Israelis all over the country were putting up their defensive guards this week, as a photograph surfaced on www.facebook.com with the caption “An Israeli soldier holding down a Young Palestinian Girl”. (more…)
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Saturday, February 11th, 2012Madonna: Not happy about M.I.A.’s gesture
Friday, February 10th, 2012 AP Photo/Michael Conroy |
NEW YORK (AP) -- The British hip-hop artist M.I.A. has apologized to Madonna for making an obscene gesture during the Super Bowl halftime show.
Madonna said in radio interviews on Friday that she had no idea M.I.A. would extend her middle finger during the performance in front of 114 million people, according to Madonna's spokeswoman, Liz Rosenberg. The singer didn't find out about it until after the show.
"I wasn't happy about it," Madonna told Ryan Seacrest in one interview. "I understand it's kind of punk rock and everything, but to me there was such a feeling of love and good energy and positivity, it seemed negative."
She said it was like something a teenager would do.
Stocks fall sharply as Greek deal is held up
Friday, February 10th, 2012 AP Photo/Richard Drew |
NEW YORK (AP) -- Stocks are closing their worst day this year after Greece hit a roadblock on its way to a critical bailout.
The Dow Jones industrial average is finishing down 89 points, or 0.7 percent, at 12,801. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 is down nine points to 1,343. It is the first losing week for the index this year.
The Nasdaq composite is closing down 23 points at 2,904.
Stocks fell all day on news that European finance ministers were insisting that Greece cut even more in wages and spending if the nation hopes to get bailout money to pay its creditors.
Three stocks fell for every one that rose Friday on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was light with just 3.5 billion shares trading hands.
First lady’s trips boost health _ and her husband
Friday, February 10th, 2012 AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster |
DALLAS (AP) -- In just the past few days, she's danced with cheering school kids, chatted with troops, swapped ideas with busy parents and engaged in a friendly cooking competition with stars from "Top Chef."
Michelle Obama is on a national tour to promote the second anniversary of her campaign against childhood obesity. The images have been disarming, intriguing and non-political - just the type of thing her husband's re-election campaign can't get enough of.
Five years to the day after Sen. Barack Obama announced he was running for president, Mrs. Obama's travels this week offer fresh evidence of what an out-sized role she's assumed in the public eye and how powerful a political asset a first lady can be.
And, make no mistake, Mrs. Obama says she's "incredibly enthusiastic" about making the case for her husband's re-election.
Simply put, "I want him to be my president for another four years," she said in a 40-minute interview Friday with a handful of reporters.
In recent weeks Mrs. Obama has seemingly been everywhere: Doing pushups with Ellen DeGeneres. Serving veggie pizza to Jay Leno. Playing tug-of-war with Jimmy Fallon in the White House. And now making a rare four-state tour - Arkansas, Florida, Iowa and Texas - to mark the two-year-point for her "Let's Move" initiative.
The first lady draws a line between her policy efforts on childhood obesity and her political activities. But such distinctions often are lost on the public.
In an election year, it's all to the good for Barack Obama that his popular wife is traveling the country promoting can't-miss issues like healthy living.
"This is a bit of a two-fer," Mrs. Obama acknowledged in her interview on Friday, "because it's an issue that I care about, and it's an issue that's important to the country. ... I want to make sure that what I do enhances him."
The first lady added that she knew from the beginning of her husband's presidency that she had to choose issues that were important to her personally because "if you're just doing it for political reasons or there's some ulterior, people smell that out so easily and it's hard to sustain."
To a more limited extent, Mrs. Obama also fills a more overtly political role by headlining private fundraisers that raise millions for her husband's campaign, reaching out to supporters through conference calls to various states and shooting out periodic emails to campaign backers around the country.
That part of her labors will increase considerably in the months to come.
Rio police strike exposes marred institution
Friday, February 10th, 2012 AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo |
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) -- A strike by Rio police a week ahead of Carnival celebrations is drawing attention to a deeply troubled force in which low wages help fuel corruption, extortion and lethal violence, experts said Friday.
Recent efforts by Rio de Janeiro state to increase wages and change police culture will help root out some of these long-standing problems, but the change won't happen suddenly, said Guaracy Mingardi, a crime and public safety expert and researcher at Brazil's top think tank Fundacao Getulio Vargas.
And this is worrying because part of Brazil's successful pitch to host the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016 relied on its ability to keep the peace during the events.
"Authorities are now more concerned with the short-term problem of the effects the strike may have on Carnival and are not paying attention to the longer term problem these strikes could represent for the World Cup and Olympics," said Mingardi.
At the heart of the recent unrest among Brazil's police forces are low salaries. Rio's security forces decided to walk out on Friday to demand a pay raise, not content with a last-minute legislative approval of a 39 percent hike staggered over this year and the next.
"The main thing wrong with police forces in Rio, Bahia, and in the rest of the country is the poor wages paid," said Mingardi. "This is the driving force of the strikes and of the problems affecting the forces."
Fashion’s newness coming from old-school Hollywood
Friday, February 10th, 2012 AP Photo/Richard Drew |
NEW YORK (AP) -- Marlene Dietrich is having a moment. The runways of New York Fashion Week are paying homage to the late star's sultry, glamorous but sometimes slightly mannish style.
On the second of eight days of previews for next season, Friday's newness largely came from this old-school Hollywood star.
Dietrich's "balance of smoldering femininity and masculine garb was the starting point for the mood," explained Peter Som in his notes for editors, stylists and retailers. His collection was filled with modest-yet body-conscious silhouettes. A top look was the peek-a-boo effect of slim sheaths and pencil skirts covered with a glossy organza that often extended the hemline or covered the arms.
"She, like Katharine Hepburn, wore pants but still looked like a woman. She wore menswear and androgynous style with a sexiness," said Catherine Moellering, executive vice president of The Tobe Report, a trend-tracking service.
Jason Wu said in a pre-show interview that he aimed to interpret different elements of historical Chinese fashion through the lens of Dietrich's 1932 film "Shanghai Express."
"I don't need to say any more about Marlene Dietrich, or that time and place. It all has such strong features," Wu said.
Dietrich also was an inspiration for Tadashi Shoji, who previewed his looks Thursday.
Here are some of the looks shown Friday.
JASON WU
Jason Wu has been considered a strong up-and-comer since Michelle Obama wore a gown by the then-barely known designer to the presidential inaugural balls in 2008. A Target deal put a limited collection in stores earlier this month, and Wu's confidence was evident in a dramatic show that was also highly personal, with Chinese-influenced styles inspired partly by a trip 18 months ago to Taiwan, where he grew up.
The runway show had studded fortress doors, billowing smoke and a theatrical finale. The clothes tapped into Chinese military uniforms with Mao jackets, grommets, strong shoulders and capes, with the best look in the show opener: a green coat with attached cape and black lace. Tassels, embroideries and brocades drew on ornate costumes worn by empresses, with references to 1930s and `40s Hollywood, where traditional Chinese dress was reinterpreted in movies like Marlene Dietrich's "Shanghai Express."
The result? Puffy jackets in glitzy brocade.
The lingering look from this collection, though, is likely the finale: a black wool jacket with epaulets and mink trim covered in crystal embroidery paired with a black skirt etched with fabric through a process known as devore.
Ex-president threatens Maldives protests
Friday, February 10th, 2012The former president of the Maldives has demanded new elections and called for mass street protests if the new government does not relent, raising the prospect of a protracted political crisis on the Indian Ocean islands.
Mohamed Nasheed, who says his resignation earlier in the week was forced by a coup, remained free on Friday despite an arrest warrant against him as diplomats, including a UN envoy, worked to forestall renewed violence.
He demanded his successor and former vice president, Mohamed Waheed, step down and hand power to the speaker of the parliament for two months, until a new presidential poll can be called.
Before Nasheed resigned his presidency, the next election had been scheduled for October 2013.
"Fresh elections are our bottom line and we are not relying on the international community for that, we are relying on the people of the Maldives," Nasheed told reporters. "The medicine here is on the streets, in strength."
But in an interview on Friday, Waheed told Al Jazeera that Nasheed's approach could become dangerous.
"I cannot protect him if he continues to do this kind of thing," Waheed told Al Jazeera's Steve Chao. The new president also said that Nasheed had been acting "autocratic in so many ways".
A warrant was issued on Thursday for Nasheed's arrest, but the warrant's charges were not made public, and the former president told reporters from his home on Thursday that he expected to be in jail by Friday.
The bulls return, but for how long?
Friday, February 10th, 2012It is almost as if the past year has just been a bad dream.
Global equities this week re-entered a bull market, having risen 20 per cent since their October lows. The gains mean that many share indices are within touching distance of their highs from 2011, or above them. The Nasdaq index of predominantly technology stocks is at its highest level since the end of 2000.
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Justifications for the sharp rally are well rehearsed. Better economic data, particularly in the US but also in Europe and China, has, for now, dimmed the prospects of a global double-dip recession. And fears of a break-up of the eurozone have receded due to action from the European Central Bank.
But the question all investors are asking is: just how sustainable is the rise in equities?
Markets may have largely grown bored with the “Groundhog Day” nature of the Greek bail-out talks but few are complacent that Athens has stopped posing threats for investors. The news late on Thursday that Europe was demanding greater spending cuts from Greece weighed on equities on Friday, and the S&P 500 recorded its first weekly decline this year.
Caution also comes from the twin facts that January is historically the best month of the year as investors return to the markets with fresh optimism while the first month also proves to be good for contrarian strategies.
So far, 2012 is living up to that billing. The worst-performing stock market in Europe last year – Greece – is the best performer this year. Last year’s star, Ireland, is the laggard, according to analysts at Citi.
But many market participants say something more powerful is happening than simply a classic beginning of the year rally. “The market is behaving in a way that is very reminiscent of an early bull market,” says Ed Yardeni, founder of Yardeni Research.
UniCredit, the troubled Italian bank, has seen its shares rebound 110 per cent since their January 9 low.
Mr Yardeni says the S&P 500 should rise about 8-15 per cent this year to close at 1,450-1,550. Larry Fink, head of BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, told Bloomberg this week that investors should be 100 per cent in equities.
From a valuation perspective, the S&P’s price-to-earnings ratio of 13.9 remains low and has been below its long-term average of 16.4 times for the past 18 months.
“That is the longest valuation dry spell since the 13-year stretch that began in 1973,” says Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank.
Other investors are turning cautious.
“It’s important not to get sucked in by this rally,” says James Sarni, senior portfolio manager at Payden & Rygel. “We face an environment of slow growth and low inflation. Earnings are clearly off their highs and more companies are surprising on the negative side.”
In Europe, the mood is less ebullient but still optimistic.
Sushil Wadhwani, a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee who nows runs his own hedge fund, has researched the high level of the equity-risk premium, the extra reward investors demand to hold shares over bonds. He says the elevated premium late last year was due to investors fearing not just a eurozone break-up but also a Japan-style extended economic slump.
Turbo-traders take Bank of America for a ride
Friday, February 10th, 2012 AP Photo/Henny Ray Abrams |
NEW YORK (AP) -- On a normal day, 4 billion shares of stock change hands on the New York Stock Exchange. One in 10 belongs to a single company. It's not McDonald's or IBM, both of which have been on a tear.
It's Bank of America - bailed out by the government three years ago, reviled for being part of the mortgage frenzy that helped wreck the economy and selling for not much more than an ATM fee.
When the market goes up because of positive news about the economy, Bank of America stock shoots up past the stocks of other big banks. When traders get worried about Greek debt, Bank of America takes the biggest plunge.
The big swings are not driven by a fundamental bet that the bank will be more profitable because the economy is getting better or a real concern that it will lose more money than others if there is a default in Greece.
Instead, Bank of America is the stock of the moment for high-frequency trading, the supercomputer-driven buying and selling that barely existed a few years ago and now accounts for as much as two-thirds of U.S. trading.
The bank's single-digit stock price and flood of shares on the market - three times as many as its nearest big-bank competitor - make it an attractive target for hedge funds and banks that employ high-powered, computerized trading.
"The movement of Bank of America stock on most days has nothing to do with Bank of America," says Joseph Saluzzi, co-founder of brokerage firm Themis Trading.
In other words, the stock moves because it moves. Bank of America stock has risen or fallen 1 percent or more on 20 days this year. The Standard & Poor's 500 index has only done it three times.
For the year, Bank of America is up 46 percent, best of the 30 stocks that make up the Dow Jones industrial average. Big banks collectively are up 15 percent.
In high-frequency trading, investors use computer algorithms to exploit small changes in a stock's price. If a computer can seize on a stock like Bank of America a fraction of a second faster than the rest of the market, it can book a tiny profit.
Those pennies add up over tens of millions of shares a day to produce big gains. And when computers rush to buy or sell a stock like Bank of America, it can result in accelerated moves in the stock price. Buying leads to more buying, selling to more selling.
Bank of America is part of the Standard & Poor's 500, and therefore held in mutual funds in the retirement accounts of millions of Americans. And mutual fund managers hate high-frequency trading.
Not only does it make the stocks in their portfolios more volatile, but fund managers fume that high-frequency computers can detect their stock orders, step in to change the price of a stock slightly and pocket a small profit.
"It has nothing to do with the fundamentals," says Leon Cooperman, a billionaire investor, chairman of hedge fund Omega Advisors and former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
For computers to move in and out quickly, there must be enough shares available to trade. Bank of America has a truckload - 10.5 billion shares outstanding, compared with 3.8 billion for JPMorgan Chase and 2.9 billion for Citigroup.
The stock traded as high as $15.31 last year. Then investors, worried about how deep the bank's mortgage problems might be, drove it below $10 in July. High-frequency traders pounced, and Bank of America's volume exploded. It was 147 million shares last summer. On Thursday, 477 million shares changed hands.
The low price put it in the sweet spot for high-frequency trading. If a high-frequency operation is trading blocks of 100 shares at a time to capitalize on a 1-cent change, there's a lot less risk working with a $5 stock than a $500 one.
It makes Bank of America "a juicy trade at very little risk," says Adam Sussman, director of research at Tabb Group, a markets advisory firm.
In 2009 and 2010, Citigroup, then part-owned by the government, was in the same spot. Its price was in single digits, and it seesawed day to day. It was often the highest-volume stock - as many as 500 million shares changing hands in one day.
Last year, Citi reduced the number of shares by exchanging one share for every 10. That brought its stock price up - $33 on Wednesday - and high-frequency traders stopped flocking to it. Volume on a normal day has dropped to 50 million.
Bank of America went the opposite way in November and December and sold 400 million more shares to the market to raise $3.5 billion and improve its financial stability.
Today, some investors - the human ones - are buying Bank of America because they like CEO Brian Moynihan's efforts to shore up the company's finances. Other investors won't touch it because they are afraid of the billions Bank of America is still spending to fight mortgage lawsuits. Charles Bobrinskoy, director of research at Ariel Investments, even calls the company "unanalyzable."
But none of those groups is driving the stock. Some days, it moves with little or no tangible reason.
On Jan. 5, the stock jumped 8 percent with no explanation. The Wall Street Journal blogged that the stock was rising on "reports/rumors/blind hopes" about President Barack Obama appointing a new head to the federal housing agency.
Researchers probe 200-year-old shipwreck off RI
Thursday, February 9th, 2012 AP Photo/David Klepper |
WESTERLY, R.I. (AP) -- For two centuries it rested a mile from shore, shrouded by a treacherous reef from the pleasure boaters and beachgoers who haunt New England's southern coast.
Now, researchers from the U.S. Navy are hoping to confirm what the men who discovered the wreck believe: that the sunken ship off the coast of Rhode Island is the USS Revenge, commanded by Oliver Hazard Perry and lost on a stormy January day in 1811.
"The Revenge was forgotten, it became a footnote," said Charlie Buffum, a brewery owner from Stonington, Conn., who found the shipwreck while diving with friend Craig Harger. "We are very confident this is it."
On Wednesday, Buffum and Harger braved the raw weather of Block Island Sound to accompany the researchers as they surveyed the wreck site. The Navy - along with help from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution - is using high-tech sensor equipment to map the site, a first step toward retrieving possible artifacts.
If they're successful, they will illuminate a critical episode in the life of one of the nation's greatest naval officers. Perry is remembered as the Hero of Lake Erie for defeating the British navy in the War of 1812. He was famous for reporting simply "we have met the enemy and they are ours" after the decisive Battle of Lake Erie in 1813.
Two years earlier, the Revenge and its 25-year-old commander were en route from Newport, R.I. to New London, Conn., when the ship hit a reef in heavy fog. The area is infamous for its rocky, tide-swept reefs that lurk just beneath shallow waters.
When the Revenge struck the reef, Perry ordered the crew to dump some of the ship's cannons to lighten the load. The mast was cut. But it wasn't enough to free the ship.
The crew abandoned the Revenge, and not a single man died. But Perry's career was almost scuttled along with his ship.
The South Kingstown, R.I., native was court-martialed, and though he was exonerated, his career languished. Until he was posted to the Great Lakes.
"He was a rising star," said David Skaggs, a professor emeritus at Bowling Green State University who has written a book on Perry. "But then his ship runs aground. Running a ship aground is not a helpful thing for your career."
Harger and Buffum found the shipwreck six years ago after beer-fueled bull sessions in Buffum's brewery. Both men were experienced recreational divers. Buffum was fascinated by Perry and by shipwrecks off the Rhode Island coast.
They obtained an underwater metal detector and calculated the Revenge's likely resting place by analyzing currents and the location of the reef.
"We knew where he was going, we knew the area," said Harger, of Colchester, Conn. "We sat around in Charlie's brewery talking about where it might have gone."
Sanctioning Iran and where that puts Israel
Saturday, January 28th, 2012
Israelis are feeling that they finally have support when it comes to Iran, as sanctions introduced by the European Union this week include a ban on oil imports from the country. (more…)
Gingrich reiterates Palestinians ‘invented’ people
Thursday, January 26th, 2012JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) -- Newt Gingrich is defending himself after a questioner at the GOP presidential debate criticized him for calling Palestinians an invented people.
A questioner of Palestinian descent asked Gingrich how he could say Palestinians are "invented."
Robert Hegyes, played Epstein on ‘Kotter,’ dies
Thursday, January 26th, 2012 AP Photo |
METUCHEN, N.J. (AP) -- Robert Hegyes, the actor best known for playing Jewish Puerto Rican student Juan Epstein on the 1970s TV show "Welcome Back Kotter" has died. He was 60.
The Flynn & Son Funeral Home in Fords, N.J., said it was informed of Hegyes' death Thursday by the actor's family.
A spokesman at JFK Medical Center in Edison, N.J., told the Star-Ledger newspaper that Hegyes, of Metuchen, arrived at the hospital Thursday morning in full cardiac arrest and died.
Hegyes was appearing on Broadway in 1975 when he auditioned for "Kotter," a TV series about a teacher who returns to the inner-city New York school of his youth to teach a group of irreverent remedial students nicknamed the "Sweathogs." They included the character Vinnie Barbarino, played by John Travolta.
The show's theme song, performed by John Sebastian, became a pop hit.
Hegyes also appeared on many other TV series, including "Cagney & Lacey."
He was born in Perth Amboy and grew up in Metuchen, the eldest child of a Hungarian father and Italian mother.
Judge: BP contract shielded Transocean in spill
Thursday, January 26th, 2012NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- The rig owner involved in drilling the ill-fated well that blew out in the Gulf of Mexico and spewed more than 200 million gallons of oil will not have to pay many of the pollution claims because it was shielded in a contract with well-owner BP, a federal judge ruled on Thursday. The ruling comes as BP, the states affected by the disaster and the federal government are discussing a settlement over the nation's largest offshore oil spill.
The decision may have spared Transocean from having to pay potentially billions of dollars in damage claims. However, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier said the driller still is not exempt from paying punitive damages and civil penalties that arise from the April 20, 2010, blowout 100 miles off the Louisiana coast. Those penalties could amount to billions of dollars.
Law experts were split over who is a clear-cut winner.
BP has been pursuing agreements with multiple parties to reach settlements that would make an upcoming trial involving hundreds of spill lawsuits in New Orleans unnecessary, or at least resolve as many of the issues as possible.
The Justice Department also is involved, working with the states to create an outline for a settlement that would resolve their potentially multibillion dollar claims against BP and the other companies involved in the disaster, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange told The Associated Press.
Justice led a meeting last week in Washington among the states in an effort to formulate an agreement that would satisfy government and state claims, including penalties and fines, Strange said. He also indicated if there is a settlement that officials are discussing what to do with the $20 billion fund set up by BP to pay victims.
The lead attorneys for individuals and businesses suing BP were not at the meeting.
According to Strange, a federal magistrate judge has been asked to expedite settlement discussions. The Louisiana attorney general's office said in a statement to the AP that it is in settlement discussions with BP, which would not comment on any deals in the works. A first phase of the trial is set for Feb. 27 to determine liability for the spill.
"The closer you get to a trial date, the more pressure builds to reach a settlement," Strange said.
Despite the decision, BP claimed victory and said Barbier's ruling "at a minimum" left Transocean facing "punitive damages, fines and penalties flowing from its own conduct."
Transocean spokesman Lou Colasuonno said in an emailed statement that the company was pleased to see its position affirmed.
Buffett Rule’s impact? W.H. won’t say
Thursday, January 26th, 2012President Barack Obama has left unanswered a major question about his Buffett Rule tax on millionaires: Just how much money would it raise?
Administration officials are not releasing projected revenues from the much-hyped plan named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett. During the State of the Union address, Obama tied his proposal — which would tax those earning $1 million at a minimum of 30 percent — to cutting a deficit estimated to top $1.1 trillion for the fourth straight year.
But for the moment, the White House wants to keep the attention focused on Obama’s argument that it’s unfair to tax Buffett’s secretary at a higher rate than her boss.
“I’m not going to give you a schedule of how broad individual tax reform would break down and what impact it would have,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said at the Wednesday briefing. “The president simply believes that as a matter of principle that unfairness ought to be changed.”
Republican lawmakers — noting the absence of real numbers — attacked the plan as a political charade, an attempt to score points in the November election instead of a serious policy to reduce federal debt. One outside analysis by the non-partisan Tax Foundation indicates the rule would generate another $36.7 billion a year in revenue — far from enough to make a serious dent in a national debt of $15 trillion.
“It’s a smokescreen,” Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) told POLITICO. “Barack Obama just wants to pit one group against another so he can raise more money to spend on a bloated government.”
The League of Extraordinarily Bureaucratic Gentlemen – By Colum Lynch
Thursday, January 26th, 2012Can DC Comic’s new comic book series make the U.N. look cool -- or at least effective?
BY COLUM LYNCH | JANUARY 26, 2012
How life imitates art -- or graphic art, at least. In DC Comics' new series, , governments are going bankrupt, the masses are out in the street protesting, terrorists are blowing up state institutions, and the United Nations' credibility is in tatters.
Sound familiar? It's only natural that comic strips reflect the real world, or at least our worst fears about it. This comic version of life at Turtle Bay provides a glimpse of a future where the world's declining superpower, the United States, appears to have lost its seat on the Security Council and a triumvirate headed by Britain, China, and Russia are calling the shots -- but the rest of the world isn't listening.
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Internationally Supercharged
Even the superheroes follow a moral compass that routinely swerves off course. "People have lost faith in their own governments, and by extension, us," Andre Briggs, the comic strip head of U.N. intelligence, tells the Global Security group -- a three-person Security Council headed by Chinese, Russian, and British officials.
"Confidence in every level of authority is at an all-time low. Every government, and by extension, every law enforcement agency and security forces, is woefully under-funded and lacking resources," says Briggs. "We believe it's time for the United Nations to assemble its own team, representing select nations, uniquely equipped to overcome those issues."
The United Nations has had a long, though intermittent, history in the world of action heroes, providing comic book artists with a symbol for breaking with the propagandistic and nationalist themes that marked the Golden Age of war comics during World War II, says Laura Hudson, the editor in chief of , a major online magazine on comic culture. "Modern comic book writers tend to be a progressive lot, and less inclined to infuse superhero books with the idea of American exceptionalism."
The U.N. formed a backdrop for many of the themes of nuclear holocaust at the height of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry and the post-Cold War proliferation of nuclear weapons. In the late 1980s, the Batman's nemesis, the Joker, acquired a nuclear weapon and sold it to Arab terrorists. He then established contact with the Ayatollah Khomeini, who appointed him as his U.N. envoy, granting him diplomatic immunity for his crimes. "He subsequently gives a speech to the General Assembly about how the world fails to show enough respect for Iran while filling the room with toxic laughing gas," said Hudson. "His plan is foiled by Superman and Batman, and he later disappears. I am making none of this up."
But it was , which got its start in the late 1980s as an offshoot of the -- the latter led by All-American superheroes like Superman (though he was born in Krypton), Batman, and Wonder Woman -- that placed the U.N. at the center of the action. Acting under the auspices of the United Nations, a new multinational corps of superheroes tapped into the possibilities for international cooperation unleashed by the demise of the Soviet Union. It even included a Soviet superhero, Rocket Red.
"Once upon a time there was the Justice League of America," read the mission statement to the comic's launch in late 1987. "But that was another era, when the world could afford borders and boundaries, when heroes could claim national loyalties and feel justified in their claims. But in today's world there's no longer room for borders and boundaries. The walls between nations have to fall if our planet is to survive."
That might have been a bit ahead of its time -- "globalism" didn't even enter the Oxford English Dictionary until 1986. So was shelved in 1994, after a stop-start run of only 36 issues. But it was re-launched in September 2011, tapping into the global crisis of confidence in the ability of governments to solve the world's financial and security troubles. It's release -- part of a re-launch of 52 comic strips introduced by DC Comics -- comes at a time when comic superheroes have been distancing themselves from the United States.
In April 2011, Superman -- fretting that his close association with the United States had undercut his ability to defend anti-government demonstrators in Iran -- went to the United Nations to renounce his American citizenship. "Truth, justice and the American way -- it's not enough anymore. The world's too small. Too connected," Superman tells the U.S. president's national security adviser. "I'm tired of having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy," he adds. Superman may not be a fan of American exceptionalism, but he's still inclined to go it alone.
The somewhat second-tier stars of , however, form a motley crew of multinational superheroes, who have been hired by the United Nations to confront threats to mankind that conventional armies and law enforcement agencies can't handle.
Jonathan urges Boko Haram to state demands
Thursday, January 26th, 2012Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has challenged Boko Haram to identify themselves and state clearly their demands as a basis for talks.
"If they clearly identify themselves now and say this is the reason why we are resisting, this is the reason why we are confronting government or this is the reason why we destroy some innocent people and their properties ... then there will be a basis for dialogue," said Jonathan on Thursday.
"We will dialogue, let us know your problems and we will solve your problem but if they don't identify themselves, who will you dialogue with?"
In an interview with Reuters at the presidential villa in the capital Abuja, Jonathan said there was no doubt that Boko Haram had links with other jihadist groups outside Nigeria.
The group killed more than 500 people last year and more than 250 in the first weeks of 2012 in gun and bomb attacks in Africa's top oil producer, Human Rights Watch said this week.
Boko Haram threats
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| Suspected Boko Haram leader issues new threats in a message posted on YouTube [AFP] |
Meanwhile, in a message posted on YouTube the purported leader of the group issued new threats while also saying last week's attacks in Kano were over the torture of its members.
Internationally Supercharged – By Kedar Pavgi
Thursday, January 26th, 2012The U.N. has a long history of comic heroes and villians.
BY KEDAR PAVGI | JANUARY 26, 2012
The U.N's appearance in comics and fiction has been long and colorful -- and often cartoonish. From (which mocked the global organization as a dysfunctional do-nothing) to the (the prequel to the Wachowski brothers' film series, , in which the U.N. signed away humanity's collective will to a new set of machine overlords) it's been a checkered history.
More frequently, it's the United Nations in need of a savior. Foreign Policy's Colum Lynch details the escapades of the latest group of superheroes to grace Turtle Bay -- in DC Comic's reincarnated -- but the history of heroes working with the U.N. goes much further back.
S.H.I.E.L.D
In 1965, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby developed the Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-enforcement Division, also known by the convenient acronym S.H.I.E.L.D. Lead by the gritty and battle-hardened Colonel Fury, they battled their evil rival, HYDRA, commanded by the former Nazi Baron Strucker. The writers note that S.H.I.E.L.D has the full backing of the U.N. General Assembly for its operations. And perhaps to be in close proximity to Turtle Bay, the organization's headquarters were located on the Upper East Side of New York, with easy access to a helipad, among other technological amenities.
Halo Series
The "Master Chief" in Bungie's best-selling video game franchise, , may be a hero for millions of gamers blasting away at aliens, but the super-soldier only takes orders from the U.N. of the future. In , the U.N. has evolved into the Unified Earth Government, a supranational regime boasting its own interplanetary force, the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) tasked with ensuring stability in the solar system. The back story, covered in great length in the Halo Encyclopedia, details the creation of the UNSC following the interplanetary war, a 4-year conflict between the U.N. and rebel groups lead by the neo-communist villian, Vladimir Koslov. The U.N. of today, however, is a long way from having its own internal rapid reaction force -- and forget it being space-capable anytime soon.
Deus EX Series
Arab League to take Syria peace plan to UN
Thursday, January 26th, 2012 |
| Syrians urge Russia to stop its vetoes of UN proposals for action against the Syrian government's crackdown [Reuters] |
The Arab League chief has reportedly said that a peace plan that aims to end Syria's political crisis will be submitted to the United Nations Security Council early next week.
Nabil Elaraby, the secretary-general of the Arab League, told reporters in Cairo on Thursday that the meeting with UN officials will be held on Monday in New York.
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The plan calls for President Bashar al-Assad to hand power to his deputy and clear the way for a unity government within two months.
Elaraby and Sheikh Hamad bin Jasem Al Thani, Qatar's prime minister who heads the league's Syria committee, would depart for New York on Saturday.
Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, said endorsement from the UN would "embolden" activists inside Syria.
"[The Arab League] is hoping that there will be a vote later in the week."
She also said that Russia, a veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council, wants dialogue, a peaceful resolution to Syria's crisis and is opposed to any military intervention, such as that which occurred in Libya.
Assad and his government have fiercely rejected the Arab League proposal, accusing the league of being part of a "conspiracy" against Syria.
The Arab League has been pushing for a UN Security Council resolution to end the Syrian government's violent crackdown on protesters, which has killed thousands of people since demonstrations calling for reform began in March.
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Al Thani told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that elevating the Syria issue to the UN was "the only option".
Elaraby's latest announcement on Syria came after Gulf Arab observers, deployed to Syria as part of a previous Arab League initiative, began to pull out of Syria on Wednesday after their governments said they were "certain the bloodshed and killing of innocents would continue".
"The departure of the GCC [Gulf Co-operation Council] countries will not have an impact on the mission's work. We are all professionals here and we can do the job," said Al Thani.
Poll: Feds should act on foreclosures
Thursday, January 26th, 2012Most Americans want the government to step in and help stop housing foreclosures, according to a new poll Thursday.
A majority of Americans - 58 percent - said they want the federal government to take further actions this year to prevent Americans from losing their homes through bank foreclosures, the Gallup poll found. Just 34 percent said they want the housing market to resolve its problems on its own.
Continue ReadingAlong partisan lines, a whopping 76 percent of Democrats said they believed it would be better for the economy if the government takes action, while just 31 percent of Republicans agreed. For independents, 61 percent said they also favored the government playing a larger role.
Over half of Republicans - 64 percent - said they do not want the federal government to take additional steps this year to help stop foreclosures.
President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union address Tuesday night that he’s sending Congress a proposal that “gives every responsible homeowner the chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage.”
Florida polls: Dead heat
Thursday, January 26th, 2012JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Polling shows Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich locked in a tight race for Florida on Tuesday as the Republicans prepared for the final pre-primary debate.
Bouncing off his South Carolina victory, Gingrich has surged to match Romney in polls in Florida, a state in which 50 delegates are at stake in the winner-take-all contest. Romney once led the former House speaker by double-digit margins in Florida, and his campaign and its allies have been blanketing the airwaves in recent days with ads that are highly critical of Gingrich.
A CNN/Opinion Research Center poll released Wednesday found Romney leading Gingrich by two points, 36 to 34 percent, among likely voters. That’s within the polls margin of error. Rick Santorum — who may not even be in Florida on primary night — finished with 11 percent to Ron Paul’s 9 percent, while 7 percent were undecided.
A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday also found likely voters favoring Romney over Gingrich, 36 percent to 34 percent. The survey, conducted Jan. 19 to 23, also showed Gingrich receiving the most support from evangelical Christians and those who identify themselves as part of the tea party.
Public Policy Polling found Gingrich further ahead among likely primary voters – with 38 percent support – and Romney in second place with 33 percent. That poll, released Monday, represented a 12-point gain for Gingrich, and an 8-point drop for Romney in just one week.
That survey also showed Gingrich and Romney running even when respondents were asked about electability, something that is central to Romney’s argument. Respondents were equally divided at 37 percent each when asked who had the best chance of beating President Barack Obama in a general election.
Only one survey — done by the American Research Group from Jan. 23 to 24 — found Romney leading Gingrich by a wider margin of seven points. The survey of likely Republican primary voters showed Romney with 41 percent and Gingrich with 34 percent.
The candidates have also been trying to win the Hispanic vote, which could make the difference in a tight race. The one million Cuban-Americans concentrated in South Florida tend to vote Republican.
No energy industry backing for the word ‘fracking’
Thursday, January 26th, 2012 AP Photo/Mike Groll |
NEW YORK (AP) -- A different kind of F-word is stirring a linguistic and political debate as controversial as what it defines.
The word is "fracking" - as in hydraulic fracturing, a technique long used by the oil and gas industry to free oil and gas from rock.
It's not in the dictionary, the industry hates it, and President Barack Obama didn't use it in his State of the Union speech - even as he praised federal subsidies for it.
The word sounds nasty, and environmental advocates have been able to use it to generate opposition - and revulsion - to what they say is a nasty process that threatens water supplies.
"It obviously calls to mind other less socially polite terms, and folks have been able to take advantage of that," said Kate Sinding, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council who works on drilling issues.
One of the chants at an anti-drilling rally in Albany earlier this month was "No fracking way!"
Industry executives argue that the word is deliberately misspelled by environmental activists and that it has become a slur that should not be used by media outlets that strive for objectivity.
"It's a co-opted word and a co-opted spelling used to make it look as offensive as people can try to make it look," said Michael Kehs, vice president for Strategic Affairs at Chesapeake Energy, the nation's second-largest natural gas producer.
To the surviving humans of the sci-fi TV series "Battlestar Galactica," it has nothing to do with oil and gas. It is used as a substitute for the very down-to-Earth curse word.
Michael Weiss, a professor of linguistics at Cornell University, says the word originated as simple industry jargon, but has taken on a negative meaning over time - much like the word "silly" once meant "holy."
But "frack" also happens to sound like "smack" and "whack," with more violent connotations.
"When you hear the word `fracking,' what lights up your brain is the profanity," says Deborah Mitchell, who teaches marketing at the University of Wisconsin's School of Business. "Negative things come to mind."
Groups sue over Navy sonar use off Northwest coast
Thursday, January 26th, 2012 AP Photo/Anonymous |
SEATTLE (AP) -- Conservationists and Native American tribes are suing over the Navy's expanded use of sonar in training exercises off the Washington, Oregon and California coasts, saying the noise can harass and kill whales and other marine life.
The environmental law firm Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups filed the lawsuit Thursday against the National Marine Fisheries Service, saying it was wrong to approve the Navy's plan for the expanded training.
They said the regulators should have considered the effects repeated sonar use can have on those species over many years and also required certain restrictions on where the Navy could conduct sonar and other loud activities to protect orcas, humpbacks and other whales, as well as seals, sea lions and dolphins.
Instead, the Navy is required to look around and see if sea mammals are present before they conduct the training.
Kristen Boyles, a Seattle-based attorney with Earthjustice, said it's the job of the fisheries service to balance the needs of the Navy with measures to protect marine life.
"Nobody's saying they shouldn't train," she said. "But it can't be possible that it's no-holds-barred, that there's no place where this can't happen."
In 2010, the fisheries service approved the Navy's five-year plan for operations in the Northwest Training Range Complex, an area roughly the size of California, about 126,000 nautical square miles, that stretches from the waters off Mendocino County in California to the Canadian border. The Navy has conducted exercises in the training range for 60 years, but in recent years proposed increased weapons testing and submarine training.
The groups want the permit granted to the Navy to be invalidated. They are asking the court to order the fisheries service to study the long-term effects of sonar on marine mammals, in accordance with the Endangered Species Act and other laws.
Sundance fest embraces hip-hop on stage and screen
Thursday, January 26th, 2012 AP Photo/Victoria Will |
PARK CITY, Utah (AP) -- Hip-hop is making itself heard - and seen - at the Sundance Film Festival.
In addition to performances by rappers Drake, Common, Nas, Lil Jon and Chuck D, the festival includes documentary and narrative films about hip-hop culture.
Ice-T's documentary, "Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap," premiered at the festival. It stars artists such as Run-DMC, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Mos Def and Eminem.
Revealed: Famous names who snubbed UK queen’s honors
Thursday, January 26th, 2012LONDON |
(Reuters) - Receiving an honor from Britain's Queen Elizabeth marks the pinnacle of many careers. But for more than 250 people named in a once-secret official document, the idea was so unappealing that they turned down the monarch's offer.
Artist Lucian Freud, sculptor Henry Moore and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" author Roald Dahl all rejected honors, according to papers released by the British government on Thursday.
"Psycho" film director Alfred Hitchcock also refused an award in 1962, only to accept a knighthood shortly before his death in 1980.
Other public figures named on the official list include painters Francis Bacon and L.S. Lowry and the "Brave New World" novelist Aldous Huxley.
The British government was forced to publish the document after repeated requests under freedom of information laws.
Previously, rejected honors only came to light through unofficial leaks or if the person involved chose to spoke about their decision to snub the twice-yearly "gongs."
Several well-known writers appeared on the list, which only includes people who are no longer alive.
Poet Philip Larkin refused the chance in 1968 to become an OBE, or Officer of the Order of the British Empire, one of the five classes of the chivalric order set up by King George V in 1917 to recognize service in the arts, science, charities and public bodies. Larkin later accepted a higher ranking CBE, or Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Eveyln Waugh, who wrote "Brideshead Revisited" and "Scoop," rejected an offer in 1959 to become a CBE.
Graham Greene, author of "Our Man in Havana" and "The Quiet American," turned down the same honor three years earlier, only to accept honors later in life. "The Chronicles of Narnia" creator C.S. Lewis also said no to a CBE.
The government gave no details of why people rejected their honors.
In the past, "refuseniks" have cited a range of reasons, from antipathy to the monarchy and Britain's colonial past, to a general lack of interest in prizes or a fear of perpetuating snobbery.
How Will Economic Warriors Christine Lagarde and Angela Merkel Shape the Future of Women?
Sunday, January 22nd, 2012
There exist today countries that are connected by fear of the future. Yet they are hopeful that past transgressions and poor decisions will not destroy the struggles of generations. (more…)
Deion Sanders — Pilar’s Trying to EXTORT Me
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
Deion Sanders Pilar's Trying to EXTORT Me
Deion Sanders is firing back at his estranged wife Pilar, claiming her recent accusations -- that he's a narcissistic serial cheater -- are just a "shady" attempt to extort more money from the NFL star.
Deion's attorney, Jody Johnson, tells TMZ -- "The actions of Ms. Sanders and her attorney are nothing more than an attempt to avoid a legally binding contract that she no longer likes, by falsely assassinating the character of Mr. Sanders in an effort to extort additional money from Mr. Sanders."
Deion's lawyer is referring to new docs Pilar filed this week in the couple's divorce proceedings -- in which Pilar asks the judge to toss out the couple's prenup ... and award her the lion's share of Deion's estate.
Pilar claims she was forced to sign the prenup under duress, but Deion says that's BS -- according to his lawyer, "Mr. Sanders committed to a generous financial agreement with his wife when they both voluntarily signed a premarital agreement that they presented to the judge for approval."
Deion claims it didn't end there either, he also showered her with money and gifts before and during their marriage.
Enough Already – By Stephen Hadley and John Podesta
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012It's time to talk to the Taliban.
BY STEPHEN HADLEY AND JOHN PODESTA | JANUARY 18, 2012
Over the past two years, the United States has made enormous strides in Afghanistan. The U.S. military has undertaken a devastating campaign against al Qaeda and its affiliates, as well as members of the Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. This military pressure has made Americans safer -- Osama bin Laden and dozens of other top al Qaeda leaders are dead, U.S. and NATO troops casualties are down in Afghanistan, and the Afghan government has been given the breathing room it needs to bolster its security forces and its governing institutions.
U.S. policy is now entering a new and complex phase of this conflict, where diplomatic efforts in support of a robust political strategy for Afghanistan and the region will become even more essential. This effort should not become a political football in the coming election season -- it needs strong bipartisan support here at home.
U.S. political leaders, Democrats and Republicans alike, and our military commanders, have consistently argued that the conflict in Afghanistan will not end by military means alone. The elimination of al Qaeda's safe havens and the establishment of long-term peace and security in Afghanistan and the region -- the key U.S. national security objectives -- is best assured by a sustainable political settlement that strengthens the Afghan state so that it can assume greater responsibility for addressing the country's security and economic challenges.
This broad political settlement must include all elements of Afghan society -- opposition groups, non-Taliban Pashtuns, ethnic and religious minorities, women, and civil society. Many of these groups are currently excluded by a government in Kabul that they rightly view as corrupt, closed, and unaccountable.
Efforts to reach a settlement should include an approach to Taliban elements that are ready to give up the fight and become part of the political process. Such an approach would not -- as some have suggested -- constitute "surrender" to America's enemies. Rather, convincing combatants to leave the insurgency and enter into the political process is the hallmark of a successful counterinsurgency effort.
The decision by Taliban representatives to open a political office in Qatar presents an important opening for such diplomatic efforts. Afghan President Hamid Karzai initially opposed this new political office and recalled Afghanistan's ambassador to Qatar last month, but he has since thought better of the idea. Karzai's decision to gain support for talks with the Taliban from a traditional loya jirga was another step in the right direction.
We are not blind to the potential pitfalls of the diplomatic path. First, the Taliban is a decentralized movement with many different voices and wings -- some of which may be open to talks, and others that may be irreconcilable. An early stage of diplomacy involves testing which Taliban representatives have the authority to speak for which parts of the movement.
Weather key to resuming search of capsized Italy liner
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012GIGLIO, Italy |
(Reuters) - Divers searching a capsized Italian cruiseliner were hoping for calm seas on Thursday after the ship shifted precariously on a rocky ledge, delaying plans to remove oil from the vessel to prevent a possible environmental disaster.
Five days after the Costa Concordia struck a rock and capsized off the picturesque Tuscan island of Giglio, hopes of finding anyone alive have faded and salvage experts are preparing to pump 2,300 tons of fuel from the hulk.
Weather conditions, which have been largely good since the 114,500 ton vessel ran aground, are forecast to worsen over coming days, making the ship even more unstable and complicating the search for survivors and bodies.
Eleven people are confirmed dead and 22 are still missing from more than 4,200 passengers and crew who were onboard when the Concordia foundered on Friday evening, two hours into a week-long cruise of the western Mediterranean.
The search was suspended all day on Wednesday after the ship slipped by some 1.5 meters, the second such suspension since rescue attempts began. As darkness fell, a spokesman said the Concordia had stabilized but it was unclear if the search would resume before daylight on Thursday.
Environment Minister Corrado Clini told parliament there was a risk that with sea conditions expected to worsen, the ship could slip down 50 to 90 meters from the reef it is resting on, further damaging the vessel and creating a major hazard to the environment in one of Europe's largest natural marine parks.
US president rejects oil pipeline from Canada
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 |
| The Keystone XL pipeline was supposed to transport crude oil from Alberta in Canada to Texas in the US [Reuters] |
US President Barack Obama has rejected the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada, saying he could not vouch for its safety by a deadline despite intense election-year pressure.
The rival Republican Party had forced Obama to make a decision on whether to approve the 2,700 km route through the Great Plains to Texas, forcing him to choose between environmentalists and industry.
The Obama administration said on Wednesday that company TransCanada could resubmit the Keystone XL project but that officials were not able to assess its plan by a February 21 deadline put into law by Republicans in Congress.
TransCanada has said that it would re-apply.
"This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people," Obama said in a statement.
"I'm disappointed that Republicans in Congress forced this decision, but it does not change my administration's commitment to American-made energy that creates jobs and reduces our dependence on oil," said Obama, who initially hoped to make a decision after the November election.
The pipeline has turned into a major issue in US politics, with environmentalists waging months of street protests against it and the oil industry funding an advertising blitz saying the project would immediately create shovel-ready jobs amid a weak economy.
'Profound disappointment'
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper expressed "profound disappointment" to Obama over the rejection, telling him in a telephone call that he had hoped this project "would continue given the significant contribution it would make to jobs and economic growth" in both countries.
The Slow Death of ‘Asian Values’ – by Christian Caryl
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012Why the latest news from Malaysia helps to undermine authoritarianism throughout the region.
BY CHRISTIAN CARYL | JANUARY 18, 2012
Something remarkable is happening in Malaysia, and the rest of the world should take note.
Malaysia, you ask? Really? It's only 28 million people, and it's just one part of Southeast Asia, a region fragmented into a variety of cultures and systems -- and largely off the radar of people in the West, except when it comes to planning honeymoons on the beach. So why should non-Malaysians care?
Last week, a Malaysian court acquitted Anwar Ibrahim, the leader of the country's main opposition movement, of sodomy charges. (Sodomy is a crime in Malaysia.) Anwar's supporters have long maintained that the case against him was actually political, cooked up by the government to prevent him from mounting a credible challenge to the system that has ruled the country for decades. Anwar was arrested on similar charges back in 1998 and spent six years in jail before a court finally overturned his conviction. Many understandably expected the same thing to happen again this time around.
But it didn't. To general astonishment, the court dismissed the accusations, saying that the DNA evidence cited by prosecutors didn't hold up to scrutiny. The judges, it seemed, had actually assessed the case on its own value. And with that ruling, Anwar can now continue his campaign against the government, one that is likely to culminate in a general election within the next year or so.
So why should we regard this story as worth our attention? Well, it's certainly true that the verdict could help Anwar lead the opposition to victory, thus overturning decades of control by the ruling United Malays National Organization (UMNO). But this is by no means a given. Just because Anwar has been pronounced innocent doesn't mean that he'll win. Ernest Bower, a Southeast Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, notes that the opposition movement headed by Anwar is a fairly volatile coalition of different groups pulled apart by sometimes competing interests: "Anwar has a real challenge ahead," Bower noted in a recent email to me. "As he and his supporters anticipated a guilty verdict, they had planned to rally around political martyrdom. Now they need to go back to basics and compete in an election based on an economic and policy platform and ensure their very diverse coalition gets unified around those ideas."
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Najib Razak, who has been pledging to clean up corruption and reform the system from within, can now argue that efforts are bearing fruit. The verdict works in his favor as well.
UK urges tougher Syria sanctions, Russia issues warning
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012BEIRUT |
(Reuters) - Britain called on Wednesday for harsher sanctions on Syria, where an Arab monitoring mission has failed to halt bloodshed in a 10-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad.
But Russia underlined divisions at the United Nations, saying it would work with China to prevent the Security Council from approving any military intervention in Syria.
Damascus may let the monitors stay on after their mandate expires on Thursday, but Assad's foes say the Arab League peace effort has failed and the U.N. Security Council should step in.
Arab foreign ministers, due to consider their next step at the weekend, are split over how to handle Syria, as is the U.N. Security Council, which has failed to adopt any position.
British Prime Minister David Cameron accused Iran and Lebanon's Shi'ite Hezbollah movement of helping to prop up Assad, whom he described as "a wretched tyrant".
"Britain needs to lead the way in making sure we tighten the sanctions, the travel bans, the asset freezes, on Syria," Cameron told parliament in London.
European Union governments are expected on Monday to expand the list of people and Syrian companies and institutions targeted by EU sanctions, diplomats said in Brussels.
An EU diplomat said 22 extra people would be affected by asset freezes and travel bans. EU companies would also be prohibited from doing business with about eight additional companies or institutions. Current EU sanctions target 30 entities and 86 Syrians.
RUSSIAN WARNING
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned the West against contemplating any kind of foreign intervention to end Assad's 10-month crackdown, which the United Nations says has killed more than 5,000 civilians.
"We will insist - and we have an understanding with our Chinese colleagues that this is our common position - that these fundamental points be retained in any decision that may be taken by the U.N. Security Council," he told a news conference.
"If somebody intends to use force ... it will be on their conscience. They will not receive any authority from the Security Council," said Lavrov, who also emphasized that Moscow and Beijing oppose any sanctions against Syria.
Russia joined China in October to veto a Western-backed resolution against Assad's government, saying the domestic opposition shared blame for the violence and that it would have opened the door for military action like NATO's Libya operation.
Moscow submitted its own draft resolution last month and proposed a new version this week.
Syria is a leading buyer of Russian arms, and a Russian-operated ship carrying what a Cypriot official said was bullets arrived in Syria last week from St. Petersburg after being held up in Cyprus.
GOP wants Hillary Clinton to testify
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012House Republicans have called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to testify as early as next week on the Obama administration’s decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline.
Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton formally sent a request to Clinton to come and testify at a hearing as early as next Wednesday, the day after President Barack Obama gives his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress.
Continue ReadingUpton is required to give members of his panel a week’s notice before a hearing occurs. “So as much as I’d like to do it tomorrow, or Friday or Monday, we can’t ask her before Wednesday,” he told reporters Wednesday.
Upton added he had not heard back from the State Department but “we expect to hear back very shortly.” He said Clinton is the only witnesses he has asked for so far.
In the meantime, Republicans continue to weigh their legislative options.
"All options are on the table,” House Speaker John Boehner told reporters. “This fight is not going to go away, you can count on it.”
That includes Republicans trying to include language in the next extension of the payroll tax holiday that will need to occur by the end of February.
France loses top credit rating, govt says
Friday, January 13th, 2012 AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia |
PARIS (AP) -- France was stripped Friday of its top-notch credit rating and rumors swirled in financial markets that its debt-burdened neighbors would be next, complicating Europe's efforts to solve its financial crisis.
Finance Minister Francois Baroin told a French TV station that France had been downgraded by one notch by credit rating agency Standard & Poor's. That would mean a rating of AA+, the same as the United States since it was downgraded last summer.
Rumors coursed through the markets that Austria and Italy could be downgraded next, perhaps as early as the end of the day's stock trading in New York. S&P had warned 15 European nations in December that they were at risk for a downgrade.
Baroin said France had received a change to its rating "like most of the eurozone," referring to the 17 European nations that use the euro currency, but there was no confirmation from S&P that any other nation had been downgraded Friday.
A credit downgrade would escalate the threats to Europe's fragile financial system and raise the costs at which the affected countries - some of which are already struggling with heavy debt loads and slow economic growth - borrow money.
Michelle Obama ‘random dances’ at US appearance
Friday, January 13th, 2012 AP Photo/Cliff Owen |
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (AP) -- They called it "random dancing" but First Lady Michelle Obama broke out some moves that resembled subdued variations of "the Monkey" or "the Jerk" Friday during an appearance at a northern Virginia high school.
A screaming, raucous auditorium filled with elementary and middle school students greeted Obama and the cast of the Nickelodeon TV show "iCarly" at Hayfield Secondary School in Fairfax County.
The appearance promoted an upcoming episode featuring Obama in which she thanks military families for their sacrifices. On the show, star Miranda Cosgrove plays the daughter of an Air Force colonel deployed overseas.
A staple of the show is a segment of random dancing, which Obama performed both in the episode that premieres Monday and on stage Friday.
Obama's dance moves drew plaudits from the "iCarly" cast.
"I think she showed everybody up in the dance department," said Jennette McCurdy, who plays Samantha on the show.
The onstage dance session Friday lasted only a minute or so, far less than the extended dance session Obama did last year when visiting Deal Middle School in the District, when she joined students doing "the Dougie" and "The Running Man" in a clip that has been viewed more than 4 million times on YouTube.
Her acting skills also drew praise. The cast was impressed with Obama's ability to deliver her lines in the compressed time they had to shoot the scenes.
LA deputy accused in drug case once failed academy
Friday, January 13th, 2012LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A deputy charged with smuggling heroin inside a burrito into a courthouse jail was initially kicked out of the Sheriff's Department training academy after a bumbling performance that was captured by Fox TV cameras for a reality show, a newspaper reported Friday.
Henry Marin later returned to the academy and became a deputy. But during his first attempt in 2007, he was quickly tagged as the class slacker on the show "The Academy" after supervisors caught him sleeping during orientation, the Los Angeles Times said (http://lat.ms/w95Lfl ).
"If he doesn't have the discipline to come here on Day 1 and show some respect, he's certainly not gonna have the discipline to work in the field of law enforcement," a drill sergeant said on the show.
"What is wrong with you recruit?" another drill sergeant said when Marin showed up with a backward tie.
Marin's arrest on Wednesday was the latest of many misconduct allegations against the Los Angeles County department, including brutality against inmates and contraband smuggling. The department, the FBI and others are investigating.
During a training exercise filmed by Fox, Marin failed to call for help and forgot the radio code for an emergency after a suicidal woman pulled a gun. A similar mishap led to his dismissal.
"You seem to have no knowledge or understanding of the laws that guide you and allow you to do certain things," a sergeant on the show told Marin after his ouster.
He was later allowed to enroll again and graduated, sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said.
Anti-Bain hits on Romney may take root in SC race
Friday, January 13th, 2012 AP Photo/Charles Dharapak |
BLUFFTON, S.C. (AP) -- South Carolina may be fertile ground for attacks on Mitt Romney's corporate takeover record.
The state has suffered a long string of shuttered textile plants and other workplaces. At 9.9 percent, it has one of the nation's highest unemployment rates. And like its fellow Deep South states, its Republican electorate has a disproportionate number of blue-collar workers and noncollege graduates.
That combination could make South Carolina a good test of efforts by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry to paint the GOP presidential front-runner as a heartless venture capitalist who fired workers while reaping big profits during his time at Bain Capital in the 1980s and `90s. Those attacks may be starting to resonate.
"I don't like it," said Rhonda Jones, 50, a Republican who showed up here Friday to see Perry at the Squat 'n 'Gobble cafe. The stay-at-home mom talked about how Romney's record at Bain "is what concerns me" and said she will vote for either Perry or Gingrich. Romney is a nonstarter.
"He was money-hungry himself," Jones said, adding that she knows several unemployed people. "He wasn't looking out for people."
South Carolina's Jan. 21 primary may mark the last real chance for his rivals to stop Romney's drive to the nomination.
President Barack Obama's aides have made it clear they will hammer Romney on Bain if he becomes the nominee. Obama won't try to win GOP-heavy South Carolina in November. But independent voters' reaction to the Bain-related attacks may give his campaign some hints of the issue's potency nationwide.
An array of conservative leaders and party officials are denouncing Gingrich and Perry for the Bain attacks, saying they sound like Democrats attacking free enterprise. Stung, the two candidates softened their criticisms in campaign stops throughout South Carolina this week.
But they didn't drop them altogether. And a well-financed group backing Gingrich is airing a foreboding TV ad here that shows displaced workers blaming Romney and Bain Capital for their job losses.
If enough GOP voters like Jones see it, Romney may face rougher sledding here than he did in Iowa and New Hampshire, says Merle Black of Emory University, who has written extensively on Southern politics.
"This is really going to be a challenge for him," Black said. When low-income and low-education Republicans hear the criticisms of Bain's record, he said, "it might repel them from Romney."
Generally speaking, Republicans are far more inclined than Democrats to accept capitalism's rough edges. These can include the so-called "creative destruction" of plant closings and fired workers in the drive for greater efficiency, which can lead to long-term growth and eventual hiring.
"Capitalism without failure isn't capitalism," said former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, another presidential hopeful, as he defended Romney's record at Bain this week.
Mexico City fights trash pileup after closing dump
Friday, January 13th, 2012 AP Photo/Christian Palma |
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mounds of debris piled up at illegal dumping sites around the city in recent weeks as the metropolis grappled with an avalanche of refuse after closing one of the world's largest landfills.
Garbage trucks queued up for more than six hours to dump loads at transfer stations, while overstuffed bags and other trash piled up even on the toniest streets over the holidays, when dumps in surrounding Mexico state refused to take the city's trash.
This week, city officials were caught in a front-page photograph dumping tons of trash at the same landfill they claimed to have closed in December, promising a better, greener waste management system for the city of 8.8 million.
"We're seeing a confusion obviously now in the handling of garbage," said Pierre Terras, who coordinates the toxins campaign for Greenpeace Mexico. "You can see it in the streets."
Like other mega-cities around the world, Mexico City is struggling to move from the informal garbage collection systems of the past to modern waste management designed to drastically cut the volume of material that ends up in landfills.
Mexico City officials count some 1,000 illegal dumping sites in a metropolis that generates more than 12,000 tons of trash a day. That includes some trash that is trucked in from neighboring towns in this sprawling metro area of more than 21 million - one of the world's largest.
The Latin American capitals of Bogota and Buenos Aires, which face similar problems, have committed to Zero Trash, a campaign supported by environmental groups to manufacture reusable goods and materials, recycle and ideally cut the amount of unusable trash to zero. Greenpeace is pushing such a plan for Mexico City.
Everyone agreed that the Bordo Poniente landfill had to close as scheduled on Dec. 31, a move that could mean a drop in greenhouse gas emissions by a minimum of 2 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. Built on a dry lake bed partly to handle the rubble from the devastating 1985 earthquake, it had taken in more than 76 million tons of garbage.
Critics say the city was unprepared, and it wasn't clear why there wasn't a solid alternative waste system in place after earlier plans to build four new garbage processing plants were abandoned.
Meanwhile an interim plan to take refuse to smaller dumps outside the city fell apart almost immediately.
Last week residents of Ixtapaluca in Mexico state blocked a federal highway to prevent Mexico City garbage trucks from unloading at a dump in their neighborhood, while other communities staged similar revolts.
Mexico City has required its residents to separate trash since 2003, but without enforcement or the necessary recycling equipment. Despite public service campaigns, there is no culture for recycling.
Residents still rely on an old collection system in which trucks roam the streets daily, with a garbage man ringing a bell to alert neighbors who come running with their trash cans and bags.
The small amount of recycling is done at the trucks, as garbage workers open bags to separate out glass, plastic and cardboard.
Dumping on the street brings heavy fines. But trash routinely piles up on Mexico City street corners under the cover of night from households where people can't wait around during the day for the trash bell.
Weaker Europe starts to lose appetite for US goods
Friday, January 13th, 2012 AP Photo/Paul Sakuma |
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A sign that Europe's crisis has begun to weigh on the U.S. economy emerged Friday from a report that exports to the continent sank in November - far more than overall U.S. exports did.
Europe, which consumes nearly one-fifth of America's exports, may already be in a recession. A weakening Europe could further shrink demand for American goods and slow the U.S. economy just as the job market has started to strengthen.
"The decline in our sales to Europe was fairly large and may be the start of a longer-term trend in declining exports to the continent," said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors.
The U.S. trade deficit rose 10.4 percent in November to $47.8 billion, the Commerce Department said.
Higher oil prices were the main reason the deficit widened. Oil rose above $100 per barrel in November. It had been as low as $75 a barrel the previous month. More expensive oil drove the value of imports up 1.3 percent, to a record $225.6 billion.
Overall exports dropped 0.9 percent to $177.8 billion. American exports to Europe fell much more sharply - nearly 6 percent.
Economic growth weakens when exports decline because factories tend to produce fewer goods. And U.S. companies earn less. Friday's trade report led some economists to cut their growth estimates for the October-December quarter.
Many economists had expected growth to be stronger after seeing more hiring, an increase in company stockpiles and faster production at U.S. factories. Most had been predicting that the economy would grow this quarter at an annual rate of roughly 3 percent.
But Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist for Capital Economists, said he now expects growth to be closer to 2 percent, in part because of the weaker trade report and also because of December's disappointing retail sales.
"The widening in the U.S. trade deficit in November ... is perhaps the first real sign that the crisis in Europe and the more general global slowdown is starting to take its toll on the U.S.," Dales said.
With time, money running out, SC often turns nasty
Friday, January 13th, 2012 AP Photo/MICHAEL JUSTUS |
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- In mailboxes across South Carolina in 2007, likely Republican voters received a Christmas card signed by "The Romney Family" with a quotation from a 19th century Mormon leader suggesting God had several wives.
Mitt Romney's campaign, just a few weeks away from the 2008 presidential primary in a state where evangelicals look skeptically on the former Massachusetts governor's Mormon faith, condemned the bogus card as politics at its worst. The sender never took credit. And it was just another anonymous shot in the endless volleys of nasty campaigning in South Carolina.
While attack politics happen in every state, South Carolina's reputation for electoral mudslinging and bare-knuckled brawling is well-earned.
Why there? Largely because of the high stakes. South Carolina has always picked the GOP's eventual nominee since the primary's inception in 1980. And money, nerves and time are usually running out for almost everyone but the front-runner after Iowa and New Hampshire, often leading challengers to go for the jugular.
"The ghost of Lee Atwater hangs over South Carolina like a morning fog and permeates every part of the state's politics," says Scott Huffmon, a Winthrop University political science professor. Atwater, who died 20 years ago, was South Carolina's most famous political operative and a master of slash-and-burn politics.
Given the dynamics of this year's Republican presidential race, it's safe to expect under-the-radar attacks over the next week as challengers work to derail front-runner Romney before the Jan. 21 primary. The rise of super PACs - outside groups aligned with but independent from the candidates - means some of the attacks could be more public this time, but still nasty.
"You've got four guys that are make or break,' said Warren Tompkins, a veteran South Carolina political consultant advising Romney. "Desperate men do desperate things."
Romney says he's ready for whatever comes his way.
"Politics ain't beanbags, and I know it's going to get tough," the GOP front-runner said as he headed south after his New Hampshire victory. "But I know that is sometimes part of the underbelly of politics."
The lore of negative attacks here includes a whisper campaign against Republican John McCain in 2000 that included rumors that the daughter his family adopted from Bangladesh was the Arizona senator's illegitimate black child.
Those were desperate times for George W. Bush's campaign. McCain had just stunned the establishment's choice with a blowout win in New Hampshire, and Bush had just 18 days to turn the momentum around in South Carolina. Publicly, Bush took a few shots at McCain, but mostly stressed he was the true conservative. But plenty of ugliness was happening behind the scenes.
People who attended rallies or debates found flyers on their car windshields with the accusations about McCain's daughter and raising questions about his mental stability. Callers, pretending to be pollsters, would ask loaded questions of voters about whether they could support a man who had homosexual experiences or a Vietnam hero who was really was a traitor. The sponsors of the false attacks were careful to leave no trail.
Russia says its spacecraft may crash into Atlantic
Friday, January 13th, 2012 AP Photo/STR |
MOSCOW (AP) -- Russia's space agency has adjusted its forecast for the crash of a failed spacecraft, saying it may shower its fragments into the south Atlantic.
Roscosmos said the unmanned Phobos-Ground probe could plummet to Earth Sunday or Monday anywhere along a broad swath between 51.4 degrees north and 51.4 degrees south.
It said Friday that the mid-point in the two-day window would have the craft crashing into the ocean about 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of the coast of Chubut province in southern Argentina. It said the precise time and place of the uncontrolled plunge can only be clarified later as the probe draws closer to Earth.
Scientists say cut soot, methane to curb warming
Thursday, January 12th, 2012 AP Photo/Toby Talbot |
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An international team of scientists says it's figured out how to slow global warming in the short run and prevent millions of deaths from dirty air: Stop focusing so much on carbon dioxide.
They say the key is to reduce emissions of two powerful and fast-acting causes of global warming - methane and soot.
Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and the one world leaders have spent the most time talking about controlling. Scientists say carbon dioxide from fossil fuels like coal and oil is a bigger overall cause of global warming, but reducing methane and soot offers quicker fixes.
Soot also is a big health problem, so dramatically cutting it with existing technology would save between 700,000 and 4.7 million lives each year, according to the team's research published online Thursday in the journal Science. Since soot causes rainfall patterns to shift, reducing it would cut down on droughts in southern Europe and parts of Africa and ease monsoon problems in Asia, the study says.
Two dozen scientists from around the world ran computer models of 400 different existing pollution control measures and came up with 14 methods that attack methane and soot. The idea has been around for more than a decade and the same authors worked on a United Nations report last year, but this new study is far more comprehensive.
All 14 methods - capturing methane from landfills and coal mines, cleaning up cook stoves and diesel engines, and changing agriculture techniques for rice paddies and manure collection - are being used efficiently in many places, but aren't universally adopted, said the study's lead author, Drew Shindell of NASA.
If adopted more widely, the scientists calculate that would reduce projected global warming by 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit (0.5 degrees Celsius) by the year 2050. Without the measures, global average temperature is projected to rise nearly 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius) in the next four decades. But controlling methane and soot, the increase is projected to be only 1.3 degrees (0.7 degrees Celsius). It also would increase annual yield of key crops worldwide by almost 150 million tons (135 million metric tons).
Methane comes from landfills, farms, drilling for natural gas, and coal mining. Soot, called black carbon by scientists, is a byproduct of burning and is a big problem with cook stoves using wood, dung and coal in developing countries and in some diesel fuels worldwide.
Reducing methane and black carbon isn't the very best way to attack climate change, air pollution, or hunger, but reducing those chemicals are among the better ways and work simultaneously on all three problems, Shindell said.
And shifting the pollution focus doesn't mean ignoring carbon dioxide. Shindell said: "The science says you really have to start on carbon dioxide even now to get the benefit in the distant future."
It all comes down to basic chemistry. There's far more carbon dioxide pollution than methane and soot pollution, but the last two are way more potent. Carbon dioxide also lasts in the atmosphere longer.
A 2007 Stanford University study calculated that carbon dioxide was the No. 1 cause of man-made global warming, accounting for 48 percent of the problem. Soot was second with 16 percent of the warming and methane was right behind at 14 percent.
But over a 20-year period, a molecule of methane or soot causes substantially more warming then a carbon dioxide molecule.
2012: year of the environment
Thursday, January 12th, 2012
The Icebergs that Threaten the Fed REO to Rent Program
Tuesday, January 10th, 2012
Real Estate Owned homes continually add sludge to an economy struggling to recover. (more…)
In elections, jobless trend matters more than rate
Saturday, January 7th, 2012 AP Photo/(AP PHOTO/DARREN HAUCK) |
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Unemployment is higher than it's been going into any election year since World War II.
But history shows that won't necessarily stop President Barack Obama from reclaiming the White House.
In a presidential election year, the unemployment trend can be more important to an incumbent's chances than the unemployment rate.
Going back to 1956 no incumbent president has lost when unemployment fell over the two years leading up to the election. And none has won when it rose.
The picture is similar in the 12 months before presidential elections: Only one of nine incumbent presidents (Gerald Ford in 1976) lost when unemployment fell over that year, and only one (Dwight Eisenhower in 1956) was re-elected when it rose.
Those precedents bode well for Obama. Unemployment was 9.8 percent in November 2010, two years before voters decide whether Obama gets to stay in the White House. It was down to 8.7 percent in November 2011, a year before the vote. It fell to 8.5 percent in December and is expected to fall further by Election Day.
Obama can take comfort in President Ronald Reagan's experience. In November 1982, the economy was in the last month of a deep recession, and unemployment was 10.8 percent, the highest since the Great Depression. A year later, unemployment was down to 8.5 percent. By November 1984, it was still a relatively high 7.2 percent, but the downward trend was unmistakable. Reagan was re-elected that month in a 59-41 percent landslide.
"A sense that things are on the mend is really important to people," says Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. The trend holds up even when the changes in unemployment are slight. President Bill Clinton was re-elected handily even though the unemployment rate was only 0.2 percentage points lower in November 1996 than it had been two years earlier and was the same as it had been a year before.
Under Obama, unemployment peaked at 10 percent in October 2009, nine months into his presidency, before it began coming down in fits and starts. Along the way it stayed above 9 percent for 21 straight months.
In elections, jobless trend matters more than rate
Saturday, January 7th, 2012AP Photo/(AP PHOTO/DARREN HAUCK) |
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Unemployment is higher than it's been going into any election year since World War II.
But history shows that won't necessarily stop President Barack Obama from reclaiming the White House.
In a presidential election year, the unemployment trend can be more important to an incumbent's chances than the unemployment rate.
Going back to 1956 no incumbent president has lost when unemployment fell over the two years leading up to the election. And none has won when it rose.
The picture is similar in the 12 months before presidential elections: Only one of nine incumbent presidents (Gerald Ford in 1976) lost when unemployment fell over that year, and only one (Dwight Eisenhower in 1956) was re-elected when it rose.
Those precedents bode well for Obama. Unemployment was 9.8 percent in November 2010, two years before voters decide whether Obama gets to stay in the White House. It was down to 8.7 percent in November 2011, a year before the vote. It fell to 8.5 percent in December and is expected to fall further by Election Day.
Obama can take comfort in President Ronald Reagan's experience. In November 1982, the economy was in the last month of a deep recession, and unemployment was 10.8 percent, the highest since the Great Depression. A year later, unemployment was down to 8.5 percent. By November 1984, it was still a relatively high 7.2 percent, but the downward trend was unmistakable. Reagan was re-elected that month in a 59-41 percent landslide.
"A sense that things are on the mend is really important to people," says Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. The trend holds up even when the changes in unemployment are slight. President Bill Clinton was re-elected handily even though the unemployment rate was only 0.2 percentage points lower in November 1996 than it had been two years earlier and was the same as it had been a year before.
Under Obama, unemployment peaked at 10 percent in October 2009, nine months into his presidency, before it began coming down in fits and starts. Along the way it stayed above 9 percent for 21 straight months.
But unemployment has now dropped four months in a row. And the economy added 1.6 million jobs in 2011, the most since 2006.
Cargo drone makes debut in Afghanistan
Saturday, January 7th, 2012 AP Photo/Justin M. Boling |
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The U.S. military is testing a revolutionary new drone for its arsenal, a pilotless helicopter intended to fly cargo missions to remote outposts where frequent roadside bombs threaten access by road convoys.
Surveillance drones for monitoring enemy activity and armed versions for launching airstrikes have become a trademark of America's wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. But this is the first time a chopper version designed for transport has ben used operationally.
Two unmanned models of the Kaman K-MAX helicopters and a team of 16 company technicians and 8 Marines are conducting a 6-month evaluation program for the new craft at Camp Dwyer, a Marine Corps airfield in the Garmsir district of southern Helmand Province.
The craft have flown 20 transport missions since the inaugural flight on Dec. 17, said Maj. Kyle O'Connor, the officer in charge of the detachment. They have delivered nearly 18 tons of cargo, mainly thousands of Meals Ready to Eat and spare parts needed at the forward operating bases.
"Afghanistan is a highly mined country and the possibility of improvised explosive devices is always a problem moving cargo overland in a convoy," O'Connor said.
"Every load that we can take off of a ground convoy reduces the danger and risk that our Marines, soldiers, and sailors are faced with," he said. "With an unmanned helicopter, even the aircrew is taken out of harm's way."
The Marines from Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadron 1 lead the missions and deliver the cargo into combat drop zones, while contractors operate and maintain the two aircraft.
The craft's onboard computer uploads the mission plans, enabling them to fly on autopilot. But an operator at base control monitors progress and can step in and override the autopilot for manual operation if any problems occur, or if the drone must be redirected in mid-flight.
The K-MAX is the latest in a series of Kaman synchronized twin-rotor helicopters dating from the 1950s. The unusual arrangement, with two side-by-side pylons on the helicopter's roof supporting counter-rotating blades, results in exceptional stability while hovering and allows pinpoint cargo delivery.
The ‘Price Tag’ of Angering the Extreme Right, and who is Paying
Saturday, January 7th, 2012
A continuing spate of hate crimes claimed two Arab owned vehicles in Jerusalem this week, which were torched while parked overnight. (more…)
Second Tunisian man sets self on fire in 2 days
Saturday, January 7th, 2012TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) -- A middle-aged man with a history of mental illness set himself on fire Saturday in northern Tunisia, two days after a similar case in the south.
Hedia Khemiri of Bougatfa hospital says 50-year-old Daoud Bouhli poured gasoline over himself and then ignited it in front of Bizerte town hall in the country's north.
Self-immolation has enormous resonance in the country that last year overthrew its long ruling dictator in an uprising sparked by fruit vendor Mohammed Bouazizi setting himself on fire after being harassed by police.
His actions set in motion a number of similar incidents across North Africa and self-immolation became a symbolic protest for people who had lost all hope, and were usually unemployed.
A year after the uprising, Tunisia has elected a new government but still suffers from serious unemployment and a flagging economy as tourists stay away and labor unrest strikes industries.
On Thursday, Ammar Gharsalli, a 45-year-old father of three, set himself on fire in front of the town hall in Gafsa - a center for phosphate mining in southern Tunisia.
Iran welcomes US rescue of sailors from pirates
Saturday, January 7th, 2012 AP Photo |
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's government on Saturday welcomed the U.S. Navy's rescue of 13 Iranian fishermen held by pirates, calling it a positive humanitarian gesture.
U.S. officials announced Friday that the fishermen had been rescued by a U.S. Navy destroyer on Thursday, more than 40 days after their boat was commandeered by suspected Somali pirates in the northern Arabian Sea. The rescue came just days after Tehran warned the U.S. to keep the same group of warships out of the Persian Gulf in a reflection of Iran's fear that American warships could try to enforce an embargo against Iranian oil exports.
"The rescue of Iranian sailors by American forces is considered a humanitarian gesture and we welcome this behavior," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying by state TV's Al-Alam Arabic channel.
Iran's hard-line Fars news agency had a different take, calling the rescue operation a Hollywood dramatization of a routine event.
The Fars report noted that attacks by Somali pirates in the region are common and said that Iran's navy has itself freed many mariners held by pirates in recent years without seeking to highly publicize it.
Amid escalating tension with Iran over its nuclear program, the Obama administration reveled in delivering Friday's announcement and highlighted the fact that the rescuing ships were the same ones Iran's army chief had just said were no longer welcome in the Persian Gulf.
"Basically, rescuing trading and fishing boats from the hands of pirates in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Aden is considered a completely normal issue," Fars said. "A U.S. helicopter filming the rescue operation from the first minute makes it look like a Hollywood drama with specific locations and actors. It shows the Americans tried to publicize it through the media and present the American warship as a savior."
The semiofficial Fars news agency is considered close to Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard military force.
Fars reported in April that Iranian naval commandos had driven off pirates attempting to hijack a supertanker off Pakistan's southwestern coast.
"Iran's navy has rescued various foreign ships from the hands of pirates ... but never publicized that," it said.
Iran welcomes U.S. rescue of sailors
Saturday, January 7th, 2012TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s government on Saturday welcomed the U.S. Navy’s rescue of 13 Iranian fishermen held by pirates, calling it a positive humanitarian gesture.
U.S. officials announced Friday that the fishermen had been rescued by a U.S. Navy destroyer on Thursday, more than 40 days after their boat was commandeered by suspected Somali pirates in the northern Arabian Sea. The rescue came just days after Tehran warned the U.S. to keep the same group of warships out of the Persian Gulf in a reflection of Iran’s fear that American warships could try to enforce an embargo against Iranian oil exports.
“The rescue of Iranian sailors by American forces is considered a humanitarian gesture, and we welcome this behavior,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast, according to state TV’s Al-Alam Arabic channel.
Iran’s hard-line Fars News Agency had a different take, calling the rescue operation a Hollywood dramatization of a routine event.
The Fars report noted that attacks by Somali pirates in the region are common and said Iran’s navy has itself freed many mariners held by pirates in recent years without seeking to highly publicize it.
Amid escalating tension with Iran over its nuclear program, the Obama administration reveled in delivering Friday’s announcement and highlighted the fact that the rescuing ships were the same ones Iran’s army chief had just said were no longer welcome in the Persian Gulf.
Obama to promote insourcing of jobs
Saturday, January 7th, 2012 AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite |
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is highlighting companies that have returned jobs to the U.S. and he says that's one more way of putting people back to work.
The White House plans a forum Wednesday, called "Insourcing American Jobs," that will bring together business leaders who shifted work back home. The president said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address that the event will discuss ways business leaders can return more jobs to the country.
"We're heading in the right direction. And we're not going to let up," Obama said on the heels of the government reporting Friday that the unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent in December.
Obama noted that the jobs report showed the economy added more than 200,000 private sector jobs last month and that more than 3 million private sector jobs had been added during the past 22 months. He said the nation was "starting 2012 with manufacturing on the rise and the American auto industry on the mend."
The president said the U.S. couldn't return "to the days when the financial system was stacking the deck against ordinary Americans," citing his decision to install former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray as the director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau while the Senate was on break, circumventing Republican opposition to the appointment.
Mitt a safe bet for N.H. Hill GOP
Saturday, January 7th, 2012For all the differences between the New Hampshire primary and the Iowa caucuses, one stands out: Two of New Hampshire’s Capitol Hill Republicans didn’t hesitate to endorse Mitt Romney.
No one in Iowa’s Hill delegation endorsed anyone.
The New Hampshire lawmakers’ willingness to weigh in reflects a simple reality: Mitt Romney is a virtual lock to win there, presenting Republicans looking to protect their own political interests with a safe, easy choice.
But it goes further than that. Win or lose, backing Romney won’t come back to haunt them. There were no such safe choices in Iowa, and plenty of strong incentives not to endorse.
Two of the three Republicans in New Hampshire’s delegation, Sen. Kelly Ayotte and Rep. Charlie Bass, are backing Romney. A third, freshman Rep. Frank Guinta, has said he is still weighing his options and could endorse in the final days before the primary.
It’s a stark contrast from Iowa, where, after months of pleading and lobbying from White House hopefuls, ultimately not one of the state’s three delegation members endorsed for fear of alienating the voters who were deeply split among those in the field. In the final caucus tally, none of the top three finishers won more than 25 percent.
Obama talks of ‘insourcing’ jobs
Saturday, January 7th, 2012President Barack Obama hailed improving job-creation numbers Saturday in a weekly address devoid of the usual caveats that the latest statistics might be just a blip and that a distressing number of Americans are still hurting economically.
“We just learned that our economy added 212,000 private sector jobs in December. After losing more than 8 million jobs in the recession, we’ve added more than 3 million private sector jobs over the past 22 months. And we’re starting 2012 with manufacturing on the rise and the American auto industry on the mend,” Obama said in the pre-recorded statement broadcast on radio and TV stations and via the Internet. “We’re heading in the right direction. And we’re not going to let up.”
In a speech Friday afternoon, just hours after the release of a Bureau of Labor Statistics report showing unemployment dipped to 8.5 percent in December, Obama tempered his remarks with a series of statements showing his sensitivity to the ongoing economic pain.
“There are a lot of people that are still hurting out there,” the president said in remarks at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The bureau’s director, Richard Cordray, got a recess appointment from Obama earlier in the week.
“The American people I think rightly understand that there are still a lot of struggles that people are going through out there. A lot of families are still having a tough time. A lot of small businesses are still having a tough time. But we’re starting to rebound,” Obama said at the CFPB.
NASA questions Apollo 13 commander’s sale of list
Friday, January 6th, 2012 AP Photo |
MIAMI (AP) -- NASA is questioning whether Apollo 13 commander James Lovell has the right to sell a 70-page checklist from the flight that includes his handwritten calculations that were crucial in guiding the damaged spacecraft back to Earth.
The document was sold by Heritage Auctions in November for more than $388,000, some 15 times its initial list price. The checklist gained great fame as part of a key dramatic scene in the 1995 film "Apollo 13" in which actor Tom Hanks plays Lovell making the calculations.
After the sale, NASA contacted Heritage to ask whether Lovell had title to the checklist. Greg Rohan, president of Dallas-based Heritage, said Thursday the sale has been suspended pending the outcome of the inquiry. The checklist, he said, is being stored for now in the company's vault.
Rohan said Lovell provided a signed affidavit that he had clear title to the ring-bound checklist, which is standard procedure. Heritage does robust business in space memorabilia and this is the first time NASA has ever raised questions about ownership of its items, he added.
"It's one that is near and dear to our hearts," Rohan said of the space collectibles business. "We, like a lot of people, consider these astronauts to be national heroes."
The latest inquiry follows a federal lawsuit NASA filed last year in Miami against Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell seeking return of a camera he brought back from his 1971 moon mission. That lawsuit was settled in October when Mitchell agreed to give the camera to NASA, which in turn is donating it to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs said the lawsuit and Lovell inquiry do not represent an aggressive, broad new agency effort to recover space items.
"It's a challenge to continually monitor the growing auctions community, which is usually how these items come to light," he said in an email. "This latest issue demonstrates a need to reach out to former astronauts and other former agency personnel who may have these kind of items."
Lovell, 83, lives near Chicago and owns a restaurant bearing his name in Lake Forest, Ill. In an email Friday to The Associated Press, the former astronaut said he is "seeking a meeting with NASA administration to clear up this misunderstanding." He did not elaborate.
The Apollo 13 moon mission was aborted about 200,000 miles from Earth when an oxygen tank exploded on April 13, 1970, causing another tank to fail and seriously jeopardizing the three-man crew's ability to return home. Astronaut Jack Swigert famously said "Houston, we've had a problem here" after the explosion.
The crew was forced to move from the command ship into the attached lunar landing module for the return flight. Lovell's calculations on the checklist were key in transferring navigation data from the command craft to the lunar module.
NASA has raised questions about title rights for three other space items Heritage had sold in the same November auction. Two were from Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweikart: a lunar module identification plate that brought more than $13,000 and a hand controller that received a $22,705 bid. The space agency also targeted a fourth item, a hand glove worn by Alan Shepard during training for Apollo 14, that brought more than $19,000.
In an email to Heritage, NASA Deputy Chief Counsel Donna M. Shafer said there was no indication the agency had ever transferred ownership of any of the items to the astronauts.
Now you see it, now you don’t: Time cloak created
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012 AP Photo/Heather Deal |
WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's one thing to make an object invisible, like Harry Potter's mythical cloak. But scientists have made an entire event impossible to see. They have invented a time masker.
Think of it as an art heist that takes place before your eyes and surveillance cameras. You don't see the thief strolling into the museum, taking the painting down or walking away, but he did. It's not just that the thief is invisible - his whole activity is.
What scientists at Cornell University did was on a much smaller scale, both in terms of events and time. It happened so quickly that it's not even a blink of an eye. Their time cloak lasts an incredibly tiny fraction of a fraction of a second. They hid an event for 40 trillionths of a second, according to a study appearing in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature.
We see events happening as light from them reaches our eyes. Usually it's a continuous flow of light. In the new research, however, scientists were able to interrupt that flow for just an instant.
Other newly created invisibility cloaks fashioned by scientists move the light beams away in the traditional three dimensions. The Cornell team alters not where the light flows but how fast it moves, changing in the dimension of time, not space.
They tinkered with the speed of beams of light in a way that would make it appear to surveillance cameras or laser security beams that an event, such as an art heist, isn't happening.
Another way to think of it is as if scientists edited or erased a split second of history. It's as if you are watching a movie with a scene inserted that you don't see or notice. It's there in the movie, but it's not something you saw, said study co-author Moti Fridman, a physics researcher at Cornell.
The scientists created a lens of not just light, but time. Their method splits light, speeding up one part of light and slowing down another. It creates a gap and that gap is where an event is masked.
"You kind of create a hole in time where an event takes place," said study co-author Alexander Gaeta, director of Cornell's School of Applied and Engineering Physics. "You just don't know that anything ever happened."
This is all happening in beams of light that move too fast for the human eye to see. Using fiber optics, the hole in time is created as light moves along inside a fiber much thinner than a human hair. The scientists shoot the beam of light out, and then with other beams, they create a time lens that splits the light into two different speed beams that create the effect of invisibility by being too fast or too slow. The whole work is a mess of fibers on a long table and almost looks like a pile of spaghetti, Fridman said.
Bits of Russia space probe set to fall Jan. 15
Wednesday, January 4th, 2012MOSCOW (AP) -- Fragments of a failed Russian space probe are now expected to fall to Earth on Jan. 15, officials said Wednesday.
The unmanned Phobos-Ground probe was launched Nov. 9 on what was supposed to have been a 2 1/2-year mission to the Mars moon of Phobus to take soil samples and fly them back to Earth, but it became stuck in Earth's orbit and attempts to send commands that could propel it toward the Mars moon were unsuccessful.
As the probe's orbit slowly deteriorated, space officials predicted it would come crashing down between late December and late February.
A precise date was given Wednesday by a spokesman for the air and space defense troops, who said any fragments that do not burn up in the atmosphere are expected to fall to Earth on Jan. 15.
The date could still be affected by external factors and Defense Ministry troops are monitoring changes in the probe's orbit, Russian state news agencies quoted Alexei Zolotukin as saying.
Thousands flee South Sudan tribal conflict
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012Tens of thousands of villagers in South Sudan are hiding in the bush, waiting for United Nations and government troops to stop a tribal conflict, which officials fear may have left scores of people dead over the weekend.
Armed youths from the Lou Nuer tribe marched on the remote town of Pibor in Jonglei state, home to the rival Murle people, who they blame for cattle raiding.
On Tuesday morning, the government claimed that the South Sudanese army was in "full control" of Pibor, and that Lou Nuer tribesmen were vacating it.
"Pibor is under the full control of the government, and the Lou Nuer have been ordered to return to their homes, and they are starting to do so," Barnaba Marial Benjamin, the country's information minister, said.
Thatched huts have been burned and, according to Parthesarathy Rajendran, the head of Doctors without Borders (known by its French name Medicines sans Frontieres, or MSF) in South Sudan, thousands have been displaced, including his own staff.
"Many of our staff are in the bush and we also heard an MSF clinic has been damaged and looted," he told Al Jazeera.
"MSF is the only medical health care in the whole region, and the population is very vulnerable for all kinds of medical issues. So we are very concerned about those fleeing into the bush. They don't have access to water, medical care or food."
The government and the UN, which has said the violence could lead to a "major tragedy", were strengthening their forces in the area.
"We are worried about their conditions. They are without water, shelter and food. They are hiding in the bush. I think it
is between 20,000 and 50,000. This is an estimate only," Lise Gande, UN humanitarian co-ordinator for South Sudan, told the Reuters news agency.
Grande said on Sunday that the number of government forces heading to Pibor was estimated at 3,000 troops and 800 police.
'Village deserted'
Al Jazeera's Haru Mutasa, reporting from a village belonging to the Murle tribe, said the situation was tense, with deserted streets.
"All you see is soldiers and guns, lots and lots of guns," she said. "It doesn't feel like a normal place. The UN here is trying by all means to reassure the few that are left that it's safe to return."
She reported there was particular concern for those who had fled the violence and were currently in the bush. "They have no food and no water, and the longer they stay out there the concern is that they could start dying," she said.
| Haru Mutasa reports from Pibor town |
Reverend Mark Akec Cien, head of the Sudan Council of Churches, an umbrella organisation with members across the area, said they had reports of many killed and wounded in the clashes.
Banks borrow €14.8bn in emergency funds from ECB
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012Acute tensions in the eurozone banking system have been highlighted by a continued surge in emergency borrowing from the European Central Bank.
A total of €14.8bn was drawn from the ECB’s “marginal lending facility” on Monday night. That was down from the €17.3bn borrowed last Thursday, which was the highest since June 2009, but remained exceptionally high even by standards set during the turbulent past few months for the continental European financial system.
Because its use incurs a penal 1.75 per cent interest rate, the facility is only tapped by banks facing sudden difficulties and usually only for a day or two. The latest surge suggests at least one bank faced serious problems at the year end, which have still not been resolved. The ECB gave no details of how many banks used the facility or where they were based.
One or more banks may have tapped the emergency ECB facility to show stronger balance sheets at the end of 2011 but, if the use of the facility does not fall in coming days, worries could spread about a possible banking crisis somewhere in the 17-country eurozone.
Egypt holds third round of elections
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012| Al Jazeera's Jamal Elshayyal reports from Mahalla |
Egyptians have flocked to the polls for the third round of the country's parliamentary election, the first election since the uprising that unseated Hosni Mubarak from the presidency in February last year.
Queues began to form around schools that had been turned into polling stations at 8am local time (06:00 GMT) on Tuesday. Al Jazeera's correspondents in El-Arish and Shubra El-Khaima reported good voter turnouts.
The final round takes place over two days in the Nile Delta provinces of Qaliubiya, Gharbiya and Daqahliya; the New Valley province; the southern governorates of Minya and Qena; the border province of Matruh; and in North and South Sinai.
The run-up to this round of polls has been overshadowed by the deaths of 17 people last month in clashes between the army and protesters demanding the ruling military step aside immediately.
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But the military generals have insisted the election process will not be derailed by violence.
Islamist groups came late to the uprising but have so far won the biggest share of seats in the previous rounds of the first free and fair elections in six decades.
Pakistan the Unreal – by Aatish Taseer
Monday, January 2nd, 2012A son's tale of a death ripped from the headlines -- and the novel that foretold it.
BY AATISH TASEER | DEC/JAN 2012
In December 2010 I sent off the changes to my first work of fiction set in Pakistan. I should say work because really I was concluding a writing cycle that, having begun 10 years before with a failed novel, had led me to nonfiction and memoir before bringing me full circle back to the novel. The looping lessons of this journey were what formed my earliest ideas of fiction and nonfiction in the special context of writing about Pakistan, a place where reality often dwarfs the best efforts of the imagination.
My relationship to the country has always been a complicated one. My father was Pakistani, but I had grown up away from him in New Delhi with my mother and had known neither him nor his country until the age of 21, when I first went to Lahore to seek him out. That time of great personal upheaval coincided with my first wish to be a writer, and knowing next to nothing about the mechanics of fiction but seduced by its glamour, I sat down to write a novel about the experience.
It was an abysmal failure, a baggy black hole of a book. I tried to calm my well-founded fears about it by taking comfort in the urgency and relevance of the real-world circumstances that had inspired the novel. But no outside reality, no matter how compelling, can rescue a work of fiction that doesn't work on its own terms. A writer needs distance if he is to create an autonomous fictional world in which the complexities of lived experience are distilled; he cannot still be in the throes of the experience he is writing about.
And I, age 22 or 23, was still very much consumed by the great drama of seeking out my father in adult life. It had not gone quiet; its overarching lines were yet to reveal themselves. In the end, after a considerable amount of self-delusion, I abandoned the novel , I think it was aptly called -- and from its salvageable remains I wrote and published in 2009 my first book, a travel memoir, , which was the story of my relationship with my father, interwoven with the account of an eight-month journey from Istanbul to Lahore.
TRUE TO LIFE
From Vietnam to Pakistan, writers have long turned to fiction to make sense of the news, often yielding uncanny portraits of real-life war, revolution, and cultural change. Here, Foreign Policy offers a sampler of novels that could have been straight out of the newspapers -- and sometimes even made them.
Rudyard Kipling, 1901
In what is often considered his best novel, the Bombay-born Kipling unfolds the "panorama of India," as a review said at the time, exposing the forces of Hinduism and imperialism in the British-ruled subcontinent.
Pearl S. Buck, 1931
For its depiction of a rural family in pre-communist China, this book won a Pulitzer, became a bestseller, and helped make Buck, who grew up in the village of Zhenjiang, the first American woman to win a Nobel Prize in literature. Some argue the novel later helped Americans empathize with their Chinese allies during World War II.
Berlin film festival to honor Meryl Streep
Monday, January 2nd, 2012BERLIN (AP) -- Meryl Streep is to be honored for her wide-ranging career at this year's Berlin film festival.
Festival organizers said Monday that the 62-year-old Streep will be presented with an honorary Golden Bear, the event's top award, on Feb. 14.
Festival director Dieter Kosslick says that "Meryl Streep is a brilliant, versatile performer who moves with ease between dramatic and comedic roles."
GoDaddy Exodus — Stop SOPA and Bad Hosting Boycott
Sunday, January 1st, 2012
Go Daddy got a well deserved Christmas present this year. Between Monday December 19th and Friday, two days before Christmas 2011, Go Daddy lost 72,354 Hosting Accounts. People are leaving in troves! The reason every one is jumping ship is even better! Ever heard of SOPA?
On December 29th the GoDaddy boycott begins in earnest, and if your hosting with Godaddy read on to see if you’ve had similar experiences.
Go Daddy’s unparalleled losses equals payback for notorious cyber-bully.
Here’s the scoop GoDaddy, kissing up to Capital Hill, appeared on a list of corporations that supportSOPA, along with the likes of Time Warner, MasterCard and Viacom.
SOPA, is actually an acronym for ‘Stop Online Piracy. However, as you’ll discover a more suitable alternative would be “Stop Online Private Association”
What SOPA really is, is an insidious attempt by Multi-National Corporations and their political pundits to control the internet in the same way that they control the main stream global media.
“Imagine a world in which any intellectual property holder can, without ever appearing before a judge or setting foot in a courtroom, shut down any website’s online advertising programs and block access to credit card payments.” Nate Anderson
SOPA is dressed up in the righteous speak of America Nazi styled nationalism, the same kind of hyperbola that pours out of Washington daily, and then goes on to fill the corroded sewers of main stream media with the waste that they would like us to believe is news.
Here’s an example straight from the horses mouth. Many people can now see through this kind of blatant manipulation. As you’ll see, it’s little more than a rallying words, psychologically loaded sound bites. The same terms in the following quote are endlessly reppeaed by the corporate media and politicians so that they can be drilled into our subconscious minds and influence our beliefs and actions.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.): “As a co-chair of the Congressional Anti Piracy Caucus, I know how hard it is to safeguard our Intellectual Property from foreign rogue websites, and as a Representative from Los Angeles, I know what it costs us in terms of well-paying jobs.”Committee on the Judiciary
The problem is that we’re just not buying it anymore. The exodus of customers from GoDaddy is a sign that people, the 99% of us are waking up. The multi-national robber barons are getting desperate, they’re shaking in their boots, because we have the power to hit them where it counts, in the bank and in the streets.
In fact, we should be grateful that GoDaddy was spotted on the list the corporate elite who back the bill, because it has brought to our collective attention, something that was never meant to happen.
You know, general protocal goes something like this; corporations see a threat or opportunity. Then theymobalize the monkeys in Congress, who are told what to bury, what to hide in cryptically worded sections of Legislative bills that make Oxford Dictionary look like an afternoon read.
The cats out of the bag and we all need to join together to occupy the airways and get this bogus piece of legislation defeated, because if we don’t who knows what could:
“Sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, Wikipedia, or any sites that allow user generated content CANNOT exist under these laws. Immediately after this bill is passed, you will see the media mafia (MPIAA, RIAA, etc) replacing websites like Wikipedia with commercialized encyclopedia software. Mainstream media outlets will not cover this bill because they are the ones lobbying for it…
This bill isn’t designed to eliminate piracy, it is designed to give them control of the internet, the pesky free speech tool that has crippled their obsolete business model.” SOPA for Dummies
Go Daddy got what it deserves, and showed it’s true colors that’s why they’re going to see many more of their clients move to better hosting companies. After Go Daddy realized how much this was going to hurt their one and only, their precious profit, they withdrew their support and initiated a PR campaign to neutralize the fall out.
GoDaddy’s Bag of Crooked Tricks
I have to admit that I have a particular grudge against hosting corporations like GoDaddy. They have their own built in system to take advantage of the unwary, and that includes all but the techno savy.
Who want’s to have to learn Mysql or deal with phpmyadmin just to have their website function properly? Well I certainly didn’t and that’s what happened to me.
What generally occurs is that Hosting providers like GoDaddy, reel in you in with cheap prices on your first hosting package. Then you get hit by the control panel, which often isn’t designed to help you, no is designed to up-sell you on slew of things you don’t don’t really need.
Now that they got your money they don’t care what happens to your website. This isn’t conjecture. I’ve had more than my fair share of bad hosting companies like ipage, StartLogik, Nine Dot Systems to deal with.They actually torment their users with outsourced, undertrained and scripted customer support, whose real job it seems to waste your time, and frustrate you to the point of giving up.
The reason chose not to ever, excuse the pun, go with GoDaddy, is because I heard about how bad their support is. Actually GoDaddy is renowned for it’s horrific customer service. If you want to find out for your self, just do a Google search on “bad web hosting +go Daddy”. You’ll end up with more than 1,940,000 results.
Here’s a couple of fairly recent reviews that I picked out to give you an idea of what I’m talking about:
“This host is terrible. Just search in Google for Godaddy Complaints and see for yourself how many others have complaints about them. We wanted to leave them after we heard that they outsource their support to low salary countries, which is one of the many Godaddycomplaints.” Godaddy Complaints
“This post is about another bad customer service experience I had with GoDaddy support. Every time I asked for the support expert (ha) to check to see if something had gone wrong on their end he said, “nothing has gone wrong, your site is scripted wrong.”
Even after explaining that I had not touched my site in ages and the other was install by GoDaddy… he continued to disregard any my suggestion/queries has to what might have gone wrong. In the end all I wanted was the sites up and not to point a finger…After writing this I will still keep the sites mention with them because moving the sites will be such a hassle and their prices are one of the lowest for Windows hosting.” Thuan V. Ngugen
“GoDaddy sucks… their dashboard is completely un-navigable, their shared hosting has repeated errors, their VPS hosts are so poorly configured that they can’t even run updates on themselves, their CEO murders elephants for his own amusement, and they think that a few Superbowl ads featuring Danica Patrick will somehow make us forget how bad they suck.” Evert Tipfor.us
Granted GoDaddy does have a large number of positive reviews, and they also have a huge PR budget. Actually it wouldn’t even cost that much to hire a virtual army of Amazon Turks to spam the net with phony reviews. The best place to look for real reviews is on professional forums like WordPress of Warrior, because the online pro’s see through the smoke and mirrors.
Once these Hosts’ from hell have you in their clutches, they realize that most people are stuck with them. They know it’s not easy for non-technical perople to migrate their website to another hosting company. It can be a royal pain the preverbal arse to move your website. Don’t you think it’s odd in a funny kind of way, that their terrible customer support works in their favor, making it nearly impossible for most people to move their website?
After suffering through nearly a dozen horrific Hosting companies I learned the ropes and found one company that is absolutely awesome. I actually found two, one Tiger Technologies is apparently whoGoogle’s Matt Cuts uses to host his personal blog. They are fantastic. However, because they’re geared towards more advanced users, I’d only recommend them to you know what your doing and what you want.
The Hosting Company that I recommend for everyone, is a perfect alternative to GoDaddy. You may have guessed it, I’m talking about Hostgator. From my experience they offer the best customer support I’ve ever had. I’ve even had their technicians call me on two occasions to help solve a couple sticky problems. The reson that I like them so much is that, their customer support won’t quite, or cop out until helped solve your problem. I believe that this is what a corporation should be like, for the people.
Hostgator not only helps migrate a site, they do it for you, and for free. So if you’ve been stuck withGoDaddy or any other hosting company, Hostgator makes it easy to move. The’ll do all the work for you. Now, keeping with the spirit of transparency if you use this Hostgator link to set up you account, I make a commission.
However, that’s not why I’m recommending them, it does help me continue writing, but if for some reason you find find this troubling then just use this Hostgator link instead, and I won’t make a dime. Either way you’ll be glad you did.
No matter what you decide, if you enter this coupon code gowiththebest when you sign up with Hostgator you’ll get 25% off the package that you choose. All you have to do is look for the coupon field when your setting up your account, and type in gowiththebest Its valid until January 31st 2012
I could write a book about the do’s and don’ts of Hosting but I won’t bore you any longer with my war stories. But to really help defeat SOPA and take your power back from corporations like GoDadddy, then keep keep up with the latest and join in Twitters Protest.
Iran ‘tests homegrown’ nuclear fuel rods
Sunday, January 1st, 2012 |
| The war games aim to display Iran's military capabilities amid increasing pressure over its atomic programme [Reuters] |
Iran has successfully produced and tested fuel rods for use in its nuclear power plants, state television reported.
The rods were made with uranium ore deposits mined in Iran and have been inserted into the core of Tehran's research nuclear reactor, the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation said on Sunday.
Nuclear fuel rods contain small pellets of fuel, usually low-enriched uranium, patterned to give out heat produced by nuclear reaction without melting down.
Iran said last month that it planned to insert domestically produced uranium fuel into the Tehran research reactor, which produces isotopes for medical purposes and currently runs on a nearly depleted stock of nuclear plates bought from Argentina in 1993.
"This great achievement will perplex the West, because the Western countries had counted on a possible failure of Iran to produce nuclear fuel plates," the newspaper said.
The Tehran reactor requires uranium enriched to 20 per cent, a far higher level than that needed for Iran's Russian-built nuclear power plant in Bushehr, on the Gulf coast, which uses Russian fuel that is returned when spent.
The atomic energy organisation did not specify the level of enrichment of the trial fuel rod but Iran's programme to enrich uranium to the higher level has been at the centre of growing Western concerns about the goals of its nuclear programme.
John Large, an independent nuclear consultant, told Al Jazeera the reported developments would mean that Iran "can now produce key radioactive elements" and has moved "steps forward on the nuclear path".
Arab body wants withdrawal of Syria monitors
Sunday, January 1st, 2012An advisory body to the Arab League has called for the immediate withdrawal of the group's observer mission in Syria, saying its monitors are inadvertently helping the government cover up continued violence.
The Arab Parliament, an 88-member advisory committee of delegates from each of the League's member states, said on Sunday that the violence in Syria was continuing to claim victims despite the presence of Arab League monitors.
The monitors are on a month-long mission to ensure the government of President Bashar al-Assad complies with the terms of the League's plan to end the crackdown on dissent.
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But the parliament called on the League's Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby to convene a meeting of Arab foreign ministers to adopt a resolution to withdraw the mission immediately.
"For this to happen in the presence of Arab monitors has roused the anger of Arab people and negates the purpose of sending a fact-finding mission," Ali al-Salem al-Dekbas, the Arab Parliament's chairman said.
"This is giving the Syrian regime an Arab cover for continuing its inhumane actions under the eyes and ears of the Arab League," he said.
The Arab Parliament was the first body to recommend freezing Syria's membership in the organisation in response to Assad's crackdown.
An Arab League official, commenting on the parliament's statement, told the Reuters news agency that it was too early to judge the mission's success, saying it was scheduled to remain in Syria for a month and that more monitors were on their way.
Contradictory statements
In yet another sign of cracks among the observer mission, disputes emerged on Sunday over the reported appearance of government snipers across Syria.
Activists have accused the government of posting snipers on rooftops as part of their brutal crackdown on dissent, in which government forces have also been accused of firing tear gas, stun grenades and on Friday "nail bombs".
In a video released by activists, a man wearing an orange vest with the Arab League logo said in Deraa: "There are snipers; we have seen them with our own eyes."
"We ask the authorities to remove them immediately; if they don't remove them within 24 hours there will be other measures," the unnamed speaker in the video, which was dated Friday, told a crowd of people.
But veteran Sudanese military intelligence officer General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, who is heading the observer mission, said the official seen in the video was making a hypothetical remark.
"This man said that if he saw - by his own eyes - those snipers he will report immediately," Dabi told the BBC's Newshour programme. "But he didn't see (snipers)."
Divisions within opposition
Amid the controversy, divisions within Syria’s opposition hoping to topple Assad hampered efforts towards a transitional plan for a new Syria.
The Syrian National Council (SNC), the leading opposition group in exile, on Sunday quashed reports that it signed a deal with the National Co-ordination Committee (NCC), a group whose majority is inside Syria and which had disagreed with the SNC's earlier calls for foreign intervention.
BlackRock’s Bob Doll sees hopeful signs in 2012
Sunday, January 1st, 2012It's a bittersweet way for investors to begin a new year.
On the one hand, economic news in the U.S. has been getting steadily better. This holiday shopping season is shaping up to be the best since the Great Recession; the housing market is showing signs of life and even the job market is on the mend.
Then, there's Europe. The region's leaders have failed again to convince investors that they will be able to prevent a breakup of their 17-nation currency union. Greece could still default on its debt, causing huge losses for banks in France and elsewhere that hold Greek bonds. Investors fear that could cause a financial panic to spread around the world, like what happened in 2008 after the U.S. brokerage Lehman Brothers collapsed.
In the U.S., too, there are plenty reasons for investors to be cautious. Many companies are still wary of hiring, and banks are afraid to turn on the lending spigots.
Who better to guide investors during these uncertain times than Bob Doll, who helps oversee $3.6 trillion in assets as chief investment officer at the world's biggest money manager, BlackRock.
Doll recently spoke with The Associated Press about how 2011 worked out for investors, what he's optimistic about in 2012 and what he's worried about. He's hopeful that Europe can stick to its goal of greater fiscal austerity. But he acknowledges that - like his own New Year's resolution of losing 15 pounds - enforcing the outcome is the tricky part.
Here are excerpts from the conversation, edited for clarity.
Q: How does 2011 stack up for you?
A: We entered the year hopeful. Global economies were looking better. But the tsunami disaster in Japan cast a bigger shadow on global growth than a lot of people initially thought. Then there were big political upheavals in the Middle East with the Arab Spring. Those political and social issues contributed to a rise in oil prices that didn't help the fledgling U.S. economic recovery. Then Europe kept coming back as problem. All the wild cards that showed up were on the negative side. The year started high on hopes that were dashed.
Holocaust survivors blast Nazi garb at protest
Sunday, January 1st, 2012JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli Holocaust survivors and political leaders expressed outrage Sunday over a Jerusalem demonstration in which ultra-Orthodox Jews donned Star of David patches and uniforms similar to those the Nazis forced Jews to wear during World War II.
Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews gathered Saturday night to protest what they say is a nationwide campaign directed against their lifestyle. The practices, which call for strict separation of the sexes, are rejected by mainstream Israelis as religious coercion.
Ultra-Orthodox extremists have been under fire for their attempts to ban mixing of the sexes on buses, sidewalks and other public spaces. In one city, extremists have jeered and spit at girls walking to school, saying they are dressed immodestly. These practices, albeit by a fringe sect, have unleashed a backlash against the ultra-Orthodox in general.
At Saturday's protest, children with traditional sidelocks wore the striped black-and-white uniforms associated with Nazi concentration camps. One child's hands were raised in surrender - mimicking an iconic photo of a terrified Jewish boy in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial called the use of Nazi imagery "disgraceful," and several other survivors' groups and politicians condemned the acts.
Six million Jews were killed by German Nazis and their collaborators during World War II. About 200,000 aging survivors of the Holocaust live in Israel.
It’s never been safer to fly; deaths at record low
Saturday, December 31st, 2011 AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh |
NEW YORK (AP) -- Boarding an airplane has never been safer.
The past 10 years have been the best in the country's aviation history with 153 fatalities. That's two deaths for every 100 million passengers on commercial flights, according to an Associated Press analysis of government accident data.
The improvement is remarkable. Just a decade earlier, at the time the safest, passengers were 10 times as likely to die when flying on an American plane. The risk of death was even greater during the start of the jet age, with 1,696 people dying - 133 out of every 100 million passengers - from 1962 to 1971. The figures exclude acts of terrorism.
Sitting in a pressurized, aluminum tube seven miles above the ground may never seem like the most-natural thing. But consider this: You are more likely to die driving to the airport than flying across the country. There are more than 30,000 motor-vehicle deaths each year, a mortality rate eight times greater than that in planes.
"I wouldn't say air crashes of passenger airliners are a thing of the past. They're simply a whole lot more rare than they used to be," says Todd Curtis, a former safety engineer with Boeing and director of the Airsafe.com Foundation.
The improvements came even as the industry went through a miserable financial period, losing $54.5 billion in the past decade. Just to stay afloat, airlines eliminated meals and added fees for checked luggage.
But safety remained a priority. No advertisement of tropical beaches can supplant the image of charred metal scattered across a field.
There are still some corners of the world where flying is risky. Russia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia have particularly high rates of deadly crashes. Russia had several fatal crashes in the past year, including one that killed several prominent hockey players. Africa only accounts for 3 percent of world air traffic but had 14 percent of fatal crashes.
Still, 2011 was a good year to fly. It had the second-fewest number of fatalities worldwide, according to the Flight Safety Foundation, with 507 people dying in crashes. Seven out of 28 planes in fatal crashes were on airlines already prohibited from flying into European Union because of known safety problems. (There were fewer fatalities in 2004 - 323 - but there were also fewer people flying then.)
There are a number of reasons for the improvements.
- The industry has learned from the past. New planes and engines are designed with prior mistakes in mind. Investigations of accidents have led to changes in procedures to ensure the same missteps don't occur again.
- Better sharing of information. New databases allow pilots, airlines, plane manufactures and regulators to track incidents and near misses. Computers pick up subtle trends. For instance, a particular runway might have a higher rate of aborted landings when there is fog. Regulators noticing this could improve lighting and add more time between landings.
- Safety audits by outside firms. The International Air Transport Association, an industry trade group, started an audit program in 2003. Airlines prove to the industry and each other that they have proper maintenance and safety procedures. It's also a way for airlines to seek lower insurance premiums, which have also dropped over the past 10 years.
Turkey admits mistake in deadly air strike
Thursday, December 29th, 2011 |
| Local officials said the victims may have been mistaken for Kurdistan Workers' Party fighters [AFP] |
A Turkish air raid that killed at least 35 people in a Kurdish-dominated village in the country's southeast mistakenly hit a group of smugglers rather than separatist fighters as was intended, the ruling party says.
Huseyin Celik, a spokesman for the ruling Justice and Development Party, said that those killed in the strike on Thursday "were not terrorists" and that officials are now investigating possible intelligence failures which led to the incident.
He expressed regret for the deaths and suggested that the government could compensate the victims.
"If it turns out to have been a mistake, a blunder, rest assured that this will not be covered up," he told reporters, adding that it could have been an "operational accident" by the Turkish military.
The air strike prompted a protest by about 2,000 ethnic Kurds in Istanbul, which was broken by police using tear gas and water cannon. Several hundred of the protesters had thrown stones at the police and smashed vehicles during the demonstration in the city's main Taksim square.
Ertugrul Kurkcu, a member of parliament for the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) told Al Jazeera that the air strike was an "inhuman" and "unacceptable" act, and that it was "part of the government's crackdown project on the Kurdish movement".
"What I saw today in the heart of Taksim [square] was a great rage and great hatred not only against the government but also against the society as a whole. These kind of attacks ... make it almost impossible to bring together the people of different ethnic origins, particularly the Kurds," he said.
Strike killed 'smugglers'
Local security officials said earlier on Thursday that they had found the bodies of the victims at Ortasu village in Sirnak province.
Ertan Eris, a local councillor belonging to the BPD, said that the victims were smuggling gas and sugar into Turkey from northern Iraq and may have been mistaken for Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighters.
Celik also suggested that the victims had been involved in smuggling.
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| The strike took place near the country's border with the Kurdistan area of Iraq |
A crisis centre was set up in the area following the strikes, and prosecutors and security officers have been deployed, the Sirnak provincial government said in a statement.
Turkey: Air raids kill 35 civilians
Thursday, December 29th, 2011ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Turkish warplanes aiming for suspected Kurdish rebels hiding in Iraq instead killed 35 civilians - most of whom are believed to be cigarette smugglers, a senior official said Thursday.
It was one of the largest one-day civilian death tolls incurred during Turkey's 27-year-old drive against militant Kurds seeking autonomy in the country's southeast. It also is the latest instance of violence to undermine the Turkish government's efforts to grant cultural and other rights to aggrieved Kurds.
Huseyin Celik, a spokesman for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling party, said authorities were still trying to identify the dead, but that most were youngsters from an extended family in the mostly Kurdish-populated area that borders Iraq.
"According to the initial information, these people were not terrorists but were engaged in smuggling," Celik said. All of the victims were under the age 30 and some were the sons of village guards who have aided Turkish troops in their fight against rebels, he said.
Celik suggested Turkey was ready to compensate the victims. "If there was a mistake, if there was a fault, this will not be covered up, and whatever is necessary will be done," he said.
Earlier, the Turkish military confirmed the Wednesday night raids, saying its jets struck an area of northern Iraq frequently used by rebels to enter Turkey after drones detected a group approaching the often unmarked mountainous border.
Border troops had been placed on alert following intelligence indicating that Kurdish rebels were preparing attacks in retaliation for a series of recent military assaults on the guerrillas, the military said.
New violence taints Syria mission
Thursday, December 29th, 2011
Protests have continued throughout the country to mark the monitors' visitArab League monitors overseeing compliance with a peace plan for Syria have been visiting the capital, Damascus, and other cities but killings show no sign of abating.
Activists say at least 29 people were killed by security forces on Thursday, mostly in areas where monitors are visiting, including a Damascus suburb.
The activists have called for massive street protests on Friday.
The UN says more than 5,000 civilians have died in 10 months of unrest.
The Arab League peace plan calls for a complete halt to the violence, the withdrawal of all armed forces and the release of all detainees.
However, after two days of monitoring, more questions were being asked about the head of the Arab League mission, Sudan's Gen Mustafa al-Dabi, who Amnesty International said was responsible for "torture" and "disappearances" in 1990s Sudan.
'Only God can help us'After starting in the flashpoint city of Homs on Tuesday, the Arab League monitors have moved to Idlib in the north, Deraa in the south, and Damascus.
Activists have reported violence and killings in all those areas.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least three people were killed when security forces opened fire outside a mosque in Douma, a suburb of the capital.
Monitors were arriving at the city hall there when security forces fired on "tens of thousands" of protesters outside the Grand Mosque, the UK-based group said.
It reported more deaths in other suburbs of the capital, Aarbin and Kiswah, as well as in Idlib and the central city of Hama.
Casualty figures and other information are hard to verify as most foreign media are barred from Syria.
The BBC's Jim Muir, in neighbouring Lebanon, says that far from diminishing the violence, it seems the presence of the observers may actually be causing it to increase, because of the large number of people they are attracting who are desperate to vent their grievances.
One activist in Hama told Reuters: "People really hope to get to reach them. We do not have much access to the team. The people stopped believing anything or anyone now. Only God can help us now."
Our correspondent says virtually none of the peace plan's objectives have yet been met, although Syria on Wednesday did release 755 of the 14,000 people the UN says have been detained during the uprising.
Activists have been using social media to call for massive protests on Friday - the traditional day of demonstration.
Syrian activists criticise Arab monitors
Thursday, December 29th, 2011Arab League observers in Syria are preparing to visit more cities that have been at the heart of the anti-government uprising, amid accusations by opposition activists that the mission is not doing enough to stop the violence in the country.
Monitors were working in the Damascus suburbs, Syrian state television reported, as activists said that 24 people were killed across the country on Thursday.
The observers were also due to go on to the city of Deraa, the cradle of the uprising, as well as Hama, which have experienced massive protests followed by a brutal crackdown, and Idlib, which witnessed clashes between army forces and military deserters.
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The Arab League mission got off to a controversial start when its leader, Mustafa al-Dabi, said he had seen "nothing frightening" on his first trip to Homs on Tuesday, the deadliest city in uprising.
During their second visit to the central city on Wednesday, the monitors faced angry crowds, gunfire and explosions, as fresh violence flared just a few miles away from where they were gathering accounts about the government's crackdown on dissent.
One of the monitors who spoke to Al Jazeera from Syria on the condition of anonymity said the situation in Homs is "very dangerous" and that it is under constant shelling.
He said that some areas are under the control of the so-called Free Syrian Army, a group of soldiers who defected from the regular army to side with pro-democracy protesters.
Activists sceptical
Against this backdrop of violence, some activists called the Arab League mission a farce and accused the government of President Bashar al-Assad of trying to bide time and avoid more international condemnation.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Hadi Abdullah, an activist in Homs, said that the mission experienced first hand the crackdown on protests, but he is suspicious it will report what it saw or act upon it.
"The observers saw a lot of violence in the city. They saw how security forces shoot at protests. They also saw the bodies of dead people," he said.
"The monitors also saw destruction in the city. One of the observers asked residents of Baba Amr neighbourhood ‘how can you live in this place."
Another activist, Aram al-Dumi, from Douma, told Al Jazeera that there is a lack of coordination between activist and the observers.
"The delegation is relying solely on street signs when visiting the cities, they should rely on satellite images in order to locate the areas.
"There has been reports of security forces changing the street signs, this has been the case in Douma, today we went to the grand Mosque square after a funeral procession to demonstrate and greet the observers but the army fired at us."
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| Observers plan to visit protests hubs in the country |
In Baba Amr, residents refused to allow observers in because they were accompanied by an army officer, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The standoff only ended when the officer withdrew.
"We want to fully co-operate with the mission," Abdullah, the activist, said. "But we believe the officer that was accompanying the mission was responsible for massacres in the city."
Activists also charged that the army had pulled back heavy armour from Baba Amr in advance of the monitors' visit, accusing the government of deception.
Al-Dabi, the mission head accused by activists of undermining the situation in Homs, has said the 20 observers will remain in Homs "for a long time".
Stocks rise as unemployment claims remain modest
Thursday, December 29th, 2011 AP Photo/Richard Drew |
NEW YORK (AP) -- Stocks rose Thursday morning after the government reported that the number of claims for unemployment benefits remained at a level consistent with modest job growth. Contracts to buy homes rose to the highest level in a year and a half.
The four-week average of unemployment claims fell to a three-and-a-half-year low of 375,000, an indication that hiring could pick up.
The National Association of Realtors says its index of sales agreements jumped 7.3 percent last month. The news sent stocks of home builders sharply higher. PulteGroup Inc., Lennar Corp. and Masco Corp. all rose close to 4 percent.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 75 points at 12,227 at 10 a.m. It fell nearly 140 points the day before.
The S&P 500 was up 7 points at 1,257, and is at breakeven for the year. The Nasdaq composite index rose 6 at 2,596.
Europe's debt woes weighed on currency markets. The euro fell to its lowest level against the dollar this year and a decade-low against the Japanese yen. At one point the euro's value against the dollar hit $1.28, the lowest level since September 2010.
Italy’s Monti warns of ongoing market turbulence
Thursday, December 29th, 2011 AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito |
ROME (AP) -- Italy's borrowing costs fell for a second day Thursday but the country's new premier said his government has more to do before it convinces financial markets it can manage the heavy debts that have made it the focus of the eurozone crisis.
Mario Monti said he was encouraged by the bond auctions at which the interest costs paid out by Italy to bond investors eased. He said his government of technocrats, in office for just a month and a half following the resignation of Silvio Berlusconi, was preparing a package of measures to get the Italian economy moving again, including efforts to boost competition and liberalize the labor market.
"Yesterday and today went pretty well, this is encouraging," Monti said at a news conference after the Italian treasury tapped investors for around euro7 billion ($9.2 billion). "But we absolutely don't consider the market turbulence to be over."
The amount raised, however, was less than the euro8.5 billion ($11 billion) maximum sought and contributed to ongoing weakness in the euro, which fell to a 15-month low against the dollar of $1.2866.
The most keenly awaited result from Thursday's batch of auctions was the euro2.5 billion ($3.3 billion) sale of ten-year bonds at an average yield of 6.98 percent. That's lower than the record 7.56 percent it had to pay at an equivalent auction last month, when investor concerns over the ability of the country to service its massive debts became particularly acute.
However, the country's borrowing rate on the key 10-year bond remains uncomfortably close to the 7 percent level widely considered to be unsustainable in the long run. Greece, Ireland and Portugal all had to request financial bailouts after their 10-year bond yields pushed above 7 percent. In the secondary markets, Italy's yield continues to hover around the 7 percent mark.
"Investors are still waiting for more progress on the reform front to ensure Italy can improve its muted growth and productivity performance since the adoption of the euro," said Raj Badiani, a senior economist at IHS Global Insight.
Unemployment claims rise after steady declines
Thursday, December 29th, 2011 AP Photo/Paul Sancya |
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of people seeking unemployment benefits rose last week after three weeks of decline.
Even with the gain, applications remained at a level consistent with modest hiring. And the broader trend over the past month suggests job growth could pick up further in the new year.
Weekly applications increased by 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 381,000, the Labor Department said Thursday.
The four-week average, a less volatile measure, dropped for the fourth straight week to 375,000. That's the lowest level since June 2008.
"Despite the rise in the weekly claims data, the longer-term trend ... suggests that the recovery in the labor market is maintaining its momentum," said Michael Gapen, an economist at Barclays Capital, in a note to clients.
Applications generally must fall below 375,000 - consistently - to signal that hiring is strong enough to reduce the unemployment rate.
While layoffs have fallen sharply since the recession officially ended two and a half years ago, many companies have been slow to add jobs.
Economists caution that the figures can be volatile around the holidays. The data for seven states, including California and Virginia, were estimated because of the Monday holiday, a Labor Department spokesman said. Those estimates have in the past proven reliable, the spokesman said, and haven't required major revision.
Hiring has improved in recent months. Employers have added an average of 143,000 net jobs a month from September through November. That's almost double the average for the previous three months.
Next year should be even better. A survey of 36 economists by the Associated Press this month found that they expect the economy will generate an average of about 175,000 jobs per month in 2012.
More small businesses plan to hire than at any time in three years, a trade group said earlier this month. And a separate private-sector survey found more companies are planning to add workers in the first quarter of next year than at any time since 2008.
Walker punts on 2012 question
Thursday, December 29th, 2011Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, facing a recall election, ducked the question Thursday of which Republican presidential candidate he supports.
Walker refused to get pinned down on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” but told the hosts there are three candidates he thinks could beat President Barack Obama in November. The Republican governor pointed to Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich as the three candidates who have best articulated plans to boost jobs.
Continue Reading“My hope is that there are candidates who stand up and say, ‘I’ve got a plan to get people off of the government payrolls and more on the private sector payrolls,’” Walker said.
“Certainly, Gov. Romney has private sector experience and has done that, Gov. Perry has done that in Texas,” Walker added. “Certainly, Speaker Gingrich has talked about that in the past. Which of them can break through, not only in this caucus but in the upcoming primary season, I think will be largely dependent on which makes the best case for the issue.”
When pressed to narrow down his choice to one candidate who best fit his criteria, Walker balked.
Arnold’s green road back
Thursday, December 29th, 2011Arnold Schwarzenegger, hot off a seven-year run as California governor, went underground in May after it was revealed he had fathered a child with a household employee.
The White House, which worked with him on events like Solyndra’s factory groundbreaking in 2009, cut off contact. A “world tour” to promote green policies was derailed. Polls showed that most of the support he had left among his former constituents was gone.
Continue ReadingBut in recent weeks, Schwarzenegger has begun to return to the spotlight, making public appearances at renewable energy and climate change events, advocating for green technology and touting his energy achievements in the Golden State.
“I promise you I will be your cheerleader and carry our message around the world. I will do everything in my power to make this happen,” Schwarzenegger told the American Council On Renewable Energy on Dec. 5 in Washington, D.C. “I feel as passionate about this as I did about bodybuilding, about fitness and weight training, all those things.”
Having spent six months out of the spotlight, Schwarzenegger is easing back into public life.
Besides his energy-related activities, Schwarzenegger is penning a memoir and starring in a sequel to the 2010 action flick “The Expendables,” as well as a Western.
Whether his shift back into the world of policy will ingratiate him again with the public is unclear.
Schwarzenegger — the star of Hollywood hits such as “The Terminator” and “Total Recall” — is both enigmatic and appealing, strategists say.
“The normal rules that you would apply to a politician just really have never applied to him because he’s an iconic figure beginning with sports and then entertainment and then politics,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist who worked in the White House counsel’s office during President Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky scandal.
“He’s just never been perceived — even as governor — as a politician. He was his own separate brand that transcended politics, that transcended entertainment, that was a very unique brand,” Lehane added.
Schwarzenegger was well-known in politics, inside and outside of California, for his energy and environmental efforts, including: passing a cap on greenhouse gas emissions, fostering the solar industry and mandating that utilities have energy storage capacity for when the wind doesn’t blow.
He even converted two of his Hummers to run on biofuel and hydrogen.
But any post-gubernatorial plans were postponed when news broke in May that he had fathered a child with an employee and kept it secret for more than a decade. Schwarzenegger’s wife, Maria Shriver, left him and has filed for divorce.
A June poll found that three-quarters of California voters said they viewed their former governor unfavorably, while 20 percent expressed support.
Monti: ‘Unite to save eurozone’
Thursday, December 29th, 2011
Mr Monti said Italy had "dug in its heels" to avoid a debt crisisItalian Prime Minister Mario Monti has called for a "united response" to the eurozone debt crisis, as he announced plans to get Italy out of recession.
He added that despite the two recent successful Italian bond auctions, he did not think that the phase of financial turbulence had finished.
On Thursday the government raised about 7bn euros ($8.96bn; £5.86bn) of debt.
Interest rates on Italian 10-year bonds remained high at 6.98%, a barely sustainable level.
Mr Monti, speaking at the prime minister's traditional end-of-year press conference, stressed that problems for Italy on the markets were linked to wider difficulties on the European level which required a "united, joint and convincing response" that could also boost growth.
He said his new government was working intensively on preparing a package of measures to get the Italian economy moving again. He will present details of his economic plan to EU leaders on 23 January.
The plan would focus on boosting competition and liberalising the Italian jobs market, Mr Monti said.
'Vultures circling'He said Italy had been sliding towards a debt crisis like the one seen in Greece, but had "dug in its heels" at the precipice and did not fall.
"We're not very close to Greece's situation," he said. "We were heading south-east [toward Greece] and we put on the brakes."
He added that until the government took action, "there were many vultures circling in the skies of the European and international markets".
Italy is the eurozone's third largest economy, but investors worry about its mix of low growth, high debt and spiralling borrowing costs.
It is feared the country might need a bailout like fellow eurozone members Greece, Ireland and Portugal.
Marvel wins NYC dispute over Ghost Rider rights
Thursday, December 29th, 2011NEW YORK (AP) -- Comic book publisher Marvel Entertainment owns the rights to the Ghost Rider character in the fiery form that originated in the early 1970s, a federal judge ruled Wednesday as she rejected the claims of a former Marvel writer seeking to cash in on lucrative movie rights.
U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest tossed out 4-year-old claims brought by Gary Friedrich, who said he created the motorcycle-driving Ghost Rider with the skeletal head that sometimes had fire blazing from it. A Ghost Rider of the 1950s and '60s was a Western character who rode a horse.
The judge said Friedrich gave up all ownership rights when he signed checks containing language relinquishing all rights to the predecessor companies of Marvel Entertainment LLC.
"The law is clear that when an individual endorses a check subject to a condition, he accepts that condition," the judge wrote.
Forrest said her finding made it unnecessary to "travel down the rabbit hole" to decide whether the character was created separate and apart from Marvel, whether the company hired Friedrich to create the character and whether he had thoughts about what rights he wanted to retain from the outset.
She said he also signed an agreement with Marvel in 1978 relinquishing rights in exchange for the possibility of additional future freelance work. He had worked for Marvel prior to that year as both an employee and as a freelance writer.
Telephone messages left with lawyers on both sides of the dispute were not immediately returned. Friedrich's phone number in Columbia, Illinois, was unpublished.
Forrest said Friedrich began seeking legal representation when he realized about a dozen years ago that there were plans for new uses of the Ghost Rider character, including in movies. In April 2004, his lawyers began asserting rights to try to get him a financial cut of the first of two motion pictures. They failed.
In 2007, when the film "Ghost Rider" starring actor Nicolas Cage as stunt motorcyclist Johnny Blaze came out, Friedrich sued Marvel in East St. Louis, Illinois, seeking to assert his rights and gain compensation for use of the character in movies, video games, toys and promotional products.
The lawsuit was moved to New York. The movie credited Marvel as the author of the Ghost Rider characters and story. A movie sequel, "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance," is scheduled to be released in February.
Romney’s ride stays remarkably smooth in GOP race
Thursday, December 29th, 2011 AP Photo/Chris Carlson |
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Regardless of whether Mitt Romney wins the Iowa Republican caucus Tuesday, he has enjoyed a remarkably easy presidential race so far.
When his rivals have stopped battering each other long enough to criticize him, they've often done so tentatively and ham-handedly. Romney's injury-free journey is all the more surprising because, despite some obvious campaign skills, he has well-known vulnerabilities ripe for attack.
The turn of events has astonished campaign pros in both parties, who expected Romney to be more bloodied. And it has dismayed President Barack Obama's allies, who assumed Republicans would at least soften up the man they viewed as the likeliest nominee from the start.
"By all rights, Romney should have spent the last six months with a target painted on his back," said Dan Schnur, a former GOP adviser who teaches politics at the University of Southern California. "But he has been able to keep his head low," Schnur said, while a series of rivals have taken turns quarreling, surging and falling.
New polls show Romney heading into Tuesday's caucus as the front-runner in a state that seems ill-suited to his background, and which snubbed him four years ago. The Iowa Republican caucus is usually dominated by evangelical voters, home-schoolers and other social conservatives. Yet his rivals have done little here to turn those dynamics against Romney, a Mormon who supported legalized abortion and mandatory health insurance as governor of liberal Massachusetts.
Romney began this year's campaign de-emphasizing Iowa. But his rivals' inability to produce a clear leader has opened a possible path for him to seize the prize.
A Romney win in Iowa, which is far from certain, would make him the clear favorite to win the nomination. Next up is the Jan. 10 primary in New Hampshire. Romney has a second home there, and the GOP voters' greater emphasis on financial matters is better suited to his politics.
Romney's luck stems largely from his opponents' early conclusion that he had enough money and experience to go deep into the nominating contest, and only one viable alternative could emerge. They've been competing for that spot, and attacking each other, ever since.
"If you have modest resources, you're going to spend your time differentiating yourself from the rest of the non-Romney crowd," said GOP lobbyist and strategist Mike McKenna.
Campaign attack ads in Iowa underscore the point. When former House Speaker Newt Gingrich surged in polls earlier this month, he was quickly pilloried by TV ads and mailings financed by groups associated with Romney, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas.
In two weeks in Iowa, a PAC that supports Romney dumped $2.6 million into the effort, according to records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. Having little money to respond, Gingrich has plummeted in the polls.
A far smaller sum was spent on anti-Romney ads, mostly by a pro-Obama group trying to fill the vacuum.
Campaign veterans say Perry had the best chance to establish himself early as the Romney alternative. That could have positioned him to hammer away at his Massachusetts rival. A proven fundraiser with 10 years as Texas governor, Perry rocketed to the top of GOP polls when he announced his candidacy in mid-August.
Bugs may be resistant to genetically modified corn
Wednesday, December 28th, 2011 AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli |
One of the nation's most widely planted crops - a genetically engineered corn plant that makes its own insecticide - may be losing its effectiveness because a major pest appears to be developing resistance more quickly than scientists expected.
The U.S. food supply is not in any immediate danger because the problem remains isolated. But scientists fear potentially risky farming practices could be blunting the hybrid's sophisticated weaponry.
When it was introduced in 2003, so-called Bt corn seemed like the answer to farmers' dreams: It would allow growers to bring in bountiful harvests using fewer chemicals because the corn naturally produces a toxin that poisons western corn rootworms. The hybrid was such a swift success that it and similar varieties now account for 65 percent of all U.S. corn acres - grain that ends up in thousands of everyday foods such as cereal, sweeteners and cooking oil.
But over the last few summers, rootworms have feasted on the roots of Bt corn in parts of four Midwestern states, suggesting that some of the insects are becoming resistant to the crop's pest-fighting powers.
Scientists say the problem could be partly the result of farmers who've planted Bt corn year after year in the same fields.
Most farmers rotate corn with other crops in a practice long used to curb the spread of pests, but some have abandoned rotation because they need extra grain for livestock or because they have grain contracts with ethanol producers. Other farmers have eschewed the practice to cash in on high corn prices, which hit a record in June.
"Right now, quite frankly, it's very profitable to grow corn," said Michael Gray, a University of Illinois crop sciences professor who's tracking Bt corn damage in that state.
A scientist recently sounded an alarm throughout the biotech industry when he published findings concluding that rootworms in a handful of Bt cornfields in Iowa had evolved an ability to survive the corn's formidable defenses.
Similar crop damage has been seen in parts of Illinois, Minnesota and Nebraska, but researchers are still investigating whether rootworms capable of surviving the Bt toxin were the cause.
University of Minnesota entomologist Kenneth Ostlie said the severity of rootworm damage to Bt fields in Minnesota has eased since the problem surfaced in 2009. Yet reports of damage have become more widespread, and he fears resistance could be spreading undetected because the damage rootworms inflict often isn't apparent.
Without strong winds, wet soil or both, plants can be damaged at the roots but remain upright, concealing the problem. He said the damage he observed in Minnesota came to light only because storms in 2009 toppled corn plants with damaged roots.
"The analogy I often use with growers is that we're looking at an iceberg and all we see is the tip of the problem," Ostlie said. "And it's a little bit like looking at an iceberg through fog because the only time we know we have a problem is when we get the right weather conditions."
Seed maker Monsanto Co. created the Bt strain by splicing a gene from a common soil organism called Bacillus thuringiensis into the plant. The natural insecticide it makes is considered harmless to people and livestock.
Scientists always expected rootworms to develop some resistance to the toxin produced by that gene. But the worrisome signs of possible resistance have emerged sooner than many expected.
The Environmental Protection Agency recently chided Monsanto, declaring in a Nov. 22 report that it wasn't doing enough to monitor suspected resistance among rootworm populations. The report urged a tougher approach, including expanding monitoring efforts to a total of seven states, including Colorado, South Dakota and Wisconsin. The agency also wanted to ensure farmers in areas of concern begin using insecticides and other methods to combat possible resistance.
NASA probes to arrive at the moon over New Year’s
Wednesday, December 28th, 2011 AP Photo/NASA |
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The New Year's countdown to the moon has begun.
NASA said Wednesday that its twin spacecraft were on course to arrive back-to-back at the moon after a 3 1/2-month journey.
"We're on our way there," said project manager David Lehman of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $496 million mission.
The Grail probes - short for Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory - won't land on the lunar surface. Instead, they were poised to slip into orbit to study the uneven lunar gravity field.
Grail-A was scheduled to arrive on New Year's Eve, followed by Grail-B on New Year's Day.
Lehman said team members won't celebrate until both probes are safely in orbit.
It's been a long voyage for the near-identical Grail spacecraft, which traveled more than 2.5 million miles since launching in September. Though the moon is relatively close at about 250,000 miles away, Grail took a roundabout way to save on costs by launching on a small rocket.
Once at the moon, the probes will spend the next two months tweaking their positions before they start collecting data in March. The pair will fly in formation at an altitude of 34 miles above the surface, with an average separation of 124 miles.
The mission's chief scientist, Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said many aspects of the moon remain a mystery despite being well studied.
All I want for Christmas is Mariah and Justin
Thursday, December 22nd, 2011
I really agree with the one who said their favourite version of this song was the one in “Love Actually,” even though the competition is broad. (more…)
All the Companies Supporting SOPA, the Awful Internet Censorship Law–and How to Contact Them (Sam Biddle/Gizmodo)
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011
Who's officially on the record backing what could be the worst thing to ever happen to the internet? All of these companies listed below. Don't take our word for it—this list comes straight from Congress. Just FYI.
If you want to get in touch, we've provided a contact list below. Maybe you want to let them know how you feel about SOPA.
SOPA Supporters
60 Plus Association: info@60plus.org
ABC: http://abc.go.com/site/contact-us
Alliance for Safe Online Pharmacies (ASOP): 703-539-ASOP (2767)
American Federation of Musicians (AFM): presoffice@afm.org
American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA): (212) 532-0800
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP): atoczylowski@ascap.com
Americans for Tax Reform: ideas@atr.org
Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States: iatsepac@iatse-intl.org
Association of American Publishers (AAP): asporkin@publishers.org
Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies: bob@mcconnell.net
Association of Talent Agents (ATA): rnoval@agentassociation.com
Baker & Hostetler LLP: dholcombe@bakerlaw.com or rokada@bakerlaw.com
Beachbody, LLC: http://beachbody.custhelp.com/app/ask
BMI: newyork@bmi.com
BMG Chrysalis: info@bmg.com
Capitol Records Nashville: ann.inman@emimusic.com and brent.jones@emimusic.com
CBS: http://www.bctd.org/Contact-Us.aspx
Cengage Learning: (800) 354-9706
Christian Music Trade Association: 615-242-0303
Church Music Publishers' Association: (615) 791-0273
Coalition Against Online Video Piracy (CAOVP): (212) 485-3452
Comcast/NBCUniversal: info@comcast.com
Concerned Women for America (CWA): (202) 488-7000
Congressional Fire Services Institute: update@cfsi.org
Copyhype: http://www.copyhype.com/contact/
Copyright Alliance: info@copyrightalliance.org
Coty, Inc.: http://www.coty.com/#/contact_us
Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB): (703) 276-0100
Council of State Governments: membership@csg.org
Country Music Association: communications@CMAworld.com
Country Music Television: info@cmt.com
Covington & Burling LLP: http://www.cov.com/contactus/
Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard LLP: info@cdas.com
Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, P.C.: law@cll.com
Davis Wright Tremaine LLP: davebaca@dwt.com
Directors Guild of America (DGA): (310) 289-2000 or (800) 421-4173
Disney Publishing Worldwide, Inc.: (212) 633-4400
Elsevier: T.Reller@elsevier.com
EMI Christian Music Group: (615) 371-4300
EMI Music Publishing: (212) 492-1200
ESPN: http://espn.go.com/espn/contact?lang=EN&country=united%20states
Estée Lauder Companies: (212) 572-4200
Fraternal Order of Police (FOP): pyoes@fop.net
Go Daddy: (480) 505-8800
Gospel Music Association: service@gospelmusic.org
Graphic Artists Guild: president@gag.org
Hachette Book Group: http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/customer_contact-us.aspx
HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide: feedback2@harpercollins.com or (212) 207-7000
Hyperion: http://www.hyperionbooks.com/contact-us/
Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA): http://www.ifta-online.org/contact
International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees: See Artists and Allied Crafts
International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC): iacc@iacc.org
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW): (202) 833-7000
International Brotherhood of Teamsters: http://www.teamster.org/content/contact-us
International Trademark Association (INTA): customerservice@inta.org or
communications@inta.org
International Union of Police Associations: iupa@iupa.org
Irell & Manella LLP: info@irell.com
Jenner & Block LLP: (312) 222-9350
Kelley Drye & Warren LLP: http://www.kelleydrye.com/contacts/index
Kendall Brill & Klieger LLP: (310) 556-2700
Kinsella Weitzman Iser Kump & Aldisert LLP: info@kwikalaw.com
L'Oreal: (212) 818-1500
Lathrop & Gage LLP: http://www.lathropgage.com/contact.html
Loeb & Loeb LLP: http://www.loeb.com/Firm/Contact/
Lost Highway Records: (615) 524-7500
Macmillan: (646) 307-5151
Major County Sheriffs: jrwolfinger@mcsheriffs.com
Major League Baseball: http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/help/contact_us.jsp
Majority City Chiefs: dstephens@carolina.rr.com
Marvel Entertainment: (212) 576-4000
MasterCard Worldwide: (800) 622-7747
MCA Records: communications@umusic.com
McGraw-Hill Education: customer.service@mcgraw-hill.com
Minor League Baseball (MiLB): customerservice@website.milb.com or
webmaster@minorleaguebaseball.com
Minority Media & Telecom Council (MMTC): info@mmtconline.org
Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP: http://www.msk.com/contact/
Morrison & Foerster LLP: eking@mofo.com
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA): contactus@mpaa.org
Moving Picture Technicians: See Artists and Allied Crafts
MPA – The Association of Magazine Media: mpa@magazine.org
National Association of Manufacturers (NAM): manufacturing@nam.org
National Association of Prosecutor Coordinators: (518) 432-1100
National Association of State Chief Information Officers: svaughn@AMRms.com
National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA): webmaster@ncta.com
National Center for Victims of Crime: http://www.ncvc.org/ncvc/main.aspx?
dbID=DB_Contact764
National Crime Justice Association: info@ncja.org
National District Attorneys Association: (703) 549-9222
National Domestic Preparedness Coalition: info@ndpci.us
National Football League: http://www.nfl.com/contact-us
National Governors Association, Economic Development and Commerce Committee:
webmaster@nga.org
National League of Cities: http://www.nlc.org/about-nlc/contact-nlc
National Narcotics Offers' Associations' Coalition: rmsloan626@verizon.net or http://www.natlnarc.org/default.aspx?page=1011
National Sheriffs' Association (NSA): http://sheriffs.org/content/contact-us
National Songwriters Association: http://members.nashvillesongwriters.com/
webform.php?ViewForm=1
National Troopers Coalition: info@ntctroopers.com
News Corporation: web.queries@computershare.com
Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP: http://www.pbwt.com/contact/
Pearson Education: http://www.pearsoned.com/contacts
Penguin Group (USA), Inc.: ecommerce@us.penguingroup.com
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America: newsroom@phrma.org
Phillips Nizer, LLP: http://www.phillipsnizer.com/about/contact.cfm
Pfizer, Inc.: https://www.pfizer.com/contact/mail_general.jsp
Proskauer Rose LLP: info@proskauer.com
Provident Music Group: (615) 261-6500
Random House: ecustomerservice@randomhouse.com
Raulet Property Partners: http://www.raulet.com/HTM%20Stuff/ContactUs.htm
Revlon: http://www.revlon.com/Revlon-Home/Revlon-General/Contact.aspx
Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi LLP: http://www.rkmc.com/Contact.aspx
Scholastic, Inc.: http://scholastic.custhelp.com/app/ask
Screen Actors Guild (SAG): saginfo@sag.org
Shearman & Sterling LLP: website.administration@shearman.com
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP: (212) 455-2000
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP: info@skadden.com
Sony/ATV Music Publishing: info@sonyatv.com
Sony Music Entertainment: http://hub.sonymusic.com/about/feedback.php or http://
www.sonyatv.com/index.php/contact
Sony Music Nashville: http://www.sonyatv.com/index.php/contact
State International Development Organization (SIDO): sido@csg.org
The National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO): nato@natodc.com
The Perseus Books Groups: (800) 343-4499
The United States Conference of Mayors: info@usmayors.org
Tiffany & Co.: http://press.tiffany.com/Customer/Request/ContactUs.aspx
Time Warner: https://www.timewarnercable.com/SoCal/about/contactus.ashx
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC): info@ufc.com
UMG Publishing Group Nashville: (615) 340-5400
United States Chamber of Commerce: http://www.uschamber.com/about/contact/submit-
question
United States Tennis Association: https://forms.usta.com/usta/form325815541/
secure_index.html or memberservices@usta.com
Universal Music: communications@umusic.com
Universal Music Publishing Group: umpg.newmedia@umusic.com
Viacom: http://www.viacom.com/contact/Pages/default.aspx
Visa, Inc.: https://corporate.visa.com/utility/contactus.jsp
W.W. Norton & Company: (212) 354-5500
Warner Music Group: http://www.wmg.com/contact
Warner Music Nashville: http://www.warnermusicnashville.com/contact
White & Case LLP: http://www.whitecase.com/ContactUs.aspx
Wolters Kluewer Health: customerservice@lww.com
Word Entertainment: wordtech@wbr.com
[US House of Representatives via Reddit]
The End of the Chinese Dream – by Christina Larson
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011As China's economy continues to trend downward, Beijing's elites are sparking a new, palpable frustration in the general population.
BY CHRISTINA LARSON | DECEMBER 21, 2011
BEIJING – In June, a Chinese friend of mine who grew up in the northern industrial city of Shenyang and recently graduated from university moved to Beijing to follow his dream -- working for a media company. He has a full-time job, but the entry-level pay isn't great and it's tough to make ends meet. When we had lunch recently, he brought up his housing situation, which he described as "not ideal." He was living in a three-bedroom apartment split by seven people, near the Fourth Ring Road -- the outer orbit of the city. Five of his roommates were young women who went to work each night at 11 p.m. and returned around 4 a.m. "They say they are working the overnight shift at Tesco," the British retailer, but he was dubious. One night he saw them entering a KTV Club wearing lots of makeup and "skirts much shorter than my boxers" and, tellingly, proceeding through the employee entrance. "So they are prostitutes," he concluded. "I feel a little uncomfortable."
But when he tallied his monthly expenses and considered his lack of special connections, or g, in the city, either to help boost his paycheck or to find more comfortable but not more expensive housing, he figured he'd stick out the grim living situation. "I have come here to be a journalist -- it is my goal, and I do not want to go back now. But it seems like it's harder than it used to be."
When I asked how his colleagues and former classmates were getting along, he thought about it for a moment and then replied that some were basically in the same lot as him, "but many of my friends have parents in Beijing, and they can save money to live with them. If your family is already established here, it helps a lot." After a moment, he added: "And some of them have rich parents who have already bought them their own apartments -- and cars."
Despite China's astonishing economic growth, it has gotten harder for people like my friend to get by in the big city. His is not a particularly lucrative profession. Like many in Beijing, he cannot count on his annual pay to keep pace with China's official rates of inflation -- which many economists suspect are lowballed anyway. (The consumer-price-index inflation rate is considered so sensitive that the State Council approves it before it is released publicly.) Even so, every month this year consumer-price-index inflation has exceeded the official average monthly target of 4 percent. Last month state media hailed it as good news that it was, officially, just 4.2 percent.
Anyone in Beijing can point to examples of friends who see rents hiked 10 percent or more in one year. The prices at restaurants keep going up, even as portions are getting noticeably smaller. Throw in the loss of intangibles that money can't buy -- like air quality and food safety -- and you begin to understand the grumbling among some of Beijing's non-wealthy folks that their standard of living seems to be diminishing, even as the national GDP surges ahead at a heady 9 percent.
Could it possibly be true that a swath of people in China's big cities is mobile, if one compared wages with living expenses? I asked Patrick Chovanec, an associate professor at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management in Beijing. Alas, he told me, it's difficult to find much clarification in China's famously fudgeable official statistics. (For instance, the official unemployment rate only includes individuals with urban , or permanent residency permits -- which excludes the most economically vulnerable.) Still, he noted: "If you perceive that you're losing buying power -- or have rising but unmet expectations -- that's when people get upset.… And this country, for a country growing at over 9 percent, is in a foul mood."
Indeed, there is a palpable sense of frustration in Beijing, especially compared with the last time I lived here in 2008. You can see it on the dour faces on the metro, hear it in raspy voices at dinner conversations, and especially sense it in the new gruffness of taxi drivers, who no longer think ferrying people around town for 10 yuan, about $1.60, is such a good deal for them (their base fare hasn't been raised). Still, it's hard to rage against abstractions. It's a lot easier to fume at obnoxious people.
No wonder, then, that in 2011 the Chinese media and Sina Weibo (China's version of Twitter) buzzed nearly every month with salacious reports of China's Paris Hilton-types -- the sons and daughters of the wealthy and political elite, dangling opulent accessories and impoverished judgment -- behaving badly in BMWs and Audis and typically expecting to get away with it, to boot.
The year began with the trial of Li Qiming, a university student in Hebei province who in October 2010 was drunk-driving and slammed into two other college students out skating, killing one of them. When he saw what had happened, he tried to speed away, but the campus guard stopped his vehicle. When questioned, the first thing he is widely reported to have blurted out was, "My father is Li Gang." Li Gang is the district's deputy police chief.
Then there was 15-year-old Li Tianyi, the son of a high-ranking army official, who had no license when he got behind the wheel of a BMW in September. While carousing the streets of Beijing, he grew frustrated when another car was blocking his path. He reportedly got out of the car and assaulted the other driver while either he or a friend shouted, "Who will dare call the police?" Behind his car's windshield was a temporary driving pass for the Great Hall of the People, China's parliament building.
And earlier this month, a student at Beijing Film Academy got into a fight over where he could park his Audi, the telltale car of choice of Chinese officials. After a brawl in the parking lot, a cleaner, a 43-year-old migrant worker from nearby Hebei province, was taken to a hospital, where he died.
Perhaps the closest female equivalent was the lightning-rod saga of Guo "Meimei," a petite 20-year-old with a heart-shaped face and big brown eyes who took to posting photos of herself driving her "little horse" (a white Maserati) and her "little bull" (an orange Lamborghini) on her Weibo microblog. On her account, she claimed to be a general manager at the Red Cross of China, one of the country's largest and most politically connected charities. Her luxury goods, not to mention horrible judgment, were widely taken by readers as signs of corruption at the charity. (In the months following the scandal, which reached its zenith in June, donations to the charity dropped off precipitously). Later, it came out that she held no such position and was rumored instead to be either a mistress or relative of someone at the Red Cross.
The anger in China at such dilettantes misbehaving runs deeper than, say, America's love-hate relationship with Lindsay Lohan. As Michael Anti, a popular Chinese blogger and political commentator, told me, "The rich are becoming a dynasty." Now people in China recognize that "you get your position not by degree or hard work, but by your daddy." Anti added that though corruption and guanxi are hardly new concepts in China, there was previously a greater belief in social mobility through merit. "Before, university was a channel to help you to ruling class. Now the ruling class just promote themselves."
Iraq’s Maliki urges Kurds to hand over VP
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's prime minister, has called on authorities in the autonomous Kurdish region to hand over Tariq al-Hashimi, the country's vice president who is wanted on allegations of running a death squad.
"We call for the government of the Kurdistan region to take its responsibility and hand over Hashimi to the justice system," Maliki told a news conference in Baghdad on Wednesday. "We do not accept any interference in Iraqi justice."
Maliki also rejected Hashimi's calls for Arab League representatives to monitor the investigation and any questioning, telling reporters, "This is a criminal case, and there is no need for the Arab League and the world to have a role in this".
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| Follow in-depth coverage of the nation in flux |
Officials issued the warrant for Hashimi's arrest on Monday, after earlier banning him from leaving the country. The accusations date back to the height of the war in 2006 and 2007, when neighbours turned on neighbours and whole sections of Baghdad were divided along sectarian lines.
Hashimi has rejected the charges against him, while the US has urged calm in a row that has raised questions about the stability of the country and reignited sectarian tensions just days after the final withdrawal of US troops.
Joe Biden, the US vice president, who visited Iraq earlier this month ahead of the pullout, said the US was monitoring conditions in Iraq closely and remained committed to a long-term strategic partnership.
"The vice president also stressed the urgent need for the prime minister and the leaders of the other major blocs to meet and work through their differences together," the White House said in a statement.
The latest intrigue has raised suspicions that Maliki, a Shia, ordered the arrest of the vice president as part of a campaign to consolidate his hold on power.
Northern safe haven
Kurdish leaders have been trying to work out a solution, sheltering Hashimi from arrest in their semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq.
It is unlikely they will agree to hand over the vice president, said Al Jazeera's Omar al-Saleh, reporting from the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
"Kurdish officials in the region said that they will never hand the vice president back to Baghdad because, as things stand now, he is a suspect and he's not convicted of any crime. And he came in his capacity as vice president of this country, so he is a guest in other words," our correspondent said.
Stocks end mixed; Oracle miss drags down tech
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 AP Photo/Richard Drew |
Technology stocks fell Wednesday, dragged down by a weak earnings report from the business software maker Oracle Corp.
Broad market indexes were flat. The Dow Jones industrial average eked out a gain of 4 points after having been down 104 points at midday.
Technology stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 2 percent. Oracle plunged 12 percent after the business software company said it was struggling to close deals.
The rare earnings miss by Oracle seemed to reinforce worries that businesses and the government may cut back on technology spending. Especially worrying was a weak 2 percent gain in new software licenses, a key sign of demand from other businesses. Oracle had predicted gains of as much as 16 percent.
Those worries hurt other big technology companies. IBM Corp. was by far the biggest loser in the Dow, falling 3.1 percent to $181.47. A bright spot was the BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd., which jumped 10 percent to $13.78 on rumors that it might be a takeover target.
Investors also had more to worry about from Europe. New data showed extensive lending from the European Central Bank to European banks. The initial reaction to the $639 billion in lending by the ECB was positive, but then worry set in that Europe's banks needed so much help in the first place.
"Long-term, people were a little bit concerned that banks needed more money than we thought they did," said Joe Bell, a senior equity analyst with Schaeffer's Investment Research.
The Dow edged up 4.16 points, less than 0.1 percent, to close at 12,107.74. On Tuesday the Dow jumped 337 - its biggest gain this month - on a strong bond sale in Spain and a surge in new home construction in the U.S.
The Standard & Poor's 500 rose 2.42 points, or 0.2 percent, to 1,243.72. Outside of the 2 percent decline for technology companies, prices rose or were flat in the rest of the S&P 500's 10 sectors.
No votes, but things seem to be going Romney’s way
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 AP Photo/Charles Krupa |
KEENE, N.H. (AP) -- The stars may be aligning for Mitt Romney - and at just the right time.
Four years after his failed White House bid, the former Massachusetts governor's strategy in the 2012 Republican presidential race has long been premised on a respectable finish in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses followed by a decisive New Hampshire victory to drive momentum heading into South Carolina, Florida and beyond.
To be sure, no one has voted yet. The outcome in Iowa will shape the race, the contest has been mercurial and Romney still faces hurdles, not the least of which is his failure to become the chosen one in GOP circles after running for president for the better part of five years.
Still, his preferred scenario is looking more plausible now, thanks to Ron Paul's helpful ascent, Newt Gingrich's slide and fractures among conservatives who have not rallied behind an alternative to Romney. There's a growing sense inside and outside of Romney's campaign that his path to the nomination is clearer than it has been in weeks.
"Barring a tornado, things are starting to line up for Romney at the right time," said Dave Roederer, an unaligned Republican who served as Sen. John McCain's Iowa campaign chairman in 2008.
Indeed, with voting set to begin in just 12 days, polling suggests that the latest candidate to challenge Romney's place atop the field, Gingrich, is slipping in Iowa and elsewhere under the weight of negative advertising fueled by Romney allies and other campaigns. And Romney has begun to display a confidence of sorts as he expands what is already a mammoth political machine in early voting states and other places across the country.
Perhaps illustrating his newfound optimism after weeks of concern inside his campaign, Romney went after Gingrich in uncharacteristically sharp language Wednesday for complaining of repeated attack ads.
"If you can't stand the relatively modest heat in the kitchen right now, wait until Obama's Hell's Kitchen shows up," Romney told supporters in Keene, the first stop in a multi-day bus tour showcasing his growing bench of New Hampshire political backers.
Among them: two of the three Republicans in the state's congressional delegation as well as former Sen. Judd Gregg and former Gov. John H. Sununu. More than 100 current and former elected officials are backing Romney in New Hampshire.
In a later campaign stop in the state's largest city, Gingrich shot back, shortly after having announced the support of state House speaker Bill O'Brien, who declared that Romney was taking New Hampshire for granted.
"If he wants to test the heat, I'll meet him anywhere in Iowa next week," Gingrich said. "If he wants to try out the kitchen, I'll be glad to debate him anywhere. We'll bring his ads and he can defend them."
Political observers suggest that even if Romney doesn't win Iowa - which has never warmed to him, and dealt him a blow in 2008 - he's on safer ground in New Hampshire's Jan. 10 primary.
Newt courts Iowa with judicial rants
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011Newt Gingrich, scrambling to regain ground in Iowa, has worked to keep his crusade against federal judges alive — talking up the issue for the fourth straight day in an appearance on “The O’Reilly Factor” on Tuesday night.
In a field of judicial-branch haters, Newt Gingrich has become the courts’ loudest and fiercest critic — a distinction that has angered some establishment Republicans but is playing well in socially conservative Iowa, a state with a well-known disdain for activist judges.
Continue ReadingGingrich received a robust response to a lengthy tirade against courts in last week’s debate in Sioux City, Iowa, and since then has gone full-speed ahead with his anti-judge rhetoric. He doubled down on his critiques on a Saturday conference call, and in a Sunday appearance on “Face the Nation,” in which he suggested sending U.S. marshals to arrest certain judges and haul them before Congress to explain their positions. He kept going when he hit the trail on Monday, telling Iowa voters why he thinks judges are overstepping their bounds. He fended off critiques on his stance in a Tuesday interview from Iowa with Bill O’Reilly.
Gingrich’s suggestions for reining in the judiciary have drawn fire from his fellow candidates, including Rick Perry, who has urged imposing term limits on judges but said Gingrich’s ideas were a bridge too far.
“Just because Congress doesn’t agree with a ruling, I don’t agree that you snatch them up and bring ’em up in front of Congress,” Perry told The Wall Street Journal this week.
Mitt Romney also expressed uneasiness with Gingrich’s proposals to the Journal. They would, Romney said, “change the very constitutional rule-of-law basis of our nation, and, by the way, encourage enterprises of all kinds to see America without the rule of law and not worthy of investment.”
In provoking his rivals, Gingrich might have established himself as the most conservative candidate when it comes to the courts, a title that can help him in Iowa, where a PPP poll released earlier this week found support for his candidacy slipping. Iowa ousted three of its own state Supreme Court judges in 2010 after they ruled in favor of gay marriage — an effort Gingrich helped secure financial backing for — and many conservatives there are cheering on his latest anti-court offensive.
France ponders removing recalled breast implants
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 AP Photo/Michel Euler |
PARIS (AP) -- Emmanuelle Maria's breasts were burning and globules of silicone gel were protruding into her armpits. Her implants had ruptured. Yet her doctors, she says, told her nothing was wrong.
Now she and a group of leading plastic surgeons want the French government to tell 30,000 women to get their implants removed - at the state's expense.
Prompted by the calls, French health authorities are considering an unprecedented move: recommending that all women with the now-banned breast implants undergo surgery to remove them. Investigators say the implants were made with cheap industrial silicone whose medical dangers remain unclear.
Governments around Europe are awaiting France's decision Friday. Tens of thousands more women in Britain, Italy, Spain and other European nations are walking around with the same implants, made by the now-defunct French company Poly Implant Prothese, or PIP.
The main concern in France is the risk of rupture, as well as uncertainty over what risks the suspected industrial silicone gel could pose when it leaks inside the body. Of the more than 30,000 women who have the implants, more than 1,000 have suffered ruptures, according to the French health safety agency AFSSAPS.
Eight cases of cancer among women with the implants, including one who died in November, have heightened pressure on the government to act, and Friday's decision will depend partly on guidance from the French National Cancer Institute.
The implants in question were not sold in the United States, where concerns about silicone gel implants overall led to a 14-year ban on their use. Silicone implants were brought back on the market in 2006 after research ruled out cancer, lupus and some other concerns.
All implants - not just this brand - have a risk of rupture. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommends regular MRI checks for ruptures and French health officials also recommend regular screening.
PIP implants were taken off the market last year after French authorities discovered the company misreported the type of silicone used.
British health officials say they see no reason so far to have the French-made implants systematically removed, and have said there is not enough evidence of a link between silicone implants and cancer. Italy's Health Ministry is holding a meeting Thursday to discuss the French-made implants.
Boxer Mayweather gets 90 jail days in Vegas case
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 AP Photo/Julie Jacobson |
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. was sentenced Wednesday to 90 days in a Las Vegas jail after pleading guilty to a reduced battery domestic violence charge and no contest to two harassment charges.
The 34-year-old Mayweather also was ordered to complete 100 hours of community service and pay a $2,500 fine.
The plea deal avoids trial on felony allegations that the undefeated prizefighter hit his ex-girlfriend and threatened two of their children during an argument at her home in September 2010.
Prosecutor Lisa Luzaich told Justice of the Peace Melissa Saragosa that Mayweather has been in trouble before and hasn't been punished.
"He just continually gets himself into trouble and he is able to get himself out of it as well," she said. "Essentially it is because he is who he is and is able to get away with everything."
"The only thing that's going to get this man's attention is incarceration," the prosecutor said.
Mayweather stood still in a striped olive vest and showed no reaction when the judge imposed the sentence and told him he must report to the Clark County jail on Jan. 6.
Mayweather's lawyer, Karen Winckler, said she may appeal what she called an unusual sentence.
Mayweather would likely serve most of the 90-day sentence, but could serve several weeks less if he gets credit for good behavior, said Officer Bill Cassell, a Las Vegas police spokesman.
Mayweather and his manager, Leonard Ellerbe, declined comment outside the courtroom.
Winckler had argued that the public would benefit more if Mayweather performs 100 hours of community service with children.
Many Americans brace for loss of payroll tax cut
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 AP Photo/Mark Lennihan |
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Some say they'll spend less on groceries. Others expect to cut back on travel. For many, there would be fewer meals out.
Across the country, Americans are bracing for another financial hardship: smaller paychecks starting in January, if Congress doesn't break a deadlock and renew a Social Security tax cut.
The tax cut, which took effect this year, benefits 160 million Americans - $1,000 a year, or nearly $20 a week, for someone making $50,000, as much as $4,272 or $82 a week for a household with two high-paid workers.
The tax cut is set to expire Jan. 1. If lawmakers don't renew it for 2012, analysts say the economy would slow as individuals and families looked for ways to spend less.
"Of course, it changes my plans," said Craig Duffy, an information-technology worker from Philadelphia and new father of twins. Duffy said his family already has tightened spending, so "we'll have to find a way to cut back."
That might mean canceling a planned trip to visit the twins' grandparents in Wisconsin, Duffy said.
The tax cut is part of legislation that would also renew benefits for the long-term unemployed. If the unemployment benefits aren't renewed, starting in January nearly 6 million people would lose weekly checks averaging about $300 - the main source of income for most of them.
House Republicans have rejected a Senate-passed bill that would extend the payroll tax cut for two months and let the long-term unemployed continue to receive benefits during that time. That plan would give lawmakers time to work on a yearlong extension.
But most lawmakers have left Washington, and no negotiations are scheduled before the year ends.
If Congress doesn't renew the two measures for 2012, analysts say the economy's growth would slow by as much as 1 percentage point.
Less money in paychecks means less consumer spending, which powers the U.S. economy. Many people who say they already depend on each paycheck for living expenses say they can't cut spending deeply. Instead, they'll trim at the edges, wherever they can.
"It will limit my spending from week to week," said Jennifer Stempel, an office manager from Denver.
Stempel said that could mean making fewer impulse buys at the grocery store, packing her lunch each day and rejoining a carpool she quit after gas prices declined this year.
"I was starting to relax about (travel expenses), but now I don't know," Stempel said.
Michael Allara of Raleigh, N.C., said a higher tax would further pressure his family, which includes three small children.
"I'm already trying to save as much as I can to pay for college," Allara said. "I don't know where the money would come from."
The tax cut lowered the Social Security tax on incomes of up to $106,800 from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. It's meant a maximum savings of $2,136 for an individual.
Without a deal, Americans would begin 2012 facing a tax increase just as an election year begins.
Smaller paychecks and reduced spending would coincide with a still-vulnerable period for the U.S. economy. Though growth has strengthened in the final months of 2011, some analysts say the gains might be hard to sustain. Workers' pay isn't rising much. And Europe may be on the verge of a recession that would undermine the American economy.
"A failure to extend the payroll tax holiday and the extended unemployment benefits would be a serious hit to the economy," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. "The risk of a recession would rise and be uncomfortably high, particularly early next year, when the fallout from Europe's troubles will be the greatest."
Population surging in 5 battleground states
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011Five battleground states are among the nation’s fastest growing, according to newly released Census data.
Colorado, Florida, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina all expanded their populations by more than 1 percent from July 2010 to July 2011, the Census bureau estimated.
All are states that will play large roles in determining the winner of the 2012 presidential election. All but Georgia are included in five possible electoral paths outlined earlier this month by President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, Jim Messina.
Though Republican John McCain won his home state of Arizona in 2008, Democrats contend it will be in play this time around.
“There are a variety of pathways to 270 electoral votes and Arizona is definitely in the mix,” Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said at a fundraiser earlier this month.
Republicans, meanwhile, believe Obama’s sliding poll numbers in Florida, Colorado and North Carolina will be key to their candidate’s march to the White House.
The numbers provide a glimpse at where new voters will most shape 2012, and where campaigns’ efforts to reach first-timers can have maximum impact in next year’s election.
Population growth drives both voter registration and ballots cast. Since 2000, states with surging populations — including Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Florida — have seen double-digit growth in the number of ballots cast in successive presidential cycles.
Floyd Mayweather — 90 Days in Jail for Beating Up Baby Mama
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011
Floyd Mayweather 90 Days in Pokey for Beating Up Baby Mama
Floyd Mayweather Jr. got hammered by a judge, who just sentenced him to serve 90 days in jail for beating up his baby mama in front of their kids.
Floyd was sentenced to 6 months in jail, but 3 months of that sentence was suspended. He also gets 3 days credit for time he has already served.
TMZ broke the story ... the boxer was arrested in September 2010 -- after his ex-girlfriend accused him of striking her "multiple times in the head with his fist" and then threatening to kill her.
Economy ends tough 2011 on a surprising upswing
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 AP Photo/Vickie D. King |
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The economy is ending 2011 on a roll.
The job market is healthier. Americans are spending lustily on holiday gifts. A long-awaited turnaround for the depressed housing industry may be under way. Gas is cheaper. Factories are busier. Stocks are higher.
Not bad for an economy faced with a debt crisis in Europe and, as recently as this summer, scattered predictions of a second recession at home. Instead, the economy has grown faster each quarter this year, and the last three months should be the best.
"Things are looking up," says Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.
When The Associated Press surveyed 43 economists in August, they pegged the likelihood of another recession at roughly one in four. The Dow Jones industrial average was lurching up or down by 400 points or more some days.
There was plenty of reason for gloom. A political standoff over the federal borrowing limit brought the United States to the brink of default and cost the nation its top-drawer credit rating.
Most analysts now rule out another recession. They think the economy will grow at an annual rate of more than 3 percent from October through December, the fastest pace since a 3.8 percent performance the spring of 2010.
Many economists still worry that the year-end surge isn't sustainable, in part because the average worker's pay is barely rising. And Europe may already be sliding into a recession that will infect the United States.
The outlook could darken further if Congress can't break the impasse blocking an extension of a Social Security tax cut for 160 million Americans and emergency unemployment benefits.
Yet for now, the economy is on an upswing that few had predicted:
- JOBS: The number of people applying for unemployment benefits came in at 366,000 last week, down from a peak of 659,000 in March 2009. Even in good economic times, the figure would be between 280,000 and 350,000.
Employers have added at least 100,000 jobs five months in a row, the longest streak since 2006. And the unemployment rate fell from 9 percent in October to 8.6 percent last month, the lowest since March 2009.
Small businesses are hiring again, too, according to the National Federation of Independent Business.
Business is up at AG Salesworks in Norwood, Mass., which helps technology companies like Motorola find new customers. The firm has hired 26 workers to restore its staff to 56, erasing the job cuts from the recession. CEO Paul Alves plans to add an employee or two a month as long as growth continues.
"I do see more confidence than I saw 12 months ago," Alves says. "But it's good, not great. Robust isn't the word I'd use."
- SPENDING: The holiday shopping season has turned out better than anyone expected. Sales from November through Saturday were up 2.5 percent. Americans have spent $32 billion online, 15 percent more than a year ago. Retails sales were up in November for the sixth month in a row. People are spending, in particular, on clothes, cars, electronics and furniture.
- CONSUMER CONFIDENCE: Americans felt better about the economy in November than they had since July, according to the Conference Board, a business group that tracks the mood of consumers.
The board's consumer confidence index climbed 15 points to 56 in November, the biggest one-month jump since April 2003. During the Great Recession, the index fell as low as 25.
"It seems like the confidence of the traditional American consumer is higher right now," says Jim Newman, executive vice president of operations at the digital marketing company Acquity Group, which has added 100 jobs since summer.
- GAS: Falling prices at the pump have freed more money for consumers to spend on appliances, furniture, vacations and other things that help drive the economy. The national average for regular unleaded has sunk to $3.21 a gallon since peaking at $3.98 in May, according to the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge.
- INVENTORIES: Businesses are restocking shelves and warehouses, more confident that customers will buy their products. In October, their inventories were up 8.7 percent from a year earlier. An increase in inventories is expected to account for perhaps a third of growth this quarter.
The battered housing market might be showing signs of recovery. Home construction rose more than 9 percent in November from October, driven by apartment building. And the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday that sales of previously occupied homes rose 4 percent in November.
Dawn spacecraft beams back new images of asteroid
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 AP Photo |
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- NASA's Dawn spacecraft has been a fervent photographer, snapping more than 10,000 pictures of the asteroid Vesta since it slipped into orbit around the giant space rock last summer.
The views were taken from a distance away - until now. On Wednesday, the space agency released new images of the hummocky surface as Dawn circled from an average altitude of 130 miles above the surface - the closest it'll get.
From this low orbit, scientists can count numerous small impact craters and see textured grooves and outcrops in sharp detail.
"We're totally thrilled with the data we're getting. It seems to get better," said mission deputy principal investigator Carol Raymond of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $466 million mission.
By inching this close to Vesta, Dawn will use other instruments to measure the gravity field and determine its chemical makeup to better understand its origins.
Dawn will spend the next 2 1/2 months at the current altitude before moving higher to take another round of pictures. By that time, the sun will hit Vesta at a different angle and illuminate sections of the northern hemisphere that had been shrouded earlier.
Michael Douglas’ son gets 4 1/2 more years in prison
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 AP Photo/Chris Pizzello |
NEW YORK (AP) -- A judge called the imprisoned son of actor Michael Douglas reckless and irresponsible as he nearly doubled his prison sentence Wednesday from five years to 9 1/2 years for repeated drug offenses.
U.S. District Judge Richard Berman in Manhattan cited Cameron Douglas' "history of reckless behavior" as he imposed a new punishment that was more than double what prosecutors were seeking for Douglas' guilty plea to drug charges that arose from his successful efforts to smuggle drugs into prison.
Berman added 4 1/2 years to the five-year term he gave Douglas last year for his guilty plea in connection with his sales of methamphetamine in July 2009 from a high-end Manhattan hotel.
The judge said he had never had a case before in which a defendant "has so recklessly, wantonly, flagrantly and criminally acted in such a destructive and manipulative fashion as Cameron Douglas has."
Berman reminded Douglas' lawyers that he had warned at the earlier sentencing that it was the defendant's last chance to turn around a life derailed by drugs and mental troubles stretching into his teenage years.
The judge also criticized the government for being too lenient on Douglas after he repeatedly violated prison rules by arranging to get drugs. The judge said the violations included four instances in which a lawyer smuggled anti-anxiety prescription drugs into prison for Douglas in her bra. The lawyer entered into a deferred prosecution agreement that enabled the charges against her to be dropped if she stayed out of trouble for six months.
The 33-year-old Douglas asked the judge to give him another chance at treatment.
"I cannot seem to find comfort within my own skin," he said. "I feel ashamed. I feel defeated. ... I know that I bear in my heart what it will take to overcome this plague."
Sinaloa cartel OK’s Mexico’s newest drug ballads
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 AP Photo/Marco Ugarte |
NAUCALPAN, Mexico (AP) -- Trumpets and trombones blast across a rodeo ring where women in miniskirts dance with men in cowboy hats and gold chains. Some fans try to climb onto the stage while others whoop to the deafening music and sing along to an outlaw ballad about one of the most-wanted criminal suspects in North America, an alleged drug kingpin.
"We take care of El Mayo
"Here no one betrays him...
"We stay tough with AK-47s and bazookas at the neck
"Chopping heads off as they come
"We're bloody-thirsty crazy men
"Who like to kill."
At the microphone is Alfredo Rios, whose stage name is "The Komander." He's a singer of Movimiento Alterado - "Altered Movement" in English - a new commercial brand of "narcocorrido" ballads that bluntly describe drug violence to the oompah beat of Mexico's norteno music.
The songs are filled with unusually explicit lyrics about decapitations and torture, and praise for one drug gang in particular: the Sinaloa cartel and its bosses, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
The increasingly popular music is banned on radio stations in parts of Mexico but is heavily promoted over the Internet. It is the brainchild of twin brothers based in Burbank, California, who have long turned to the Sinaloa cartel for artistic inspiration. They won a Grammy award in 2008 for producing an artist who goes by the name of "El Chapo de Sinaloa."
Omar Valenzuela says the music not only tells of the violent world of the Sinaloa cartel, but has received its blessing at least once, when the producers worried about the group's reaction to a song about Manuel Torres, allegedly a top hit man for Zambada.
"We looked for them and asked for permission," Valenzuela said. "We sent them the song and they told us it was OK to release the song. We were afraid. They told us through their people that we were authorized to release any song. Sometimes people can get offended. We didn't want any problems."
The song since then has been downloaded 5 million times from the company website, Valenzuela said, and the accompanying video, which tells of how much gunmen working for Torres enjoy killing, has been watched more than 13 million times on YouTube.
Rios and Valenzuela deny any direct relationship with any cartel, and say they don't receive any money from the gangs. "I wish they were putting in money to promote (the music)," Valenzuela said with a laugh.
For Jose Manuel Valenzuela, an expert on narcocorridos at Mexico's College of the Northern Border, the success of the Movimiento Alterado's music shows that drug traffickers have become more socially acceptable in many circles.
"The social presence of drug trafficking helps this music circulate, and this is also made easier by the easy access to it through the Internet," said Valenzuela, who is not related to the twins.
The new music was born in Culiacan, capital of the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa. The fact that the bands Valenzuela promotes sing exclusively about the Sinaloa cartel has mostly to do with geography, he said.
"In Culiacan, you can't sing about anyone else because they are from here," he said referring to the Sinaloa cartel. "Singing about the Zetas it's not even something you think about. Someone could complain. Nobody wants any trouble."
The Zetas gang, which had its beginning in the border state of Tamaulipas, across the border from Texas, is fighting the Sinaloa cartel for control of drug traffic routes. The battle has caused many of the roughly 40,000 drug war deaths since Mexican President Felipe Calderon ramped up the military offensive on cartels as he took office in 2006.
Some Movimiento Alterado musicians wear camouflage and bulletproof vests on stage and some have names clearly alluding to the Sinaloa cartel, such as Los Mayitos, referring to Zambada's nickname, or The Buchones, as the new rich who made their fortunes in drug trafficking are called in Sinaloa.
Syria ‘massacre’: UN urged to act
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011
The BBC's Jim Muir: "It certainly seems there is a big flare-up of violence"
Syria's main opposition coalition has called for emergency meetings of the UN Security Council and the Arab League to discuss the intensifying violence in the north-west of the country.
The Syrian National Council, which is based outside Syria, says about 250 people have been killed since Monday.
A human rights group has accused the Syrian authorities of carrying out an "organised massacre" in Idlib province.
Arab League monitors are due in Syria on Thursday under a peace initiative.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was "extremely concerned about the escalating crisis and the mounting death toll in Syria", his spokesman said.
He urged the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to give its "full co-operation" to the Arab League plan.
Washington said it was "deeply disturbed" by the reports of escalating violence.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the Assad regime had "flagrantly violated" its earlier pledges to end violence.
'Protected zone' pleaThe latest wave of violence is taking place in the Jabal al-Zawiya area, not far from the border with Turkey.
Journalist Javier Espinosa went undercover with the Free Syrian Army and said they were poorly equipped
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in London, said that on Tuesday security forces killed more than 110 people, most of them army defectors, around the village of Kansafra.
The previous day, up to 70 defectors were shot dead when they attempted to flee a nearby base, it added.
The Observatory also said that on Wednesday, at least 22 people - six army deserters, a civilian and 15 members of government forces - were killed in clashes in the southern Deraa province.
Another activist organisation, the Local Co-ordination Committees, said 15 people had been killed so far on Wednesday, in Hama, Idlib, Homs and Deraa.
Journalists are not allowed to report freely in Syria so details are hard to verify.
The Syrian National Council (SNC), which is the main opposition umbrella group, said on Wednesday that it wanted the UN Security Council to declare a "protected zone" in the areas under attack by the army.
It also urged both the Security Council and the Arab League to act to protect people in those areas.
France, which is a permanent member of the Security Council, has backed the call for action.
"There was a massacre of an unprecedented scale in Syria on Tuesday," said French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero.
"It is urgent that the UN Security Council issues a firm resolution that calls for an end to the repression."
'Unfinished business'The fighting involves armed opposition groups, made up largely of army defectors, who have been taking on the Syrian security forces.
Reports from Idlib province suggest that army reinforcements are arriving and that clashes are continuing, with the number of casualties rising.
The BBC's Jim Muir, who is monitoring events from neighbouring Lebanon, says it may be no coincidence that the surge in violence comes ahead of the arrival of Arab League monitors.
He says the Syrian authorities might be "clearing up unfinished business" ahead of the arrival of the monitors, with reports suggesting the security services are acting against army deserters and civilians trapped in a valley.
Syria's armed forces said they were ready to repulse any foreign aggressionSoyuz bound for space station blasts off
Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky |
MOSCOW (AP) -- A Soyuz spacecraft carrying a Russian, an American and a Dutchman to the International Space Station blasted off flawlessly from Russia's launch facility in Kazakhstan on Wednesday.
Mission commander Oleg Kononenko and his colleagues, American Don Pettit and European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers are to dock with the space station on Friday.
The blastoff from the snowy launchpad in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, took place without a hitch and the spacecraft reached Earth orbit about nine minutes later. Video from inside the craft showed the three crew members gripping each others' hands in celebration as the final stage of the booster rocket separated.
The three aboard the Russian spacecraft will join three others already on the ISS, NASA's Dan Burbank and Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin. The six are to work together on the station until March.
The launch came amid a period of trouble for Russia's space program, which provides the only way for crew to reach the space station since the United States retired its space shuttle program in July.
The launch of an unmanned supply ship for the space station failed in August and the ship crashed in a Siberian forest. The Soyuz rocket carrying that craft was the same type used to send up Russian manned spacecraft, and the crash prompted officials to postpone the next manned launch while the rockets were examined for flaws. The delayed mission eventually took place on Nov. 14.
Just five days before that launch, Russia sent up its ambitious Phobos-Ground unmanned probe, which was to go to the Phobos moon of Mars, take soil samples and return them to Earth. But engineers lost contact with the ship and were unable to propel it out of Earth orbit and toward Mars. The craft is now expected to fall to Earth in mid-January.