Sunday, January 29, 2012

UN Security Council discusses Syrian crisis (AP)

UNITED NATIONS ? The Security Council began closed-door negotiations Friday on a new Arab-European draft resolution aimed at resolving the crisis in Syria, but Russia's envoy said he could not back the current language as it stands.

Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters afterward that the text introduced by new Arab Security Council member Morocco has "red lines" for Moscow, but he's willing to "engage" with the resolution's sponsors.

Churkin said those lines include any indication of sanctions, including an arms embargo. "We need to concentrate on establishing political dialogue," he said.

British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant later insisted that the text based on the Arab League's recent recommendations for Syria contains no mention of an arms embargo or any other sanctions, and that it received broad support from other council members. "A lot of straw men are being put up," he said.

"We want, as do the Arabs, an unanimous resolution," Lyall Grant said. "Frankly, the time has come where we should be supporting the Arab League efforts."

The U.N. says at least 5,400 people have been killed in a monthslong Syrian government crackdown on civilian protests.

European diplomats have been meeting this week with diplomats from Arab countries, including Morocco and Qatar, on a resolution that would strongly back an Arab League bid to end the crisis.

French Ambassador Gerard Araud told reporters he expected that a "very determined negotiation process" on the text would start at the ambassador level on Wednesday, one day after the Arab League secretary-general and Qatar's prime minister brief the council on the situation in Syria.

"There is now a chance that the Security Council will finally take a clear stand on Syria. That is long overdue," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Friday at the General Affairs Council in Brussels. The comments were provided by the German mission to journalists at the U.N.

"We hope now that council members will seize this new window of opportunity and find common ground," German Ambassador Peter Wittig said before the council met behind closed doors.

But, as Churkin indicated, eventual approval is far from guaranteed.

Permanent council members Russia and China used their veto powers last fall to block an earlier European resolution on Syria. On Friday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov was quoted by the ITAR-Tass news agency as saying Moscow will oppose the new draft U.N. resolution on Syria because it fails to take Kremlin's concerns into account.

South African Ambassador Baso Sangqu said it was important that supporters of the resolution assure other countries, including his, that the draft was not a plan for regime change.

Russia and some other countries believe NATO misused last year's Security Council's resolutions on Libya as a pretext for regime change in that nation.

Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari expressed his country's opposition to the new draft resolution saying that "Syria will not be Libya."

Russia has been a strong ally of Syria since Soviet times, when the country was led by the president's father Hafez Assad, and has long supplied Syria with aircraft, missiles, tanks and other modern weapons.

The new Arab-European draft resolution on Syria, obtained by The Associated Press, expresses support of the Arab League's Jan. 22 decision "to facilitate a political transition leading to a democratic, plural political system."

The draft does not explicitly mention sanctions, but calls for the adoption of unspecified "further measures, in consultation with the League of Arab States," if Syria does not comply within 15 days.

The draft also condemns the "continued widespread and gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms by the Syrian authorities" and demands that the Syrian government immediately stop all human rights violations.

The Arab League earlier this month sent observers to Syria, but the mission was widely criticized for failing to stop the violence. Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia pulled out of the mission Tuesday, asking the Security Council to intervene because the Syrian government has not halted its crackdown.

The head of Arab League observers in Syria said in a statement that violence in the country has spiked over the past few days. Sudanese Gen. Mohammed Ahmed al-Dabi said the cities of Homs, Hama and Idlib have all witnessed a "very high escalation" in violence since Tuesday.

___

Associated Press writer Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report.

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

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Senate banking panel to vote on Iran sanctions February 2 (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - ? The Senate Banking Committee expects to vote on Thursday, February 2 on legislation containing more sanctions on Iran, the panel announced on Friday.

Lawmakers want to strengthen the economic chokehold on Iran to discourage Tehran from seeking to build a nuclear bomb. The panel's announcement gave no details of the upcoming legislation, saying these would be released next week.

(Reporting By Susan Cornwell)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iran/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120127/pl_nm/us_iran_usa_banking

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Saturday, January 28, 2012

HP Folio 13


One's too steep and one's too shallow, and they're the Achilles' heels of ultrabooks. What are they? Prices and keyboards, respectively, and HP goes a long way toward fixing them with its entry in the super-slim laptop sweepstakes, the HP Folio 13?$899.99 with Windows 7 Home Premium or $1,048.99 as tested with Windows 7 Professional, and equipped with one of the nicest keyboards in the class.

The HP Folio 13 is nice in other ways, too, from its Ethernet port to its memory-card slot. It's a few ounces heavier and a few ticks of the benchmark stopwatch slower than some competitors, but the more you use it the less you'll care about that: Ultrabooks are about convenience and productivity, and the Folio 13 delivers so much of both that it comes within a whisker of unseating our Editors' Choice in the category, the Asus Zenbook UX31-RSL8 ($1,049 list, 4 stars).

At $899.99 with Win 7 Home Premium, the Folio is the second most affordable ultrabook with a true solid-state drive instead of a spinning hard drive with solid-state booster like the Acer Aspire S3 ($899.99 direct, 3.5 stars). The most affordable, the Toshiba Portege Z835-P330 ($799.99 at Best Buy, 3.5 stars), makes do with a tepid Intel Core i3 processor versus the HP's perkier Core i5, as well as a thinner, more flex-prone screen and keyboard. The difference is worth the $100, even if the upgrade to Win 7 Professional is pricey at $149 (blame Microsoft, not HP).

Design
Though not carved out of an aluminum unibody like the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (Thunderbolt) ($1,299 direct, 4 stars) or Lenovo IdeaPad U300s ($1,495 direct, 4 stars), the Folio 13 makes good use of the metal, combining a brushed aluminum lid and palm rest with a grippable, soft-touch plastic bottom. It offers a mix of matte and glossy finishes, with a non-reflective bezel around the mirror-finish display and a glossy tray beneath the matte keys.

Between the aluminum construction and a large-for-the-category six-cell battery, the HP, while still quite light, is heavy for an ultrabook?3.25 pounds on PC Labs' scale, compared to about 2.9 pounds for most rivals and 2.5 pounds for the Toshiba Z835-P330. The difference is barely noticeable; you can still slip the 8.7 by 12.5 by 0.7-inch Folio into your briefcase and almost forget it's there. Meanwhile, the system is flex-, wiggle-, and wobble-free, whether you're grasping the screen by the corners or typing with it in your lap?something you can't say for many ultrabooks.

The 13.3-inch display offers the same 1,366 by 768 resolution as most ultrabooks (trailing the 1,440 by 900 of the MacBook Air and 1,600 by 900 of the Asus UX31). It's nicely sharp and passably bright if you keep the backlight cranked up to its top couple of settings, though white backgrounds aren't washday-miracle white and colors don't pop as they do on some competitive screens.

If the screen is only fair to good, however, the keyboard is very good to excellent, as long as you don't mind having Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn doubled up on the cursor arrows instead of given their own keys (and one quirk: full-sized left and right arrows bracketing half-sized up and down keys). Travel-wise, ultrabook keyboards are by definition shallower than those of thicker laptops, but the HP's soft-touch keys manage to provide good tactile response without the did-that-keystroke-register uncertainty of some rivals.

The keyboard is backlit, too (the F5 key toggles the handy backlight), like the Toshiba's and Apple's and unlike the Asus', and doesn't oblige you to press a Fn key to access the functions such as screen brightness and audio and media controls assigned to F1 through F10. It's accompanied by a touchpad whose silky-smooth gliding and tapping contrasts with fairly stiff mouse buttons.

Features
Deskbound users will look in vain for a Kensington lock slot, but they'll find a full-sized Gigabit Ethernet port as well as Wi-Fi for connecting to office networks plus Bluetooth for sharing data with smartphones. The Wi-Fi worked fine for Web surfing and Windows Update sessions. There are also one USB 2.0, one USB 3.0, and HDMI ports, as well as a headphone/microphone jack and the SD/MMC card slot that's missing from the Lenovo U300s and Dell Inspiron 13. The only thing missing is a VGA port for connecting older monitors and projectors, but HP sells an HDMI-to-VGA adapter for $40.

Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) is another presentation option, allowing you to beam the Folio's video and audio to an HDTV equipped with an aftermarket adapter, like the $99 Netgear Push2TV. The ultrabook's own audio is easily able to fill a room, with hearty, not-too-tinny sound through its above-the-keyboard speakers?which are worth turning up, because the Folio 13's cooling fan makes a faintly audible whir at most times.

Like all 13.3-inch ultrabooks, the Folio 13 lacks an optical drive; the 128GB Samsung solid-state drive is divided into a 97GB C: and 18GB D: or system recovery partition. Preloaded software, despite the Windows 7 Professional OS, skews toward the consumer side with links to movie and music sites and the WildTangent games that are the very definition of bloatware, though you'll also find Evernote, a 60-day trial of Norton Internet Security, and Microsoft Office Starter 2010. HP backs the Folio 13 with a one-year parts-and-labor warranty.

Performance
HP Folio 13 The Folio 13 is built around Intel's dual-core, four-thread Core i5-2467M "Sandy Bridge" processor, the same chip found in the Acer S3, with 4GB of DDR3 memory. Thanks in part to its pure SSD instead of hybrid storage solution, the Folio 13 soundly beat the Acer S3 in the PCMark 7 all-around performance benchmark test, scoring 3,146 to 1,899, although it in turn trailed the Asus Zenbook UX31's score of 3,531. The Folio managed cold start and resume-from-sleep times of 26 seconds and 3 seconds, respectively, in stopwatch tests.

HP Folio 13

The ultrabook posted competitive, if not head-of-the-class, numbers in our Handbrake video encoding (2 minutes 30 seconds) and Photoshop CS5 image manipulation (5 minutes 27 seconds) tests?easily besting the Core i3-powered Toshiba Z835-P330 (3:29 and 8:17, respectively), if a step behind the Core i5-based Asus UX31 and 13-inch Apple MacBook Air. The only area where it raised the white flag was in gaming graphics, posting an unplayable 14.3 frames per second in Lost Planet 2 and an unbearable 6.6 fps in Crysis. The MacBook Air and Core i7-powered Toshiba Portege Z830-S8302 led the field here with 21.2 and 19.7 fps, respectively, but even the Core i3 Toshiba Z835-P330 did better than the Folio 13 with 16.2 and 14.8 fps, respectively, on the gaming tests.

HP touts the Folio 13 as having a better than nine-hour battery life (and indeed, its 59Wh battery is the main reason for its slightly-excessive-compared-to-comrades weight), so we were mildly disappointed to record a runtime of only six hours and six minutes in our MobileMark 2007 test. Even as is, that's better than the MacBook Air's 5:46 or Acer S3's 5:20, but doesn't threaten the Toshiba Z835-P330's ultrabook battery record of 7:35.

But if the HP Folio 13 isn't the longest-lasting ultrabook on the market, well, it isn't the thinnest or lightest or fastest, either. What it is, is one of the most immaculate designs we've seen, with clever attention to small details as well as thoughtful attention paid to big issues like connectivity and typing comfort. With either a slightly brighter screen or a couple of better benchmark numbers, the Folio 13 would have bumped our Editors' Choice Asus Zenbook UX31 from its top spot; as is, it's a must-have on ultrabook shoppers' short lists.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE:
Compare the HP Folio 13 with several other laptops side by side.

More laptop reviews:
??? HP Folio 13
??? Acer Aspire TimelineX 5830TG-6614
??? Toshiba Portege Z830-S8302
??? HP Pavilion dm1-3010nr (Verizon)
??? Dell Latitude E6420 XFR
?? more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/XnjGY1iJpkE/0,2817,2399370,00.asp

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Mortgage rates for the past 52 weeks, at a glance (AP)

Mortgage rates for the past 52 weeks, at a glance - Yahoo! News Skip to navigation ? Skip to content ? AP By The Associated Press The Associated Press ? Thu?Jan?26, 5:17?pm?ET
The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage rose to 3.98 percent, Freddie Mac said Thursday. It was the first increase in four weeks and up from last week's record low of 3.88 percent.
Here's a look at rates for fixed- and adjustable-rate mortgages over the past 52 weeks:
Current week's average Last week's average 52-week high 52-week low
30-year fixed 3.98 3.88 5.05 3.88
15-year fixed 3.24 3.17 4.29 3.16
5-year adjustable 2.85 2.82 3.92 2.82
1-year adjustable 2.74 2.74 3.40 2.74
All values are in percentage points.
Source: Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey.
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  • Copyright ? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

    Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personalfinance/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120126/ap_on_bi_ge/us_mortgage_rates_glance

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    Friday, January 27, 2012

    Dwight Schrute Spin-Off From 'The Office' In Works

    NBC considers launching spin-off focused on Rainn Wilson's character.
    By Gil Kaufman


    Rainn Wilson as Dwight in "The Office"
    Photo: NBC

    Up until now, we've gotten just an occasional glimpse at the bizarre happenings at the Schrute family beet farm. But if NBC has its way, we may be seeing a lot more of agritourism hotel owner and Assistant to the Regional Manager at Dunder Mifflin, Dwight Schrute.

    According to The Hollywood Reporter, an unnamed source at NBC confirmed that the network is thinking about a spin-off centered on Rainn Wilson's paintball-loving character and his family's farm. The show would delve deeper into life at Schrute Farms and include a number of other Schrutes.

    With "The Office" not yet picked up for a ninth season, the plan is to start testing the concept in an episode later this season. So far, it's believed that Wilson, as well as actor/showrunner Paul Lieberstein and executive producer Ben Silverman are involved.

    "Paul and Rainn have been joking for years about Dwight's life on the farm, his family and how ill-suited he is to run a B&B," a source told Deadline Hollywood. "A while ago, it started to feel like a show to them. NBC agreed, it's been further developed to include multiple generations, many cousins and neighbors. At its base it will be about a family farm struggling to survive and a family trying to stay together."

    As the Reporter noted, while Wilson's quirky character has a devoted cult following -- as evidenced by such comprehensive fan sites as Schrute Space -- the spin-off concept is not necessarily a slam-dunk. Just as the short-lived, unfunny "Friends" spin-off "Joey" crashed and burned, it's possible that the shrinking "Office" fanbase might not follow Dwight off into the beet fields.

    "The Office" got a major overhaul at the end of last season, when star Steve Carell left and actor James Spader was brought in as new boss Robert California. So far, the strong ensemble cast has struggled to find its legs without Carell's outrageously clueless Michael Scott to ground them and average ratings have slipped down by more than a million viewers since last season. Given the show's legacy and appeal to young male viewers, though, the trade magazine said it was likely "The Office" would be picked up for another season.

    Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1677930/the-office-spin-off-dwight.jhtml

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    Thursday, January 26, 2012

    Restored wetlands rarely equal condition of original wetlands

    Wednesday, January 25, 2012

    Wetland restoration is a billion-dollar-a-year industry in the United States that aims to create ecosystems similar to those that disappeared over the past century. But a new analysis of restoration projects shows that restored wetlands seldom reach the quality of a natural wetland.

    "Once you degrade a wetland, it doesn't recover its normal assemblage of plants or its rich stores of organic soil carbon, which both affect natural cycles of water and nutrients, for many years," said David Moreno-Mateos, a University of California, Berkeley, postdoctoral fellow. "Even after 100 years, the restored wetland is still different from what was there before, and it may never recover."

    Moreno-Mateos's analysis calls into question a common mitigation strategy exploited by land developers: create a new wetland to replace a wetland that will be destroyed and the land put to other uses. At a time of accelerated climate change caused by increased carbon entering the atmosphere, carbon storage in wetlands is increasingly important, he said.

    "Wetlands accumulate a lot of carbon, so when you dry up a wetland for agricultural use or to build houses, you are just pouring this carbon into the atmosphere," he said. "If we keep degrading or destroying wetlands, for example through the use of mitigation banks, it is going to take centuries to recover the carbon we are losing."

    The study showed that wetlands tend to recover most slowly if they are in cold regions, if they are small ? less than 100 contiguous hectares, or 250 acres, in area ? or if they are disconnected from the ebb and flood of tides or river flows.

    "These context dependencies aren't necessarily surprising, but this paper quantifies them in ways that could guide decisions about restoration, or about whether to damage wetlands in the first place," said coauthor Mary Power, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology.

    Moreno-Mateos, Power and their colleagues will publish their analysis in the Jan. 24 issue of PLoS (Public Library of Science) Biology.

    Wetlands provide many societal benefits, Moreno-Mateos noted, such as biodiversity conservation, fish production, water purification, erosion control and carbon storage.

    He found, however, that restored wetlands contained about 23 percent less carbon than untouched wetlands, while the variety of native plants was 26 percent lower, on average, after 50 to 100 years of restoration. While restored wetlands may look superficially similar ? and the animal and insect populations may be similar, too ? the plants take much longer to return to normal and establish the carbon resources in the soil that make for a healthy ecosystem.

    Moreno-Mateos noted that numerous studies have shown that specific wetlands recover slowly, but his meta-analysis "might be a proof that this is happening in most wetlands."

    "To prevent this, preserve the wetland, don't degrade the wetland," he said.

    Moreno-Mateos, who obtained his Ph.D. while studying wetland restoration in Spain, conducted a meta-analysis of 124 wetland studies monitoring work at 621 wetlands around the world and comparing them with natural wetlands. Nearly 80 percent were in the United States and some were restored more than 100 years ago, reflecting of a long-standing American interest in restoration and a common belief that it's possible to essentially recreate destroyed wetlands. Half of all wetlands in North America, Europe, China and Australia were lost during the 20th century, he said. S

    Though Moreno-Mateos found that, on average, restored wetlands are 25 percent less productive than natural wetlands, there was much variation. For example, wetlands in boreal and cold temperate forests tend to recover more slowly than do warm wetlands. One review of wetland restoration projects in New York state, for example, found that "after 55 years, barely 50 percent of the organic matter had accumulated on average in all these wetlands" compared to what was there before, he said.

    "Current thinking holds that many ecosystems just reach an alternative state that is different, and you never will recover the original," he said.

    In future studies, he will explore whether the slower carbon accumulation is due to a slow recovery of the native plant community or invasion by non-native plants.

    ###

    University of California - Berkeley: http://www.berkeley.edu

    Thanks to University of California - Berkeley for this article.

    This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

    This press release has been viewed 36 time(s).

    Source: http://www.labspaces.net/117041/Restored_wetlands_rarely_equal_condition_of_original_wetlands

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    Obama pitches tax, jobs ideas on campaign-style tour (Reuters)

    CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (Reuters) ? President Barack Obama began a campaign-style swing through political battleground states on Wednesday, pitching his State of the Union initiatives on taxes and jobs as he made his case for a second term.

    Fresh from his election-year speech to Congress, Obama amplified his proposals for rewarding companies that keep jobs at home and eliminating tax breaks for those that outsource overseas. He also pressed his argument for higher taxes on the rich.

    Obama used his last State of the Union speech before the November election to cast himself as a champion of the middle class, but with polls showing most Americans unhappy with his economic leadership he faces a tough re-election challenge.

    Embarking on a three-day, five-state tour starting in Iowa, Obama defended his record and sought to turn up the heat on Republicans in Congress he has accused of obstructing his economic recovery efforts.

    "There are people in Washington who seem to have collective amnesia. They seem to have forgotten how we got into this mess," Obama told workers at a conveyor belt factory in Iowa. "They want to go back to the very same policies ... that have stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for years."

    Republicans have accused Obama of promoting the "politics of envy" and pursuing policies that kill jobs and hinder growth.

    While the biggest proposals in Obama's speech are considered unlikely to gain traction in a deeply divided Congress, the White House believes he can tap into voters' resentment over Wall Street excesses and Washington's dysfunction.

    He used his Iowa visit primarily to build on his State of the Union assault on tax breaks he says reward U.S. firms for shipping jobs overseas. He has also called for a minimum international tax on the overseas profits of American firms.

    As he spoke, the White House rolled out more details, including new tax breaks for U.S. manufacturers and closing loopholes for companies' income overseas.

    "We've got to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas," Obama said.

    He planned to keep the focus on jobs at a stop in Arizona on Wednesday. A Nevada visit is likely to highlight proposed remedies for the housing crisis. He will also go to Colorado and Michigan. All are states crucial to his re-election chances.

    ON THE BIG STAGE

    In his Tuesday night address that afforded him one of his biggest political stages of the year, Obama set as a central campaign theme a populist call for greater economic fairness.

    He mentioned taxes 34 times and jobs 32 times during his hourlong speech, emphasizing the two issues at the heart of this year's presidential campaign.

    But Obama seemed to put no blame on himself for a fragile economic recovery and high unemployment that could trip up his re-election bid.

    A highlight of Obama's speech was his call to set a 30 percent minimum tax on millionaires, known as the "Buffet rule" because it is favored by billionaire Warren Buffett.

    Obama's message could resonate in the 2012 campaign following the release of tax records by Mitt Romney, a potential Republican rival and one of the wealthiest men ever to run for the White House. He pays a lower effective tax rate than many top wage-earners.

    Democrats have hammered Republicans in Congress for supporting tax breaks that favor the wealthy. Republicans staunchly oppose tax hikes, even on the richest Americans, arguing they would hurt the economic recovery.

    "No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others," Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels said in the Republican response to Obama.

    In a critique of Obama's speech, Romney, campaigning in Florida for Tuesday's party primary, accused the Democratic president of being "detached from reality" in his appeals to voters who have suffered economic hardship under his tenure.

    Obama's challenge is clear. The U.S. unemployment rate was 8.5 percent in December. No president in the modern era has won re-election with the rate that high.

    As a result, Obama cast a wide net in his State of the Union speech.

    Taking aim at China - an election-year target of Republicans and Democrats alike over its currency and trade practices - Obama proposed creation of a new trade enforcement unit.

    Obama said he would ask his attorney general to establish a special financial crimes unit to prosecute those parties charged with breaking the law, and whose fraud contributed to the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

    He also said he would send to Congress a proposal to allow more Americans to take out new and cheaper mortgages as long as they are current on their payments, savings that would amount to $3,000 per household each year. The depressed housing market continues to drag on the economy.

    (Additional reporting by Alister Bull and Steve Holland, writing by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

    Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personalfinance/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120125/pl_nm/us_usa_obama_speech

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    Wednesday, January 25, 2012

    New Jersey legislature revives same-sex marriage push (Reuters)

    NEW YORK (Reuters) ? New Jersey's Democrat-controlled state legislature revived its push to legalize same-sex marriage on Tuesday, putting Governor Chris Christie under pressure as speculation mounts that he could be a Republican vice presidential contender.

    Christie, who decided against entering the 2012 presidential race despite a high-profile courtship from top Republican donors, has said he opposes marriage for same-sex couples but supports civil unions, which New Jersey has allowed since 2007.

    A similar bid to approve marriage for same-sex couples was defeated by the New Jersey State Senate two years ago, just weeks before Christie took office. Christie has repeatedly said he would veto any such legislation on gay marriage.

    Supporters of gay marriage in the state, who would need a two-thirds majority to override a governor's veto, face a considerable hurdle, and did not appear to have the votes in hand despite strong support from Senate President Steve Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver.

    On Tuesday, hearings were being held before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Meanwhile, at a town hall appearance, Christie said his position had not changed and that the issue should be put to voters in a referendum, local media reported.

    "I think this is not an issue that should rest solely in my hands, or the hands of the Senate President or the Speaker or the other 118 members of the legislature," Christie said, according to reports. "Let's let the people of New Jersey decide what is right for the state."

    Polls show growing popular support for gay marriage in New Jersey, including a Quinnipiac University poll last week that found voters support gay marriage by a margin of 52 to 42 percent. The effort comes at the heels of New York approving a gay marriage bill this summer.

    Steven Goldstein, head of Garden State Equality, said he hoped that could translate into legislative success for gay marriage.

    "Over-ride is a long shot that seems to be less of a long shot every day," he said.

    COURT BACKED CIVIL UNIONS

    New Jersey's Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that same-sex couples have equal rights under the law and backed civil unions. But the court stopped short of endorsing gay marriage, saying that issue should be decided by the legislature.

    Gay-marriage supporters say that civil unions are inadequate because many employers do not recognize them.

    More than 40 states ban or refuse to recognize gay marriage, but six states, as well as the District of Columbia, allow it. In addition to New York, gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Iowa.

    A bill to legalize same-sex marriage has been introduced in Washington state, and gay rights activists in Maine say they plan to bring the issue to voters in a referendum.

    The National Organization for Marriage, a national group advocating that marriage be defined as a union between a man and a woman, has pledged to spend $500,000 supporting legislators who vote against the measure as part of an "all-out effort" to defeat the bill in New Jersey.

    Nationally there is still strong opposition to gay marriage, especially among Republicans. Presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has seen his past comments on gay rights come back to haunt him on the campaign trail.

    Christie, mentioned as a possible vice presidential running mate for Romney, has been actively campaigning for the former Massachusetts governor.

    On Monday, Christie won praise from gay rights leaders, including Goldstein, for nominating Bruce Harris, an openly gay man, to the state Supreme Court. Christie said his feelings about gay marriage had not changed, but some questioned the timing of his appointment.

    "The judicial appointment itself is a way to inoculate himself on the gay marriage bill," said David Redlawsk, director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.

    He said New Jersey voters were unlikely to punish Christie if he does in fact veto the bill. While a majority of New Jersey voters support gay marriage.

    "For the vast majority of people, it's not high on their agenda," Redlawsk said.

    (Reporting By Edith Honan)

    Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120124/us_nm/us_newjersey_gaymarriage

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    Paramount Movies lets you stream UltraViolet films from the cloud, for a price

    Paramount became the first studio to offer UltraViolet-based movies this week, with the launch of Paramount Movies. With this new service, users can purchase a film in either digital or physical form, and automatically store a copy of it within Paramount's cloud-based digital locker. You won't be able to download a UV film for offline viewing directly from the cloud, though you will be able to stream it to any iOS device (support for Android and Windows Phone remains unavailable, as does compatibility with most set-top boxes). It's all part of DECE's "buy once, play anywhere" ethos, though it should be noted that the studio's UV offerings are somewhat limited. At the moment, Paramount Movies boasts about 60 titles, all of which are available at comparatively steep prices: $20 for HD quality movies, and $13 for SD versions. Check it out for yourself at the source link below.

    Paramount Movies lets you stream UltraViolet films from the cloud, for a price originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Jan 2012 07:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

    Permalink SlashGear  |  sourceParamount Movies  | Email this | Comments


    Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/Xf6OTMH7j-Y/

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    Tuesday, January 24, 2012

    AT&T and T-Mobile file request for FCC approval of spectrum transfer

    It looks like AT&T is ready to uphold its end of the bargain. As promised, the GSM giant is poised to hand over spectrum to T-Mobile valued at $1 billion as a result of the proposed merger failing, and once again the FCC is the gatekeeper that holds the keys to the success of the transfer. According to the Wall Street Journal, the companies need permission from the Commission in order to make the handover work out according to plan, though we haven't seen a specific deadline set for the transition. We don't imagine the government will have quite the same concern with this particular transfer as it did with the entire merger itself, but we wonder if AT&T is secretly hoping -- for once -- that the FCC will say no.

    AT&T and T-Mobile file request for FCC approval of spectrum transfer originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

    Permalink   |  sourceWall Street Journal  | Email this | Comments


    Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/VSU_UpqAaj8/

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    99% A Separation

    Asghar Farhadi's "A Separation" (made in Iran) is a deceptively simple film. On the surface, it seems quite mundane. But gradually, its deeper themes emerge beautifully. It is not just about the specific legal disputes that make up the plot. It's a deep expression of sorrow about the divisions in present-day Persian society. It's complex enough that one could analyze it in different ways ad infinitum. (How often are you able to say that about a film nowadays?!) The divisions that hit me most powerfully are: - Class stratification. The gap between the well-educated professional class and the poorly educated working class is depicted in a brutal, heart-wrenching way. - Religious stratification. The gap between the religious population (Muslim, of course) and the secular population is shown to have some correspondence to class stratification, with the poor and less educated tending to be more religious, but not always. - Family divisions. This is explored several ways. A well-educated family is torn apart over whether to leave Iran. The mother wants to leave; the father does not. Their teenage daughter is caught in the middle, forced to make an agonizing choice: which parent does she want to stay with? Before this, I had always thought that families were united in the desire to migrate. This film clued me into the devastating struggles families go through trying to reach consensus around the momentous decision to uproot the family and possibly never again see family members left behind. A chief reason the man does not want to leave is that he cannot leave his father alone. The divisions inside a poor family are also explored. Here it surrounds whether a married woman should work outside the home. This struggle has religious overtones as well. "A Separation" is uncommonly rich. Its weakness is that it does become tedious at times. There are endless scenes in make-shift courtrooms, where witnesses bicker with each other. The camera work is extremely pedestrian. Farhadi seems to be of the mind that the director's hand should be invisible. He should just set up the camera, point it toward the actors, and turn it on. This approach to filmmaking is risky. Sometimes a flat style is paradoxically exhilarating. But more often it leads to a dull cinematic experience for the audience. Unfortunately, this happened too often during the film, at least for me. But still, there's no denying the depth and uniqueness of "A Separation." I'm delighted that it has become an art-house sensation in America. I also look forward to following Asghar Farhadi's career with more care. (This is the fifth film he has directed but the first I've seen or even heard of.)

    January 6, 2012

    Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/a_separation_2011/

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    Monday, January 23, 2012

    GOP Candidates Debate Veteran Aid (ContributorNetwork)

    American veterans have the daunting task of overcoming the physical and psychological traumas of war and integrating into a society with an ailing economy and unwelcoming job market. In fact, according to CNN's John King, a startling 22 percent of post-9/11 veterans aged 18 to 24 are currently unemployed.

    The candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination were asked during the South Carolina GOP debate what they would do to facilitate veterans' transition back home.

    Here is what they said, according to a debate transcript provided by the Chicago Sun-Times:

    * Ron Paul: "We can create a healthy economic environment if we did the right things. But where the veterans really deserve help, both as a physician and as a congressman, is the people who've come back and aren't doing well health-wise. They need a lot more help. We have an epidemic now of suicide of our military coming back. So they need a lot of medical help, and I think they come up shortchanged. They came up shortchanged after Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War and even now. They don't get care from the Veterans Administration."

    * Rick Santorum: "I grew up on VA grounds ? and I saw the impact of the Vietnam War on those veterans who came back. And they came back very damaged, not just with physical wounds but a lot of psychological wounds. And that's a very big part of the high unemployment rate that we're dealing with. And we need to be much, much more aggressive. We have a president of the United States who said he is going to cut veterans' benefits, cut our military, at a time when these folks are four, five, six, seven tours, coming back, in and out of jobs, sacrificing everything for this country, and the president of the United States can't cut one penny out of the social welfare system and he wants to cut a trillion dollars out of our military and hit our veterans. That's disgusting."

    * Mitt Romney: "In our state we found a way to help our veterans by saying, look, if you're going to come back, particularly if you're in the National Guard, we'll pay for your education, college degree, both the fees and tuition -- we'd give you a full ride. And we also had a plan that said, if you come back and you've been out of work for a year or more, we're going to put a bonus on your back, which, if anyone hires you, that bonus goes to them to pay for your training. So we can encourage that to occur. But let's do it at the state level. Let's not have the federal government continue to extend its tentacles into everything that goes on in this country."

    * Newt Gingrich: "The U.S. government did two dramatic things after World War II. They created a GI Bill which enabled literally millions of returning veterans to go to college for the very first time. ? So there was an enormous expansion of opportunity that enabled them to integrate into a new, emerging society. The second thing they did is, they dramatically cut taxes, and the economy took off and grew dramatically, and it absorbed the workforce."

    Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120121/pl_ac/10864389_gop_candidates_debate_veteran_aid

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    New Telescope to Take First-Ever Black Hole Photo (SPACE.com)

    A group of astronomers are meeting this week to plan out an ambitious and unprecedented project ? capturing the first-ever image of a black hole.

    The researchers want to create an Earth-size virtual instrument called the Event Horizon Telescope, a worldwide network of radio telescopes powerful enough to snap a picture of the supermassive black hole at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy.

    "Nobody has ever taken a picture of a black hole," Dimitrios Psaltis, of the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, said in a statement. Psaltis is a co-organizer of the conference, which began today (Jan. 18) in Tucson, Ariz. "We are going to do just that."

    An elusive target

    Black holes are exotic structures whose gravitational fields are so powerful that they trap everything, even light. They were first postulated by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity.

    Astronomers have detected plenty of black holes in our galaxy and beyond via indirect means. It's thought that most, if not all, galaxies harbor a supermassive black hole at their cores. [Gallery: Black Holes of the Universe]

    However, scientists have yet to image a black hole. Researchers working on the Event Horizon Telescope ? named after a black hole's "point of no return," beyond which nothing can escape ? hope to change that.

    "Even five years ago, such a proposal would not have seemed credible," said Sheperd Doeleman of MIT, the project's principal investigator. "Now we have the technological means to take a stab at it."

    Doeleman and his team want to create a network of up to 50 radio telescopes around the world, which will work in concert to get the job done.

    "In essence, we are making a virtual telescope with a mirror that is as big as the Earth," Doeleman said. "Each radio telescope we use can be thought of as a small silvered portion of a large mirror. With enough such silvered spots, one can start to make an image."

    Imaging a black hole's 'shadow'

    The team plans to point the Event Horizon Telescope at the supermassive black hole at the Milky Way's center, which is about 26,000 light-years away and is thought to hold as much mass as 4 million suns.

    That's pretty big, but picking the object out at such a great distance is equivalent to spotting a grapefruit on the surface of the moon, researchers said.

    "To see something that small and that far away, you need a very big telescope, and the biggest telescope you can make on Earth is to turn the whole planet into a telescope," said Dan Marrone of the Steward Observatory.

    Researchers hope to get a picture of the black hole's outline, or "shadow."

    "As dust and gas swirls around the black hole before it is drawn inside, a kind of cosmic traffic jam ensues," Doeleman said. "Swirling around the black hole like water circling the drain in a bathtub, the matter compresses and the resulting friction turns it into plasma heated to a billion degrees or more, causing it to 'glow' ? and radiate energy that we can detect here on Earth."

    General relativity predicts that the black hole?s shadow should be a perfect circle. So the Event Horizon Telescope's observations could provide a test of Einstein's venerable theory, researchers said.

    "If we find the black hole?s shadow to be oblate instead of circular, it means Einstein?s theory of general relativity must be flawed," Psaltis said. "But even if we find no deviation from general relativity, all these processes will help us understand the fundamental aspects of the theory much better."

    The team hopes to keep adding more instruments to the telescope over time, providing a sharper image of our galaxy's central black hole as the months and years go by.

    Each telescope in the network will record its observations onto hard drives, which will be physically shipped to a central processing center at MIT?s Haystack Observatory, researchers said.

    Radio rather than optical telescopes are the right tool for the job, they added, since radio waves can penetrate the murk of stars, dust and gas between Earth and the galactic center.

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

    Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/space/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/space/20120120/sc_space/newtelescopetotakefirsteverblackholephoto

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    Sunday, January 22, 2012

    Michael Giltz: Theater: "Bob" A Clear-Eyed, Clever Look At Director Robert Wilson

    BOB *** 1/2 out of ****
    SITI COMPANY AT NEW YORK LIVE ARTS

    What a puckish, bold enterprise. Not only is Bob a show about one of the most acclaimed theater and opera directors working today -- Robert Wilson -- it profiles him by using elements of his distinctive, ground-breaking style. It was conceived and directed by Anne Bogart, created and performed by Will Bond (who has worked with Wison) and has text adapted by Jocelyn Clarke from interviews Wilson has given over the years. With the landmark work Einstein On The Beach touring the world and set to arrive at BAM in the fall, it's an ideal time to revisit this look at Wilson.

    The director's own words tell us about his childhood, his insights on art, his working methods and stories from his career, all of it presented in a style reminiscent of Wilson's own. But here's the important distinction: Bob is not imitative. Ultimately it is nothing like what Wilson might do with the same material. It's rich in anecdote, quietly moving, funny and features a strong narrative as we learn his story.

    Wilson began as a little boy growing up in Waco, Texas, with parents utterly bewildered by their son's artistic leanings. Wilson describes an early piece he staged in his garage, with apparently the garage door closing and then opening to reveal a new tableaux, such as one featuring his grandmother and sister moving around the room ritually. Neighbors dragged their kids away and Wilson's dad found it not only weird but genuinely upsetting. Flash forward to years later when Wilson calls his dad to describe his latest work: several thousand people show up every night to see a piece that contains no dialogue and it's seven hours long. "I want you to come see it," says Wilson while we laugh.

    Just as absorbing as Wilson's life story are the comments he makes about art in general and the way the show illustrates how he'll come up with a movement and then refine and repeat it over and over. It's all performed on a stage with Bond traversing a bare space defined by one giant square divided into nine smaller squares. In one corner Bond begins the show sitting in a chair, staring at the quart of milk sitting on a table in the square at the opposite corner.

    Throughout the show Bond approaches and surveys and plays with the quart of milk and the glass originally hidden behind it. Clearly not lactose intolerant, Bond has devilish fun toying with these simple elements in a formalized dance that embodies some of Wilson's approach to art. Artfully done on every level, anecdote intersects with insight; at some stages Bond as Wilson hesitates and stumbles over his words, at others he wonderfully demonstrates ideas like how the text can be divorced from movement and strengthen the impact of both and the importance of slowing things down.

    Wilson was profoundly influenced by a study that filmed new mothers in the act of reaching towards their baby when the child was crying. At regular speed, you see a mother moving to comfort her child. Slow it down frame by frame and the facial expressions and actions take on an entirely different light. Mothers seem to lunge for their child in an act of anger and frustration. It's a funny, fascinating tale, especially for those who know how ritualized and...measured Wilson's direction can be. We hear the story and later we see Bond act it out, frame by frame and again and again we circle this story, revealing it for the turning point it became in his growth as an artist.

    Like that film, Bob slows down the wildly prolific artist and let's us examine him step by step, frame by frame, revealing the heart and intellect embedded in Wilson's avant-garde style. All of this is presented in an impeccable production by Bogart whose every element works in concert. The set by Neil Patel, the costume by James Schuette, the lighting by Brian H. Scott (with original lighting design by Mimi Jordan Sherin), and especially the soundscape by Darron L. West (which combines everything from scraps of songs by Harry Nilsson to muttering voices and orchestral passages to capure the quicksilver imagination of Wilson) each work together beautifully. They pay the ultimate compliment to Wilson by not merely copying his art but using it as a springboard for their own imaginations.


    The Theater Season 2011-2012 (on a four star scale)

    The Agony And The Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs ** 1/2
    All-American **
    All's Well That Ends Well/Shakespeare in the Park **
    The Atmosphere Of Memory 1/2 *
    Bob *** 1/2
    Bonnie & Clyde feature profile of Jeremy Jordan
    Broadway By The Year: 1997 ** 1/2
    The Cherry Orchard with Dianne Wiest **
    Chinglish * 1/2
    Close Up Space *
    Crane Story **
    Cymbeline at Barrow Street Theatre ***
    Dedalus Lounge * 1/2
    An Evening With Patti Lupone and Mandy Patinkin ***
    Follies *** 1/2
    Fragments ***
    The Gershwins' Porgy And Bess *** 1/2
    Godspell ** 1/2
    Goodbar * 1/2
    Hair ***
    Hand To God ***
    Hero: The Musical * 1/2
    How The World Began * 1/2
    Hugh Jackman: Back On Broadway ***
    Irving Berlin's White Christmas ***
    It's Always Right Now, Until It's Later *** 1/2
    King Lear at Public with Sam Waterston **
    Krapp's Last Tape with John Hurt ***
    Lake Water **
    Leo ***
    Love's Labor's Lost at the PublicLab ** 1/2
    Lysistrata Jones *
    Man And Boy * 1/2
    The Man Who Came To Dinner **
    Maple And Vine **
    Master Class w Tyne Daly ** 1/2
    Measure For Measure/Shakespeare in the Park ***
    Milk Like Sugar ***
    Mission Drift * 1/2
    Misterman ** 1/2
    The Mountaintop ** 1/2
    Newsies **
    Pigpen's The Nightmare Story *** 1/2
    Once *** 1/2
    Olive and The Bitter Herbs ** 1/2
    On A Clear Day You Can See Forever * 1/2
    One Arm ***
    Other Desert Cities on Broadway ** 1/2
    Private Lives **
    Queen Of The Mist ** 1/2
    Radio City Christmas Spectacular ** 1/2
    Relatively Speaking * 1/2
    The Road To Mecca ** 1/2
    Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History Of The Robot War ** 1/2
    The Select (The Sun Also Rises) ** 1/2
    Seminar **
    Septimus & Clarissa *** 1/2
    Shlemiel The First ** 1/2
    Silence! The Musical * 1/2
    69 Degrees South * 1/2
    Sons Of The Prophet *** 1/2
    Sontag: Reborn *
    Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark * 1/2
    Standing On Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays **
    Stick Fly **
    The Submission **
    Super Night Shot ** 1/2
    Sweet and Sad **
    The Table ** 1/2
    Titus Andronicus at Public with Jay O. Sanders * 1/2
    Unnatural Acts ***
    Venus In Fur ***
    We Live Here **
    Wild Animals You Should Know ** 1/2
    Zarkana **

    NEW YORK MUSICAL THEATRE FESTIVAL 2011

    Blanche: The Bittersweet Life Of A Wild Prairie Dame *** 1/2
    Central Avenue Breakdown ** 1/2
    Crazy, Just Like Me ***
    Cyclops: A Rock Opera *
    Ennio: The Living Paper Cartoon ** 1/2
    F---ing Hipsters **
    Ghostlight **
    Gotta Getta Girl ** 1/2 for staged reading
    Greenwood *
    Jack Perry Is Alive (And Dating) * 1/2
    Kiki Baby ** 1/2
    Kissless * 1/2
    Madame X **
    The Pigeon Boys ***
    Time Between Us * 1/2
    Tut **

    FRINGEFEST NYC 2011

    Araby *
    The Bardy Bunch **
    Books On Tape ** 1/2
    Civilian **
    Hard Travelin' With Woody ***
    Leonard Cohen Koans *** 1/2
    The More Loving One **
    The Mountain Song *** 1/2
    Paper Cuts ***
    Parker & Dizzy's Fabulous Journey To The End Of The Rainbow ** 1/2
    Pearl's Gone Blue ***
    Rachel Calof ** 1/2
    Romeo & Juliet: Choose Your Own Ending **
    2 Burn * 1/2
    Walls and Bridges **
    What The Sparrow Said ** 1/2
    Yeast Nation ***

    Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day and features top journalists and opinion makers as guests. It's available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website and his daily blog. Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes. Link to him on Netflix and gain access to thousands of ratings and reviews.

    Note: Michael Giltz is provided with free tickets to shows with the understanding that he will be writing a review.

    ?

    Follow Michael Giltz on Twitter: www.twitter.com/michaelgiltz

    Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-giltz/theater-bob-a-clear-eyed_b_1222340.html

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    Vanilla Ice Comeback: Rob Van Winkle Talks Reality Show, New Movie And Album

    Is Vanilla Ice making a comeback? He just might be. The rapper, whose real name is Rob Van Winkle, stopped by "Good Day New York" on Friday, and it turns out he's actually quite busy. Ice talked about the return of his reality show "The Vanilla Ice Project" for its second season, as well as film and music project he has in the works.

    While his hip-hop career was going through an extended fallow period, Vanilla Ice built himself a successful real estate career, which is the focus of his DIY reality show "The Vanilla Ice Project." Ice talked about how the show, that features him investing in low-value properties, fixing them up and selling them. The genesis of the project happened when DIY executives asked him one thing they didn't know about him, and he told them that, "I've been invested pretty good in real estate and had a good success at it. So I got a call back a few years later and now I have a show." Reflecting on the current market, Ice emphasized that there's still opportunity to be found. "Well, it's evolved, but it's better today than ever, investing-wise. You've got short-sales and foreclosures, which everybody knows, but there's tax liens and auctions that you can get in on, and you can crush it if you know the right area."

    He also has a part in an upcoming movie starring Adam Sandler, called "I Hate You Dad," which comes out on Father's Day. Ice revealed that he plays a character named Uncle Vanny, who's been Sander's character's best friend since high school. And to prove that he's evolved into a triple-threat, Ice has a new album coming out entitled "WTF," which he explained stands for "Wisdom, Tenacity and Focus." The man has always had a way with words.

    "The Vanilla Ice Project" returns for its second season on Saturday, January 21 at 10:00 p.m. EST on DIY.

    TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.

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    Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/20/vanilla-ice-project-reality-show-season-2_n_1219310.html

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    Saturday, January 21, 2012

    Mortgage rates for the past 52 weeks, at a glance (AP)

    Mortgage rates for the past 52 weeks, at a glance - Yahoo! News Skip to navigation ? Skip to content ? AP By The Associated Press The Associated Press ? Thu?Jan?19, 10:48?am?ET
    The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage fell to a record low of 3.88 percent, Freddie Mac said Thursday. That's just below the previous record of 3.89 percent reached one week ago. Here's a look at rates for fixed- and adjustable-rate mortgages over the past 52 weeks.
    Current week's average Last week's average 52-week high 52-week low
    30-year fixed 3.88 3.89 5.05 3.88
    15-year fixed 3.17 3.16 4.29 3.16
    5-year adjustable 2.82 2.82 3.92 2.82
    1-year adjustable 2.74 2.76 3.40 2.74
    All values are in percentage points.
    Source: Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey.
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  • Copyright ? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

    Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personalfinance/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120119/ap_on_bi_ge/us_mortgage_rates_glance

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    Tyler, Underwood team for Super Bowl 'Crossroads' (AP)

    NASHVILLE, Tenn. ? Steven Tyler and Carrie Underwood are teaming up for a special "CMT Crossroads" the night before the Super Bowl.

    "CMT Crossroads: Steven Tyler & Carrie Underwood Live From the Pepsi Super Bowl Fan Jam" will air Saturday, Feb. 4.

    The Aerosmith frontman and "American Idol" judge teamed with the country music sensation and former "Idol" champion last year during the Academy of Country Music Awards. Their performance of "Undo It" and "Walk This Way" was one of the night's highlights and a viral video on the Web the next day.

    They'll try to recreate that energy at a private event at the Pepsi Coliseum in Indianapolis.

    This is the second year "CMT Crossroads," which pairs artists from different genres, will broadcast from the Super Bowl Fan Jam.

    ___

    Online:

    http://www.cmt.com

    Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/celebrity/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120120/ap_en_tv/us_people_tyler_underwood

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    Friday, January 20, 2012

    Inter full of optimism after emotional derby win

    By ANDREW DAMPF

    AP Sports Writer

    Associated Press Sports

    updated 9:21 a.m. ET Jan. 19, 2012

    ROME (AP) -Inter Milan is full of optimism following an emotional derby win over AC Milan that is helping the club forget its dismal start to the season.

    With six consecutive victories, the Nerazzurri have climbed from 15 points behind to trail Serie A leader Juventus by six points approaching the season's midpoint.

    Inter remains at the San Siro this weekend to face fourth-place Lazio, the squad that is only one point above it in the table.

    "This is a squad that should be fighting for the title," Inter manager Claudio Ranieri said. "We've had an incredible run but we still haven't done anything. We've gotten back in the (Europa League) zone but we've got to get back in the Champions League places - because that's where Inter belongs. We're placing one brick at a time."

    Speculation that Inter might sign Carlos Tevez from Manchester City has waned recently, since word that the Argentina international is close to a deal with Paris Saint-Germain.

    "We've found a nice balance, and this kid who hasn't played for a long time, how much could he offer and how much could he take away?" Ranieri said.

    Inter began the season by failing to win its opening three matches, leading the club to replace Gian Piero Gasperini with Ranieri, although the real problem appeared to be Samuel Eto'o's sudden departure to Russian club Anzhi Makhachkala in August.

    Eto'o led Inter with 37 goals in all competitions last season.

    After a disappointing season and a half, Diego Milito finally appears to have rediscovered the goalscoring touch that helped lead Inter to an unprecedented treble in 2010.

    Milito's 54th-minute goal against Milan last weekend was his fourth in three games.

    Also, key playmaker Wesley Sneijder has returned after missing more than two months with a right leg muscle injury.

    "When I arrived everything was going wrong, but I've re-instilled in everyone the desire to battle and show that they're not finished," Ranieri said. "I've put everyone back into their natural positions and working with these guys is a real pleasure."

    While Inter was hosting Genoa on Thursday for a spot in the Italian Cup quarterfinals, it's real focus now is on Lazio, which exceeded expectations in the first half of the season but then was routed 4-0 by Siena in its first match after the holiday break.

    Lazio got back on track with a 2-0 win over Atalanta last weekend with an opening goal from Brazilian playmaker Hernanes and then Miroslav Klose's 10th league score of the season in stoppage time.

    "After the vacation it's not unexpected to have a blackout because you're not used to certain rhythms," said Lazio coach Edy Reja, the oldest manager in the league at 66. "Let's hope that letdown we had is over now. ... We're going to Milan to win."

    Juventus, which leads Milan by one point, visits Atalanta, while Milan plays at last-place Novara in a rematch of an Italian Cup game won 2-1 by the Rossoneri in extra time on Wednesday.

    "We lost but we're still five points in front of Inter," Milan striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic said. "There are still a lot of matches remaining, so that game wasn't decisive."

    Third-place Udinese, which is three points behind, hosts Catania.

    Also this weekend, it's: Cagliari vs. Fiorentina; Roma vs. Cesena; Bologna vs. Parma; Lecce vs. Chievo Verona; Palermo vs. Genoa; and Siena vs. Napoli.

    ? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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    Mourinho's 'woeful Barca loss

    Another loss to Barcelona has piled pressure on Jose Mourinho, with support for the Real Madrid coach ebbing after another ill-tempered and ineffective display against its biggest rival.

    Getty Images
    He's back

    David Beckham has re-signed with the Los Angeles Galaxy, agreeing to a new two-year contract with the Major League Soccer club.

    Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/44225939/ns/sports-soccer/

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