Calling an initial compensation offer ?insulting,? an attorney representing Costa Concordia passengers announced Tuesday details of a $460 million civil lawsuit against the owner of the wrecked cruise ship, The Guardian reports.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/46210636#46210636
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BRUSSELS (Reuters) ? European leaders struggled to reconcile austerity with growth on Monday at a summit that approved a permanent rescue fund for the euro zone and was trying to put finishing touches to a German-driven pact for stricter budget discipline.
Officially, the half-day 27-nation summit was meant to focus on ways to revive growth and create jobs at a time when governments across Europe are having to cut public spending and raise taxes to tackle mountains of debt.
But disputes over the limits of austerity, and Greece's unfinished debt restructuring negotiations with private bondholders, hampered efforts to send a more optimistic message that Europe is getting on top of its debt crisis.
Leaders agreed that a 500-billion-euro European Stability Mechanism will enter into force in July, a year earlier than planned, to back heavily indebted states. But Europe is already under pressure from the United States, China, the International Monetary Fund and some of its own members to increase the size of the financial firewall.
The risk premium on southern European government bonds rose while the euro and stocks fell on concerns about a lack of tangible progress in the Greek debt talks and gloom about Europe's economic outlook.
Highlighting those fears, Spain's economy contracted in the last quarter of 2011 for the first time in two years and looks set to slip into a long recession.
France halved its 2012 growth forecast to a mere 0.5 percent in another potentially ominous sign for President Nicolas Sarkozy's troubled bid for re-election in May. Prime Minister Francois Fillon said the cut would not entail further budget saving measures.
Conservative Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, attending his first EU summit, said Madrid was clearly not going to meet its target of 2.3 percent growth this year. That has raised big doubts about whether it can cut its budget deficit from around 8 percent of economic output in 2011 to 4.4 percent by the end of this year as promised.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso hinted Brussels may ease Spain's near-unattainable 2012 deficit target after it updates EU growth forecasts on February 23.
Italy, rushing through sweeping economic reforms under new Prime Minister Mario Monti, was rewarded with a significant fall in its borrowing costs at an auction of 10- and 5-year bonds, despite double-notch downgrades of its credit rating by Standard & Poor's and Fitch this month.
But Portugal's slide towards becoming the next Greece - needing a second bailout to avoid chaotic bankruptcy - gathered pace as banks raised the cost of insuring government bonds against default and insisted the money be paid up front instead of over several years.
The yield spread on 10-year Portuguese bonds over safe haven German Bunds topped 15 percentage points for the first time in the euro era. It cost a record 3.9 million euros ($5.12 million) to insure 10 million euros of Portuguese debt.
OUTLAWING KEYNES?
With Britain standing aloof, most of the other 26 EU leaders were set to approve a fiscal pact to write balanced budget rules into their national law, despite economists' doubts about the wisdom of effectively outlawing deficit spending.
"To write into law a Germanic view of how one should run an economy and that essentially makes Keynesianism illegal is not something we would do," a British official said.
European Parliament President Martin Schulz told the leaders the new fiscal treaty was unnecessary and unbalanced, because it failed to combine budget rigor with necessary investment in public works to create jobs.
The 17th summit in two years as the EU battles to resolve its sovereign debt problems was called to shift the narrative away from politically unpopular austerity and towards growth.
Negotiations between Greece and private bondholders over restructuring 200 billion euros of debt made progress over the weekend, but were not concluded before the summit.
A Greek official said Prime Minister Lucas Papademos would give the summit a brief report on the situation and meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the sidelines.
Until there is a deal, EU leaders cannot move forward with a second, 130-billion-euro rescue program for Athens, which they originally pledged at a summit last October.
Germany caused outrage in Greece by proposing that a European commissar take control of Greek public finances to ensure it meets fiscal targets. Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said that to make his country choose between national dignity and financial assistance ignored the lessons of history.
The German call won cautious backing from the Dutch and Swedish prime ministers. But Merkel played down the idea of placing Greece under stewardship, saying: "We are having a debate that we shouldn't be having. This is about how Europe can be supportive so Greece can comply, so there are targets."
FISCAL COMPACT
There was a last-minute hitch over the terms of a 'fiscal compact treaty' tightening euro zone budget rules when four central European states demanded that countries planning to join the single currency be allowed to attend all euro zone summits.
The prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia agreed to seek an amendment to the text as a condition for joining the pact, a Hungarian spokesman said.
The ESM was meant to replace the European Financial Stability Facility, a temporary fund that has been used to bail out Ireland and Portugal. But pressure is mounting to combine the resources of the two funds to create a super-firewall of 750 billion euros ($1 trillion).
The IMF says if Europe puts up more of its own money, that will convince others to give more resources to the IMF, boosting its crisis-fighting abilities and improving market sentiment.
Germany has so far resisted such a step.
Merkel has said she will not discuss the issue of the ESM/EFSF's ceiling until the next EU summit in March. Meanwhile, financial markets will continue to worry that there may not be sufficient rescue funds available to help the likes of Italy and Spain if they run into renewed debt funding problems.
"There are certainly signals that Germany is willing to consider it and it is rather geared towards March from the German side," a senior euro zone official said.
The sticking point is German public opinion which is tired of bailing out the euro zone's financially less prudent.
The summit was expected to announce that up to 20 billion euros of unspent funds from the EU's 2007-2013 budget will be recycled towards job creation, especially among the young, and will commit to freeing up bank lending to small- and medium-sized companies.
But with no new public money available for a stimulus, leaders focused mainly on promoting structural reforms such as loosening labor market regulation, cutting red tape for business and promoting innovation.
($1 = 0.7615 euros)
(Additional reporting by Julien Toyer, Harry Papachristou and Robin Emmott in Brussels, Marius Zaharia, William James, Chris Wickham and Jeremy Gaunt in London,; Roberta Cowan in Amsterdam,; Writing by Paul Taylor; Editing by Mike Peacock/Elizabeth Piper/Janet McBride)
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GOP presidential primary candidate Newt Gingrich has promised a manned moon base by 2020 if he is elected, yet such a plan will face some serious budgetary and practical hurdles, experts say.
Gingrich is in Florida competing for that state's nomination for the Republican candidacy against Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Ambitious plans for America's space program are likely to generate enthusiasm among those in Florida's space industry, hard-hit by the retirement of the space shuttle last year.
"By the end of my second term, we will have the first permanent base on the moon, and it will be American," Gingrich promised during a speech in the city of Cocoa, on Florida's Space Coast, Jan. 25.
Yet experts question whether a plan to send people to live on the moon can so quickly be achieved. [50 Years of Presidential Space Visions]
For one thing, the United States does not currently posses a vehicle capable of flying to the moon.
"When we are not expecting a U.S. crewed launch to the [International Space Station] until 2016-2017 and are just getting started on a lunar-class launch vehicle, establishing a lunar outpost by 2020 is a fantasy," space-policy expert John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University, told SPACE.com in an email.
Furthermore, experts question whether the country has sufficient motivation for such a trip.
"Without either economic justification or national security concerns to sustain such grand activities, I do not envision a confluence of support from the various political, social, and economic interests in the United States for a significant expenditure of national effort, human capital, and treasure to undertake a human mission to return to the moon," Roger Launius, space history senior curator at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., wrote in an email. "I would like to be proven wrong because I would dearly love to see humans on the moon again in my lifetime, but I must question whether or not a sufficiently compelling reason for humans to return to the moon will emerge in the near term."
Gingrich didn't elaborate on how much his vision for the future would cost. But a 2009 independent analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a foreign policy think tank, estimated that establishing a manned international lunar base would cost about $35 billion, with an additional price tag of $7.35 billion per year to keep the base operating.
These tallies do not include the costs of designing and building the heavy-lift rocket and crew capsule required to make the journey to the moon.
"All supplies (O2, H2, food, etc.) would be supplied from Earth and recycled to the maximum extent possible," according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies report. "If useable water ice is found near the base, or oxygen-rich minerals can be utilized, operating costs will decrease significantly."
Yet Gingrich also said that, if elected, he would slim down NASA's bureaucracy, reduce the agency's budget and devote 10 percent of its funds to prizes aimed at spurring commercial investment in space exploration.
Staff writer Denise Chow (@denisechow) contributed to this story.?You can follow assistant managing editor Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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BEIJING (AP) ? Militants apparently captured 29 Chinese workers after attacking a remote worksite in a volatile region of Sudan, and Sudanese forces were increasing security for Chinese projects and personnel there, China said Sunday.
China has close political and economic relations with Sudan, especially in the energy sector.
The Foreign Ministry in Beijing said the militants attacked Saturday and Sudanese forces launched a rescue mission Sunday in coordination with the Chinese embassy in Khartoum.
The Ministry's head of consular affairs met with the Sudanese ambassador in Beijing and "urged him to actively conduct rescue missions under the prerequisite of ensuring the safety of the Chinese personnel," the statement said.
In Khartoum, a Chinese embassy spokesman said the northern branch of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement announced that 29 Chinese workers had been captured in the attack. The spokesman, who asked not be identified, gave no other details and it wasn't clear if the militants had demanded conditions for their return.
Other details weren't given. The official Xinhua News Agency cited the state governor as saying the Sudan People's Liberation Movement attacked a road-building site in South Kordofan and seized the workers.
The Sudan People's Liberation Movement are a guerrilla force that has fought against Sudan's regime. Its members hail from a minority ethnic group now in control of much of South Sudan, which became the world's newest country only six months ago in a breakaway from Sudan.
Sudan has accused South Sudan of arming pro-South Sudan groups in South Kordofan. The government of South Sudan has called such accusations a smoke screen intended to justify a future invasion of the South.
China has sent large numbers of workers to potentially unstable regions such as Sudan and last year was forced to send ships and planes to help with the emergency evacuation of 30,000 of its citizens from the fighting in Libya.
China has consistently used its clout in diplomatic forums such as the United Nations to defend Sudan and its longtime leader Omar al-Bashir. In recent years, it has also sought to build good relations with leaders from the south, where most of Sudan's oil is located.
Chinese companies have also invested heavily in Sudanese oil production, along with companies India and elsewhere.
___
Associated Press writer Mohamed Saeed contributed to this report from Khartoum.
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Two Oklahoma lawmakers have filed legislation to increase the number of state employees who could opt out of state insurance coverage.
The measure expands a 2011 law that allowed state employees and lawmakers to refuse state-funded coverage if they are already covered by another policy.
The law now applies to individuals currently covered by a separate policy. The proposal by Reps. Dustin Roberts and Emily Virgin of Oklahoma City would expand the opt-out option to include those who will be covered by a separate group health insurance plan on or before the beginning of the next plan year.
The current law has already saved an estimated half-million dollars and could ultimately save $1.5 million to $3.5 million annually. Roberts and Virgin say their measure could lead to more savings.
Source: http://washingtonexaminer.com/news/2012/01/okla-lawmakers-file-state-insurance-opt-out-bill/2144781
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By msnbc.com news services
A Southwest Airlines employee at Washington Dulles International Airport died on Friday after being injured in a collision with a luggage cart and a vehicle used to transport passengers.
The incident, according to airline spokesperson Brandy King, occurred on Thursday at approximately 7 a.m. ET.
The employee, who has not been named, was rushed to an area hospital and received medical attention. The airline learned early Friday that the employee died.
"We continue to work with the local authorities and the airport to investigate the accident," King said in a statement to msnbc.com. "The Southwest Airlines Family is greatly saddened by the passing of our Southwest Family Member, and we extend our heartfelt sympathies and support to his entire family at this time."
The airline said it is not planning on releasing additional information at this time.
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ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2012) ? Memories in our brains are maintained by connections between neurons called "synapses." But how do these synapses stay strong and keep memories alive for decades? Neuroscientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have discovered a major clue from a study in fruit flies: Hardy, self-copying clusters or oligomers of a synapse protein are an essential ingredient for the formation of long-term memory.
The finding supports a surprising new theory about memory, and may have a profound impact on explaining other oligomer-linked functions and diseases in the brain, including Alzheimer's disease and prion diseases.
"Self-sustaining populations of oligomers located at synapses may be the key to the long-term synaptic changes that underlie memory; in fact, our finding hints that oligomers play a wider role in the brain than has been thought," says Kausik Si, Ph.D., an associate investigator at the Stowers Institute, and senior author of the new study, which is published in the January 27, 2012 online issue of the journal Cell.
Si's investigations in this area began nearly a decade ago during his doctoral research in the Columbia University laboratory of Nobel-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel. He found that in the sea slug Aplysia californica, which has long been favored by neuroscientists for memory experiments because of its large, easily-studied neurons, a synapse-maintenance protein known as CPEB (Cytoplasmic Polyadenylation Element Binding protein) has an unexpected property.
A portion of the structure is self-complementary and -- much like empty egg cartons -- can easily stack up with other copies of itself. CPEB thus exists in neurons partly in the form of oligomers, which increase in number when neuronal synapses strengthen. These oligomers have a hardy resistance to ordinary solvents, and within neurons may be much more stable than single-copy "monomers" of CPEB. They also seem to actively sustain their population by serving as templates for the formation of new oligomers from free monomers in the vicinity.
CPEB-like proteins exist in all animals, and in brain cells they play a key role in maintaining the production of other synapse-strengthening proteins. Studies by Si and others in the past few years have hinted that CPEB's tendency to oligomerize is not merely incidental, but is indeed essential to its ability to stabilize longer-term memory. "What we've lacked till now are experiments showing this conclusively," Si says.
In the new study, Si and his colleagues examined a Drosophila fruit fly CPEB protein known as Orb2. Like its counterpart in Aplysia, it forms oligomers within neurons. "We found that these Orb2 oligomers become more numerous in neurons whose synapses are stimulated, and that this increase in oligomers happens near synapses," says lead author Amitabha Majumdar, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in Si's lab.
The key was to show that the disruption of Orb2 oligomerization on its own impairs Orb2's function in stabilizing memory. Majumdar was able to do this by generating an Orb2 mutant that lacks the normal ability to oligomerize yet maintains a near-normal concentration in neurons. Fruit flies carrying this mutant form of Orb2 lost their ability to form long-term memories. "For the first 24 hours after a memory-forming stimulus, the memory was there, but by 48 hours it was gone, whereas in flies with normal Orb2 the memory persisted," Majumdar says.
Si and his team are now following up with experiments to determine for how long Orb2 oligomers are needed to keep a memory alive. "We suspect that they need to be continuously present, because they are self-sustaining in a way that Orb2 monomers are not," says Si.
The team's research also suggests some intriguing possibilities for other areas of neuroscience. This study revealed that Orb2 proteins in the Drosophila nervous system come in a rare, highly oligomerization-prone form (Orb2A) and a much more common, much less oligomerization-prone form (Orb2B). "The rare form seems to be the one that is regulated, and it seems to act like a seed for the initial oligomerization, which pulls in copies of the more abundant form," Si says. "This may turn out to be a basic pattern for functional oligomers."
The findings may help scientists understand disease-causing oligomers too. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's disease, as well as prion diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, all involve the spread in the brain of apparently toxic oligomers of various proteins. One such protein, strongly implicated in Alzheimer's disease, is amyloid beta; like Orb2 it comes in two forms, the highly oligomerizing amyloid-beta-42 and the relatively inert amyloid-beta-40. Si's work hints at the possibility that oligomer-linked diseases are relatively common in the brain because the brain evolved to be relatively hospitable to CPEB proteins and other functional oligomers, and thus has fewer mechanisms for keeping rogue oligomers under control.
Other researchers who contributed to the work include Wanda Col?n Cesario, Erica White-Grindely, Huoqin Jian, Fangzhen Ren, Mohammed 'Repon' Khan, Liying Li, Edward Man-Lik Choi, Kasthuri Kannan, Feng Li, Jay Unruh and Brian Slaughter at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Missouri.
The research was supported by the Searle Foundation, the March of Dimes Basil O'Connor Starter Award, the Klingenstein Foundation and the McKnight Foundation.
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Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120127162409.htm
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MARSEILLE, France (Reuters) ? Jean-Claude Mas, the Frenchman who has sparked a global health scare by selling substandard breast implants, was arrested on Thursday and could be charged with manslaughter, the public prosecutor in the city of Marseille said.
In the first arrests since the two-year-old scandal grabbed headlines worldwide in December, Mas and a second executive at his now defunct company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) were seized at their homes in southern France shortly after dawn.
If charged with involuntary manslaughter and causing injury, both could face longer prison terms than those they already risk in a parallel fraud case due to come to court around October.
French authorities have been criticized for being slow to react to a case that has sown fear among tens of thousands of women who carry PIP implants. French inspectors ordered them off the market in March 2010, due to concerns over their quality.
But only last month did officials in Paris recommend their surgical removal, drawing attention to the problem for patients worldwide who had been fitted with products from the company, which was at one time the third biggest global supplier.
Lawyers for women in France who have filed complaints over PIP implants welcomed the arrests and said there must be no escaping justice for the 72-year-old Mas, who has been quoted as deriding those suing him as being motivated only by money.
"This is a comfort for the victims," said Laurent Gaudon, whose clients are pursuing PIP and surgeons who used its implants for fraud. "It's the feeling that justice is advancing and they have not been forgotten. It's the assurance that the guilty are at last going to be held accountable."
Philippe Courtois, who represents 1,300 people with PIP implants, said Mas should not be freed pending any court case. "A degree of provisionary detention is desirable," he said.
Mas and PIP's former chief executive Claude Couty were still being questioned at home at midday, as police searched their premises. They were due to be moved to police custody in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille later, under the orders of prosecutor Jacques Dallest.
SUBSTANDARD SILICONE
PIP enjoyed years of success with international sales, but behind the scenes employees, and Mas himself, have admitted to hiding from certification agencies the fact they were using cheap, industrial silicone, not approved for medical use.
Health authorities in France and elsewhere have stressed that PIP's products carry no proven link to cancer, but surgeons report that they have abnormally high rupture rates. Responses to the problem have varied among different foreign authorities.
Thursday's arrests follow an investigation opened in Marseille, close to PIP's former premises, on December 8 after the death from cancer in 2010 of a woman with PIP implants.
Mas and Couty can be held for up to 48 hours while a judge decides whether to charge them with involuntary manslaughter and causing injury and, if so, whether to continue their detention or to free them on bail conditions.
A trial date could be years away, given the extent of inquiry required, but the graver manslaughter case could make it harder for Mas to avoid appearing in court later this year on other charges of fraud and deception.
That latter case targets half a dozen former PIP executives and could also carry prison terms for them of several years. It has dragged on as investigators have had to quiz up to 2,700 women who have filed complaints over PIP implants.
Mas, who sold some 300,000 implants around the world, has acknowledged that he used unapproved silicone but dismissed fears that it constituted a health risk.
Earlier in January, leaks from a police document showed Mas admitting to lying about the quality of PIP's implants and describing the women filing complaints against him as just seeking money. The comments sparked public anger against him.
PIP closed down in March 2010 after regulators discovered it was using a non-approved silicone gel, and pulled its implants off the market.
In December 2011, the French government advised women with PIP implants to have them removed, and said it would even pay for the operations in France, sparking alarm around the world.
Governments in several other countries such as Britain and Brazil have asked women to visit their doctors for checks.
France has called for tighter European Union regulations on medical devices in wake of the PIP health scare, saying suppliers should be made to carry the same sort of authorization as suppliers of prescription medicine.
(Writing by Catherine Bremer; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
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Clearly controversy is swirling around web lockers and online storage companies in the wake of the Federal swoop on Megaupload, but if it all goes wrong rest assured that DropBox founder and CEO Drew Houston has a second career to fall back on. The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (or just "Davos" to those in the know) is a great place for the world's millionaires and billionaires to loosely affiliate with each-other (as Paul Simon might have put it) and part of that looseness extends to the Piano Bar of the Hotel Europe in the tiny - but 5-star-hotel-packed - village.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/h4iwK0o8h74/
The Salvadoran National Civil Police say gangs are planning attacks on security forces, but others believe the remark has more to do with politics.
? A version of this post ran on the author's blog, Insightcrime.com. The views expressed are the author's own.
Skip to next paragraphEl Salvador?s police have claimed that the country?s ?maras,? or street gangs, are planning an all-out attack on security forces, despite the fact that these groups have neither the organizational structure nor motive to do so.
The deputy director of investigation for the Salvadoran National Civil Police (PNC), Howard Cotto, claims that authorities believe imprisoned gang leaders are contacting gang members on the outside and directing them to attack security forces. In remarks to El Salvador?s newspaper, Contrapunto, Cotto said that those behind this scheme refer to it as an attack on ?the system.?
Deputy director of prisons, Nelson Rauda, backed the claim, saying that authorities had intercepted letters from gang leaders which contained a call to attack ?members of the Salvadoran Armed Forces, the PNC, prison staff members, as well as judges and prosecutors.?
It is true that the Central American country?s gangs are a growing security threat. As InSight Crime has reported, El Salvador?s murder rate is the highest it has been in years. This rise was accompanied by an overwhelming number of disappearances in 2011, with more than 2,000 people reported missing in San Salvador alone. According to Minister of Security David Munguia Payes, 90 percent of the murders in the country are gang-related.
Despite the threat they pose to citizen security, the non-hierarchical nature of El Salvador?s maras suggests that a concerted attack on security forces would be nearly impossible to orchestrate. While the main street gangs active in the country -- groups like Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), Barrio 18 and the Texis Cartel -- do have networks spread throughout the country, they lack the firm chain of command of more structured organized crime groups, like Mexico?s Zetas. Relations between gang cells, more so than within cartels, vary according to complex local identities and variations in criminal interests. As such, the idea of a gang like MS-13 declaring a widespread campaign against state forces is highly suspect.
What?s more, the lack of details released by both Cotto and Rauda make their claims difficult to take seriously. For one thing, neither official made mention of which particular street gang was behind this strategy. It could be that this omission was due to security considerations, but it casts the authenticity of the claim into question.
Ultimately, the remark could have more to do with politics than with the reality of gang violence in the country. The PNC is currently in the middle of a major anti-corruption purge which has resulted in the investigation of more than 1,600 officers for misconduct. As such, the claims may simply be designed to garner public sympathy for the police, in an attempt to cast the police force as the ?good guys.?
Mara attacks on police officials are more likely to take place on an individual basis, and to come in response to direct interference with the gangs? activities. Ironically, such interference does not always come in the form of justice or strict law enforcement, a point which could backfire for the PNC. It is just as likely that a gang would target police in retaliation for a crackdown as it is that they would target them for charging too much for a ?cut? of the action, or for entering into an alliance with a rival gang.
---?Geoffrey Ramsey ?is a writer for Insight ? Organized Crime in the Americas, which provides research, analysis, and investigation of the criminal world throughout the region. Find all of his research here.
Get daily or weekly updates from CSMonitor.com delivered to your inbox.?Sign up today.
The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of Latin America bloggers. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here.
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Arthur Christmas is a beautiful and fun Christmas movie that is sure to be a holiday classic. The story follows Arthur who is the son of Santa Clause, his brother Steve is a smart but at times inconsiderate role model who is second in command to Santa, and when a little girl has a gift that did not get sent Arthur does everything he can to make sure this girl has a Merry Christmas. The plot of the movie is funny and a great lesson to be told about Christmas and children, and what i learned from this movie if anything is that every child needs to believe in Santa, because there is nothing better than believeing that there is somebody who loves you that whill bring you a present on Christmas day, and the characters of the film were good but i found the characters to be a little selfish at times besides Arthur who was a incredibly kind and good charcater and he saved the film in a way from being just a bunch of selfish men wanting to be a star. The voice cast was great, James McAvoy was perfect for the character, Hugh Laurie was also was a well done choice as Steve, Jim Broadbent was good as the voice as Santa, and Bill Nighy was also a great choice for his role, what else can I say for voice actors other than I liked them. The animation was incredible, I could really tell they worked hard to make a beautiful Christmas film and it really payed off big time, I loved the beauty in this film. Arthur Christmas had some few problems that kept it from being a perfect Christmas film, but those were minor compared to the things that they got right that made it a great Christmas film and that will make it remembered for years to come.
December 30, 2011Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/arthur_christmas/
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Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2012/01/23/richard-gere-arbitrage/
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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) ? The crackdown on file-sharing site Megaupload is expected to do little to reduce overall piracy of music, software and Hollywood movies, while potentially stifling emerging means of distributing content online.
In the wake of last week's surprising indictment of the digital storage company and seven executives, other companies have begun changing their policies even as Megaupload officers maintained their innocence in a first court appearance in New Zealand.
Filesonic.com stopped allowing people to download files that they had not uploaded themselves, while Uploaded.to blocked access from Internet locations in the United States.
However, just 3 percent of U.S. Internet users relied on digital lockers like Megaupload in the third quarter, according to NPD market research, compared with 9 percent who used peer-to-peer networks, which allow sharing of files among consumers' computers with little or no central organization.
Peer-to-peer systems, including BitTorrent and PirateBay, might gain more activity after the Megaupload charges, analysts said, while users may be afraid to upload content to lockers for fear they will lose access in a similar shutdown.
"I don't think you'll see more file sharers per se, but the amount downloaded over the torrents might rise," said NPD's Russ Crupnick.
But the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America said at least some users would balk at the higher complexity of peer-to-peer sites.
Lockers are "more user friendly. I doubt there will be a wholesale shift" to torrents, said MPAA Senior Vice President Kevin Suh.
PirateBay appeared to ignore the demise of Megaupload in its communications with users on Monday. In its blog, writers posted about how PirateBay saw the future of copying - evolving beyond digital format to physical objects it dubbed "physibles" - and
about what artists it might promote in coming months.
In a press release issued last week about proposed anti-piracy legislation in the U.S., PirateBay compared its role to the founding fathers of the U.S. and took the position that it fights for freedom of speech and the equality of all people.
SKIP HOLLYWOOD MIDDLEMEN
Though Megaupload has been around since 2005, lockers have only gone mainstream in the past year. Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc and Google Inc all adopted some version of the technology that permits digital content to be uploaded for the purpose of backing up user data or making content available to multiple devices or outsiders.
For some content producers, the new avenues are a way to skip the middlemen in Hollywood and reach their fans directly.
Last month, the comedian Louis C.K., complaining of a lack of royalties from conventional DVD sales, offered downloads of a one-man show for $5 from his own website and sold more than $1 million worth.
Megaupload supporters in the past have included major recording artists, such as Macy Gray and Sean "Diddy" Combs, who lent their voices to a popular video touting Megaupload by name.
Rapper Busta Rhymes signaled his support on Twitter even after the arrests last week, tweeting that Megaupload "could create the most powerful way 4 artist 2 get 90% off of every dollar despite the music being downloaded 4 free."
Until the middle of last year, Megaupload offered "rewards" for those who uploaded the most popular content. The indictment said this induced piracy, because the most popular content was likely to infringe copyrights.
But Jennifer Granick, a longtime Internet attorney who is now general counsel for a site devoted to hip-hop, said the idea that only infringing material would be popular was "ridiculous".
"This is a way for artists of all kinds to get out of these record-label deals that can be really limited. These can be a really important way to try to make money and get their stuff out there."
Julie Samuels, an attorney for the civil liberties nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, said it was unusual for the Justice Department to bring a criminal case for an alleged conspiracy over copyright violations, which are usually handled in civil court.
The EFF filed an amicus brief defending another locker service, MP3Tunes, against a record label that sued over a related issue, the "de-duplicating" that saves resources by preserving only one copy of a file that is uploaded by many.
The court ruled that MP3Tunes was in the clear as long as it abided by Digital Millennium Copyright Act requirements for responding to takedown requests, blocking repeat infringers and the like.
Samuels said she was not surprised that other file-storage services were dropping reward programs and in some cases limiting downloads to users' own files.
But she said that was bad for innovation and bad for users.
"The worst part here is that if the lockers are legally unstable then users will be hesitant," she said. "What's really been troubling is that the third parties who are using Megaupload for legitimate reasons no longer have access to their own content. In this case it's the government, but often it's traditional industries that are squelching innovation in what may be an expansion of ways for artists to get paid."
(Reporting by Joseph Menn and Sara McBride in San Francisco, Jeremy Pelofsky in Washington and Jim Finkle in Boston; Editing by Tiffany Wu, Bernard Orr)
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A severe line of storms that started in Arkansas and Missouri moved eastward, leaving a trail of destruction from high winds and tornadoes in the Midwest and the South. According to MSNBC, at least three people are dead in Alabama, and homes and businesses were destroyed in several states and thousands without power late Sunday and early Monday.
* The Storm Prediction Center of the National Weather Service posted preliminary data from the overnight storms and it included 22 tornado reports.
* In Arkansas, the SPC reported tornadoes were spotted near Fordyce, Coy, Slovak, Lodge Corner, DeWitt and Burks. The counties were Cleveland, Dallas, Lonoke, Prairie, Arkansas and Crittendon.
* In Mississippi, tornadoes were spotted near Trebloc and Lauderdale.
* In Tennessee, there was a possible tornado report in Dickson.
* MSNBC reported that in Alabama, the three deaths occurred near Birmingham. Center Point was hit especially hard. Tuscaloosa, which saw death and destruction from tornadoes in April, suffered damage.
* Accuweather.com reported a fourth fatality had occurred in Alabama.
* Accuweather also reported damage in the Paradise Valley, Millbrook and Clanton areas in Alabama. In Clanton, a tornado is believed to be behind the destruction of a radio station and transmission tower. A report from Millbrook stated winds knocked down trees and power lines and tore apart fences and metal buildings.
* There were reports of severe damage, downed trees, snapped power lines and debris blocking roads in several areas around Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky, Illinois and Indiana. The SPC received numerous reports of high winds and wind damage, lightning and power outages across parts of these states.
* In Arkansas and Tennessee, there were reports of tractor-trailers and signs blown over on Interstates, according to the SPC.
* Large hail was reported to the SPC from several states, with multiple reports of quarter-sized hail in Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois and Kentucky. Some locations reported hail that was half-dollar in size and larger. There was a report of hail the size of a hen's egg in Calloway County, Ky., and at least one report of hail the size of softballs in Jefferson County, Ark.
* Following overnight high winds, the ferry at Cave-in-Rock, Ill., was closed temporarily, as reported by WPSD-TV. The ferry transports travelers the Ohio River between Illinois and Kentucky but high winds that continue in the region on the heels of Sunday night's storm system are still creating dangerous conditions in the area and the decision was made to close the ferry until weather conditions improve.
Tammy Lee Morris is certified as a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) member and is a trained Skywarn Stormspotter through the National Weather Service. She has received interpretive training regarding the New Madrid Seismic Zone through EarthScope -- a program of the National Science Foundation. She researches and writes about earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, weather and other natural phenomena.
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How sudden was the turnaround that took former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney from being a step away from clinching the GOP nomination to the candidate who's putting on a brave face and pretending to look forward to a long, drawn-out primary slog?
All you have to do is go back and follow the media narrative of the past seven days. After the New Hampshire contest, Romney was considered such a shoo-in to win in the Palmetto State that most thought that all he'd have to do to win the primary was not "fall down or throw up."
But as it happened, that "something crazy" turned out to be Romney's not anticipating that anyone would hold him responsible for releasing his income taxes. Now, because of Romney's lack of transparency and a few well-delivered anti-media rants by Newt Gingrich, it's the former House speaker who's being credited for a "historical political achievement."
And so Romney looks to Florida not as the site of a GOP coronation but as the state where he'll have to begin his comeback. HuffPost's Sam Wilkes takes us through Mitt Romney's strange, sad week on the trail.
[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/22/romneys-gingrich-campaigns_n_1222506.html
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“Grey’s Anatomy” Star Sarah Drew Welcomes First Child
Actress Sarah Drew, who plays the role of Dr. April Kepner on “Grey’s Anatomy”, gave birth to her first child with hubby Peter Lanfer on [...]
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An Afghan man stands at the scene of Wednesday's suicide attack in Kajaki, Helmand province south of Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012. The suicide bomber blew himself at a bridge under construction in Kajaki district of Helmand province, according to Mohammad Ismail, the deputy of the Afghan security forces coordination office in the area. Ismail said NATO troops also were working at the construction site, but it was unclear whether any were injured or killed. (AP Photo/Abdul Khaleq)
An Afghan man stands at the scene of Wednesday's suicide attack in Kajaki, Helmand province south of Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012. The suicide bomber blew himself at a bridge under construction in Kajaki district of Helmand province, according to Mohammad Ismail, the deputy of the Afghan security forces coordination office in the area. Ismail said NATO troops also were working at the construction site, but it was unclear whether any were injured or killed. (AP Photo/Abdul Khaleq)
U.S. soldiers with the NATO led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) stand guard at the scene of a suicide attack in Kandahar south of Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012. A suicide attacker blew himself up Thursday at an entrance to a sprawling base for U.S. and NATO operations in southern Afghanistan, killing at least six civilians, police said. (AP Photo/Allauddin Khan)
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that he personally held peace talks recently with the insurgent faction Hizb-i-Islami, appearing to assert his own role in a U.S.-led bid for negotiations to end the country's decade-long war.
Karzai made the announcement hours before he was to meet with American special representative Marc Grossman to discuss progress and plans for bringing the Taliban insurgency into formal talks for the first time.
"Recently, we met with a delegation from Hizb-i-Islami ... and had negotiations," Karzai told a meeting of the Afghan parliament, adding, "We are hopeful that these negotiations for peace continue and we will have good results."
Hizb-i-Islami is a radical Islamist militia that controls territory in Afghanistan's northeast and launches attacks against U.S. forces from Pakistan. Its leader, powerful warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is a former U.S. ally now listed as a terrorist by Washington.
The president has met before with representatives of Hekmatyar, whose political allies hold seats in the Afghan parliament and Cabinet, but Saturday's public announcement seemed intended to bolster Karzai's insistence on inclusion in the U.S.-led peace process.
Karzai's statement was also a reminder that any negotiations to end Afghanistan's war will be more complex than just talking to the Taliban's Pakistan-based leadership, headed by Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Hizb-i-Islami, also based over the Pakistan border, has ties to al-Qaida and has launched deadly attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Fighters loyal to Hekmatyar also have strongholds in Baghlan, Kunduz and Kunar provinces in the north and northeast Afghanistan.
There is also the feared Haqqani network, which maintains close ties to both al-Qaida and the Taliban and commands the loyalties of an estimated 10,000 fighters. The Haqqanis have been blamed for a series of spectacular attacks, including suicide bombings inside Kabul.
By showing he can bring at least one major faction to the negotiating table, Karzai may hope to increase his standing in a tentative peace process that has recently been dominated by Washington. The U.S. has repeatedly said that formal negotiations must be Afghan-led, but Karzai is reportedly uneasy with his government not being directly involved in recent preliminary talks with Taliban representatives.
"It should be mentioned that the Afghan nation is the owner of the peace process and negotiations," Karzai said. "No foreign country or organization can prevent (Afghans) from exercising this right."
U.S. representative Grossman recently stressed that any future negotiations would include Afghanistan's government, and said he would meet Karzai on Saturday.
"After our meeting with President Karzai, we will decide what to do next because we take his guidance and advice in an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led process," Grossman said Friday at a stop in India.
The Taliban have vowed to keep fighting as they explore a possible political resolution to the war.
Insurgents clashed Saturday with government forces in Barmal district of Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan, said Maj. Abdul Rahman, who coordinates coalition and Afghan operations in the area.
Afghan security forces killed two of the attackers and recovered their guns and a rocket-propelled grenade, he said. Two other attackers wearing suicide bomb vests moved in, but their explosives detonated prematurely and both died at the scene. One civilian was wounded in the attack, he said.
The Paktika governor's office said four attackers were trying to enter a bazaar and then move toward government offices and military bases nearby. Before they could, Afghan security forces engaged them in a one-hour gun battle and all four attackers were killed, it said.
Separately, four Afghan civilians were killed Saturday morning when their truck struck a roadside bomb near Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province in the south, the Ministry of Interior said.
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. ? Florida's unemployment has dropped below 10 percent.
Gov. Rick Scott personally handled the conference call on Friday to boast that Florida's unemployment for December was 9.9 percent.
Florida's jobless rate is still significantly above the national unemployment figure of 8.5 percent and 913,000 eligible workers are still hunting for jobs across the state.
Scott campaigned on creating some 700,000 new jobs over a seven-year period assuming he'd win re-election in 2014. He said his strategy has led to the creation of 140,000 new jobs since he took office in January 2011.
Scott says Florida has added jobs at a faster rate over the past four months than any other state.
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BANGKOK ? Asian stock markets rose Friday as strong earnings and positive jobs data out of the U.S. added to hopes that the economic recovery in the world's largest economy is for real.
Benchmark oil lingered near $100 per barrel while the dollar fell against the euro and the yen.
On the last trading day before Chinese New Year holidays begin Monday, Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 0.3 percent to 19,992.55. Japan's Nikkei 225 index rose 1.4 percent to 8,761.30 and South Korea's Kospi gained 1.2 percent to 1,937.63.
Benchmarks in Australia, Singapore, India and mainland China were also higher.
Strong corporate earnings reports in the U.S. boosted investor risk tolerance. IBM Corp.'s fourth-quarter earnings beat Wall Street expectations, while Bank of America and Morgan Stanley both reported results that were better than analysts were expecting.
That helped lift shares in Japan's major banks, including Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, which jumped 5.1 percent. Mizuho Financial Group was up 5.5 percent and Nomura Holdings surged 4.9 percent.
Another positive sign was data that showed the U.S. job market is strengthening. The number of people seeking unemployment benefits fell last week to 352,000, the fewest since April 2008.
"The U.S. has better job figures and China's central bank pumped money into the banking system to provide money to cash-starved enterprises so they can pay new year bonuses. I think after the Chinese New Year, be prepared for a correction," said Francis Lun, managing director of Lyncean Holdings in Hong Kong.
Some Hong Kong-listed banks and insurers fell as investors sold shares to book profits ahead of the Lunar New Year, analysts said. The Industrial & Commercial Bank of China fell 2.2 percent. Ping An Insurance shed 1.4 percent.
Resources stocks advanced following strong gains in metals prices overnight.
Mining giant Rio Tinto Ltd. rose 0.8 percent. Fortescue Metals Group, Australia's third-biggest iron ore producer, gained 1.2 percent.
Meanwhile, France and Spain held successful bond auctions, their first since Standard & Poor's downgraded their credit ratings last week. The result was a sign that politicians and central bankers have at least temporarily stemmed the spread of Europe's debt crisis.
Analysts warn, however, that a looming recession could hinder efforts to slash deficits and the results are uncertain from a closely watched debt-restructuring negotiations taking place between Athens and private creditors. Failure to seal a deal would likely result in a financially disastrous default by Greece.
"For the moment, the market expects a deal to be made while downside risk still exists and any disappointment could end the week of rallies," Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong said in an email.
The Dow Jones industrial average gained 0.4 percent to close at 12,623.98 on Thursday. The Standard & Poor's 500 index added 0.5 percent to close at 1,314.50. Both averages are at their highest since July. The Nasdaq added 0.7 percent to close at 2,788.33.
Benchmark crude for February delivery was up 11 cents at $100.50 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 20 cents to finish at $100.39 per barrel in New York on Thursday.
In currency trading, the euro rose to $1.2962 from $1.2936 late Thursday in New York. The dollar fell to 77.09 yen from 77.17 yen.
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ScienceDaily (Jan. 17, 2012) ? A natural enzyme derived from human blood plasma showed potential in significantly reducing the effects of graft-vs.-host disease, a common and deadly side effect of lifesaving bone marrow transplants.
Researchers from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center looked at the drug alpha-1-antitrypsin, which is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in people who have a genetic mutation that makes them deficient in a certain enzyme. This drug has been used in many of these patients over extended periods of time and is known to cause minimal side effects.
More important, there are no known reports of increased susceptibility to infections. This is key for people with graft-vs.-host disease, where existing treatment options tend to suppress the immune system, putting patients at risk of infection. Graft-vs.-host disease is a major complication of bone marrow transplants using marrow from a donor, called an allogeneic transplant. This often-deadly side effect is what makes the procedure so risky.
"If we can get graft-vs.-host disease under control, we can more effectively use allogeneic bone marrow transplant to treat people with leukemia and lymphoma as well as other blood disorders. It would be a curative therapy for people who otherwise have no hope," says senior study author Pavan Reddy, M.D., associate professor of hematology/oncology at the U-M Medical School.
In this study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers used alpha-1-antitrypsin in mice that received allogeneic bone marrow transplants. The drug significantly reduced mortality from graft-vs.-host disease, compared to control mice who did not receive the drug.
In addition, alpha-1-antitrypsin reduced the number of inflammatory cells called T Effector cells that are known to be present in graft-vs.-host disease. It also increased the number of T-regulatory cells, which immunologists believe play a positive role in immune responses.
"It's likely the balance between the T-regulatory cells and the T Effector cells that leads to graft-vs.-host disease. Alpha-1-antitrypsin appears to have tipped that balance favorably," says lead study author Isao Tawara, M.D., Ph.D., a research investigator at the U-M Medical School.
The U-M researchers collaborated on this work with researchers from the University of Colorado and from Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. The researchers are beginning to discuss a possible clinical trial using alpha-1-antitrypsin in post-transplant patients with graft-vs.-host disease for whom conventional therapies are no longer working.
Additional authors include Yaping Sun, Tomomi Toubai, Rebecca Evers and Evelyn Nieves, all from U-M; Eli C. Lewis, from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel; Tania Azam and Charles A. Dinarello, from the University of Colorado.
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Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120117144224.htm
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Meat-eating dinosaurs such as Velociraptor may have been quite the acrobats, using their tails to land aerial maneuvers safely, say scientists studying today's leaping lizards.
Long-tailed robots built as part of this work could help inspire a new generation of maneuverable search-and-rescue droids, the researchers add.
More than 40 years ago, scientists proposed that Velociraptor and other predatory dinosaurs used their tails to stabilize their bodies during jumps or similar rapid or irregular movements, helping make them active, agile hunters. The idea is that the raptors used their tails much as tightrope walkers use balancing poles ? tightrope walkers tilt the poles to make their bodies lean in the opposite direction of the tilt, and the thought was that the extinct reptiles bent their tails to control the orientation of their bodies as they leapt.
Researchers have since found that swinging appendages can help lemurs, cats, kangaroo rats and even humans with their walking and acrobatics. However, while some studies suggested the same apparently holds true for geckos during climbing and gliding, others hinted that lizards that had lost their tails might not only experience no change in performance, but actual improvements, calling into question the idea that tails are useful for balancing.
To address this controversy, scientists analyzed red-headed Agama lizards (Agama agama), which are very good jumpers and are notably capable of landing safely. The scientists shot video of the reptiles making running leaps toward a vertical wall. The horizontal platforms they jumped from had varying surfaces, from slippery to sandpaper-like.
The investigators found the lizards swung their tails to correct for errors made at launch. For instance, slippery surfaces made their feet skid, but the reptiles corrected for such anomalies with appropriate tail movements in midair.
To help confirm their findings, the scientists produced a lizard-size wheeled robot named "Tailbot" that had an aluminum tail and could leap like a ski jumper from a ramp. During each jump, the robot's front wheels, which left the ramp first, started falling while the rear ones were still on the ramp, causing the machine to tilt downward. To avoid a nosedive into the landing pad, Tailbot corrected the angle of its body before landing by using tail movements controlled by feedback from an onboard gyroscope.
The researchers developed mathematical models allowing them to predict the effectiveness of different tails at balancing bodies. Their work suggested that Velociraptor mongoliensis, a 5-foot (1.5-meter) tall, 45-pound (20-kilogram) predator, might have been capable of aerial acrobatics beyond those of even the most agile modern lizards.
"Animals show us that by moving appendages effectively, the control of the body can be simplified," researcher Robert Full, an integrative biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, told LiveScience.
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When it comes to potential robotic applications for this work, "inspiration from lizard tails will likely lead to far more agile search-and-rescue robots that can deal with the rubble often found resulting from a disaster," Full said. "Legged robots will also have a greater capability to more rapidly detect chemical, biological or nuclear hazards that might occur in a subway or populated area."
As to why past studies found that tailless lizards might not suffer any changes in performance, "they may not have problems running on level, smooth ground with no perturbations, but that is not the case on rough terrain or during a perturbation," Full noted.
The scientists detailed their findings online Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.
? 2012 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45875886/ns/technology_and_science-science/
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