BEIRUT ? Syrian President Bashar Assad said Tuesday he will not step down, insisting that he still has his people's support despite a 10-month-old uprising against him.
In his fourth speech since the Syrian revolt began in March, Assad also lashed out at the Arab League and accused the Cairo-based bloc of failing to protect Arab interests.
The League has suspended Syria and sent a team of monitors into country to assess whether the regime is abiding by an Arab-brokered peace plan that Assad agreed to on Dec. 19. The moves were humiliating for Syria, which considers itself a powerhouse of Arab nationalism.
"The Arab League failed for six decades to protect Arab interests," Assad said in the speech at Damascus University, where he stood at a podium flanked by Syrian flags. "We shouldn't be surprised it's failed today."
Assad repeated claims that a conspiracy is behind the unrest, but he said it is failing.
"We will declare victory soon," Assad said. "When I leave this post, it will be also based upon the people's wishes," he added.
The president has made few public appearances since the anti-government uprising began in March, inspired by the revolutions sweeping the Arab world. The regime's crackdown on dissent has killed thousands and led to international isolation and sanctions.
Assad also accused hundreds of media outlets of working against Syria to "push us toward ... collapse."
"They failed, but they have not given up," he said in the speech, which was broadcast live on state television.
Since the start of the uprising, Assad has blamed a foreign conspiracy and media fabrications for the unrest ? allegations that the opposition and most observers dismiss. The regime has banned most foreign news outlets and prevented independent reporting.
In recent months, Syria's conflict has turned increasingly violent as army defectors turn their weapons on the regime and some protesters take up arms to protect themselves.
Syria agreed in December to an Arab League-brokered plan that calls for an end to the military crackdown on protesters, but killings have continued.
About 165 Arab League monitors are in Syria to determine whether the regime is abiding by the plan to stop violence and pull heavy weapons out of the cities.
The U.N. estimated several weeks ago that more than 5,000 people have been killed since March. Since that report, opposition activists say hundreds more have died.
Adnan al-Khudeir, head of the Cairo operations room that the monitors report to, said more observers will head to Syria in the coming days and the delegation should reach 200. He said the mission then will expand its work in Syria to reach the eastern province of Deir el-Zour and predominantly Kurdish areas to the northeast.
Moe Levin, no fan of Mayor Rob Ford, had considered telling him off at the annual Mayor?s New Year?s Levee on Monday afternoon.
In the end, Levin thought better of it. When the 24-year-old got his chance to speak to Ford, he politely conveyed his holiday best. Then, with a broad smile, he posed with Ford for photos.
In an exceptionally rare occurrence at City Hall, good cheer ruled the day. Ford, in his glad-handing element, exchanged greetings with more than 300 people who lined up in the lobby to meet him. Most were supporters; Ford smiled and bantered with even the critics.
One critic, Occupy Toronto member Loretta Lime, told Ford that she hadn?t voted for him and that he had given her no reason to do so. He grinned, shrugged, and said, ?At least you?re voting.?
?At least he didn?t get mad at me,? Lime, 28, said afterward.
The prevailing pleasantness was interrupted twice by people chanting in opposition to proposed budget cuts. One Stop the Cuts Network member who helped to unfurl an anti-cuts banner in front of Ford was detained by City Hall security.
Police officers released the man on a promise not to return to City Hall for the rest of the day, city spokesperson Chris Fernandes said.
Ford left without speaking to reporters. The levee was his first public appearance since the Star revealed that police were investigating two domestic incidents that resulted in 911 calls to his house.
The people at the front of the levee line waited more than three hours for their brief encounters with Ford and the councillors who stood beside him. Many others waited about an hour to say little more than hello.
?It?s like a tradition now: I basically just greet the mayor and wish him all the best. It?s just a day to kind of have fun. Everyone can agree you should kind of leave politics aside on this day,? said Hosna Ahmad, 18, from North York.
Another 18-year-old, Ryan Endoh, called himself ?Mayor Ford?s number one fan from Scarborough.? Ford, Endoh said, has quickly responded to his phone calls.
?I think he?s a great guy, and I think he?s doing great things for the city, and I think he?s just misunderstood,? Endoh said.
Linda and Lee Dunlop, a wife and husband from Etobicoke, attended for differing reasons. Linda Dunlop said she planned to wish Ford a happy new year and thank him for taking on a difficult job. Lee Dunlop said he planned to ask Ford how he could possibly have a happy new year when his ?taxes are going up but services are going down.?
?We have a split,? Lee Dunlop said, smiling himself.
People who did not want a photo with the mayor were given sticky pink pieces of paper to affix to their jackets. The colour choice, several of them said, called to mind Don Cherry?s rant about ?left-wing pinkos? at Ford?s inauguration.
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The perfect size at 3.23 lbs, the VAIO YB laptop is built to go with up to 5 hours 30 minutes of standard battery life. As a defining touch to this stylish PC, its LED backlit display delivers the brilliant color and vivid detail you expect from Sony.
Sony 11.6" VAIO Laptop PC:
Key Features and Benefits:
AMD Dual-Core E-450 processor 1.65GHz, 1MB Cache
4GB DDR3 SDRAM system memory Gives you the power to handle most power-hungry applications and tons of multimedia work
500GB SATA hard drive Store 333,000 photos, 142,000 songs or 263 hours of HD video and more
10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Connect to a broadband modem with wired Ethernet or wirelessly connect to a Wi-Fi signal or hotspot with the 802.11b/g/n connection built into your PC
11.6" LED display AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6310 Graphics
Additional Features:
Built-in webcam
2-in-1 memory card reader
3 x USB 2.0 ports, 1 x headphone output, 1 x microphone input, 1 x RJ-45 Ethernet port, 1 x VGA port, 1 x HDMI port, 1 x DC-in
Standard lithium-ion battery, up to 5 h 30 min battery life
Software:
Genuine Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 32-Bit Edition (To learn more about the features of Windows 7, click here)
Microsoft Office Starter 2010: Includes reduced functionality versions of Microsoft Word and Excel, with advertising. PowerPoint and Outlook are NOT included. Purchase Office 2010 today and get the most out of your new PC. (To learn more about the features of Office 2010, click here)
Norton Internet Security 2012 (30-day trial)
Backup and Restore options built into Windows allows you to create safety copies of your most important personal files, so you're always prepared for the worst
Support and Warranty:
What's In The Box:
Power cord
Standard lithium-ion battery
Quick Start Guide
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Display
Display Type:
11.6" TFT
Widescreen Display:
Yes
Max Resolution:
1366 x 768 ( WXGA )
Processor
Multi-Core Technology:
Dual-Core
Processor:
AMD Fusion E-450 / 1.65 GHz
Cache Memory
Installed Size:
1 MB
Storage
Hard Drive:
500 GB - Serial ATA-300 - 5400 rpm
RAM
Installed Size:
4 GB / 4 GB (max)
Technology:
DDR3 SDRAM - 1066 MHz
Configuration Features:
1 x 4 GB
Networking
Data Link Protocol:
Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, IEEE 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1 EDR
Wireless LAN Supported:
Yes
Audio
Audio Input:
Microphone
Operating System / Software
OS Provided:
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Software:
VAIO Care, VAIO Media Gallery, Picture Motion Browser VAIO Edition, Microsoft Office 2010 Starter, Norton Internet Security 2012 (30 days trial)
Battery
Technology:
Lithium ion
Installed Qty:
1
Capacity:
3500 mAh
Run Time (Up To):
5.5 hour(s)
Product Dimensions
Width:
11.4 in
Height:
1.3 in
Depth:
8 in
Weight:
3.2 lbs
Color:
Black
Card Reader
Supported Flash Memory Cards:
SD Memory Card, Memory Stick Duo
Miscellaneous
Compliant Standards:
RoHS
Manufacturer Warranty
Service & Support:
1 year warranty
More Information
Model No.:
VPCYB35KX/B
Shipping Weight (in pounds):
3.5
Product in Inches (L x W x H):
11.42?x?1.25?x?7.99
Walmart No.:
550193909
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If you're familiar with a site called VideoETA, which tells you when a movie will arrive on DVD, then you'll get the concept behind the new website called WhatsOutt.com. It's basically VideoETA for everything. The site keeps track of new and upcoming releases for movies coming to theaters, DVDs, books, music, and games.
If you're going to rock out, you might as well do so with a video game console from the '70s as the core of your guitar. In fact, this is precisely what modder cTrix has done with his gATARI2600. In his configuration, he's able to write and play new music through an Atari 2600 by using an EPROM programmer (a software application he wrote) and daughterboards to feed the new music back through the instrument. The gATARI also features equalizer and flange pedals, a track selector, and whammy bars that allow the player to switch tracks and make changes on the fly. No details have been posted as to how to make your own just yet, but click past the break to watch cTrix jam both thoroughly and effectively at Blip Fest 2011 in Japan.
Particles? precursor doesn?t have enough energy to produce such speeds
Web edition : Friday, December 30th, 2011
Physicists have found yet another reason to doubt recent
reports of neutrinos traveling faster than light. The existence of such speedy
particles would screw up not only Einstein?s theory of special relativity, but
also the laws of conservation of energy and momentum.?
In September, the OPERA experiment reported clocking neutrinos
traveling faster than the speed of light, arriving 60 nanoseconds early on
their 730-kilometer journey between the European laboratory CERN, near Geneva, and
the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. To try to explain the result, two new
studies examined the particles that give birth to neutrinos. Both found that
these particles, called pions, could not possibly have had enough energy to give
rise to the faster-than-light, or superluminal, speeds indicated by OPERA.?
?We give a clear constraint on the superluminality of
neutrinos,? says Xiaojun Bi, a particle astrophysicist at the Chinese Academy
of Sciences? Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing. His team reported its
findings in the Dec. 6 Physical Review
Letters.?
If neutrinos can travel faster than light, they should
get heavier as their energy increases. So there?s a limit to how fast the
particles can zip along, dictated by the energy of their unstable pion parents.?
OPERA?s pions, made at CERN, have about 3.5 times as much
energy as their neutrino progeny. That sets a neutrino speed limit that?s lower
than the speed measured by OPERA, physicist Ramanath Cowsik of Washington
University in St. Louis and colleagues reported in the Dec. 16 Physical Review Letters. Bi suggests
that OPERA?s highest-energy neutrinos push this speed limit even lower.?
Achieving the mind-boggling velocities measured by OPERA would
have required pions with energies 20 times greater than their offspring,
Cowsik?s team calculates. At such energies, though, the lifetimes of pions
would be six times longer, which has been ruled out by measurements from OPERA
and other experiments.?
The most stringent limit yet on neutrino speed comes from
high-energy neutrinos born when cosmic rays strike the atmosphere. The IceCube
detector at the South Pole has measured these neutrinos to energies more than
10,000 times as high as OPERA?s neutrinos. If the speeds measured by OPERA are
correct, the cosmic-ray neutrinos should be far too heavy to have been produced
by pions. IceCube thus throttles back the potential speed of any superluminal
neutrinos to be a few ten billionths of a percent above the speed of light ? a
far cry from the few thousandths of a percent reported by OPERA.
For Cowsik and other researchers, these problems and
contradictions suggest that the laws of physics as currently understood are
correct. But physicists will still be watching other neutrino experiments that can
check OPERA?s result, which may be clouded by some unknown source of error.?
?No one is saying that the OPERA result is impossible,
even though it would require extreme revisions to what we know about physics,?
says Sheldon Glashow, a Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist at Boston
University. ?But if it turns out to be
true, I would say to Nature, ?You win.? Then I?d give up, and I?d retire.?
If you're familiar with a site called 
ToastMaster