thomism coarse: March 2013

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Lindsey Vonn and Tiger Woods say they're dating

In this 2013 photo provided by Tiger Woods and Lindsey Vonn, golfer Tiger Woods and skier Lindsey Vonn pose for a portrait. Two months after rumors began circulating in Europe, Woods and Vonn posted separate items on their Facebook pages Monday, March 18, 2013, to announce their relationship. (AP Photo/Courtesy Tiger Woods/Lindsey Vonn) MANDATORY CREDIT TO COURTESY TIGER WOODS/LINDSEY VONN

Tiger Woods holds the Gene Sarazen Cup for winning the Cadillac Championship golf tournament on Sunday, March 10, 2013, in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) ? Sports has a new power couple: Tiger Woods and Lindsey Vonn confirmed they're dating.

Two months after rumors began circulating in Europe, Woods and Vonn posted separate items on their Facebook pages Monday afternoon to announce their relationship. The posts include photos of golf's 14-time major winner and the Olympic and World Cup downhill ski champion.

"This season has been great so far and I'm happy with my wins at Torrey and Doral," Woods said. "Something nice that's happened off the course was meeting Lindsey Vonn. Lindsey and I have been friends for some time, but over the last few months we have become very close and are now dating."

Woods made a stop in Austria ? where Vonn was competing in the Alpine skiing world championships ? in January on his way to Abu Dhabi to start his season. Two weeks ago, after he won the Cadillac Championship at Doral for his second win this year, The Daily Mail published photos that showed a woman, who appeared to be Vonn, in a golf cart at the marina where Woods' yacht "Privacy" was docked.

"I guess it wasn't a well-kept secret but yes, I am dating Tiger Woods," Vonn said on her Facebook page. "Our relationship evolved from a friendship into something more over these past few months and it has made me very happy."

Both said they wanted to keep everything else private.

Woods posted four photos with Vonn on his page, while Vonn's had one of those photos.

Vonn is recovering from right knee surgery ? something familiar to Woods ? after a Feb. 5 crash that ended her season. Her divorce from Thomas Vonn after more than four years became official in January. They separated in 2011. Vonn, whose maiden name is Kildow, decided to keep Vonn as her last name after the divorce.

The announcement was one day after the World Cup season ended. Vonn hopes to return in time for the Olympics next year in Sochi.

Woods' past relationships are far more sensational.

His marriage of five years to Elin Nordegren of Sweden collapsed in 2010 after shocking revelations of multiple extramarital affairs. His infidelity was exposed the night after Thanksgiving in 2009 when he ran his car into a tree and a fire hydrant outside his Florida home.

Woods spent the summer of 2010 working out details of a divorce, which became official in August that year. They share custody of their two children.

The 37-year-old Woods rarely discusses any aspect of his private life, and it was surprising that he acknowledged a relationship with Vonn, much less post studio photos of him, in a short-sleeve Nike golf shirt, and Vonn, in a light blue warm-up jacket. But this would preclude paparazzi making big money when they are photographed together for the first time.

He is playing the Arnold Palmer Invitational this week at Bay Hill, where he is a seven-time winner and the defending champion. Woods can return to No. 1 in the world for the first time since October 2010 if he wins.

After that, Woods is not expected to play until the Masters on April 11-14.

The 28-year-old Vonn is the premier ski racer of her generation, an owner of four World Cup overall titles, along with gold and bronze medals from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics that earned her AP Female Athlete of the Year honors. She is the only skier ? male or female ? to win one of the annual AP awards that date back to 1931.

Dominant against other top female skiers, Vonn petitioned the International Ski Federation to let her compete against men in a downhill race, but the request was rejected last year. Her 59 career World Cup race victories is three shy of the record, and she recently claimed a sixth consecutive World Cup downhill title.

Vonn's season was cut short when she shredded two knee ligaments and broke a bone in her lower right leg in a crash during this year's world championships. She hopes to return at the start of the next World Cup season in November and, if healthy, she would be one of the top athletes at the Sochi Olympics next year.

During a conference call with reporters last month to discuss her recovery from the injury, Vonn declined to talk about rumors of a relationship with Woods.

Woods has gone through four surgeries on his left knee, including reconstruction after winning the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in 2008 despite shredded ligaments and two stress fractures of his tibia.

Along with his 14 majors, Woods has won 17 times in the World Golf Championships (no one else has won more than three), and after Bay Hill he will have the record for most weeks (789) in the top 10 of the world ranking dating to 1986.

___

AP Sports Writer Howard Fendrich in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-03-18-Woods-and-Vonn-Dating/id-5c2369cc84944002a2fd4615724767f9

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Monday, March 18, 2013

China becomes world's 5th biggest arms exporter

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has become the world's fifth-largest arms exporter, a respected Sweden-based think tank said on Monday, its highest ranking since the Cold War, with Pakistan the main recipient.

China's volume of weapons exports between 2008 and 2012 rose 162 percent compared to the previous five year period, with its share of the global arms trade rising from 2 percent to 5 percent, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said.

China replaces Britain in the top five arms-dealing countries between 2008 and 2012, a group dominated by the United States and Russia, which accounted for 30 percent and 26 percent of weapons exports, SIPRI said.

"China is establishing itself as a significant arms supplier to a growing number of important recipient states," Paul Holtom, director of the SIPRI Arms Transfers Program, said in a statement.

The shift, outlined in SIPRI's Trends in International Arms Transfers report, marks China's first time as a top-five arms exporter since the think tank's 1986-1990 data period.

Now the world's second-largest economy, China's rise has come with a new sense of military assertiveness with a growing budget to develop modern warfare equipment including aircraft carriers and drones.

At the Zhuhai air show in southern China in November, Chinese attack helicopters, missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles and air defenses were on public show for the first time.

SIPRI maintains a global arms transfers database base that tracks arms exports back to the 1950s. It averages data over five-year periods because arms sales vary by year.

"Pakistan - which accounted for 55 percent of Chinese arms exports - is likely to remain the largest recipient of Chinese arms in the coming years due to large outstanding and planned orders for combat aircraft, submarines and frigates," SIPRI said.

Myanmar, which has been undergoing fragile reforms that the United States thinks could help counter Beijing's influence in the region, received 8 percent of China's weapons exports.

Bangladesh received 7 percent of the arms, and Algeria, Venezuela and Morocco have bought Chinese-made frigates, aircraft or armored vehicles in the past several years.

Beijing does not release official figures for arms sales.

Germany and France ranked third and fourth on the arms exporter list. China followed only India in the acquisition of arms, though its reliance on imports is decreasing as it ramps up weapons production capabilities at home.

After decades of steep increases in military spending and cash injections into domestic defense contractors, experts say some Chinese-made equipment is now comparable to Russian or Western counterparts, though accurate information about the performance of Chinese weapons is scarce.

China faces bans on Western military imports, dating back to anger over its crushing of pro-democracy protests in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989. That makes its domestic arms industry crucial in assembling a modern military force that can enforce claims over Taiwan and disputed maritime territories.

China has faced off recently with its Southeast Asian neighbors and Japan over conflicting claims to strings of islets in the South China Sea and East China Sea, even as the United States executes a military pivot towards the Pacific.

(Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/china-replaces-britain-worlds-top-five-arms-exporters-003324632.html

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Friday, March 1, 2013

New Rosa Parks statue: 'She defied injustice'

President Obama and Congressional leaders paid tribute to Rosa Parks today, as the civil rights pioneer took her "rightful place" among those who have shaped the nation's history.

"She defied the odds and she defied injustice," Obama said at the unveiling of a statue of Rosa Parks at the U.S. Capitol. "She lived a life of activism, but also a life of dignity and grace. And in a single moment, with the simplest of gestures, she helped change America and change the world."

In 1955, Parks refused to move to the back of a segregated bus in Montgomery, Ala., sparking a movement against racial prejudice with one simple act. More than half a century later, she became the first African-American woman honored with a statute in the U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall.

"So we place her here, in a chamber where many fought to prevent a day like this," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said. "For when the trappings of ceremony come down, people from all walks, backgrounds and beliefs will pass through here?. It will be an ordinary routine, but one that about half a century ago would have been improbable. I can think of no more perfect way to capture the vision of a more perfect union ? and to continue what Rosa Parks started."

"With this statue, we affirm that the courage and the cause of Rosa Parks not only earned her a place in the hearts of all Americans, but a permanent place among the other figures in this hall of national memory," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell proclaimed. "This simple carpenter's daughter from Tuskegee is honored as a national hero. What a story. What a legacy. What a country."

The "seamstress slight in stature but mighty in courage" continues to inspire Americans to face today's challenges, Obama said.

"Rosa Parks tells us there's always something we can do. She tells us that we all have responsibilities to ourselves and to one another. She reminds us that this is how change happens, not mainly through the exploits of the famous and the powerful but through the countless acts of often anonymous courage and kindness and fellow feeling and responsibility that continually, stubbornly expand our conception of justice, our conception of what is possible," he said.

"That is why this statue belongs in this hall: to remind us, no matter how humble or lofty our positions, just what it is that leadership requires, just what it is that citizenship requires," Obama said.

See Who Else Is Memorialized In the Capitol Here