LA mall bans boxing champ for anti-gay commentary

Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao suddenly stepped into a political hellhole this past weekend when he expressed disagreement with President Obama's stance on gay marriage. To drive home his point, Pacquiao pulled out a particularly unfriendly quote from Leviticus about same-sex partners, saying that gay men are to be "put to death." Pacquiao lives and trains in gay-friendly L.A., where a number of folks are outraged with the champ's stance. A local mall, The Grove, has banned Pacquiao from its premises, even though he was supposed to do an interview with the entertainment show "Extra" there today. Guess Manny will have to go to the movies instead of shopping on Friday nights.

Taxmageddon sparks rising anxiety

Defense contractors have slowed hiring. Tax advisers are warning firms not to count on favorite breaks. And hospitals are scouring their books for ways to cut costs.

Across the U.S. economy, anxiety is rising about the potential for widespread disruptions after the November election, when a lame-duck Congress will have barely two months to resolve a grinding standoff over taxes and spending.

The halls of the U.S. Capitol are already teeming with people warning of disaster if lawmakers fail to defuse a New Year's budget bomb scheduled to raise taxes for every American taxpayer and slash spending at the Pentagon and most other federal agencies.

Last week, hospital executives came to complain about big scheduled cuts in Medicare payments. Next month, university presidents plan to raise the alarm about big scheduled cuts in federal research grants. And the chief executives of Lockheed Martin and other aerospace giants last Wednesday passed out digital countdown clocks ticking off the seconds until "over 1 million American jobs" will be lost to big scheduled cuts in defense.

read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/taxmageddon-sparks-rising-anxiety/2012/05/14/gIQAUxAAQU_story.html

Jerry Brown proposes billions in cuts. Are Californians getting his message?

With California's budget shortfall soaring, Gov. Jerry Brown proposes broad, painful cuts for state workers and programs. Without new taxes, he warns voters, the cuts will be even worse.

read more: http://news.yahoo.com/jerry-brown-proposes-billions-cuts-californians-getting-message-233005895.html

Siri recommends another phone as best ever

Apple might want to have a talk with its digital assistant, which seems to have a thing for the competition.

"When asked "What is the best smartphone ever?" Siri doesn't mention the iPhone. Instead, it recommends Nokia's (NOK -1.23%) Lumia 900 4G on AT&T's (T +1.39%) network. And Siri apparently prefers cyan, recommending that color above the others."

read more: http://money.msn.com/top-stocks/post.aspx?post=2d250427-e4e0-4014-891b-9db8ae9a9d19

Her majesty's underpants are now up for grabs on eBay

Queen Elizabeth ll's underpants are available for sale on eBay. If you haven't already clicked over to frantically bid past the starting price of $3,999, we can tell you how something so intimately attached to the crown came to America's No. 1 source for slightly stained Beanie Babies. "Baron" Joseph de Bicske Dobronyi had reportedly arranged for the panties, which he said he got from a friend in 1968, to be auctioned off posthumously by Hansons Auctioneers, but after the auction house stalled, fearing royal indignation, the estate put the pantaloons on the very public site instead. The supremely high-waisted undershorts bear an embroidered monogram and would unquestionably make any woman feel like a ... creep. Sorry! Used underwear is creepy, no matter whose it is.

Meat Glue, Pink Slime, Health Risks & More Reasons to Never Eat Meat

A slab of filet mignon might look delicious—but what if it's just a bunch of scraps being held together by something known as 'meat glue'? A recent investigation has revealed the powder is commonly used to hold meat together—the latest in a string of bad press for red meat. From the stats that eating red meat will take years off your life to the infamous 'pink slime,' The Daily Beast rounds up eight reasons why you might want to think twice before eating that steak.

read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/13/eating-all-red-meat-increases-death-and-more-reasons-to-never-eat-meat.html

For Volcker Rule, JPMorgan’s $2 Billion Loss Says It All

It’s never polite to say I told you so, but JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s $2 billion trading loss has proponents of a tougher proprietary trading ban saying . . . well, you know what.

JPMorgan’s admission is a shocker. The bank said the losses resulted from errors, sloppiness and bad judgment, which top bank executives didn’t know about or understand until it was too late. On Wall Street and around the globe, JPMorgan was a standard-setter for risk management. If regulators can’t trust JPMorgan to get it right, whom can they trust?

The Volcker rule, part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, was inspired by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. It’s supposed to stop federally insured banks from making speculative bets for their own profit -- leaving taxpayers to bail them out when things go wrong.

As we have said, banks have both explicit and implicit federal guarantees, so the market doesn’t impose the same discipline on them as, say, hedge funds. For this reason, the Volcker rule should be as airtight as possible.

The huge trading positions taken by the London branch of JPMorgan’s chief investment office certainly drive home the point. As first reported by Bloomberg News, the investment office, operating much like a hedge fund, built a position that may have totaled $100 billion in a credit-derivative index known as the CDX, which tracks the default risk of a basket of companies. Those are the positions that blew up. They could ultimately cost the bank much more than $2 billion now that the market knows they are being unwound.

Skewed Prices

read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-11/for-volcker-rule-jpmorgan-s-2-billion-loss-says-it-all.html

Judge lets Fruit Roll-Ups lawsuit proceed

(Reuters) - General Mills Inc must defend a lawsuit that claims the food company deceived consumers into believing its Fruit Roll-Ups and Fruit by the Foot snacks are made with real fruit.

Reasonable consumers might be misled by packaging that claimed the snacks are "made with real fruit," and would not read the fine print, U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti in San Francisco said on Thursday.

The federal lawsuit is one of many accusing food companies of advertising products as being healthier than they are.

Last month, Italy's Ferrero set aside $3 million to settle a U.S. lawsuit by a San Diego mother that claimed its Nutella chocolate spread could not be considered a healthy and nutritious part of a balanced breakfast.

The General Mills case was brought in October by Annie Lam, a resident of Daly City, California. It sought class-action status on behalf of consumers nationwide.

Lam said General Mills incorrectly described the ingredients of its fruit snacks, citing strawberry-flavored Fruit Roll-Ups that contain "pears from concentrate," but no strawberries.

read more:

Listen up: Bristol Palin has something to say about gay marriage

During President Barack Obama's interview with ABC News yesterday in which he completely evolved into the final Pokemon in his stance on gay marriage he said his daughters, who have friends with same-sex parents, helped prompt his own "change in perspective."

Well that is just NOT okay with Bristol Palin. In a blog post titled "Hail to the Chiefs — Malia and Sasha Obama," Palin put her fingers to America's pulse and wrote:

"So let me get this straight – it's a problem if my mom listened too much to my dad, but it's a heroic act if the President made a massive change in a policy position that could affect the entire nation after consulting with his teenage daughters? …

"Sometimes dads should lead their family in the right ways of thinking.  In this case, it would've been nice if the President would've been an actual leader and helped shape their thoughts instead of merely reflecting what many teenagers think after one too many episodes of Glee."

 

Oh, boy. 

by  Eddie Scarry

Big banks go after 401k trillions

Bank of America (BAC +0.13%, news), JPMorgan Chase (JPM -7.44%, news) and Wells Fargo (WFC +0.17%, news) are adding staff, creating easier-to-use technology and competing on fees in an effort to win a bigger share of the trillions of dollars in 401k savings plans.

JPMorgan almost doubled its sales force dedicated to selling retirement-plan services to employers in 2010, says Michael Falcon, whose job as head of retirement in the U.S. and Canada for the bank's asset management unit was created in January. "It's one of the top priorities" at JPMorgan, he says.

Americans held $2.9 trillion in 401k plans as of September, and the total may reach $4 trillion by 2015, according to Cerulli Associates, a Boston research firm.

Increased competition from banks may lead to lower costs and more choices for employers and savers, says Laura Pavlenko Lutton, an editorial director in the mutual fund research group at Morningstar.

And it may mean less revenue for the top three 401k administrators: Fidelity, Aon Hewitt and Vanguard, which together had 43% of the market at the end of 2009, compared with a combined share of less than 10% for Bank of America, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo, according to Cerulli.

 

Read more: http://money.msn.com/mutual-fund/big-banks-go-after-401k-trillions.aspx

Obama declares support for gay marriage

President Obama today announced that he now supports same-sex marriage, reversing his longstanding opposition amid growing pressure from the Democratic base and even his own vice president.

In an interview with ABC News' Robin Roberts, the president described his thought process as an "evolution" that led him to this place, based on conversations with his own staff members, openly gay and lesbian service members, and conversations with his wife and own daughters.

"I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don't Ask Don't Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I've just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married," Obama told Roberts, in an interview to appear on ABC's "Good Morning America" Thursday. Excerpts of the interview will air tonight on ABC's "World News with Diane Sawyer."

The president stressed that this is a personal position, and that he still supports the concept of states deciding the issue on their own. But he said he's confident that more Americans will grow comfortable with gays and lesbians getting married, citing his own daughters' comfort with the concept.

"It's interesting, some of this is also generational," the president continued. "You know when I go to college campuses, sometimes I talk to college Republicans who think that I have terrible policies on the economy, on foreign policy, but are very clear that when it comes to same sex equality or, you know,  believe in equality. They are much more comfortable with it. You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are same-sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table and we're talking about their friends and their parents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn't dawn on them that somehow their friends' parents would be treated differently. It doesn't make sense to them and frankly, that's the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective."

read more: http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/29242313

North Carolina OKs constitutional same-sex marriage ban

The amendment says: "Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State." In effect, it would bar the state from giving legal recognition to civil unions between same-sex couples.

Related: Is Obama's gay marriage stance all about suburban voters?

Under North Carolina law, same-sex marriages are already banned.

And opponents of the constitutional amendment did not make the argument that defeating it was a prelude to changing the law so that same-sex couples could legally marry in North Carolina.

"This is not a conversation about a possible change of law down the road," said Paul Guequierre, a spokesperson for the Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families, the main group rallying opposition to the amendment, on Monday.

By approving the amendment, North Carolina joins 28 other states that have state constitutional provisions limiting marriage to man-woman unions.

Related: North Carolina amendment could impact gay and straight couples

On Monday Peter Sprigg, the senior fellow for policy studies at the conservative Family Research Council in Washington, said, "Marriage remains an essential social institution which unites men and women to provide for the reproduction of the human race and to provide mothers and fathers for children. We trust that the voters of North Carolina will recognize and protect this vital public purpose of marriage."

But President Barack Obama had opposed the amendment. "While the president does not weigh in on every single ballot measure in every state, the record is clear that the President has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same sex couples," Cameron French, Obama's North Carolina campaign spokesman, said in March.

Related: Half of Americans support gay marriage in new Gallup poll

A Gallup Poll released Tuesday showed the American people split on the same-sex marriage question: 50 percent think marriages between same-sex couples should be recognized by the law as valid, but 48 percent think they should not be recognized as legal. Among Democrats, 65 percent say same-sex marriages should be recognized by the law as valid, but among only about one in five Republicans hold that view. Among independents, 57 percent think sex marriages should be legally recognized.

Thirty-eight states have prohibitions of same-sex marriage in their laws. Six states and the District of Columbia allow same-sex marriages.

THE BROWNING
OF AMERICA

Essayist Richard Rodriguez of the Pacific News Service considers the changing face of America.

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ, Pacific News Service: Everywhere America is browning. Los Angeles is our largest brown city, California the largest brown state.

More than black and white.

Brown is moving West to East, South to North. Brown terrifies the skinhead in Colorado, bewilders the African-American historian.  When President Clinton named John Hope Franklin to direct a national conversation on race relations, Professor Franklin was quick to insist the unfinished business of America, he said, is black and white. It is, at least, an irony of history that an African-American historian would end up arguing for the centrality of the black and white dialectic. For generations, white racists denied African-Americans the possibility of brown. The Ku Klux Klan was infuriated by the idea of brown: Brown, the color of family secrets, illicit passion; brown, the shade of love, and of drawn shades.

To deny the possibility of Brown, white racists concocted the one-drop theory, as it was called. Its aim was to keep the African slave a slave. Regardless of how light-skinned, how brown you may be, regardless of how racially mixed, you remained African if you carried a single drop of African blood. In fact, America was never just white and black. From the first day that African slaves were brought to these shores against their will there was a complicating third race: The Indian.

 The Indian who fought against the European also married the European. The Indian married, too, the African. Every African-American I've ever known has told me somewhere in the course of our friendship, by the way, did you know that my grandmother was Cherokee, my great-grandfather was Sioux? The African-Indian marriage is the great unwritten chapter in American history. Lyndon Johnson seems to me the last black and white President of the United States. It was LBJ who oversaw the final years of the Negro Civil Rights movement, the collapse of our system of segregation: separate water fountains, separate schools, separate seats in the movie theater, designed to keep the races apart.

It is a mark of true emancipation that two of this nation's most prominent African-Americans, Colin Powell and Tiger Woods, are now able to speak so easily about their racial complexity. The Clinton administration has announced that in future we Americans will be able to describe ourselves on census forms as belonging to more than one race. But 25 years ago Richard Nixon, a Californian, moved us well beyond the black and white chessboard by providing five choices: white, black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American.

 In November, USA Today published a survey showing that 57 percent of American teenagers date inter-racially. The largest number--90 percent--are Hispanics. And why not? Most Hispanics are already mixed, either Mulatto Puerto Ricans or Mestizo Mexicans. Brown is pushing up from South of the border. Zebras--Robert Mapplethorp photographs--tuxedos--piano keys--the world of black and white is a world of sharp, cool, sometimes elegant contrasts about ideas or judgments we say are black and white we mean that they are simplistic, admitting no complexity or shadings.

And though increasingly America grows messy, brown, no one wants to speak about it, or how it may affect our national conversation on race. This season's most talked about books on race relations are black and white. There's an optimistic black and white written by Stephen and Abigail Thernstrom. And there's a pessimistic black and white from David Shipler. Take your pick.

I am a brown man in a black and white country. All of my life I have listened to the black and white conversation, like listening to a quarreling couple through a thin motel wall. In the 1950's and 60's I watched in awe as the Negro Civil Rights movement forced the end of segregation. There, on my family's black and white television, I saw President Johnson sign legislation marking an end of a black and white nation, and then the NBC peacock unfurled its wings, and America assumed color.

I'm Richard Rodriguez.

John Travolta Denies Masseuse's Sexual Assault Claims

'This lawsuit is a complete fiction and fabrication,' a rep for Travolta tells People.

An anonymous plaintiff has filed a $2 million lawsuit against John Travolta, alleging that the "Old Dogs" star assaulted and sexually harassed him after he was hired to massage the actor.

Unsurprisingly, a rep for Travolta has shot down the allegations via a statement issued to People magazine, in which the rep strongly denied all claims made by the anonymous man, known only as John Doe via his court filing.

"This lawsuit is a complete fiction and fabrication," Travolta's rep said. "None of the events claimed in the suit ever occurred. The plaintiff, who refuses to give their name, knows that the suit is a baseless lie. It is for that reason that the plaintiff hasn't been identified with a name even though it is required to do so.

"On the date when plaintiff claims John met him, John was not in California and it can be proved that he was on the East Coast," the statement continued. "[The] plaintiff's attorney has filed this suit to try and get his 15 minutes of fame. John intends to get this case thrown out and then he will sue the attorney and plaintiff for malicious prosecution."

The plaintiff's lengthy 14-page suit, which was filed Friday in California's U.S. District Court, charges 58-year-old Travolta with assault, sexual battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. According to the complaint, the plaintiff alleges that among other salacious activities, Travolta exposed himself and groped the masseur despite protests during a massage performed in Los Angeles in January 2011.

9-Year-Old Boy Left Dead Mom & Sister & Went to School Because He Had No Other Choice

A 9-year-old boy became one of the quiet heroes of America this week in the saddest way possible. He walked into his elementary school and told teachers that his mom and sister were dead. And it only gets worse from there.

Police say they went to the boy's home and found the bodies of his mom and older sister (listed as 10 years old by some media outlets, 11 years old by others), his father alive but covered in blood, and his 4-year-old brother sitting amidst the chaos. Dad's now being investigated to determine whether he played a role in the tragedy. Guess what that means for the 9-year-old?

He's the adult in this situation ... more or less. He had the wherewithal to keep it together until he made it to school, his safe haven, and actually talked to a responsible adult. What he did was smart and pretty darn incredible. Most adults couldn't have kept calm enough to do that. And he's 9. NINE!

Now he's a 9-year-old without a mom. And with police saying there was no sign of a break-in or some intruder, things are looking pretty bad on the dad front too. That makes him, what. The "man" of the family? In what world does that make sense?

I know "they" always say kids will surprise you, but I can't help sitting here today with tears in my eyes for this little boy. He shouldn't have had to surprise people with his strength. He should be just a little boy going about his day doing little boy things. Playing LEGOs and eating candy. He shouldn't be the one who had to figure out how to escape a home of horrors and how to find a responsible adult to help his family.

He's a 9-year-old hero. But I wish he could just be a 9-year-old boy.

 

What would you like to do for this young man today?

Dinosaurs 'gassed' themselves into extinction, British scientists say

Dinosaurs may have farted themselves to extinction, according to a new study from British scientists.

The researchers calculated that the prehistoric beasts pumped out more than 520 million tons (472 million tonnes) of methane a year -- enough to warm the planet and hasten their own eventual demise.

 Until now, an asteroid strike and volcanic activity around 65 million years ago had seemed the most likely cause of their extinction.  

'These dinosaurs may have produced more methane than all the modern sources put together.'

- Co-researcher David Wilkinson

Giant plant-eating sauropods were fingered as the key culprits in the study, which appears in the latest edition of the journal Current Biology. An average argentinosaurus, weighing around 90 tons (82 tonnes) and measuring 140 feet (42m), chomped its way through half a ton (half a tonne) of ferns a day, producing clouds of methane as the food broke down in its gut.

Professor Graeme Ruxton from St. Andrews University in Scotland and co-researcher David Wilkinson, from Liverpool John Moores University, worked out just how much of the greenhouse gas the billions of dinosaurs would have generated during the Mesozoic era, starting 250 million years ago.

"A simple mathematical model suggests that the microbes living in sauropod dinosaurs may have produced enough methane to have an important effect on the Mesozoic climate," Wilkinson said. "In fact, our calculations suggest these dinosaurs may have produced more methane than all the modern sources, natural and human, put together."

The dinosaur output of 520 million tons (472 million tonnes) is comparable to current natural and man-made emissions of the greenhouse gas, which scientists say is around 21 times more powerful than CO2 at trapping heat on Earth and causing climate change. Cows and other farm animals globally contribute up to 100 million tons (90 million tonnes) a year of methane.

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Bizarre craze behind smuggling of pills containing the powdered flesh of babies.

South Korean authorities have seized thousands of pills containing the powdered flesh of fetuses and babies that were smuggled in from China to be used as Viagara-style performance enhancers, according to multiple reports.

Nearly 17,500 of the bizarre capsules have been grabbed from tourists' luggage and international mail since last August, the state-run Korea Customs service said in a statement Monday. The capsules were made in northeastern China in a stomach-turning process in which dead babies' bodies were chopped into small pieces and dried on stoves before being turned into powder, the Korea Customs Service said. Customs officials refused to say where the dead babies came from or who made the capsules, citing possible diplomatic friction with Beijing. China ordered an investigation into the production of drugs made from dead fetuses or newborns last year.

The pills, which are typically smuggled in by ethnic Koreans living in northern China, aren't just creepy, they contain "super bacteria" that is hazardous to human health, the statement said. South Korea began cracking down on the drugs last year after a television network aired a documentary accusing Chinese pharmaceutical companies of collaborating with abortion clinics to make the pills from human fetuses and the remains of dead infants, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Twisted myths about the medical powers of dead babies have long persisted in parts of China. Consumption of human placentas is believed to help revive blood supply and circulation, and many believe the fetus is a "tonic" for disease has kept the pills in demand, according to the China Daily. But the latest use of fetal tissue is as a sexual performance enhancer, according to a report in the Global Times, a tabloid published by the official People's Daily.

Some among the approximately 35 smugglers who have been caught told customs officials they believed the capsules were ordinary stamina boosters and did not know the ingredients or manufacturing process. Ethnic Koreans from northeastern China who now live in South Korea were intending to use the capsules themselves or share them with other Korean-Chinese, a customs official said. They were carried in luggage or sent by international mail.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/05/07/south-korea-finds-smuggled-capsules-containing-human-flesh/#ixzz1uDR7NZ4Z

Angry Greeks reject bailout, risk euro exit

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek voters enraged by economic hardship caused by the terms of an international bailout turned on ruling parties in an election on Sunday, putting the country's future in the euro zone at risk and threatening to revive Europe's debt crisis.

The latest official results, with over 61 percent of the vote counted, showed the only two major parties supporting an EU/IMF program that keeps Greece from bankruptcy would be hard pressed to form a lasting coalition.

Conservative New Democracy and Socialist PASOK, who have dominated Greece for decades, were holding less than 35 percent of the vote. That would mean they might only scrape the 151-seat threshold needed for even the most fragile majority in parliament.

Once mighty PASOK looked set to be pushed into third place by the anti-bailout Left Coalition party, in a stunning vote against austerity policies that have caused deep hardship in one of Europe's worst postwar recessions.

New Democracy was polling just under 20 percent and PASOK a humiliating 13.6 percent with the Left Coalition on 16.2.

In the last election in 2009, PASOK won a landslide victory with 44 percent and the Left Coalition had just 5 percent.

"I cannot take it anymore, living as beggars in our own country. The Left Coalition can shake them up, and wake them up," said Kate Savvidou, 65, a pensioner who deserted PASOK.

Left Coalition leader Alexis Tsipras, at 37 Greece's youngest political leader, hailed a peaceful revolution and said German Chancellor Angela Merkel should understand that austerity policies had been defeated.

"Greek people gave a mandate for a new dawn with solidarity and justice instead of barbaric bailout measures," he said.

In another indication of the extent of public anger, the extreme right Golden Dawn party was poised to take nearly 7 percent of the vote. This would allow such a party to enter parliament for the first time since the fall of a military dictatorship in 1974.

read more: http://news.yahoo.com/angry-greeks-vote-cliffhanger-election-041733917--business.html

iPhone Owners: AT&T Chief Wishes You Had Paid for All That Data

AT&T's chief executive dropped a bombshell on iPhone users: he regrets making unlimited data plans for the Apple device.

Rather, CEO Randall Stephenson told a conference in Los Angeles this week, heavy data users should have paid for what they were using, and light users should have paid less, rather than having the light users subsidize the heavy users.

"My only regret was how we introduced pricing in the beginning," Stephenson said at the Milken Institute's Global Conference Wednesday. "Because how did we introduce pricing? Thirty dollars and you get all you can eat, and it's a variable cost model. Every additional megabyte you use in this network, I have to invest capital."

But the unlimited plan was nixed in 2010, and replaced with a tiered data coverage options. In a New York Times report, Chief Executive of AT&T Mobility Ralph de la Vega said 70 percent of individuals on tiered data plans paid for one of the more expensive options.

Despite some regrets, Stephenson said he doesn't regret supporting the iPhone. He recalled the board was initially nervous about the pairing: "I remember asking the question: Are we investing in a business model, are we investing in a product or are we investing in Steve Jobs?

"The answer to the question was, you're investing in Steve Jobs. Let's go after this thing. And we went after it, and the rest is history."

AT&T is doing pretty well ($6.1 billion in mobile data revenue last quarter). But Stephenson admitted free messaging services such as Apple's iMessage that are already tapping into the company's revenue. He also mentioned Skype as a potential threat to AT&T's offerings.

Did you have an unlimited data plan back in the day? How does it compare to your current plan? Tell us in the comments.

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Greece's pro-bailout parties take a beating - exit poll

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece's conservative New Democracy and Socialist PASOK parties risked falling short of the 151-seat majority needed to form a coalition government after Sunday's general election, an exit poll from Kapa Research showed.

The poll for Reuters and To Vima newspaper showed New Democracy taking 16-19 percent of the vote, well below projections of up to 25 percent last month, while PASOK took 15-18 percent. The anti-bailout Left Coalition party was set to challenge PASOK for second place with 15-18 percent of the vote.

With a maximum of 37 percent of the vote, the only two pro-bailout parties which have ruled Greece for decades looked like they would struggle to form a coalition.

Analysts say the parties needed between 35 to 40 percent to obtain a workable parliamentary majority.

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Under fire: Wartime stress as a defense for murder

Should post-traumatic stress disorder be a defense for murder? Watch "War Rage on Trial" on CNN Presents, Sunday, May 6 at 8 p.m./11p.m. ET.

Altoona, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- Raymond Williams had just retired and was looking forward to traveling out west with his wife and spending time with his three grandchildren. But all those plans were shattered on April 6, 2009. As Williams, 64, went to get the mail on that spring day, he was gunned down by a man he'd never met.

His wife found his body.

"She said, you know 'Matt! Matt! Somebody shot Dad,'" recalled Williams' son, Matt. "It didn't register. I'm thinking, 'OK where is he now? Did they take him to the hospital? What hospital is he in?' And before I could even get another word out, she goes 'And he's dead.'"

A short time earlier, the same gunman had killed a teenager and wounded a woman at a store in the same working-class town of Altoona in central Pennsylvania.

The gunman, Nicholas Horner, was a husband, a father, and a veteran soldier who had been awarded multiple medals for his service in Iraq, including a combat action badge. Less than a year after returning from combat, Horner faced two first degree murder charges and the possibility of the death penalty.

"Not in a million years could I believe this was true because Nick would never, he could never hurt anyone," said Horner's mother, Karen. "I know Nick. Nick pulled the trigger, but that wasn't Nick."

read more: http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/05/justice/ptsd-murder-defense/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

Family Locked In Restaurant For Not Tipping, Woman Claims

What happens when you take issue with a restaurant's automatic gratuity?

Jasmine Marks told KPRC that she and her family and friends were locked inside a Houston restaurant after they refused to pay an automatic 17 percent gratuity.

The gratuity was added to the bill because Marks sat with a party of more than five, a policy clearly noted on the menu. But when Marks refused to pay because of poor service including rudeness and missing orders, she said the restaurant called the police and locked the door.

Despite Marks' insistence that the service she received wasn't worth a 17 percent tip, the bill was eventually paid in full.

The story generated mixed reactions when it was posted on Reddit.

"The restaurant should have just voided the gratuity," one commenter wrote. "They get the 17% from this family but then lose tons of business once this story makes the rounds. Basically the whole town has just found out their food and service sucks."

But another commenter said the diners were at fault since the restaurant had a clearly marked gratuity policy on the menu.

"It was on the menu that a party that size would have the gratuity included in the bill," the commenter wrote. "I will agree that 17% is a bit much, but they really have no right to complain."

In the end, perhaps Marks should be thankful that she wasn't arrested.

NBC Philadelphia reported that a Pennsylvania couple were handcuffed after they refused to pay a mandatory 18 percent gratuity at a pub in Bethlehem, Pa.

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FLORIDA SINKHOLE

A massive sinkhole opened up in a residential neighborhood in Windermere, Florida that was 100 feet across and nearly 50 feet deep.

Luckily, no one was hurt in the freak accident, though the massive hole displaced a family of six, which had to be evacuated with aid of the fire department.

The cause of the sinkhole is unknown, but officials believe the dry weather conditions experienced in parts of the south could have contributed to the hole.

The hole ends a mere three feet from the family's two-story house, WESH reported.

One of the homeowners discovered the pit in their backyard around 7am this morning when they let the dog out.

read more: http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/47567/florida-sinkhole/

Fig Newtons get a new name

The plump fruit is on the outs as Nabisco tries to increase sales of the cookie line.

Is the fig out of favor?

It is at Nabisco, a unit of Kraft (KFT -0.15%), where the famous Fig Newtons cookies have lost part of their name. They are simply called Newtons now.

The fig is still inside the cookie -- in three versions, including original and fat-free. Other versions include strawberry, raspberry and minis.

Why the name change? The cookie had been losing sales and market share, The New York Times reports. Nabisco wanted to know why and started asking consumers.

As it turned out, a lot of people just hate figs. One executive at Kraft told the Times about the "baggage of the fig."

"For people who loved us, there was heritage there, and they had eaten them most of their lives," the brand manager for Newtons told the Times. "But the opposite was true with the people that didn't love us -- they knew the brand as Fig Newtons, but they really disliked figs."

So a name change was in order. It isn't so much a change as a reversion to the original name. The first Fig Newtons were created in 1891 at Kennedy Biscuit Works in Cambridge, Mass. The cookie was named the Newton after a nearby town. The cookie didn't become the Fig Newton until later, and the new name was trademarked in 1914.

Now the sales slump is over. A new line of crisp cookies called Newtons Fruit Thins is a success, and Newtons have a 3.2% share of the American cookie market, the Times reports. Early last year, fig versions grabbed 75% of the sales in the Newton line. Now they get only 60% as the other flavors shine.

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Sharon Jones, Woman Who Found Winning Lottery Ticket, May Have To Give Up Winnings

EARCY, Ark. — An Arkansas woman who cashed a $1 million lottery ticket may have to give up the winnings to a woman who threw away the ticket after she bought it, according to a judge's ruling Tuesday.

The judge decided that Sharon Duncan was entitled to the prize money, not Sharon Jones, who claimed the prize money after she took the ticket from a trash can of discarded lottery tickets at a convenience store in Beebe, a city about 40 miles northeast of Little Rock.

Jones' attorney, James Simpson, said he plans to appeal. Jones had testified that she already spent some of the money on a new truck and cash gifts to her children.

Simpson noted that Duncan testified she threw away the ticket after the read-out on a ticket scanner said, "Sorry. Not a winner." The attorney argued that people shouldn't be allowed to throw items away and then say, "`ooh, I want to un-abandon it.'"

"We'd have garage-sale law all over the place," he said. "It became trash when someone threw it away."

White County judge Thomas Hughes, however, said Jones never met the burden of proof that Duncan abandoned her right to claim $1 million.

"The $1 million was never found money," Hughes said.

read more:

Cannibal shrimp: The invasion has begun

Do not be alarmed, but the cannibal shrimp invasion has begun.

The influx of the jumbo-sized shrimp (which look more like a small lobster than the little pink crustaceans you see at the grocery store) has increased 10 times in the last year, according to a report from the U.S. Geological Survey—from 32 in 2010 to 331 in 2011. The shrimp-eating shrimp have been spotted in waters from North Carolina to Texas.

Tony Reisinger of the Texas Sea Grant Extension Service, told CNN that the tiger prawn "are cannibalistic as are other shrimp, but it's larger so it can consume the others."

The black-and-white-striped sea creatures have shown up in the Gulf of Mexico and Southeast coast and, unlike their bottom-feeding cousins, are big enough—up to 13 inches long and up to a quarter-pound—to gobble up smaller shrimp.

Researchers worry that the Asian cannibal species is preying on the smaller, native sea life, competing for resources and carrying disease.

The increase "is the first indication that we may be undergoing a true invasion of Asian tiger shrimp," said marine ecologist James A. Morris, who works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Center for Coastal Fisheries and Habitat Research.

Scientists don't know exactly how the Asian variety got to the Gulf Coast—the possibilities include breeding in the local waters or being carried to the area by currents.

No matter how they got to the U.S., they're not welcome. Said Morris, "The Asian tiger shrimp represents yet another potential marine invader capable of altering fragile marine ecosystems."

The  numbers are probably much higher than the reported amount. Pam Fuller, the USGS biologist who runs the agency's Nonindigenous Aquatic Species database, said, "The more fisherman and other locals become accustomed to seeing them, the less likely they are to report them."

The USGS will next look into the tiger shrimp DNA for clues to its origins, and asks anyone who spots a tiger shrimp to report its location to the USGS.

Wii U info bonanza: Day one downloads, leaked Rayman trailer

Nintendo usually likes to keep things pretty close to its vest, so you'd expect details about the Wii U, the company's next generation console, to be pretty scant right now.

Nope. With the system's big coming out party planned during the E3 video game expo just over a month from now, we're learning plenty about what the company has in store, though far from everything. 

First, what we don't know — and what we won't for a while. Nintendo, in a conference call with analysts following its annual earnings report, slipped in word that it does not intend to announce the price of the Wii U at its annual E3 press conference in June.

That's disappointing, but not surprising. The company traditionally keeps that detail in its pocket for new systems until a couple months prior to release, which lets it get a new round of media focus.

What we do know sounds pretty exciting, though. Nintendo, which has never been the most progressive company when it comes to online gaming, is finally embracing digital distribution in a big way.

Starting in August, Nintendo's new first-party games will be available at both retail locations and through its downloadable games eShop. The first title to do so will be New Super Mario Bros. 2 for the 3DS — and when the Wii U comes out, users will be able to download games digitally from day one.

"Starting from this software, the company will offer the software titles that Nintendo itself publishes in both packaged and digital download formats so that our consumers can choose the way to purchase them," said CEO Satoru Iwata on the call. "It is imperative for us to expand the exposure of the digital download products to potential consumers."

read more:

'Real life Barbie' stirs debate over cosmetic surgery'

A recent article about 21-year-old Ukrainian model Valeria Lukyanova has caused an uproar across the Internet, as people debate whether or not the "real life Barbie" achieved her appearance through cosmetic surgery. It has also stoked a larger debate over whether or not excessive pressure is placed on young women by the media and popular culture to fit within a certain cosmetic mold.

Lukyanova's Tumblr account features some pictures of the model without cosmetics, but in most of the photos she appears to be wearing a lot of makeup. In addition, several readers are questioning whether the photos have been altered, and there's speculation as to whether Lukyanova underwent extensive plastic surgery at such a young age to get her look.

So, are young women really altering their bodies in an attempt to look like Barbie?

Writing for Discovery News, Benjamin Radford says "little research" has actually been done on whether girls actually look up to Barbie as a physical ideal. Radford cites an article from the journal Adolescence, in which authors Tara Kuther and Erin McDonald write that, "the extant literature about Barbie dolls tends to be opinionated and based on essays and popular media articles" rather than actual scientific research and analysis.

In fact, Radford points to a 1995 British study, which found that young girls are actually fond of "torturing" and destroying their Barbie dolls, seeing them as disposable toys rather than a real-life approximation of feminine beauty.

Gay-rights activist rips Bible, mocks teens fleeing room

Dan Savage knows how to work a room. He also knows how to clear one out. The founder of the "It Gets Better" project did both during a recent speech at a high school journalism convention in Seattle. He called the Bible pro-slavery and argued that if the Bible got something like slavery wrong then anti-gay protestors shouldn't use the book as a defense for their views. As you can see in this video, some students applauded while others walked out. Savage called those fleeing the room "pansy ass" and later apologized if he "hurt anyone's feelings."

Watch video: http://now.msn.com/now/0428-savage-bible-speech.aspx

UK Pays For Disabled To Visit Prostitutes

Councils pay for disabled to visit prostitutes and lap-dancing clubs from £520m taxpayer fund

A 'man of 21 with learning disabilities has been granted taxpayers' money to fly to Amsterdam and have sex with a prostitute. His social worker says sex is a 'human right' for the unnamed individual – described as a frustrated virgin.

His trip to a brothel in the Dutch capital's red light district next month is being funded through a £520 million [$812 million] scheme introduced by the last government to empower those with disabilities.

They are given a personal budget and can choose what services this is spent on.

The man's social worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said his client was an 'angry, frustrated and anxious young man' who had a need for sex…

'He has been to two sexual health and sexual awareness courses and basically wants to try it.

'The girls in Amsterdam are far more protected than those on UK streets. Let him have some fun – I'd want to.

'Wouldn't you prefer that we can control this, guide him, educate him, support him to understand the process and ultimately end up satisfying his needs in a secure, licensed place where his happiness and growth as a person is the most important thing?

'Refusing to offer him this service would be a violation of his human rights.' …

The social worker added: 'Who says he can't do what he wants? We can't place restrictions on a young man who wants to experience the world.'

Good point. Besides, the British taxpayers should be grateful that he didn't was an all expenses paid trip around the world. Which, of course, is another 'human right.'

The trip emerged in data from Freedom of Information requests which revealed that many councils are using the money from the government's Putting People First scheme to pay for prostitutes, visits to lap dancing clubs and exotic holidays.

Another man who has a brain injury has even had sex work built into his council care package. This is designed to teach him to become sexually 'self-reliant' after his wife left him and took all their money.

It has increased his confidence and restored his faith in women, care workers said…

Doesn't life seem more and more like a bad Jerry Lewis movie? Which is to say, a Jerry Lewis movie.

In Greater Manchester and Norfolk, social care clients have used their payments for internet dating subscriptions.

In one year, a man from Norwich who suffers mental health problems received a holiday to Tunisia, a subscription to an internet dating site, driving lessons and expensive art materials.

This was on top of state benefits. He claimed he needed 'some time out, some rest and a change of scenery' after a mental breakdown. He also argued that a break in Tunisia with a friend was cheaper than a week in institutional care.

And we thought we were joking when we talked about a trip around the world earlier.

A survey by The Outsiders and TLC [sic] Trusts – groups which campaign for the sexual rights of people with disabilities – found most local authorities said they did not 'condone' transfer of their funds to pay for sex.

But of 121 councils who responded, 97 per cent said they had no offical [sic] policy on the topic. Instead, they left decisions to the discretion of their social workers and junior managers.

Nevertheless, 53 per cent of the councils were said to have a strategy that 'explicitly empowered' disabled people to pursue their sexual aspirations…

Liz Sayce, chief executive of disability network Radar, agreed with the social worker the desire for sexual relations was a matter of human rights…

Young arrested on hate assault charge

Detroit Tigers left fielder Delmon Young was arrested Friday on a hate crime harassment charge after police said he got into a fight with a group of men and yelled anti-Semitic epithets.

Young was standing outside of the Hilton New York at about 1:30 a.m., where he was staying ahead of a series with the New York Yankees that starts Friday night. Nearby, a group of about four Chicago tourists staying at the hotel were approached by a panhandler wearing a yarmulke. After, as the group walked up to the hotel doors, Young started yelling anti-Semitic epithets, police said.

It was not clear whom Young was yelling at, but he got into a tussle with the Chicago group, and a 32-year-old man sustained scratches to his elbows, according to police.

Both Young and the group went inside the hotel, and at some point, police were called, and Young was arrested, police said. He was arrested on a charge of aggravated harassment as a hate crime.

Young was first taken to a hospital because he was believed to be intoxicated, police said. He was at a police precinct and may be facing arraignment later.

A call to the team and a message sent to his agent weren't immediately returned Friday.

It was not clear whether Young would play Friday at the 7:05 p.m. game. The Tigers were home Thursday afternoon, where Young went 0-for-3 with a walk in a 5-4 loss to the Seattle Mariners. Young is hitting .242 with one home run and five RBI, is signed to a one-year contract for $6,725,000 and can become a free agent after the season.

In 2006, Young was suspended for 50 games without pay by the International League for throwing a bat that hit a replacement umpire in the chest. Young, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2003 amateur draft, was ejected in the first inning after taking a called third strike. He lingered in the batter's box, walked away and then threw his bat end over end at the umpire, hitting him in the chest.

Young has played for the Tigers since last season, spending two seasons before with the Minnesota Twins. He's the younger brother of former outfielder and first baseman Dmitri Young.

 

KFC ordered to pay $8.3 million to Australian girl

Fast food giant Kentucky Fried Chicken has been ordered to pay Aus$8 million (US$8.3 million) to an Australian girl who suffered severe brain damage and was paralysed after eating a Twister wrap.

Monika Samaan was seven when she suffered salmonella encephalopathy -- a brain injury linked to food poisoning that also left her with a blood infection and septic shock -- in October 2005.

Several other family members also fell ill and they claimed Samaan's injuries, which include severe cognitive, motor and speech impairment and spastic quadriplegia, were caused by a chicken Twister wrap from a Sydney KFC outlet.

The New South Wales Supreme Court ruled in the family's favour a week ago and on Friday ordered KFC to pay the girl Aus$8 million in damages plus legal costs.

In a statement, the family's lawyer George Vlahakis said they were relieved the battle was over.

"Monika's severe brain damage and severe disability has already exhausted the very limited resources of the family," he said.

"Monika is now a big girl and they are finding it increasingly difficult to lift her and to look after her basic needs as well as look after Monika's younger siblings.

"The compensation ordered is very much needed. KFC have to date been determined that Monika does not receive a cent."

Last week KFC indicated it will appeal the decision but is yet to do so.

During the trial, Justice Stephen Rothman said the chicken became contaminated "because of the failure of one or more employees of KFC" to follow proper preparation rules, which he described as "negligent".

N. Korea marks army day, vowing war against South

North Korea's military chief of staff accused the United States and South Korea on Wednesday of plotting war but said his country's own weaponry could destroy their armaments in "a single blow".

Vice-Marshal Ri Yong-Ho also repeated threats of war against South Korea, vowing to "cut the throats" of those seen as defaming Pyongyang's leadership.

The North has made a series of increasingly strongly worded threats against the South in recent weeks. On Monday its military threatened "special actions" soon to turn parts of Seoul to ashes.

Some analysts believe the new young leader Kim Jong-Un is trying to bolster his military credentials and divert attention from a failed rocket launch this month.

Ri, in a speech marking army day, credited Jong-Un's late father Kim Jong-Il with strengthening the 1.2 million-strong military in the nuclear-armed state.

Because of this, he said, "our military is now equipped with strong modern weapons capable of destroying what the imperialists call highly sophisticated weapons by a single blow".

The launch, which attracted UN condemnation, was to have been the centrepiece of celebrations in mid-April marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of founding leader Kim Il-Sung.

The North bridled at comments by the South's President Lee Myung-Bak and conservative media, who said the money spent on the launch could have bought food for the perennially hungry nation.

"Our military and people are full of rage against the Lee Myung-Bak's traitor groups, who dared to commit such an extreme criminal act as defaming our system and the top leadership," Ri told a national meeting in the April 25 House of Culture.

"Our military and people will launch a retaliatory war in our own way... to cut the throats of the reckless provocateurs and crush the source of provocations without a trace."

The US and its ally the South were making "ever-intensifying plots for war", he said.

The ceremony attended by Kim Jong-Un and other top leaders marked what the North calls the 80th anniversary of the military's founding, during the guerrilla struggle against Japanese colonial forces.

The North says its rocket launch was part of a peaceful bid to put a satellite in orbit, and not a disguised missile test as the US and its allies maintain.

Some analysts believe it will now stage a nuclear test, as it did in 2006 and 2009 following international censure of its rocket launches.

read more: http://news.yahoo.com/n-korea-marks-army-day-vowing-war-against-114818620.html

North Korea issues unusually specific threat

North Korea's military vowed a new and unusually specific threat to its neighbors, saying it would reduce South Korea "to ashes" in less than four minutes.

The statement, released Monday when programming was interrupted on North Korea's state TV by a special report, comes amid rising tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Earlier this month, North Korea was unsuccessful in a long-range missile launch, prompting worries that North Korea may conduct another nuclear test. South Korean officials say new satellite images show that North Korea has been digging a tunnel in what appears to be preparation for a third atomic test.

According to the Associated Press, the statement from North Korea was unusual in promising something soon and in describing a specific period of time.

The North Korean military threatened to "reduce all the rat-like groups and the bases for provocations to ashes in three or four minutes, (or) in much shorter time, by unprecedented peculiar means and methods of our own style."

For months the North has castigated South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and the conservative administration for insulting their leadership and criticizing a new cruise missile capable of striking anywhere in the south.

South Korean officials responded, urging North Korea to end the threats. "We urge North Korea to immediately stop this practice," Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk said, according to the Associated Press. "We express deep concern that the North's threats and accusations have worsened inter-Korean ties and heightened tensions."

read more: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/north-korea-issues-unusually-specific-threat-152720861.html

Iran says is building copy of captured US drone

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran claimed Sunday that it had recovered data from an American spy drone that went down in Iran last year including that it was used to spy on Osama bin Laden's house weeks before he was killed by U.S. forces. Iran also said it was building a copy of the surveillance aircraft.

This type of drone has been used in Afghanistan for years and was used to keep watch on bin Laden's compound in Pakistan but U.S. officials have said little about the history of the particular drone now in Iran's possession. Iran has also been known to exaggerate its military or technological prowess.

Tehran says it brought down the RQ-170 Sentinel, a top-secret surveillance drone with stealth technology, and has flaunted the capture as a victory for Iran and a defeat for the United States. The U.S. says the drone malfunctioned and downplayed any suggestion that Iran could mine the aircraft for sensitive information because of measures taken to limit the intelligence value of drones operating over hostile territory.

The drone went down last December in eastern Iran and was recovered by Iran almost completely intact. After initially saying only that it had lost a drone operating near the Afghan-Iran border, U.S. officials eventually confirmed the drone was monitoring Iran's military and nuclear facilities.

Washington has asked for it back, a request Iran rejected.

The chief of the aerospace division of the powerful Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, told state television that the captured surveillance drone is a "national asset" for Iran and that he could not reveal full technical details.

But he did provide some samples of the data that he claimed Iranian experts had recovered from the aircraft, state television reported.

"There is almost no part hidden to us in this aircraft. We recovered part of the data that had been erased. There were many codes and characters. But we deciphered them by the grace of God," Hajizadeh said.

read more: http://news.yahoo.com/iran-says-building-copy-captured-us-drone-083944692.html

Mexico volcano spews glowing rock, tower of ash

MEXICO CITY –  The Popocatepetl volcano is shooting a heavy plume of ash into the sky southeast of Mexico's capital, and television images show a reddish glow near the crater.

Webcam images on the site of the National Disaster Prevention Center show the plume rising from the top of the 17,886-foot peak at dawn, though clouds obscured the volcano for people further away.

The Televisa television network broadcast images of red, glowing material near the crater.

Authorities this week raised the alert level due to increasing activity at the volcano, whose most violent eruption in 1,200 years occurred on Dec. 18, 2000.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/04/20/mexico-volcano-spews-glowing-rock-tower-ash/?test=latestnews#ixzz1saYHgCQb

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The poorest county in each state

Most are rural, many are tiny, and a few are huge and urban. The median household income for these 50 counties also varies widely.

Poverty on the rise

The number of Americans living in poverty has been on the rise since the onset of the Great Recession, as many households have seen their incomes drop and their debts mount during the past few years.

More than 15% of the population lived in poverty in 2010, the highest percentage since 1993, according to the most recent data from the Census Bureau. That means more than 46 million people fell below the poverty line, defined as $22,314 for a family of four. If you factor in the income spent on expenses such as medical costs, child care and mortgage payments, the number of Americans whose remaining income falls below the poverty line is closer to 50 million, or roughly 16% of the population.

Some regions in the U.S. are much worse off. In November, the Census Bureau released the poverty rates of every county in the U.S. in 2010. The data showed that in dozens of counties, more than a third of the population lives in poverty, and in a handful, overall poverty rates were closer to 50%.

MainStreet combed through the data to find the county in each state with the highest overall poverty rate. For those results, click through the following slides, listed alphabetically by state.

• Video: Can the US fight poverty with policy?

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New York's Poverty Rate Rises, Study Finds

The number of New Yorkers classified as poor in 2010 increased by nearly 100,000 from the year before, raising the poverty rate by 1.3 percentage points to 21 percent — the highest level and the largest year-to-year increase since the city adopted a more detailed definition of poverty in 2005.

The recession and the sluggish recovery have taken a particularly harsh toll on children, with more than one in four under 18 living in poverty, according to an analysis by the city's Center for Economic Opportunity that will be released on Tuesday.

Families with children were also vulnerable. They had a poverty rate of 23 percent, and a significant number of households were struggling to remain above the poverty line. Even families with two full-time earners were more likely to be considered poor in 2010; their ranks swelled by 1.3 percentage points to 5 percent compared with 2009.

By the city measure, more than 1.7 million residents were poor in 2010, the last year for which an analysis could be calculated.

The center placed most of the blame on reduced earnings caused by higher unemployment during the recession, which struck in New York later than in the rest of the country. The analysis emphasized that the poverty rate would have soared higher — to 23.7 percent over all, and to 27.6 percent for families with children — without the expansion of government tax credits, food stamps and other benefits since 2007.

In part because of a city outreach program, the number of New Yorkers using food stamps catapulted to more than one million in 2010 from 773,000 in 2008.

Unlike the official federal poverty rate, the city's measure takes into account tax credits and benefits as well as expenses, like medical care, child care, commuting and housing. Those expenses increased the city's version of the poverty threshold for a two-adult, two-child family to $30,055 in 2010, compared with the federal threshold of $22,113.

By the federal measure, 7.7 percent of New Yorkers were living in extreme poverty, meaning below 50 percent of the poverty line. By the city's measure, 5.5 percent were in extreme poverty.

 

read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/nyregion/new-york-citys-poverty-rate-reaches-highest-level-since-2005.html

CNN Poll: 7 out of 10 support 'Buffett Rule'

Hours before a crucial Senate vote over the so-called "Buffett Rule," a new national poll indicates that nearly three-quarters of Americans support the measure to require people earning $1 million a year or more to pay at least 30% in taxes.

According to a CNN/ORC International survey, 72% favor the bill, which is named for billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who has argued that it's unfair that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. Twenty-seven percent oppose the measure.

The bill is intended to prevent the wealthy from paying a lower actual tax rate than most middle class workers. Both President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are heavily lobbying in support of the "Buffett Rule." The legislation is opposed by most Republicans, including presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. They argue raising taxes on anyone, including high income Americans, is a bad move, and claim that a minimum tax on millionaires would hurt small business owners, some of whom file tax returns under the individual tax code. The partisan battle has spilled from Capitol Hill to the presidential campaign trail.

According to the poll, nine in ten Democrats say they support the "Buffet Rule," with nearly seven in ten independent voters and even 53% of Republicans favoring the measure.

The poll was conducted for CNN by ORC International April 13-15, with 509 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

GSA official pleads Fifth in conference scandal

A top General Services Administration official who was in charge of organizing a lavish Las Vegas conference that's drawn congressional and taxpayer fire repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination Monday on Capitol Hill.

During Monday's hearing, Jeff Neely, refused to answer several questions from House Oversight and Government Committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), including rudimentary questions such as his official title at GSA and whether he was currently employed at the agency.

Issa also asked Neely if he attended the Las Vegas conference, whether he approved funding for it, the size of the event's original budget, and if he were prepared to answer any questions related to the junket that's now become an icon of federal waste.

"On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline," Neely replied.

Issa said this was the first time that a person called to testify before his committee refused to testify.

Neely was seated in the middle of five people at the hearing connected to the spending scandal, but left the room soon after he pleaded the Fifth. The career civil servant, who could also be facing a Justice Department probe into allegations of theft and contracting violations, told investigators that he felt he didn't need to get competitive bids because he was paying for quality, according to the Washington Post.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75192.html#ixzz1sEgObtPO

Brother-sister couple fail in fight against anti-incest laws
2 days ago

The European Court of Human Rights has decided to keep incest in Germany illegal, citing the damages inbreeding can cause to offspring. The ECHR was prodded into making such a seemingly obvious statement because of a brother-sister couple who says their home country of Germany had no right to penalize their relationship. The pair did not grow up together, but met in their 20s after the brother, who had been adopted, tracked down his biological family, and they now have four children, two of whom are described as having "disabilities." Surprisingly, if the court had overturned the ban, it would not be the first European effort to decriminalize incest: France doesn't prosecute such relationships, and Sweden allows half-siblings to marry.

 

Ann Romney Comes Under Attack By House Dem

Rep. Scott Randolph (D-Fla.): Ann Romney is Not a Real Stay-at-Home Mom

Democratic Rep. Scott Randolph attacked Ann Romney in a series of tweets yesterday.  Specifically attacking her as a stay-at-home mother.

Tweets:

How many house servants did "stay-at-home-mom" Ann Romney have to raise her kids. Just b/c u don't have job doesn't make u stay-at-home mom.

Wish my spouse had hundreds of millions in off shore accts gained by firing American workers so I could be "stay-at-home-dad".

Romney should release all his tax returns so that we can see how many nannies "stay at home mom" Ann had. Release ur taxes!!

Totally false that Ann Romney didn't have job--all those nannies, gardeners, cooks, drivers, in all those houses--If Mitt let her have say

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/ann-romney/2012/04/14/ann-romney-comes-under-attack-house-dem#ixzz1s48lErgx

Scientists seek to revive woolly mammoth

Russian schoolchildren view the skeleton of a woolly mammoth in a museum. But in ten years time they could come face to face with one of the prehistoric pachyderms in real life. That's the aim of scientists from Russia, Japan, and South Korea working to bring the species back from the dead. Recent thaws in Siberian permafrost have uncovered the remains of several woolly mammoths. Scientists hope to use the recovered biological material to clone the shaggy, Ice Age beast, by implanting mammoth DNA into an elephant egg. The resulting foetus would be grown inside an elephant's womb. Semyon Grigoriev, head scientist at Russia's Northeast Federal University, is heading an expedition from all three countries to northern Siberia. SOUNDBITE (Russian) HEAD SCIENTIST AT NEFU UNIVERSITY SEMYON GRIGORIEVICH, SAYING: "This summer Korean scientists together with us will go on expeditions, starting from this year and in northern Yakutia will search for material from permafrost. They're bringing mobile laboratories from Korea and are planning to start working on the selection and cultivation of biological material." Mammoths evolved from hairless elephants in Africa, roaming North America and northern Eurasia, before becoming extinct almost 4,000 years ago. Scientists from Japan's Kinki University are also taking part in this summer's expedition. Biology professor Iritani Akira is project leader. (SOUNDBITE) (Japanese) BIOLOGY PROFESSOR AND LEADER OF MAMMOTH CLONING PROJECT AT KINKI UNIVERSITY IRITANI AKIRA SAYING: "The technology to extract and clone the nucleus of a cell already exists, but finding good quality samples, such as tissues, skins, muscles or bone marrows, has been the barrier in cloning prehistoric mammals." And good quality samples are what they're hoping to find on their trek. The scientists say the production of a successful clone could open the door to recreating other extinct animals - while helping prevent endangered species from dying out. They admit the scale of the project is elephantine but say that soon, if all goes according to plan, a live mammoth will once again roam the earth.

Marines fight to keep crosses at California base as atheist groupspush to remove them

Planted atop a remote hill in the middle of California's Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base rest two 13-foot crosses.

Originally erected back in 2003 by seven marines grieving over lives lost in the war on terror, this site originally established for reflection has now become grounds for controversy.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/slideshow/2012/04/12/marines-fight-to-keep-crosses-at-california-base-as-atheist-groups-push-to/#slide=1#ixzz1rvNK5JGU

60 Minutes

Did Goldman Sachs Create the Food Crisis?

Don't blame American appetites, rising oil prices, or genetically modified crops for rising food prices. Wall Street's at fault for the spiraling cost of food.

Demand and supply certainly matter. But there's another reason why food across the world has become so expensive: Wall Street greed.

It took the brilliant minds of Goldman Sachs to realize the simple truth that nothing is more valuable than our daily bread. And where there's value, there's money to be made. In 1991, Goldman bankers, led by their prescient president Gary Cohn, came up with a new kind of investment product, a derivative that tracked 24 raw materials, from precious metals and energy to coffee, cocoa, cattle, corn, hogs, soy, and wheat. They weighted the investment value of each element, blended and commingled the parts into sums, then reduced what had been a complicated collection of real things into a mathematical formula that could be expressed as a single manifestation, to be known henceforth as the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI).

For just under a decade, the GSCI remained a relatively static investment vehicle, as bankers remained more interested in risk and collateralized debt than in anything that could be literally sowed or reaped. Then, in 1999, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission deregulated futures markets. All of a sudden, bankers could take as large a position in grains as they liked, an opportunity that had, since the Great Depression, only been available to those who actually had something to do with the production of our food.

An Imperfect Union: Europe's debt crisis

(CBS News) Ten European countries are in a recession. In order to avoid default, three have needed bailouts from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, and more might be necessary. What's at stake? A lot, including the future of the currency, the euro, and the health of the United States' largest trading partner. Steve Kroft reports on the European debt crisis, including how the austerity measures being demanded of Greece are rekindling the ghosts and even enmity of World War II.

There are only a few things that could derail the U.S. economic recovery that finally seems to be underway, and one of them is the debt crisis in Europe, along with the recession that is now sweeping across the continent.

It's similar in many ways to the financial crisis that leveled the U.S. economy in 2008. Except that in Europe, it's not just the banks that are in danger of going broke, it's entire countries. Greece has already defaulted on more than a hundred billion dollars of public debt. Ireland and Portugal have needed massive bailouts to stay solvent. Italy and Spain are just hanging on in what has turned out to be an imperfect economic union. At stake is the survival of the European currency, the euro, and the economic future of America's largest trading partner.

The European Union has all the accoutrements of nationhood: its own flag, its own anthem, its own parliament, its own huge bureaucracy, and its own currency, the euro, shared by 17 of its 27 members. It's a loose economic alliance of countries and faded empires -- with different languages, cultures and customs -- that have more or less been at war with each other for a thousand years. Until recently, their monetary union had brought stability and prosperity to the continent's social democracies, producing good wages, generous benefits, long vacations...but Louise Cooper, a top financial analyst in London, says the European holiday is over.

Louise Cooper: We're in a debt crisis. Eurozone countries have way too much debt. We have gorged on debt. We are living beyond our means. And after 10 years of booming economic times, it is now payback time. We are paying back our credit cards and that will prove very painful and costly.

It already has. Ten European countries are now in recession. In Spain, where the unemployment rate is 23 percent, there have been general strikes and civil unrest. In France, three of its largest financial institutions teetered on the edge of insolvency until the European Central Bank came to the rescue with more than a trillion dollars in easy credit to shore up the system. Seven European countries have changed leadership because of the crisis, and one, Greece, reneged on $133 billion in debts.

Louise Cooper: This is an extraordinary event. You know, a member of the euro club, the elite euro club, can't pay its bills. That is extraordinary. A Western, developed country has defaulted. We haven't seen that since 1940 when Italy did it in the Second World War when it refused to pay its enemies.

The financial markets worry that the same fate could befall Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy, which are already all in crisis, and losing the confidence of international investors who have bankrolled their debts.

Louise Cooper: The fear of Greece is it sets a precedent for other indebted countries. Then everybody who owns Portuguese debt or Irish debt, possibly even Spanish debt or Italian debt, you start to worry, "Will I ever get my money back?" That is the problem.

European finance ministers have spent most of the past year trying to find a way to save Greece and keep the Eurozone intact. But until recently, they have lacked the unity and the authority to impose a solution on 17 different countries, all of which have their own financial and political interests. Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, has been part of the process.

read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57410910/an-imperfect-union-europes-debt-crisis/?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel

Arizona lawmakers to review cyberbullying bill over free speech concerns

Members of the Arizona House and Senate will review a recently passed anti-cyberstalking bill after critics raised concerns that it's so broad it could authorize arrests for online "trolls" who write mean comments on social media and news sites.

State Rep. Chad Campbell, a co-sponsor of the bill, told Yahoo News that lawmakers are trying "to address the constitutional concerns" raised by First Amendment advocates and are looking at making some changes. "This bill was only intended to go after people who are engaging in digital stalking, nothing more. If it can't be fixed to address the constitutional concerns then I will be voting no on it," he wrote in an email.

In March, Arizona politicians overwhelmingly voted to update an old statute that prohibited harassment and stalking by telephone to also include Internet communications, in an effort to combat cyberbullying. The new statute says it's illegal for anyone to use profane or lewd language on an electronic device with the intent to "terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend." The statute also makes it a crime for someone to infringe upon the "peace, quiet or right of privacy of any person" by "repeated anonymous electronic or digital communications."

 One of the key problems with the statute, according to legal experts, is that the law is not limited to one-to-one communications, such as emails, Facebook messages or texts. That means someone's offensive tweets, comments or any other publicly available online words could fall under the law. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh writes that if someone uses profanity to insult the author of an online article in the article's section for comments, he or she could theoretically be prosecuted under this law. (So if you're in Arizona, think twice before cursing me out in the comments.)

But David Horowitz of the Media Coalition, a legal association that represents businesses' First Amendment interests, told Yahoo News that the bill could violate the First Amendment even if it is altered to apply only to one-to-one communications. Sending someone an offensive email containing profane or lewd words isn't necessarily a crime, he said. Digital messages must rise to the level of harassment or obscenity before they can be declared illegal.

Horowitz's group sent a letter to Gov. Jan Brewer after the bill passed on March 29 urging her to veto it because it "plainly violates the First Amendment." He said Jon Stewart's comedy routines, Rush Limbaugh's radio show, and even angry online banter among fans of rival sports teams could face prosecution if an Arizona resident were offended by their profanity or lewdness.

Arizona lawmakers have stopped the bill from going to Brewer's desk for now and plan to alter it.

 

Las Vegas Meeting's Cost Prompts Lawmaker Review of Agency

April 4 (Bloomberg) -- House Republicans said they will hold a hearing on spending by the U.S. General Services Administration after the agency's chief resigned because of a conference at a Las Vegas area resort that cost $823,000.

"This outrageously lavish training conference, which was held on the taxpayer's dime, is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the spending habits of GSA," Representative John Mica, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said today in an e-mailed statement. "This agency is sitting on thousands of underutilized and vacant properties across the country which cost Americans $1.7 billion to operate every year."

Martha Johnson, President Barack Obama's appointee as administrator of the agency that manages federal property and acquisitions, quit on April 2 as the GSA's inspector general was about to release a report on its investigation of the October 2010 event for 299 employees at the M Resort Spa Casino in Henderson, Nevada.

The taxpayer-funded conference provided $44 daily breakfasts for employees, almost four times the government's $12 allowance for the morning meal in Las Vegas, according to the report. The agency also spent $6,325 on commemorative coins and $8,130 to print "yearbooks" for participants.

read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/las-vegas-meetings-cost-prompts-lawmaker-review-of-agency/2012/04/06/gIQAKiGuzS_story.html

NBC fires producer over edited Zimmerman 911 call

A producer for NBC News has been fired for editing a recording of George Zimmerman's call to police the night he fatally shot Trayvon Martin.

The New York Times is reporting that "the person was fired on Thursday, according to two people with direct knowledge of the disciplinary action who declined to be identified discussing internal company matters."

The dismissal of the Miami-based producer, whose name has not been publicized, followed an internal investigation by NBC, which led to the network apologizing earlier this week for having aired the deceptive audio.

The recording aired on NBC's "Today" show on March 27, when the audio viewers heard suggested that Zimmerman volunteered to police, without provocation, that Martin was black: "This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black."

But the tape had been edited, and the portion where the 911 dispatcher specifically asks Zimmerman if the person in question was "black, white or Hispanic," was deleted.

The conversation that actually occurred between the dispatcher and Zimmerman is as follows:

"This guy looks like he's up to no good. Or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about." Then the dispatcher asked, "O.K., and this guy — is he white, black or Hispanic?" To which Zimmerman replied, "He looks black."

After that phone call on the night of Feb. 26, Zimmerman fatally shot Martin. The 17-year-old Martin was unarmed, and Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Fla., told police he fired in self-defense after Martin attacked him.

 

 

Why Amazon is crushing Best Buy

Best Buy (BBY 0.00%) is desperate to turn itself around, terrified of joining Circuit City and CompUSA in the electronics retailing graveyard.

But the company can't compete in one key area: price.

A new study by Barclays analysts shows that Best Buy's online prices are 4.2% higher than Amazon's (AMZN 0.00%), on average. The analysts compared prices on a shopping cart with 100 items sold on both companies' websites and found that Best Buy's prices are higher -- before tax and shipping.

It gets worse when you add tax and shipping to the mix. Amazon doesn't charge tax at all in most states, and customers who subscribe to Amazon's Prime membership plan don't pay for shipping on many items. Amazon often offers free shipping on orders of more than $25.

Then the analysts compared each item on the sites. They found that on an average per-item basis, Best Buy products were 10.7% more expensive than Amazon's items.

Best Buy was able to beat Amazon some of the time -- on about 4% of the products in the survey -- but Amazon won on price on 54% of the other products. (The rest of the time, the prices were the same.)

Savvy electronics shoppers always stop at Amazon when considering products. They'll price-check around, and maybe they'll stop by a Best Buy store to scope out what they want to buy. But when it's time to make the purchase, not enough people are choosing Best Buy.

"The company is gradually becoming a physical showroom for online retailers," said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, according to Cnet.

Where can Best Buy compete? In service. So it's changing the way it pays employees to focus more on customer service. That's the area where Circuit City collapsed. Employees were absent from the floor and didn't seem to care at all about helping customers.

The following video has more details on Best Buy's changes.

Gay pride flag raised at US base gets jeered, cheered

The United States military has reportedly launched an investigation into the appearance of the rainbow-striped gay pride flag that flew over an army base in Afghanistan. Three pictures of the flag raising were posted on the Wipeout Homophobia Facebook page and, although the photos haven't been verified as being recent or even for real, they're unsurprisingly the source of debate. The uberconservative Family Research Council has condemned the gesture as "uncomfortable" and "a headscratcher," while the Maddow Blog says it's an example of the military's "extraordinary progress on gay rights." But several Instinct Magazine commenters say the biggest issue isn't the flag itself, but the lack of authorization to fly it.

Drones coming to a sky near you as interest surges

Sharp-eyed dog walkers along the San Francisco Bay waterfront may have spotted a strange-looking plane zipping overhead recently that that looked strikingly like the U.S. stealth drone captured by Iran in December.

A few key differences: The flying wing seen over Berkeley is a fraction of the size of the CIA's waylaid aircraft. And it's made of plastic foam. But in some ways it's just like a real spy plane.

The 4 1/2-foot-wide aircraft, built by software engineers Mark Harrison and Andreas Oesterer in their spare time, can fly itself to specified GPS coordinates and altitudes without any help from a pilot on the ground. A tiny video camera mounted on the front can send a live video feed to a set of goggles for the drone's view of the world below.

"It's just like flying without all the trouble of having to be up in the air," Harrison said.

Thousands of hobbyists are taking part in what has become a global do-it-yourself drone subculture, a pastime that's thriving as the Federal Aviation Administration seeks to make the skies friendlier to unmanned aircraft of all sizes.

The use of drones in the U.S. by law enforcement and other government agencies has privacy advocates on edge. At the same time, some DIY drone flyers believe the ease of sending cheap pilotless planes and choppers airborne gives citizens a powerful tool for keeping public servants on the ground honest.

Drones are the signature weapon of U.S. wars in the 21st century. Just as Humvees became a presence on U.S. highways in the 1990s after the first war with Iraq, interest in non-military uses of drones from policing to farming is rising.

Government agencies currently need FAA permission on a case-by-case basis to fly drones domestically. Commercial use is banned except for a small number of waivers for companies building experimental aircraft. But lawmakers have instructed the agency to allow civilian use of drones in U.S. airspace by September 2015. The FAA is expected to take the first step this year by proposing rules that would permit limited use of small commercial drones.

read more: http://news.yahoo.com/drones-coming-sky-near-interest-surges-150302837.html

Face Transplant Operation is 'Most Extensive in History'

A 37-year-old Virginia man severely disfigured by a 1997 gun accident has received the most extensive full-face transplant in medical history, according to University of Maryland Medical Center surgeons.

Hospital officials report that Richard Lee Norris, of Hillsville, Va., is recovering well after an amazing, medically unprecedented 36-hour surgery that not only gave him a new face—from the hairline to the neck--but also teeth, a tongue, and upper and lower jaws. (See before/after photo above, right.)

A week after the full-face operation, Norris' improvement has exceeded his doctors' expectations. He can open and close his mouth and is already brushing his new teeth and shaving the whiskers growing on the transplanted face. He's miraculously regained his sense of smell, which he'd lost after the accident.

http://health.yahoo.net/yahoohealth/images/experts/lisa_collier_cool/before-and-after.jpg

read more: http://health.yahoo.net/experts/dayinhealth/face-transplant-surgery-richard-lee-norris

Cheney recovering from heart transplant surgery

Former GOP Vice President Dick Cheney is recovering from heart transplant surgery at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Northern Virginia, a spokeswoman said Saturday evening.

In 2010, Cheney had a left ventricular assist device implanted for treatment of end-stage heart failure. The former vice president has been on the cardiac transplant list for more than 20 months.

Though he and his family do not know the identity of the donor, they will be forever grateful for this lifesaving gift, the spokeswoman also said.

Cheney, who is in intensive care, expressed his thanks to the teams of doctors and other medical professionals at Inova Fairfax and George Washington University Hospital for their "continued outstanding care.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/24/cheney-recovering-from-heart-transplant-surgery/#ixzz1q52L8Z9A

Pope arrives in Mexico, denounces drug violence 

Many see the pope's Latin America trip as a way to strengthen the faithful in a region where Catholicism has dropped over the decades, though not as dramatically as in Europe and elsewhere.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/pope-arrives-mexico-denounces-drug-violence-article-1.1050132#ixzz1q2t5Bk2Q

Consumer Reports: iPad runs 12 degrees hotter than earlier model

The new iPad gets warm, Consumer Reports says -- very warm.

The hot-selling device -- 3 million in its first weekend -- can reach up to 116 degrees during intensive use, according to a test by the consumer magazine.  The test appears to confirm mounting consumer complaints that the new iPad runs hotter than its two predecessors.

The group ran a graphics-intensive video game for 45 straight minutes, and found that the device got hottest on its back panel, in one corner, likely near the computer processor.  It was hottest when plugged into an outlet.

But how hot is 116 degrees?

"During our tests, I held the new iPad in my hands. When it was at its hottest, it felt very warm but not especially uncomfortable if held for a brief period," wrote Donna L. Tapellini of Consumer Reports.

Beryn Hammil, a San Francisco blogger and interior designer, got her iPad on Friday and noticed that evening that the device got quite warm when it was "just sitting there doing basic functions" such as email and running apps, she said.

"It wasn't so hot that I went, 'Ouch,' like when you touch a hot pot," she said. "But it was hot enough that I went, 'Hmm, I don't want to leave my hand here.'"

Hammil said her original iPad never felt unusually warm. She's now monitoring blogs and news stories "to see if there's a recall or a swap or something they're doing to address it."

Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller said the new iPad operates "well within our thermal specifications," and that if iPad owners have concerns they should contact Apple customer service for help.  She did not elaborate on the device's precise thermal specifications.

In order to carry more power and last longer, mobile device batteries must pack more energy into the same space.  Apple says the new iPad's battery lasts 10 hours.  That's about the same as the earlier models, but the new device has a far more sophisticated screen and graphics processor, both of which require more power to operate than the earlier models.

"There's always a compromise," said Isidor Buchmann, the chief executive of battery diagnostics firm Cadex Electronics Inc. "Yes, you can pack higher capacities into a battery of the same size, but then the internal resistance goes up."  And with resistance comes heat.

During the last decade, the computer industry began calling portable computers "notebooks" rather than "laptops," in part because the increasingly powerful devices were becoming so hot that users could no longer comfortably situate the devices on their laps.

Marlyse Comte, a Web developer and designer, has owned all three generations of iPads. When the latest version arrived in the mail, she said she noticed that it got "really, really warm on the sides and on the glass surface."

"When I say it was really hot it wasn't comparable to a laptop, but hot compared to any other iPad, where I never felt anything," said Comte, 53. "My first thought was maybe by mistake I bought a lemon."

Comte began searching online for a solution and came across an Apple message board where many people had posted similar overheating problems. The Kansas City, Mo., resident turned the iPad's screen from 100% brightness to 85% and said "the problem vanished."

"It's so sharp and it's so crystal clear that I'm fine with it, actually," she said.

Driver mindlessly follows GPS directions straight into water

Your gut instincts should take over when GPS tells you to drive to an island not connected to land by a bridge. The Brisbane Times reports that a trio of Japanese sightseers on a day trip to North Stradbroke Island believed their rental car's GPS system could direct them there despite the nine miles of water and mud separating the island from the mainland. Driver Yuzu Noda said the GPS system "told us we could drive down there," but after driving a full quarter of a mile, the three found themselves stuck in the mud and facing an incoming tide. All three were safe and - though this is probably being generous - all the wiser.

Japan earthquake: Northern Japan rattled by 6.8 earthquake

Japan earthquake: Tokyo was hit by a 6.1 magnitude earthquake Tuesday. Northern Japan - the same area hit last year - was struck by a 6.8 earthquake. But there were no injuries reported.

Tokyo

A series of earthquakes rattled Tokyo and northeast Japan late Wednesday evening but caused no apparent damage or injury in the same region hit by last year's devastating tsunami.

The strongest tremor, off Hokkaido island, was 6.8 magnitude and caused tidal changes that prompted some communities to issue evacuation orders or tsunami advisories to residents nearest the coast.

A swelling of 20 centimeters (8 inches) was observed in the port of Hachinohe in Aomori, northern Japan, about one hour after the tremor. Smaller changes were reported in several locations on Hokkaido island and Aomori prefecture.

The Japan Meteorological Agency lifted all tsunami advisories about an hour and half later.

Within about three hours, a magnitude-6.1 quake shook buildings in the capital. It was centered just off the coast of Chiba, east of Tokyo, at a rather shallow 15 kilometers (9 miles) below the sea surface.

Narita International Airport briefly closed runways for inspection but later resumed operation. Several local train services were suspended for safety checks.

There were no abnormalities reported at nuclear power plants after the two earthquakes, operators said. Nearly all of Japan's nuclear plants are offline for safety inspections.

The temblors were considered aftershocks of last year's massive quake, Meteorological Agency official Akira Nagai told a news conference, warning residents to stay away from buildings and plots already loosened by that tremor and the thousands of aftershocks that have followed.

The town of Otsuchi in Iwate prefecture, where more than 800 died in last year's tsunami, issued an evacuation order to coastal households as a precaution after the 6.8 quake, said prefecture disaster management official Shinichi Motoyama. No damage or injury was reported, he said.

Iwate was heavily damaged by last year's earthquake and tsunami. Thousands of aftershocks have shaken the region since then, nearly all of them of minor or moderate strength.

The magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 left some 19,000 people dead or missing.

Japan marked the first anniversary of the disasters on Sunday, as the country still struggles to rebuild.

Ben & Jerry's changes name of flavor to support gay marriage

Ben & Jerry's is stirring things up again with its decision to rename "Oh My! Apple Pie!" as "Apple-y Ever After" to support the U.K.'s proposal to legalize gay marriage. A section of the Ben & Jerry's U.K. website explains the name change and provides a link to a Facebook app that lets consumers show their support for the legislation. In 2009, the company renamed "Chubby Hubby" as "Hubby Hubby" to mark the legalization of gay marriage in Vermont.

http://www.benjerry.co.uk/our-values/appleyeverafter

Social justice is at the core of our values. Since our humble beginning 34 years ago, Ben & Jerry's has been an advocate for equal rights. (Did you know we were one of the first companies in the US back in 1993 that widened our health & employment benefits umbrella to recognise unmarried domestic partners regardless of their sexual orientation?)

In 2009 we renamed our legendary flavour Chubby Hubby to 'Hubby Hubby' to celebrate gay marriage legalisation in our home state of Vermont, in the US. This March as the UK government debates whether to legalise same sex marriage, we've partnered with gay rights organisation, Stonewall, to raise awareness about the importance of marriage equality by renaming our Apple Pie flavour, Apple-y Ever After! 

If you think that Civil Partnership is the same as marriage, think again! Show your support and help convince members of parliament that it's time to say 'I do' to same sex marriage!

You can help support this campaign by "marrying" someone of the same sex through our Facebook App or by writing to your MP using this template. (Because everyone is equal and deserves to live Apple-y Ever After!)

Two British women cross at having their crucifixes banned

The United Kingdom, already a beacon of atheist/humanist activity (most recently with the cheeky "There's probably no God" bus ads), is now working to lay down the law on the subject of Christians wearing crosses at work.

In an upcoming case, the UK government will argue that wearing crosses is not a "requirement" of the Christian faith. Coincidentally (or not), this move comes on the heels of heated backlash from the Roman Catholic Church on efforts to legalize same-sex marriage. Two women are asking the European Court on Human Rights to rule their employers were out of line in refusing them the right to wear crosses at work. The government says the current grievances are "manifestly ill-founded."

Youcef Nadarkhani, Iranian Pastor, May Face Execution For 'Apostasy From Islam' (REPORT)

Youcef Nadarkhani, an Iranian pastor who in 2010 was found guilty of apostasy and sentenced to death for refusing to recant Christianity, may have received a final execution order, according to the American Center for Law and Justice and Fox News.

Neither Human Rights Watch nor Amnesty International could verify the information for The Huffington Post, but the White House on Thursday afternoon issued a statement condemning the reports and calling on Iran to release Pastor Nadarkhani.

"This action is yet another shocking breach of Iran's international obligations, its own constitution, and stated religious values," the White House statement read. "The United States stands in solidarity with Pastor Nadarkhani, his family, and all those who seek to practice their religion without fear of persecution -- a fundamental and universal human right."

While unable to verify the reports, Faraz Sanei, the Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch, spoke with The Huffington Post in a telephone interview about the uncertain circumstances surrounding Nadarkhani.

"A death sentence that has been sent for implementation by the judiciary would suggest the person is at imminent risk of execution," Sanei said. "If it has been sent to the implementation department, that is very troubling."

Sanei added that if the implementation has indeed been sent, Nadarkhani is "one step closer" to being executed.

Read more @: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/23/youcef-nadarkhani-iranian-pastor-death-execution_n_1297262.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

Angry About High Gas Prices? Blame Shuttered Oil Refineries

The U.S. has lost nearly 5 percent of its refining capacity in the past three months, as a handful of old refineries have shut down

The average price of gas is up more than 10 percent since the start of the year, a point repeatedly made during Wednesday's Republican Presidential debate. Predictably, the four GOP candidates blamed President Barack Obama for the steep increase.

Actually, the President doesn't have that kind of pricing power. The more likely reason behind the price increase, though certainly less compelling as a political argument, is the recent spate of refinery closures in the U.S. Over the past year, refineries have faced a classic margin squeeze. Prices for Brent crude have gone up, but demand for gasoline in the U.S. is at a 15-year low. That means refineries haven't been able to pass on the higher prices to their customers.

As a result, companies have chosen to shut down a handful of large refineries rather than continue to lose money on them. Since December, the U.S. has lost about 4 percent of its refining capacity, says Fadel Gheit, a senior oil and gas analyst for Oppenheimer. That month, two large refineries outside Philadelphia shut down: Sunoco's plant in Marcus Hook, Pa., and a ConocoPhillips plant in nearby Trainer, Pa. Together they accounted for about 20 percent of all gasoline produced in the Northeast.

Ben & Jerry's replaces fortune cookies in 'Lin-Sanity' flavor after controversy

Ben & Jerry's will take fortune cookies out of its new Jeremy Lin-inspired ice cream flavor after hearing complaints that the ingredient was racist.

The limited-edition flavor, "Taste the Lin-Sanity," originally featured vanilla frozen yogurt, honey swirls and bits of fortune cookies, the latter ingredient serving as an obvious nod to Lin's heritage. After the backlash, the company pulled the cookies from the mix and replaced them with waffle cone pieces that will be served on the side.

"There seemed to be a bit of an initial backlash about it, but we obviously weren't looking to offend anybody and the majority of the feedback about it has been positive," Ryan Midden, the general manager of the Ben & Jerry's in Cambridge, Ma., told the Boston Globe.

And that quote right there encapsulates the politically correct culture in which we live. Most people liked it, Midden said. But because a few people didn't, Ben & Jerry's caved.

The company says the main reason for removing the fortune cookies was because they got soggy inside the batch. If you believe that, I have a bridge made of Cherry Garcia to sell you.

The move comes days after the Asian American Journalists Association released media guidelines about how to cover Lin. "Is there a compelling reason to draw a connection between Lin and fortune cookies, takeout boxes or similar imagery?," they wrote. "In the majority of news coverage, the answer will be no."

[Y! News: Asian American Journalists Association issues guidelines on Jeremy Lin coverage]

Notice how the AAJA specifically mentions news coverage. There's never a compelling reason to run a graphic of Lin standing on a takeout box. But a tongue-in-cheek ice cream product being sold in Harvard Square is not news coverage.

How else should they have honored him? He plays in the Big Apple, but apples aren't a good ice cream fruit. He played for the Harvard Crimson. That color doesn't go well with frozen yogurt. He grew up in Palo Alto, Calif., attending high school in the shadow of Stanford's football stadium. Adding bits of cardinal would have upset bird lovers.

There's a difference between being color/race blind and completely ignoring a person's heritage. The über-PC police got all worked up about the inclusion of fortune cookies but surely their anger was misplaced. Lin's family is of Chinese descent. Fortune cookies are associated with Chinese food. A liberal ice-cream company no one ever associates with racism, hate or unfairness decided to have some fun with the connection. That's all.

Iran-court-convicts-christian-pastor-convert-to-death

A trial court in Iran has issued its final verdict, ordering a Christian pastor to be put to death for leaving Islam and converting to Christianity, according to sources close to the pastor and his legal team.

Supporters fear Youcef Nadarkhani, a 34-year-old father of two who was arrested over two years ago on charges of apostasy, may now be executed at any time without prior warning, as death sentences in Iran may be carried out immediately or dragged out for years.

It is unclear whether Nadarkhani can appeal the execution order.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/02/22/iran-court-convicts-christian-pastor-convert-to-death/#ixzz1nDEAK1pE

Analysis: Obama goes on offense over high gasoline prices

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As Republican presidential candidates toss barbs at Barack Obama over expensive gasoline, the U.S. president and his team are going on the offensive with a strategy to divert blame and prepare voters for higher costs.

In subtle and not so subtle ways, Obama, a Democrat, is raising the issue of high prices to promote his own policy priorities and blunt criticism from the men vying to unseat him in the November 6 election.

His strategy is both politically- and policy-oriented. The president wants to advance his plans to increase renewable energy sources and reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil.

But he also needs to win the war of words to gain an upper hand over Republicans in Western battleground states such as Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, where people drive a lot and feel the sting of rising prices acutely.

Republicans see many weaknesses to exploit. They blame Obama for not doing enough to increase domestic production of fossil fuels and cite his decision to block a new oil pipeline from Canada as evidence that he is beholden to environmentalists.

Rising gasoline costs have brought the issue to the forefront of the presidential campaign. So Obama has started to pepper his speeches with references to prices at the pump.

On Tuesday he cited the extension of the payroll tax cut as a welcome buffer for workers coping with the cost of gas. On Wednesday he proposed -- not for the first time -- getting rid of tax loopholes that benefit oil and gas companies.

On Thursday he'll go a step further, using a speech in Florida to outline his own accomplishments in the energy arena along with a long-term strategy to keep fuel prices down.

"This is a recurrent problem and it's a problem that reinforces the need that (Obama) identified back when he was a candidate for a comprehensive energy strategy," White House spokesman Jay Carney said. Obama advisers have pointed to growing demand in China and unrest in the Middle East as factors out of their control that are affecting the price of oil.

Average gasoline prices have climbed to their highest February levels on record, hitting $3.53 per gallon last week, according to MasterCard SpendingPulse data.

Gasoline prices have tracked crude oil prices, which have been bolstered by the threat of supply disruptions from the West's standoff with Iran over Tehran's nuclear program.

Some analysts say U.S. prices could hit $4 a gallon or more ahead of the summer when driving demand peaks.

Fold-up car of the future unveiled for Europe

A tiny revolutionary fold-up car designed in Spain's Basque country as the answer to urban stress and pollution was unveiled Tuesday before hitting European cities in 2013.

The "Hiriko," the Basque word for "urban," is an electric two-seater with no doors whose motor is located in the wheels and which folds up like a child's collapsible buggy, or stroller, for easy parking.

Dreamt up by Boston's MIT-Media lab, the concept was developed by a consortium of seven small Basque firms under the name Hiriko Driving Mobility, with a prototype unveiled by European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso.

 Demonstrating for journalists, Barroso clambered in through the fold-up front windscreen of the 1.5-metre-long car.

"European ideas usually are developed in the United States. This time an American idea is being made in Europe," consortium spokesman Gorka Espiau told AFP.

Its makers are in talks with a number of European cities to assemble the tiny cars that can run 120 kilometers (75 miles) without a recharge and whose speed is electronically set to respect city limits.

They envision it as a city-owned vehicle, up for hire like the fleets of bicycles available in many European cities, or put up for sale privately at around 12,500 euros.

Several cities have shows interest, including Berlin, Barcelona, San Francisco and Hong Kong. Talks are under way with Paris, London, Boston, Dubai and Brussels.

The vehicle's four wheels turn at right angles to facilitate sideways parking in tight spaces.
The backers describe the "Hiriko" project as a "European social innovation initiative offering a systematic solution to major societal challenges: urban transportation, pollution and job creation."

Cruise Captain Says He 'Tripped' Into Lifeboat, Couldn't Get Out

The captain of the Italian cruise ship gave a slapstick explanation of how he ended up safely in a lifeboat instead of going down with his ship, saying he tripped and fell into the boat as it was being lowered into the sea, Italian media reported today.

"I had no intention of escaping," Francesco Schettino, 52, said during his first court hearing Tuesday, according to Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper.

"I was helping some passengers put the life boat to sea. At a certain point the mechanism for lowering it, blocked. We had to force it. Suddenly the system unblocked itself and I tripped and I found myself inside the life boat with a number of passengers."

Once in the lifeboat that was lowered into the sea, Schettino insisted to the court that it was "impossible to go back onboard."

The captain also reportedly admitted to the court that he lied at one point when he assured officials that he had dropped anchor shortly after the Costa Concordia slammed into a rock to stabilize the luxury liner.

However a video by the Guardia di Finanza who arrived onsite 10 minutes after the disaster clearly shows that the anchor had not been lowered. Schettino admitted Tuesday that he lied about the anchor, the newspaper reported.

The luxury cruise ship was carrying more than 4,000 passengers and crew when it struck rocks Friday evening near Giglio off the coast of Tuscany, during a close pass to shore. At least 11 people were killed in the aftermath when the ship keeled over. Nearly two dozen people are still missing, including an American couple from Minnesota.

Schettino reportedly admitted that he made mistakes that led to the crash and afterwards, but said the ship's course, including the now-controversial close pass, had been set from the beginning. The cruise line previously said Schettino had made an unauthorized deviation from the programmed route.

Schettino, who is currently under house arrest, is under investigation for potentially causing the wreck by steering into the rocks and then abandoning the panicked passengers for a lifeboat as the ship plunged over on its side. In recorded radio transmissions released Tuesday, Schettino is heard telling Italian Port Authority officials he and other officers abandoned ship.

"And with 100 people still on board, you abandon ship? [expletive]," the Port Authority officer says in response.

Schettino appears to correct himself, saying, "I didn't abandon any ship... because the ship turned on its side quickly and we were catapulted into the water."

TRANSCRIPT: 'Get Back on Board for [Expletive] Sake!'

The recording goes on to show the Port Authority official repeatedly berating Schettino for not going back to the ship to coordinate rescue efforts, and at one point ordering Schettino to "get back on board for [expletive]'s sake!"

Italians appear divided on how to view the embattled cruise captain.

Read more and Video: http://news.yahoo.com/cruise-captain-says-tripped-lifeboat-couldnt-153914621--abc-news.html

Qatar: A tiny country asserts powerful influence

The Arab revolution keeps spreading, leaving chaos and turmoil in its wake. But one country has been untouched by all that: The tiny speck of a nation called Qatar, wedged between Saudi Arabia and Iran. There have been no protests or demonstrations there. That might be because the 250,000 Qatari citizens are the richest people in the world and there are no taxes. There isn't much democracy either, but Qataris don't seem to mind. The same family has ruled them for 150 years and life couldn't be much better.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57358891/qatar-a-tiny-country-asserts-powerful-influence/?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel

Gold slumps, stocks drop on euro worries

Gold falls below $1,600 an ounce as fears build that Europe's problems are getting worse. The Dow falls 131 points. Stocks of companies with big non-US sales are hit hard. Michael Kors IPO prices at $20; Zynga on deck.

Stocks tumbled today as worries piled up about Europe and its debt crisis.

The sell-off was more dramatic among commodities, beaten down as the euro dropped below $1.30 for the first time since January.

Gold (-GC) fell below $1,600 an ounce for the first time since September. Silver (-SI) dropped below $30 for the first time since early fall. Crude oil (-CL) in New York traded  below $95 a barrel, even as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to cap oil production at 30 million barrels a day.

The catalysts were twofold: German Chancellor Angela Merkel's refusal to boost the size of a European bailout fund above 500 billion euros and the Federal Reserve's comment Tuesday that "Strains in global financial markets continue to pose significant downside risks to the economic outlook."

"Most markets are taking their cue from the struggling euro," Edward Meir, an analyst at INTL FCStone in New York, told Bloomberg News.

The Dow Jones industrials ($INDU -1.10%) closed down 131 points, or 1.1%, to 11,823. The blue chips had been down as many as 168 points at 3:05 p.m. ET. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index ($INX -1.13%) finished down 14 points, or 1.1%, to 1,212. The Nasdaq Composite Index ($COMPX) was off 40 points, or 1.6%, to 2,539, back from a decline of 53 points.

The 3 big crises of 2012

To the eurozone mess -- which will spread -- add Russian unrest and a budget crunch in India. By midyear, we should know how it will all play out.

Ready for the next crises?

Yep. That's "crises." Plural. Because 2012 promises to be even more exciting than 2011.

First off, the euro debt crisis isn't going away. Sorry if you're bored with it. But it will take a new twist.

As Europe sinks into a self-induced recession created by all that tough talk about the need for austerity and budget cuts, we'll get treated to the spectacle of chickens coming home to roost as politicians have to explain to suffering voters why they need to tighten their belts even more to balance budgets thrown out of whack by no-growth economies.

But I do think that in 2012, we'll add exciting new crisis venues such as Russia and India.

The Queen of England faces a pay freeze

The Queen of England may be forced to scrimp on repairs to her palaces and lavish public appearances under a recently passed British law expected to reduce her income over the next several years.

"The squeeze on the monarch's income is likely to delay a backlog of repairs to royal palaces," the Daily Telegraph's Matthew Holehouse reported Monday. "There will be no extra money from the taxpayer to pay for the court of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who are rapidly emerging as global stars." (Queen Elizabeth's son, Charles, Prince of Wales, will continue to kick in to pay the salaries for staff for Prince William and his new bride, the Sunday Times, however, reported.)

Under the new legislation, which passed into law six weeks ago, England will employ a new formula for calculating the Queen's taxpayer-funded allowance, as Americans might put it. "Under the new arrangement, the Queen receives 15 percent of the profits made over two years from the Crown Estate, whose portfolio includes Regent Street, Windsor Great Park and more than half the country's shoreline," Holehouse notes.

US agents laundered drug money: report

Anti-narcotics agents working for the US government have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds to see how the system works and use the information against Mexican drug cartels, The New York Times reported Sunday.

Citing unnamed current and former federal law enforcement officials, the newspaper said the agents, primarily with the Drug Enforcement Administration, have handled shipments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal cash across borders.

Some 45,000 people have been killed in Mexico since 2006, when its government launched a major military crackdown against the powerful drug cartels that have terrorized border communities as they battled over lucrative smuggling routes.

According to these officials, the operations were aimed at identifying how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are, the report said.

The agents had deposited the proceeds in accounts designated by traffickers, or in shell accounts set up by agents, the paper noted.

While the DEA conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years, The Times said.

As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests, the report said.

According to The Times, agency officials declined to publicly discuss details of their work, citing concerns about compromising their investigations.

But Michael Vigil, a former senior official who is currently working for a private contracting company called Mission Essential Personnel, is quoted by the paper as saying: "We tried to make sure there was always close supervision of these operations so that we were accomplishing our objectives, and agents weren’t laundering money for the sake of laundering money."

The Fed to Europe’s Rescue?

Whether Germany’s Angela Merkel decides to be Germany’s new Iron Chancellor or Merkel in the Middle may be beside the point, as the bond markets continue to deliver a negative verdict on the Eurozone crisis, with EU yields sticking stubbornly high and borrowing costs soaring.    

Because it could take months more for either Germany’s Merkel or France’s Nicolas Sarkozy to get the 17 members of the European Union to agree on measures to save the eurozone, as the markets now threaten a rapid loss of faith in Italy, Spain and France within the span of the next several weeks.

Another European summit could render a deal on December 9, the next scheduled meeting, but for the markets that may be “a day late, a euro short.”

Will the Federal Reserve step in once again, as it has done in the past, to help? Will it do so, along with a coalition of the willing -- meaning other central banks -- as has been suggested? Will it revive and increase a 2008 rescue measure, dollar liquidity swaps to the European Central Bank? That is, literally print money -- which will make Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s head explode.

In fact, the Fed has kept open its dollar swap lines, renewing them in June until August 2012. The way it works is thus: the ECB, for example, sells a slug of its euros to the Federal Reserve in exchange for dollars -- the foreign central bank then doles that money out to banks, and agrees to repurchase its own currency, with interest, on a specified future date.

61 whales die in New Zealand mass stranding

More than 60 pilot whales died in a mass stranding at a remote New Zealand beach, conservation officials said Wednesday.

Tourists found the pod of 61 beached whales on Monday at Farewell Spit, on the top of the South Island, the Department of Conservation (DOC) said.

DOC local manager John Mason said a large number were already dead and hopes the survivors would refloat at high tide on Tuesday were dashed when the whales swam back to shore.

He said 18 whales remained alive early Wednesday and DOC staff decided to euthanize them, rather than prolong their suffering.

"It's the worst outcome and it's not a job our staff enjoy doing at all," Mason said.

Pilot whales up to six metres (20 feet) long are the most common species of whale in New Zealand waters, with mass standings occurring about two or three times a year.

Scientists are unsure why pilot whales beach themselves, although they speculate it may occur when their sonar becomes scrambled in shallow water or when a sick member of the pod heads for shore and others follow.

Soaring borrowing costs push Italy to the edge

ROME/LONDON — Italian borrowing costs reached breaking point on Wednesday after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's promise to resign failed to raise optimism about the country's ability to deliver on long-promised economic reforms.

Italian 10-year bond yields shot above the 7 percent level that is widely deemed unsustainable, reflecting investors' concerns that they may not get their money back, prompting German Chancellor Angela Merkel to issue a call to arms.

Merkel said Europe's plight was now so "unpleasant" that deep structural reforms were needed quickly, warning the rest of the world would not wait.

Stocks waver as Italy joins Europe's debt dilemma...

Stocks were mixed Monday as political turmoil in Europe’s third largest economy, Italy, fueled worries over European debt troubles.

 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU -0.24%) was rising 3.4 points at 11,986. The Dow snapped a five-week winning streak last week, taking off 250 points. The S&P 500 ($INX -0.40%) was losing 0.9 points at 1,252 and the Nasdaq ($COMPX -0.81%) was losing 13 points at 2,673.

 

After a busy week filled with central bank meetings, a modestly positive U.S. jobs report and mixed earnings data, markets are headed for a quieter week. However, a scheduled vote on austerity cuts in Italy and discussions on bailout efforts by European leaders in Brussels are keeping investors on tenterhooks.

 

The vote on budget reforms in Italy will test Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's leadership and offer a key indicator of whether the country can deal with its debt problems. Yields on 10-year Italian government debt hit a 14-year high Monday of 6.59%.

 

Greece's debt situation looks more stable after the country came to an agreement to accept an aid package from its European neighbors that will allow it to avoid default in the near term. Turmoil around Greece's future helped push the major averages down by more than 2% last week.

Steve Jobs Dies: Apple Chief Created Personal Computer, iPad, iPod

Steve Jobs, the mastermind behind Apple's iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac and iTunes, has died, Apple said. Jobs was 56.

"We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today," read a statement by Apple's board of directors. "Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve. His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts."

The homepage of Apple's website this evening switched to a full-page image of Jobs with the text, "Steve Jobs 1955-2011."

Clicking on the image revealed the additional text: "Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple."

White House Condemns Possible Execution of Iranian Pastor

The White House condemned the conviction and possible death sentence for an Iranian pastor who refuses to renounce his Christian faith on Thursday, saying the execution would further demonstrate Iranian authorities "utter disregard" for religious freedom.

Greece: will get loans in time to avoid default

BERLIN (AP) — Greece will receive its next batch of bailout loans in time to avoid a disastrous default, the finance minister said Tuesday, as stock markets rallied on hopes that the prime minister will discuss new ways of solving the crisis with Germany's leader later in the day.

Reports that European leaders are considering bolder moves to relieve Greece and other countries of their debt burden have buoyed spirits in financial markets, though officials in Chancellor Angela Merkel's government have downplayed such speculation.

The current plan is to have Greece implement painful debt-reduction measures in exchange for rescue loans.

Greece's international creditors are holding up payment of the next batch of those loans until a review of the reforms is completed in the coming days. Without the money, Greece faces bankruptcy in mid-October, potentially sending shock waves through the financial sector in Europe and abroad.

Greece faces austerity strike as default looms

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — As the prospect of a disastrous debt default hung over Greece, the government faced strikes and protests Monday against new austerity measures needed to appease the country's rescue creditors.

Athens metro, tram and suburban rail workers held a 24-hour strike, while buses and trolleys were to stop operating for several hours. Airline passengers also faced delays as traffic controllers implemented work-to-rule action, refusing to work overtime. A 48-hour strike by all transport workers is expected later this week.

Greek police held their own protest, with the Special Guards unit hanging a giant black banner from the top of Lycabettus Hill in the capital reading "Pay day, day of mourning."

Faced with mounting anger from the country's international creditors, the government recently announced a raft of new austerity measures to secure the next euro8 billion ($10.7 billion) installment of bailout loans from the euro110 billion rescue package it has been dependent on since last year. Without the funds, Greece only has enough funds to see it through mid-October, when it faces the prospect of a messy default.

Debt inspectors from the International Monetary Fund, European Commission and European Central Bank, known collectively as the troika, are expected to return to Athens this week to resume a review suspended earlier this month amid talk of delayed implementation of reforms.

But no specific date has been set for their return, and the European Commission made clear Monday that no decision on releasing the funds would be reached during a meeting of eurozone finance minister in Luxembourg next Monday.

She can hide from the public -- but not her conscience.

Casey Anthony will change her name and don disguises to evade an outraged public when she's sprung from an Orlando jailhouse Sunday, after a jury shockingly acquitted her last week of murdering her 2-year-old daughter.

She even considered plastic surgery, a source close to her defense team said.

"There even have been discussions about cosmetic surgery, but Casey has rejected that," the source told the Chicago Sun-Times.

One issue is that the Casey, 25 -- who has received death threats since the unexpected verdict -- has been in jail for three years, and doesn't comprehend how loathsome she's become.

"Casey really does not completely understand the depth of hatred out there," the source said.

Upon her release, she'll assume a pseudonym "almost as if she was living in a witness protection-like program," the source said.

NEW YORK — Bank of America is considering cutting at least 10 percent of its work force as part of a massive restructuring, according to published reports.

The Wall Street Journal said that officials at the Charlotte, N.C. bank have discussed cutting 40,000 employees, or 14 percent of its 288,000 total staff. Bloomberg put the job cuts at about 10 percent. They each cited people that were not identified by name.

President Michele Bachmann has a promise: $2 gas.

"Under President Bachmann you will see gasoline come down below $2 a gallon again," Bachmann told a crowd Tuesday in South Carolina. "That will happen."

August 2, 2011 10:23 AM ET

By Steve Slater

LONDON (Reuters) - Barclays is set to cut about 3,000 jobs this year to reduce costs and expects financial markets to stay tough after a drop in bond trading and an insurance mis-selling charge cut first-half profit by a third.

The British bank's performance was more resilient than rivals, however, as bad debts tumbled and it kept costs steady.

"It's better on costs and impairments, and within the revenue line BarCap had a relatively strong quarter compared to its peer group," said Mike Trippitt, analyst at Oriel Securities. "It has been a savage market out there."

Chief Executive Bob Diamond, the American who built investment banking unit BarCap into a debt market powerhouse over the previous decade, said Barclays had cut 1,400 jobs during the first half and the tally was likely to rise to about 3,000 by the end of the year.