Activists: Ethiopia clears people off land for foreigners

By msnbc.com staff and news services

The Ethiopian government is forcing an tens of thousands of people off their land so it can be leased to foreign investors,? Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released Tuesday.

The Horn of Africa state has already leased 3 million hectares (7.4 million acres)? to foreign farm businesses and the U.S.-based rights group said that the government had plans to lease another 2.1 million hectares (5.2 million acres), Reuters reported.


HRW said that 1.5 million Ethiopians would eventually be forced from their land and highlighted what it said was the latest case of forced relocation in its report "Ethiopia: Forced Relocations Bring Hunger, Hardship."

"My father was beaten for refusing to go along [to the new village] with some other elders," HRW quoted a former villager as saying.? "He said, 'I was born here -- my children were born here -- I am too old to move so I will stay.'? He was beaten by the army with sticks and the butt of a gun. He had to be taken to hospital. He died because of the beating -- he just became weaker and weaker."

The United Nations has increasingly voiced concern that countries such as China and Gulf Arab states are buying swathes of land in Africa and Asia to secure their own food supplies, often at the expense of local people.

"The Ethiopian government under its "villagization" program is forcibly relocating approximately 70,000 indigenous people from the western Gambella region to new villages that lack adequate food, farmland, health care, and educational facilities," HRW said, adding it had interviewed more than 100 people for the report.

"The first round of forced relocations occurred at the worst possible time of year -- the beginning of the harvest. Government failure to provide food assistance for relocated people has caused endemic hunger and cases of starvation," it said.

Government denial
Government officials deny the charge and say the affected plots of land are largely uninhabited and under-used, while it has also launched a program to settle tens of thousands from the remote province in more fertile areas of the country.

"Human Rights Watch has wrongly alleged the villagization program to be unpopular and problematic," government spokesman Bereket Simon told Reuters.

"There is no evidence to back the claim. This program is taking place with the full preparation and participation of regional authorities, the government and residents," he said.

Ethiopia says its prime intention in leasing large chunks of land is technology transfer and to boost production in a country that has been ravaged by droughts over the past few decades.

Reuters and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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Source: http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/17/10172091-rights-group-ethiopia-forcing-tens-of-thousands-off-land-to-make-room-for-investors

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Faster-than-fast Fourier transform

ScienceDaily (Jan. 18, 2012) ? The Fourier transform is one of the most fundamental concepts in the information sciences. It's a method for representing an irregular signal -- such as the voltage fluctuations in the wire that connects an MP3 player to a loudspeaker -- as a combination of pure frequencies. It's universal in signal processing, but it can also be used to compress image and audio files, solve differential equations and price stock options, among other things.

The reason the Fourier transform is so prevalent is an algorithm called the fast Fourier transform (FFT), devised in the mid-1960s, which made it practical to calculate Fourier transforms on the fly. Ever since the FFT was proposed, however, people have wondered whether an even faster algorithm could be found.

At the Association for Computing Machinery's Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA) this week, a group of MIT researchers will present a new algorithm that, in a large range of practically important cases, improves on the fast Fourier transform. Under some circumstances, the improvement can be dramatic -- a tenfold increase in speed. The new algorithm could be particularly useful for image compression, enabling, say, smartphones to wirelessly transmit large video files without draining their batteries or consuming their monthly bandwidth allotments.

Like the FFT, the new algorithm works on digital signals. A digital signal is just a series of numbers -- discrete samples of an analog signal, such as the sound of a musical instrument. The FFT takes a digital signal containing a certain number of samples and expresses it as the weighted sum of an equivalent number of frequencies.

"Weighted" means that some of those frequencies count more toward the total than others. Indeed, many of the frequencies may have such low weights that they can be safely disregarded. That's why the Fourier transform is useful for compression. An eight-by-eight block of pixels can be thought of as a 64-sample signal, and thus as the sum of 64 different frequencies. But as the researchers point out in their new paper, empirical studies show that on average, 57 of those frequencies can be discarded with minimal loss of image quality.

Heavyweight division

Signals whose Fourier transforms include a relatively small number of heavily weighted frequencies are called "sparse." The new algorithm determines the weights of a signal's most heavily weighted frequencies; the sparser the signal, the greater the speedup the algorithm provides. Indeed, if the signal is sparse enough, the algorithm can simply sample it randomly rather than reading it in its entirety.

"In nature, most of the normal signals are sparse," says Dina Katabi, one of the developers of the new algorithm. Consider, for instance, a recording of a piece of chamber music: The composite signal consists of only a few instruments each playing only one note at a time. A recording, on the other hand, of all possible instruments each playing all possible notes at once wouldn't be sparse -- but neither would it be a signal that anyone cares about.

The new algorithm -- which associate professor Katabi and professor Piotr Indyk, both of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), developed together with their students Eric Price and Haitham Hassanieh -- relies on two key ideas. The first is to divide a signal into narrower slices of bandwidth, sized so that a slice will generally contain only one frequency with a heavy weight.

In signal processing, the basic tool for isolating particular frequencies is a filter. But filters tend to have blurry boundaries: One range of frequencies will pass through the filter more or less intact; frequencies just outside that range will be somewhat attenuated; frequencies outside that range will be attenuated still more; and so on, until you reach the frequencies that are filtered out almost perfectly.

If it so happens that the one frequency with a heavy weight is at the edge of the filter, however, it could end up so attenuated that it can't be identified. So the researchers' first contribution was to find a computationally efficient way to combine filters so that they overlap, ensuring that no frequencies inside the target range will be unduly attenuated, but that the boundaries between slices of spectrum are still fairly sharp.

Zeroing in

Once they've isolated a slice of spectrum, however, the researchers still have to identify the most heavily weighted frequency in that slice. In the SODA paper, they do this by repeatedly cutting the slice of spectrum into smaller pieces and keeping only those in which most of the signal power is concentrated. But in an as-yet-unpublished paper, they describe a much more efficient technique, which borrows a signal-processing strategy from 4G cellular networks. Frequencies are generally represented as up-and-down squiggles, but they can also be though of as oscillations; by sampling the same slice of bandwidth at different times, the researchers can determine where the dominant frequency is in its oscillatory cycle.

Two University of Michigan researchers -- Anna Gilbert, a professor of mathematics, and Martin Strauss, an associate professor of mathematics and of electrical engineering and computer science -- had previously proposed an algorithm that improved on the FFT for very sparse signals. "Some of the previous work, including my own with Anna Gilbert and so on, would improve upon the fast Fourier transform algorithm, but only if the sparsity k" -- the number of heavily weighted frequencies -- "was considerably smaller than the input size n," Strauss says. The MIT researchers' algorithm, however, "greatly expands the number of circumstances where one can beat the traditional FFT," Strauss says. "Even if that number k is starting to get close to n -- to all of them being important -- this algorithm still gives some improvement over FFT."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The original article was written by Larry Hardesty.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.


Journal Reference:

  1. Haitham Hassanieh, Piotr Indyk, Dina Katabi, Eric Price. Nearly Optimal Sparse Fourier Transform. Arxiv, 2012 [link]

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120118123054.htm

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Greek Debt Talks Resume

ATHENS?Greece's government is set to resume talks with its private creditors late Wednesday over a plan to restructure the country's debt as it scrambles to secure a deal demanded by its European partners for a new bailout package.

The talks, which are expected to begin late in the day, come after negotiations between the two sides broke up last Friday amid differences about the future interest rate Greece would pay bondholders. What rate is chosen could determine how much of a loss creditors will take on the net present value of their Greek debt holdings.

The Institute for International Finance, ...

ATHENS?Greece's government is set to resume talks with its private creditors late Wednesday over a plan to restructure the country's debt as it scrambles to secure a deal demanded by its European partners for a new bailout package.

The talks, which are expected to begin late in the day, come after negotiations between the two sides broke up last Friday amid differences about the future interest rate Greece would pay bondholders. What rate is chosen could determine how much of a loss creditors will take on the net present value of their Greek debt holdings.

The Institute for International Finance, ...

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204555904577168300405547574.html?mod=rss_europe_whats_news

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Should We Temper Presidential Debate Audiences? (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | Todd Graham of CNN opines that loud hecklers at the GOP debate in South Carolina on Monday night effectively hindered the flow of what should have been an informative exercise of democracy and campaigning.

Tyranny of the loud is not a recent phenomenon: The outspoken have had an oversized share of public discourse since the dawn of mankind, when the biggest and loudest Cro-Magnon could force others to run and hide. These days the tyranny of the loud is often parodied in comedy, showing a loudmouth being accommodated by civilized people who are too cultured to throw out ultimatums (or fists). A Dilbert comic strip once showed a character receiving a job, then an immediate promotion simply because he was loud and the boss wanted to placate the volume.

We accommodate and placate the loud because we are often socialized to do so. But when it comes to democracy and justice, where equality should be paramount, is it fair to let the loud and aggressive have a bigger share of our political leaders' attentions? No, it is not.

The traditional concept of one person, one vote should be extended to one's representation at a debate or other political activity in a public setting. Obnoxious behavior, as if a presidential debate were a football game or mixed-martial arts match, should be considered voter intimidation.

Just because it's not a day at the ballot box does not mean it is acceptable to intimidate through volume and display. People will feel disenfranchised if they cannot attend a political debate in person without being worried about being shouted down.

Freedom of speech is one thing, but what says the Constitution about freedom of volume?

As a relatively quiet person, I know I am biased. I cannot stand people who are loud simply for the sake of being loud. I've often felt they get some misguided sense of power out of being able to make others cringe or stay away. They seem to exude an obnoxious and odious challenge: You want me to quiet down? Well, what are you gonna do about it?

They know most people will not challenge their misbehavior -- we are socialized to want to de-escalate situations. But now that an area of intellectual of discourse seems to be falling prey to the loud and profane, will we "properly" socialized people stand up for ourselves?

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politicsopinion/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120117/cm_ac/10845367_should_we_temper_presidential_debate_audiences

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Perry defends states' rights (AP)

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. ? Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry is blasting the Obama administration for intruding on states' rights.

In a Republican debate in South Carolina Monday night, the Texas governor said the state "is at war with this federal government and this administration."

He criticized the Obama administration for slapping down South Carolina's voter identification law, which would require voters to show a photo ID before casting a ballot. He also objected to the Justice Department suing the state over its tough immigration law.

The Texas governor said the most egregious example of federal government overreach was the National Labor Relations Board intervening in a right to work state. He was referring to a ruling against Boeing, which moved production from Washington to South Carolina.

Perry called the federal actions "irresponsible" and "unconstitutional."

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

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UK politicians say take two alcohol-free days a week

TOAST your health by not drinking alcohol for two days a week, says a report by British MPs.

"The evidence we received suggests that people should be advised to take at least two drink-free days a week," said Andrew Miller, chairman of the cross-party House of Commons Science and Technology Committee.

The booze break gives the liver a chance to regenerate, advice echoed in the US by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The UK government's current recommendations imply that people can safely drink every day if they remain within recommended limits.

Nick Sheron, a liver specialist at the University of Southampton, UK, supports the idea of giving the liver a weekly break, but says an annual "liver holiday" of four to six weeks is more likely to heal liver damage. He says the benefit of a weekly break is more psychological because it proves to people that they can regularly manage without alcohol, and avoids escalation of intake.

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Scotland gaining enthusiasm for independence (AP)

STIRLING, Scotland ? In this green swath of Scotland, you can stay at the King Robert Hotel, eat at Bruce's Bistro and drink in the William Wallace pub ? all named for leaders who fought the English here 700 years ago.

For centuries Scotland was an independent kingdom, warding off English invaders in a series of bloody battles, but in 1707 the two united in a single country ? Great Britain ? that shares a monarch, a currency, and a London-based government.

Now a more peaceful, modern movement thinks its goal of regaining Scotland's independence is finally in sight.

This week Scottish authorities announced they will hold a referendum on independence in 2014, firing the starting pistol on a contest that could end with the breakup of Britain.

Many people around here can't wait.

"This is a wonderful time, an exciting time," said Gillian Leathley-Gibb, who runs a gift shop selling scarves, shawls and all things tartan in Stirling, a sturdy little city dominated by a castle that was repeatedly fought over by Scottish and English armies. "We went into a marriage with them over the border. Now it's time for a divorce."

Scotland's history has been entwined with that of its more populous southern neighbor for millennia, with Scots often bridling at London's central role in their affairs.

Scots like to see themselves as independent, strong-willed underdogs who fought for centuries against English oppression, and as passionate Celts pitted against stiff-necked Anglo-Saxon neighbors.

Though the two countries have shared a government for more than 300 years ? and the last two British prime ministers, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, were Scots ? centuries-old tales of English brutality and Scottish resistance still have strong emotional resonance. Every Scottish schoolchild learns about Bannockburn, a couple of miles (kilometers) from Stirling, where Scottish King Robert the Bruce defeated an invading English army in 1314, winning Scotland its temporary independence.

Scots gained significant autonomy in 1997 following a vote to set up an Edinburgh-based legislature with substantial powers.

Last year, the separatist Scottish National Party won a majority in the assembly, with the promise of a referendum on full independence at an unspecified date.

This week British Prime Minister David Cameron raised the stakes, declaring that only the British government in London had the power to grant a legally binding vote.

He said he was willing to do so, as long as the ballot met certain conditions, including a simple yes-or-no question and an early voting date to end the uncertainty over the country's future.

Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond, responded by saying Scotland would make its own decisions, accusing Cameron of trying to "trample over Scotland with his size 10 boots." And he set a date for the referendum: the fall of 2014.

He made clear that London's interference would not be tolerated, promising "a referendum organized in Scotland, built in Scotland for the Scottish people, discussed with civic Scotland and brought to the people in 2014 for a historic decision on the future of this nation."

It's a decision many in Stirling, 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Edinburgh, are eager to take.

"I'd have a brick wall across the border," said resident Janice Black. "They make all the rules down in London and haven't got a clue what goes on up here."

Black works at one of Stirling's main attractions ? a 220-foot (67 meter) Victorian Gothic tower perched high on a crag that honors William "Braveheart" Wallace, a warrior who routed the invading English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297.

Wallace's other, even better-known, memorial is the 1995 Mel Gibson film "Braveheart," a testament to the Scottish spirit which told the story in heroic Hollywood style.

Even after its union with England in 1707, Scotland retained distinct educational, religious and legal systems, and a vibrant intellectual culture that produced Enlightenment thinkers including economist Adam Smith and philosopher David Hume.

For most of that time, said University of Edinburgh history professor Tom Devine, "Scotland has had a kind of dual identity ? a mix of Scottishness and Britishness," and there was little demand for independence.

The modern independence movement took off after the 1980s, a decade of industrial decline for which many Scots blamed the London-based government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

The campaign owes much of its political success to Scottish National Party leader Salmond, a canny 57-year-old who likes soccer and horse racing and paints himself as a genial Scottish everyman.

Under him, the party has promoted a brand of "aspirational nationalism" open to Scots of all races and creeds, arguing that an independent Scotland's resourcefulness and North Sea oil revenues will create a dynamic economy and a cozy social safety net.

Despite Salmond's popularity, it seems most Scots do not, yet, want outright independence. Opinion polls since the 1990s have found support for it hovering at between 30 and 35 percent.

Knowing this, Scottish authorities want to put on the ballot a third choice ? known as maximum devolution or "devo max"_ which would stop short of full independence but give Scotland autonomy in all areas except foreign affairs and defense.

The British government favors a straight "in or out" question, because it thinks the pro-independence side would lose.

Many observers believe that given the choice Scottish voters would opt for greater autonomy, not independence.

"The Scots are not daft, and traditionally they have also been fairly cautious," said Devine.

But, the history professor added, this is unknown territory.

No part of Britain has ever held a secession referendum ? John Curtice, professor of politics at Scotland's Strathclyde University, calls it a "constitutional hornet's nest."

The other volatile variable is Europe's staggering economy, which may give some Scottish voters cold feet about leaving Britain and striking out on their own.

Salmond once spoke of Scotland joining a northern "arc of prosperity" with Iceland and Ireland ? two formerly high-flying countries whose economies crashed during the credit crunch. He also used to advocate joining the euro single currency. Now Salmond says independent Scotland would stick with pounds sterling for the foreseeable future.

Anti-independence politicians also ask how Scotland alone ? with a population of 5 million, one-tenth of England's ? could have withstood the near-collapse of two gigantic banks based in Edinburgh, the Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS, which were bailed out with billions from the British government following the 2008 credit crisis.

An independence vote would also bring wrangling over who gets the country's resources ? and its debt.

The SNP says independent Scotland would be entitled to 90 percent of Britain's oil wealth ? currently revenue from oil and gas in North Sea waters off the Scottish coast goes to British coffers ? but only liable for 8 percent of its almost 1 trillion pound ($1.5 trillion) national debt, based on Scotland's share of the U.K. population.

The British government is sure to dispute this, pointing out that Scotland has higher per capita public-sector spending than England and so is more indebted.

U.K. Treasury chief George Osborne warned Thursday that "the people of Scotland would lose out in terms of the Scottish economy" if they left Britain.

That fear is keeping some Scots from embracing independence, even here at the site of some of the country's most glorious military victories.

"It's beautiful," said Elizabeth Breakenridge, a tourist from the Glasgow area, as she stood at Stirling Castle looking out over the Forth River valley toward the Wallace Monument. "But it's not a part of your everyday life. It doesn't put money in the bank or food on the table."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120114/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_s_breakup

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A bit late, winter grips Midwest and Northeast (AP)

BUFFALO, N.Y. ? Many Americans' first real taste of winter this season blew through the Midwest and Northeast on Friday, leaving ski resort operators giddy, delaying commuters and air passengers, and forcing pedestrians along the East Coast to button up against biting winds.

The storm blanketed the Upper Midwest before slowly swirling to points east. Snowplow drivers were out in force overnight in Chicago, where temperatures plummeted. It could drop as much of a foot of snow on parts of Ohio along Lake Erie before plodding on.

In a typical year, such a storm would hardly register in the region. But atmospheric patterns, including the Pacific phenomenon known as La Nina, have conspired to make this an unusually icy winter in Alaska and have kept it abnormally warm in parts of the lower 48 states accustomed to more snow.

In Buffalo, worse than the accumulation of 5 inches ? moderate by regional standards ? were 25- to 35-mph winds that blew the snow in blinding sheets.

"We go from no snow to a blizzard," said Courtney Taylor of Lewiston, north of Buffalo, holding on to keep her fur-lined hood up.

For Steve Longo, a 47-year-old chiropractor from Wauwatosa, Wis., the wait to try out the cross-country skis he got for Christmas was excruciating. He and a friend wasted no time hitting the trails at Lapham Peak, about 25 miles west of Milwaukee.

"I wasn't worried," Longo said. "I was just anxious."

The storm annoyed commuters, and authorities said it caused hundreds of traffic accidents and at least three road deaths ? two in Iowa and one in Missouri. And while some lucky grade-schoolers cheered an unexpected day of sledding, hundreds of would-be air travelers had to scramble to come up with a Plan B.

High winds delayed flights Friday, as the long Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend began, heading to large East Coast airports including Philadelphia; Newark, N.J.; New York's LaGuardia; and Boston.

Blowing snow appeared to factor into a mishap at Buffalo Niagara International Airport, where the nose gear of a plane on a flight arriving from Atlanta rolled from the runway onto grass and got stuck. No one was injured.

While the dry weather has been an unexpected boon to many cash-strapped communities, which have saved big by not having to pay for plowing, salting and sanding their streets, it has hurt seasonable businesses that bank on the snow.

The arrival of blustery weather had Vermont's ski industry celebrating. The King Day weekend is one of the most important moneymaking weekends of the season.

The snow finally enabled the state's snowmobile organization, the Vermont Association of Snow Travelers, to start opening some trails.

"We are absolutely giddy, stoked, and the phones are ringing off the hook," said Jen Butson, a spokeswoman for the Vermont Ski Areas Association. "It's what we've been hoping for. Our snow dances have paid off."

___

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Carla K. Johnson in Chicago, Carrie Antlfinger in Milwaukee and Wilson Ring in Montpelier, Vt.

___

Online: Associated Press winter storm interactive http://apne.ws/xKAREC

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/weather/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120113/ap_on_re_us/us_winter_weather

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Keflezighi, Flanagan win Olympic marathon trials (AP)

HOUSTON ? Meb Keflezighi waved an American flag as the crowd cheered during the final strides of his victory in Saturday's U.S. Olympic marathon trial.

Ryan Hall and Abdi Abdirahman finished second and third, and the trio embraced before turning their sights to London.

The top American men's and women's distance runners competed in Houston for three Marathon spots on each team that will represent the U.S. at the Summer Games.

Shalane Flanagan won the women's Olympic trial. Desiree Davila finished second and Kara Goucher was third.

The 36-year-old Keflezighi covered the course in a personal-best 2 hours, 9 minutes and 8 seconds. He qualified for his third games, returning after winning silver in the 2004 marathon in Athens.

Keflezighi is the first runner to win the New York marathon (2009) and the U.S. Olympic trial. He's also the oldest winner of the trial, putting together an impressive race just 70 days after finishing sixth in New York in November.

Keflezighi missed three weeks of training after that race after developing an infection in his left foot, the result of leaving a nasal strip in his shoe. He remembered to wear the nasal strip on his nose Saturday, and he had broken away from Hall by Mile 24.

Hall's time was 2:09.30 and Abdirahman finished in 2:09.42.

Dathan Ritzenheim, second to Hall in 2008, crumpled to his knees and cried as he finished fourth, 13 seconds behind Abdirahman.

The 29-year-old Hall won the 2008 marathon trial in a record 2:09.02. He was back in one of his favorite cities to run, where he won the 2007 U.S. Half Marathon championship in an American record time of 59:43.

The 33-year-old Abdirahman will compete in his fourth Olympics. He qualified in the 10,000 meters in the previous three games.

Flanagan, 30, set a trials record on the women's side, finishing in 2:25.38. It was her second marathon and first since she was the runner-up in New York in 2010.

The 28-year-old Davila, the runner-up in Boston last year, finished in 2:25.55. She'll make her Olympics debut.

The 33-year-old Goucher trains with Flanagan in Oregon and finished Saturday's race in 2:26.06. She'll compete in her second games after running in the 5,000- and 10,000-meter races in Beijing.

The weather was ideal, with the races starting under a clear sky and a temperature of 40 degrees.

Hall went straight to the front from the opening gun, and ran the first mile in 4:52. Mo Trafeh and Keflezighi matched him stride-for-stride as the lead pack wound through downtown Houston.

Keflezighi passed Hall in Mile 8, and looked over his shoulder. Hall retook the top spot, and the men's lead group had a 40-second lead on the rest of the pack by Mile 9.

The men's lead group was down to four runners ? Hall, Abdirahman, Ritzenheim and Keflezighi ? through 17 miles. Abdirahman waved his arms, encouraging the fans lining the streets to cheer, as Ritzenheim dropped off the pace.

Abdirahman fell back, leaving Hall and Keflezighi alone at the front by Mile 22. Keflezighi then stretched the gap from Mile 24.

Keflezighi looked over his shoulder in the final mile and pumped his right fist to acknowledge the cheering crowd. Someone handed him an American flag near the finish and he waved it as he crossed the finish line.

Flanagan and 2008 Olympian Magdalena Lewy Boulet started the women's race side-by-side. Davila and Amy Hastings had moved to the front by the second mile, when the runners began the first of three circuits around an 8-mile loop. Davila and Hastings were roommates at Arizona State.

The women's lead group reached the midway point of the race in just over an hour and 13 minutes. Hastings fell back, then surged to the lead by the Mile 17 marker. Flanagan and Davila then moved to the front, with Goucher keeping pace until the final mile.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120114/ap_on_sp_ot/ath_us_marathon_trials

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Atlanta takes Leroux with top pick in WPS draft

Associated Press Sports

updated 6:49 p.m. ET Jan. 13, 2012

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - The Atlanta Beat selected UCLA forward Sydney Leroux with the top pick Friday in the Women's Professional Soccer draft.

Sky Blue FC took Notre Dame forward Melissa Henderson with the second pick, and the Boston Breakers selected University of San Diego forward Stephanie Ochs third.

Camille Levin, a defenseman who helped Stanford win the NCAA title, went to Sky Blue FC with the fourth pick, and the Philadelphia Independence took Wisconsin-Milwaukee forward Sarah Hagen fifth.

The Western New York Flash completed the first round by taking Stanford forward Lindsay Taylor sixth and Cardinal midfielder Teresa Noyola seventh.

The league will open its fourth season in April.

? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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