Asian stocks mostly higher on strong China data (AP)

SHANGHAI ? Asian stocks were mostly higher Wednesday despite a lackluster day on Wall Street, as improved manufacturing data from China offered reassurance over its economic slowdown.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 rose 0.3 percent to 8,826.79, helped by news of rebounding industrial production and household spending. Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 0.2 percent to 20,424.24 and Seoul's Kospi added 0.3 percent, to 1,961.77.

An unexpected drop in U.S. consumer confidence dragged stocks down on Wall Street, where the Dow Jones industrial average finished down 20.81 points, or 0.2 percent, at 12,632.91. The S&P slipped 0.60 point to 1,312.41 while the Nasdaq composite index rose 1.90 points to close at 2,813.84.

But overall the U.S. markets had their best start for stocks in 15 years, thanks to a modest improvement in the economy. Sentiment was further buoyed by hopes of progress in Europe after leaders there agreed on the broad outlines of a deal to tie the countries that use the euro closer together and on hopes that Greece is close to a debt-reduction deal with private creditors.

China's benchmark Shanghai Composite Index climbed 0.1 percent to 2,294.67 following the release of a key manufacturing index that showed conditions improving in January for a second straight month, though only by a modest margin.

Peng Yunliang, an analyst based in Shanghai, said strong demand for food and beverages kept manufacturing demand better than expected.

"I expect the market will keep on rising in the short term," he said.

Shares in Singapore and Australia weakened, while Taiwan, Indonesia and New Zealand gained ground.

European markets rebounded Tuesday amid hopes for progress on handling Greece's debt. Under a tentative agreement, investors holding 206 billion euros ($272 billion) in Greek bonds would exchange them for bonds with half the face value. The replacement bonds would have a longer maturity and pay a lower interest rate. When the bonds mature, Greece would have to pay its bondholders only 103 billion euros.

France's CAC-40 gained 1 percent while Britain's FTSE 100 and Germany's DAX both gained 0.2 percent.

Benchmark oil for March delivery gained 31 cents to $98.79 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 30 cents to end at $98.48 per barrel in New York on Tuesday.

In currencies, the euro fell to $1.3064 from $1.3084 late Tuesday in New York. The dollar fell to 76.15 yen from 76.20 yen.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/stocks/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120201/ap_on_re_as/world_markets

tax refund calculator death race fafsa internal revenue service huntington disease new world trade center west memphis three

Oil near $99 in Asia on Greece debt concern

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) ? Oil fell to nearly $99 a barrel Monday in Asia amid fresh concerns that the eurozone may refuse to grant Greece a fresh bailout.

Benchmark crude for March delivery was down 42 cents at $99.14 a barrel at midday Kuala Lumpur time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 14 cents to finish at $99.56 on Friday.

Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore, said crude prices were volatile after Germany's finance minister warned that the eurozone might not give Greece a fresh bailout unless it can overhaul its state and economy. Analysts fear this could reignite the region's debt crisis.

European leaders were to meet later Monday in Brussels to discuss austerity measures and a tentative deal reached Saturday between Greece and its private investors to avert a disastrous Greek default on its debt.

Shum said supply concerns also weighed on the market although Iran has postponed plans to immediately cut the flow of crude oil to Europe in retaliation for EU sanctions over its nuclear program.

Iran also threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil passage, and the head of its national oil company warned Sunday that EU sanctions could push oil prices up to between $120 and $150 a barrel. The market is also awaiting report from an International Atomic Energy Agency team that is currently touring Tehran, Shum said.

"Trade has been flat. The geopolitical tension in Iran and concerns over Greece's debt default are driving oil in different directions. This has helped oil to hold steady," Shum added.

In other energy trading, heating oil rose 1 cent to $3.07 per gallon but gasoline futures were steady at $2.92 per gallon. Natural gas added 7 cents to $2.82 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-01-29-Oil-Prices/id-793803cd3b8d42c2a6090dc8523dc09d

new iphone 5 release mary j blige cole hamels cole hamels curtis painter apple news conference apple news conference

Clever Plans to Reform Legal Education Won't Make Legal Services ...

January 30, 2012 12:04 PM

Clever Plans to Reform Legal Education Won't Make Legal Services Any Cheaper

Posted by Matt Leichter

Due to the stream of negative press America's legal education system has received, it is becoming almost a rite of passage for aspiring reformers to submit their own proposals to fix the problem. There's nothing wrong with that, but some proposals are more sophisticated than others. Here are ten examples in no particular order:

? UCLA law professor Stephen Bainbridge recommends unilaterally shutting down the bottom half of the ABA law schools per U.S. News & World Report's rankings.

? Law School Transparency advocates requiring law schools to gather and provide accurate graduate employment data to applicants and letting them decide whether law school is worthwhile.

? Two economists, Clifford Winston and Robert W. Crandall, want to completely deregulate legal services.

? Yale law professors Ahkil Reed Amar and Ian Ayers want first-year law students to be able to demand a partial tuition refund if they choose to discontinue law school. (It should be noted that Southern Illinois law professor Christine Hurt proposed the same idea in 2010).

? Attorney Ari L. Kaplan proposes law schools backload their costs, making the first year cheap so students can decide if they want to continue without significant financial penalty.

? One common suggestion is to turn the third year of law school into an apprenticeship program.

? Scambloggers' views differ,?but generally they advocate eliminating the formal legal education requirement altogether, though some would like the deans incarcerated for fraud.

? CUNY law professor Michael Macchiarola and attorney Arun Abraham argue for law schools to give their graduates "put options" on their student loans, which if exercised would require law schools to reimburse graduates the difference between their projected incomes after ten years and their actual incomes.

? I'd like to see the Direct Loan program dismantled and bankruptcy protections restored to student debt. Legal education can be financed by human capital contracts in which graduates pay roughly 10 percent of their disposable incomes for 10 years back to the law school, providing they're employed using their legal educations.

? And most recently, Northwestern law professor John O. McGinnis and attorney Russell D. Mangas (Kirkland & Ellis) stepped forward on the Wall Street Journal?s opinion page to advocate reducing legal education into an undergraduate major.

All these proposals have their drawbacks, particularly Winston and Crandall's, which I believe uses the plight of underemployed, indebted law grads as a pretext to ram through their neoliberal deregulation agenda.

But I'd like to focus on McGinnis and Mangas' proposal, and not because I disagree with it. Quite the contrary, as far as I'm concerned the test of a reform proposal rests on its ability to allow market demand for legal services to control excess demand for legal education. The current system tries to do it the other way around, resulting in an expensive, pushing-the-string ideology that promotes people paying for education and then letting the market decide whether they get to use it fruitfully. McGinnis' and Mangas' proposal doesn't fully address that, but at least it clearly reduces the education costs lawyers would incur in entering the profession. However, it leans on two premises I believe are false, and importantly, other proposals duplicate them:

(1) There is a shortage of attorneys in the United States.

(2) The costs of legal education raises the cost of legal services.

The first is easy to falsify, the second is more involved.

For specific numbers on lawyers, the ABA recently updated its Web site with a spreadsheet of its "Total National Lawyer Counts," which measures the number of "active and resident" attorneys in the U.S. It's an impressive dataset, though I think the pre-1980 numbers aren?t very accurate and also include non-practicing lawyers who serve as judges, legislators, executives, administrators, etc. The ABA also gives us the number of people who graduated from its law schools each year, which isn't the total number of potential attorneys (aside from the several thousand that have passed away or could never pass a bar exam), but it does represent the majority. Archived issues of the Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) provide estimates of the number of employed lawyers between 1994 and 2008. In each edition, the OOH predicts there would be more law graduates looking for work than the number of jobs available for them. I contacted the BLS, and in addition to sending me the Current Population Survey's (CPS) number of employed lawyers going back to 1983, it informed me that the BLS considers the CPS more definitive than the OOH. Here's a comparison against the population going back to 1950, using Census data:

Given that there were a few years in which the BLS managed to find more employed lawyers than state bar authorities reported as active on their rolls, I suspect the CPS overstates the number of employed lawyers and that the actual number is closer to the OOH's, which is unfortunate given its shallow employment projection for 2018. Nevertheless, it's clear that the lines have been splitting apart for quite some time, a topic I may cover at a future date. True, many potential attorneys could have left the rolls and found gainful employment in other industries, but many more left the profession early in their careers while others never had good chances at creating them. This is the exact opposite of what we would expect to see if there was a shortage of lawyers.

Moving on to the second premise, the cost of legal education's bearing on the cost of legal services, McGinnis and Mangas write:

?[T]he great benefit of the undergraduate option would be lowering the cost of legal education, thus increasing the supply of lawyers willing to charge lower fees.?

The authors assume that lawyers pass their education's costs (especially student loans) onto their clients. Thus, the more unevenly student debt is distributed among lawyers, the more they will have to eat their student loan payments to compete with those who paid less. Here?s what we know about the unevenness of law school debt?s distribution.

(1) As recently as 2010, about 15 percent of all ABA grads finished law school with zero law school debt.

(2) Some law schools are cheaper than others, especially public law schools and those in Puerto Rico, so those who graduate with debt have varying amounts. (Notice that McGinnis voices no concern that Northwestern's graduates will be unemployable when Mangas's firm decides to switch to hiring Northern Illinois or Southern Illinois grads to cut costs.)

(3) Older lawyers frequently have less student debt than more recent grads, so their loan payments are smaller.

(4) Some states allow graduates of cheaper, non-ABA law schools to sit for their bar exams, or they allow people to forgo the legal education requirement altogether.

Additionally, even if debts were evenly distributed, lawyers might still find that offering lower prices offsets the cost of their debt payments with increased business, until others do the same.

The fourth point, though, is critical. California has scores of relatively cheap state-accredited, unaccredited, distance-learning, correspondence, and online law schools. This system is not new, yet none of the reformers who believe cheaper education leads to cheaper lawyers has compared the cost structures of California's legal industry to "ABA-only" states'. Surely by now there are more than enough non-ABA attorneys licensed in California to have made a noticeable difference in the cost of legal services as McGinnis and Mangas argue, yet California?s ABA law schools (including public ones) aren?t competing with non-ABA schools in terms of price. They charge about $40,000 per year in tuition, and they increase it each year over inflation.

Why aren't California's more price-sensitive firms hiring grads directly from the People's College of Law in Los Angeles rather than from UCLA? Better yet, given non-ABA graduates' lower bar passage rates, why aren't firms sending associates to stand around outside LSAT test centers, handing people their business cards and offering to help them through a correspondence program to cut out the ABA middleman? Better yet, they could simply hire people straight out of college (California doesn't even require that much) and have them qualify for the bar by "reading the law," which California allows.

Firms could do this, but instead, they prefer ABA grads from highly regarded law schools. Either California?s legal employers are all monumentally bad businesspeople, or the cost of legal education isn't their (much less their clients') problem.

Let me be clear, McGinnis and Mangas's proposal offers more than some of the others I listed above. But while it would save would-be lawyers time and money, but it still does not ensure that the country's need for legal services determines how many people undergo legal education. Those concerned about providing legal services to the poor will have to demand poverty alleviation and expanded legal aid programs. These solutions politicize the legal profession's role in society, but I think that's unavoidable. More than clever proposals, it will take courage for the profession to admit that noblesse oblige and low-cost education won't entice lawyers to serve the destitute. It will also take courage to admit that law graduates' debts do nothing but reduce their living standards, especially when the profession has no place for them.

Matt Leichter is an attorney licensed in Wisconsin and New York, and he holds a masters in International Affairs from Marquette University. He operates The Law School Tuition Bubble, which archives, chronicles, and analyzes the deteriorating American legal education system. It is also a platform for higher education and student debt reform.

Comments (2)
Save & Share: Facebook | Del.ic.ious | | Email |

Reprints & Permissions

Source: http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2012/01/clever-plans-to-reform-legal-education-wont-make-legal-services-any-cheaper.html

mark kelly jeff goldblum uc berkeley ohio state basketball annie annie zuccotti park

Abbas: Israel to blame for failure of latest talks

FILE- In this Sept. 1, 2010 file photo, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are seated together as they listen to U.S President Barack Obama, not seen, in the East Room of the White House in Washington on the resumption of direct peace talks. Abbas said Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012, Israel has caused the failure of the latest round of low-level talks with the Palestinians by not presenting detailed proposals. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

FILE- In this Sept. 1, 2010 file photo, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are seated together as they listen to U.S President Barack Obama, not seen, in the East Room of the White House in Washington on the resumption of direct peace talks. Abbas said Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012, Israel has caused the failure of the latest round of low-level talks with the Palestinians by not presenting detailed proposals. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) ? The Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Sunday blamed each other for the impasse in newly launched peace efforts, raising doubts about whether the dialogue would continue just weeks after it began.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of spoiling the low-level talks, saying it failed to present detailed proposals for borders and security requested by international mediators. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Palestinians "refused to even discuss" Israeli security needs.

For the past month, the sides have held Jordanian-mediated exploratory talks at the urging of the Quartet of international Mideast mediators ? the U.S., the U.N., the E.U. and Russia. The goal of the talks has been to find a formula to resume formal peace negotiations, with the aim of forging an agreement this year.

The Palestinians say a three-month period set by the Quartet for the exploratory talks ended last week, counting from the day the mediators issued their marching orders last October.

But Abbas, deeply skeptical about the hardline Netanyahu, is under intense international pressure to stay at the table and would risk being blamed for the failure of the latest Mideast peace efforts.

Walking away would be a risky strategy at a time when he seeks global recognition of a state of Palestine ahead of a possible border deal with Israel. U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon is expected in the region this week to help keep the talks alive.

Abbas said Israel's efforts so far have fallen short.

"By not presenting a clear vision on the issues of borders and security, as the Quartet demanded, Israel foiled the exploratory talks in Amman," Abbas said in remarks published late Saturday by the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Israel has said it wants to keep talking and is serious about reaching a deal by year's end. It says the exploratory talks should continue for another two months, starting its countdown of the Quartet's three-month period from the beginning of meetings in early January.

Addressing his Cabinet on Sunday, Netanyahu said the dialogue had gotten off to a rocky start, but held out hope the talks would continue.

"Until this moment, according to what happened in recent days, the Palestinians refused to even discuss with us the needs of Israel's security," he said. "The signs are not very good, but I hope they will come to their senses and we'll continue the talks so we can reach real negotiations."

The Quartet had asked both sides to present detailed proposals on borders and security arrangements between Israel and a future Palestinian state, in hopes the exploratory talks would evolve into full negotiations.

The Palestinians said they presented four-page proposals on each subject, but refused to elaborate. Earlier this week, Israel presented its principles for drawing a border with a future state of Palestine ? the first-ever indication by Netanyahu on how much war-won land he would be willing to relinquish.

Abbas said he remains committed to serious negotiations that would lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state, with east Jerusalem as its capital.

The Palestinians want to establish their state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians, who regained control of Gaza in 2005, have said they are willing to swap some land to enable Israel to keep some of the largest of dozens of settlements it has built on occupied lands. In talks with Netanyahu's predecessor, the Palestinians suggested swapping 1.9 percent of the West Bank, while Israel proposed 6.5 percent.

Two Palestinian officials said last week that Israel proposed keeping control of east Jerusalem and essentially turning its West Bank separation barrier into the border. That would place attach roughly 10 percent of the West Bank to Israel.

Israeli officials have declined comment.

However, it is unlikely Abbas would accept any deal that leaves east Jerusalem under Israeli control and gives him only 90 percent of the West Bank.

Abbas consulted Sunday with his Fatah movement and was to talk Monday with top officials in the Palestine Liberation Organization. Abbas said he would make his final decision after briefing the Arab League at the end of the week.

In a statement after the Fatah meeting late Sunday, Abbas aide Nabil Abu Rdeneh said a return to direct talks requires, among other things, a halt in Israeli settlement construction, but that a final decision on resuming exploratory talks would come only after more consultations.

Western diplomats said Quartet envoy Tony Blair will try in coming days to persuade Netanyahu to agree to incentives to salvage the talks, including the release of veteran Palestinian prisoners.

Mahmoud Aloul, a senior Fatah official, said Sunday that Fatah would likely urge Abbas to end the talks.

"There is no hope ... that these talks or any talks with this right-wing Israeli government would lead to any progress," Aloul said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-01-29-ML-Israel-Palestinians/id-1ed49b5c279a491d827399f034590699

russell brand files for divorce bowl game schedule katy perry and russell brand clippers katy perry divorce the curious case of benjamin button christine

Jumping Spiders see clearly by blurring their vision

Researchers in Japan have now discovered that the arachnids accurately sense distances by comparing a blurry version of an image with a clear one, a method called image defocus.

Jumping spiders, which hunt by pouncing on their prey, gauge distances to their unsuspecting meals in a way that appears to be unique in the animal kingdom, a new study finds.

Skip to next paragraph

The superability boils down to seeing green, the researchers found.

There are several different visual systems that organisms use to accurately and reliably judge distance and depth. Humans, for example, have binocular stereovision. Because?our eyes?are spaced apart, they receive visual information from different angles, which our brains use to automatically triangulate distances. Other animals, such as insects, adjust the focal length of the lenses in their eyes, or move their heads side to side to create an effect called motion parallax ? nearer objects will move across their field of vision more quickly than objects farther away.

However,?jumping spiders?(Hasarius adansoni) lack any kind of focal adjustment system, have eyes that are too close together for binocular stereovision and don?t appear to use motion parallax while hunting. So how are these creatures able to perceive depth?

Researchers in Japan have now discovered that the arachnids accurately sense distances by comparing a blurry version of an image with a clear one, a method called image defocus.

Jumping spiders have four eyes densely packed in a row: two large principal eyes and two small lateral eyes. The spider uses its lateral eyes to sense the motion of an object, such as a fly, which it then zeros in on using its principal eyes, Akihisa Terakita, a biologist at Osaka City University in Japan and lead author of the new study, explained in an email to LiveScience.

Rather than having a single layer of?photoreceptor cells, the retinas in the spider?s principal eyes have four distinct photoreceptor layers. When Terakita and his colleagues took a close look at the spider's principal eyes, they found that the two layers closest to the surface contain ultraviolet-sensitive pigments, whereas the deeper layers contain green-sensitive pigments.

However, because of the layers' respective distances from the lens of the eye, incoming green light is only focused on the deepest layer, while the other green-sensitive retinal layer receives defocused or fuzzy images. The researchers hypothesized that the spiders gauge depth cues from the amount of defocus in this fuzzy layer, which is proportional to the distance an object is to the lens of the eye.

To test this, they placed a spider and three to six?fruit flies?in a cylindrical plastic chamber, housed in a white styrene foam box. They then bathed the bugs in different colored lights: If the defocus of green light is important to the spiders, then they should not be able to accurately judge jumping distance in the absence of green light.

Sure enough, the spiders could easily catch the flies under green light, but consistently underestimated their jumps under red light (which doesn't contain shorter-wavelength light, such as green and blue). The researchers suggest that green light is just right to produce the image defocus necessary to gauge distances, unlike other wavelengths of light.

The team doesn?t know if any other animals employ similar depth-perception techniques, though they think the findings could have important implications for the future design of?visual systems in robots.

"Further investigation of the optics, retinal structure and neural basis of depth perception in jumping spiders may provide biological inspiration for computer vision as well," they write in their study, published in the Jan. 27 issue of the journal Science.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/aC8TqWrXnqg/Jumping-Spiders-see-clearly-by-blurring-their-vision

liquor store how to tie a bow tie brock lesnar vs alistair overeem times square new years eve buffalo chicken dip diverticulitis jello shots

California passes new auto emission rules (AP)

SAN FRANCISCO ? Seeking to influence other states and Washington, California air regulators passed sweeping auto emission standards Friday that include a mandate to have 1.4 million electric and hybrid vehicles on state roads by 2025.

The California Air Resources Board unanimously approved the new rules that require that one in seven of the new cars sold in the state in 2025 be an electric or other zero-emission vehicle.

The plan also mandates a 75 percent reduction in smog-forming pollutants by 2025, and a 50 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from today's standards.

Automakers worked with the board and federal regulators on the greenhouse gas mandates in an effort to create one national standard for those pollutants.

"Today's vote ... represents a new chapter for clean cars in California and in the nation as a whole," said Mary Nichols, the board's chairman. "Californians have always loved their cars. We buy a lot of them and drive them. Now we will have cleaner and more efficient cars to love."

California's auto emissions standards are influential and often more strict than federal rules. The state began passing regulations for cleaner cars in the 1960s to help ease some of the world's worst smog, and has since helped spur the auto industry's innovations in emissions-control technology.

Currently 14 other states ? including New York, Washington and Massachusetts ? have adopted California's smog emissions rules as their own.

California has also previously set zero-emissions vehicle mandates, which 10 other states have also currently adopted.

Companies including Ford Motor Corp., Chrysler Group LLC, General Motors Co., Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. and others submitted testimony Thursday supportive of the new standards.

Some of the companies protested the inclusion of a system that will give some automakers credit toward their zero-emission vehicle mandate for exceeding federal greenhouse gas emissions standards in other cars. These credits, which can be used to reduce the number of clean vehicles made, can be used from 2018-2021.

Some called it a loophole that will take hundreds of thousands of clean cars off the road, hurting the emerging market for these vehicles.

"This is a temporary way station," Nichols said about the credits. "But by 2021 all companies will be producing the full complement of zero-emission vehicles."

Trade groups representing auto dealers worried that the new regulations would increase the costs of vehicles for consumers and stifle the industry's growth.

The California New Car Dealers Association and other industry groups representing those who sell cars said the board is overestimating consumer demand for electric vehicles and other so-called "zero-emission vehicles."

Dealers are concerned that the regulations will lead to higher costs in all cars, and say consumers have been slow to warm to electric and other zero-emission vehicles.

Board member Sandra Berg, who said she drives the all-electric Nissan Leaf, said before the vote that regulators need to take consumer behavior and choice seriously in this equation.

She said a lot of work must be done to educate dealers to sell the new generation of cars.

"Early adopters (of electric cars) are willing to go without heat to save the miles they need to get to their destination, but that is not going to help grow the consumer base," Berg said, referring to the range issues with some current electric vehicles.

The board's research staff disputes the argument from dealers that the mandates for new technology will increase costs for cars. They point to steady increases in hybrid and other sales and argue that fuel cost savings will make up for any vehicle price increase.

"Our research shows a $1,400 to $1,900 car price increase. But over the life of the vehicles, the owners save $6,000 in reduced fuel and maintenance costs," board spokesman David Clegern said.

One of the nation's foremost consumer groups, the Consumers' Union, the policy and advocacy division of Consumer Reports, supported the changes.

The rules will "protect consumers by encouraging the development of cleaner, more efficient cars that save families money, help reduce the American economy's vulnerability to oil price shocks and reduce harmful air pollution," according to a letter from the group.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120127/ap_on_re_us/us_california_clean_car_standards

michael buble michael buble teddy roosevelt rita hayworth rita hayworth lakers rumors alfa romeo giulietta

Costa to offer 11,000 euros to passengers on Concordia (Reuters)

ROME (Reuters) ? Several of Italy's consumer groups signed an agreement with Costa Cruises to offer about 11,000 euros ($14,500) to each of the more than 3,000 passengers aboard the Costa Concordia when it hit a rock and capsized near the Italian island of Giglio on January 13, a statement from the consumer groups said.

The company has agreed to pay 11,000 euros for items lost and any psychological damages to each passenger who suffered no physical injuries. In addition, the cost of the cruise and all transportation will be covered. Passengers injured while abandoning the ship will be dealt with individually.

Those who accept the offer must agree to drop all future legal actions against Costa Cruises, according to the agreement. Children will receive the same financial settlement as adults, and passengers will be paid within a week of accepting the offer.

Codacons, a consumer group that did not sign the agreement, recommended that passengers not accept it and urged them to undergo a check to see if they suffered any psychological trauma as a result of the shipwreck, according to Carlo Rienzi, the group's president.

Codacons is collecting names to file a class action suit in Miami against parent company Carnival Plc, requesting 125,000 euros for each passenger.

($1 = 0.7601 euros)

(Reporting by Steve Scherer)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120127/wl_nm/us_italy_ship

sanctum the notebook duke basketball ides of march miranda july joepa joe paterno near death

Tuition Refund Insurance

Sallie Mae, one of the largest private lenders in the country, just launched open online enrollment for a host of insurance plans for consumers.?

This isn't the lender's first foray into the insurance world. It launched a tuition refund insurance plan back in May for college students.

With the latest additions to its suite of insurance offerings, including plans for for auto, renter's, health and travelers insurance, Sallie's clearly looking to diversify its business outside the realm of college campuses.?

There's nothing all that special about the new policies, but the whole idea of tuition refund insurance gave us pause.?

Insurance policies for college tuition function as a way to protect students if they have to suddenly drop out due to underlying medical issues. For $249 per year, Sallie Mae's plan will cover 100 percent of lost tuition but only up to $5,000 per semester.?

"With the average private college tuition in excess of $38,000, that leaves a sizable shortfall," says Joseph Orsolini of?College Aid Planners, Inc. "That being said, I once had a client whose student gotten bitten by a spider in her dorm room and when into a comma for three days. She had to dropout for obvious reasons. This type of plan would have come in handy."?

But what about the rest of students out there?

Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of Fastweb.com and FinAid.org, has some reservations.

"Tuition refund insurance provides the family with peace of mind, but is probably not necessary for most students," he says.?

There's one case in which it might be a good idea: If you have a long-standing medical illness you fear might take a turn for the worse or require a lot of in-patient treatment. But as Orsolini points out, you might already be covered under your parent's health plan so you'll want to doublecheck beforehand.?

Thanks to a bit of public backlash last year, the tuition refund plan also covers tuition costs for students forced to dropout for mental health reasons. Originally, it only covered up to 75%.?

If it makes a difference, the tuition plan also includes up to $1,000 in coverage for physical or virus damage to your personal computer for all states except New York.?

When it comes to the rest of the lender's insurance offerings, a few might be worth looking into.

Renter's insurance is always a good idea, especially if you're living off campus and want protection for your expensive belongings like furniture and electronics. The plan covers up to $95,000?in losses from?fire, water damage and theft. You can also share the policy with your roommates.

Auto, health, and travel are worth a glance, but you can get those plans from just about anywhere. Do your homework in advance and shop around to compare prices to Sallie Mae's.

Here's one you can skip: Life insurance.

Unless you have children to care for, there's not much need for college students to have one, Kantrowitz?says. If you're on the fence about getting a plan, check out this helpful infographic.?

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/college-tuition-refund-insurance-is-it-worth-the-cost-2012-1

orcl hanukkah gpa calculator menorah chanukah chanukah david archuleta

Artist plans to bury 727 jetliner in US desert

BAKERSFIELD, California (AP) ? A Swiss artist plans to bury an intact Boeing 727 jetliner in California's Mojave Desert and build a tunnel to give visitors a chance to see it.

Christoph Buchel has applied for a permit that will allow him to bury the 153-foot-long (46-meter-long) decommissioned airliner.

The Bakersfield Californian newspaper reports the project, called "Terminal," already has approval from the local planning department staff.

The jetliner would be buried 38 feet (11 meters) below the surface.

Visitors will be able to experience the subterranean art project via a tunnel connecting the plane to a parking area. And they'll be able to use the plane's restrooms, which will be connected to a septic system.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/aa9398e6757a46fa93ed5dea7bd3729e/Article_2012-01-26-Jetliner%20Burial/id-eab62a2ecfd24238a30c8c03e66ebcbc

occupy philadelphia conrad murray conrad murray jack del rio jack del rio heaven is for real chapter 11 bankruptcy

PFT: Peyton's next place should be with 49ers

AP

Though the Cleveland Plain Dealer still has not acknowledged the move on its website (other than to finally remove his name and face from the roster), Tony Grossi no longer covers the Browns as a beat writer, following the accidental publication of a private Twitter message that called Browns owner Randy Lerner? (pictured) ?pathetic? and an ?irrelevant billionaire.?

Browns spokesman Neal Gulkis tells PFT that the Browns have no comment on the situation.

There?s still no evidence that the Browns pressured the Plain Dealer to make the move.? Per a source with knowledge of the situation, however, both Lerner and president Mike Holmgren refused to accept calls from Grossi after the message was posted and deleted.? We?re also told that a meeting occurred Wednesday between Plain Dealer publisher Terry Eggar and Holmgren.

The Plain Dealer has been nearly as silent as the Browns.? Managing editor Thom Fladung called the Kiley & Booms radio show on 92.3 The Fan this morning to explain the decision, and Fladung?s explanation was less than persuasive, in our opinion.

The decision to remove Grossi from the beat was driven by this ?determining factor? articulated by Fladung:? ?Don?t do something that affects your value as a journalist or the value of your newspaper or affects the perception of your value and the perception of that newspaper?s value.?

That?s a pretty broad ? and vague ? rule.? And that?s the kind of standard that gives a news organization the ability to do pretty much whatever it wants whenever it wants, because there?s pretty much always something to which someone can point as proof of ?something that affects your value as a journalist or the value of your newspaper or affects the perception of your value and the perception of that newspaper?s value.?

Making Fladung?s ?determining factor? even more confusing is the fact that he admitted that Grossi could have deliberately expressed a strong opinion about Lerner in a column published and printed in the Plain Dealer without conseqeuence.? ?Let?s say Tony had written that Randy Lerner?s lack of involvement with the Browns and their resulting disappointing records over the years has made him irrelevant as an owner, that?s defensible,? Fladung said.? ?That?s absolutely defensible.?

What?s indefensible is the failure of the Plain Dealer to acknowledge the fact that Grossi never intended to make the statements available for public view.? He fell victim to the subtle but significant differences between a ?direct message? (which is private) and a ?reply? (which is public) on Twitter.? It was an accident.? A mistake.

Let?s go back to the days of typewriters and shorthand, and let?s say that Grossi?s editor has two boxes on his desk.? One is for article submissions and one is for proposed topics.? And let?s say that Grossi scribbled out a scathing column about Lerner as a proposed topic, but Grossi accidentally put it in the box of actual submissions for print.

That?s the low-tech version of what happened here.? Grossi accidentally put his message in the wrong box.

So when Fladung says he ?felt very strongly? that the Twitter message ?was inappropriate and unprofessional and . . . it?s not the kind of opinion a journalist covering a beat can express,? Fladung presumes that Grossi actually intended to articulate that opinion to the world.? He didn?t.? It was inadvertently blurted out, like a temporary case of Twitter Tourette?s.

Some have suggested that the Twitter blunder provided the Plain Dealer with a vehicle for addressing pre-existing concerns regarding Grossi?s overall job performance.? Undercutting that theory was Fladung?s assertion during the radio interview that Grossi is a ?very good? and ?very successful? beat writer.

I?m continuing to write about this because it?s the kind of mistake that could happen to anyone, and everyone should be entitled to the benefit of the doubt in a case like this, especially when newspapers and other media companies want their writers to engage with the audience through various new technologies and platforms.? It also just ?feels? like an unjust result, whether because the Plain Dealer is being obtuse or because the Plain Dealer is cowering to the Browns or because the Browns are remaining deliberately silent in order to secure the preferred outcome of having Grossi removed from the beat.

Regardless, we?re disappointed in the Plain Dealer, in Fladung, in the Browns, in Lerner, and in Holmgren.? And we hope that one or more of them will snap out of it and do the right thing, or at least let the rest of us know in far more convincing fashion why they believe the right thing was done.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/01/25/manning-to-49ers-could-be-tricky-to-pull-off/related/

iron chef bath and body works coupons jeff probst jeff probst king jong il dead south korea baron davis

Small Business Success Still Relies On Communication

If you?re in small business, be prepared to communicate. It?s an important part of what small businesses do. The same thing goes for those who lead them. Here are some tips and tools to help you better master communication for your small business.

Opening Up

Why you must spend time face to face. Technology is great. It connects us in ways never possible before. But there are limitations to what technology can do when building important business relationships. Here?s why. Jennifer Warawa

It?s lonely at the top. But it doesn?t have to be. Here are 10 ways many business leaders avoid loneliness and isolation. As a small business owner you may sometimes feel isolated too. How do you work to avoid those feelings. Startup Professionals Musings

The State of Business

Big companies want to handle your IT. There was a time when IT services for small businesses and startups were handled by smaller firms as well. No longer. Here is why big business wants a piece in serving your IT needs. WSJ

What Washington is telling small business. Small businesses and entrepreneurs did feature in the President?s State of the Union Address. But what is big government really telling small businesses about where they fit in? Entrepreneur

Blogging & Engagement

Why blogging is your business. No better paradigm of business communications exists today than the small business blog. Personal and focused, it is at the same time representative of your brand. But it may turn out your blog is even a bigger part of your business than you thought. Noobpreneur

The importance of engagement. Is your small business engaging with customers, clients and the public in the way that it should? What tools and approaches can you use to reach the necessary engagement with your customers? Famous Bloggers

Marketing & Sales

The problems with converting leads. Your marketing is a form of communication, but what is really important to consider, when deciding whether that communication is effective, is to look at whether your audience is turning into customers. Dawn Westerberg Consulting

Tech Basics

Best gear for podcasting. Podcaster Ileane Smith shows you her personal choice for equipment to use in your own efforts and explains a bit more about why podcasting is so critical to communication in small business today. Basic Blog Tips

Making Connections

It?s still about the people. No matter how small business communications is done, it?s still a very human interaction. Technology and techniques aside, what will really make you better at marketing and selling is to better understand your customer. B2B Marketing Smarts

Do you know your audience? No, it?s not a silly question! Do you? Because all of the above won?t help you much if you don?t. Here?s why you?ll need to consider the people you?re addressing first before finding success. Respectfully Disobedient

Source: http://smallbiztrends.com/2012/01/small-business-success-still-relies-on-communication.html

eli manning eli manning steven tyler ny giants chip kelly billy cundiff new york giants

The Science of Cramming [Science]

Many of us don't learn in optimal ways. We know that we forget new material, neglect to review older material, and study in ways that elevate cramming and procrastination to art forms. But there is research about how to be more efficient in these things. For example, dating back to 1885, there is a rich literature that explores how timing our learning of new and old material can affect education. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/oQ1vERHMxZw/the-science-of-cramming

charlie and the chocolate factory ou football ryan torain ryan torain world series game 3 sign language alphabet texas tech

The Case Against Porno Chic

Style and fashion guru Simon Doonan has been railing against what he calls ?porno chic? for some time.?? And it?s not because he?s a prude.? The author of Gay Men Don?t Get Fat tells Slate?s Jacob Weisberg why he has no patience for 6-inch heels, bleach blondes and spray tans.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=98c6e6b29847bd933c53c29b586156cc

leonard cohen napoleon napoleon wish you were here lyrics wish you were here lyrics mine mine

Northern lights: Huge solar flare may trigger Saturday night show

Northern lights show this weekend? A big solar plasma wave is heading toward Earth, and may create Northern lights or aurora borealis display by Saturday night.

A powerful flare erupted from the sun Thursday (Jan. 19), unleashing a plasma wave that may supercharge the northern lights for skywatchers in high latitudes this weekend.

Skip to next paragraph

The solar flare occurred at about 11:30 am EST (1600 GMT) and touched off a massive solar explosion ? known as a coronal mass ejection ? aimed at Earth, space weather experts and officials said. The charged particles from the sun explosion should reach Earth by Saturday night (Jan. 21), and could amp up northern lights displays when they hit the upper atmosphere.

"Forecasters say strong geomagnetic storms are possible when the cloud arrives during the late hours of Jan. 21st. High-latitude (and possibly middle-latitude) sky watchers should be alert for auroras this weekend," the skywatching website Spaceweather.com announced in an alert.

Several space telescopes recorded photos and video of the solar flare, including NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). [Photo and video of the solar flare]

?According to the Space Weather Prediction Center maintained by NOAA, Thursday's solar flare erupted from an active sunspot group called Region 1401. Another solar hotspot, called Region 1402, is also fired off a flare, the center reported.?

Auroras occur when charged particles from the sun interact with Earth's upper atmosphere, releasing visible light in the process. The particles are funneled toward Earth's polar regions by the planet's magnetic field, with the northern auroral displays known as the aurora borealis, or northern lights. The southern counterpart is called the aurora australis, or southern lights.?

Thursday's solar flare rated as a powerful M2-class sun storm on the scale used by astronomers to measure flare strength. M-class storms are powerful, but mid-range, types of solar flares. They fall between the weaker C-class flares and the most powerful X-class solar storms, which can pose a threat to satellites and astronauts in orbit, cause widespread communications interference and damage infrastructure on Earth when aimed directly at the planet.

SDO mission scientists have said that sunspot group 1401 has been unleashing solar flares almost daily as the sun's rotation slowly turned the solar hotspot toward Earth in recent days. On Wednesday (Jan. 18), the region unleashed an M1.7-class solar flare, they said in a Twitter post.

The sun is currently in the middle of an active phase of its 11-year solar weather cycle. The current sun storm cycle, called Solar Cycle 24, is expected to peak in 2013, NASA scientists have said.

Editor's note: If you snap an amazing northern lights photo, or other skywatching image, and would like to share it for a possible story or gallery, please contact managing editor Tariq Malik at?tmalik@space.com.

Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter?@Spacedotcom?and on?Facebook.

Copyright 2011 Space, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/kLvXr8PxjBE/Northern-lights-Huge-solar-flare-may-trigger-Saturday-night-show

casey anthony leann rimes dakota fanning joseph kennedy iii casey anthony video diary joe johnson lamarcus aldridge

Dr. Drew gets juiced up on 'Lifechangers'

The CW

Dr. Drew has an adverse reaction to Go-Go Juice.

By Randee Dawn

Dr. Drew Pinsky of "Dr. Drew's Lifechangers" is pretty unflappable -- and why not? He's had years of experience dealing with celebrities and their sometimes off-the-wall addictions, and is usually the composed, cool-headed center of rationality.

But you haven't seen Dr. Drew until you've seen him try some of Honey Boo Boo Child's Go-Go Juice, as he does in the clip below, from "Lifechangers."

"It tastes like apple juice!" says Child, whose birth name is Alana, and who stars in "Toddlers & Tiaras."

OK, he doesn't exactly get down on the floor and spin around (as the pageant princess has been known to do). But having had a small sip of the "energy drink and caffeine drink" combo Alana's mom put together, he starts immediately stumbling over his words.

"I'm kind of starting to sweat a little bit ... I can't speak, my tongue is getting thick ... I can't talk because I've got this Go-Go juice making my mouth thick," he said.

"I'm having trouble, I'm starting to lose it," he added, spitting a little out.

Talk about a life-changer!

Honey Boo Boo Child, her mother and the Go-Go Juice make an appearance on "Dr. Drew's Lifechangers" on Feb. 2 on The CW.

What do you think about giving a young child an energy/caffeine drink combo? Share your thoughts on our Facebook page.

Related content:

Source: http://theclicker.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/23/10215721-dr-drew-chokes-up-over-go-go-juice-on-lifechangers

j r martinez j r martinez long island serial killer wizard of oz jeff green saturday night live aortic aneurysm

Last-minute failures end Ravens' season, 23-20 (AP)

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. ? Lee Evans had victory in his hands. Billy Cundiff had a tie game on his toe.

Two chances in the final 30 seconds to keep their Super Bowl hopes alive and the Baltimore Ravens let both slip away.

Evans was stripped after briefly hauling in Joe Flacco's pass in the back right corner of the end zone and, two plays later, Cundiff pushed a 32-yard field goal attempt wide left in Sunday's AFC championship game. The New England Patriots won 23-20 and the Ravens ended their season disappointed but not disgraced.

"We're grinders," said linebacker Ray Lewis, wiping his face with a towel in the quiet Ravens locker room. "We're coming home and we're coming home with smiles. But, most importantly, when we start back training, we're coming back (ticked) off. Why wouldn't we be?"

The Ravens gave the Patriots all they could handle.

The much-maligned Flacco played one of his best games of the season. The third-ranked Baltimore defense held Tom Brady without a touchdown pass for the first time in 36 games. And the Ravens moved from their 21-yard line to a second-and-1 at the Patriots 14 with 27 seconds left.

Plenty of time to at least tie the score.

On the next play, Evans had the pass in his grasp. But Sterling Moore, a rookie free agent who was cut once by the Patriots this season, arrived just in time to knock out the ball.

"I feel like I had it, but it came out," Evans said. "I don't know how to put it into words. Honestly, it's the most disappointing part of all of this that I feel personally that I let everybody down.

"It hit me right where you would want to be hit. It was a great pass by Joe and a play not completed by me. Nobody else can take the fault."

Ravens coach John Harbaugh thought the play should have been reviewed, but because coaches can't ask for a review in the last two minutes of a half, he was powerless.

"Obviously, in that situation I thought they would look at it," he said, "but they didn't. I have not talked to anybody, didn't get a chance to, so I don't know what the explanation is on that."

But the Ravens weren't done.

On the next play, needing a yard for a first down, Flacco threw toward Dennis Pitta. Again, Moore made a late move to knock the ball away.

Still, there was a chance to send the game into overtime. And Cundiff had kicked field goals of 48 and 44 yards a week earlier in a 20-13 win over the Houston Texans. He had made 10 of 12 field goals between 30 and 39 yards this season.

Not this time.

Morgan Cox snapped, Sam Koch held. Cundiff, the All-Pro kicker in the 2010 season, swung his leg.

On the Ravens sideline, jaws dropped and heads sank. There was a look of shock that such a dependable kicker had missed such a makeable kick.

"The timing was just a little off," Cundiff said. "I'm disappointed. I let my teammates down."

His teammates didn't think so. The kick was one of dozens of plays that affected the outcome.

"Not one play won or lost this game," Lewis said. "There's no `Oh, Billy's the fault. Billy missed the (kick).' There's no freaking `Billy missed the kick.' It happened. Move on."

Linebacker Terrell Suggs is moving away from football for now. He has no plans to watch the Super Bowl.

"If I'm not playing in it, it doesn't matter to me," he said. "No matter who wins, I lose."

Flacco will move on after answering his doubters by completing 22 of 36 passes for 306 yards, his third most of the season. He had two touchdowns but threw a costly interception that Brandon Spikes caught at the Patriots 31 and returned to the 50 midway through the fourth quarter.

On the next play, though, Jimmy Smith intercepted Brady's pass in the end zone.

Baltimore drove to the Patriots 30, but on third-and-3, Rice was stuffed for a 3-yard loss. After calling a timeout, the Ravens decided to go for it on fourth-and-6 instead of having Cundiff try a tying 51-yard field goal.

But Flacco couldn't find an open receiver, throwing the ball away and giving the Patriots possession with 2:46 remaining. The defense forced a punt, and Flacco began his final drive of the season with 1:44 left, 79 yards from the end zone.

He completed five of seven passes before the oh-so-close toss to Evans.

"He played his tail off," Ravens safety Bernard Pollard said, "and for the people who keep dogging him, man, if you never played this game, shut up, shut up, you know. He played his tail off."

And his pass to Evans was right on target. The celebration on Baltimore's sideline already had started.

"If you weren't celebrating, you weren't a Raven fan," said Lewis, dressed in a brown pinstripe suit after removing his uniform for the last time this season. "That's the irony of sports. It's a game of inches."

Inches that make all the difference between a chance for a championship and a promise for next season.

"We fell 15 seconds from having it," Suggs said, "so, please believe, it won't happen again."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120123/ap_on_sp_fo_ga_su/fbn_afc_championship_ravens

houston texans houston texans texans enemy of the state lana del rey snl golden globe nominees arian foster

Korean research, a first step toward Dr. Smartphone? (Reuters)

SEOUL (Reuters) ? Tired of long waits at the hospital for medical tests? If Korean researchers have their way, your smartphone could one day eliminate that -- and perhaps even tell you that you have cancer.

A team of scientists at Korea Advanced Institute of Science of Technology (KAIST) said in a paper published in Angewandte Chemie, a German science journal, that touch screen technology can be used to detect biomolecular matter, much as is done in medical tests.

"It began from the idea that touch screens work by recognizing the electronic signs from the touch of the finger, and so the presence of specific proteins and DNA should be recognizable as well," said Hyun-gyu Park, who with Byong-yeon Won led the study.

The touch screens on smartphones, PDAs or other electronic devices work by sensing the electronic charges from the user's body on the screen. Biochemicals such as proteins and DNA molecules also carry specific electronic charges.

According to KAIST, the team's experiments showed that touch screens can recognize the existence and the concentration of DNA molecules placed on them, a first step toward one day being able to use the screens to carry out medical tests.

"We have confirmed that (touch screens) are able to recognize DNA molecules with nearly 100 percent accuracy just as large, conventional medical equipment can and we believe equal results are possible for proteins," Park told Reuters TV.

"There are proteins known in the medical world like the ones used to diagnose liver cancer, and we would be able to see the liver condition of the patient."

The research team added that it is currently developing a type of film with reactive materials that can identify specific biochemicals, hoping this will allow the touch screens to also recognize different biomolecular materials.

But confirming that the touch screen can recognize the biomolecular materials, though key, is only the first step.

Since nobody would put blood or urine on a touch screen, the sample would be placed on a strip, which would then be fed into the phone or a module attached to the phone through what Park called an "entrance point."

"The location and concentration of the sample would be recognized the same way the touch of the finger is recognized," he added.

There are no details yet on a prospective timetable for making the phone a diagnostic tool, however.

(Reporting by Hyunyoung Yi, writing by Iktae Park, editing by Elaine Lies and Bob Tourtellotte)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120123/wr_nm/us_korea_doctor_smartphone

jerry angelo work it amy chua iowa gop gloria steinem forgetting sarah marshall meteor shower tonight

Amazon setting up first "fulfillment center" in India (Reuters)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) ? Amazon.com Inc is setting up its first "fulfillment center" in India as the world's largest Internet retailer tries to break into the world's second most-populous nation.

Fulfillment centers are giant warehouses that help Amazon and other online retailers store many products, ship them and handle returns quickly.

The fulfillment center is based in Mumbai, the biggest city in the country, according to job listings on Amazon's India careers website.

Amazon "has an immediate opening for an IT Manager in our first Fulfillment Center based out in Mumbai, India," one recent listing said.

Another recent Amazon job posting sought a "Stations Operations Manager" to work for the fulfillment center team in Mumbai.

Amazon was also recently looking for a financial analyst in Mumbai to report to a general manager and controller and help the fulfillment center operate more efficiently and predictably.

Amazon spent heavily last year setting up more than 10 new fulfillment centers in the United States. The company also lists fulfillment centers in China, Germany, Japan and the U.K. on its website, but currently lists none in India.

Fulfillment centers cost a lot to set up, so Amazon's efforts to start one in India signals the company is serious about getting into the country's $550 billion retail market.

"While it has been speculated that Amazon would be expanding internationally, it seems that the international expansion plans have been accelerating," said Ben Schachter, an analyst at Macquarie. "Last year, they launched a country-specific site in Spain and now it looks like India could be next."

An Amazon spokeswoman did not respond to emails seeking comment on the company's plans for India.

Amazon has software development centers in Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad and a customer-service center in Hyderabad.

Shoppers in India can also buy products from Amazon websites in other countries and have the items shipped to them. But the company does not have a dedicated online retail business in India yet.

That has allowed e-commerce start-ups, led by Flipkart, to expand quickly in India.

"India is a tremendously large potential market for Amazon," said Mahesh Murthy, a venture capital investor in India and founder of digital marketing start-up Pinstorm.

"In fact, from the metrics we see, Amazon currently gets more traffic from India than Flipkart does, even though the former has no formal presence in India," he added.

Amazon already does a lot of business in India through its U.K. website, amazon.co.uk, because the company offers free shipping and handles customs for all books, music and DVDs bought from that site and shipped to India, Murthy said.

"But this would be significantly smaller than what Amazon could do if it came with a full offering into India," he added.

(Reporting By Alistair Barr; editing by Andre Grenon)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/internet/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120120/wr_nm/us_amazon_india

los angeles clippers los angeles clippers charlize theron telenav telenav wade phillips wade phillips

Pakistan PM defends president at Supreme Court (AP)

ISLAMABAD ? Pakistan's prime minister struck a conciliatory tone in an appearance before the Supreme Court Thursday, trying to cool down a political and legal crisis destabilizing the nuclear-armed country.

The unusual appearance by a head of government before a high court was the latest move in a high-stakes struggle between the civilian regime, the judges and Pakistan's powerful army generals, who have seized power three times since 1947.

At stake is the future of Pakistan's leadership and its ties to the U.S. Relations between the two countries have been strained since last May's unilateral U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Pakistan's elected government is locked in bitter conflict with the army over a secret memo asking for Washington's help in curtailing the power of the generals after the bin Laden raid. The army was outraged by the memo, allegedly sent by the government, and pushed the Supreme Court to set up a commission to investigate. The government insists it did not send the memo.

On Thursday the Supreme Court stepped into another part of the struggle, a decade-old Swiss corruption case involving President Asif Ali Zardari. Some believe the military is maneuvering the court to depose Zardari and his government, while others point to bad blood between the president and the court's chief justice.

Against that complicated and tense background, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani agreed to honor a summons to appear before the court to answer charges he was ignoring the judiciary.

The court wants government prosecutors to formally ask Swiss authorities to reopen a shelved graft probe against Zardari, who was found guilty in absentia in a Swiss court in 2003 of laundering millions of dollars in kickbacks from Swiss companies. Zardari appealed, but in 2009 Swiss prosecutors dropped the case after a request from the Pakistani government.

Gilani insisted that Zardari is immune from prosecution. Judges didn't immediately accept that, but they adjourned for two weeks to hear more arguments in the case.

For two years, the government has been refusing orders to reopen the decade-old corruption case against Zardari, infuriating the judiciary. Zardari loyalists have long claimed that the court wants to get the president out of office, regardless of the law.

"It is my conviction that he (Zardari) has complete immunity inside and outside country," Gilani said in a 10-minute speech that was laced with humility. "I have no intention of ridiculing the court. We have the highest regard for the court."

Later, Gilani's lawyer, Aitzaz Ahsan, offered a concession to the court, agreeing to argue the issue of the president's immunity when the hearing resumes on Feb. 1. The government previously insisted presidential immunity was a right, and therefore didn't need to be debated in court.

"I will bow to the court order and will also speak on immunity to satisfy the court that the president has complete immunity," Ahsan told reporters.

Security was especially tight during the court session, which was also attended by several of Gilani's ministers and coalition partners. Police lined the roads in front of the Supreme Court, and two helicopters hovered over the building during the hearing.

Supporters and opponents of the government competed for attention outside the court. A group of about a dozen women chanted, "Long live Zardari!" while several dozen lawyers shouted slogans in favor of the court chief justice and against the president.

Political analysts said events at the court Thursday indicated something of a thaw.

"This will definitely contribute to reduce the tension, but it is not the end of the problems for the president," said political science professor Hasan-Askari Rizvi.

___

Associated Press writer Sebastian Abbot contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120119/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan

prohibition alex honnold nbc news dexter season 6 koch industries andy rooney 60 minutes andre johnson

Congress has legal clout on Keystone pipeline: study (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The Congress has the constitutional right to legislate permits for cross-border oil pipelines like TransCanada's Keystone XL, according to a new legal analysis released late on Friday.

The study by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service could give a boost to Republicans drafting legislation to overturn a decision this week by President Barack Obama to put the $7 billion Alberta-to-Texas project on ice.

Historically, U.S. presidents have made executive decisions on pipelines that cross borders. But Congress had the power all along to weigh in on the permits, said the study, done by four legislative attorneys with the CRS.

"If Congress chose to assert its authority in the area of border-crossing facilities, this would likely be considered within its Constitutionally enumerated authority to regulate foreign commerce," the study said.

Republicans in Congress have elevated the Canadian pipeline and the construction jobs it would create into an election-year issue, accusing Obama of caving in to environmental groups. They pushed to include a deadline for a permit approval in a payroll tax cut bill that Obama signed into law in December.

But this week, Obama and the State Department said an environmental review of a portion of the proposed pipeline could not be rushed, closing the door on a quick start to the project.

BACK IN THE DAY

The CRS study examined the history of decisions by presidents on thorny issues involving approval of cross-border projects such as bridges and power lines stretching back to 1869, when President Ulysses Grant ruled on a French transatlantic cable used to send telegrams.

The report also looked at more recent court cases involving oil and gas pipelines crossing the Canada-U.S. border.

While the U.S. president has authority over foreign affairs, the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate foreign commerce, the report explains.

Until now, presidents have issued permits by executive order for pipelines, and Congress has stayed out of the matter.

The report did not comment on specific proposals floated by Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives, but said that "legislation altering the pipeline border crossing approval process appears likely to be a legitimate exercise of Congress's constitutional authority to regulate foreign commerce,"

Legislation on cross-border "facilities" like pipelines "is unlikely to raise significant constitutional questions, despite the fact that such permits have traditional been handled by the executive branch alone," it said.

REPORT 'HELPS THE CONVERSATION'

Any "plan B" drafted by Republicans would still have to clear a very big political hurdle. While legislation could easily pass in the Republican-controlled House, the Democratic-led Senate is another matter.

"Regardless of whether the Republican legislation seeking to rubber-stamp Keystone XL would pass constitional muster, it would still need to pass the Senate and be signed by the president, and that is not going to happen," a Senate Democratic aide said on Friday.

But the CRS report "greatly helps the conversation" among Senate and House Republicans strategizing about how to keep the project alive, said Ryan Bernstein, an energy adviser to Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota, whose office requested the study.

"I think this confirms what we've been saying all along - Congress has the authority to approve the Keystone pipeline," said Bernstein, who is helping Hoeven draft legislation that would see Congress approve the project.

Earlier on Friday, Republicans in the House of Representatives said they were considering using upcoming payroll tax cut or highway construction bills to force quick approval of the pipeline.

Representative Lee Terry, whose home state of Nebraska would host part of the pipeline, has drafted legislation to shift the Keystone decision-making process from the Obama administration to the independent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates pipelines in the United States.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday about Terry's bill and other Keystone measures.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/energy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120121/wl_canada_nm/canada_us_usa_pipeline_legislation

julianna margulies dr oz hakeem nicks hakeem nicks alpha lipoic acid 105.1 alex trebek

Murdoch to pay Jude Law and others hacking damages

FILE - A Thursday, Dec. 8, 2011 photo from files showing actor Jude Law as he poses for photographers at the European Premiere of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, at a central London cinema. Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper company on Thursday agreed to pay damages to 36 high-profile victims of tabloid phone-hacking, including actor Jude Law, soccer player Ashley Cole and former British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott. In the 15 settlements whose financial terms were made public, amounts generally ran into the tens of thousands of pounds (dollars) _ although Law received 130,000 pounds (about $200,000/156,000 euro) to settle claims against the now-shuttered News of the World tabloid and its sister paper, The Sun. (AP Photo/Joel Ryan)

FILE - A Thursday, Dec. 8, 2011 photo from files showing actor Jude Law as he poses for photographers at the European Premiere of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, at a central London cinema. Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper company on Thursday agreed to pay damages to 36 high-profile victims of tabloid phone-hacking, including actor Jude Law, soccer player Ashley Cole and former British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott. In the 15 settlements whose financial terms were made public, amounts generally ran into the tens of thousands of pounds (dollars) _ although Law received 130,000 pounds (about $200,000/156,000 euro) to settle claims against the now-shuttered News of the World tabloid and its sister paper, The Sun. (AP Photo/Joel Ryan)

Rupert Murdoch and his wife Wendi arrive at the 69th Annual Golden Globe Awards Sunday, Jan. 15, 2012, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)

LONDON (AP) ? Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper company has agreed to pay damages to 37 high-profile victims of tabloid phone-hacking, including actor Jude Law, soccer player Ashley Cole, a friend of Prince William's and former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.

In the 15 settlements whose financial terms were made public Thursday, amounts generally ran into the tens of thousands of pounds (dollars) ? although Law received 130,000 pounds (about $200,000) to settle claims against the now-shuttered News of the World tabloid and its sister paper, The Sun.

Law was one of 60 people who have sued News Group Newspapers, claiming their mobile phone voicemails were hacked. Other cases whose settlement was announced at London's High Court on Thursday included claims by former government ministers Chris Bryant and Tessa Jowell, rugby player Gavin Henson and Sara Payne, the mother of a murdered girl.

It was the biggest number of settlements yet in the long-running hacking scandal, which has shaken Murdoch's global empire, spurred the resignations of several of his top executives and reverberated through Britain's political, police and media elite.

News Group Newspapers admitted that 16 articles about Law published in the News of the World tabloid between 2003 and 2006 had been obtained by phone hacking, and that the actor had also been placed under "repeated and sustained physical surveillance." The company also admitted that articles in The Sun tabloid misused Law's private information ? although it didn't go so far as to admit to phone hacking.

In a statement, Law said Murdoch's tabloids had been "prepared to do anything to sell their newspapers and to make money, irrespective of the impact it had on people's lives."

The claimants described feeling mistrust, fear and paranoia as phone messages went missing, journalists knew their movements in advance or private information appeared in the media.

"I changed my phones, I had my house swept for bugs but still the information kept being published," Law said, adding that the phone hacking had made him "distrustful of people close to me."

"For me, this case was never about money. It was about standing up for myself and finding out what had happened. I owed it to my friends and family as well as myself to do this," he said.

Law's ex-wife, actress Sadie Frost, received 50,000 pounds (about $77,000) in damages plus legal costs for phone hacking and deceit by the News of the World. Bryant received 30,000 pounds (about $46,000) in damages plus costs, while Prescott ? a prominent member of the Labour Party ? accepted 40,000 pounds (about $62,000).

After each victim's statement, News Group lawyer Michael Silverleaf stood to express the news company's "sincere apologies" for the damage and distress that its illegal activity had caused.

Frost said the paper's activity caused her and Law to suspect one another. Henson said he accused the family of his then-wife, singer Charlotte Church, of leaking stories to the press.

Other claimants included Guy Pelly, a friend of Prince William, who was awarded 40,000 pounds (about $62,000), and Tom Rowland, a journalist who wrote for one of Murdoch's own newspapers, the Sunday Times. He received 25,000 pounds ($39,000) after News Group admitted hacking his phone.

In some cases the company admitted hacking into emails, as well as telephone voice mails. Christopher Shipman, son of serial killer Harold Shipman, had emails containing sensitive legal and medical information intercepted by the News of the World. He was awarded "substantial" undisclosed damages.

Many victims had earlier settled with the company, including actress Sienna Miller and the parents of murdered teenager Milly Dowler, who were awarded 2 million pounds (about $3.1 million) in compensation.

The slew of settlements is one consequence of the revelations of phone-hacking and other illegal tactics at the News of the World, where journalists routinely intercepted voicemails of those in the public eye in a relentless search for scoops. The wide-ranging scandal prompted Murdoch to close the 168-year-old paper in July.

British politicians and police have also been ensnared in the scandal, which exposed the cozy relationship between senior officers, top lawmakers, and newspaper executives at Murdoch's media empire. A government-commissioned inquiry set up in the wake of the scandal is currently investigating the ethics of Britain's media ? and the nature of its links to police and politicians.

The settlements announced Thursday amount to more than half of the phone-hacking lawsuits facing Murdoch's company, but the number of victims is estimated in the hundreds. Mark Lewis, a lawyer for many of the phone hacking victims, said in an email that the fight against Murdoch wasn't over.

"While congratulations are due to those (lawyers) and clients who have settled their cases, it is important that we don't get carried away into thinking that the war is over," Lewis said. "Fewer than 1 percent of the people who were hacked have settled their cases. There are many more cases in the pipeline. ... This is too early to celebrate, we're not even at the end of the beginning."

Ten further cases are due to go to court next month, though lawyers said more settlements are likely.

___

Associated Press Writer Raphael Satter contributed to this report.

Jill Lawless can be reached at: http://twitter.com/JillLawless

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-01-19-Britain-Phone%20Hacking/id-88ba62d9b1e54d9c99009c0f6aa57d82

emergency alert system 21 jump street 19 kids and counting 2011 election results 11/11/11 11 11 11 activision blizzard