The 2012 presidential race is on. Kinda.

At the moment, it feels more like a wade through treacle - so slow is the pace of President Barack Obama's opponents. Mr Obama can be unambiguous that he is going to run because they are all showing varying degrees of hesitancy.

If the president is to get back into the White House he has to leap a number of obstacles: an economy that is so sluggish that there are constant worries it could go backwards and supporters who may be unenthusiastic about sending more troops to Afghanistan, bombing Libya and failing to close Guantanamo Bay prison. There is also huge uncertainly in the country about health care and much more we will be looking at in detail.

But the strength of opposition doesn't seem, at the moment, a particularly high hurdle.  To British eyes, the primary system is one of the most curious parts of American politics.

The elite of British political parties have only grudgingly and slowly given the power of choosing their own leader. The principle of "one member, one vote" has been slow in coming. 

Elections for leaders rarely grip in the same way as American internal elections. While any American can easily register as a Republican or Democrat and have their say about who represents them, in Britain being a party member still seems an effort of will.

Twenty-five pounds ($40) per year may not be much to play your part in conservative politics in Britain, £12 may be a bargain to have a say in the Lib Dems and it's only a penny (for those under 27) to join the Labour Party - but it still costs something.

There's a feeling that being interested in who becomes your PM or MP isn't enough. You have to be willing to sit in draughty village halls on wet Wednesdays listening.  

The biggest difference is perhaps not in just who is involved, but how late in the political cycle the choice is made. This has a real impact. Every party leader, good or bad, has an image, policy likes and dislikes and personal ticks that colour voters approach to the parties as a whole.

The British public has years to get to know Ed Miliband and decide what to think about him leading a Labour government. Here in the US, the opposition is currently either faceless or hydra-headed. There is no obvious front-runner, and any prediction about who will be the Republican candidate in 2012 is nothing more than an informed guess.

Mr Obama v Michele Bachmann would be quite a different contest to Mr Obama v John Huntsman. 

Republicans get to choose, late in the day, exactly what they want their party to stand for.

The influence of the Tea Party suggests any candidate will be economically conservative, but beyond that, it is impossible to predict very much. The candidates are so unenthusiastic about firing the starting gun, the first big debate at the Reagan library in California has been put back from next month to the autumn.

Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann and Donald Trump seem almost certain to have a go. Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, John Huntsman and Mitch Daniels seem less sure bets. And, of course, there are plenty of other names out there.

Mr Obama is starting the race now to make sure that whoever challenges him, his organisation will be ramped up and ready, with big bucks at its command.

Former Center Grove High School standout attended Stanford but will play for the Hoosiers in his remaining season.

IU alum and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban pitches an idea to Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari as if he was a 'Shark Tank' contestant.

Former Center Grove High School standout attended Stanford but will play for the Hoosiers in his remaining season.

Restaurants struggling during the coronavirus pandemic are becoming grocery stores to survive. Here's where to score groceries around Indianapolis.

The payoffs for such turnarounds can be extraordinary for the residents who live nearby and for the city as a whole.

An anonymous reader quotes CNN: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday issued an emergency use authorization for the first at-home Covid-19 test that uses saliva samples, the agency said in a news release. Rutgers University's RUCDR Infinite Biologics lab received an amended emergency authorization late Thursday. With the test, people can collect their own saliva at home and send their saliva samples to a lab for results... "Authorizing additional diagnostic tests with the option of at-home sample collection will continue to increase patient access to testing for COVID-19. This provides an additional option for the easy, safe and convenient collection of samples required for testing without traveling to a doctor's office, hospital or testing site," FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen M. Hahn said in the FDA's press release on Friday... The test remains prescription only.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Crawling along the world's river bottoms, the larvae of the caddis fly suffer a perpetual housing crisis. To protect themselves from predators, they gather up sand grains and other sediment and paste them all together with silk, forming a cone that holds their worm-like bodies. As they mature and elongate, they have to continuously add material to the case -- think of it like adding rooms to your home for the rest of your life, or at least until you turn into an adult insect. If the caddis fly larva somehow loses its case, it's got to start from scratch, and that's quite the precarious situation for a defenseless tube of flesh. And now, the microplastic menace is piling onto the caddis fly's list of tribulations. Microplastic particles -- pieces of plastic under 5 millimeters long -- have already corrupted many of Earth's environments, including the formerly pristine Arctic and deep-sea sediments. In a study published last year, researchers in Germany reported finding microplastic particles in the cases of caddis flies in the wild. Then, last month, they published the troubling results of lab experiments that found the more microplastic particles a caddis fly larva incorporates into its case, the weaker that structure becomes. That could open up caddis flies to greater predation, sending ripple effects through river ecosystems. In the lab, the researchers found that the larvae chose to use two kinds of microplastics to build their cases, likely because the plastic is lighter than the sand, so it's not as hard to lift. The problem is that the cases with more plastic and less sand collapse more easily, weakening the larvae's protection from predatory fish, among other things. A more long-term concern is bioaccumulation. "A small fish eats a larva, a bigger fish eats the smaller fish, all the way on up, and the concentrations of microplastic and associated toxins accumulate over time," the report says. "The bigger predators that people eat, like tuna, may be absorbing those microplastics and the chemicals they leach." The study has been published in the journal Environmental Science and Pollution Research.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IndyFringe, the popular Mass Ave. theater festival, has been canceled. Social distancing requirements will not allow the artists to prepare.

St. Paul & the Broken Bones, Moon Taxi will headline Holler on the Hill, a new two-day Indianapolis music festival.

Outlaw Music Festival makes smashing Indiana debut led by national treasure Willie Nelson and rising iconoclast Sturgill Simpson.

Nearly 70 acts, including Valee and Black Moon, will perform at fourth annual Chreece hip-hop festival in Fountain Square.

Love is in the air for this week's Take Away English. We hear about a very unusual Valentine's Day gift.

Wandering around the internet, I was searching for 2 different things at the same time: a hotel for a romantic weekend getaway (with our lovely dog!) and a new apartment to rent. I suddenly asked myself: “Why not renting a vacation home instead of booking the usual same type of hotels (those few hotels that [...]

The owner claims he was left no choice after sudden departure of the chef and bar manager.

Teams will be allowed to use five substitutes when the season resumes after a Fifa proposal to help with fixture congestion was approved.

Defying shelter-in-place orders over coronavirus, some Napa Valley businesses have reopened.

With parts of the California economy poised to reopen Friday, cities will be taking it slow over concerns that COVID-19 remains a significant threat.

The Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission voted Thursday to subpoena L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva for testimony regarding the coronavirus outbreak in the jails.

Vanessa Bryant has filed a claim against the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department over deputies sharing "unauthorized" photos of the scene of the helicopter crash that killed her husband Kobe Bryant, their daughter and seven others.

Former Center Grove High School standout attended Stanford but will play for the Hoosiers in his remaining season.

Evansville native and pro golfer Dylan Meyer discusses what his plans would have been this spring, his dream golf foursome and more.

The NFL has instituted a league-wide policy in which fans who buy tickets directly from teams can receive refunds for games that are canceled.

Eventual vaccine developed to fight COVID-19 should be free to everyone, a letter to the editor says.

Hong Kong has seen 57 new infections over the past two weeks, 50 of which were imported.

In one weekend Stoffel Vandoorne manages to qualify on pole position in two races and crash out of both of them.

A chronology of key events

A chronology of key events

Key facts, figures and dates

Key facts, figures and dates

American forces seize control of the Caribbean island of Grenada less than a week after a left-wing coup in which the prime minister, Maurice Bishop, was killed.

Sporting events in the Netherlands will have to take place without fans until there is a coronavirus vaccine, Dutch Health Minister Hugo de Jonge says.

College students can take a break and spice up their lives without breaking their wallet...

A chronology of key events

A chronology of key dates

Key facts, figures and dates

Key facts, figures and dates

Key facts, figures and dates

Native woodlands can resist the spread of invasive species if they block light reaching the ground.

The Blyth Festival will not be staging any plays this year.

1. Virat Kohli shares a cuddly throwback photo with Anushka Sharma from their swiss vacay and we are in awe  PINKVILLA
2. Virat, Anushka donate Rs 5L each for Mumbai police welfare  Hindustan Times
3. Virat Kohli, Anushka Sharma contribute 10 lakhs to Welfare of Mumbai Police Personnel - Republic World  Republic World
4. Virat Kohli shares an unmissable throwback picture with wife Anushka Sharma from their Swiss vacation  Times of India
5. Anushka Sharma, Virat Kohli kiss and cuddle in throwback pic from a snowy vacation  Hindustan Times
6. View Full coverage on Google News

ICMR teams up with Bharat Biotech to develop Covid-19 vaccine  Times of IndiaView Full coverage on Google News

A chronology of key events

Key facts, figures and dates

Cheeky behavior can be a cover for inadequacy.

The Force was reportedly not with the original scripts of the anticipated show.

“I can’t go back,” says Philippe Lançon, who wrote a memoir about his recovery from the massacre.

From Ronald Reagan's "evil empire" to Mark Hamill battling Ivanka Trump.

The task of introducing a vaccine for the coronavirus faces an uphill struggle in Africa, where a flood of online misinformation is feeding on mistrust of Western medical research.

A Texas woman wanted to control her Tesla Model 3. So she implanted part of the vehicle's valet key in her arm.