (AFP) –
An Australian man was in hospital Sunday after surviving a shark attack while diving off the country's northeast coast, officials said.

The 19-year-old was diving at Lamont Reef, off central Queensland's Herron Island, when he was bitten on the arm, the Royal Flying Doctor Service said after taking him to the Royal Brisbane Hospital.

"He was in a stable condition when our doctor left him at the hospital there," a spokesman for the Royal Flying Doctor Service told AFP.

"Any kind of shark bite is serious. But I believe his condition is stable, it's not life-threatening."

Sharks are a common feature of Australian waters but fatal attacks are rare.

In December 2008, a snorkeller died after being attacked by a large shark off the Western Australian coast.

DHAKA (AFP) –
The prime minister of Bangladesh, one of the nations worst-hit by global warming, said she was satisfied with the Copenhagen summit's outcome, and hoped rows over thorny issues would be ironed out soon.

"I am pleased to say that we have been successful in arriving at a reasonable conclusion," Sheikh Hasina said, while speaking at Lund University in Denmark on Saturday, hours after the world leaders hammered out a deal.

"An agreement has been agreed upon taking in most of all our concerns. There are certain areas that would be finalised in the coming days," she said, according to the full script of her speech released in Dhaka on Sunday.

The Copenhagen Accord, passed Saturday after two weeks of frantic negotiations, was strongly condemned as a back-door deal that violated UN democracy, excluded the poor and doomed the world to disastrous climate change.

The agreement was reached at the last minute by a small group consisting of leaders of the United States, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and major European nations, after it became clear the summit was in danger of failing.

It set a commitment to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), but did not spell out the important stepping stones -- global emissions targets for 2020 or 2050 -- for getting there.

Nor did it identify a year by which emissions should peak, and pledges were made voluntarily and without tough compliance provisions.

Hasina, who led a strong Dhaka delegation to the Danish capital, told the 194-nation summit that although Bangladesh's greenhouse gas contribution was negligible, it was one of its worst victims.

She appealed to the wealthiest countries to cut carbon emissions, which are blamed for climate change, by 45 percent of 1990 levels by 2020, exceeding the pledges made by any of them.

On the summit's sideline, a charity called Germanwatch published a climate-risk study based on data from insurance giant Munich Re, saying Bangladesh was the country most severely affected by extreme weather events from 1990 to 2008.

SAP is hoping to build a platform of third-party SaaS (software-as-a-service) applications to complement its own emerging wave of offerings.

The vendor has been building a series of on-demand products with a Java-based platform it acquired through the 2006 purchase of Frictionless Commerce, maker of e-sourcing applications.

At some point, SAP plans to allow others access to the Frictionless platform, according to John Wookey, the SAP executive vice president heading up the company's on-demand software strategy for large enterprises.

But SAP has no desire to force those developers into a proprietary box, Wookey said in an interview this week during SAP's Influencer Summit in Boston.

"Our intent is not to go out and be a tools provider. We want to build good tools to build great applications and we want to open those up to third parties to use," he said. "But we're not going to actually prescribe that you have to use those tools."

"One of the biggest things people want to be able to do is to connect to our data sources or to connect to [SAP] Business Suite data sources," Wookey added. Therefore, SAP is developing the platform as a set of on-demand services, he said. "So you want to go connect to a certain customer's implementation of the Business Suite ... you can use these on-demand services to connect to it, get access to master data, and so on."

"People may choose to build on [Frictionless] which would be great," he continued. "But they may also decide they want to use Python or Ruby or anything else. We still want them to connect to our system in a standard way. So packaging up those services to get access to Business Suite, our data and our services is really what we're focused on in terms of when we talk about a platform."

SAP won't open up access to the platform right away. "We want to focus on getting our own applications out before supporting other people," he said.

The company's large enterprise on-demand strategy initially targets SAP's own customers, with applications positioned as extensions to an on-premise installation of Business Suite. An initial wave focuses on areas such as expense management and HCM (human capital management).

But down the road, SAP plans to also market its on-demand applications as stand-alone offerings, Wookey said.

"The first thing we have to do is win over our installed base and then use that as the right launching pad to go more aggressively into the open marketplace," he said.

Meanwhile, the periodic but high-profile service outages suffered by some SaaS vendors over the past couple of years have not been lost on SAP. The company has developed a "ramp plan" for scaling up its technology and support infrastructure as SAP adds more on-demand customers, according to Wookey.

"I worry about [reliability] all the time, but I get good answers to all my hard questions so I think we're in a good position to serve our customers," he said.

A bathroom is a room that may have different functions depending on the cultural context. In the most literal sense, the word bathroom means "a room with a bath". Because the traditional bathtubs have partly made way for modern showers, including steam showers, the more general definition is "a room where one bathes". There can be just a shower, just a bathtub or both; and often both plumbing fixtures are combined in the bathtub. The room may also contain a sink, often called a "wash basin" or "hand basin" (in parts of the USA) and often a "lavatory".

The Roman attitudes towards bathing are well documented; they built large purpose-built thermal baths, marking not only an important social development, but also providing a public source of relaxation and rejuvenation. Here was a place where people could meet to discuss the matters of the day and enjoy entertainment. During this period there was a distinction between private and public baths, with many wealthy families having their own thermal baths in their houses. Despite this they still made use of the public baths, showing the value that they had as a public institution. The strength of the Roman Empire was telling in this respect; imports from throughout the world allowed the Roman citizens to enjoy ointments, incense, combs, and mirrors.

Division 10 Specialties

SYDNEY (AFP) –
A monster iceberg nearly twice the size of Hong Kong island has been spotted drifting towards Australia in what scientists Wednesday called a once-in-a-century event.

Australian glaciologist Neal Young pinpointed the slab, which is some 19 kilometres (12 miles) long and about 1,700 kilometres south of the country, using satellite imagery.

He said he was not aware of such a large iceberg being found in the area since the days when 19th century clipper ships sailed the trade route between Britain and Australia.

"I don't recall any mention of one for a long, long time," Young, of the Australian Antarctic Division and the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, told AFP.

"I'm guessing you would probably have to go back to the times of the clipper ships."

Young said the iceberg measured about 140 square kilometres (54 square miles). Hong Kong island's surface area is about 80 square kilometres.

The glaciologist said the iceberg carved off the Antarctic about 10 years ago and had been slowly floating round the icy continent before taking the unusual route north.

He said the "very, very big" iceberg was originally about 400 square kilometres but then split into two smaller pieces.

"This one has survived in the open ocean for about a year," he said. "In that time it's slowly been coming up to the north and north east in the general direction of Western Australia."

The finding comes after two large icebergs were spotted further east, off Australia's Macquarie Island, followed by more than 100 smaller ice chunks heading towards New Zealand.

Young described the icebergs as uncommon, but said they could become more frequent if sea temperatures rise through global warming.

A long tongue of land that points northwards towards South America, the Antarctic peninsula has been hit by greater warming than almost any other region on Earth.

Scientists say that in the past 50 years, Antarctic temperatures have risen by 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit), around six times the global average.

A maidservant or in current usage maid is a female employed in domestic service. Once part of an elaborate hierarchy in great houses, today the maid may be the only domestic worker that upper and even middle-income households can afford. In the Western world, comparatively few households can afford live-in domestic help, usually compromising on periodic cleaners. In less developed nations, very large differences in the income of urban and rural households and between different socio-economic classes, fewer educated women and limited opportunities for working women ensures a labour source for domestic work.

Maids perform typical domestic chores such as cooking, ironing, washing, cleaning the house, grocery shopping, walking the family dog, and taking care of children. In many places in some poor countries, maids often take on the role of a nurse in taking care of the elderly and people with disabilities. Many maids are required by their employers to wear a uniform.

Portland Janitorial

Mealworms are typically used as a food source for reptile and avian pets. They are also provided to wild birds in bird feeders, particularly during the nesting season when birds are raising their young and appreciate a ready food supply. Mealworms are high in protein, which makes them especially useful as a food source. They are also commonly used for fishing bait.

Mealworm beetles (darkling beetles) are prolific breeders. Mating is a three step process: 1) The male gives chase until the female relents. 2) The male then mounts the female and curls his genitals (aedagus) underneath himself and inserts it into her genital tract. 3) The male then injects a packet of semen into the female. Dependent on incubation temperature, just days after mating the female will burrow into soft ground and lays about 500 eggs.

Mealworms

The once-a-decade process for redrawing the map of the House of Representatives has two distinct parts with similar-sounding, multisyllabic names. Redistricting, the drawing of the lines within each state, is the second part. Reapportionment, deciding how many House seats each state will have, comes first.

There's likely to be much more suspense about Part 2 than about Part 1. Although the governors, state legislators and probably some judges will be fighting over congressional district boundaries for much of 2011 and 2012, how many seats get assigned to each state will be decided formally, relatively straightforwardly, by the end of next year, based on the results of the 2010 census.

But the outcome, in broad terms, is not in doubt. As in every reapportionment since World War II, more seats will be awarded to the Southern and Western states, and taken away almost exclusively from the states of the Midwest and Northeast.

The power shift will not be as great as it was over the latter half of the 20th century, when the population surges in the Sun Belt eclipsed the modest growth in the Rust Belt because of a variety of factors: technological advances -- air conditioning, first and foremost -- that boosted the appeal of life in the warm-weather states; changes in the American economy, especially the decline in manufacturing in the nation's northern half; the rapid increase in the Hispanic population; and the growth of the retirement and tourism industries that favored the temperate climes and expanses of the South and West.

Based on the most recent detailed population projections from the Census Bureau, the nonpartisan Election Data Services Inc. (EDS) -- a consulting firm in Manassas, Va., specializing in political demographics -- projects that a dozen seats will be reassigned next year, with eight states gaining some strength in the House and 11 states losing some.

Twelve seats were shifted after the 2000 census; the reapportionment upheaval was significantly greater after the 1990 census (19 seats moved) and the 1980 census (17 seats). The seat-shift projection may change at the end of the year, when the Census Bureau will release new populations of the 50 states based on estimates made this summer.

Not only will the reapportionment signal the start of redistricting, it will also inform the early strategizing about the 2012 presidential election, because each state's strength in the Electoral College is equal to the size of its total congressional delegation: House members plus senators.

Priority Values
For an event of rather momentous political consequences, reapportionment hardly captures the imagination of the average American. It begins with a national population head count that few people give more than a few minutes' notice every 10 years. And it concludes with the application of a formula for apportioning seats that only someone with a doctorate in statistics can love, or truly comprehend.

Using forms mailed to every household in March, and follow-up interviews with people who don't return those forms, the Census Bureau will seek to determine the precise populations of each state on April 1. The secretary of Commerce, who oversees the agency, has until Dec. 31 to announce those population counts. (In 2000, the job got done three days before the deadline.)

The totals provide the raw data for reapportionment based on the "method of equal proportions," which Congress has used since 1941 to divvy up House seats among the states. The formula is actually used to parcel out only the 385 seats that remain after each of the 50 states is assigned the one seat it is guaranteed under the Constitution.

The rest of the seats are handed out based on statistical "priority values" assigned to each additional seat that a state might get. In as close to plain English as the formula will allow, these priority values are calculated in a two-step process that requires dividing a state's population by the square root of the product of the number of seats it's already been assigned and that number plus one. The priority numbers are then rank ordered: "State A" will get an additional seat if its priority value for that seat is greater than any other state's. The seats are disbursed to states based on these rankings until all 435 have been awarded.

The reason at least a handful of seats get transferred each decade is that reapportionment is a zero-sum game: The size of the House was fixed at 435 seats in a law enacted 80 years ago. The fact that the number of House seats has stayed the same even as the population has soared means a vast increase in the number of constituents represented by most House members. The average district population in the coming decade will be about 710,000 people, 10 percent more than in this decade and 24 percent more than in the 1990s.

That each state, no matter how small, is entitled to one seat creates some significant variations from those averages, though. Republican Cynthia M. Lummis, Wyoming's sole House member, has the smallest constituency; her state's current population is estimated at 533,000. But another at-large member, Republican Denny Rehberg, has by far the biggest constituency; Montana's current head count is above 967,000.

Where the Population Is Growing
Politically, the continued political-gravitational pull of seats to the South and West will be the most consequential aspect of the next reapportionment.

In the 1950s, when seats were assigned for the first time after World War II, the states of the South, the Rocky Mountain region and the Pacific Coast had 38 percent of them; today, that figure is 53 percent. The changes in some individual states are at least as dramatic. While New York's strength has plummeted from 43 seats in 1950 to 29 now, and Pennsylvania from 30 to 19, California's delegation has surged from 30 to 53 members, Texas' from 22 to 32 and Florida's from just eight to 25.

The seat shifts next year will continue those trends. Under any scenario envisioned by EDS, Texas will be the biggest winner, with four more House seats -- a consequence of the state's burgeoning Hispanic population; the government estimates that 63 percent of the 3.4 million new residents in the state this decade are Latino. Hispanic population growth is the reason the only other state in line for more than one new House seat is Arizona; if its delegation grows to 10, from the current eight, that will be a doubling just since the 1980s.

The biggest loser stands to be Ohio, which would slip to 16 seats from 18. Ten other states are projected to lose one seat each. The only one outside the Northeast or Midwest is Louisiana, which almost certainly will see its House allotment reduced to six. With its sluggish economy heavily dependent on oil and gas production, the state was in danger of losing a seat even before Hurricane Katrina caused significant population dislocations four years ago.

Some Sun Belt states that are still growing are not doing so as quickly as in recent decades. California is not on course to gain a seat -- the first time since it became a state 160 years ago that it would not be rewarded in reapportionment. In fact, there's a chance the state could lose a seat in favor of a second new seat for Florida or one new seat for North Carolina.

"The shine is definitely off of California," said Douglas Johnson, a fellow at the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College east of Los Angeles. "It's certainly not the beacon attracting internal migration anywhere near what it used to be, and in fact we're seeing occasional bursts of out-migration."

Although there's no direct correlation between a state's strength in numbers in the House and its congressional clout, it is undeniably true that the more people there are in a given delegation, the higher the likelihood the state will have a seat at the table in a wider variety of legislative deliberations.

The Foreclosure Factor
The reapportionment projection isn't etched in granite. After all, it's based on estimates of population shifts that could change before the actual head count takes place. The formula is sensitive to small shifts in population, so it's not inconceivable that a state now projected to just miss out on an additional seat could wind up getting it after all, or that a state presumed to barely qualify for one of the last of the 435 seats could be deprived of it.

The current projections by and large don't take into account any population dislocations that may have been caused by the weakened economy, in particular the rash of housing foreclosures.

"The one big variable that none of us demographers know how to accommodate is the foreclosure crisis," Johnson said.

Demographers at the University of Florida projected in August that more than 58,000 people left that state in the 12 months that ended in April -- the first time since 1946 that Florida has lost population. In California, demographers wonder how foreclosures in the state's Central Valley and Inland Empire regions will affect mobility patterns.

"Are they going back to the coastal areas of California, or are they heading out to Nevada and Arizona?" Johnson said. "There's no good tracking of the foreclosed population, so we just don't know what's going on with all of those folks."

The Census Bureau determined that 11.9 percent of the population changed residences last year -- the lowest annual moving rate since the government began tracking the statistic in 1948. "The fact that we've got many fewer people moving, that is going to have an impact on the reapportionment, and maybe we won't see as much of a change this decade as what we've seen in previous decades," said Kimball W. Brace, president of EDS.

And the projections also don't factor in the tens of thousands of military personnel who are serving outside the United States but are included in the reapportionment count. These Americans are allocated to their home states using information provided to census takers by the federal agencies that employ them.

North Carolina's large population of military personnel allowed it to gain a seat in the 2000 reapportionment, in the process leapfrogging Utah, whose Mormon missionaries serving overseas were not included. The states' positions essentially are reversed for 2010: Utah is a cinch to receive its fourth seat, while North Carolina is on the cusp of receiving a 14th seat.

Counting Non-Citizens
That the census counts everyone in the United States, without regard to citizenship or immigration status, has rankled some conservative lawmakers who say states with large numbers of illegal immigrants gain an unfair advantage in reapportionment.

David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, earlier this month proposed an amendment to the Senate's fiscal 2010 Commerce-Justice-Science spending bill that would have barred federal funding for the Census Bureau unless it asked about citizenship and immigration status on the form it will send to all households in the spring. But Vitter's amendment, which the Senate ultimately shunted aside, came far too late. More than 300 million questionnaires had already been printed, and the Census Bureau informed Congress of the exact wording on them nearly two years ago.

Vitter's amendment didn't say anything about how the information would have been used, though his presumed goal -- excluding non-citizens from the reapportionment -- would require a constitutional amendment to supersede the 14th Amendment's declaration that reapportionment shall be conducted by "counting the whole number of persons in each state."

In each of the past three Congresses, Republican Rep. Candice S. Miller of Michigan has introduced a constitutional amendment that would mandate that the reapportionment be conducted by "counting the number of persons in each State who are citizens of the United States." But the proposal hasn't gone anywhere in either Republican-controlled or Democratic-controlled Congresses.

Cap Cana is located in the Eastern region of the Dominican Republic known as Juanillo. The site was founded as a new and more ambitious touristic site with contributions from international investors and strategic partners such as Ritz-Carlton, Sotogrande, Donald Trump and many others. The site has a Marina, Large resorts, beaches, and many others. Primarily founded as a site to attract international visitors. The Cap Cana Championship, a Champions Tour golf tournament, is held at Punta Espada Golf Club in Cap Cana, a course designed by Jack Nicklaus.

Cap Cana is a tourism development with an investment of upwards of two billion dollars in the eastern lands of the Dominican Republic. This area renown for its great hotels and beaches, lacks exclusivity to the high upper class which Cap Cana hopes, in part, to offer. The area was conceived with the backing both financially and publicly of "elites" such as Donald Trump, Jack Nicklaus, and other holders.

Dominican Republic Villa

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – Strong westerly winds in the southern Pacific Ocean have driven scores of icebergs originally headed toward New Zealand to the east, away from the country, an oceanographer said Tuesday.
A shipping alert was sent out last week and maritime authorities have been monitoring the iceberg flotilla as it drifted north from Antarctica toward New Zealand's South Island.
"It looks like they've all disappeared east of New Zealand," oceanographer Mike Williams, with New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, told The Associated Press. He said it would be unlikely they would be seen anywhere near the coastline.
The nearest one, measuring about 330 to 660 feet (100 to 200 meters) long, was 160 miles (260 kilometers) southeast of New Zealand's Stewart Island a week ago.
Australian glaciologist Neal Young said satellite imaging shows no sign of any icebergs northeast of Auckland Islands, 250 miles (400 kilometers) south of New Zealand.
"If ice is there, it's below 500 feet (150 meters) in length," the smallest size detectable on satellite images, Young said.
Williams said melting and erosion by waves would have made many of the icebergs quite small by now, and that it was unlikely scientists will spot them again on satellite.
Large numbers of icebergs last floated close to New Zealand in 2006, when some were visible from the coastline — the first such sighting since 1931.
Scientists say the current flotilla of icebergs likely split off Antarctica in 2000 when parts of two major ice shelves — the Ross Sea Ice Shelf and Ronne Ice Shelf — fractured. The Ross Sea Ice Shelf is the size of France and is also widely believed to be the origin of the 2006 icebergs.
Icebergs are routinely sloughed off as part of the natural development of ice shelves.
The latest appearance of the bergs in waters south of New Zealand depends as much on weather patterns and ocean currents as on the rate at which icebergs are calving off Antarctic ice shelves.
Rodney Russ, expedition leader on board the Spirit of Enderby eco-tourism vessel east of New Zealand, said they had earlier spotted two big icebergs north of Macquarie Island and also sighted two fishing boats working south of Auckland Islands.
"Traffic in this part of the world is pretty light at all times of the year. We're probably one of the only vessels that ply this area regularly," he told The AP in a telephone interview.
While the vessel has a fully ice-strengthened hull, it has up to three sailors on permanent watch in iceberg-affected ocean, a constant radar scanning and also uses powerful searchlights during the short, six- to seven-hour nights, he noted.
"It would be a foolhardy captain who would come down here and not step up the (iceberg) watch and increase the lookouts," Russ said.