Finally, France tastes victory at its 100th Tour

L'ALPE D'HUEZ, France (AP) ? After five grueling hours of riding, as he strained and sweated to victory in an eye-popping Tour de France stage with crowds that turned cycling's most famous climb into a huge and raucous high-mountain party, Christophe Riblon didn't want it to stop.

Winning a Tour stage is always special.

Becoming the first French stage winner at the 100th Tour was doubly special.

Doing all this in front of hundreds of thousands of screaming fans, several rows deep up 21 steep hairpin bends in the Alps, well, Riblon wanted the pleasure to last and last.

"It was as if the crowds were carrying me. Magical," Riblon said. "The last kilometer (half-mile) wasn't long enough. I so would have liked to have profited more from that moment with the crowds. It was incredible. I would have liked for it to go on for 10 kilometers (six miles) like that."

In a Tour that has offered a kaleidoscope of racing drama and scenic beauty from its June 29 start point on the French island of Corsica, this Stage 18 was the one that most set hearts racing and tongues wagging when organizers unveiled the race route last October.

When their bodies and minds are already sapped by more than two weeks of racing, it sent the riders not once but twice up the legendary climb to the ski station of L'Alpe d'Huez.

Between the two ascents, the route hared down a sinewy, narrow and risky descent with no safety barriers that some riders, including Tour champion-in-the-making Chris Froome, felt was dangerous.

The gamble could have backfired horribly had a rider plunged off a missed bend. But feared storms didn't materialize, so the roads didn't become overly treacherous. The racing proved engrossing.

Watching the riders' high-wire act on the Col de Sarenne descent, especially a heart-in-mouth moment when Froome's rival Alberto Contador zipped past him as they sped downhill, was an adrenaline high.

The double ascent to L'Alpe d'Huez made the roadside hordes doubly frenzied. It was as though someone had scooped up an entire outdoor music festival ? with hundreds of thousands of people, tents, barbecues, colors, smells, noise, outdoor toilets and all ? and scattered them across the mountain. The riders cleaved through curtains of people screaming and running alongside them. A man waving a Japanese flag inadvertently caught it on the handlebar of Froome's teammate Richie Porte, giving him a fright.

And the French got a perfect crescendo when Riblon spared them the indignity of a Tour without a stage win. The last time that happened was 1999. With just three stages left after Thursday to the finish in Paris, French chances were fast running out.

"A Frenchman winning on L'Alpe d'Huez is a beautiful recompense for France and for the Tour de France. We, the French, France, our team, didn't deserve to come out of this Tour de France without a stage victory," said Riblon.

Riding to the line, he fished a dog tag engraved with the names of his wife and two daughters out of his jersey and kissed it.

Although not from the same country or team, Riblon used the limelight of victory as a soapbox to defend Froome against suspicions voiced in some quarters about the British rider's performances.

Froome's clear physical superiority has raised eyebrows. Because cycling was so let down by Lance Armstrong and his generation of dopers, some observers are finding it hard to believe that Froome could be riding clean ? even though the sport's anti-doping tests are more credible now than when Armstrong was winning and cheating.

Among the many banners that spectators hung on the switchbacks to L'Alpe d'Huez was one that read: "Froome dope"

"I believe in cycling and I don't think there are many cheats left," Riblon said. "What I want most of all is to eradicate suspicion. Honestly, I don't really understand why the yellow jersey (Froome) is being put on trial ... He doesn't deserve this. When harm is done to the yellow jersey, the whole of cycling is hurt."

To combat suspicion, Froome's team released his performance data from six races, including this Tour, to French sports newspaper L'Equipe. The newspaper reported Thursday that it had an outside expert analyze the data ? including how much power Froome generated and his climbing times on 18 ascents ? and that he found "no anomalies."

L'Equipe, owned by Tour organizers ASO, said Sky also told the newspaper that Froome has had 48 anti-doping tests this year, including 19 so far at the Tour before Thursday' stage.

"The team owns all that data and the team made the decision to release that data," said Froome. "But, yeah, I'm really happy to hear their findings and to hear their take on it and, basically, backing us up to say that these performances are very good, strong, clean sporting performances."

"I know what I'm doing is right and I'm extremely proud of what I've done to get here. So no one can take that away from me," he said.

Having barely put a foot wrong for more than two weeks, Froome ran short of energy on the second ascent to L'Alpe d'Huez, slowing suddenly as he sought assistance from his team.

"It's a horrible feeling," Froome said of the sugar-low.

Porte dropped back to their team car to fetch an energy bar, rode back and handed it over to Froome. That cost both of them a 20-second time penalty because food supplies weren't allowed that late in the stage.

Still, Froome has plenty of time to spare, even more now than he started the day with.

After his aggressive downhill from Sarenne, Contador labored on the last uphill. He finished 11th. Froome was seventh. His overall lead grew to 5 minutes, 11 seconds over Contador. Colombian Nairo Quintana moved up to third overall, 5:32 behind Froome, who is now just three days away from becoming the second successive British winner after 2012 champion Bradley Wiggins.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/finally-france-tastes-victory-100th-tour-205742071.html

joel osteen Accidental Racist Fallon Fox Chris Webber linda perry WrestleMania 29 Lilly Pulitzer

Amazon's Best-Selling TV And Movies Of 2013 - Business Insider

Fox

"A Good Day to Die Hard" is the fifth installment of the "Die Hard" series, starring Bruce Willis.

Amazon released its list of best-selling television shows and movies for the first half of 2013.

The numbers aren't exactly a reflection of the flicks' box office performance.

"A Good Day to Die Hard" grossed $67 million in theaters, while Amazon's third-place title, "Skyfall," earned a cool $300 million,?according to Box Office Mojo.

The TV season sales line up more with ratings.

This spring, HBO's darling "Game of Thrones" averaged 13.6 million viewers, booting "True Blood" from its spot as the second-most watched series in the network's history.

See the full list below:

Best-Selling Movies

1. "A Good Day to Die Hard"

2. "Djanjo Unchained"

3. "Skyfall"

4. "Lincoln"

5. "Life of Pi"

Best-Selling Kids & Family Movies

1. "Monsters, Inc."

2. "LEGO Batman: The Movie ? DC Super Heroes Unite"

3. "Wreck-it Ralph"

4. "Escape from Planet Earth"

5. "Mulan / Mulan II"

Best-Selling TV Shows

1. "Game of Thrones: The Complete Second Season"

2. "True Blood: The Complete Fifth Season"

3. "Dexter: The Seventh Season"

4. "The Bible: The Epic Miniseries"

5. "Breaking Bad: The Fifth Season"

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.

SEE ALSO:? Writers Guild Releases Controversial List Of The Best TV Shows Ever

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-best-selling-tv-and-movies-of-2013-2013-7

aubrey o day johan santana viktor bout ncaa hockey role models ferdinand porsche gregg williams

A Closer Look at the Arboretum?Boston Teachers Union School Partnership

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HarvardGazetteCalendar/~3/k6Ws0XFafb4/

vanessa minnillo super tuesday epidemiology total eclipse of the heart jionni lavalle earthquake san francisco donald payne

Elect Sony: Sony TX30 Digital Camera - Waterproof, Shockproof, Superslim $277 (Reg $399)

Sony Cyber-shot Digital Camera TX30
Model Highlights: Certified waterproof, dustproof, shockproof and freezeproof, 3.3" OLED touchscreen, 18.2 megapixels, Magnifying Glass Plus, LED light, AVCHD? 1080/60i video, dual record of stills and movies, 5x optical zoom

$299 - use SONYCJP for additional $15 off
Also 2.75% RFD Cashback
$277 final price before tax after CB

http://store.sony.ca/webapp/wcs/stor...52921666534671 EARN CASH BACK

Looks like link doesn't go directly to the product page - just search for TX30

Source: http://forums.redflagdeals.com/sony-sony-tx30-digital-camera-waterproof-shockproof-superslim-277-reg-399-a-1361695/new-post/

scotty mccreery megan fox pregnant metta world peace suspension apple earnings report john l smith apple earnings the glass castle

Do pilots rely too much on technology?

By Gerry Shih and Alwyn Scott

SAN FRANCISCO/ SEATTLE (Reuters) - In the seconds before Asiana Airlines Flight 214 slammed into a seawall at San Francisco airport on July 6, pilots realized the plane was flying too low and much too slowly - even though, they told investigators, they had set a control system called an auto-throttle to keep the Boeing 777 at a constant speed.

The pilots belatedly tried to abort the landing, but it was too late. Three Chinese students died in the crash, and at least 14 people remain in hospitals with severe injuries.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash, has stressed that it's too early to determine the cause. Still, information from the plane's flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders released by the NTSB strongly suggest a chain of events similar to what was seen in several other crashes in recent years, aviation experts say.

As in the crash of a Colgan Air jet near Buffalo, the crash of an Air France flight over the Atlantic, and the crash of a Turkish Airlines jet in Amsterdam - which all occurred within six months in 2009 - the Asiana pilots appear to have let the plane's airspeed dip dangerously low and failed to correct it in time. While regulators' reports found multiple causes of the 2009 accidents, including some equipment issues, in each instance they questioned pilots' training and called for more instruction on issues ranging from monitoring of computerized flight systems to dealing with surprises in flight.

The latest crash renews questions about whether increasing reliance on automated flight controls in large passenger jets is eroding pilots' abilities to fly the planes manually and handle unexpected situations.

The Asiana crash also highlights long-standing complaints by the NTSB that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which must implement any recommendations from the safety board, is not moving fast enough to address emerging weaknesses in airline safety. In particular, the NTSB has advocated for better low-airspeed warnings in the cockpit and improved pilot training, but action has been slow.

Airline safety has improved radically in recent decades, and there is broad agreement in the industry that sophisticated cockpit computers have been a major factor in reducing the number of fatal accidents. But it's now clear that computers have also introduced a new set of problems for pilots.

"In the last five years, you'll find the preponderance of accidents have had some element of less-than-optimal flying skill," said David Greenberg, a longtime Delta executive and former chief operating officer at Korean Air. "There was a day when machines were falling out from under humans. Now the humans are riding perfectly good machines into the ground."

In particular, he said, over-reliance on automation was "a global issue right now, not an Asian issue or Korean issue."

Pilots have warned about the loss of manual flying skills ever since Britain's Trident jetliner pioneered automated landings in the 1960s.

The debate has become a major industry-wide issue as later generations of aircraft put ever greater emphasis on automatic systems and risk-averse airlines encourage their pilots to maintain their manual skills in the simulator rather than in flight.

Greg Feith, a consultant and a former senior investigator with the NTSB, said pilot training needs to change.

"Training programs emphasize that the automation can fly better than a human, so a lot of the training is focused around letting the plane do an auto-land or shoot the approach or do a variety of things," Feith said.

"That degrades the pilot's skill because it takes them out of the loop and it breeds complacency."

A Korean government aviation official, who declined to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said manual flying was once common among Korean pilots, many of whom where former military pilots. But in an effort to improve safety after a 1997 Korean Air crash in Guam, pilots were encouraged to make more use of automated controls.

"Many pilots now get used to automation, and they are given little opportunity for manual flying," he said. "Nowadays, a pilot is required to have management skills rather than flying skills because of automation - it is more important to know the system and understand how to manage it.

"We sometimes make jokes to pilots, saying 'are you a pilot or a manager?'"

In the wake of the Asiana crash, he said, "airlines should overhaul training programs, and beef up manual flying."

An Asiana spokesman said the company could not comment while the investigation is ongoing. In a presentation to the Korean government that was shared with reporters on Monday, Asiana said it would enhance training for pilots seeking to fly new aircraft and take other measures in response to the crash.

The FAA last week approved new rules, demanded by legislators, requiring co-pilots to have as many minimum flying hours as pilots. The measure came in response not to the Asiana crash, but rather to the 2009 Colgan Air crash, where pilots responded incorrectly to a stall warning. A stall, in which a plane loses lift and effectively drops out of the sky, is the most extreme result of a plane going too slowly; a "low and slow" landing can cause an accident even without a stall.

Just days after the Colgan crash, a Turkish Airlines flight stalled after a problem with a radio altimeter was compounded by pilot error in Amsterdam. Four months after that, an Air France flight departing from Brazil crashed after a junior pilot over-reacted to the loss of airspeed readings and inadvertently put the plane into a stall, which the crew then failed to recognize despite numerous voice warnings.

NO ACTION ON SAFETY RECOMMENDATIONS

For close to a decade, the NTSB has been calling for the FAA to study whether it should require airlines and jet manufacturers to install cockpit systems to warn pilots when they are going too slowly, even before they are in immediate danger of stalling. After the Turkish Airlines crash in 2009, Boeing began installing a spoken low-airspeed warning system in 737 airplanes. The 777 is equipped with a low-speed warning tone, but it does not feature a spoken alert. By the time a stall warning known as a "stick shaker" activated on the Asiana flight, the pilots were unable to abort the landing.

In a 2010 safety recommendation published one year after the Colgan crash, the NTSB expressed frustration that the FAA had not moved more quickly to implement low-airspeed warnings: "The NTSB notes that human factors concerns associated with a low-airspeed alert do not require more than 6 years of study for a solution to be implemented."

Scott Maurer, whose daughter Lorin died in the 2009 Colgan accident and who heads a group of families that advocate for more stringent safety standards, blamed the FAA for delaying rule changes because of their cost.

The FAA's delay "gets in the way of doing the right thing and lives have been lost as a result," Maurer said.

Still, Maurer said there has been progress.

"The origins of so many FAA regulations are the result of crashes," Maurer said. "Asiana may be the tipping point, as Colgan 3407 was a tipping point."

In a statement, the FAA said it is still studying possible enhancements for pilot awareness of low speed conditions on large commercial planes.

"That work is continuing and involves considerations for new and existing designs," the FAA statement added.

Senator Charles Schumer of New York has called on the FAA to approve by October another rule passed by Congress that would require pilots to receive more intensive simulator training on stalls.

Robert Mann, an aviation consultant in Port Washington, New York, suggested another possible lesson from the Asiana incident: looking more closely at how pilots are paired on flights. The pilot at the controls of the Asiana flight was attempting his first landing of a Boeing 777 jet in San Francisco and his supervisor was making his first flight as a trainer, and it was the first time the two pilots had flown together, the NTSB said.

"The issue is whether you pair certain crew members with certain characteristics together," Mann said.

Asiana declined to comment on that issue.

Whatever conclusions are eventually reached about the Asiana crash, the lengthy process the FAA undergoes to approve new rules suggests that any change may be slow in coming. Global standards, requiring agreement among FAA counterparts around the world, are likely to take even longer.

(Reporting by Gerry Shih and Alwyn Scott; Additional reporting by Karen Jacobs in Washington, Tim Hepher in Paris and Hyunjoo Kim in Seoul; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Claudia Parsons)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-well-known-hazards-seen-likely-factors-asiana-183152466.html

Life of Pi Christoph Waltz Quvenzhané Wallis dancing with the stars cast kristen stewart Shirley Bassey adele

Engadget Giveaway: win a 'Connect to Cell' phone system and $100 Best Buy gift card, courtesy of AT&T!

It's easy to forget that AT&T provides more than just smartphones and tablets -- it has a rather robust wireline segment as well. The "Connect to Cell" products you see above are designed to bridge the two services together, using Bluetooth to hook your smartphone (or featurephone) to your home phone system. It also works perfectly fine for those of us who don't have any landline service at our house, so it can come in handy for anybody. As part of this particular giveaway, which is sponsored by AT&T, we've got Connect to Cell phones and $100 Best Buy gift cards for ten lucky winners. If you want to be one of the ten -- and let's face it, you wouldn't be reading this if you didn't -- go to the widget below to enter. Good luck!

Filed under: Announcements, HD, Mobile, Alt, AT&T

Comments

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/emLXO3FNbfE/

world financial center zimmerman charged bonobos charles manson actuary elon musk fox mole

'True Blood' renewed for Season 7 by HBO

By Tim Kenneally

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - HBO is taking another bite of "True Blood."

The network has renewed the hit vampire drama for a seventh season, to premiere in summer 2014.

Executive producer Brian Buckner - who replaced Mark Hudis as showrunner in March - will return as showrunner.

"'True Blood' remains a signature show for HBO, and a true phenomenon with our viewers," Michael Lombardo, president of HBO Programming, said in a statement. "Thanks to Brian Buckner and his talented team, the show continues to be a thrill ride like nothing else on TV."

The current sixth season of "True Blood" premiered in June with 4.5 million total viewers, down from the previous season's premiere, which drew 5.2 million - though the dip was no doubt in part to competition from Game 5 of the NBA Finals, which dominated the ratings for the night with 14.2 million total viewers.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/true-blood-renewed-season-7-hbo-234827284.html

ihop Sasquatch 2013 super bowl commercials wheres my refund superbowl ads Super Bowl Ads 2013 Buffalo Wild Wings