Liberty Newspost Mar-30-2012

Curated News Edition
- 30/03/12
http://www.LibertyNewspost.com
Twitter: No spamming but death threats are ok. @KillZimmerman is still online
RT (News RSS : Today)
every1 is going to die one day sum ppl deserve to die today Submitted at 3/30/2012 1:58:00 PM #killzimmerman. The hunt for Trayvon Martins Zimmerman, who was the selfkiller, George Zimmerman, has p r o c l a i m e d n e i g h b o r h o o d reached cyberspace. watchman shot and killed the 17This past Saturday a Twitter year-old Martin on February 26. a c c o u n t w i t h t h e h a n d l e Despite many requests to delete @KillZimmerman was created. the account, Twitter refused to do According to the users Twitter so. The only comment they page, this page is 4 da ppl who offered was " no comment." believe Zimmerman should be We dont comment on specific shot dead in the street the same users or the status of accounts for way Travyvon was, the bio privacy reasons, reads the reads. company's statement. The account has caught some " Privacy reasons" didn't stop attention gaining 440 followers. Twitter in the past from deleting Since the account began, 454 or suspending various accounts tweets have been sent. for relatively minor offenses like Although most of the tweets are spamming celebrates. in defense to people requesting RT's regular guest, blogger David the person behind the account Seaman had his Twitter account delete the profile, a message sent temporarily shut down. This after by @KillZimmerman has stated trying to draw the attention of [unable to retrieve full-text content]
popular micro-bloggers to issues like legalized indefinite detention and torture of Americans under NDAA and the Occupy Wall Street movement. But in the @KillZimmerman case the online giant refused to take down the account urging to kill a person without prosecution. Some groups and politicians have called for the arrest of Zimmerman including The New Black Panther Party. The black political organization called upon a militia of black volunteers to help capture Trayvons murderer. As RT reported, the Panthers have begun posting flyers calling for Zimmermans capture dead or alive and are offering a reward of $10,000 to the person who captures him. Reportedly the bounty increased to $1 million on
Wednesday. George Zimmerman was not a police officer he was a community volunteer, said Mikhail Muhammad, Southern Regional Director of the New Black Panther Party. Earlier this week a video showing Zimmerman in police custody surfaced. Many see the footage as proof that Zimmermans allegations of self-defense are false. In the recording a handcuffed Zimmerman appears to be injury free and many non-believers of the self-defense story claim if Trayvon punched him in the face and slam his head on the concrete his face would show it. According to Reuters, Zimmermans lawyers insist the footage is too grain to prove anything.
Some believe the video showing Zimmerman unimpaired will simply spark more demand for vigilante justice. Its time for us as black men to take justice in our own hands, said Muhammad just outside the neighborhood where Martin was gunned down. The senders tweets also echo The New Black Panthers message, No Justice No Peace!!!!!!!!!! This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
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Headline/
Young Syrian activists put life on hold in revolt

(USATODAY.com Feed)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:15:07 PM
decades of autocratic rule left them with limited freedom and constricted economies. For Khalid AP and other young Syrians, the Anti-Syrian regime activists uprising is about more than just cover their faces with scarves as toppling a dictator. It's a fight for they prepare an Arabic banner. their generation's dreams. TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AP) Last "I can't think about my own life year, Khalid was a 19-year-old now," said Khalid, now 20, after Syrian university student whose sneaking across the Syrian border modest dreams were to land a job into Lebanon. "All I can think and earn enough to marry his about is working to make the girlfriend not simple tasks revolution succeed because it will given Syria's weak economy and have a huge effect on the lives of his lack of connections to the all youth." ruling elite. The young have been key players Since then, he's become a in Syria's uprising since its start in fugitive activist in the fight to March 2011, when security forces topple President Bashar Assad. arrested a group of teenagers who Khalid said he has been tortured scrawled anti-regime graffiti on a by security forces and hasn't wall in the southern city of Daraa, spoken to his loved ones in generating huge protests. months for fear he'll endanger Assad's security forces violently their lives. cracked down, deploying tanks, Young people like Khalid have snipers and thugs to quash the manned the front lines in the spreading dissent. Later, many uprisings across the Arab world, civilians took up arms to defend organizing protests, documenting their communities and attack violence and taking up arms security forces. The U.N. says against government troops. more than 9,000 people have been Analysts say youth frustration killed, including at least 500 has proven to be a potent force in children. Hundreds more children an area where some 60 percent of have been injured, detained or people are under 25 making it abused. one of the world's youngest As the death toll mounts, young regions. activists acknowledge some Many youth activists say they naivete in their decision to had plenty to protest, facing challenge one of the region's most adulthood in societies where brutal police states. Their elders
often tried to dissuade them, recalling how Assad's father and predecessor, Hafez, killed between 10,000 and 25,000 people while crushing a 1982 rebellion in the city of Hama. "Many of them were scared. They saw what the regime can do and told us, 'We were there in 1982. You weren't.'" said Mustafa, 24, who fled the coastal city of Banias to Lebanon last year. Like Khalid, he asked only that his first name be used for fear of endangering relatives inside Syria. Still, many have decided that a chance at better lives was worth dropping their studies, jobs and marriage plans. Before the uprising, Khalid studied engineering at a university in the central city of Homs, even though he was interested in computers and wasn't sure he'd ever get a job. He dreamed of going to school abroad, but government scholarships went to students in the ruling Baath Party. He never thought about politics, but began paying close attention when uprisings toppled dictators in Tunisia and Egypt last year. In March, security forces stopped an anti-regime demonstration on campus, then forced students to attend a pro-Assad rally. In April, security forces killed protesters in his neighborhood, Baba Amr, then posted troops to
deter future gatherings. "That was the first time I got mad and decided I was against the regime," Khalid said. Anger grew in the neighborhood as the regime crushed more protests and raided homes to arrest activists, sometimes detaining their parents, he said. Khalid started a Facebook page to commemorate those killed while working with other activists to film protests to post online. In October, security forces stopped him at a checkpoint and found a photo on his cellphone of a government sniper, Khalid said. At the police station, he was beaten with a mop handle until his back was numb, then locked with six others in a cell so small that only three people could sit down at a time, he added. For 20 days, he was regularly beaten during interrogations and suspended by plastic strips around his wrists, he said. He finally escaped with the help of a sympathetic security officer. "After that, I knew I'd never shut up," he said. "I wanted to do the impossible to make the revolution succeed." But first, he broke up with his girlfriend, worrying that their relationship would endanger her. She cried when he told her. "I had to do it for her safety," he said. "I have set out on a martyr
mission. As soon as you say, 'I'm an activist,' you know you could die." At that time, Baba Amr was becoming a national symbol of the uprising. Army defectors has flocked to the area, making it harder for troops to come in, protests grew and the youth organized into media, medical and even trash pickup committees. That defiance drew the regime's wrath, and in early February troops surrounded Baba Amr and shelled it daily. Khalid and the media team kept working, filming and uploading videos and communicating with journalists and other activists via Skype. Despite the violence, there was youthful mischief. When an explosion near their makeshift media center silenced a rooster often heard in their videos, they commemorated him with his own Facebook page. On Feb. 22, government rockets hit the media center, killing a number of activists and foreign journalists Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik, who had sneaked into Syria. Government troops captured the area on March 1, after armed rebels and activists pulled out. Khalid says he's seen the bodies of some of his relatives in activist YOUNG page 5
Headline/
Lawyers: Court of public opinion no place for Trayvon case

(USATODAY.com Feed)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:42:03 PM
By Yamiche Alcindor and Natalie DiBlasio, USA TODAY Updated On one side there is a visceral reaction to the man who pulled the trigger in the Trayvon Martin killing: Thousands of people have used social media to label George Zimmerman guilty of racial profiling and murder. A "KillZimmerman" Twitter account began publishing calls for violence against him. By Robyn Beck, AFP/Getty Images Robert Zimmerman Jr., the brother of George Zimmerman, arrives for an interview on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight" in Hollywood on Thursday. By Robyn Beck, AFP/Getty Images Robert Zimmerman Jr., the brother of George Zimmerman, arrives for an interview on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight" in Hollywood on Thursday. On the other side, particularly in the past few days, there are impassioned pleas by Zimmerman's brother, father, lawyer and friends begging the public to consider the counterargument: The 28-year-old neighborhood watch captain
struggled for his life against an aggressive attacker. He fired the gun, they say, in a kill-or-bekilled moment. "Nobody just stood there with a bag of Skittles and an iced tea," Robert Zimmerman Jr. said on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight, alleging that Trayvon smashed his brother's head into the pavement in a rage. "You return force when somebody assaults you. There would have been George dead had he not acted decisively and instantaneously in that moment when he was being disarmed." Robert Zimmerman added, "That's called saving your life." Calls for vigilante justice and pleas for a fair shake in the court of public opinion have created one of the most stirring national crime debates in recent years. The killing Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla., has sparked more than a dozen rallies across the country, largely fueled by the belief of many that the case is the tip of the iceberg of a glaring problem of racial injustice in the USA. Family photo Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in February. Zimmerman's family says he is Hispanic; Trayvon is black. George Zimmerman: Neighborhood watch captain involved in shooting death of Trayvon Martin
$10,000 to anyone who makes a citizen's arrest of Zimmerman, and there have been a spate of death threats against him. Thursday, an elderly couple reached a settlement with Hollywood director Spike Lee over a tweet he circulated incorrectly identifying their "I have to think back to O.J. address as that of Zimmerman. Simpson to find a case that Elaine and David McClain said grabbed the nation in this way," they fearfully left their Sanford said Randy Reep, a criminal home after receiving hate mail defense attorney based in and unwanted guests. The Jacksonville. "It's alarming to me couple's attorney, Matt Morgan, that I've seen bounties for a a n n o u n c e d t h e s e t t l e m e n t suspect on a case before they've T h u r s d a y . been indicted. The rhetoric has "The matter is fully resolved," taken on such a violent tone. It Morgan said. "Spike has agreed to would not take much of a leap of compensate the McClains for their irrational behavior to have this loss and for the disruption into their lives. He's taken full become violent." T r a y v o n ' s f a m i l y a n d responsibility." Zimmerman's family tell different Details of the settlement have not stories, but it's important that both been disclosed. sides and the public be prepared Lee called and apologized to the to accept the decision of the grand couple as requested by their jury and the state and federal family on television. officials handling the case, Reep "He was really kind," Elaine said. The Seminole County grand McClain said. "And when he jury considering the case will called us, you could just tell he really felt bad about it. And it was convene April 10. "This case needs to play out in the just a slip, and I just know that he court of law and not the court of really, really has been concerned." Zimmerman's brother said the public opinion," he said. hatred in the case is astounding. Emotion has played a bigger role for some than reason. A group He said the case is being driven identifying itself as the New by a "carnival of hatred" and a B l a c k P a n t h e r P a r t y o f f e r s "mythology" surrounding George
Zimmerman that isn't true. "He's the neighbor that everybody would want to have," Robert Zimmerman said. "He's the kind of guy that sees somebody struggling with changing a tire and stops to help them or helps older people with their groceries. He goes out of his way to help people." Contributing: Associated Press For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com. USA TODAY is now using Facebook Comments on our stories and blog posts to provide an enhanced user experience. To post a comment, log into Facebook and then "Add" your comment. To report spam or abuse, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box. To find out more, read the FAQ and Conversation Guidelines. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read LAWYERS: page 4
Headline/ Technology/
Nuclear centrifuge project to move ahead

(USATODAY.com Feed)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 2:45:35 PM
The grant is a stopgap measure while the company seeks $2 billion in Department of Energy By Gregory Korte, USA TODAY loan guarantees to expand the Updated project, which it says will support WASHINGTON A giant 2,000 jobs in Ohio and a halfnuclear centrifuge project in dozen other states. southern Ohio will move forward Other loan guarantees have come despite a setback in Congress this under congressional scrutiny after w e e k , u r a n i u m e n r i c h m e n t the bankruptcy of solar panel company USEC said Friday. maker Solyndra despite $535 By Nicolas Asfouri, AFP/Getty million in federal loan backing. Images Energy Secretary Steven USA TODAY reported this month Chu has said he wants a signal that some Republican critics of that he has the authority to decide the Solyndra project had urged on a grant for the American "immediate action" on USEC's Centrifuge Project. loan guarantee even after Solyndra's failure became known. By Nicolas Asfouri, AFP/Getty USEC had told investors and Images analysts that it needed federal Energy Secretary Steven Chu has action on the grant by March 31, said he wants a signal that he has or it would be forced to start the authority to decide on a grant winding down operations. for the American Centrifuge The project, once completed, Project. would provide the only Congress' failure to act on a long- domestically owned source of term transportation bill means that enriched uranium for commercial a $106 million research and and military use when USEC's d e v e l o p m e n t g r a n t f o r t h e Paducah, Ky., plant which uses American Centrifuge Project 60-year-old gaseous diffusion remains in limbo. That provision technology closes. was included in the Senate In a regulatory filing this month, version, but it faces some t h e c o m p a n y s a i d i t h a d resistance in the House, which has renegotiated the terms of its stricter rules on "earmarks." credit, allowing it to borrow $15
Secretary Steven Chu to award the grant out of existing funds. Chu has told lawmakers he wants a clear signal from Congress that he has the authority. "We're continuing to work with Congress, and we're hopeful that the House picks up the language in the Senate transportation bill," million a month to operate the said DOE spokeswoman Jen project through May. In June, that Stutsman. "We are, beyond that, looking at whatever potential drops to $1 million. That's important because the options are available." s h o r t - t e r m t r a n s p o r t a t i o n President Obama supported the extension, signed by the president project when he campaigned in t o d a y , r u n s f o r 9 0 d a y s southern Ohio in 2008 and has meaning Congress won't have to included an additional $150 pass a final bill until the end of million in research funding in his 2013 budget. Even if approved by June. "Federal funding needs to be in Congress, that funding won't be place in the very near term," available at least until the new USEC CEO John K. Welch said fiscal year starts Oct. 1. All told, in a statement. Still, he said the $300 million in grant funding government talks have made would allow USEC to update its enough progress for its board to loan guarantee application in j u s t i f y " c o n t i n u e d l i m i t e d 2013, Welch said. s p e n d i n g " o n t h e p r o j e c t . "The administration has been The project is in the district of incredibly clear from the secretary Rep. Jean Schmidt, R-Ohio, who up to the White House," Stutsman was defeated in the Republican said. "We've done everything that primary this month. She and other we can to move this project m e m b e r s o f a b i p a r t i s a n , forward. We are trying to take multistate delegation of project steps to make sure the U.S. has a supporters are pushing Energy domestic enrichment capability that is necessary for national
security while protecting taxpayer dollars." For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com. USA TODAY is now using Facebook Comments on our stories and blog posts to provide an enhanced user experience. To post a comment, log into Facebook and then "Add" your comment. To report spam or abuse, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box. To find out more, read the FAQ and Conversation Guidelines. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
LAWYERS:
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YOUNG
videos from the neighborhood and hasn't spoken to his parents in two months. None of the activists' claims could be independently verified. The Syrian government bars most media from operating inside the country. Another Baba Amr activist who also fled to Lebanon said he passed up a chance to study medicine in Germany so he could work to topple Assad. "I reached a point where I realized that Syria could have a good future," he said, declining to give his name for fear of reprisals against his relatives. "I used to
want to go to a developed country, but someday, after Assad falls, Syria will be like that. But we'll build it ourselves." While international condemnation of Assad has mounted, diplomacy has failed to stop the violence and many activists acknowledge that the conflict is unlikely to end soon. Most are still driven by the hope of better lives in Syria. "I want to go back and study, get a job in a company," said Mustafa, the activist from Banias, who was a barber before the uprising and now helps Syrian refugees settle in Lebanon.
He, too, put marriage plans on hold because of the uprising, but is still in touch with his girlfriend whom he hopes to marry someday. "Perhaps the day after the regime falls," he said, laughing. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Apple Labor Pact Could Ripple Across China Wall Street Journal
(china - Google News)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 10:48:25 AM
Visa hassle puts expats off Moscow

USA TODAY Apple Labor Pact Could Ripple Across China Wall Street Journal By LORETTA CHAO, JAMES T. AREDDY and ARIES POON Manufacturers grappling with rising labor costs and worker demands in China could face further pressure if a critical probe of a major Apple supplier sets a
new standard for China's factory workers,... Apple pledge could lead to China wage hikes USA TODAY New report finds worker abuses at Apple's supplier in China San Jose Mercury News Foxconn Pledges Labor Improvements in China Voice of America InformationWeek all 1,712 news articles
TAGS: Russia, Prime Time Russia, Immigration, Neil Harvey, Thabang Motsei Get short URL New Russia-EU visa rules and Link copied to clipboard email Moscows delayed spring caught story to a friend print version the city's expats' attention this Published: 30 March, 2012, week. 22:33 0( 0 votes) Follow @rt_com Moscow airport (RIA Novosti / Back to top Share on Tumblr R u s l a n K r i v o b o k ) ( 3 3 . 3 M b ) previous MORE NEWS 30.03, embed video 21:57 How to make money from X EMBED To include this chart R u s s i a n h a u t e c u i s i n e : A in your web page, paste the R e s t a u r a t e u r s s t o r y following HTML tag into your As Moscows elite Pushkin web page HTML: restaurant expands to New York,
Submitted at 3/30/2012 1:33:57 PM
RT talked to founder Andrey Dellos about how Russian cuisine goes down in the Big Apple. 0 COMMENTS This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Chinese President in Cambodia As Summit Opens - Voice of America (blog)

(china - Google News)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 12:30:55 PM
DAWN.com Chinese President in Cambodia As Summit Opens Voice of America (blog) China's President Hu Jintao is in Cambodia on a four-day state visit that coincides with a key regional summit where participants are expected to voice growing opposition to Chinese territorial
claims in the South China Sea. China's Hu Visits Cambodia as Asean Leaders Eye Sea Disputes BusinessWeek China influence over Cambodia to be tested at SE Asia summit Reuters Sea Clashes Loom Over Southeast Asia Summit Wall Street Journal China Daily- GMA News all 94 news articles
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Top News/
Analysis: GOP needs to wake up to President Obama's dominance online

(The Front Page)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 6:29:00 AM
Big news of the week seems to be the Team Obama has now discovered yet another social media platform that they can dominate: the rapidly growing and expanding Pinterest platform. For the Republicans, the story is getting increasingly desperate. Its pretty clear from this weeks numbers that the rate of growth online across the board for the Republican candidates is slowing dramatically. My sense is that all of the infighting and bickering is taking its toll on an electorate that has grown tired of these brands and the ongoing rhetoric between the candidates. Anyone sitting over at the Republican National Committee looking at these numbers and seeing something more positive than I do has probably drunk too much of the Kool-Aid. The last remaining Republicans are being propped up by a media constituency that is desperate for a continuing soap opera, not a real election cycle. Its readily apparent that the Republican Party has little regard for fighting a good fight to win back the White House. I see nothing anywhere that leads me to believe that there will be any magical strategy or
formula that will reverse the trends that we are seeing right now. In fact, the Obama camp is showing signs of gaining strength despite all of the rumblings about the potential of ObamaCare being struck down by the Supreme Court. The re-election team for Barack Obama is hitting on all cylinders and an online cohort is being assembled that will provide the President with his second term. I watch with great disdain as one Republican pundit after another makes the rounds of Fox News and other media platforms railing against the President and his policies. One would think from this rancor that the election is going to be very close. We are all being duped and lulled into a false sense of security. Everyone on the network side likes programming where the perception is nip and tuckclose games, tight competitions. Such intensity drives viewers to these broadcasts. No one is tuning in to watch a blowout. So it is with the numbers this week online. At a time when a Republican candidate should be surging, there is still slugging going on for the cameras. If any of the candidates believe that all of this is helping any Republican win the White House, they need to have their heads
examined. Where is the online marketing strategy to compete with Team Obama? It is nonexistent. Where are all of those campaign dollars going? Trust me--it wont even be close when its time to run that roadblock of TV ads this fall. Heres the latest data. Read it and worry. Facebook Friends Mitt Romney 1,551,169 UP 10,009 Ron Paul 924,249 UP 7526 Newt Gingrich 296,333 UP 37 Rick Santorum 187,342 UP 3,274 President Barack Obama 25,879,506 UP 146,902 Mitt Romney Mitts Facebook page has gone stale again and his performance shows it. It has been a down week for Romney online. His rate of growth as with the other candidates in the race has dropped off dramatically. With the Wisconsin primary coming April 3, Romney needs to start acting Presidential soon, or he wont be any sort of a respectable contender. Ron Paul Rons online team needs to merge with Romneys team after all of the battling is over in the next week or so. Throughout this race, Paul has done an admirable job of building
an online community and growing it. Romney is going to need a major injection of enthusiasm and online knowledge; my sense is that Romneys team can learn a great deal from the Ron Paul teams mechanics and success. Newt Gingrich --Newt really needs to leave the race and fade to black. His performance within Facebook this week is insulting to his image as a viable candidate. Only the bright lights of the cameras and a desire in the media for someone who makes outrageous sound bites from time to time would keep a candidate like Newt in the game. There is honor in knowing when to fold the tent and go home to support the inevitable nominee. That moment for Newt was weeks ago. The longer he stays in, the more damage is being done to his personal brand and that of the party. Rick Santorum Wisconsin may be Ricks swan song; like Newt, he has had his moment in the spotlight. He has made his point very clear about the differences between himself and Mitt Romney. I have a sense that we will see his words turned against Mitt in the fall via Team Obama commercials. Here again, Santorum needs to preserve his own brand to fight another day and learn from the mistakes made
in marketing and community building. He too would benefit from a crash course in Internet Marketing. Twitter Followers Newt Gingrich 1,451,308 UP 1,732 Ron Paul 416,577 UP 6805 Mitt Romney 398,969 UP 12,977 Rick Santorum 182,681 UP 8,004 President Barack Obama 13,489,517 UP 345,742 Newt Becoming a non-issue here. His best bet for the good of the party would be to start embracing the nominee and helping the Republican Party regain the White House. He could do a lot of good reaching out to that nice universe of followers and inspiring them to do the right thing. My sense is that he wont. He suffers from an incurable case of self-righteousness regardless of data that shows him totally lagging the field. Ron Paul--continues to show consistent growth week in and week out. Never a real media darling or considered a serious contender, Ron Paul has defied conventional wisdom and has built for himself a nice base and foundation to be reckoned with. Romney out front Solid ANALYSIS: page 11
Top News/
Big lottery win could easily be followed by big loss - USA TODAY
(Top Stories - Google News)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:16:20 PM
But his funds dissipated. "The money's gone," Sharp, then 71, told the New York Daily Sure, the odds of winning News in 2009. "I bought into a lot tonight's $640 million Mega of things that went bad." Millions lottery are daunting. But Wisconsin-resident Andrew the likelihood of the winner Cicero also struggled to maintain keeping his or her cash are pretty his lottery windfall. He lost most disconcerting as well. of the $5.5 million he won in "The perception is once you win 1995 to bad investments. the lottery, you are set you're Cicero lived on a pension and in great shape. But in reality the Social Security income before he battle has just begun," says was successfully able to gain Andrew Stoltmann, an attorney some of the money back in who has represented lottery lawsuits against his investment winners who have hit financial and advisory firms that were troubles. settled. Stoltmann handled "Often lottery winners do not Cicero's case but declined to have much experience with comment. managing money and lack basic Winners who lack financial investing skills," he says. In turn, savvy barely have time to Google t h e y c a n e a s i l y m a k e b a d "investing tips" before they are investments, fritter their money deluged with offers from financial away on big-ticket purchases and planners, scam artists, friends and fall prey to scam artists. family. So it's easy for a lottery Tales of lottery winners who v i c t o r t o q u i c k l y f e e l blew their riches abound. One of overwhelmed and make poor the most infamous is Curtis Sharp, decisions, Stoltmann says. an air conditioning technician For the lucky winner of tonight's from Newark, N.J., who won $5 Mega Millions or anyone who million in the New York Lotto lands a large, unexpected windfall drawing in 1982. financial advisers offer this Known for his dapper attire and initial advice: Keep the news flashy personality, he became an quiet. icon for making it big through "Don't go to Facebook and say lottery luck. A three-piece-suit- y o u ' v e j u s t w o n t h e M e g a clad Sharp even starred in a Lotto Millions lottery," says attorney ad that showed him cruising in the Richard Craig, whose firm has back of a limousine . represented past lottery winners.
Sure, it's fine to share the news with close, trustworthy friends and families, he says. But those who widely brag about their newfound fortunes open themselves up to a swarm of legitimate and illegitimate money requests, as well as to potential predatory lawsuits from those who want to get their hands on the riches. "In this litigious society, you don't want to be a target so don't purposely draw attention to yourself," Craig says. "You want to do your best to minimize your visibility on the radar screen." Other tips on how to manage any Mega Millions or other lottery windfalls. Keep that winning ticket safe: Powerball champ Louise White who won a $336 million jackpot in February hid the ticket in her Bible. Financial advisers say that's not the best way to go. Instead, those with winning tickets should sign them and tuck them into a safe or safety deposit box, Craig says. He advocates making a few copies of the winning ticket and storing those papers in a separate location. Create a trusted advisory team: Ask friends, family and professional contacts for suggestions on credible tax experts, lawyers, financial
planners and insurance providers. "Few lottery winners have the infrastructure in place to manage a lottery windfall," Stoltmann says. Craig suggests winners create an "advisory board" that can include business-savvy friends, as well as professional advisers. Among its benefits: The board can serve as "a buffer" against friends and family who ask for handouts. This way, a winner doesn't have to solely take blame for turning down a solicitation from a family or friend. Sit tight for six months:"Don't make any major commitments or financial obligations for six months," Craig says. Instead, just let the win settle in. "It's tempting for a lottery winner to quit his or her job or immediately splurge on a mansion or other large purchase. Don't," Stoltmann says. "The worst decisions made by lottery winners are usually the first few decisions." Don't rely on the familiar when investing: For the financially uneducated, there is a tendency to invest in a tangible assets such as a restaurant or car wash rather than put the money into more liquid, and easily traded, investments such as stocks or bonds, says Ed Butowsky, managing partner at Chapwood Capital Investment Management.
"They typically will invest in things they are familiar with and that they can touch and feel because, generally speaking, they don't have the knowledge of investment instruments," he says. Although it's easy to put money into a private investment, such as a restaurant, "it's hard to get the money out." Winners should instead consider public securities over these private investments, he says. Donate wisely: Don't dole out money indiscriminately to charities, Craig says. Instead, those who want to contribute to a cause should speak with a financial adviser about tax benefits, as well as the possibility of setting up a foundation. Have fun: It's OK to buy that dream boat or new wardrobe if it's planned out. "Take some of this, and let it be mad money," Craig says. Contributing: Natalie DiBlasio in McLean, Va. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Top News/
Did the US just break the secret IsraeliAzerbaijani alliance against Iran?
Ilham Aliyev labeling the country's relationship with Israel as an iceberg where " nine-tenths An Israeli F-16 fighter jet of it is below the surface." (Reuters/Nikola Solic) For years Israel and Azerbaijan According to an alleged leak, have established an economic Israel is secretly staging an relationship. Israel buys oil from airstrike on Iran in neighboring A z e r b a i j a n a n d A z e r b a i j a n Azerbaijan. purchases military equipment Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin from Israel. Netanyahu has been salivating Despite the Israeli-Azerbaijani over the thought of bombing relationship, Azerbaijan officials Iranian nuclear facilities for some have denied that such an attack time now, and an anonymous would ever be launched from senior US diplomat along with Azerbaijani soil. military intelligence officials " The Republic of Azerbaijan, like alleged that Israel has recently always in the past, will never been granted access to airbases on permit any country to take Irans northern border. advantage of its land, or air, " The Israelis have bought an against the Islamic Republic of airfield and the airfield is called Iran, which we consider our A z e r b a i j a n , " s a i d a s e n i o r brother and friend country," said administration official. Azerbaijan's defense minister The information which was during a visit to Tehran. disclosed in Foreign Policy Nevertheless the Israelimagazine stated that the Israeli- Azerbaijani cooperation allegedly Azerbaijani alliance is deeper than caused so much concern in the both parties want others to White House that unnamed believe. officials were given permission to According to the article, in 2009 leak the information on possible a memo released by WikiLeaks airstrikes on Iran from the Southquoted Azerbaijani President Caucasus country. The intention
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:47:07 PM
of the Obama administration was to make the plans public to disrupt any secret agreements between the two governments that would leave the US in the dark. These plans would also grant Israel much needed airfields for a strike on Iran . In a study lead by Retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, for a think-tank affiliated with the Swedish Ministry of Defense played out the possible scenarios of an Israeli lead attack on Iran. " It's not weight that's a problem," said Gardiner in the AFP article. The problem is the number of weapons that are mounted on each aircraft," Gardiner added. In other words, the lighter the payload the more distance it can travel; the heavier the payload the distance will suffer. He reiterated restricting the distance travel will increase firepower and will boost the likelihood of an effective strike. Thats where Azerbaijan steps into the picture. Bases in the country would be supposedly used for landing and refueling after the strike has been
implemented. Israel has received mix messages from Washington about their plans to strike Iran. In early March, President Obama meet with Netanyahu at this years American Israel Public Affairs Committee. During a speech at the convention Obama told AIPAC, I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say," Obama added. There should not be a shred of doubt by now: when the chips are down, I have Israels back." Apart from his statements the Obama Administration has been rather reserved on their stance to support Israel if they were to attack and many speculate this years election is a major factor. " I think this leak today is part of the administration's campaign against an Israeli attack," former US diplomat John Bolton said Thursday on Fox News. " It's just unprecedented to reveal this kind of information about one of your own allies, Bolton said. According to The Christian
Science Monitor, Tehran has questioned Azerbaijans involvement in the assassinations of key Iranian nuclear scientists, since the individuals blamed for the attacks were arrested in Azerbaijan. According to reports, Israeli officials have yet to comment on the allegations. " We're watching what Iran does closely," one of the US intelligence sources was quoted as saying in the Foreign Policy article. " But we're now watching what Israel is doing in Azerbaijan. And we're not happy about it," the source concluded. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Can Stramaccioni rescue Inter? - ESPN

(Andrea Rossi - Google News)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 2:36:16 PM
Can Stramaccioni rescue Inter? ESPN By James Horncastle | Special to
ESPN.com AP Photo/Luca Bruno Can he realistically triumph where Andrea Stramaccioni has become his predecessors have failed? If Inter's third manager this season. Andrea Stramaccioni was still in
need of a reminder that... and more
Top News/
Let there be light: 'Human Achievement Hour' to coincide with Earth Hour - Fox News
Fox News (Top Stories Google News)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:26:47 PM
This image provided by NASA and posted to Twitpic by astronaut Douglas Wheelock on Oct. 31, 2010 shows a night view of the Nile River winding up through the Egyptian desert toward the Mediterranean as seen from the International Space Station. AP Photo/NASA via Twitpic, Douglas Wheelock As millions of people sit in the dark during Earth Hour to call for action against climate change this weekend, a libertarian think tank wants you to fight the power by keeping the lights on. The Competitive Enterprise Institute plans to commemorate Earth Hour 2012 with its "Human Achievement Hour," 60 minutes to gather with friends in a heated home, watch television and surf the Internet instead of dimming or shutting off the lights altogether to draw attention to climate change. "HAH is an annual event meant to recognize and celebrate the fact that this is the greatest time to be alive, and that the reason we have
come is that people have been free to use their minds and the resources in their environment to experiment, create, and innovate," reads a CEI website on the event scheduled to coincide with Earth Hour 2012 from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m.
local time Saturday. Participants in the event understand the "necessity to protect the individual persons from government coercion," according to the Washingtonbased think tank.
The event is about saluting the people who "keep the lights on and produce the energy." - Myron Ebell, Competitive Enterprise Institute "Observers of Earth Hour want world leaders to 'do something'
about pollution and energy use," the website continues. "What this means is that they want politicians to use legal mandates and punitive taxes to prevent individuals from LET page 11
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Top News/
Obama to Clear Way to Tighten Iranian Oil Sanctions - New York Times
HELENE COOPER and ANNIE LOWREY (Top Stories - Google News)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 2:53:43 PM
Doug Mills/The New York Times President Obama greeted supporters after making a speech at a fundraising event at the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vt. BURLINGTON, Vt. President Obama has determined there is enough oil in world markets to allow countries to rely less on imports from Iran, a step that could increase Western actions to deter Tehrans nuclear ambitions, an administration official said Friday. Mr. Obama is required by law to decide by March 30, and every six months after, whether the price and supply of non-Iranian oil is sufficient to allow for countries to cut their oil purchases from Iran. Mr. Obamas decision was to be announced Friday afternoon in a conference call, the official said. He made the decision after consultations with a number of oil exporters that had agreed to increase production. The decision comes even as gas prices have risen in recent months, a rise that his political advisers say could hamper his re-election efforts. The new sanctions, passed as part of the defense budget and
mandated by the Senate in a rare 100-to-0 vote, penalize foreign corporations or other entities that purchase oil from Irans central bank, which collects payment for most of the countrys energy exports. The penalties are meant to pressure Iran to curb its nuclear program. The law includes loopholes that allow Mr. Obama to waive the measures if they threaten national security or if gas prices increase. Gas prices in the United States
have climbed about 19 percent this year on worries about a confrontation with Iran, investor speculation about higher prices and other factors. A gallon of gas currently costs an average of $3.93, up from about $3.30 a gallon in December. The rising prices have weighed on economic confidence and cut into household budgets, a concern for an Obama administration seeking reelection. But since the law was enacted in
December, the White House has engaged in a broad effort to prevent supply disruptions that might cause prices to spike and to persuade countries around the world to buy less oil and demand discounts from Iran. In the last three months, a number of highranking officials, including Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, have traveled around the world to rally support for the sanctions. Countries including Saudi Arabia
have increased production to make up for any lost production from Iran. There is no rational reason why oil prices are continuing to remain at these high levels, the Saudi oil minister, Ali Naimi, wrote in an opinion article in The Financial Times this week. I hope by speaking out on the issue that our intentions and capabilities are clear. We want to see stronger European growth OBAMA page 11
Technology/
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ANALYSIS:
LET
week for Mitt on Twitter. The biggest problem here is that he needs to do a heck of a lot better in building the size of his base if he is going to be seriously considered in the race against the President. My sense is that the marketing team in the Romney camp may be a group of legacy campaign folks who know very little about the Internet. Note to Mitt its time that you pivot your campaign with online at the core and make television a supplemental component of your strategy. Take a look at Obamas numbers! Santorum Up Again Rick had a solid growth this week, but like the other candidates ; the competitor; President Obama is destroying the field in terms of growth. As Rick battles his fellow Republicans , the data documents that Barack Obama is getting the real benefit from all of this ruckus. If Rick were smart and really cared about the Republicans winning the White House, he would stop now and support the a candidate that can be elected. Its highly likely that next weeks
column will run under a headline: Time to get to work. I truly believe that after Wisconsin Mitt Romney will be the de facto Republican nominee for the White House. As much fun as it has been monitoring the online performance of the gang of candidates, I must tell you that it has grown tiring repeating the same advice each week. It is my sense that no one with any authority or chops to change anything is listening. We have identified the problem repeatedly. The data is crystal clear. The trend line is verifiable. Some of you reading the column would like to discount the data and/or the analysis. You question method and motives. That is your right. What you cannot dispute is that Team Obama is totally outclassing the Republican field in the area of online and social marketing. As they showcase their strategy and tactics, the return on their investment is crushing the Republican competition .These are metrics that I have studied my entire career. Any brand that has this
level of domination online, this early in a brand war would have to commit the most heinous of mistakes in order to lose share. I see no signs that the competing brands in this race have any desire, strategy or tactics that will reverse this trend. I hope I am wrong. Hope, though, isnt a strategy. Al DiGuido has long been recognized as an innovator in the digital marketing industry and as a pioneer in email communications. He has held leadership positions at Zeta Interactive, Epsilon Interactive, Bigfoot Interactive and Ziff Davis Publishing. He can be reached at aldiguido@aldiguido.com. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
35 Glam Geometric Shoes - These Fierce Footwear Designs are Artfully Edgy (TrendHunter.com)
(TREND HUNTER - The Latest Trends)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 11:47:02 AM
OBAMA
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-fashion art pieces, these glam geometric shoes dare to push traditional style boundaries. A fierce take on classic footwear designs, these bold pieces...
and realize that reasonable crude oil prices are key to this. American officials have also discussed a coordinated release of oil from national strategic reserves along with French and British officials, as publicly confirmed on Thursday by the OBAMA page 12
freely using resources, hindering our ability to create the solutions and technologies of the future." Myron Ebell, CEI's director of energy and global warming policy, said the event is about saluting the people who "keep the lights on and produce the energy" that makes human achievement possible. More than 5,200 cities in 135 countries worldwide participated in Earth Hour 2011, according to the event's website. It was originally conceived in 2007 in Australia by the World Wide Fund for Nature and was expanded globally the following year. "Earth Hour encourages individuals, businesses and governments to show leadership on environmental solutions through their actions, to use Earth Hour as a platform to showcase to the world what measures they are taking to reduce their environmental impact," EarthHour.org reads. "Taking the first step is as easy as turning off your lights." Requests for comment from Earth Hour officials on the counter event were not immediately returned. Those who do flip the switch, however, are encouraged only to turn off non-essential lights and not those that affect public safety. Candles to be used in lieu of lights should be 100 percent beeswax or soy varieties, according to Earth Hour officials,
because they are non-toxic and non-allergenic. Print Email Share Comments Recommend Tweet Related Slideshow 7 Gadgets only Mega Millions winners can afford Related Stories uReport: This unseasonably warm, dry weather has wildfire season in full throttle. If there's a wildfire by you, send us photos and videos -- but remember to stay safe while uReporting. EXCLUSIVE: How to talk to an NBA star this March Madness weekend'Speed of light' scientist resigns over mistake Facebook's Zuckerberg takes Tokyo victory lap Share This Article Newsletter Signup Sign up for free e-mail news alerts from FoxNews.com and FoxBusiness.com. Newsletter Signup This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
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Top News/ Business/ World News/
OBAMA
French prime minister, Franois Fillon. Additionally, the administration last week exempted 10 European countries, including Britain, France, Germany and Japan from the new measures, given that the countries were already reducing oil imports from Iran. In a statement, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that the country had made progress in shrinking Irans oil export markets and isolating its Central Bank from the world financial system.
Annie Lowrey contributed reporting from Washington. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read (china - Google News) the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Submitted at 3/30/2012 11:59:49 AM Filters recommends: Donate to China Factor Tames Asian Wikileaks. Currencies' Performance Wall Street Journal By Prabha Natarajan and Erin McCarthy Of DOW JONES
China Factor Tames Asian Currencies' Performance Wall Street Journal
Cronulla club will boycott deadly beach Brisbane Times
E-Cat: l'impianto da 1 MW sar presto aperto al pubblico negli USA - GreenStyle

(andrea rossi e-cat - Google News)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 8:11:19 AM
GreenStyle E-Cat: l'impianto da 1 MW sar presto aperto al pubblico negli USA GreenStyle
Andrea Rossi torna a pretendere quell'attenzione mediatica che (Andrea Rossi - Google News) fino ad ora a caratterizzato la vicenda E-Cat, il reattore a Submitted at 3/30/2012 1:11:21 PM fusione fredda che lui ed il prof. ESPN Sergio Focardi avrebbero messo a Can Stramaccioni rescue Inter? punto. ben noto come la ESPN Leonardo Corporation (azienda By James Horncastle | Special to di...
Can Stramaccioni rescue Inter? ESPN
N E W S W I R E S N E W Y O R K (Nation - Google News) ( D o w J o n e s ) - - F o r A s i a n Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:52:45 PM currencies, proximity to China has gone from an asset to a liability. Belfast Telegraph Currencies like the Indonesian Cronulla club will boycott deadly rupiah and Korean won held up beach Brisbane Times better than their peers in... Cronulla Surf Life Saving Club and more says it will boycott national championships held at the Gold Coast beach where a teenage competitor died. The loss of 14year-old Matthew Barclay in an under-15s board race on Wednesday raised fresh doubts about the... Police investigate dangerous surf warning given before Matthew Barclay's death NEWS.com.au Walk to honour family The ESPN.com AP Photo/Luca Bruno Sunshine Coast Daily Andrea Stramaccioni has become Matthew Barclay, 14, drowns in Inter's third manager this season. rough seas at Australian Surf Life Can he realistically triumph where Saving... Courier Mail his predecessors have failed? If The Australian- Sydney Morning Andrea Stramaccioni was still in Herald need of a reminder that... all 1,206 news articles
Washington area's housing market is recovering, albeit unevenly - Washington Post

(housing - Google News)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:03:22 PM
Washington area's housing
market is recovering, albeit unevenly Washington Post The District, which had the
second-highest median price before the housing crash, now leads the region (with a much smaller number of houses), at
$398500, according to RBI. Thinking of putting your home up for sale in suburban Maryland?
Business/ Finance/
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If You Win The Mega Millions Jackpot, Don't Take The Annuity
Jill Krasny (Business Insider)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:52:47 PM
Yesterday, we asked readers how they'd take their lottery winnings if they won this week's Mega Millions jackpot. The choice is between a lump sum and annuity. Mega Millions describes the options: " Annuity option: Provides annual payments over a 26-year period. For every $1,000,000 in the jackpot, you will receive approximately $385,000 per year before taxes. Cash option: A one-time, lumpsum payment that is equal to all the cash in the Mega Millions jackpot prize pool." As of press time, 88 percent of our readers would take the lump sum. But is that a smart choice? We asked Libertas Wealth Management advisor Adam Koos to give us his take, and he told us the lump sum wins by a longshot. Here's why: It's a smarter investment. This week's jackpot stands at $540 million, with the cash option being $389 million. Assuming a winner pays 35 percent of income tax, that comes to $252,850,000. Putting that into a super
conservative portfoliowithout touching the principalthat returns around 3 percent would generate a princely $7,585,500 in a year, says Koos. And if you leave this world too soon? No worriesyour inheritors will still have the principal to play with. More control of your money. When Ohio state workers are given the choice between a reduced pension check or annuity when they retire, Koos always tells them to take the check. "You
can always make up for the difference by taking the lump sum and investing," he says. And why wait for a yearly allowance from the lottery commissionwhich could go out of business theoreticallyto spend or donate your money? "You can't get more money if you have a cap on it," says Koos, "no matter how much you need or want to give to charity." Another note: If your spending habits suck, this won't make them better.
You'll beat the IRS. Today's tax bracket for the ultra-rich is historically low35 percent. The current jobs bill being proposed could hike that bracket to 39.6 percent. If that happens, get ready to pay more on your lottery payout each year. And the bracket could always go higher. "It's better to take the tax hit today, then invest the rest of the principal in various ways," says Koos. "Pay it up front while the taxes are low." Don't miss: An insider shares secrets of the state lottery > Please follow Your Money on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story See Also: America Desperately Needs This 'No-Lose Lottery', But The States Don't Want Us To Have It 7 Things You Could Do If You Win Tomorrow's Mega Millions Jackpot This Wealth Management Site Was Created For The 99%
San Francisco Homeless Veterans Get $2.7 Million In Housing Vouchers Huffington Post
Submitted at 3/30/2012 12:47:21 PM
FTSE 100 claws back most of 2011 losses

Jamie Dunkley (Finance News Business news from the UK and world)
San Diego Gay & Lesbian News San Francisco Homeless Veterans Get $2.7 Million In Housing Vouchers Huffington Post By Robin Wilkey Posted: 03/30/ 2012 1:46 pm Updated: 03/30/ 2012 2:06 pm On Thursday, Mayor Lee announced that San Francisco will be the recipient of $2.7 million in housing vouchers for homeless veterans. The US Housing and Urban Development's Veterans... San Francisco receives $2.7 million in housing vouchers for formerly homeless... SanFranciscoSentinel.com Larsen Announces Affordable Housing Vouchers for 75 Homeless Veterans in... Lake Stevens Journal HUD awards $33 million to 18 HIV/AIDS housing programs San Diego Gay & Lesbian News Queerty- Wicked LocalBizjournals.com all 58 news articles
UK's leading index of shares wipes out two-thirds of 2011 losses.
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Business/ World News/
Groupon Blows It Again -- Restates Earnings After A Flood Of Buyers Demand Refunds (GRPN)
Henry Blodget (Business Insider)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:50:00 PM
Goldman Sachs Now Betting On Housing Recovery Instead Of Doom - Huffington Post
Groupon can't get out of its own way. After missing the bottom line in its first quarter as a public company, Groupon is now restating its Q4 earnings after a higher-than-expected number of customers demanded refunds. The stock is getting smashed in after-hours trading, falling more than 10% to about $16. Now, this sounds totally horrible, but it's actually not that big a deal. The restatement does not affect cash flow, and the company is sticking with its outlook for the first quarter. According to the company, what happened is this: Groupon launched a bunch of new, higher-priced products late last year. At least in the fourth quarter, the return rate on these products was considerably higher than the return rate for Groupon's cheaper offerings. When customers demand refunds within 60 days, Groupon's accounting treats the refund as a "contra-revenue" event, meaning that it reduces Groupon's revenue and earnings. After 60 days,
called The US Housing Recovery Fund,... After betting on housing crash, Goldman Sachs Now Betting On Goldman now betting on housing Housing Recovery Instead Of reboot InvestmentNews Doom Goldman Looks to Profit Off Huffington Post Housing Rebound Barron's (blog) The firm that made billions Goldman Sachs (GS) Bets On s h o r t i n g m o r t g a g e - b a c k e d Real Estate Recovery with New securities prior to the 2007 Fund ValueWalk housing collapse is starting a new Wall St. Cheat Sheet fund to purchase mortgage bonds, all 10 news articles according to Bloomberg News. The new fund, which will be
Submitted at 3/30/2012 12:43:57 PM
Ed Miliband's eight meetings with Unite leader tops Labour donors' list - The Guardian
refunds are treated as an expense, so they only hit earnings. Going forward, Groupon will use higher refund assumptions for its higher-priced products. So this shouldn't happen again. And the good news is that the company is not reducing its guidance for the first quarter (which is basically complete) despite using more aggressive refund assumptions. So this isn't as big a deal as it seems. But it is embarrassing. And it won't help boost investor confidence in the stock. SEE ALSO: I Wouldn't Touch Groupon's Stock At The IPO Price With A 50-Foot Pole Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story See Also: CHART OF THE DAY: Groupon's Growth Bounces Back No, I Still Wouldn't Buy Groupon's Stock Here's What It's Like When Groupon Acquires Your Startup
(Nation - Google News)
McCluskey and fellow union leaders dominate a list published by Labour... The Guardian Ed Miliband entertained tycoon Ed Miliband's eight meetings Labour donors in his own home with Unite leader tops Labour Telegraph.co.uk donors' list Miliband lists Labour donor The Guardian meetings Financial Times Ed Miliband has had eight formal Miliband gives donor talks meetings or dinner with Len details The Press Association McCluskey, the Unite general BBC News- Labour Party- The secretary, since he was elected Sun Labour leader in September 2010, all 192 news articles the party said on Friday.
Submitted at 3/30/2012 2:28:09 PM
Business/ News Wire/ Technology/
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Epoch Times | National, America Desperately Needs This 'No-Lose Lottery', But The World, China, Sports, States Don't Want Us To Have It Entertainment News
Jill Krasny (Business Insider)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:47:00 PM
(Epoch Times | National, World, China, Sports, Entertainment News)
With the Mega Millions frenzy reaching the breaking point, it bears repeating that the real money-maker is your investment account. Or if the brains behind Freakonomics had their way, it'd be a controversial financial product called Prize-Linked Savings accounts. Freakonomics describes how they work: "In a nutshell, PLS is a kind of savings account that pools some of the interest from all depositors and pays out a big lottery prize every month or so. It combines the thrill of the lottery with the safety of a savings account. Its sometimes called a no-lose lottery, since a depositor is automatically entered into the lottery but cant lose the original money she deposits." Seeing as most Americans have yet to sock away $2,000 in case disaster strikes, such a financial product is badly needed. Trouble is, the states won't go for it. Americans suck at saving, but are great at blowing cash on the lotto.
Freakonomics is quick to point out we spent $58 billion on tickets last year (about $200 per person), and that the states withhold about 40 percent of the prize pool for overhead. You're better off hitting the blackjack table, where you can at least boost your odds by improving your skill. Or just do the smart thing and start saving for emergencies. Don't Miss: 14 lotto winners who blew it all >
Please follow Your Money on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story See Also: Don't Want To Share Your Mega Millions Jackpot? Here's What To Do 7 Things You Could Do If You Win Tomorrow's Mega Millions Jackpot 14 Lottery Winners Who Blew It All
Governments need to address the Earths environmental challenges or humanity will face an unprecedented disaster, scientists Top Stories said. Wei Jingsheng, one of the most An enormous change is unfolding recognized Chinese human rights in China. Chinese Communist and democracy activists, weighs Party head Hu Jintao and Premier in on the significance of the Wen Jiabaos opponents in the political upheaval presently escalating Beijing power struggle occurring in China. are responsible [...] The head of the Mali junta that This entry passed through the came to power only a week ago Full-Text RSS service if this is said the country needs help in your content and you're reading it dealing with Tuareg-led rebels. on someone else's site, please read On March 24, the family of the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contenth u m a n r i g h t s a t t o r n e y w a s only/faq.php#publishers. Five allowed to visit him in jail-- Filters recommends: Donate to something that probably could not Wikileaks. have happened if Zhou Yongkang had a firm hold on power.
Precious Petite Pastries - These Bite Sized Banana Cream Pies are Perfectly Portioned (TrendHunter.com)
(TREND HUNTER - The Latest Trends)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 11:01:02 AM
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of pie, these Bite Sized Banana Cream Pies are sure to satisfy. For those reluctant to commit to an entire slice of pie and find cutlery...
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News Wire/
Euro zone agrees to boost rescue capacity

(Reuters: Top News)
said. International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde welcomed Austrian Finance Minister Maria the decision, saying it would help Fekter (R) delivers a speech next the global lender raise more to Infrastructure Minister Doris resources to fight contagion from Bures during a session of the the European crisis if needed. parliament in Vienna March 28, The euro rose and Spanish and 2012. Italian bond yields fell slightly Credit: Reuters/Lisi Niesner after the firewall boost and a By Jan Strupczewski and Robin draconian Spanish austerity Emmott budget. COPENHAGEN| Fri Mar 30, Spain unveiled savings worth 27 2012 4:37pm EDT billion euros ($35.85 billion) this (Reuters) - Euro zone finance year, roughly half from spending ministers agreed on Friday to cuts and half from revenue increase their financial firewall to increases, in a bid to convince 700 billion euros to ward off a European partners and investors it n e w f l a r e - u p o f E u r o p e ' s can rein in its budget deficit. sovereign debt crisis, drawing a "Today's decision is a classic positive initial reaction from G20 European compromise. It was as partners and markets. far as the German government The 17-nation currency area was willing to go and it was the agreed to combine two rescue minimum most other euro zone funds to make 500 billion euros of countries were expecting," said new funds available in case of Carsten Brzeski, economist at emergency until mid-2013, on top ING bank in Brussels. of 200 billion euros already A bigger boost would have been committed to bailouts for Greece, more convincing, he said: "With Ireland and Portugal. today's increase, the role of the T h e e x e c u t i v e E u r o p e a n European Central Bank as euro Commission had proposed raising zone fire brigade is likely to the total to 940 billion euros, with continue." 740 billion in new money, but EU In December, the ECB averted a paymaster Germany resisted a looming credit crunch by flooding bigger increase. euro zone banks with cheap three"The euro area has responded to year loans, calming bond markets calls from our global partners, the temporarily. But ECB executive G20 and the BRIC countries. I board member Joerg Asmussen trust today's decision will pave the said there was no room for way for an IMF decision at the complacency. Spring meetings," EU Economic The central bank was satisfied and Monetary Affairs Olli Rehn with Friday's decision but a bigger
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:37:48 PM
firewall was substitute for pressing ahead with economic reforms, he said. An official statement said the ministers had lifted the combined lending ceiling of the temporary European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the permanent European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to 700 billion euros from 500 billion. "All together, the euro area is mobilizing an overall firewall of approximately 800 billion euros, more than 1 trillion dollars," the Eurogroup statement said. The higher number was arrived at by adding in bilateral loans that euro zone countries granted to Greece under a first bailout, money disbursed by the EFSF and from a smaller third fund controlled by the European Commission. The ESM will have only 200 billion euros in its first year from July since capital is due to be paid in over three years. Friday's decision means 240 billion of uncommitted EFSF funds could be tapped if necessary until the ESM becomes bigger. IMF BOOST French Finance Minister Francois Baroin said the decision put the euro zone in a strong position to persuade other major economies next month to increase IMF resources. The United States, China, Brazil and Britain had all said the euro zone should first do more to help itself. Mexico, chairing the G20 major
economies, said the European agreement was an important step towards boosting IMF funding. "It's a major effort on the part of Europe, in line with what was discussed during the last meeting of G20 ministers," Mexican Deputy Finance Minister Gerardo Rodriguez told Reuters. "Now we have to work within the G20 for additional resources for the IMF. That was the agreement. There was no official comment from the United States. But Eswar Prasad, a former IMF official and senior fellow at the Washingtonbased Brookings Institution, said the euro zone move was likely to unlock extra funds for the IMF. "Today's decision is an important step towards strengthening the fortifications around the euro zone," he said. "This step may not be adequate to convince markets that the fortifications are impregnable. But it is likely to elicit a positive response from the international community in terms of supporting an increase in IMF resources as a secondary backstop." Some bond market players questioned whether the compromise would provide sufficient money to help Spain, the euro zone's number four economy, if it needs a bailout to overcome a banking crisis due to the collapse of a real estate bubble. Gizem Kara, European economist at BNP Paribas, said euro zone governments had opted for the
minimum amount that would be needed to cover the funding needs of Spain and Italy for the rest of this year and next if they were shut out of markets. But Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said the idea of Spain seeking emergency funds was "absurd". Tempers flared when Eurogroup Chairman Jean-Claude Juncker scrapped a scheduled news conference, blaming Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter for announcing the decision prematurely. She later apologized. Juncker said the appointment of a new European Central Bank executive board member had been postponed until mid-April. He had earlier said fellow Luxemburger Yves Mersch was the strongest candidate for the ECB job. France's Baroin said more time was needed to agree on what he called "a carousel of positions", including a successor to Juncker as Eurogroup chairman, expected to be German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble. The package also involves the heads of the ESM and the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, for which Paris has a candidate. A decision would only be taken in June after France's presidential election, Baroin said. SPANISH AUSTERITY Countries sharing the euro have already agreed to adopt more EURO page 22
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Mega Millions Sales Push Up RecordSetting Payout

(FOXNews.com)
lottery paper and lottery-machine printing ink well before all your tickets could be printed out. OMAHA, Neb. Lottery ticket A jackpot this large also means a lines swelled Friday as players g r e a t e r c h a n c e o f m u l t i p l e drawn by a record $640 million winners. And if you have to share Mega Millions jackpot cast aside the jackpot with even one other concerns about odds to take a winner, you'll be down tens of chance at becoming an overnight millions of dollars. millionaire. Such uncertainty has been little From Arizona, where a cafe deterrence to players converging worker reported selling $2,600 on convenience stores in 42 states worth of tickets to one buyer, to and Washington, D.C., where Wisconsin, where a retired soldier Mega Millions tickets are sold. doubled his regular weekly ticket Many in Indiana were further spending to $55, people have been encouraged by the promise of willing to test their luck for a shot freebies: Hoosier Lottery officials at instantaneous wealth. were giving away one free Mega "I feel like a fool throwing that Millions ticket to each of the first kind of money away," said Jesse 540 players at several outlets C a r t e r , w h o s e t w o t i c k e t s around the state Friday. purchased Friday at a Milwaukee In Indianapolis, college student g r o c e r y s t o r e b r o u g h t h i s Chris Stewart said he showed up spending to $55 for the drawing. at the lottery's headquarters at "But it's a chance you take in life, 6:30 a.m., two hours before doors with anything you do." opened, to be first in a line of With a jackpot so large, someone about 60 people who wanted to theoretically could buy up every claim a free ticket. possible number combination, "I've never seen a jackpot like this thereby guaranteeing a winning before," said Stewart, who bought ticket -- but doing so would mean five additional tickets for the putting up millions of dollars on drawing. "If I won -- I mean the front end. wow! I just don't know what I'd Then there's logistics. First, if it do. I'd really have to think what I takes five seconds to fill out each could do with it." card, you'd need almost 28 years Mike Catalano, chairman of the just to mark the bubbles on the m a t h e m a t i c s d e p a r t m e n t a t game tickets. You'd also use up Dakota Wesleyan University in the national supply of special Mitchell, S.D., concedes the math
Submitted at 3/30/2012 4:17:00 PM
is clear: The more tickets you buy, the better chances you have of winning. Better long-shot chances. "You are about 50 times as likely to get struck by lightning as to win the lottery, based on the 90 people a year getting struck by lightning," Catalano said. "Of course, if you buy 50 tickets, you've equalized your chances of winning the jackpot with getting struck by lightning." Based on other U.S. averages, you're about 8,000 times more likely to be murdered than to win the lottery, and about 20,000 times more likely to die in a car crash than hit the lucky numbers, Catalano said. "You might get some psychological enjoyment from playing the lottery, but from a financial standpoint ... you'd be much better off going to Las
Vegas and playing blackjack or the slot machines," he said. For David Kramer, a lawyer in Lincoln, Neb., buying his Mega Millions ticket Thursday wasn't about "the realistic opportunity to win." "It's the fact that for three days, the daydreaming time about what I would do if I won is great entertainment and, frankly, a very nice release from a normal day," he said. Everett Eahmer, 80, of St. Paul, Minn., said he's been playing the lottery "since the beginning." "If I win, the first thing I'm going to do is buy a (Tim) Tebow football shirt, and I'm going to do the Tebow pose," said Eahmer, who bought five tickets Thursday. "I'm with him in honoring a higher power." Lottery officials are happy to have Friday's record Mega
Millions jackpot fueling ticket sales, but even they caution against spending large amounts per person. "When people ask me, I just tell them that the odds of a lottery game make it a game of fate," said Chuck Strutt, executive director of the Urbandale, Iowa-based Multi-State Lottery Association that oversees the Mega Millions, Powerball and other lotteries. "Just buy a ticket, sit back and see if fate points a finger at you for that day." Related Stories Mega Millions: What to do when you win Lottery's biggest losers: Big wins don't equal better lives How would you spend the Mega Millions jackpot? FoxBusiness: Hedge-fund heavyweight banks seven times the $540M Mega Millions jackpot Mega Millions fever: Why we go nuts over lotto uReport: Send photos and videos of the Mega Millions mania near you Related Video Mega Millions jackpot soars to $500 million Huge payoff creates buying frenzy Related Video Playing the odds in Mega Millions Is there a winning strategy? Astro numerologist Lloyd Strayhorn does the math Related Video A Dollar and a Dream May Get MEGA page 20
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News Wire/
Consumer spending jumps, GDP prospects brighten

(Reuters: Top News)
February. "Fears that the economy was going to slow substantially this By Lucia Mutikani quarter were overdone. The WASHINGTON| Fri Mar 30, economy is doing fairly well, 2012 12:41pm EDT given the headwinds from Europe, ( R e u t e r s ) - U . S . c o n s u m e r rising gasoline prices," said Ryan spending increased by the most in Sweet, a senior economist at seven months in February as Moody's Analytics in West households shook off a rise in Chester Pennsylvania. g a s o l i n e p r i c e s , l e a d i n g U.S. stocks rose on the spending economists to raise forecasts for and sentiment reports, which were first-quarter growth. both stronger than expected, while Even with gasoline around $4 a U.S. Treasury debt prices were gallon, Americans were more little changed. The dollar fell optimistic about the economy's a g a i n s t a b a s k e t o f m a j o r prospects this month than at any c u r r e n c i e s . other time over the past year, With confidence holding up, drawing solace from a firming consumer spending should remain labor market. supported in the first half of the The Commerce Department said year and soften the impact of on Friday that consumer spending cooling factory activity on the rose 0.8 percent in February as economy, analysts said. demand for long-lasting goods, FIRST-QUARTER GDP like automobiles, rose sharply. It F O R E C A S T S R A I S E D also said spending in January was When adjusted for inflation, double the previously reported 0.2 spending advanced 0.5 percent, percent gain. the largest gain since September. Separately, the Thomson Reuters/ That prompted several University of Michigan's final economists, including those at March reading for the overall Goldman Sachs to raise their firstconsumer sentiment index rose to quarter GDP forecasts. Goldman 76.2, the highest level since Sachs now expects GDP to rise at February 2011, from 75.3 in a 2.3 percent annual rate in the
Submitted at 3/30/2012 11:41:30 AM
first quarter, up from 2 percent. The economy expanded at a 3 percent pace in the final three months of 2011 as it got a boost from restocking by businesses, but the inventory buildup has likely pretty much run its course and is not expected to help this quarter. The growth in factory activity in the U.S. Midwest slowed in March, another report showed on Friday, with employment and new orders pulling back from recent lofty levels. The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago's business barometer slipped to 62.2 from 64.0 in February. A reading above 50 indicates expansion in the regional economy. Last month's increase in consumer spending suggested households were taking surging gasoline prices in stride. Prices at the pump averaged $3.97 a gallon in the week to Monday and have risen 62 cents since the start of the year. Earlier this week, Wal-Mart Stores said U.S. sales in the last two months had withstood rising gas prices and a tough economy that worried many of its shoppers.
Economists said the pain at the pump was being mitigated by falling natural gas prices, which have been depressed by abnormally warm weather that has curbed demand for heating. A modest 0.2 percent rise in income helped cover some of the rise in spending last month, but consumers also saved less. The saving rate, the amount of disposable income socked away, dropped to 3.7 percent, the lowest rate since August 2009. Disposable income, that amount left after taxes and inflation, declined for a second straight month, a worrying trend that could eventually put the brakes on spending. "While households want to spend and will raid their bank accounts to support that habit, unless income gains start improving, consumption will have to slow," said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania. Spending on goods meant to last three years or more rose 1.6 percent after advancing 1.4 percent the prior month, a reflection of a pickup in auto sales, which reached their highest
level in four years in February. Spending on services, which accounts for about two thirds of consumption, notched its strongest gain in nearly two years. Despite rising gasoline costs, inflation was largely contained. A price index for personal spending rose 0.3 percent in February after increasing 0.2 percent the prior month. In the 12 months through February, the socalled PCE price index was up 2.3 percent. It increased 2.4 percent in January. A core inflation measure, which strips out food and energy costs, edged up 0.1 percent after rising 0.2 percent in January. In the 12 months through February, core prices rose 1.9 percent, the same as in January. (Reporting By Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Neil Stempleman) This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
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19
It's Light vs. Darkness in Climate-Change Faceoff

(FOXNews.com)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 4:17:00 PM
This image provided by NASA and posted to Twitpic by astronaut Douglas Wheelock on Oct. 31, 2010 shows a night view of the Nile River winding up through the Egyptian desert toward the Mediterranean as seen from the International Space Station. AP Photo/NASA via Twitpic, Douglas Wheelock As millions of people sit in the dark during Earth Hour to call for action against climate change this weekend, a libertarian think tank wants you to fight the power by keeping the lights on. The Competitive Enterprise Institute plans to commemorate Earth Hour 2012 with its "Human Achievement Hour," 60 minutes to gather with friends in a heated home, watch television and surf the Internet instead of dimming or shutting off the lights altogether to draw attention to climate change. "HAH is an annual event meant to recognize and celebrate the fact that this is the greatest time to be alive, and that the reason we have come is that people have been free to use their minds and the resources in their environment to experiment, create, and innovate,"
reads a CEI website on the event scheduled to coincide with Earth Hour 2012 from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. local time Saturday. Participants in the event understand the "necessity to protect the individual persons from government coercion," according to the Washingtonbased think tank. The event is about saluting the
people who "keep the lights on and produce the energy." - Myron Ebell, Competitive Enterprise Institute "Observers of Earth Hour want world leaders to 'do something' about pollution and energy use," the website continues. "What this means is that they want politicians to use legal mandates and punitive taxes to prevent individuals from
freely using resources, hindering our ability to create the solutions and technologies of the future." Myron Ebell, CEI's director of energy and global warming policy, said the event is about saluting the people who "keep the lights on and produce the energy" that makes human achievement possible. More than 5,200 cities in 135
countries worldwide participated in Earth Hour 2011, according to the event's website. It was originally conceived in 2007 in Australia by the World Wide Fund for Nature and was expanded globally the following year. "Earth Hour encourages IT'S page 22
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News Wire/ Technology/
Exclusive: Iran helps Syria ship oil to China: sources
MEGA
You $540MNot Really FBN's Adam Shapiro breaks down the taxes that would be deducted in the Mega Millions Game jackpot for tomorrow's $540 million drawing. Related (Reuters: Top News) Western sanctions against Syria, traditional destination until set up by Iran to evade sanctions. Video its oil sector and state oil firm S e p t e m b e r l a s t y e a r w h e n The M.T. Tour reached the Submitted at 3/30/2012 7:17:54 AM Breaking down Mega Millions Sytrol. E u r o p e a n U n i o n a n d U . S . Syrian port of Tartus at the odds EDITORS' NOTE: Reuters and "The Syrians planned to sell the s a n c t i o n s h a l t e d e x p o r t s . weekend, where it loaded the What is more likely to happen other foreign media are subject to oil directly to the Chinese but they The crude oil cargo, worth 120,000 metric tonne (132,277 than you winning the lottery Iranian restrictions on their ability could not find a vessel," said an around $84 million assuming a tons) cargo of light crude oil, to report, film or take pictures in industry source who added that he discounted price of about $100 a according to the industry source This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is Tehran. had been asked to help Sytrol barrel, could provide Assad with and shiptracking data. C r e d i t : R e u t e r s / M o r t e z a execute the deal but did not take much-needed funds after another Satellite tracking showed the your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read Nikoubazl part. round of sanctions designed to vessel was last spotted near Port the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentBy Jessica Donati The source named the Chinese further isolate the country's ailing Said in Egypt, where is was due to LONDON| Fri Mar 30, 2012 buyer as Zhuhai Zhenrong Corp, a economy were imposed by the arrive on Wednesday. Its final only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to 8:17am EDT state-run company hit by U.S. European Union last week. destination was not available but Wikileaks. (Reuters) - Iran is helping its ally sanctions in January. Syria's Sytrol, which has been on the industry source said the vessel Syria defy Western sanctions by A Z h u h a i Z h e n r o n g the EU and U.S. sanctions list was likely to head to China or providing a vessel to ship Syrian spokeswoman said: "I've never since last year, referred calls to Singapore. oil to a state-run company in heard about this." She declined the country's oil ministry. No one "I was asked to provide an option China, potentially giving the further comment. answered repeated calls by to ship to southern China or government of President Bashar al The U.S. State Department said Reuters at the oil ministry. Iranian Singapore," the source said. -Assad a financial boost worth an in January that Zhuhai Zhenrong authorities were not available to (Reporting by Jessica Donati; estimated $80 million. was the largest supplier of refined comment. Additional reporting by Chen Iran, itself a target of Western petroleum products to Iran, on The source added Sytrol had Aizhu; Editing by Anthony sanctions, is among Syria's closest which the West has imposed enlisted contacts in Venezuela to Barker and Giles Elgood) allies and has promised to do all it sanctions because it suspects help find a vessel that could pick This entry passed through the can to support Assad, recently Tehran of trying to develop up the cargo. The problem was Full-Text RSS service if this is praising his handling of the year- nuclear weapons. ultimately resolved by the Iranian your content and you're reading it long uprising against Assad in China's willingness to start authorities, who sent the tanker on someone else's site, please read which thousands have been killed. importing Syrian oil offers a rare M.T. Tour to take on the cargo. the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentChina has also shielded Assad break in the country's growing The Maltese-flagged tanker is only/faq.php#publishers. Five from foreign intervention, vetoing isolation. owned by shipping firm ISIM Filters recommends: Donate to two Western-backed resolutions Syria, a relatively modest oil Tour Limited, which has been Wikileaks. at the United Nations over the exporter, has been unable to sell identified by the U.S. Department bloodshed, and is not bound by i t s c r u d e i n t o E u r o p e , i t s of Treasury as a front company
Gillmor Gang Live 03.30.12 (TCTV)

Steve Gillmor (TechCrunch)
Gillmor Gang Robert Scoble, Rob La Gesse, and Steve Gillmor. John Taschek, Kevin Marksw, Recording live at 1pm PT.
News Wire/ World News/
21
Wisconsin Man Faces Jail In Deer 'Thrill Kill' Contest

(FOXNews.com)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 4:17:00 PM
A Wisconsin man, who along with his three friends is suspected of illegally slaughtering as many as 100 deer in what prosecutors call an unprecedented "thrill-kill" spree, faces up to six months in jail. Nathan Blaha, 20, of Hillsboro, Wis., and his accomplices allegedly wandered the backroads of Richland County in a pickup truck, stunning deer with a light before shooting them and leaving their carcasses to rot in what he called a contest to get the most deer, according to court documents. "This is the antithesis of hunting," Richland County District Attorney Jennifer Harper told FoxNews.com Thursday. "This is thrill killing." Blaha, and his alleged accomplices, 17-year-old Steven Blaha and 18-year-old Brogan Gillingham, face criminal charges in the December killing spree, when the suspects allegedly shot whitetail deer from the road after dark and without a license. A fourth suspect, a juvenile male who has not been named, was issued citations, Harper said. Steven Blaha can be tried as an adult under Wisconsin law.
According to a criminal complaint obtained by FoxNews.com, the older Blaha, who is believed to have done most of the shooting, confessed to killing 20 to 30 deer this past fall and during the 2011-2012 gun deer season illegally. "The reason I was doing this was because we all kind of had bets who could get the most deer," Blaha said in a written statement to Conservation Warden Mike Nice of Richland Center. But Blaha's co-defendants estimated the number of slain deer to be much greater, telling authorities they believe he illegally shot and killed as many as 100 whitetail deer within the past two years. "There have been cases of shining and road hunting," Harper said,
"but nothing to this extent." Deer shining is the practice of using a high-powered, hand-held light to see the animal at night. The bright light is commonly used by hunters to track the location of deer herds at night when the animals are most active. The 20-year-old Blaha is charged with three counts that each carry a penalty of up to six months in jail and a $1,000 minimum fine. He also faces revocation of hunting rights for the next nine years. The investigation into the illegal deer killings began when private landowners reported hearing gunshots at night and finding deer carcasses on their properties. Licensed deer hunting is a timehonored tradition throughout the scenic landscape of Richland County, and other parts of the
state, during a nine-day period around Thanksgiving. Residents must obtain a license and conform to various regulations and ethical rules. Hunters can use only certain kinds of weapons, for example, and are prohibited from shooting after sundown. The suspected illegal slaughtering of deer by Blaha violated all the rules of hunting, authorities said, and has since outraged many hunters and conservation groups who claim Blaha may have depleted the herd and brought unfair notoriety to the sport. "Some people hear this story and they think thats what hunters do," said Jeffrey Schinkten, president of Whitetails Unlimited, a national conservation organization based in Sturgeon Bay, Wis. "Hes not a hunter. Hes a game thief," Schinkten told FoxNews.com. "I hope they throw the book at him. Its unconscionable." This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
A runaway victory for George Galloway and all praise to Allah Telegraph.co.uk
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:18:52 PM
Telegraph.co.uk A runaway victory for George Galloway and all praise to Allah Telegraph.co.uk George Galloway fought his byelection campaign in Bradford West as a champion of Islam, nakedly appealing to race and faith. A victorious George Galloway: 'A Muslim is somebody who fears only the Judgment Day. I'm ready for that' Photo: PA By Andrew... Ed Miliband: we must learn lessons after Bradford West byelection defeat The Guardian Galloway hails poll victory in Bradford West Financial Times George Galloway wins Bradford West by-election but is this really a victory... Daily Mail BBC News- The IndependentThe Press Association all 1,584 news articles
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World News/
IT'S
individuals, businesses and governments to show leadership on environmental solutions through their actions, to use Earth Hour as a platform to showcase to the world what measures they are taking to reduce their environmental impact," EarthHour.org reads. "Taking the first step is as easy as turning off your lights." Requests for comment from Earth Hour officials on the counter event were not immediately returned. Those who do flip the switch, however, are encouraged only to turn off non-essential lights and not those that affect public safety. Candles to be used in lieu of lights should be 100 percent beeswax or soy varieties,
according to Earth Hour officials, because they are non-toxic and non-allergenic. Print Email Share Comments Recommend Tweet
scientist resigns over mistake Facebook's Zuckerberg takes Tokyo victory lap Share This Article Newsletter Signup Sign up for free e-mail news alerts from FoxNews.com and FoxBusiness.com. Newsletter Signup This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is Related Slideshow your content and you're reading it 7 Gadgets only Mega Millions on someone else's site, please read winners can afford the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentRelated Stories uReport: This only/faq.php#publishers. Five unseasonably warm, dry weather Filters recommends: Donate to has wildfire season in full throttle. Wikileaks. If there's a wildfire by you, send us photos and videos -- but remember to stay safe while uReporting. EXCLUSIVE: How to talk to an NBA star this March Madness weekend'Speed of light'
With 'Look East' Policy Bearing Fruit, India Must Now 'Act East'
(World Politics Review: Articles)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 5:51:00 AM
EURO
strictly enforced balanced-budget rules in an effort to convince markets that their public finances will be sustainable. They also agreed to impose fines on countries that run excessive budget deficits or have large imbalances in their economies. Spain outlined a budget designed to cut the deficit to 5.3 percent of gross domestic product this year from 8.5 percent in 2011, despite a recession. Details will go to parliament on Tuesday but the government said public sector pay would be frozen, ministries' spending would be cut by 16.9 percent and corporate tax revenue
increased by 17.8 percent. "Spain considers that the budget shows the commitment to austerity and will implement it as soon as possible," de Guindos said. He played down a general strike and mass street protests on Thursday that highlighted the scale of opposition to a new labor law making it easier to fire workers and dismantling collective wage bargaining. Hundreds of thousands of Spaniards marched in protest, with violence flaring in Barcelona. (Additional reporting by Annika
Breidthardt and Robin Emmott in Copenhagen, Swaha Pattanaik and Anirban Nag in London; Writing by Jan Strupczewski and Paul Taylor; Editing by Alastair Macdonald) This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Launched in 1991 by then-Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, Indias Look East policy was long regarded by many as lacking in vision and substance. Yet as India and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) prepare to mark two decades of formal relations later this year, there is much to celebrate. Given the recent advances New Delhi has made in its relations with its Southeast Asian neighbors, as well as with ASEAN as an institution, both parties can proudly toast the progress achieved thus far. But they should also use the anniversary as an opportunity to strengthen ties further. India has made significant strides in its relationship with Southeast Asia over the past year or so. The most visible trend has been the bolstering of security ties, a logical step since India shares maritime and land borders with some ASEAN states. Both sides also have common interests in
tackling a wide variety of challenges, including counterterrorism, anti-piracy, counternarcotics, sea-lane protection and a rising China. India's burgeoning naval cooperation with Vietnam is a case in point. With more-frequent military visits, including one by a top-level military delegation last September, New Delhi has moved closer to offering Hanoi naval facilities for training and capacitybuilding. Meanwhile, Indian warships have been permitted to dock at Nha Trang port in southern Vietnam, and Indias ONGC Videsh Limited has been pursuing oil and natural gas exploration in two Vietnamese blocs in the South China Sea, despite Chinese displeasure. ... This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
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23
The Realist Prism: Global Leaders Teen killer aimed to Left Guessing Who the 'Real' U.S. destroy peace President Will Be in 2013 process - BBC News
(World Politics Review: Articles)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 5:49:00 AM
immediate and drastic consequences for the U.S. economy in the months prior to Despite all the uproar generated the November ballot. by President Barack Obamas Moreover, a campaigner cannot open-mike comments to Russian be a good statesman, particularly President Dmitry Medvedev at the in an environment where a nuclear summit in Seoul, no one willingness to search for mutually should be shocked that election- acceptable solutions is attacked by year calculations play a major role domestic opponents as weakness. in international politics. It is The kind of compromise that perfectly understandable that, in permitted the New START treaty gearing up for what will be a to move forward, for instance, tough and challenging re-election would be impossible for Obama campaign, Obama would prefer to repeat over the coming months, not to have to deal with crises so Moscow does not stand to gain now if they can be postponed until much by pressing hard for after the ballots have been cast. concessions over missile defense This same logic has driven efforts at the forthcoming NATO summit to persuade Israel not to launch a i n C h i c a g o . O f a l l p e o p l e , strike on Iran, which might have Vladimir Putin, set to return to the
Russian presidency in May, should understand this dynamic perfectly. His harsh attacks in recent months on U.S. policy, which caused some Western analysts to declare the demise of the U.S.-Russia reset, were part and parcel of an electoral strategy designed to strengthen Putins nationalist credentials. ... This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.

Submitted at 3/30/2012 2:47:40 PM
BBC News Teen killer aimed to destroy peace process BBC News Teenage killer John Paul Wootton was born during the peace process in Northern Ireland but grew up determined to destroy it. Two months before his 18th birthday, he killed police constable Stephen Carroll.
Wootton became part of the new generation of... Pair found guilty of PSNI Constable Stephen Carroll murder Metro Widow 'pities' policeman's killers The Press Association Northern Ireland: two jailed over police officer's murder The Guardian Daily Mail- Belfast TelegraphTelegraph.co.uk all 546 news articles
Akali minister gets 5-yr jail for daughter's abduction - Hindustan Times
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:26:15 PM
Hindustan Times Akali minister gets 5-yr jail for daughter's abduction
Hindustan Times Bibi Jagir Kaur flashing a victory sign after declaration of results in Bholath. (HT photo) A special CBI court sentenced Punjab minister Bibi Jagir Kaur to five
years rigorous imprisonment on Friday for conspiring in forcible abortion and abduction of... Jagir Kaur gets 5 yrs jail in daughter's murder case Indian Express
Punjab Minister gets 5-yr jail Daily Pioneer Punjab minister to move HC in daugher's abortion case IBNLive.com Chandigarh Tribune- The Hindu-
Tehelka all 105 news articles
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World News/ Technology/
Earth Hour: environmentalists say there's renewed activism Toronto Star

Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:24:54 PM
Toronto Star Earth Hour: environmentalists say there's renewed activism Toronto Star Leslie Scrivener Feature Writer Related More on Earth Hour Earth Hour anthem sends strong message Carbon-cutting tips Star video: Airsick (HD) Where do you stand on Earth Hour?
Optimistically, with environmental groups buoyed by renewed support from a... Our hour of need Bundaberg News Mail Lights Out At 8:30-9:30 pm Manila Bulletin Turning off light is catching on Clarence Valley Daily Examiner gulfnews.com- Sydney Morning Herald- BBC News all 563 news articles
Bowen considers recommendations - BigPond News

BEML booked; Tatra boss grilled - Deccan Herald

Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:41:47 PM
minister says the government will consider the recommendations of... BigPond News 90-day release not always Bowen c o n s i d e r s possible: Bowen ABC Online recommendations Govt asked to limit detention BigPond News times The Daily Telegraph Federal Immigration Minister Chris Bowen says government Chris Bowen says the government won't front court if asylum seeker wants to see fewer people in in detention... Perth Now i m m i g r a t i o n d e t e n t i o n a n d The Australian believes they should remain there all 82 news articles for as little time as possible. The
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:05:55 PM
HC fire singes Bidari Deccan Herald

Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:27:24 PM
India Today BEML booked; Tatra boss grilled Deccan Herald The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday registered a case in connection with the supply of all-terrain Tatra trucks through state-owned Bharat Earth Movers Ltd (BEML) to the Army and questioned the chairman of the Vectra group,... MoD says has been looking into BEML-Tatra truck deal Indian Express BEML dismisses chief's remarks Hindustan Times Raids on BEML headquarters The Hindu Daily Pioneer- Business Standard - Daily Mail all 273 news articles
Firstpost HC fire singes Bidari Deccan Herald In a major setback to the State government, the High Court on Friday upheld the Central
Administrative Tribunal (CAT) order and quashed the appointment of Shankar Mahadev Bidari as Director-General and Inspector General of Police (DG&IGP). High Court sets aside Karnataka DGP's selection The Hindu DGP worse than
Gaddafi,Saddam: HC Indian Express Karnataka DGP Shankar Bidari worse than Muammar Gaddafi: High court Times of India Hindustan Times- IBNLive.com (TREND HUNTER - The Latest all 18 news articles Trends)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 10:45:06 AM
Youth-Determining Apps - Age Recognition Software can Estimate How Old a Person Is (TrendHunter.com)
age recognition software can now determine whether or not the cardholder is as old as the person on the ID. The website had previously specialized in...
( TrendHunter.com) Fake ID wielders be warned: Face.com's
Technology/
25
How to Monitor Your Facebook Network

Alicia Eler (ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:30:00 PM
We have truly entered a socialnetworked monitoring society. So keep an eye on your Facebook friends. In 2009, Zuckerberg declared the age of privacy over. By making Facebook user information public by default, he really did mean it. He later backpedaled and removed the default public-facing status update, but the age of privacy was dead long before that. Social-media monitoring service Secure.me aims to help users keep track of the types of information they are sharing, and with whom. "We introduced Secure.me at the end of last year, and we had a vision that social networks were the next step in the security IT industry," Secure.me Co-Founder Christian Sigl tells ReadWriteWeb. "Facebook is close to one billion users. It's getting more and more important to get an overview of what you share on Facebook." Sponsor Your Facebook friends, like your real-life friends, are a reflection of you. Facebook users should proceed with caution, especially as the defriending trend continues. Not to mention the fact that potential employers are asking job candidates for their Facebook passwords; the House GOP shot down a bill to prevent this from happening, essentially making it
possible for employers to get away with super-stalking their potential employees. What are users to do aside from either shutting down their Facebook profiles completely, or cleaning them up significantly? Monitoring service Secure.me seeks to help users gain more control over their Facebook information. It initially only seemed useful for parents who wanted to monitor their children's activities on Facebook. In light of the ever-changing Facebook privacy concerns, however, it has become clear that users need to monitor their own profiles as well. Secure.me is free and easy to sign up for. I decided to test it out using my Facebook profile as the guinea pig. The Summary overview gives users three main analyses: privacy, profile and network. The privacy analysis scoured my Facebook profile and returned information that already seemed obvious: The fact that I chose to share my hometown, location, education, work, bio, some family members and political views, could compromise the way people choose to view me. Listing family members seems like the riskiest thing to do: This exposes your biological family to Facebook and your social network. Yet this is exactly the type of information that Facebook encourages users to share. After all, it is the information that most easily
was the fact that one of my Facebook friends has been posting a harmful link; it's from a virus that's posting spammy status updates that say "View today's photo of the day!" along with a link to a harmful app. The Facebook Photo Paparazzi Effect The most useful aspect of Secure.me is the biometric facerecognition tool. Google+ made this useful feature optional to users months ago. No such tool groups and identifies us, and helps exists on Facebook. It does tell us connect with other users. you if you've been tagged in a The profile analysis discovered Facebook photo by a friend, and it that the words "art," "pelvis" and gives you the option to approve "tattoo" were cause for concern. tags manually before the images Overall, the language that appear on your wall. But Secure.me identified on my Facebook does not notify you if profile was "positive," which is photos of you are uploaded by perhaps a better indicator of p e o p l e w h o a r e n o t y o u r overall profile fitness than Facebook friends. The good news individual posts. The third option, is that if someone with which you network analysis, brought up are not Facebook friends uploads nearly 100 questionable posts, all a photo of you, they won't be able of which either had to do with to tag you - though they can write politics or keywords like "idiot," your name into the photo caption. "porn" (as in, food porn), or other Still, that image of you can float types of profanity - which is not around Facebook, unbeknownst to necessarily a bad thing, according you - and if you leave your house to Secure.me. (as in, have a life), chances are On the whole, the service says people will recognize you in that that the mood of my friend photo. network is positive. Every user I like to call this the Facebook k n o w s t h e i r F a c e b o o k Paparazzi Effect. Think about it: community, and what to expect Are real-life celebrities notified from them. I don't care if my when a trashy tabloid takes their friends use profanity, so long as photo? Of course not. And then its tasteful. The most useful the glossy hits the newsstands information gained from this with incriminating text alongside analysis of nearly 10,000 posts a random photo of the celeb.
Admit it: You've gazed at and even purchased these magazines. We love our celebrity gossip. In the social-networked era when everyone gets their 15 minutes of social media fame, we're all mini celebs in the eyes of our Facebook friends. One thing I found odd about this: Secure.me only takes into account photos of you that are actually of your face. There's a culture on Facebook of tagging people in photos to let them know about something, to invite them out to dinner, to send a shoutout, or just to acknowledge them. When I tested out the biometric facerecognition tool, I also discovered a few photos in which I'd been tagged as inanimate objects: a pink flower, a printer, a lawn ornament. Oftentimes it is the personality quirks and the language of Facebook subcultures that reveal more about a user's personality than the more obvious photos, activities and information shared. In the meantime, be selective about whom you befriend, and what types of slang you use within your Facebook subcultures. Your friends are a reflection of you. Images via Shutterstock and Flickr user mtsofan. Discuss
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Technology/
Readability Is the Middleman Nobody Needs

Jon Mitchell (ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 2:45:00 PM
We don't know where Web publishing is going yet, but we do know this: People want control over where and when they do their reading. The Read It Later blog published convincing proof of that over a year ago, and many an iPad has sold since then. It's all about the tablet, especially in conjunction with the smartphone. The future publishing business is literally in consumers' hands, and they won't give it back. We've tried paywalls and consumer surveys. We've ruined our websites with ads for unexciting native apps. We'll even try to fix advertising. But let's face it: The only future that works will be the one consumers want. Sponsor What the People Want It seems they want a future where they can strip out everything but the stuff they want - especially ads - and save it for later. This is still in the early-adopter phase, but there's a soaring market for apps that provide this service. Ad blocking used to be an edge case. Nerds with Firefox were never going to pay you anyway. Just write them off. But now it's available for anywhere from $5 to free in the local App Store, and it's selling like... well, iPads. These apps walk a fine line. If they threaten publishers' fragile businesses, that industry spooks easily. It will find some awful
way to block content from being saved for later, and everyone will be worse off. Different Approaches Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper, has always been cautious. While his competitor, Read It Later, took the liberty of
condensing multipage articles into a single page when saved, Instapaper did not. This is a common (read: awful) trick sites use to garner maximum page views, and everybody hates it. Read It Later was doing a service for its customers, but it risked
spooking the publishers. Now there's a new game in town. Readability was always a weird service. It provided cleaned-up Web views of articles, and in order to get the full-fledged service, it asked users to subscribe for a small monthly fee.
Readability would collect money on publishers' behalf, and if they signed up, that money would be distributed to them proportionate to the number of articles saved in Readability. READABILITY page 29
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27
Should you buy a laptop now, or wait?

Scott Stein (CNET News)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:57:31 PM
The great debate: buy a laptop now, or wait? With Intel's next-gen CPUs arriving late spring/early summer, and Windows 8 coming to new PCs sometime around October, it's easy to recommend that laptop shoppers hold off on any new purchases until one or both of those are available. Or, is it? We've opened up the question for point/counterpoint debate, with Scott taking the position that you should definitely not buy a laptop right now, and Dan saying we shouldn't be slaves to a release calendar, and just buy what you want, when you want it. Scott: Of course you should wait for a laptop. Isn't it clear? Intel's Ivy Bridge processors are just around the corner. Nvidia has a new graphics platform for laptops. Windows 8 may still be a ways off, but the underlying hardware is set for a significant CPU upgrade in a matter of mere months, which will affect future Apple laptops as much as Windows ones. Sure, you can buy a perfectly good laptop right now...but why would you, when the benefits of Ivy Bridge seem significant, especially for integrated graphics? I wouldn't have recommended that someone buy an iPad in February, and for the same reason I wouldn't recommend someone buy a laptop
now, unless they don't mind owning a product that feels outdated by May. If you wait, you'll get more computer for the same money. Plus, there's a good chance that some significant redesigns will emerge, with thin ultrabooks on the rise and Windows 8 emphasizing touchscreens and larger touchpads. Dan: The first thing you learn in this
industry is that there's always going to be something newer and better (and possibly more expensive) -- and it'll usually be released just as you're pulling the shrink wrap off the gadget you just bought. Case in point -- on the very day last fall that Apple announced a series of modest MacBook Pro updates, a reader wrote in to ask if they should get the new model, or if an even newer one was right
around the corner. My long-time rule of thumb has been: if you want or need something like a new laptop, just go out and get it. Otherwise, you'll spend your entire life worrying about whether something newer or shinier is about to come out. Besides, the next-gen Intel Core i -series processors don't look like they're going to be as revolutionary as the last leap. Integrated graphics will be better
for casual gaming, but they've said that about every Intel update for years -- and gaming still isn't great on systems without a dedicated GPU. And, Windows 8 has some fun widgets and different views, but how many people do you know still rocking Windows XP (hint, a lot)? It turns out that an OS update is one of the things a lot of people find they SHOULD page 29
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Technology/
Four Microsoft Courier alternatives for Android

Chris Burns (SlashGear)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:26:14 PM
This week were hearing quite a bit about a couple of applications for iPad, one of which was created by the folks who were once going to bring you the Microsoft Courier but what about Android? As it turns out, these two applications for iPad, Tapose and Paper dont currently have one whole heck of a lot of choice when it comes to such sleekness as Paper. That said, there are four apps out there at least that will bring you drawing power for the time being with updates to each on the way soon, of course. What youre going to be looking at are the following: Notepad by Catch, Evernote (with Skitch), Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile, and Note Everything. This list is of course limited to apps that can be downloaded and used by ANY Android tablet. Each of these applications has its own set of pros as well as some cons, most of the cons being layout and user interface diversity. What youll find is that these apps strengths lie in their ability to connect with one
another, the cloud, and essentially any other app in your library, as is very often the case with Android in general. Evernote with Skitch has a nice ability to bring you into a deep web of connectivity Evernote is known for that kind of excellence. Autodesks Sketchbook Mobile is made more for a smartphone and isnt quite optimized for the tablet sized screen yet, but offers the most diverse set of paintbrush abilities. Notepad by Catch and Note Everything both have the ability to very easily help you collect a diverse set of notes at the tip of a hat, and both share quite well as it true with the rest of the apps for the most part. Sketchbook Mobile will cost you[$1.99 on the Google Play App Store], Evernote[is Free] and Skitch[is Free] as well, Notepad by Catch[is Free], and Note Everything[is Free]. Of course several of these apps also have upgraded versions and in-app addons that will cost you extra cash, but the basic functions are free for all. It should be plain to see that this selection doesnt quite add up to what the iPad currently has for
patent application seems farfetched on Jul 9th 2010 Booq Cobra Courier XS iPad Messenger Bag Available Now for $145 on Sep 23rd 2010 Microsoft Courier-style pen & touch patent application filed on Oct 2nd 2010 Microsoft Courier style comes to tablets with Tapose app on Apr 28th 2011 Microsoft axes Courier-creating Pioneer Studios on May 20th 2011 Bill Gates stuck knife in Courier tablet tip insiders on Nov 1st 2011 Apple rejects Tapos iPad app for Microsoft Courier fans on Jan 13th 2012 Tapos hits iPad: Courier in app form on Mar 28th 2012 notetaking and otherwise perfectly optimized mediacollecting apps. Wed like to encourage developers (as well as those in a position to support developers) to create apps with much more diverse abilities than these and in the very near future! And you readers out there: if you know of any other applications that you feel should be added to this list, dont be shy let us know! Story Timeline Libretto W100: has Toshiba delivered Courier? on Jun 21st 2010 Microsoft Courier Patent Acceptance Opens Old Wounds on Jun 30th 2010 Microsoft page-curl Courier Four Microsoft Courier alternatives for Android is written by Chris Burns& originally posted on SlashGear. 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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READABILITY
SHOULD
This was presumptuous. It sought to impose a business model on Web publishing and said "We've got your money. If you want it, sign up." Some publishers didn't take kindly to that. Readability recently launched its iOS and Android apps, and its naive stance toward the publishing industry has only been bolstered. In November, when it announced the iOS apps, Readability made the service free, giving it a chance to scale up to threaten the other established apps, and it made the subscription optional. The Middleman How's that going? Not well at all. Ben Brooks, an independent tech writer who is pretty much the ideal Readability publisher, reports that Readability revenues have plummeted since the app went free. But that's a long-term problem. It's still worth trying the experiment. The more immediate problem is that Readability plays fast and loose with its links. A few weeks ago, I discovered that links shared from Readability go straight to the Readability view on the iPad. It doesn't load the original page at all. I'm not moaning about page
views here. That's not my point. I'm a blogger, but I don't care about blogging nearly as much as I care about reading and sharing. The problem with this is that it breaks sharing. It forces mobile users to use Readability instead of their link-saving app of choice, which might be Instapaper, a service that does treat publishers with more distance and respect. It might be Pinboard or another bookmarking service. A shared link should always, always, always be the original URL, so that users can do with it as they please. Instead, Readability skipped ads for publishers and showed ads for itself instead. Even on the desktop, though it loads the original page below, it puts the linked story in a Readability.com frame, so the URL still isn't right. Embattled Readability CTO Chris Dary said he and the team would think more about "mobilized" views, which apparently include tablets. In response to a complaint on AppAdvice today, Readability decided to do the right thing and share real links in the meantime, while it "come[s] up with something more graceful for both the user and the publisher."
Creating Value vs. Siphoning It Off The future of publishing is up to the customer. No other service should interpose itself. The margins of this business are thin enough. Instapaper does not do this, and Arment is clear about why. He creates a new kind of value for consumers by giving them a place to save things they want to read and share them later. No publisher page views are lost, and shared stories link to the publisher's site. My concern with implementations like appadvice.com/appnn/2012/03/... is that it make publishers think ALL such services are pageviewhostile. Marco Arment (@marcoarment) March 30, 2012 Readability has taken some brash actions. It's good of the company to reconsider at least some of its unwelcome innovations. Remember what happened to Zite? No? Exactly. Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock Discuss
can live just fine without. Scott: When you're this close to a new product release--as we are with Ivy Bridge, which should hit somewhere between late April and May--you'd kick yourself if you bought a last-gen model with less impressive specs for the same price. You get more each year, and not just in terms of processor: sometimes, that means more RAM or more hard drive space for your money, too. You can't chase new technology forever, but don't be a stubborn idiot and ignore an upgrade that's literally around the corner. I guess if you're desperate for a computer now and your laptop is just plain dead, go ahead. What's the hurry, can't wait a month or two? Newer operating systems and software have a way of eating up resources, and using them on new hardware, rather than installing them on your current system, can always help stave off the Spinning Wheel of Death just a bit longer. Dan: Yeah, Ivy Bridge is reportedly coming in April/May, but only for the high-end quad-core versions. The everyday computers are coming even later than that, and who knows when your favorite laptop is actually going to get an upgrade -- some PC makers take six months or more to roll out new models. Finally, here's the unpleasant
truth about most people's laptop habits. Today's laptops are more than enough for what you need. Last year's laptops are also fine. You can probably even go back another year or two before that. Why? Because you're not doing genome sequencing or running a CGI render farm. You're on Twitter. You're sending a few emails. You're watching Netflix. Maybe you're playing the latest farm simulator on Facebook. For years, people have bought too much laptop, and it's time we all stop worrying about specs, and start worrying about finding a laptop that works for your lifestyle, whether it's one that's easy to type on, light enough to throw in your bag, or one that just looks cool. What do you think? Should someone in the market for a new laptop buy now? Or wait for next-gen CPUs or Windows 8? Vote in our poll, or let us know what you think in the comments section below. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
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Technology/ Policy/
Inside Best Buy: An Anonymous Store Manager Speaks About Recent Changes
John Biggs (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 1:56:53 PM
Twitter Takes Tweetdeck Offline After Apparent Bug Opens Up Access To Accounts
Colleen Taylor (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:46:49 PM
of the job cuts were almost exclusively at the corporate level. In an organization as From the outside, we early Byzantine as Best Buy simply adopters see Best Buy as a spreading news of the cuts will dinosaur in a dying world. The take a week as corporate talks to company recently announced the management, who in turn talks to closing of 50 stores in the U.S. the districts the move to cut the and 400 layoffs, mostly in fat heartened his employees. corporate. It would be easy to say Best Buy will also open 100 or so Good riddance and ignore the new Best Buy Mobile stores with slow decline of bricks and mortar, a smaller footprint. There they but I wanted to speak to someone will sell higher margin items like inside the company. phones and mobile devices. I got a hold of a manager who I t s a n $ 8 0 0 m i l l i o n c o s t wished to remain anonymous and reduction, he said. Employees was considered a solid and will also be part of a newer profit dedicated employee. I asked him sharing structure, essentially what its like inside his store right raising wages. now. A lot of these trims are Basically whats going on is that happening so they can expand the we got to work and heard about appliance market and the high end the 50 store closings and we computer market along with started wondering about job custom integration and whole security. Immediately my reaction home networking, he said. Im was Oh, crap, what am I going to really excited about that. That do? he said. theyre expanding that from West Management told the employees Coast to East Coast is a huge that the stores to be closed were opportunity. bottom performers and that all Even the long-daunting price
Geoff Evason (@gevason) March 30, 2012 And demonstrated that he could Twitter has taken its Tweetdeck access another account by sending differential between online stores and physical Best Buy shops is app offline after an apparent bug this Tweet: slowly changing. For example, h a s p o s s i b l y g i v e n s o m e test Tackleberry Showroom t h e r e i s a n e w u n i l a t e r a l Tweetdeck users access to others accounts. (@gotackleberry) March 30, 2012 merchant retail pricing rule appearing in some distribution A Tweetdeck user in Sydney, Other accounts may well be contracts which means a merchant Australia, Geoff Evanson, says he affected, as Twitter quickly shut cannot sell an item below the d i s c o v e r e d t o d a y h e w a s off access to Tweetdeck entirely UMRP without facing a fine. This somehow able to access hundreds to look into an issue. Theyve means Best Buy and Amazon o f o t h e r a c c o u n t s t h r o u g h offered us no comment other than would both be forced to sell at the Tweetdeck. Here is an email he their Tweet: sent us: TweetDeck is currently down UMRP and no lower. Works in huge favor for brick Im a tweetdeck user. A bug has while we look into an issue. given me access to hundreds of A p o l o g i e s for the and mortar stores, he said. twitter and facebooks account i n c o n v e n i e n c e . While he feels comfortable and he hasnt been fired, hes hedging through tweetdeck. I didnt do (@TweetDeck) March 30, 2012 his bets by going back to school. anything special to make this Tweetdeck is an app beloved by Everyone was nervous, he said. happen. I just logged in one day, the power user set for posting Once they found the facts, they the account was was slower than a n d m a n a g i n g m e s s a g e s t o got more comfortable. Were normal, and I could post from T w i t t e r . T w e e t d e c k w a s previously a standalone company basically repositioning ourselves many more accounts. He also Tweeted about the before it was acquired by Twitter to be more like Starbucks. More, in May 2011 for some $40 smaller stores and a focus on situation here: Hey @ Tweetdeck A bug in your million. premium items. It did shake me up a little bit, he software has given me access to This is breaking news, so well o f be updating this post with more said. Just in case something h u n d r e d s accounts.#YouShouldLookIntoTh information as we get it. doesnt go right I want to be able at/cc @ Twitter http://t.co/ to do something else. 9UsLgnN9
The World in Photos This Week - An FP Slide Show

(Foreign Policy)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 1:12:54 PM
French police hunt suspected Islamists, and a Tongan king is laid to rest. MARCH 30, 2012 The Pope dons a sombrero, This entry passed through the
Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-
only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Technology/
31
Take that, Dr. Dre: AT&T ships $99 nonBeats wireless speaker
David Carnoy (CNET News)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:54:18 PM
The $99.99 AT&T Loudspeak'r is now available. (click to enlarge). If you've been watching American Idol, you've probably seen a commercial or two for the $399 Beats by Dr. Dre Beatbox Portable audio system, which allows you to stream music wirelessly from your Bluetoothenabled smartphone or tablet and is available exclusively through AT&T stores. But few people know that AT&T actually has its own portable Bluetooth speaker sans Beats logo. And it's shipping now. It's called the LoudSpeak'r. No, that's not a typo. The LoudSpeak'r follows in the footsteps of the Casio G'zOne (see 20 worst-named tech products for
reference), which also incorporates a wandering apostrophe, but at least LoudSpeak'r is easier to figure out how to pronounce (I'm going with a Brett Favre-like pronunciation for the end). Anyway, the AT&T LoudSpeak'r is a very compact Bluetooth speaker that's designed to compete with the Jawbone Jambox which retails for about $75 more. It's actually a lot closer in design to the $99 Logitech Mini Boombox, but it feels a little bit better built than the Logitech and has a matte finish (the speaker is available in black or white). I'm still working my way through a full review but it sounds pretty decent and like the Jambox and the Logitech Mini Boombox, it has a built-in microphone and speakerphone functionality, which
you'd expect from an AT&Tbranded speaker that will be sold in its stores starting around April 15. It's also worth mentioning that the speaker charges via USB and is rated for 10 hours of use on a single charge.
Dozens more sub $100 portable Bluetooth speakers will be hitting the market this year and Jawbone is expected to release a new Jambox in 2012. I'll let you know how the LoudSpeak'r stacks up in my full review, but at first listen it
definitely plays loud for its size, offers reasonable clarity, and some bass. Like all these small Bluetooth speakers, you're not going to want to play Skrillex at high volumes (unless you enjoy torture), but it can do just fine with less bass-intensive material. The backside of the unit shows an audio input for non Bluetooth devices (click to enlarge). This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
The 2012 Wired 100: Who should we include?

David Rowan
entrepreneurs and creatives with the power to touch the rest of our lives. Our only rules are that they Here at Wired HQ we're busy h a v e t o h a v e a s t r o n g U K drawing up 2012's Wired 100 -- connection, if not a base here -and we want your help. The and that we are measuring their Wired 100 ranks those who define influence today, rather than the Wired world: influential h i s t o r i c a l l y . F r o m v e n t u r e designers, innovators, investors, capitalists to startup mentors, artSubmitted at 3/30/2012 11:37:00 AM
world connectors or the TwitterA -list, the Wired 100 identifies the
behind-the-scenes power-players who are shaping digital life in 2012. Just as in previous years, we have crowdsourced recommendations from more than 120 experts: writers and policy-makers, investors and social entrepreneurs, trend analysts and
CEOs. We have also invited all of last year's Wired 100 to participate in updating our list. Now we want to hear from you. By: David Rowan, Continue reading...
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Technology/
Apple vaults past Google to top Japanese brand survey

Josh Lowensohn (CNET News)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:43:54 PM
Apple's retail store in Ginza Tokyo, one of seven stores Apple has in the country. Apple is the top brand in Japanese consumers' minds, according to the results of an annual survey that was published today. Japan's Nikkei business daily today released the results of its 2011 survey on brands, and Apple came out on top. Trailing it was Google, which was last year's leader, as well as other tech brands like YouTube and Panasonic. In last year's list, Apple came in 11th. The online survey, which was done by Nikkei's consulting business, polled around 52,000 people aged 18 and older, and ran
during the last two months of 2011. Besides consumers, the survey also targeted brands that cater to other businesses, where Apple came in second to automaker Toyota. Notably missing from the short list of consumer brands are Japanese giants Sony and Nintendo. For the past two year
two companies have been in the top 10 of the business to business survey. Here's the listing of companies in the top 10 from the consumer study, with last year's ranking in parentheses: 1. (11) Apple 2. (1) Google 3. (2) Uniqlo
4. (7) YouTube 5. (6) Disney 6. (4) McDonalds 7. (3) Panasonic 8. (5) Nissan 9. (39) Dyson 10. (9) Rakuten This is the latest brand ranking list in recent months where Apple's knocked another major
technology company from the top spot. Last month, a list from marketing strategy firm Davis Brand Capital -- which was not based on consumer polling -placed Apple on top of other companies including IBM, which had held the lead for two years running. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Daily Update for March 30, 2012

Steven Sande (TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog)
quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple Submitted at 3/30/2012 4:15:00 PM stories by clicking the inline It's the TUAW Daily Update, player (requires Flash) or the nonyour source for Apple news in a Flash link below. To subscribe to convenient audio format. You'll the podcast for daily listening get all the top Apple stories of the through iTunes, click here. day in three to five minutes for a No Flash? Click here to listen.
Subscribe via RSS Daily Update for March 30, 2012
originally appeared on TUAW The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 16:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Source| Permalink| Email this| Comments
Technology/
33
Lantronix Has iPad Print Server Solution

David Strom (ReadWriteWeb)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 2:30:25 PM
Once in a blue moon, I actually get a device that does what it says it does and works effortlessly out of the box. This is one of those rare times. If your company has iPads and other iThings on its network, one of the frustrations is not being able to print from them. In the past, you needed a printer that was designed for iPrint (such as the HP Envy Series we reviewed here). Now Lantronix has its xPrintServer that can do the job for any network-connected printer. And it is so easy that it will take you longer to read how to do it than to actually implement it. Sponsor The print server is about the size of an iPhone, and has two connectors: an RJ-45 for your Ethernet network and a power plug. Plug it in and, in a few moments, you are good to go. If your app has a print dialog icon, you can now start printing from your iThing. The print server will auto-discover any network
printer that is on the same network subnet. If you want to print to another subnet, you will have to go through some manual configuration, using the printer's built-in Web server. If you have iPhones, you will of course need to turn on their Wi-Fi radios and connect to the same subnet to see the print server. Lantronix has this funny short video with the loveable IT guy featured here. As he says, "Try it now." The box costs $150 and is available from numerous online electronics retailers. Discuss
Google Maps gets realtime traffic

Rue Liu (SlashGear)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:16:28 PM
Google Maps has now been updated to give you more accurate estimates of travel duration by using real-time traffic datas. Now when you use Google Maps to get directions, it will provide you with two estimated durations, one without traffic and one based on the current traffic conditions. Previously, Google had introduced a similar feature that could estimate travel time, but
that was based on historic rather than real-time traffic data. It also provided two scenarios, but the traffic data was based on average conditions for an area instead of the actual conditions at the time of your travel. The new feature utilizes data gathered from Android users that enable the My Location feature through Google Maps on their devices. The more Android users that participate the more traffic data Google Maps is able to collect in order to provide the real
-time estimates. So its possible that you may not see current traffic information for a certain route because no data has been collected from any Android users on that route. [ via Google Blog] Google Maps gets real-time traffic is written by Rue Liu& originally posted on SlashGear. 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
34
Technology/ Policy/
Apple is Japan's top consumer brand for the first time

Steven Sande (TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:30:00 PM
The Land of Lady Liberty An FP Slide Show

GEOFFREY HILLER (Foreign Policy)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:40:38 PM
The iPad, iPhone and other Apple products have become so popular in Japan that Apple is now Japan's top consumer brand. Just three years ago, Apple was barely visible in the #64 spot in Nikkei's annual brand ranking. Last year, Apple had made it to 11th place, and this year the company skyrocketed to the top of the list. Apple bumped Google from the top spot, which should make Eric Schmidt's weekend an unhappy one.
The top ten list follows, with last year's ranking in parentheses: (11) Apple (1) Google (2) Uniqlo (7) YouTube
(6) Disney (4) McDonalds (3) Panasonic (5) Nissan (39) Dyson (9) Rakute
Business respondents put Apple in second place, with Japan's Toyota in the numero uno position. Not only did Apple make the top brand list as a company, but the iPad and two other products are in the top 40 as individual brands. Apple is Japan's top consumer brand for the first time originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Source| Permalink| Email this| Comments
A photographer returns to Burma to find a nation transformed. BY GEOFFREY HILLER| MARCH 30, 2012 This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Global Payments hacked, 50,000 cardholders at risk

Rue Liu (SlashGear)
customers and asserted that their own systems are still secure. MasterCard has hired an Global Payments, a third-party independent data security firm to payment card processor, has been look into the hack, while Visa has hacked this morning, according to given the affected account number sources who spoke to the WSJ. to the banks so that steps can be The security breach puts nearly taken to protect those customers 50,000 Visa and MasterCard and to help find the hacker. including Discover and American holders at risk. Both major credit However, the breach affects all Express. card issuing agencies have alerted m a j o r c r e d i t c a r d b r a n d s , Although the alerts were sent out
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:44:19 PM
today, the estimated window for the breach is between January 21 and February 25. Its not clear if
any accounts have already seen fraudulent charges as a result of the hack and investigations are still in the early stages. Global Payments hacked, 50,000 cardholders at risk is written by Rue Liu& originally posted on SlashGear. 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Technology/
35
Kid Icarus: Uprising gets difficulty right for families
Christian World Adoption is one of the largest international adoption agencies in the United Steven Sande (TUAW - The of the Cunard "Queens", which States. Since 1991, Christian Unofficial Apple Weblog) include the huge Queen Mary 2 World Adoption has placed and the Queen Elizabeth. The thousands of children from Submitted at 3/30/2012 4:00:00 PM latter ship also has iRange, which Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and TUAW readers who are setting is a seagoing Apple Store for Latin America. These children Andy Robertson Mario Kart, Super Mario 3D s a i l a b o a r d t h e M S Q u e e n those who want to pick up a Mac, now enjoy the love and security of Land, Pilotwings and Starfox in Victoria will enjoy the fact that iPad, or iPod while cruising. Submitted at 3/30/2012 11:39:00 AM a forever family. Christian World the first year of its life the 3DS the cruise ship is now outfitted iMacs Ahoy! Cunard Line opens A d o p t i o n c u r r e n t l y o f f e r s I didn't play the original '86 Kid now finds itself the recipient of with the iStudy featuring 18 Apple iStudy on board the MS adoption programs in Bulgaria, Icarus on the NES or the '91 Kid Icarus: Uprising. One may iMacs running Mac OS X and Q u e e n V i c t o r i a o r i g i n a l l y China, Ethiopia, Guatemala, follow up on the Game Boy but I wonder quite what the new (cough) Microsoft Windows 7. a p p e a r e d o n T U A W - T h e Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia had heard about them on a handheld did to receive such The iStudy is used for various Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, and Ukraine. Explore our website number of occasions, spoken of in f a v o u r f r o m t h e G o d s o f educational courses on the ship, 30 Mar 2012 16:00:00 EST. to learn more about international glowing terms by gaming friends. Nintendo, but actually this is as and also serves as the QV's Please see our terms for use of adoption. Then, when youre Kid Icarus is an unusual game as much about its mortality as internet lounge. feeds. ready, call our friendly adoption much for its lack of sequels as for anything else. With the Vita hot WIth the addition of the iStudy Source| Permalink| Email this| c o u n s e l o r , t o l l f r e e , a t its unusual combination of on its heels the 3DS has to program to the Queen Victoria, Comments 1.888.97ADOPT. gameplay. Not many franchises succeed and Kid Icarus is the there are now iMacs on all three of this stature can rest easy for 20 latest volley from the heavens to years without being pulled out for ensure this happens. another lap around the gaming By: Andy Robertson, Edited by: coliseum. Nate Lanxon Continue reading... Having been showered with
iMacs Ahoy! Cunard Line opens Apple iStudy on board the MS Queen Victoria
Christian World Adoption

36
Technology/ Economy/ Sports/
Canada Eliminates The Penny

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Mish Shedlock) (Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:06:00 PM
Flickering sunlight illuminates 'Sunbeam Type' installation

Katie Scott
Submitted at 3/30/2012 11:13:00 AM
Russian designer Ruslan Khasanov has taken light dispersion, similar to the reflections cast on a ceiling by a swimming pool, and turned it into a flickering installation. He's called it the Sunbeam Type. The designer, who is based in Ekaterinburg in Russia, played
In a welcome, albeit long overdue attack of common sense, Canada Eliminates Penny Costing Penny-and-a-Half to Make. Canada will withdraw the penny from circulation this year, saving taxpayers about C$11 million ($11 million) annually and forcing retailers to round prices to the nearest nickel, the government announced in its budget today. The Royal Canadian Mint, which has produced 35 billion pennies since it began production in 1908, will cease distribution this fall due to the coins low purchasing with glass, mirrors and a gel using power. Production and handling dispersion to create an alphabet cost for the one-cent coin are a in light. He told Designboom: "I C$150- million drag on the thought of the light dispersion economy, according to a 2006 phenomenon (the splitting of study by Desjardins, a Levis, white light into a rainbow). All I Q u e b e c - b a s e d f i n a n c i a l needed was to deflect the light by i n s t i t u t i o n . Business groups welcomed the transparent refracting mediums. By: Katie Scott, Edited by: move, which follows other Duncan Geere Continue reading... countries such as Australia, Brazil
and Sweden, and economists said it would have little impact on inflation. The penny, with two maple leafs on one side and Queen Elizabeth II on the other, can continue to be used in payments. As they are gradually withdrawn from circulation, price rounding on cash transactions will be required, the government said. Retailers and other businesses can continue to price goods and services in one-cent increments and there will be no need to reprogram cash registers, according to the government. Catherine Swift, president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said the move will increase efficiency. It has been a long time coming, she said. Its been a real pain more than anything else. Weve actually polled our members on this and theyre supportive. Economists said there would be "little" impact on inflation. Actually, there will be "no"
impact on inflation. The penny has not been discarded as a pricing point, rather final transaction costs will be rounded to the nearest nickel. The US needs to follow suit. Dealing with pennies is a nuisance. Mike "Mish" Shedlock h t t p : / / globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot. com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http:// www.sitkapacific.com/ account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.
AP Source: Saints' Payton to appeal suspension

(Sports News Headlines Yahoo! News)
Saints coach Sean Payton is seeking relief from the NFL for
his role in New Orleans' bounty Joe Vitt. system. And so is his assistant,
Policy/
37
The Least Bad Option - By James Traub

JAMES TRAUB (Foreign Policy)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 2:50:07 PM
Let's face it, there are no good solutions to the mess in Syria. BY JAMES TRAUB| MARCH 30, 2012 Are you okay with where you're at on Syria? I know that I'm not. A senior State Department official told me that the Obama administration isn't either. Almost everyone I've spoken to about Syria in the last few days has thrown up their hands and said, "There's no good solution." It may be that the only people who are comfortable with their position are the cynics in Russia and China who are prepared to let Syrian President Bashar al-Assad grind the opposition to powder, and Senator John McCain, who wants NATO to take out Damascus. It's so much easier to say what won't work in Syria than what will. The Libya intervention-style air campaign that McCain advocates is a bad idea for reasons which a great many people, myself included, have enumerated. In any case, it's not going to happen, because no one who could do it -- the United States, Europe, even Turkey or the Gulf states -- has any appetite for a second Libya. If you haven't heard a syllable recently out of Samantha Power, the chief advocate in the White House for humanitarian intervention, it's probably because such an intervention is simply not in the
cards. But what is in the cards? Diplomacy? Many of us who favored intervention in Libya, but not Syria, have hoped that diplomatic pressure might tip the scales inside Syria and force Assad to step down. The Obama administration backed a U.N.
Security Council resolution which would have compelled Assad to step down, transferring power to an interim regime and initiating a political dialogue with all elements of Syrian society. Russia and China vetoed the resolution, though Damascus would almost certainly have shrugged off the
demand in any case. Now the U.N. has backed a new diplomatic effort by former Secretary General Kofi Annan, and Assad has formally accepted the terms, which require him to impose a cease-fire and embrace an "inclusive, Syrian-led political process" to address the demands
of the opposition. But Syrian security forces have continued firing on civilians in direct contradiction of the Annan plan's terms; it's clear by now that Assad will leave office only if he feels sure that the alternative is a bullet LEAST page 38
38
LEAST
in his head. The real danger is that he will comply with the peace plan just enough to further divide the international community. So there won't be an intervention or, in all likelihood, a diplomatic deus ex machina. What's in between those two extremes? Last week, the Obama administration announced that, along with Turkey, it would ship communications equipment and other "nonlethal" gear to armed rebels inside Syria. (Saudi Arabia and Qatar have already begun to supply the rebels with weapons.) This is an important shift in policy, since the equipment would permit rebels militias to securely communicate with one another. Such gear may be nonlethal, but it's still military. How far is the White House prepared to go in helping the Free Syrian Army, as the military opposition calls itself? For the moment, it seems, not much further. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have both said that the Free Syrian Army and the civilian opposition, gathered under the umbrella of the Syrian National Council (SNC), must demonstrate far more unity and coherence in order to become a legitimate alternative to the Assad regime, and thus conduits for more substantial aid. At a recent meeting in Istanbul, the political opposition did unite behind the SNC -- except for the Kurds, who walked out.
The administration is right to insist that the militias inside Syria at least acknowledge the legitimacy of the political leadership, and that the SNC get its act together. In Libya, after all, NATO was able to intervene on behalf of the Transitional National Council, which functioned as an inclusive, nonsectarian, secular government-in-exile. What's more, journalists and others had access to the Libyan rebels, and so could answer the question of just who they were -- which is not the case in Syria. Even so, the militias which fought the war in Libya began to behave like miniature sovereigns soon after Muammar al-Qaddafi was killed. A post-Assad Syria with no recognized political authority might prove even more violent and chaotic than Libya has, leaving the country carved up into sectarian fiefs. But how much coherence is fair to require as a precondition for further help? A recent report by the Institute for the Study of War points out that "insurgencies are inherently decentralized" and argues that Syria's armed opposition "has shown a propensity for organization at the local level." The report concludes that "delaying policy decisions before the opposition has coalesced around a viable alternative government is tantamount to insisting that the revolution succeed fully before it receives practical or military
assistance." The Friends of Syria, an organization of over 60 nations seeking to resolve the conflict there, is meeting this weekend in Istanbul, and should work actively both to help the civilian opposition hang together and to bind the militias inside Syria to the SNC -- rather than waiting for these forces to gel. (Giving the rebels satellite phones is, of course, one way to do just that.) And then what? White House officials have not wanted to say what they would do once the opposition begins to present a united front -- perhaps in part because they don't know. But reports that the rebels are literally running out of bullets argue that if outsiders don't act fast, there will be no insurgency to support -- at which point, Assad will be able to crush his opponents with impunity. One person I spoke to who does have a plan is a former government official with extensive experience in Syria. The opposition, he argues, needs not just weapons but "a comprehensive military and civilian battle plan" to defeat Assad. He envisions a multilateral effort in which the United States would provide not just communications technology but real-time military intelligence to help the rebels respond to government troop movements. Gulf states would provide the bulk of the weapons and funds;
the Jordanians might provide special forces to work closely with the militia; Turkey would provide the staging ground itself as well as other forms of aid; and diplomats would give strategic guidance to the SNC. Such an effort would look less like the bombing campaign in Libya and more like, well, the CIA-sponsored campaign to arm and train the mujahideen who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. This is, of course, not a terribly encouraging analogy, since yesterday's anti-Soviet warriors became today's anti-American Taliban. We need no better reminder of the unintended consequences of supporting foreign insurgencies. But he did not shy away from the comparison. "We need to do what we did under Reagan," he said, "which is to actively support these insurgencies." But, he adds, we need to know who we are working with, to set out clear standards of behavior and to condition our help on maintaining those standards -as we did not do in Afghanistan. And we need to be careful that the international effort doesn't exacerbate the problem: The Saudis, for example, are likely to bring an overtly sectarian agenda to Syria. The effort would be better off with a bigger role for the Turks, and a smaller one for the Saudis. The neo-mujahideen strategy has plenty of problems -- beyond the possibility of a Frankenstein
insurgency. It will take months to organize, and Assad will keep targeting civilians in the meanwhile. Assad's security forces may respond to a more robust military opposition by further ramping up the killing machine. And providing a safe haven along the northern border with Turkey offers very little comfort to either civilians or rebels in western cities like Hama or Homs, which border on Lebanon, or southern ones like Deraa, which is close to Jordan. And neither of those countries is prepared to host the insurgency. But there are no good solutions; only less bad ones. And Assad's evident willingness to kill his opponents, and his opponents' willingness to keep fighting, or even protesting, despite the likelihood of being killed, compels outsiders to urgently devise and implement a least-bad solution rather than wait for the opposition to demonstrate that it deserves support. I'm open to a better suggestion. Does anyone have one? This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Economy/
39
Question on Jobs: How Many Does It Take to Keep Up With Demographics?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Mish Shedlock) (Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis)
the analysis of more than 3 million credit reports provided to Reuters by the credit score tracking site CreditKarma Submitted at 3/30/2012 12:29:00 PM John Mauldin pinged me with a (CreditKarma.com). That group question on jobs and saw its school debt burden demographics from one of his Between January 2008 and increase by a staggering 47 readers. February 2010, the U.S. economy percent, according to the analysis. Hello John. lost 8.8 million jobs. The average student loan debt for In past letters you have cited the In the last year, the civilian those aged 38 to 41 was the need to create 125,000 jobs per population rose by 3,584,000. Yet biggest of that group -- about month to stay even with the the labor force only rose by $12,000, up from just under growth rate in the labor force. 1,569,000. $9,000 in 2009. Young people Dick Hokenson of ISI Research Millions of people dropped out still carry the biggest student loan has recently published reports of the labor force in the last Also note the unemployment did federal government loans (which burdens; those aged 26 to 29 suggesting that 75,000 jobs is a several years and if jobs are not change. Why? Because the just happens to be where student have an average of $14,000 in more accurate estimate based on available they will start looking civilian labor force went up by an loans are parked). student debt. But the increased his demographic analysis. This again even larger 476,000. Thus the Here are some charts I put levels in middle-aged student difference obviously has profound As soon as people start looking unemployment rate actually rose a together stripping out federal debt is a new phenomenon. implications for the pace of for jobs, the number it will take to fractional amount that rounding government loans. Negative Payback on Retraining r e c o v e r y a n d p o t e n t i a l hold the unemployment rate took away. Non-Revolving Loans Minus The benefit of going back to i m p r o v e m e n t i n t h e steady will rise, perhaps to a If I would have told you that a Government Loans school at age 49 is likely negative. unemployment rate. Have you number well above 125,000 rise in 428,000 jobs would not Non-Revolving Loans Minus My friend "BC" comments: seen any of Hokenson's work? Do The payoff for 40- and 50drop the unemployment rate you Government Loans Detail you have any insights into why would have thought I was off my True Bounce in Percentage somethings taking on debt to his analysis is so different than change occupations or trying to rocker. Yet it happened, assuming Terms consensus? How Many Does It Point number 4 above is the key of course you believe BLS Note that the year-over-year find jobs in "health care" or T a k e t o K e e p U p W i t h issue. numbers, complete with amazing "bounce" has not even gotten back "education" and compete with Demographics? Household Survey Data - March seasonal adjustments. to the zero-line in spite of Millennials trying to secure Ben Bernanke has estimated 9, 2012 Back to School Stats exceptionally easy comparisons. similar positions is low or 125,000 jobs a month. That is the click on chart for sharper image Let's take a look at some Middle-Aged Borrowers Pile on negative. number I have been using T a k e a g o o d l o o k a t t h e interesting points from Consumer Student Debt Statistically, the benefit to recently. household survey from the latest Credit "Demolishes Expectations" Reuters reports Middle-Aged "education" occurs between ages However, based on demographics BLS jobs report. Recall that the Really? No Not Really! The "Non Borrowers Pile on Student Debt 14 and 22, where one goes to alone, I believe 75,000 is indeed unemployment rate comes from -Bounce" in Non-Revolving Educational borrowing is up for high school and university. the correct number. the household survey, and not the Credit every age group over the past Obtaining an MBA, law degree, 75,000 is a number I arrived at a headline jobs number. Non-Revolving credit rose $11.8 three years, but it has grown far or another graduate degree after c o u p l e o f y e a r s a g o Note that 428,000 jobs were billion in December. However, m o r e q u i c k l y a m o n g t h o s e QUESTION page 40 independently, for the boomer- allegedly created in February. $8.8 billion of that is growth in between 35 and 49, according to
bust years of 2013-2015. So why use 125,000 if it only takes 75,000? I do not know Bernanke's rationale, but I can explain mine.
40
Economy/
QUESTION
age 26-28 historically has not resulted in a net benefit in terms of job/career prospects or wage/ salary income; and this has become particularly the case since the late '90s. In other words, the vast majority of people running up debt at universities, community colleges, and for-profit technical schools are wasting their time and money, as well as directing scarce resources to the "health care" and "education" sectors that don't need more misallocation further driving up costs. Needless to say, there is no precedent in US history for middle-aged unemployed, underemployed, or unemployable Americans running up debt in an economy that has not created a net new private sector full-time job per capita in at least 10 years. Fewer Nonfarm Employees Now Than December 2000 Here is one key chart (of many) from Fewer Nonfarm Employees Now Than December 2000; Unemployment Rate: Some Things Still Don't Add Up; Obamanomics? Total Nonfarm Employees There are currently 132,409,000 nonfarm employees. In December of 2000 there were 132,481,000 employees. How's that for job growth? Retraining Scam Job retraining is scam perpetrated by for-profit universities, fueled by statements from Obama regarding re-training people for new jobs.
Brick-layers are told they can be "chefs", take $10,000 courses and the universities call it a "success" if they land a job "in their field" at McDonald's. Unemployed roofers are led to believe they can become Java programmers, and they waste collective $billions trying. Meanwhile out of work Java programmers are told to take up a trade like roofing or auto mechanics. The cost of education keeps rising because Obama (like Bush before him), keeps adding to the student loan program when the entire student loan scam really needs to be shut down. Why Does the Scam Roll On and On?
All those hiding out in school, including those going back to school for retraining are not counted in the ranks of the unemployed. Nor are discouraged workers, who stopped looking for a job. As soon as those folks think there are jobs, they will start looking. Economically speaking, that would be a good thing if it happened, but it would also increase the number of jobs it will take to hold the unemployment rate steady. In a vacuum, all things being equal, it would take about 75,000 jobs a month demographically speaking. But things are not equal. Millions of workers want back in the labor force and they No politician wants to stand up will start looking, especially and tell the truth: Retraining is a students who at some point will waste of money and the odds of have no choice. It may take launching a new career in other 150,000 jobs a month or even than a low-paying job requiring 175,000 jobs a month, if those few skills is simply not likely. workers come back into the labor For-Profit universities pad force in a 2-year surge. politicians' pockets That is still not the end of the story. What if we slip back into One can always find success r e c e s s i o n a n d p e o p l e s t o p s t o r i e s , b u t i n a g g r e g a t e , looking? How many will it take retraining middle-aged workers is then? The answer may be closer a net waste of money. to 100,000. The middle of the To Paraphrase Joe Weisenthal road approach is to stick with the N o w , t o p a r a p h r a s e J o e number I have been using recently Weisenthal: " It's hard to think which is 125,000 a month. that the economy is NOT going The irony is, the better the back into a recession with economy is, the more jobs it will numbers like these." The take. One way or another, d i f f e r e n c e i n v i e w p o i n t i s headwinds on lowering the u n d e r s t a n d i n g w h a t t h e unemployment rate are very u n d e r l y i n g n u m b e r s r e a l l y strong. represent. Hiding Out In School All things considered, I see no
reason to deviate from my "Structurally High Unemployment For a Decade" call made years ago and reiterated in January in Fundamental and Mathematical Case for Structurally High Unemployment for a Decade; Shrinking Job Opportunities and the Jobs Gap; The Real Employment Situation. For further discussion please see Where is the Unemployment Rate Headed? Interactive Mapping Lets "You" Set the Parameters, and Plot a Graph Mike "Mish" Shedlock h t t p : / / globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot. com Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http:// www.sitkapacific.com/ account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.
This Time Is No Different Reflections On 1929 Optimism

Tyler Durden
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:44:46 PM
When it comes to markets, the following clip, as well as memories of recent market collapses, highlights that it is usually brightest just before it's pitch black. ..."As the market floundered financial leaders were as optimistic as ever...more so"... (h/t@Macheterosforvr) We are where... Average: Your rating: None Average: 5( 3 votes) This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Economy/
41
Groupon TVIXes Muppets

Tyler Durden
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:29:44 PM
It seems like yesterday that to much pomp and circumstance, Groupon came public. We can only hope that anyone who bought into the public offering sold long ago, becuase the company has just decided to TVIX the muppets: GROUPON CUTS FORECAST - BBG GROUPON REFUND RESERVE ACCRUAL INCREASED- BBG But most importantly: GROUPON SAYS MATERIAL WEAKNESS IN INTERNAL CONTROLS - BBG We are fairly confident that the stock will continue imploding after hours until such time as confidence in the stock market returns. From the earnings release: Groupon, Inc. (NASDAQ: GRPN - News) today announced a revision of its reported financial results for its fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2011. Groupon also affirmed its guidance for the first quarter of 2012. The revisions resulted in a reduction to fourth quarter 2011 revenue of $14.3 million. The revisions also resulted in an increase to fourth quarter
operating expenses that reduced operating income by $30.0 million, net income by $22.6 million, and earnings per share by $0.04. Financial results for prior periods, including as of and for the nine months ended September 30, 2011, were not affected by the revisions. There is no change to Groupon's previously reported operating cash flow of $169.1 million for the fourth quarter 2011 and $290.5 million for the full year 2011. There is also no change to
Groupon's previously reported free cash flow, which is a nonGAAP financial measure that reflects cash flow from operations less purchases of property and equipment, of $155.1 million for the fourth quarter 2011 and $246.6 million for the full year 2011. The revisions are primarily related to an increase to the Companys refund reserve accrual to reflect a shift in the Companys fourth quarter deal mix and higher price point offers, which have
for the year ended December 31, 2011 by its independent auditor, Ernst & Young LLP, the Company included a statement of a material weakness in its internal controls over its financial statement close process in its Annual Report on Form 10-K for year ended December 31, 2011. The Company has been working for several months with another global accounting firm in preparation for reporting on the effectiveness of its internal controls by the end of 2012, as required following Groupons initial public offering last year. The Company continues to implement process improvement initiatives and augment its staffing, and is expanding the accounting firms engagement scope to address the underlying causes of the material weakness. Further discussion of the material higher refund rates. The revisions weakness can be found in the have an impact on both revenue Companys Form 10-K, filed and cost of revenue. A more today with the SEC. detailed explanation of the refund Stock collapsing: reserve is included in the Critical Average: A c c o u n t i n g P o l i c i e s a n d Your rating: None Average: 5( 1 Estimates section of Groupons vote) Annual Report on Form 10-K for This entry passed through the the year ended December 31, Full-Text RSS service if this is 2 0 1 1 , f i l e d t o d a y w i t h t h e your content and you're reading it S e c u r i t i e s a n d E x c h a n g e on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentCommission (SEC). I n c o n j u n c t i o n w i t h t h e only/faq.php#publishers. Five completion of the audit of Filters recommends: Donate to Groupons financial statements Wikileaks.
42
Economy/ Culture/
Why Everything The TV Business Assumes About The Housing Market May Be Wrong (TWC, DISH, CMCSK)
Jim Edwards (Money Game)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:53:00 PM
The housing market and the cable /satellite TV market are not directly linked, according to analysts at ISI Group, which follows TV media stocks. Their analysis is significant because the usual assumption is that there is some sort of statistically linear relationship between the formation of new households and the purchase of new pay TV subscriptions. During the recession in 2008, 2009 and 2010, the number of households shrank for the first time since 1966 as people moved in with their parents or became homeless. That ought to have shrunk the ranks of pay TV buyers by a related numberbut ISI's analysis shows it didn't. While subscriber spending dipped, it still emerged from the recession 3 percent higher than when it began: ISI attempted to figure out the relationship between household formation and pay TV subs, but concluded the data was so filled with noise that it was not possible to calculate a statistically significant relationship. ISI says
there is a broad correlation between new houses and new subscriptions, but no measurable cause-and-effect relationship: "[W]e cant peg Pay-TV numbers precisely to housing ... [but] we still believe it to be a very powerful statement to say that its utter nonsense for one to predict X amount of Pay- TV net adds based on Y homes formed in a given time period." The other problem is that TV penetration is nearly at 100 percent of the market, and has nowhere to go but down. It can
only get growth from new household creation. But if new homes don't always mean new TV subs, then that's a problem in a market where young people just don't feel the need to watch TV the way their parents do: Could this also mean that even if there is a recovery in the housing market it may not lead to a recovery in cable TV? We don't know. But it seems plausible. I've recently suggested that the data show that consumers are losing interest in paying to watch TV in favor of using their internet
connections for video entertainment, and that TV may become a vestigial product, like the landline phone. If cable subs don't grow as household formation increases post-recession, I'll be proven right. The fact that housing numbers aren't directly linked to TV subscriptions ought to be worrying for an industry whose c u r r e n t b u s i n e s s modeladvertiser and subscription revenueis the same as newspapers. Everyone knows what the web did to them. See Also: Microsoft Fired An Exec Nicknamed 'Mr Fun' Over A 3-Story Party Palace He Created At Sundance The 20 Most Viral Tech Ads Of All Time Please follow Advertising on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story See Also: The 20 Most Viral Tech Ads Of All Time And The Winner Of Business Insider's Caption Contest Is... WPP Does $200 Million UTurn On Facebook
Google Earth reveals ancient effigy mounds in Peru

(Holy Kaw!)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 1:35:00 PM
Animal-shaped effigy moundssome more than 4,000 years oldhave been found rising above the coastal plains of Peru. Google Earth images of the mounds revealed the shapes of birds, including a giant condor, a 5,000 year-old orca, a duck, and a caiman/puma monster seen in bone and rock carvings from the area, say researchers from the University of Missouri. Full story at Futurity. More research news from top universities. Photo credit: Google Earth Pro Permalink| Leave a comment
Economy/ Culture/
43
Groupon Blows It Again -- Restates Earnings After A Flood Of Buyers Demand Refunds (GRPN)
Henry Blodget (Money Game)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:50:00 PM
Groupon can't get out of its own way. After missing the bottom line in its first quarter as a public company, Groupon is now restating its Q4 earnings after a higher-than-expected number of customers demanded refunds. The stock is getting smashed in after-hours trading, falling more than 10% to about $16. Now, this sounds totally horrible, but it's actually not that big a deal. The restatement does not affect cash flow, and the company is sticking with its outlook for the first quarter. According to the company, what happened is this: Groupon launched a bunch of new, higher-priced products late last year. At least in the fourth quarter, the return rate on these products was considerably higher than the return rate for Groupon's cheaper offerings. When customers demand refunds within 60 days, Groupon's accounting treats the refund as a "contra-revenue" event, meaning that it reduces Groupon's revenue and earnings. After 60 days, refunds are treated as an expense,
A massage with extra bite

(Holy Kaw!)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:04:00 PM
so they only hit earnings. Going forward, Groupon will use higher refund assumptions for its higher-priced products. So this shouldn't happen again. And the good news is that the company is not reducing its guidance for the first quarter (which is basically complete) despite using more aggressive refund assumptions. So this isn't as big a deal as it seems. But it is embarrassing. And it won't help boost investor confidence in the stock.
SEE ALSO: I Wouldn't Touch Groupon's Stock At The IPO Price With A 50-Foot Pole Please follow SAI on Twitter and Facebook. Join the conversation about this story See Also: CHART OF THE DAY: Groupon's Growth Bounces Back No, I Still Wouldn't Buy Groupon's Stock Here's What It's Like When Groupon Acquires Your Startup
If your masseuse started off their relaxing routine with a bite to the spine, you might think youre in for trouble, but Dr. Dots rock star clientele seem to appreciate her very nontraditional methods. Dorothy Stein got started in the massage biz by offering backstage treatments to rock stars in exchange for free tickets, her first gig being at the age of fifteen to the members of Def Leppard, and it was Frank Zappa himself who dubbed her Dr. Dot. Just so there are no
misunderstandings, despite her sometimes racy image, her services and those of her rigorously auditioned Dot Bots do not include a happy ending. As she described it: Were the pit bulls of massage, she says of her teams focus on deep tissue. Musicians need a strong massage. The rubbie-dub stuff wont help. And we have no doubt, all their shots are up to date. Full story at Well+Good NYC via Blisstree. The wild world of massage. Photo credit: Fotolia Permalink| Leave a comment
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Economy/ Culture/
Stocks Odd Man Out As Every Other Asset Class Has Now Faded LTRO2
Tyler Durden
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:06:21 PM
Silver remains the best performer YTD and the Long Bond the worst performer but what is most notable is the quiet serenity of the equity rally continued through March as Commodities, Precious Metals, Treasuries, and Corporate Bonds all lost notable ground post LTRO2. Is equity keeping the dream alive as the liquidity spigot has slowed to a drop (for now)? AAPL had it largest 2-day drop for almost 4 months into quarterend - ending under $600 - and the broad S&P 500 pulled away once again from credit yesterday and today as IG, HY, and HYG close practically unchanged from last Friday's low but the ES up 1520pts. Of the S&P sectors, Energy was the only one to fall appreciably post LTRO2 with Utilities the only sector in the red YTD -2.6% as Financials +21.5% and Tech +18.5% dominate.
See All the Pregnant Stars Jessica, Sienna, Vanessa, Neve, and More!
Lauren Turner (PopSugar)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 12:50:00 PM
YTD performance of major asset classes - note the selloff in everything post LTRO2 (liquidity) except stocks... Credit markets remain far less sanguine once again as the S&P 500 surged again away from credit which is practically unchanged on the week... IG, HY, and TSYs all lost ground in March following the LTRO2 but stocks strolled happily
onwards... AAPL suffered its largest 2-day drop in four months(since the rally began) and closed the quarter under $600... S&P sectors show Utes the only one in the red -2.6% while Financials and Tech dominate and post LTRO2, Energy is the only sector appreciably lower... Charts: Bloomberg Average: Your rating: None Average: 5( 1
vote) This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
There are a lot of bumps in Hollywood! Sienna Miller is expecting her first child with rumored fianc Tom Sturridge, while Kourtney Kardashian is prepping for the arrival of her second baby. Neve Campbell announced her exciting news earlier this month, and Vanessa Lachey showed off her growing bump in Australia this week. Reese Witherspoon is the latest addition to the group of moms-tobe after pregnancy reports came out last week - take a look at all the expecting stars! View Slideshow
Economy/ Culture/
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PRESENTING: The Hottest Stock Market In The World

Eric Platt (Money Game)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:20:00 PM
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner Hold Hands During a Couple's Day Out
Lauren Turner (PopSugar)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 1:31:00 PM
World markets just closed the first quarter of 2012. U.S. indexes have performed particularly well year-to-date, with the S&P 500 up 12 percent. But those gains pale in comparison to Venezuela's IBVC Index on the Caracas Stock Exchange. Over the first quarter, the IBVC gained some 71.9 percent, led by increases in stocks like Mercantil Servicios Financieros, Banco Provincial and Envases Venezola. However, the country also suffers from blazing hot inflation. "The evolution of President Chavezs health continues to be the main uncertainty factor in Venezuela," writes Bank of America economist Munir Jalil. "In an environment in which the boost to economic activity should persist thanks to significant increases in fiscal spending and inflation should remain in the 2530% range- unless scarcities
Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck held hands during an afternoon in LA today. They were layered up for the outing, which included a stop at Starbucks. Jen and Ben welcomed their third child, Samuel, last month, but we have yet to see the little guy in public. His older sisters have been out and about, though, with Violet popping up at a friend's birthday party and Seraphina running errands with Jen in recent weeks. Ben may be adding more to his already-busy schedule with news that he's being considered for a part in Nathan Decker, after Tom Cruise dropped out of the lead
role. Ben will also get to work promoting Argo ahead of its Fall release, which he's prepping for by posting photos from the film on his Facebook page. View Slideshow
increase due to the law of costs and fair prices - attention will probably remain focused on the ongoing presidential campaign." Venezuela is obviously not without it's problems. But it is a great example of how stocks can be a great hedge for inflation. Below, the IBVC's return year-todate. Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story See Also: MARKETS FALL AFTER LATE SELL-OFF: Here's What You Need To Know The Chinese Market Got Lauren Bradshaw (PopSugar) Crushed Again Last Night Submitted at 3/30/2012 1:20:00 PM Japan's Retail Sales Jump 3.5%, But Markets Slip Miranda Kerr is excited for bikini season! The Victoria's Secret model posed at Beverly Hill's Thompson Hotel yesterday alongside her fellow Angel Candice Swanepoel for the latest VS Swim Collection. Take a look as PopSugar editor Lindsay Miller
Video: Miranda Kerr Talks Bikinis and Flynn's Yoga Skills - "He Does Downward Dog!"
chats with the women about fitness, vacation time, and little Flynn in today's PopSugar Rush.
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Culture/
John Ramsey Tells of Finding God Through Extreme Suffering

(Christianpost.com > Most Popular)
(Photo: Hachette Book Group via The Christian Post) The cover of John Ramsey's memoir, The Other Side of Suffering. (Photo: ABC via The Christian Post) JonBenet Ramsey, a young beauty pageant queen murdered in 1996. March 27, 2012| 12:25 pm John and Patsy Ramsey lost not only JonBenet, the young beauty queen found in their basement the day after Christmas, but also lost in 1992 their eldest daughter, Elizabeth, who died in a car accident. During JonBenet's murder investigation, the Ramseys were declared "persons of interest" until they were officially cleared of any suspicions in 2008. But two years prior, in 2006, Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer. Ramsey, who admits that he wasn't much of a Christian earlier in his life, found himself faced with so many tragedies and challenges, that some have compared him to the biblical Job, who lost his family, health, possessions and wealth before finally having it all restored. The key to overcoming those difficulties, Ramsey told The
Christian Post, was finding a source of joy, and for him it was having three remaining children from a previous marriage that needed him to be a strong father. How does one overcome a string of personal traumas? And what influence can they have on one's spiritual life? These are the main questions Ramsey tackles in his new book on his spiritual journey, The Other Side Of Suffering. He recently shared some thoughts with CP on what led him to write the book. At the time when Elizabeth Ramsey was killed in a car accident, her father's faith was not very strong. Ramsey, a successful businessman, considered himself a "cultural Christian" raised in a Christian family but not spending too much time thinking about God and His ways, he told CP. That changed, however, when he learned in 1992 of Elizabeth's death. Order Online: The Other Side of Suffering: The Father of JonBenet Ramsey Tells the Story of His Journey from Grief to Grace "It certainly challenged my instant faith at the time," Ramsey told CP, revealing that it took him four years to get through the grieving process. "It just didn't make sense. In my mind God had let me down. I think that's a very common reaction that people have when
tragedy strikes; 'Why did this happen to me'? 'Am I not a good person?' 'Why is God punishing me?' 'Why did this happen?'" "It really forced me to examine what my faith was all about," he added. Ramsey read a lot at that time and talked to different people, trying to explore his faith, asking questions like "What did God promise us?" and "What He didn't promise us," he told CP. Elizabeth's death was an accident, he acknowledged, and he managed to accept that fact eventually. But the death of JonBenet was even more difficult to cope with, because it was not an accident. It involved human intent. Ramsey was the one who found the little girl's body in the basement, under a white blanket with her hands tied above her head, her mouth covered by black duct tape and a garrote tightened around her neck. The murderer had apparently broken into the house through the basement window. "When JonBenet was murdered, my faith progressed, and that helped a lot," he told CP. "I just could not comprehend how that could happen." The media frenzy and police accusations did not make things easier. "It was difficult to grieve,
in some respects," the author said, accusing the media of sensationalizing his daughter's murder case. Adding to the suffering, was also the fact that the perpetrator was not found. Ramsey revealed that there were also times when he wondered whether JonBenet's participation in beauty pageants attracted the killer. "It was different 16 years ago. Patsy and JonBenet did these little pageants for fun. It was kind of mother-daughter time," Ramsey said, suggesting that current competitions and reality shows like TLC's "Toddlers & Tiaras" are something he does not approve of. Even at pageants JonBenet attended, there was competitiveness among other parents and that made him uncomfortable. "What I see now on television is just unfortunate," he told CP. "I see that level of competitiveness from parents that is not healthy. JonBenet had fun with it. They [JonBenet and Patsy Ramsey] both did." The deaths of his two children changed how he looked at life, Ramsey told CP. He did not use to understand the real meaning of the word "hope," which he later found himself desperate to find. "Up until this happened [Elizabeth's death], I was
probably pretty materialistic," he acknowledged. "My hope was based on a better job, a nicer car, a bigger house. Those things, which are transitory, they don't last and they're really not a good foundation for hope." The next blow came when Patsy Ramsey fell ill with cancer and he realized that she was not going to win that fight, he told CP. At that time, his prayers shifted from "God, heal her" to "God, take her home and end her suffering." Patsy Ramsey passed away in 2006 at the age of 49. She had "a stronger base of faith" than he did from the very beginning, Ramsey revealed. It took years before he learned to cherish the memories of his loved ones, but now, they are bringing him a smile, as he recalls them at their moments of joy, he told CP. That transition from deep sorrow to the ability to rejoice in life once more is the main focus of The Other Side Of Suffering. "I had to get to the point where I could believe that the best days of my life are still ahead of me. Because that's hope," he said. "I spent a lot of time thinking about that and I accepted the challenge but there was no easy answer for that." "God didn't promise us that life JOHN page 50
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John Piper Readying to Step Down; Successor Candidate Named

product of Bethlehem and clearly reflective of its 'DNA' in his convictions and activities." Piper, 66, who is a well-known (Photo: SBC via The Christian evangelical theologian, responded Post) In this file photo, John Piper to the decision in a statement speaks to hundreds of pastors at posted on the church's website as t h e 2 0 1 1 S o u t h e r n B a p t i s t "Questions and Answers from Convention's Pastor Conference John Piper." in Phoenix, Ariz., June 13, 2011. Like us on Facebook He was asked how he feels about March 28, 2012| 4:28 pm Meyer's candidacy. The leaders of the church, based "I am overjoyed. Both at the in the Twin Cities metro area of process and the person. As I heard Minnesota, nominated Jason the results emerging from the Meyer, who is currently assistant various meetings there were times professor of New Testament at when I wept for joy. I thought, Bethlehem College and Seminary. 'God was actually doing this. God The congregation will first vote is loving Bethlehem. God is on May 20 in order to approve giving unity. God is anointing Meyer as an associate pastor for Jason. His hand is on him for this. the church. His starting date to This is no mere human process. f a l l u n d e r P i p e r ' s p a s t o r a l God has been at work in this for mentorship and an "overlap" over 12 years. (Yes, and in period between the two would be eternity!).'" Aug. 1 if the church votes in favor Piper has openly talked about of the decision. how churches should handle A decision on when Meyer takes succession, including how his is Piper's lead position as Pastor for being handled at his own church. Preaching & Vision will not be Last year, Piper sat down with made until the church's Council of fellow theologians D.A. Carson Elders makes sure Bethlehem's and Tim Keller to discuss and congregation has time to interact compare notes on their succession with his "preaching and other for their churches and ministries. visible avenues of leadership/ He updated his congregation grooming that he will take on about his succession plan last before the second congregational June, saying that he proposed to vote." the elders that he transition from Elders state that Meyer "is both a pastor for preaching and vision to
full-time writing, teaching, mentoring, and speaking on June 30, 2014. In Piper's statement released Tuesday, he said he had an initial conversation with Meyer last November and when he asked him if he was open to be considered "there was an astonishing sense of his readiness for this. It was beyond what I had expected. From that moment on the sense of his calling has grown." Piper said he was involved in the process until the field was narrowed to two candidates. "At that point I stepped away. I was not part of the meeting or the vote to narrow the field to one candidate. From that point on, I withdrew from all interviews and discussions and votes," he stated. Piper gave a rather lengthy answer to the question posed in the church's Q&A as to why he is stepping down in his pastoral role. He began his answer with four bullet-pointed reasons he is not leaving the position: Not because I am weary of preaching. O how I love to herald the greatest truths in the world! I hope to be doing it to the end. Not because any staff or elders have urged me to. On the contrary. There has been significant push-back over the several years we have been
talking about this. Not because I love you any less. Or love any less what this church stands for. Not because I want to leave the church or leave Minneapolis. I hope to be part of the church and launch my life from this urban home till I need skilled care. He then wrote, "The reason we are moving forward with the succession plan now has to do with a strong conviction that good pastoring is more than preaching. I could still preach. Some have encouraged me to do just that. Just preach. Hand off other leadership responsibilities to others. I do not believe such an arrangement would make Bethlehem a healthy, thriving, mission-driven, aggressively visionary, growing church-which is what she should be!" There were at least four factors that led him to the conclusion that his time of leadership at the church is a "chapter [that] is almost over." The first reason he listed was primarily about Bethlehem's growing complexity and his perceived diminishing ability to focus on the church's needs. "Most important, I am less competent at leading Bethlehem structurally and organizationally than I used to be. For about 30 years I was usually able to see
through the complexities, and formulate feasible and exciting plans-always with the help of incredibly devoted and gifted partners in ministry. This is no longer the case. For two reasons: One is that Bethlehem is more complex than it used to be; and the other is that my energies and abilities for this kind of organizational and structural planning are diminished," he explained. "If I were younger and more focused I might be able to do what I used to do. But I am not younger or more focused. This is a glorious moment in the history of Bethlehem, and it is not a time for less focus and energy for planning, but for more." When asked about what he would do once the overlap period with Meyer was over, he said he plans to be with his family and together "leave town for a year or so and find a place for writing and reflection." "There are several writing projects I want to make headway on. And I want some time and distance before I lock in to any pattern of ministry too quickly. I need to get some perspective and pray and think about the next 10 years," he wrote. "In general I can say that, if God JOHN page 50
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Culture/
Mark Driscoll Steps Down as Leader of Acts 29; Resigns From Gospel Coalition
ours." After meeting for a full day with pastors Chandler and Darrin March 29, 2012| 8:58 am Patrick, along with the executive Later in the day, in another major elders of Mars Hill, he stated that move by Driscoll, the Gospel a decision was made on how to Coalition announced that they had restructure Acts 29. received a letter of his resignation Order Online: Real Marriage: as a council member. A change in The Truth about Sex, Friendship priorities was the reason given by & Life Together Driscoll who plans to devote more "Together, we decided, in light of time to his growing church. all the complexity we're facing, Acts 29 is a network of church that the best thing for Acts 29 planters that "emerged from a going forward would be for Matt small band of brothers" to more C h a n d l e r t o a s s u m e t h e than 400 churches in the United presidency, move the network States and networks of churches offices to Dallas, and select his in multiple countries. Acts 29 staff," Driscoll said. Driscoll, who is the lead pastor of The Seattle pastor said he will Seattle-based Mars Hill Church, remain on the Acts 29 board of issued a statement through Acts directors and support his friend, 29, which gave a brief history of Chandler. All of the network of the group and how the decision Mars Hill local churches will was made. continue to be a part of Acts 29 as "Recently, I sensed that not all well, he said. was well in Acts 29. As my "I want to thank the people of concerns grew, I recently resumed Mars Hill for pouring millions of the presidency of Acts 29 to work dollars into Acts 29 over the d i r e c t l y w i t h o u r n e t w o r k years," Driscoll added. captains, most influential pastors, "As for myself, I want to humbly and staff," Driscoll stated. "It serve Jesus and his men in Acts seemed to me that some of our 29 by doing whatever is best for relationships, board size and them. Going forward, I will gladly s t r u c t u r e , c o m m u n i c a t i o n , remain on the Acts 29 Board systems, and such were not as supporting Matt, along with effective as we needed, which is Darrin and whomever else Matt to be expected to some degree in a believes best fits the Board." large, complex, fast-growing Chandler, who is the lead pastor entrepreneurial network such as o f T h e V i l l a g e C h u r c h i n
Highland Village, Texas, also wrote a letter about the group's transition posted on various websites. "I am greatly humbled by the opportunity to serve our great God and King, as well as our movement, in the capacity of president of Acts 29," Chandler stated. "Our meeting in Seattle couldn't have been more Spiritempowered and unifying than it was, and I flew home excited and invigorated by the opportunities that are before us. "There are few things that excite me like planting churches and seeing people come to know, love, and mature in Christ. So, this task allows me to serve in an area of my passion," he said. "We are in the process of transitioning Acts 29 from Seattle to Dallas. At present that involves gathering all of the information we can on Acts 29 's budget, processes, setting up Acts 29 legally in Texas, etc." Pastor Scott Thomas, who was a board member and director of the group at one time, was not mentioned in Driscoll's letter, but Chandler wrote that Thomas was "taking this transition as a chance to pursue other opportunities he has before him and will not be making the move to Dallas." "Scott and I are on very good terms and had dinner just this past weekend, where he informed me
of his deep love for you and the network but felt like God has released him from leading Acts 29. He is excited about what God has next for him," Chandler wrote. In a development that followed later on Wednesday after the announcement about the reorganization at Acts 29, The Gospel Coalition announced that they received a letter from Driscoll that stated he was stepping down from the Council of The Gospel Coalition. The coalition is "a fellowship of evangelical churches deeply committed to renewing [their] faith in the gospel of Christ and ... reforming ministry practices to conform fully to the Scriptures." "Mark let us know in advance of his intentions, part of a major reorganization of his priorities and a changing of the guard in Acts 29. We are saddened by his departure but understand that all busy people must establish priorities," officials from the group posted Wednesday afternoon. "The Council is grateful to Mark for his contributions to TGC during the past decade. In the months and years ahead, we will certainly be praying for him, his family, and the ministries he influences," the Gospel Coalition wrote.
In Driscoll's letter posted on the group's site he clarified that he was not asked to stepped down. "I was a founding member of The Gospel Coalition and to this day enjoy deep friendships and theological unity with the men. But I'm no longer going to be a Council member, as I seek to focus my energies on a handful of things. If I'm honest, with the continued growth of all the ministries in which I'm involved, it's not sustainable for me to keep up with all of them. So, this is a season of pruning for me. "For the record, no one has asked me to leave the Council, and I have no relational conflict with anyone and no disagreement theologically. The men remain friends who are welcome to speak into my life, and I'm transitioning for no other reason than I find myself at the end of my tether with time and energy." Driscoll outlined most of what transpired in the last several days in a blog post on his PastorMark.tv website published Wednesday and headlined, " What's Next for Me." SEE VIDEO OF MARK DRISCOLL SPEAKING ON HIS FAITH This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is MARK page 50
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49
Navy: We're 4 Years Away From Laser Guns on Ships

Spencer Ackerman (Wired Top Stories)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:30:00 PM
The dream of sailors, nerds and sailor-nerds everywhere is on the verge of coming true, senior Navy technologists swear. Within four years, they claim theyll have a working prototype of a laser cannon, ready to place aboard a ship. And theyre just months away from inviting defense contractors to bid on a contract to build it for them. Subsonic cruise missiles, aircraft, fast-moving boats, unmanned aerial vehicles Mike Deitchman, who oversees future weapons development for the Office of Naval Research, promises Danger Room that the Navy laser cannons just over the horizon will target them all. Or they will be, if ONRs plans work out as promised not exactly a strong suit of proposed laser weapons over the decades. (Note the decided lack of blast at your side.) First step in reaching this raygun reality: Finish up the paperwork. The contract will probably have options go through four years, but depending on which laser source the vendors pick, we may be able to demo something after two years, says
Roger McGiness, who works on laser tech for Deitchman. Our hope afterwards is to move to acquisition. Translated from the bureaucrat: After the Office of Naval Research can prove the prototype works, itll recommend the Navy start buying the laser guns. That process will begin in 30 to 60 days, adds Deitchman, when his directorate invites industry representatives for an informal idea session. Deitchman and McGiness plan on putting a contract out for the prototype by the end of the year. If this sounds like a rapid pace of development for the ultimate in science fiction weaponry, there are two major explanations why the Navy thinks the future makes a pew-pew-pew noise. The first is technological. The second is bureaucratic. From a technological perspective, the Navy thinks maritime laser weapons finally represent a proven, mature technology. The key point came last April, when the Navy put a test laser firing a (relatively weak) 15-kilowatt beam aboard a decommissioned destroyer. Never before had a laser cannon at sea disabled an enemy vessel. But the Martime Laser Demonstrator cut through
choppy California waters, an overcast sky and salty sea air to burn through the outboard engine of a moving motorboat a mile away. You can see video of the successful demonstration above. The bureaucratic reason has to do with a decision inside the Office of Naval Research to focus its laser efforts with laser-like precision. For over a decade, its dreamed of creating a massive, scalable laser weapon, called the Free Electron Laser, that can generate up to a megawatts worth of blast power. Currently, the laser blasts 14 kilowatts of light think 140 lamps, all shining in the same direction and at the same wavelength. A hundred kilowatts is considered militarily useful; a megawatt beam would burn through 20 feet of steel in a single second. The Free Electron Laser has its critics, including a Senate committee. And it was sucking up all the oxygen inside the Navys laser efforts. So, as InsideDefense.com first reported, ONR decided, effectively, to break them up into the laser equivalent of weight classes. Generating a 100-kilowatt beam is now the province of solid state lasers, lasers that focus light through a solid gain medium, like
a crystal or a optical fibers. The Free Electron Laser, which uses magnets to generate its beam, will stay focused on getting up to a megawatt. That, the Navys scientists contend, will get an actual, working laser cannon onto a ship faster. Yes, a 100-kilowatt laser isnt as powerful as the longed-for megawatt gun. And yes, a solidstate laser cant operate on multiple wavelengths, while a Free Electron Laser can, making the mega-laser more useful when the sea air is full of crud and pollution. But the Office of Naval Research says that lots of active, near-term threats to ships will be vulnerable to the 100-kilowatt, solid state laser. Its easier to shrink down a solidstate laser [to get on a ship], and theres a maturity here, vice the Free Electron Laser, says Deitchman. The solid-state laser will still deal with many asymmetric threats, but not the most hardened, most challenging threats. Its near-to-mid term. The Free Electron Laser is still longterm. Theres another advantage to developing a less-powerful laser first. The Navys surface ships dont yet have the power generation necessary for spooling
up a megawatt-class laser or at least not if they dont want to potentially be dead in the water. Thats one of the reasons the Senate Armed Services Committee is skeptical of the Free Electron Laser. Its not clear that the ships can cope with diverting 100 kilowatts of power, either, but the Office of Naval Research thinks they can, and the laser geeks are working closely with the Naval Sea Systems Command to make sure the scientists are writing checks that the ships generators can cash. But perhaps even more important is the fact that the Navy brass is on board with a concerted push for a new generation of shipboard weapons. This was a decision by the Office of Naval Research, Deitchman says, that was approved and supported by senior Navy leadership. The Navy may be set on a smaller fleet, but apparently it wants that fleet making pew-pew-pew noises. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
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Culture/
JOHN
JOHN
would be easy. In fact, he told us quite the opposite," he concluded. "The main purpose of the book was to encourage readers. I hoped that the book would be uplifting; an encouragement to people who have suffered tragedies in their lives," he said. People often struggle with smaller problems that seem big to them, like the loss of a home or job, he suggested. "You've got to be able to move beyond that and re-establish hope in your life. And purpose. I hope what the book does is share in a clear way how I dealt with those issues, both in terms of my personal life and my spiritual life," he said.
"God's grace has come to me through trial, through suffering (). I believe the best days of my life are ahead of me," he shares in the book, the final outcome of his reflections. "I found them on the other side of suffering, where they were waiting." Despite the past 16 years, he still has some hope left that JonBenet's killer might still be punished in this world, although, "The longer it goes the less encouraged I am," he said, admitting that the trail in the case has gone cold despite authorities being in possession of the killer's DNA, which might potentially one day make his identification possible.
SEE VIDEO INTERVIEW OF JOHN RAMSEY READ ABOUT SHARING THE BURDENS OF THOSE WHO HAVE EXPERIENCED LOSS Luiza.o@christianpost.com;@Lui za_CP This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
gives me life and health, these years will involve my role as Chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary, and my role as founder and teacher for Desiring God. I love to teach seminary students, and I love to encourage and strengthen the God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated vision of pastors. And I love to write. So some configuration of those loves is what I expect to see. "My life's calling remains the same: I exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. Pray that I will spend and be spent for this
till I can speak and write no more." On the Web, for a full transcript of "Questions and Answers from John Piper" go here: http:// www.hopeingod.org/questionsand-answers-john-piper This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Game|Life Podcast: Will Next PlayStation Kill Used Games?

Chris Kohler (Wired Top Stories)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:44:00 PM
Photo: Sean MacEntee/Flickr In the future, were pretty sure that games will either cost nothing or be very expensive. Or both. On this episode of the Game|Life podcast, we discuss a pair of stories that point towards the brave new world of selling
videogames. Freemium games like Temple Run are taking over the app store, making their money off the small percentage of players who choose to pay and letting everybody else ride free. Meanwhile, rumors about the next PlayStation console suggest that it might lock out sales of used games. managing editor Marty Cortinas Wired senior editors Chris Baker join in this week, as ever, to give and Peter Rubin and Wired
their educated takes on the news. Game|Lifes podcast is posted on Fridays and is available on iTunes, can be downloaded directly and is embedded below. GameLife Reboot: Episode 023 Subscribe to RSS feed Subscribe on iTunes
[ Photo source] This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
MARK
your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-
only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Culture/
51
Solve This Puzzle or You'll Be Keelhauled

Mike Selinker (Wired Top Stories)
Solution Each island is from a well-known fictional property: Submitted at 3/30/2012 2:14:00 PM Tracy Island: THUNDERBIRDS The March Wired featured a Play Azkaban: HARRY POTTER section introduction of a piratical A N D T H E P R I S O N E R O F nature, with a hidden puzzle on it. A Z K A B A N The map below reveals the Roke Island: EARTHSEA journey of the scurvy scalawags Isla de Muerta: PIRATES OF from island to island. At what THE CARIBBEAN island will these rascals end up? Membata: LOST
Biro Island: ASTRO CITY Galuga Island: CONTRA Melnibon: ELRIC OF MELNIBON Craggy Island: FATHER TED Ramita de la Baya: RED DEAD REDEMPTION Fishman Island: ONEPIECE Booty Island: MONKEY ISLAND 2: LECHUCKS REVENGE
Waponi Wu: JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO Willow Island: AVATAR Themyscira (a.k.a. Paradise Island): WONDER WOMAN Gravett Island: STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT The first letters of those properties spell THE PLACE FROM JAWS, which is AMITY ISLAND.
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
52
Culture/ Sports/ Finance/
Savchenko, Szolkowy win pairs title at worlds ClipboardEdit Puts a Clipboard Editor in Your Jailbroken iPhone's Notification Center [IPhone Downloads]
Adam Dachis (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 12:30:00 PM
This Weeks Most Popular Posts: March 2430 [Highlights]

(Lifehacker)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 1:30:00 PM
How to Remove Rust From Old Tools [Crowdhacker]

(Lifehacker)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 1:00:00 PM

Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:41:37 PM
Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy of Germany won the world figure skating pairs title for the second straight year and fourth time overall, again defeating Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov of Russia.
This week we brushed up on our DIY skills, found out the way we'd been taught to drive is all wrong, mastered some seriously timesaving clothes-folding techniques, and more. Here's a look back. More
Tools get rusty. It's one of the things they do best. But they don't have to stay rusty. The DIY experts at Stack Exchange offer a few solutions to keep your tools gleaming clean. More
Ever wish you could edit the contents of your iPhone's clipboard before you paste? ClipboardEdit makes that possible by sticking a tiny text field inside of Notification Center. From there you can edit any copied text before you paste it. More
AP Source: Saints' Payton to appeal suspension

Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:14:17 PM
SFO blasted by OECD for settling cases instead of going to court

Telegraph Staff (Finance News - Business news from the UK and world)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 2:49:42 PM
Mugging companies is a sure way to lose investment, India
A history of Western typefaces [infographic]

(Holy Kaw!)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:05:00 PM
Damian Reece (Finance News Business news from the UK and world)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:08:12 PM
India's decision to introduce retrospective tax on foreign investors is surprising. But the threat to the profits of Vodafone, Kraft, SAB Miller and others is nought compared with the threat to India itself.
Saints coach Sean Payton is The Serious Fraud Office has seeking relief from the NFL for come under fire for making secret his role in New Orleans' bounty settlements in foreign corruption system. And so is his assistant, cases rather than prosecuting companies through the courts. Joe Vitt.
Via Mashable. Historical infographics. Permalink| Leave a comment
Politics-Left/
53
French police arrest 'radical Muslims'

(AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE))
Submitted at 3/30/2012 2:11:40 PM
raids would occur. "We have some extremely precise questions to ask a certain number French police have arrested 19 of people and what happened this people in dawn raids across a morning will continue," he said, number of cities, as President in the thick of campaigning for Nicolas Sarkozy cracked down on France's April-May presidential what he termed "radical Islam" election. just weeks ahead of a presidential "There will be other operations poll in which he is seeking re- that will continue and will also election. allow us to expel from our Several of the arrests on Friday national territory a certain number occured in the southwestern city of people." of Toulouse, where an al-Qaeda After trailing Socialist candidate inspired gunman carried out a Francois Hollande for months in series of attacks earlier this month the polls, Sarkozy has jumped that left seven people dead. ahead in first-round voter Agents from the domestic intentions and seen his support intelligence agency (DCRI) and rise in the wake of the attacks. elite police carried out the dawn The latest poll by CSA released raids in Toulouse, the Paris Wednesday said 30 per cent of region, Nantes in the west, Lyon voters would pick Sarkozy and 26 in the southeast and the Provence percent would go for Hollande in region. the April 22 first round. But all Three of the 19 suspects arrested polls still predict Hollande were women, police said. winning the May 6 second round. Judicial sources said 17 of those Some of Sarkozy's opponents arrested were being held for branded the arrests a public questioning. relations stunt, with Steeve Briois, A senior police source told the the general secretary of the farAFP news agency that authorities right National Front, calling the had up to 100 suspected Muslim raids "an electoral manoeuvre". radicals in their sights and "The 'big haul' made overnight by Sarkozy said Friday's operation the DCRI and the RAID - the elite was only a start. police unit that shot Merah Presidential campaign doesn't fool anyone," he said in a Speaking on Europe 1 radio, statement. Sarkozy confirmed the arrests and Raids 'not linked' to killings said that weapons had been Police sources told AFP that seized. He said the operation was the raids were "not directly "linked with a form of radical linked" to the Toulouse shootings, Islam" and suggested that further alleged to have been carried out
by Mohammed Merah, who was killed by armed police last week after a standoff at his apartment in the city. Sarkozy said authorities had some 'extremely precise questions to ask a certain number of people' [AFP] Sarkozy said the attacks in Toulouse and nearby Montauban, which left three soldiers, three children and a teacher dead, had been profoundly felt in France, and "a little like the trauma" that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US. The victims came from across the religious spectrum: two of the soldiers were Muslim, one Catholic, and the children and teacher were Jewish. Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland, reporting from Paris, said Sarkozy also announced he would pass new anti-terrorism measures
before the country's presidential election. "They are very much trying now to focus the election campaign on security rather than on economic issues, which have up until this point dominated the debate," she said of Sarkozy's campaign for reelection. 'Drastic measures' Merah was buried on Thursday in the Muslim section of a cemetery in the Toulouse neighbourhood of Cornebarrieu, on the outskirts of Toulouse, sources said, despite requests from the city's mayor that he be buried elsewhere. French authorities have charged his brother Abdelkader Merah with complicity in the attacks and said they were looking for other accomplices. On Thursday, France banned four Muslim preachers from entering
the country for a conference of the Union of Islamic Organisations in France (UOIF), saying their "calls for hatred and violence" were a threat to public order. The ban applies to Saudi clerics Ayed Bin Abdallah al-Qarni and Abdallah Basfar, Egyptian cleric Safwat al-Hijazi and a former mufti of Jerusalem Akrama Sabri, who had been due in Paris next month. National Front presidential candidate Marine Le Pen on Friday called for the conference to be cancelled and the UOIF to be disbanded. "Drastic measures must be taken without delay and without weakness against radical Islam," she said in a statement. Claude Gueant, the interior minister, and Gerard Longuet, the defence minister, meanwhile rejected a call for the heads of France's intelligence agencies to appear before a commission in the Socialist-controlled upper house of parliament to answer questions about the Merah murders. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
54
Politics-Left/ Gaming/
Spain unveils deep budget cuts

Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:06:06 PM
Spain's government has announced $36 billion in new budget cuts, as it attempts to reassure the European Union that it will not need a financial bailout. The budget savings will take the form of a freezing of civil servant wages, ministerial spending cuts and new corporate taxes, announced Soraya Saenz de Santamaria, the country's deputy prime minister, on Friday. "The ministries will see an average reduction of 16.9 per cent ... there will be adjustments of over 27 billion euros [$36 billion] through revenues and through spending," she said, after she and her cabinet colleagues passed the draft budget at a meeting in Madrid. "This government will not raise value added tax but is calling for an extra effort within corporate taxes," she said. Overall, government spending cuts will amount to $22.7 billion. The government has also decided to freeze civil servants' salaries, but to maintain unemployment benefits and planned pension increases. Jose Manuel Soria, the country's industry minister, further announced that electricity bills for small consumers will also rise by seven per cent during a quarterly
review due in April. De Santamaria termed the budget proposal severely austere, but essential. The measure is to go to parliament on Tuesday, and is expected to be formally passed in June. "Spain is going to stop being a problem, especially for the Spanish people but also for the European Union," Luis de Guindos, the economy minister, said as he entered an informal meeting of eurozone colleagues in Copenhagen earlier on Friday. The passage of the new budget comes a day after a general strike against labour reforms that crippled public transport and industry and brought hundreds of thousands of people out in protest, but fell short of bringing the country to a standstill. Spanish government estimates put the number of people attending rallies staged across the country at about 800,000. Bailout fears Friday's package of budget cuts is designed to satisfy EU requirements and calm investors worried about Spain's public finances. IN VIDEO Al Jazeera's Barnaby Phillips speaks to Spanish citizens about the new round of budget cuts Investors' appetite for Spanish debt determines the country's borrowing costs. If the costs are too high, Spain
would find it increasingly difficult to finance itself at an affordable rate, and could eventually follow Greece, Ireland and Portugal in seeking a bailout. The package will draw money out of the Spanish economy at a time when it is entering recession for the second time in three years. Spain has committed to cut its budget deficit to 5.3 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product, from 8.5 per cent last year. The challenge for the country is to do so as the economy shrinks, and unemployment is at 23 per cent. The new cuts come on top of $11.9 billion in spending cuts and $8.4 billion in tax increases already announced earlier this year. De Guindos said he trusted his eurozone counterparts to "understand perfectly the effort that the Spanish government is making". At the meeting in Copenhagen, European finance ministers were discussing the size of a planned "financial firewall" for the EU, which would ensure that adequate funds would be available to weaker economies in the eurozone if they need to meet debt requirements. They decided to increase the size of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) to 700 billion euros ($932
billion). The possibility of using the eurozone's financial firewall to help Spain, however, is "not an option on the table", Italy's deputy economy minister Vittorio Grilli said. Disruption Thursday's strike resulted in clashes between protesters and police that led to nine people injured and 58 being arrested. "[Protesters] have succeeded in bringing a lot of disruption around Spain today, there's no doubt about that," said Al Jazeera's Barnaby Phillips, reporting from Madrid on Thursday. "People have talked about trade union influence being on the wane in Spain ... but they've hit transport links very hard across the country, many businesses, many factories have been closed. "The new laws would make it easier for companies to fire workers, but the government argues that in the long run the liberalisation of labour laws will bring unemployment down." This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Report: Epic Mickey 2 making a splash on PC and Mac

David Hinkle (Joystiq)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 4:45:00 PM
In addition to debuts on the Xbox 360 and PS3, and a 3DS spinoff, Epic Mickey: The Power of Two is apparently taking a steamboat ride on over to the PC and Mac. During a London preview event, Junction Point representatives told GameSpy that PC and Mac versions were planned. We were able to check out the upcoming sequel at a recent Disney event -- all of our coverage can be seen through this handy link. We highly suggest you check out the prototype Wii controllers because oh man they are so adorable! We've contacted Disney to confirm the PC and Mac ports. Stay tuned. Report: Epic Mickey 2 making a splash on PC and Mac originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments
Politics-Left/
55
Mali's junta seeks help against Tuareg rebels

Submitted at 3/30/2012 2:14:17 PM
Tuareg consider their homeland in the northern triangle of the bowtie shaped nation. Mali's coup leader Captain The poorly-equipped Malian Amadou Sanogo has asked for army has proved no match for the external help to halt advancing desert warriors, boosted by the Tuareg rebels who have seized return of heavily-armed fighters another key northern town from from Libya's conflict. overwhelmed soldiers. The rebels have since seized on "The rebels continue to attack our the confusion caused by the coup country and terrorise our people," to prepare offensives on the three Sanogo told journalists on Friday regional centres in Mali's remote at the military barracks outside north. Bamako, the capital which have In their most important victory so become the junta's headquarters. far, they entered Kidal after "The situation is now critical, our soldiers abandoned one of the two army needs support from Mali's local military camps there, friends to save the civilian military and diplomatic sources population and protect Mali's told the Reuters news agency. territorial integrity." "The rebel Tuareg, the MNLA, The appeal came as sources said and fighters affiliated with AQIM, that Tuareg separatist rebels and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, an allied armed group on Friday managed to easily overrun the city entered and seized control of the of Kidal," Al Jazeera's Hashem strategic town of Kidal, 1,000km Ahelbarra reported from Bamako from the capital. MALI CRISIS on Friday. Angry at the government's "They are now in control of the "incompetence" in dealing with city with some concerns now that the Tuareg rebels, soldiers led by they might move to the city of S a n o g o t o p p l e d P r e s i d e n t Gao. They are now in control of A m a d o u T o u m a n i T o u r e ' s three cities, Tessalit, Aguelhok government on March 22, a move and Kidal. If they manage to which prompted stiff rebukes control Gao, that is going to be from abroad. quite a significant blow for the The Tuareg rebel Azawad military junta," he added. National Liberation Movement ECOWAS ultimatum (MNLA) in mid-January The week-old junta has relaunched a decades-old fight for meanwhile been frozen out by its the independence of what the foreign allies.
Malian constitution." Ouedraogo said: "ECOWAS is quite willing to assist the country to protect its territorial integrity, but we cannot do so when the power in place in Bamako is not legitimate ... There is zero tolerance to power obtained or maintained by unconstitutional means." Ouedraogo added however that he was confident talks would take place with the junta before the 72hour ECOWAS deadline was up. "We have indications that they want to continue dialogue and I think that this weekend they The 15-nation regional bloc, the But he added that stability in will be in touch to see how they Economic Community of West M a l i w o u l d h a v e a d i r e c t are going to comply to the African States (ECOWAS), on influence on the entire region. ECOWAS demands, But if by the Thursday threatened a "diplomatic He said the coup was a necessary deadline of Monday they have not and financial embargo" unless step in order to improve the done so, we have instruction to constitutional order was restored situation in the country, and apply the sanctions," he said. within 72 hours - a move which that the army had seized control ECOWAS had already suspended could cripple the landlocked with the plan of "holding a rapid Mali on Tuesday and has warned nation. process of normalisation and its regional troops are on standby. The regional leaders tightened organising free and transparent The grouping has threatened to use military force as a last resort the noose around the junta after elections". scrapping a mediation mission in Speaking to Al Jazeera on Friday, to reverse the coup. mid-air when dozens of pro-coup Kadre Desire Ouedraogo, the This entry passed through the demonstrators swarmed the president of ECOWAS, said: "It is Full-Text RSS service if this is runway at Bamako's airport, not for him [Sanogo] to do so your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read preventing them from landing on [organise elections]. Thursday. "We want him to return to the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentAt Friday's news conference, constitutional normality and then only/faq.php#publishers. Five Sanogo said he "understands" the we can discuss a transition period Filters recommends: Donate to position of the West Africa and then organise the election Wikileaks. regional body. according to the provisions of the
56
TV/ Gaming/
Wendy Davis: Why I Joined a Mother's Fight to End Pediatric AIDS

Wendy Davis (TV on HuffingtonPost.com)
were primarily infected through blood transfusions -- like Ryan White -- or tragically through Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:29:45 PM their mothers during pregnancy, On the Lifetime drama Army labor, or breast-feeding -- like the Wives, I play Joan Burton, a children of Hollywood mom and woman trying to balance her AIDS activist Elizabeth Glaser. duties as a colonel in the U.S. Thankfully, the risk of HIV from Army with her role as a mother blood transfusions is a thing of the and wife. I love playing Joan -- past, and we've almost conquered it's an opportunity to explore the mother-to-child transmission of reality that thousands of military HIV here at home. families live every day. Army Did you know that with the right Wives also tackles many of the medicines and treatment, we can s o c i a l i s s u e s t h a t a f f e c t reduce the risk that an HIVAmericans, both on and off the positive mother will pass on the base. virus to her baby to less than 2 This Sunday, April 1, the show percent? will once again cover an issue that In the U.S., we have virtually we don't talk about nearly enough eliminated pediatric AIDS, with in the U.S. these days: HIV and fewer than 200 new infections in AIDS. children each year. Now Last season, my husband Roland l i f e s a v i n g m e d i c i n e s a r e -- played by Sterling K. Brown-- becoming increasingly available and I adopted a child who is to mothers and children in the living with HIV. Through playing areas of the world hardest hit by the mother of an HIV-positive the epidemic, like sub-Saharan son, I learned that AIDS is still an Africa. issue that affects children. In fact, While this is a great success 1,000 children are infected with story, HIV and children is still HIV around the world every day. very much an issue we need to I also learned that each one of pay attention to. And as a these infections is preventable. In g e n e r a t i o n o f H I V - p o s i t i v e the 1980s, children with HIV children grows into adolescence
and adulthood, they still have a lot to teach us. HIV-positive adolescents deal with a host of difficult issues, from taking their medications to dealing with the long-term medical effects of living with HIV. Sadly, they also sometimes face stigma and ignorance about HIV, as we learned in a recent case from Hershey, Penn., where a boy was denied admission to a private school based on his HIVstatus. But HIV-positive children -- like my character's son on Army Wives-- are living proof of how far we've come in the fight against HIV/AIDS, both here in the U.S. and around the world. Less than 30 years ago, we were just beginning to understand how the disease affects children. Today, because of the incredible efforts of talented researchers, doctors, and organizations like the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, we now have lifesaving medicines that give HIV-positive children the chance to live healthy, normal lives. We also have the ability to prevent new infections in children in the first place, and ultimately to
create a generation born free of HIV. But we still have work to do until all children affected by HIV and AIDS in the U.S. and around the world have the support and services they need to stay healthy and happy. My experience playing Joan has encouraged me to join the global movement to support families affected by HIV everywhere. This Sunday, April 1, I invite you to watch Army Wives as we again address the issue of HIV and children. I'm going to be tweeting live during the show about this very important subject and how we can help. Join the conversation at@wendyDofficial on Twitter. Afterward, visit the Army Wives resource page to read real-life, personal accounts of children and families dealing with HIV, and join me on amothersfight.org to learn how you can help mothers around the world who -- like Joan -- will do anything to keep their children healthy and safe.
Behind the musical bosses of Lollipop Chainsaw

Richard Mitchell (Joystiq)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 4:15:00 PM
For everyone who looks at a punk rock zombie or a heavy metal Viking and thinks, "I wonder what inspired his taste in music?" Behind the musical bosses of Lollipop Chainsaw originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 16:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments
TV/ Talk/
57
WATCH: 'Halftime In Dave Rubin: America' Is Over In New With Luck Like Chrysler Ads Carson Daly's
Kate Abbey-Lambertz (TV on HuffingtonPost.com)
the claim, as did Eastwood, who had previously criticized the federal bailout of Chrysler and Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:52:16 PM General Motors. After Chrysler got the buzz it Over at Autoblog, they're already intended from its Clint Eastwood- p r e d i c t i n g s o m e p o l i t i c a l backed "Halftime in America" speculation around the new spots: Super Bowl ad, the automaker is Ironically, the messages in these moving on to the "second half" ads, which Chrysler is calling its w i t h a s e t o f f o u r n e w "Second Half" campaign, about commercials that tell hopeful self reliance and determination stories of individual triumphs. (we hear in the Ram ad that our The commercials, one each for hero refused financial help from Chrysler, Ram, Dodge and Jeep, his father-in-law) is probably feature sentimental stories of thematically closer to campaignAmericans making it through hard year Republican rhetoric than times. A girl adapts to a new town Democratic. where her family moved for her Chrysler seemed to do well with mother's job; a wife appreciates its streak of high-profile, Detroither husband's struggles to support related commercials (2011's the family. "Imported From Detroit" Super (SCROLL DOWN TO WATCH) Bowl prominently featured the The spots purposefully follow Motor City and rapper Eminem). Chrysler's "Halftime in America" The campaigns boosted the city's commercial that aired during this image and potentially wooed its year's Super Bowl, in which Clint r e s i d e n t s , b u t t h e n e w e s t Eastwood told of Detroit's and commercials break away from the America's struggles, but declared Detroit theme and take a trip to "the Motor City is fighting again." the country and smaller towns. That ad stirred up a bit of While the "Imported from controversy, as some wondered if Detroit" tagline remains, the it had a pro-auto bailout, pro- urban backdrop disappears and is Obama message. Chrysler denied replaced with hopeful music, sun-
drenched fields and open roads. "All that matters is what's ahead," is the line that ends one ad. For a positive message, there's good reason for the ads take place outside Detroit. The "Second Half" characters might be past halftime, but the city, which is currently struggling with a massive deficit, isn't quite out of the locker room. According to a blog post from Chrysler Group LLC Chief Marketing Officer Olivier Francois, the commercials, created with the Portland, Ore.based advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy, will make their television premieres over the weekend, showing during the NCAA men's basketball semi finals (Jeep and Chrysler) and national championship game (Dodge), as well as NHL (Dodge) games, NASCAR (Ram) races, the American Country Music Awards (Ram) and "Mad Men" (Chrysler). Below, watch the latest four ads and Chrysler's previous Detroitthemed commercials:
Dave Rubin (TV on HuffingtonPost.com)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:41:00 PM
Here's Carson Daly on his radio show Wednesday: Really listen to those words: "With my luck, it would be like... this is the flight going to Pride in San Francisco... I mean, that would be my colleagues," he said. "Uh, we're headed down to Vegas for the floral convention. " As a comedian, frankly I don't care that much about bad jokes. He isn't a comic, so I'm actually willing to grant him a pretty long leash here on what he might think is funny. However, in a time when every gay story in the news is still about bully or suicide, using the easiest stereotypes against gay people just doesn't cut it. I was at
the GLAAD awards this past weekend, and the entire thing was about bullying and how much has changed and how far we have to go. Well, perhaps not that much has changed because of people like Carson. Carson, I do not accept your forced, publicist-written apology. Every week someone does this to the gay community, GLAAD steps in and makes nice, and we all pretend it never happened. I'm over it. (And so is gay 9/11 hero Mark Bingham's mother.) This gets us absolutely nowhere. You want me to accept your apology? Meet me on Christopher street in the middle of this year's NYC Gay Pride Parade... there's a couple of people I want to introduce you to.
TED: Marco Tempest: A magical tale (with augmented reality) - Marco Tempest (2012)
TEDTalks (TEDTalks (video))
Submitted at 3/30/2012 10:00:30 AM
Marco Tempest spins a beautiful story of what magic is, how it entertains us and how it highlights
our humanity -- all while working extraordinary illusions with his hands and an augmented reality machine.
58
Products/
Earth Hour imagines a planet temporarily unplugged

Consumer Reports News (Consumer Reports)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 11:54:59 AM
Sound Byte: Hands on with the HTC One smart phones

Submitted at 3/30/2012 12:59:59 PM
Earth Hour imagines a planet temporarily unplugged First there was Earth Day, now for the time-crunched there's Earth Hour, which takes place at 8:30 PM Saturday when people around the globe are asked to turn off the lights. Earth Hour began in Australia in 2007 and by last year almost two billion people in more than 5,200 cities and towns in 135 countries had flipped the switch to call attention to climate change, according to its sponsor the World Wildlife Fund. Whether or not you join the collective effort, there are plenty of things you can do at home to save energy and money, if not the planet. Most Americans say they turn off the lights, television or other appliances when not in use, according to a new Harris poll. And one in two people say they replace incandescent lightbulbs with fluorescent ones, use power strips, look for Energy Star when
and wind power, according to Harris. At Consumer Reports, we've incorporated energy-efficiency into many of our tests. We let you know how much it costs to run each refrigerator for a year and how energy efficient the new dishwashers and washing replacing appliances and reduce machines really are. We've tested hot water use by taking shorter hybrid and solar water heaters and showers or doing cold water estimated their payback times. And we have extensive test results washes. But energy-saving behaviors start a n d p a y b a c k t i m e s f o r to decline as the effort and replacement compact fluorescent expense to make them goes up. (CFL), light-emitting diode (LED) For example, fewer than 40 and halogen lightbulbs. So if you percent of respondents have decide to turn off your lights i n s t a l l e d a p r o g r a m m a b l e tomorrow, consider replacing thermostat or sealed gaps in floors them with energy-saving bulbs and walls. And fewer still have before switching them back on. installed low-flow bathroom Subscribe now! S u b s c r i b e t o fixtures, energy-efficient windows or added extra insulation to attics ConsumerReports.org for expert or crawl spaces. But the lowest Ratings, buying advice and compliance of all involves reliability on hundreds of changes that take an upfront products. Update your feed investment like installing a preferences tankless water heater or such renewable energy sources as solar
Sound Byte: Hands on with the HTC One smart phones HTC recently unveiled the ultraslim One line of smart phones, and Consumer Reports senior editor Mike Gikas was there to get some hands-on time with two of these models: the One X and One S (the One V wasn't quite ready for prime time). His initial impression? The HTC One phones "promise to maintain the company's track record for serious image-taking prowess." Mike visited the "Into Tomorrow" show to fill Dave Graveline in on the details. Listen to our Sound Byte to see what else Mike had to say about these phones, and check out our original post on the HTC One phones for lots more information. About Sound Bytes Every week, Consumer Reports experts produce a short audio segment which covers a wide variety of issues regarding consumer electronics and technology for "Into Tomorrow with Dave Graveline." The Sound Byte featured on the Consumer
Reports News Blog was aired on the prior weekend's "Into Tomorrow" broadcast. About Into Tomorrow Now in its 17th year,"Into Tomorrow with Dave Graveline" covers the latest in consumer electronics and technology available today and into tomorrow. The show airs on more than 180 AM and FM radio stations around the U.S. and can be heard globally through various sourcesincluding America's Armed Forces Networks and podcasts of previous "Into Tomorrow" episodes. Subscribe now! S u b s c r i b e t o ConsumerReports.org for expert Ratings, buying advice and reliability on hundreds of products. Update your feed preferences
Products/
59
Test complete video: 2012 Mazda3 SkyActiv

Submitted at 3/30/2012 10:29:59 AM
If Earth Day Is Too Much To Handle, Just Turn Off The Lights For Earth Hour Tomorrow
Mary Beth Quirk (The Consumerist)
Test complete video: 2012 Mazda3 SkyActiv We've enjoyed Mazda3s for years. They've often been the driver's choice for the most fun-to -drive small sedan. And now they're very fuel efficient, as well. The 2012 model year ushered in the company's new SkyActiv 2.0liter four-cylinder engine. It uses a variety of technologies, including direct injection and a very high compression ratio, to eke out maximum fuel economy. While the base 2.0-liter engine remains available, Mazda says the majority of Mazda3 buyers pay the extra money to get the SkyActiv drivetrain. Also helping to ease the pain at the pump is the move to a six-
speed automatic. A slick-shifting manual transmission is also available. We're impressed with this new engine. Combined with the automatic, we got 32 mpg overall in our tests. That puts it among the most efficient cars in its class. This new technology also doesn't put a damper on performance: Acceleration times remain brisk. The 3 maintains its status as an enjoyable small car, complete with very responsive steering that delivers great driver feedback. The ride is quite good, with
appliances when they're not using them. And half replace impressive composure for a small incandescent bulbs with Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:30:00 PM sedan. Stopping distances are also fluorescent ones, use power strips improved compared to the last We know, you're too addicted to a n d l o o k f o r E n e r g y S t a r Mazda 3i Touring sedan we keeping your phone/tablet/laptop appliances, among other things. tested. charged to go for an entire day As it gets more expensive to save Some road noise still makes its without using any electricity, but energy, however, people start way into the cabin, though. The 3 how about for just 60 minutes making less of an effort for isn't a quiet car. Another during Earth Hour tomorrow? e x a m p l e , i n s t a l l i n g a downside? The backseat is tight, Come on, you can do it. We programmable thermostat, sealing with not much leg room. believe in you, and the world will gaps in floors and walls or adding Take a look at this recent road be ever so grateful. extra insulation. test video to find out why we Over at Consumer Reports, So since this is like, the easiest think the Mazda3 ranks among they're all about tomorrow's lights possible thing to do, no problem, the best small sedans, and read -out hour, which starts at 8:30 right? Right. our complete road test for all p.m. ET. Earth Hour was started Earth Hour imagines a planet insights, specs, and Ratings. in Australia in 2007, and by last temporarily unplugged[Consumer Subscribe now! year more than two billion people Reports] S u b s c r i b e t o in 5,200 cities and towns in 135 This entry passed through the ConsumerReports.org for expert countries had joined in and Full-Text RSS service if this is Ratings, buying advice and switched off. your content and you're reading it reliability on hundreds of The event is designed to call on someone else's site, please read products. Update your feed attention to climate change, and is the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentpreferences sponsored by the World Wildlife only/faq.php#publishers. Five Fund. The good news is a new Filters recommends: Donate to Harris poll says most Americans Wikileaks. do turn off the lights, TV or other
Flash In The Brain Pan: Happy Dead Friends

(Woot! - One Day, One Deal)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 10:00:00 AM
Frankensteins and make them happy. It's harder than it might at first appear. Today we'll be playing Happy Each dead thing has different Dead Friends(scroll down a little needs on the grid of life. Zombies if you don't see it right away). and skeletons want to hold hands, Your goal is to take these sad Frankensteins want to be left who'll get up in your face and ruin zombies, ghosts, skeletons and alone, and ghosts are just jerks
your day unless you isolate them. You'll also have to deal with obstacles like rocks and characters that are chained to a single spot, but if you solve it all, you'll get to enjoy a level editor that give you the power to create the stupidest grids you can imagine. Like this
one! Yay! We won the level! Even though it's not the longest game in the world, Happy Dead Friends is a decent puzzle, and a nice way to kill a Friday.
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Products/ Featured/
MasterCard, Visa Payment Processor On the Left, the Obamacare Debate Continues Says Violation Occurred In Early March; 50,000 Cards At Risk
Adam J. White (The Weekly Standard)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:25:00 PM
Chris Morran (The Consumerist)

Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:40:52 PM
Earlier today, we wrote about how MasterCard and Visa had begun notifying banks about a possible data breach at a thirdparty company that processes credit card payments. Now more information has come out regarding when the breach occurred and how many people may be affected. The payment processor has been identified as Atlanta-based Global Payments, which tells Consumerist in a statement that it
determined card data "may have been accessed" in early March. The company says it "immediately engaged external experts in information technology forensics and contacted federal law enforcement," and "notified appropriate industry parties to allow them to minimize potential cardholder impact." Meanwhile, it's being reported that approximately 50,000 card accounts may have been put at risk by the breach, though no one is saying whether or not any fraudulent transactions were attempted on the affected accounts.
Both MasterCard and Visa have tried to calm customers by stating that their respective customer databases were not hacked. Global Payments says it will be holding a press conference on Monday morning to offer more details on the matter. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
In light of the bruising that Solicitor General Donald Verrilli took during this week's oral arguments, no one can blame Obamacare's supporters for trying to offer (belatedly) winning answers that the governments attorney lacked. Two of the early entrants are law professors Akhil
Amar and Jeffrey Rosen. But their efforts do not improve much on the government's offering.
Netflix Proves That It Still Cares About DVDs, Buys DVD.com URL
Chris Morran (The Consumerist)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:15:00 PM
In spite of the fact that Netflix has done an awful lot in the last year to distance itself from the disc-by-mail service that made it a household name, the company
apparently still wants to be associated with the shiny discs. Earlier this week, Netflix purchased the URL DVD.com, which now redirects to DVD.netflix.com, a portal to sign up for the disc-by-mail service, for people who aren't already logged into the site.
But why buy the URL when Netflix went so far as to, in a spectacular error of judgment, briefly spin off its DVD business into something called Qwikster? "Netflix cares about keeping DVD healthy," says Netflix rep Steve "I'm not related to the guy from Dirty Dancing" Swasey, "and this
is just one small investment in keeping DVD healthy." Of course, should Netflix ever decide to make another go at spinning off a DVD-only company, it now has a URL that people won't make fun of. Confirmed: Netflix buys DVD.com[DomainNameWire.co
m via GigaOm.com] This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Products/ Gaming/ Featured/
61
March Angriness: CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH

(Woot! - One Day, One Deal)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 12:00:00 PM
Here we have it folks, your 2012 March Angriness championship match-up! Scientology, the lone #1 seed in the Final Four, couldn't manage to intimidate its way any further, nor could the inconsiderate coffee shop parents who represented the Etiquette region. So it's come down to a #3 seed against a #5 seed, the internet service provider you can't trust versus the person who can't trust you. Which one will be crowned king of the enraging? That's up to YOU to decide! Before you vote, just a few quick things to keep in mind: Remember, you don't want to vote for your favorite option; you
Halo 4 'Warhouse' multiplayer map concept art and info deployed

David Hinkle (Joystiq)
want to vote for whatever makes you angrier. BE SURE TO CLICK SUBMIT WHEN IT'S ALL FILLED OUT. IF YOU DON'T, YOUR VOTES WON'T COUNT! Happy choosing! Loading...
Voting will close Sunday, April 1st at 11:59pm! We will announce the winner on Monday, April 2nd! Photo by flickr user, paddynapper used under a Creative Commons License.
G.E.'s Immelt Is Not Backing Romney

Daniel Halper (The Weekly Standard)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 2:27:00 PM
Bloomberg's Julianna Goldman reports that G.E.'s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, is not "rooting for
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney in this years
election." Immelt is head of President Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, as well as an informal economic adviser to the president.
Halos, so we sought influence from those, and also from the industrial close-quarters combat Warhouse is a massive mining in more recent games," the 343 ship, one of the multiplayer maps blog post reads. available in Halo 4 when it ships There are a series of small later this year. On the outside, pathways connecting various there is a beautiful space vista to areas of Warhouse, allowing for distract you while a Spartan w h a t 3 4 3 h o p e s a r e m a n y sneaks up behind you and bashes surprising encounters. You know, your billion-dollar helmet in with like that time that Spartan sneaked his Battle Rifle. Inside, there is a up behind you and -- well, you get giant half-built mech to distract the idea. you while -- well, while the same Gallery: Halo 4 (Warhouse thing happens. concept art) Warhouse is a working title for Halo 4 'Warhouse' multiplayer this map, 343 says in the latest m a p c o n c e p t a r t a n d i n f o Halo Bulletin update. It's a deployed originally appeared on s m a l l e r , s y m m e t r i c a l m a p Joystiq on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 designed for Slayer gametypes. 15:45:00 EST. Please see our "We wanted this playspace to be terms for use of feeds. similar competition-wise to older Permalink| Email this| Comments symmetrical maps in previous
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:45:00 PM
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Sports/
Final Four: Big programs come to Big Easy msnbc.com

By EDDIE PELLS THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The Orange County Register (Bing News)
their problems and got everyone thinking about basketball instead of the underside of a business driven by a $10.8 billion TV contract. Submitted at 3/30/2012 12:17:35 PM NEW ORLEANS -- Looking for "There are a lot of good players those charming underdog stories? out there who are performing Go find the DVD from last year. right now," Kentucky coach John This year's Final Four brings Calipari said. together an ensemble of big-name For his part, Calipari is perfecting schools, all saddled with their the art of luring a player for one, typically big-time issues - a maybe two seasons, to contend for reminder that everything in a championship, then saying a college sports is not as pure as the guilt-free goodbye. During his NCAA and its "student-athletes" more candid moments, he'll tell would like us to believe. you he's no fan of the rule that In the national semifinals allows players to leave college S a t u r d a y , K e n t u c k y p l a y s after a single year. But it's out of Louisville and Ohio State meets his hands. It's the NBA that put in Kansas. All the schools have the rule stating players must be 19 made headlines for a variety of off before they can enter the draft. -the-court reasons over the last What's a coach to do? several months, including the "I think they trust that when the proliferation of one-and-done year is out, they're going to get the players, stories about coaches in right information and be treated courtrooms and a handful of fairly," Calipari said. "They don't financial misdeeds involving worry about it. Historically, we recruits, players, coaches and don't convince kids to stay who even ticket managers. should leave. They are going to See photos of the Final Four get the information, and they teams. know that. They are just going to And so, while there are no little play basketball." vs. big stories this year - the way It means freshmen Anthony tiny Butler or overlooked VCU D a v i s a n d M i c h a e l K i d d beat the odds last season to make Gilchrist, both projected as high it to basketball's pinnacle - we're lottery picks, probably will be r e g a l e d w i t h t a l l t a l e s o f gone after this season, and it's not redemption and resurrection: impossible to think the rest of the Teams and coaches that overcame starting lineup - all freshmen and
sophomores - could leave, as well. Calipari, who has had NCAA trouble at every step along his college head-coaching career, said this is a price worth paying for running a "players-first" program - with players who worry about winning first, then reap the benefits when the NBA comes calling. While he applauds his team's unselfishness, the NCAA insists it is toughening its academic standards and isn't so concerned with the 15 players who do leave after one year, but rather the 5,500 who don't. "I've made no secret of the fact I'd prefer to have a different model," NCAA president Mark Emmert said. "Most people want a different model. It would be nice if that were the case, but I don't think we should blow one-anddone out of proportion and suggest this is undermining the educational mission of the NCAA." While the NCAA spins that issue, its rules police have spent plenty of time visiting Ohio State's athletic department over the last several years. First, there was the firing of coach Jim O'Brien, who was found to have given money to a recruit, then later sued the school for wrongful termination because he got the ax before the NCAA had officially determined
he'd done anything wrong. Thad Matta cleaned up that mess and has led the Buckeyes to the Final Four twice in the last seven years. Though the basketball program has recovered nicely, the athletic department didn't learn all its lessons: The football team is on probation because of violations that happened during Jim Tressel's tenure. The takeaway quote from that entire episode came from university president Gordon Gee, when asked if he was going to dismiss Tressel while the coach's problems were still unfolding. "No, are you kidding?" Gee said with a laugh. "Let me be very clear. I'm just hoping the coach doesn't dismiss me." The last year has not been the greatest for college sports, with child sex abuse allegations at Penn State and Syracuse and a number of scandals uncovered at Miami, North Carolina, Southern California, Tennessee and elsewhere. This week, of course, is supposed to be a celebration of what's right with college sports. Yet it's hard not to ignore some tidbits that came up on the road to the Final Four: -Louisville spent the first two weeks of the tournament off campus, not wanting to fly back and forth to play games scheduled
by the NCAA in Portland and Phoenix. -Last year's champion, Connecticut, isn't eligible to play in the tournament next year because of NCAA academic sanctions, though the school is appealing. -This year's Final Four coaches are making between $2.5 million and $3.8 million this season and will cash in on six-figure bonuses if they win the national title. The NCAA hasn't been as big a player at Kansas, but that's not to say the Jayhawks are immune to corruption. Last May, five athletic department employees and consultants got between 37 and 57 months' prison time for unlawfully selling football and basketball season tickets to ticket brokers and others, then pocketing the money. Athletic director Lew Perkins saw his name sullied, and although he wasn't accused of any wrongdoing, he retired a year ahead of schedule in the wake of the scandal. At Louisville, the NCAA didn't get involved, but Pitino certainly landed in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. His name was trending for months while details of his FINAL page 65
Sports/
63
Bob Kravitz: NCAA needs to give IU's Watford, others more time to weigh NBA options - Indianapolis Star
(- Bing News)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 7:52:44 AM
There are a lot of ill-conceived and misguided rules in the NCAA. This is one of them: Before this year, college basketball players had until May 8 to evaluate their NBA options, then were given until one week before the June NBA draft to declare whether they were coming out for the draft or returning to school. This gave players several weeks to not only get feedback from the NBA, but go to the Orlando, Fla., pre-draft camp, work out for individual teams and get all the information necessary to make a smart decision. Here's the rule now: College players such as Indiana's Christian Watford have to declare they are looking into the NBA by April 3 and must declare or withdraw by April 10. Which, by the way, is one day before the spring signing period. According to the NCAA, this coach-inspired rule is being imposed "to help keep studentathletes focused on academics in the spring term and to give coaches a better idea of their roster for the coming year before the recruiting period is closed."
Right. Academics. Truth is, it's all about the latter, all about protecting coaches and the college product. Also, those coaches want to go off and take vacation rather than talk to NBA scouts about their prospect. "It's totally unfair,'' said Indiana Pacers guard George Hill, who left IUPUI after his junior year and was drafted 26th by the San Antonio Spurs in 2008. "It's especially unfair to guys from the mid-major schools. The guys from the bigger schools, they get to play on the big stage and everybody sees them. But guys like me from a school like IUPUI, (NBA) teams don't really know what you can do unless they see you against top competition. "The reason I'm in the NBA is because of the (pre-draft) camp in Orlando. That's where the scouts saw I could play against the top guys. These kids now, they're not going to have that opportunity. They've got, what, a week to make one of the most important decisions they're ever going to make about their future? "These college coaches, nothing against them, but they're making all the money. You should be able to take your time before you
decide whether to come out or not. I'm just afraid a lot of guys are going to make bad decisions.'' Test the waters? These guys can't even get to the beach in seven days. So now, if you're Watford (who needs to stay) or maybe Cody Zeller (who will stay), you've got all of one week -- with no predraft camp and maybe a workout with a local team -- to make the most important decision of your life. John Calipari, the Kentucky coach who prepares his players for the NBA like nobody else, has it right: "All this stuff, for the good of college basketball? This should be about these kids,'' Calipari told Sporting News. "They've done their good for college basketball. This should be about, 'How can we help these kids make a good decision?' " Granted, kids made bad decisions even when they were given plenty of time to make a choice. But kids will make more bad choices if they are given limited time, feedback and resources. As it is, the young men who are contemplating early withdrawal have access to an NBA panel that will give them honest feedback,
and that's fine as far as it goes. But these players can't really know, and executives can't really know, until these players have a chance to compete against NBA types or other draft-eligible players. If JaJuan Johnson had just one week to decide two years ago, would he have chosen to return to Purdue? Johnson was leaning toward coming out, but after a few workouts with NBA teams, it became clear to him he needed to return for a final year. On the flip side, would Gordon Hayward have stayed in school if he hadn't had a chance to wow the scouts during the "testing the water'' period? This kind of deadline really hurts a kid like Watford. Right now, most draft sites have him as a second-round pick or not being drafted. So what's he going to do between April 3 and 10 to change anybody's mind? Unlike Hill or so many others, he can't go to a predraft camp and blow away scouts with his game. Good for IU. Bad for Watford. "It is a further impediment to the athlete and his ability to analyze his options,'' agent Bill Duffy
recently told ESPN.com. "It is definitely self-serving for the institutions. I don't think it impacts prospects in the top 10 but mid-to-late first-rounders looking to position themselves higher in the draft are harmed significantly.'' As of this writing, 21 players have announced they're going to consider the draft, and another 19 are viewed as likely candidates to leave school early. The NBA draft isn't until June 28. So why should kids have to rush into an important decision April 10? NCAA President Mark Emmert has said he wants to rid the organization of its dumbest rules, especially the ones that have a deleterious effect on athletes. Here's one that needs to be expunged. Bob Kravitz is a columnist for The Indianapolis Star. Call him at (317) 444-6643 or email bob.kravitz@indystar.com. Follow Bob on Twitter at @bkravitz. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read BOB page 65
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Sports/
AP Source: Saints' Payton to appeal suspension - CNN Sports Illustrated

(- Bing News)
sportsmanship and fair play.'' Cornwell said. "Based on these discussions, I am confident that NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Saints Joe's appeal and his long history coach Sean Payton is seeking in the NFL are consistent with our relief from the NFL for his role in belief that there is no place at any New Orleans' bounty system. And level of football for bounties that so is his assistant, Joe Vitt. target players.'' The coaches decided to file Goodell last week announced the appeals on Friday. suspension of Payton, starting Payton has decided to file an Sunday, for his role in connection appeal with the league on his with New Orleans' bounty system, season-long suspension, a person which offered improper cash familiar with the decision said. bonuses for big hits that either Not long after that, Vitt's agent knocked opponents out of games said his client was doing the same or left them needing help off of for his six-game suspension. the field. Payton's appeal will also ask NFL The commissioner has since said Commissioner Roger Goodell for the Saints' coach would be his guidance on the parameters of allowed to continue working if he the suspension, the person told appealed, while the process The Associated Press Friday on played out. However, he added condition of anonymity because t h a t t h e a p p e a l w o u l d b e the league and the Saints have not expedited, indicating that Payton announced Payton's plan to would not likely be able to add on appeal. much work time should his appeal David Cornwell, said in an email be upheld. to the AP he and his client - who Goodell also said at NFL also coaches linebackers - had meetings this week in Florida that t a l k e d a b o u t V i t t ' s a p p e a l . Payton could have some contact P r o F o o t b a l l T a l k . c o m f i r s t with the team but did not go into reported Vitt's decision. detail, and Payton indicated that "Joe Vitt and I discussed our he was still a little unclear about concern that his appeal be that as well. consistent with the association's With all the uncertainty, Payton view that coaches also coach is trying to compress as much
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:16:33 PM
planning for the 2012 season into whatever time he has left at Saints headquarters this weekend. The NFL could not immediately provide details on how Payton's decision to file an appeal on Friday would affect the timeline for the process to play out. "The decision to appeal is for Sean Payton to make and announce as he deems appropriate,'' NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said. "If there are appeals, the commissioner will arrange for expedited hearings, as he stated at the league meeting.'' The results of the appeal could affect whether Bill Parcells comes out of retirement to take over as interim coach while his former offensive assistant and protege is suspended. Parcells has said he would consider coaching the Saints if asked. At a spring training game in Jupiter, Fla., on Friday, Parcells declined to answer questions about the possibility. "I know better than that,'' Parcells said. Payton and general manager Mickey Loomis played golf with Parcells this week to talk to him about the team's predicament, and Parcells has told multiple media outlets that he would consider
taking the Saints interim post to help his friend. If the suspension is reduced, however, the Saints could decide it makes more sense to promote an assistant from the current staff. There are also three strong candidates among Saints assistants to take over as interim coach: offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael, defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo and offensive line coach Aaron Kromer. Payton expressed confidence in the abilities of his own assistants to compensate for his absence, but also has voiced some misgivings about saddling those coaches with additional responsibilities. Since his suspension was announced, Payton has been putting in long hours with his staff and that of general manager Mickey Loomis as they try to lay out plans for the 2012 draft and season. Loomis will be able to oversee the draft and handle other roster moves up until the season starts. Then he is slated to serve his eight -game suspension for failing to put a stop to the bounty system in a timely way. Payton said earlier this week that he had already laid out plans for the offseason training program
and the beginning of training camp, up until the Saints play Arizona in the Hall of Fame game Aug. 5 in Canton, Ohio. The NFL's investigation in New Orleans found that Payton initially lied to league investigators about the existence of a bounty and instructed his defensive assistants to do the same. Payton twice apologized for his role in the bounty program, saying he takes "full responsibility'' for a system that operated for three years under his watch. The NFL has said as many as 27 players also could be sanctioned for their role in the scandal, but it is not yet clear when that might happen, creating additional uncertainty for New Orleans and some teams that have signed former Saints defensive regulars as they tried to build their 2012 rosters. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Featured/
65
FINAL
extramarital affair and the ensuing extortion trial were aired out in public. Pitino's reputation was damaged, and the woman who tried to bribe him to keep the thing secret got a seven-year prison sentence. "A lot of times the last two years I took a lot of grief from a lot of people saying a lot of things," Pitino said last week after Louisville beat Florida to make his sixth Final Four. "And I never thought in my life I could turn the other cheek and just walk on. And I did. And some of the most ugly things I've heard, I just took it inside. And today, as I look back on it, I'm real proud that you could turn the other cheek." This week, Pitino keeps looking forward, refusing to take the bait from all those Kentucky Wildcats
fans, who may never forgive the 59-year-old coach for leaving them, heading to the NBA, then coming back a few years later to coach their archrival. The Kentucky-Louisville story line is the best thing going this week in New Orleans, for what Calipari predicts will be an epic Final Four. Without any little teams cluttering up the court, this weekend will feature the most talent, Calipari says, since 2008, when he brought Memphis and Derrick Rose to the Final against Kansas and Mario Chalmers. Jared Sullinger (Ohio State), Thomas Robinson (Kansas) and Davis (Kentucky) are first-team AP All-Americans. Those three teams all have other players who look very much like NBA material in the near future.
"2008 was ridiculous," said Calipari, whose trip to the final later was vacated by the NCAA because of violations. "Guess what? This Final Four will be very similar to that." This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Republican philosophy, day 2

(Dave Winer's "Scripting News" weblog)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 9:58:38 AM
BOB
the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Wisconsin Gubernatorial Recall Election Set for June 5

John McCormack (The Weekly Standard)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 12:37:00 PM
Mark your calendars: Wisconsin's state election board officially announced today that the recall election between Governor Scott Walker and the winner of the Democratic primary will take place on June 5. Polls show the
recall race will be tight in battleground Wisconsin. And, as Stephen F.
Yesterday's Republican Philosophy piece was a big hit. I have to admit it was something of a breakthrough for me. Though they've been upfront about both pillars of their platform. They are all about money. And they don't like you. Nothing wrong with money, btw. I like it too. But I'm not all about money. I am therefore, not a Republican. So in the blowback from this, I learned even more about Republicans. Again, things I knew before but hadn't seen very clearly. Observation: Republicans act like pricks and then complain when you don't love them. It sounds crazy when you say it like that, but it's totally observable. I wonder if they know they do it. And you have to give credit to Romney and Cheney and even the Bushes because they aren't like that. It's as if it never occurred to them that it mattered what you thought. Cheney, bless him, says it directly, clearly and unambiguously. These are some cold-blooded
people. Who hire good marketing people who have them hold up banners saying they're really compassionate. Good guy to drink a beer with. How much you want to bet we see pictures of Mitt Romney drinking a beer. Relaxing after a tough primary fight. Wearing jeans. Being a human being. A Republican version of a human being. All of this is preamble to an idea that needs a warmup because it's so chilling. Getting rid of health care is an effective voter suppression technique. Why pay for health care to maintain the lives of people who are going to vote against you. Sick people have trouble getting to the polls. Dead people even more so. Like I said, it's pretty cold. But knowing the Republicans, yeah -they are that depraved. One more thing. I know some people who vote Republican are good people and would never support anything like this. If you want to stay a Republican, then you have to stop it. You can't have it both ways, vote along with these people, and disclaim responsibility.
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Science/
Video: VICE Goes to SOFEX, a Massive Jordanian Weapons Convention

Dan Nosowitz (Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:14:40 PM
Scientist Behind Earth-Shaking Neutrino Finding Resigns Due to Slowness of Subatomic Particles
Paul Adams (Popular Science New Technology, Science News, The Future Now)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 2:32:10 PM
SOFEX Jordan VICE Weapons conventions, basically the military equivalent of the Consumer Electronics Show that we attend every year, are massive events in which generals and representatives from countries around the world come to gawk at
and buy that year's crop of weaponry. A lot of the military tech that we write about will pop up in some form at these events, and VICE went out to SOFEX, a major convention in Jordan, to see (and be a bit disturbed by) how it all works. Check out the video below--it's a really interesting 20 minutes.
Face.com (Wildly) Guesses Your Age and Mood From Your Photo
Dan Nosowitz (Popular Science - New Technology, Science News, The Future Now)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 1:45:21 PM
Smiling: False Dan Nosowitz The next creepy step in facial recognition comes from Face.com --a little bit of software that purports to not only identify you with a photo of your face, but also deduce your age, gender, and
OPERA Detector A lateral view of the OPERA detector. Gran Sasso National Laboratory Professor Antonio Ereditato, the man who found neutrinos traveling faster than light late last year, has resigned from his job at the Gran Sasso physics laboratory in Italy. Attempts to reproduce the mood. We'd be more creeped out amazing superluminal result were if it wasn't sort of...not accurate. not successful, and the finding The above photo of Pop Photo's was eventually blamed on a loose Dan Bracaglia, a 24-year-old who cable. w e ' d d e s c r i b e a s " s m i l i n g We were pretty excited for a sardonically," was identified as a minute there. non-smiling 33-year-old man in a [ BBC] "happy" mood. Try it for yourself here. [via Gizmodo]
Health/
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Take Your Dog To The Office And Stress Less

(Shots - Health Blog)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 12:30:00 PM
Brian Smith/ Flickr Patch, a Great Dane, has a memo for you. Any dog owner will tell you that they're a lot less stressed out when they're with their dog. Even at work. And now science agrees. People who took their dogs to work in an office in Greensboro, N.C., had lower stress levels through the work day, as reported on self-reported test. The employees who hadn't brought their dogs to work said their stress levels increased through the work day. So did the non-pet owners. But the dog owners said they stayed mellow as the day went on. The researchers say that dogs in the workplace may help buffer work stress, and make the job more satisfying for non-dog owners, too. Their results were published in the International Journal of Workplace Health Management. A quick poll here at Shots Central reveals that Scott Hensley and Julie Rovner would be far less stressed if their dogs were snoozing under their desks. Of course, they'd also be less stressed
if they were outside tossing a ball with their dogs on this beautiful spring day, rather than boning up on health care policy. This leads us dogless workers to wonder if workplace dogs function as an excuse to take a much needed break from work; a healthy version of stepping outside to take a smoke, or going to the vending machine. That could well be true, according to Sandra Barker, a professor of psychiatry at Virginia
Commonwealth University and one of the study researchers. During the week of the study, she saw people borrowing co-workers' dogs to go for a walk instead of sit in the cafeteria during breaks. "People may be getting more exercise," she told Shots. The company that hosted the current study, Replacements LTD, is clearly pro-pet. They've allowed dogs in the office for the past 15 years. The average tenure for a worker there is 10 years,
shows that interacting with pets can make people healthy, or healthier. Earlier this month, shameless pet partisan Julie Rovner reported on studies that found that petting one's dog lowers the owner's blood pressure, and that interacting with animals increases people's level of the hormone oxytocin. It's a neurotransmitter that's said to increase trust and reduce fear. Barker speculates that workplace pets could be a low-cost intervention to keep employees happier and healthier. But this only works, she admits, if the dogs in question are friendly, clean, and well-behaved. This raises the question of whether supervisors would have to vet pet behavior, and banish which is high in the industry, says troublemaking pets. That sounds Barker. But it's unknown if that like a recipe for stress. worker satisfaction is dog-related. This entry passed through the This current study is hardly Full-Text RSS service if this is dispositive. It followed just 75 your content and you're reading it employees, paging them four on someone else's site, please read times a day to report on their the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentstress levels using a standardized only/faq.php#publishers. Five quiz. And Barker and her co- Filters recommends: Donate to author and husband, management Wikileaks. professor Randolph Barker, are avowed dog lovers. So there may be some bias here. But there is plenty of data that
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Health/
New York Bans 'Synthetic Marijuana'

(Shots - Health Blog)
synthetic marijuana products like those on Thursday. So all kinds of wacky stuff that's made to get Kelley McCall/ AP people high but is often A package of K2, a concoction of disguised as potpourri, incense or d r i e d h e r b s s p r a y e d w i t h some mixture of herbs is now chemicals sometimes called verboten. synthetic marijuana. New York A week ago Dr. Nirav Shah, New moved to ban a wide range of York's health commissioner, products like these this week. warned doctors that products There will be no more "Mr. Nice containing so-called synthetic Guy" in New York. No more cannabinoids (chemicals tweaked "K2," "Skunk" or "Zohai" either. to be like THC, the active The New York State Health ingredient in marijuana, but Department banned the sale of different enough to evade legal
Submitted at 3/30/2012 9:29:00 AM
action) can have some serious side effects. "Calls to New York State Poison Control Centers have increased dramatically in 2012 and severe side effects including death, acute renal failure, as well as other significant negative effects to the cardiovascular and central nervous systems have been linked to use of these products," Shah wrote. The New York Daily News has been covering the growing popularity of the until-now legal
substances and the problems that crop up as more people use them. "Synthetic marijuana is really a misnomer," Lewis Nelson, an ER doctor at NYU Langone Medical Center told the News. "It's really quite different, and the effects are much more unpredictable. It's dangerous, and there is no quality control in what you are getting." Quite a few states have taken steps to stem the sale of fake marijuana. And a year ago, Drug Enforcement Administration took
emergency action to ban five chemicals used in fake pot. But the makers of the stuff have been creative in coming up with different variations of the chemicals used to avoid restrictions. The New York order goes pretty far in defining a very wide range of chemicals that are no longer allowed for sale. The New York order took effect immediately, and it's up to local health officials to enforce it. NEW page 69
Politics-Right/ Daily World/
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NEW
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Comprehensive Strategy Needed to Counter Boko Haram

Morgan Lorraine Roach (The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 2:00:16 PM
PODCAST: Rep. Steve King on Obamacare, Budget

David Weinberger (The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:30:19 PM
Royals remember Queen Mother and Margaret

(Evening Standard - News)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 9:07:30 AM
The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh arrived at St Georges Chapel in Windsor by limousine but younger members of the royal family, led by the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall, walked from Windsor Castle. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were absent as they are reportedly skiing in the French Alps. The Queen Mother died in her sleep 10 years ago today aged 101, while Margaret died the previous month, aged 71, after suffering the third in a series of strokes. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
When Boko Haram, a Nigerian terrorist insurgency, reemerged from its year-long hiatus in 2010, few in Washington took notice. The bombing of the United Nations headquarters last August in Abuja changed this. Last November, the S u b c o m m i t t e e o n Counterterrorism and Intelligence of the House Homeland Security Committee released a report and held a hearing on the overlooked threat that Boko Haram poses to U.S. interests and security. And, yesterday, the Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs held a hearing that, though not dedicated to Boko Haram, provided broad assessment of security, trade, and governance in Nigeria. Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson gave credit to the modest advancements the government has achieved in combating Nigerias institutionalized corruption, but the realities of the security crisis overshadowed his optimism. Despite its lofty talks of combating Boko Haram and
ensuring the safety of Nigeria, Nigerias government has failed to develop a useful counterterrorism strategy. Haphazard tacticssuch as initiating negotiations with Boko Haram intermediaries, declaring a state of emergency in three states, and increasing the military presence in the northhavent worked. Rather, more attention should be paid to northern Nigeria and the poor social and economic conditions that are exploited by Boko Haram to drive resentment among the northern population. Northern Nigerians are significantly marginalized and are not provided the same opportunities and benefits that those in the rest of the country enjoy. Approximately 76 percent of northerners live on less than a dollar per day. Schools are underfinanced, and the standard of education is so poor that graduates are often unfit for employment. Nigerias aggressive security forces aggravate this resentment with unprofessional and abusive conduct. In his testimony, Carson recommended(as does last weeks Heritage Foundation Issue Brief) that Boko Haram be countered
through a comprehensive approach, primarily addressing the disenfranchisement of northerners. If the central government works with reliable northern leaders to build trust and remedy social and economic disparities (e.g., education, health care, infrastructure, and employment), northerners will be less vulnerable to Boko Haram recruitment. In his December 2011 Washington Times op-ed, Nigerian national security adviser General Owoye Azazi argued that the U.S. is not doing enough to combat the threat that Boko Haram poses to the U.S. While the U.S. can and should do more (see Heritage recommendations), ultimately it is incumbent on Abuja to demonstrate the political will necessary to combat the Boko Haram threat. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
In a special Heritage podcast, Congressman Steve King (R IA) discusses Obamacares challenge in the Supreme Court and the budget. Click here to listen. In the case the Supreme Court does not rule Obamacare unconstitutional, is Congress still willing to fight the law? If so, how? And is it true, as the left contends, that if the law is overturned, it would represent judicial activism? Listen to the congressman answer these questions and more. To get regular updates on Heritage in Focus podcasts, visit our RSS feed or subscribe on iTunes. To listen to more Heritage Foundation podcasts, visit our podcast page. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
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Politics-Right/
No Fooling: U.S. Now Has Highest Corporate Tax Rate in the World
Curtis Dubay (The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation)
rate plus the average rate the states add on). Japans rate now stands at 36.8 percent after its recent cut. Submitted at 3/30/2012 2:46:21 PM This April Fools Day, the joke is The U.S. rate is well above the 25 on all of us. Thats because as of p e r c e n t a v e r a g e o f o t h e r April 1, the U.S. now has the d e v e l o p e d n a t i o n s i n t h e highest corporate tax rate in the O r g a n i z a t i o n f o r E c o n o m i c developed world. Cooperation and Development Our high corporate tax rate has (OECD). In fact, the U.S. rate is l o n g m a d e t h e U . S . a n almost 15 percentage points uncompetitive place for new higher than the OECD average. investment. This has driven new This gaping disparity means jobs to other, more competitive every other country that we nations and meant fewer jobs and compete with for new investment lower wages for all Americans. is better situated to land that new Other developed nations have investment and the jobs that come been cutting their rates for over 20 with it, because the after-tax years. The U.S. did nothing. return from that investment The U.S. was at least able to stay promises to be higher in those out of the top spot until now, lower-taxed nations. because Japan had also failed to Our high rate also makes our get its corporate tax rate in line businesses prime targets for with other more competitive t a k e o v e r s b y b u s i n e s s e s nations. But Japan has finally seen h e a d q u a r t e r e d i n f o r e i g n the light and reduced its rate as of c o u n t r i e s , b e c a u s e t h e i r April 1. worldwide profits are no longer Japans rate was 39.5 percent. subject to the highest-in-the-world That was just barely ahead of the U.S. corporate tax rate. Until U.S. rate of 39.2 percent (this Congress cuts the rate, more and includes the 35 percent federal more iconic U.S. businesses such
as Anheuser-Busch (which was bought by its Belgian competitor InBev in 2008) will be bought by their foreign competitors. To get back in line with international norms, Congress needs to reduce the rate so the combined federal and state rate matches or falls below the OECD
average. Some will contend that with deficits north of $1 trillion annually, we simply cant afford such a large rate reduction. But the actions of the nations we compete with for new investment show that these nations understand that lowering the corporate tax rate is necessary
because of the boost to economic growth it provides. The United Kingdom, for instance, is in as perilous fiscal situation as the U.S. However, the U.K. reduced its rate in 2011 from 28 percent to 26 percent. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne recently announced that the U.K. would further cut its rate to 22 percent by 2014 to increase competitiveness. Congress needs to cut the corporate tax rate to make the U.S. a more hospitable place for investment. The time for excuses is over. Until it does, every day will be a cruel joke. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Politics-Right/ Social Media/ News Photos
71
Bin Laden Fathered 4 Children While in Hiding

(The Feed)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 8:34:41 AM
Philippine school withholds diplomas of 6 boys kissing in Facebook photo - New York Daily News
(news photos - Google News)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:27:59 PM
Via NY Post: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan Former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden entered Pakistan across the Afghan border during the early months of US attacks on Afghanistan, then spent nine years on the run in Pakistan living in several safe houses and fathering four children. Testimony from bin Ladens youngest wife the 29year-old Yemenite Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah before a joint
investigation team in Pakistan reveals the al Qaeda kingpin fled over the border into Pakistan early in 2002, just after the US
launched attacks on Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan. . . Hilarious. The whole world is hunting him, and he has a better sex-life than the average A m e r i c a n husband. Greg Pollowitz This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
New York Daily News Philippine school withholds diplomas of 6 boys kissing in Facebook photo New York Daily News MANILA, Philippines A Philippine Catholic school is withholding the diplomas of six high school boys who uploaded Facebook photos that appear to
show them kissing one another, an education official said Friday. A day earlier, a Philippine court... Boys' diplomas withheld for Facebook kissing photos CNET 6 Filipino boys in trouble over Facebook kiss photos msnbc.com School punishes Filipino boys for Facebook kissing The Seattle Times ZDNet (blog) all 176 news articles
Fake ID Users Beware: Face-Scanning Software Guesses Your Age [VIDEO]

Alissa Skelton (Mashable!)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:40:39 PM
Are the days of fake IDs over? That may be so, thanks to new face-scanning software. The Face.com API, used by photo apps, can now detect the ages and moods of individuals in pictures. The API is most notably integrated in the Photo Finder and Photo Tagger Facebook apps. The update will now allow apps to list
estimated ages, as well as the minimum age and maximum age of people in photos. It also looks at a persons facial features to determine the mood in the photo. How accurate are the age scans? When Mashable tested the app, we found mixed results. The age predictor was dead-on at times; at other times it was 13 years off. The updated facial-recognition algorithm predicts age by looking at indicators such as wrinkles and
your smile is. SEE ALSO: Facebook Turns On skin texture. Facial Recognition For Tagging Check it out for yourself by By Default uploading a photo under method How can app developers use this parameters. Then click the call new API? The technology can be method button. A white box will integrated into parental-control appear around your face with red apps or be used by companies to dots pinpointing the eyes, nose restrict content based on user age and lips. or interest. Hover over the white box and an A part of the update, Face.com attributes box will list your age, says its facial recognition will be mood, gender and how genuine 30% more accurate. The formula
is propelled by new ways to detect poses and posts of interest in a photo. How dead-on is Face.coms new API? Did it guess your age? Tell us in the comments and wed love to see your photo. More About: face recognition, face.com, Video
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Social Media/ Daily World/
Google Whips Up 3D Graphing Goodness in Search

Lance Ulanoff (Mashable!)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:11:02 PM
Burma poll is not free and not fair

Rashid Razaq (Evening Standard - News)
Add one more thing to the list of fun stuff you can do directly from Googles search box: 3D Graph Plotting. And these arent just still 3D charts. Theyre colorful and fully manipulable, all thanks to Google Chrome Browsers support for WebGL. According to a post in Googles Inside Search blog, the new features are an enhancement to the 2D graphing functionality Google launched late last year. Google announced the new update by providing a sample equation that, if you have the Chrome browser, you can drop right into the address bar: tanh(y(y^4+5x^4-10(x^2)(y^2))/ (x^2+y^2)^4). Hit enter and you get a lovely, dynamic 3D graphic. The resulting 3D plot can be rotated with your mouse or by
hitting the play button within the graph window. That window also includes zoom controls and details on the X, Y and Z plot axes. You likely still have to be a math whiz to know what the graph and numbers actually mean. As Google Engineer and selfdescribed math lover Adi Avidor explained in the post, This feature is available globally, so now millions of students can explore and interact with
compound math functions right in their search results. SEE ALSO: Beyond Barrel Roll: 10 Hidden Google Tricks The 3D plotting function works in Chrome and Firefox, two browsers which support WebGL hardware acceleration. Microsofts competing Web Browser, Internet Explorer does not support WebGL because of security concerns. As a result, putting any of these equations in Google Search inside of Internet Explorer simply results in a whole bunch of search results with even more complex equations. Google has a couple of equationto-3D plotting examples that you can see for yourself in these animated Gifs. Brownie points if you can tell us in the comments the equations Google used to create these 3D Graphs. More About: Google, math, Search
commitment to change, with the possibility of some sanctions being lifted if it goes smoothly. Submitted at 3/30/2012 9:01:28 AM President Thein Sein has admitted She said government supporters to unnecessary errors in ballot had thrown stones at opposition lists. candidates, campaign posters had Today presidential adviser Nay been defaced and members of her Zin Latt said that there could be party intimidated during the run- some flaws and some bumps in up to Sundays parliamentary by- the process, but our leaders have elections. publicly said that their policy is to Speaking for the first time since hold a free, fair and impartial she halted campaigning because election. Ms Suu Kyi is expected of exhaustion, the 66-year-old to win the rural seat of Kawhmu, Nobel Peace Prize laureate said in giving her a place in parliament R a n g o o n t h a t g o v e r n m e n t for the first time since she began officials were involved in some of l e a d i n g t h e s t r u g g l e f o r the abuses and that they went democracy nearly 25 years ago. beyond what is acceptable for She spent most of that time under democratic elections. house arrest and her candidacy S t i l l , s h e s a i d , w e a r e has raised hopes of a more determined to go forward because democratic government after we think this is what our people almost 50 years of military rule. It want. She hoped the courage could also set the stage for her to and the resolution of people will run for president in a national overcome the intimidation. The election in 2015. election will fill 45 vacant seats in This entry passed through the the 664-seat national parliament. Full-Text RSS service if this is There have been months of your content and you're reading it surprising reforms, including the on someone else's site, please read release of political prisoners, the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contenttruces with rebel groups and an only/faq.php#publishers. Five easing of media censorship. Filters recommends: Donate to The poll is seen by the West as a Wikileaks. crucial test of the countrys
Social Media/ Technology/
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Listen to the Engadget Mobile Podcast, live at 5PM ET!

Brad Molen (Engadget)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:59:00 PM
Project Runway Star Tim Gunn Joins Twitter, Makes It Work

Stephanie Buck (Mashable!)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:21:39 PM
a.m., Gunn has gained more than 4,000 followers. Gunn is a fashion consultant and Beloved Project Runway mentor a former faculty member at Tim Gunn joined Twitter Friday. Parsons The New School for His first tweets are humble and Design in New York City. But he friendly, like his real-world is most famous for his presence personality. on fashion reality show Project Since his first tweet at 10:41 Runway, where he has advised
competing designers since the shows first season in 2004. @TimGunn has already tweeted @NinaGarcia, Project Runway judge and Marie Claire fashion director. However, the countdown begins: When can we expect Gunn to tweet his signature mantra Make it work!?
Now thats worth a retweet. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons More About: celebrity, Social Media, Twitter, viral
Time to podcast up! Who's with us? For starters, we're going to have Myriam, Brad, Joseph and -making his mobcast debut -- our very own Andrew Munchbach! So join us at the normal time, chat it up in our Ustream chat below, and we'll have a grand 'ol time talking all about phones and stuff. March 30, 2012 5:00 PM EDT Continue reading Listen to the Engadget Mobile Podcast, live at 5PM ET! Listen to the Engadget Mobile Podcast, live at 5PM ET! originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| | Email this| Comments
74
Daily World/ Politics/ Technology/
Brian Paddick on Video of the Day: Karl the offensive Rove's Bond Movie
(Evening Standard - News)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 9:21:19 AM
the gallery and doesn't care who he upsets in the process. "He should be ashamed of Mr Paddick, a former Met himself. And Labour should be Commander, will tomorrow use a s h a m e d t o h a v e h i m a s a his speech at the London Lib- c a n d i d a t e . Dem spring conference in Canary "He doesn't care if he divides Wharf to hit out at his Labour Londoners. Well I do care, and as rival. Mayor, I want to unite It comes after Mr Livingstone L o n d o n e r s . " was accused of anti-semitism by A spokesman for Mr Livingstone m e m b e r s o f t h e J e w i s h today declined to comment. community. PD The Labour candidate has since This entry passed through the written a letter of apology for the Full-Text RSS service if this is l a n g u a g e h e u s e d d u r i n g a your content and you're reading it meeting with Jewish leaders. on someone else's site, please read In his speech tomorrow Mr the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentPaddick will liken Mr Livingstone only/faq.php#publishers. Five to a "bad seventies comedian". Filters recommends: Donate to He will say: "Like a bad Wikileaks. seventies comedian, he plays to
Attack Ad
David A. Graham (Politics : The Atlantic)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 12:59:10 PM
From hot-mic to spy spoof, a super PAC smacks President Obama for overheard comments to the Russian president. The Cold War is back: A presidential candidate says Russia is our greatest foe, a Republican from Wisconsin has Democrats flipping out, and James Bond is timely again. Check out this ad from American Crossroads, a Karl Rove-led super PAC. It's a play on President Obama's hot-mic comments to
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, in which Obama was overheard saying that he'd have more flexibility after the election and Medvedev replied that he would "transmit this information to Vladimir" Putin, the presidentelect. The dramatic music, quick cuts, and menacing tone are spot on, but plot-wise, it's a bit confusing. Obama is the Bond character, but he's also the villain? All is forgiven, though, because of the witty tagline, "You only run twice," and because the ad uses -or perhaps transmits -- that hilarious picture of Vladimir
shirtless on a horse. Hat tip: Patrick Hruby This article available online at: http://www.theatlantic.com/ politics/archive/2012/03/video-ofthe-day-karl-roves-bond-movieattack-ad/255291/ This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Lenovo IdeaPad U310 and U410 undress for the FCC's czars
Joseph Volpe (Engadget)
but the company did earn high marks for sticking to that sleek Submitted at 3/30/2012 4:57:00 PM Ultrabook form factor and pricing When Lenovo took the wraps off the duo at a $700 entry point. its IdeaPad U310 and U410 at Now that luxurious-looking CES, we were left feeling happy / laptop pair's making another sad. On the one hand, we were public appearance, stopping by dismayed by the half-hearted the FCC for a step and repeat and in the process. While the filings inclusion of a memory card slot, splaying its guts and user manual
reveal no surprise specs for these 13- and 14-inchers -- those internal goodies were divulged back in January -- this Commission pit stop is a solid indication that all systems are go for a planned May launch. Be sure to hit up the source below to trawl the RF reports if diagnostics get
you hot under the collar. Lenovo IdeaPad U310 and U410 undress for the FCC's czars originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 16:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| FCC| Email this| Comments
Politics/
75
Republicans Struggling to Praise Mitt Romney

Molly Ball (Politics : The Atlantic)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 11:34:00 AM
The GOP is falling in line behind the all-but-inevitable nominee, but they're doing it with gritted teeth and a sense of obligation. Reuters Coming up with nice things to say about Mitt Romney is hard, even for his supporters. As Romney enters what seems to be the home stretch of the primary campaign, the Republican establishment is rallying around him. But the scene is less rah-rah than obligatory, with heavy sighs all around. It's hardly news that Romney's not the most thrilling candidate, but the level of faint praise from major figures in his own party is nonetheless impressive. Now that they're falling in line, you'd think they could have come up with a little bit more flattering hyperbole for the man they'll be touting for the next seven months. Take these statements from the GOP bigwigs who have expressed support for Romney in recent days: Rep. Paul Ryan, Wisconsin:"I am just convinced now that if we drag this thing on through the summer, it's going to make it that much harder to defeat Barack Obama this fall. That is why I
think Mitt Romney is the best guy for the job, he'll make the best president, he has the best chance of winning, and the more we drag it out the harder it is to win in November, and that is why I think it's important we just coalesce as conservatives and focus on defeating the president in the fall." Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida: "There are a lot of other people out there that some of us wish had run for president -- but they didn't. I think Mitt Romney would be a
fine president, and he'd be way better than the guy who's there right now. [Romney is] plenty conservative enough to defeat Barack Obama and do a much better job." Former President George H. W. Bush: "I do think it's time for the party to get behind Governor Romney. ... Kenny Rogers sang, 'It's time when to hold 'em and time when to fold 'em.' Well, I think it's time for people to all get behind this good man. And some
of 'em waged a very good fight. I say that about some of his opponents. But we're so convinced and we've known Mitt for a very long time, that he's the man to do this job and get on and win the presidency, and, so, that's about it." Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, in a statement: "Primary elections have been held in thirty-four states, and now is the time for Republicans to unite behind Governor Romney and take our
message of fiscal conservatism and job creation to all voters this fall. I am endorsing Mitt Romney for our Party's nomination. We face huge challenges, and we need a leader who understands the economy, recognizes more government regulation is not the answer, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism and works to ensure that all Americans have the opportunity REPUBLICANS page 80
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Politics/
The Silly Outrage Over Obama's Conversation With Medvedev

David A. Graham (Politics : The Atlantic)
space. Space for you ... ." Mr. Obama then elaborated in a portion of the exchange picked up Submitted at 3/30/2012 12:46:30 PM by the cameras: "This is my last With the president, what you see election. After my election I have is what you get. Critics who've more flexibility." accused him of bluffing on "I understand. I will transmit this foreign affairs often have been information to Vladimir," Mr. proven wrong. Medvedev said, referring to Prime The Daily Show Minister Vladimir V. Putin, who Get More: Daily Show Full just won an election to succeed Episodes, Political Humor & Mr. Medvedev. The reaction has Satire Blog, The Daily Show on been predictable. RNC Chairman Facebook Reince Priebus wrote in Human Someone call the John Birch E v e n t s , " H o w d e p r e s s i n g l y Society: The president of the cynical. How contemptuous of United States is up to some shady those he wants to re-elect him. It business with the Russians, and begs the question: What other he's trying to hide it from us. Or at plans does he have for a second l e a s t t h a t ' s w h a t s o m e term that he isn't advertising? commentators believe. Here's What exactly would Flexible what has them so concerned: Obama do?" Priebus speculates " O n a l l t h e s e i s s u e s , b u t darkly about tax increases, particularly missile defense, this a b a n d o n i n g I s r a e l , a n d a n can be solved, but it's important untrammeled EPA wreaking for him to give me space," Mr. havoc. Mitt Romney hosted a fillObama could be heard saying to in-the-blank contest on Twitter for Mr. Medvedev, according a what Obama would do. (This is an reporter from ABC News, who impressive piece of chutzpah, was traveling with the president. given that Romney had just given " Y e a h , I u n d e r s t a n d , " t h e an interview to The Weekly departing Russian president said. Standard promising to eliminate "I understand your message about government agencies but refusing
to say which ones). Marco Rubio says it spurred his endorsement of Mitt Romney. Even Jon Stewart got in on the action. At the risk of stating the obvious, this is overwrought. The matter at hand -- mostly missed amid the political recriminations -- is Russo -American disagreement over missile defense. Russia is uneasy about U.S. emplacements in Europe, especially in Poland, that would be part of a system to shoot down incoming missiles. Even if Obama is conceding a lot of ground, it's not some secret, unrevealed shift. Indeed, as far back as September 2009, hawks were complaining bitterly after his administration drastically retrenched on the missile-defense system. On foreign affairs, Obama actually has a strong record of doing what he says he'll do. During the 2008 primary, Hillary Clinton slammed him for his pledge to open direct negotiations with Iran. When he took office, he executed the plan -- with Clinton has his secretary of state. The jury's still out on how that worked. He also pledged to take
unilateral action against Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan: "If we have actionable intelligence about high -value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will." Both Clinton and John McCain assailed that comment as hopelessly naive and ill-advised, but it was just such a strike that killed Osama bin Laden, strongly vindicating the strategy. Anyway, this is how diplomacy works. Matters are discussed behind closed doors, and timing is carefully calibrated; leaders have competing constituencies to serve and a limited amount of political capital that has to be budgeted. In this case, Obama faces a divided Congress that's deadlocked over even the most pressing domestic matters, like passing a budget or reauthorizing transportation funding. To imagine that any meaningful action is going to take place before the election is folly (the present controversy proves the point). After the election, pressure will be off the president and lawmakers alike. In fact, the lame duck session and the early months after the inauguration are the only time we're likely to see
much movement before deadlock returns. And foreign policy is distinctly different from domestic policy. As James Fallows pointed out in his cover story on Barack Obama, foreign affairs is one area where the commander in chief has broad latitude. No need for Priebus to worry: Obama couldn't make domestic policy by fiat in the same way if he got elected to four terms in office. Of course, that's the crapshoot. Obama's greatest sin here appears to be cockiness about his reelection prospects. This article available online at: http://www.theatlantic.com/ politics/archive/2012/03/the-sillyoutrage-over-obamasconversation-with-medvedev/ 255129/ This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Politics/
77
Climate change skeptics should be treated, says enviro-sociologist

Tina Korbe (Hot Air Top Picks)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:15:08 PM
posted at 4:15 pm on March 30, 2012 by Tina Korbe This just smacks of the same mentality that inspired climate change activists to say global warming deniers should be purged from meteorology. Kari Mari Norgaard, a professor of sociology and environmental studies at the University of Oregon, suggests that resistance to the threat of climate change at individual and societal levels must be recognized and treated before real action can be taken to effectively address the problem global warming poses. From a University of Oregon press release: Climate change poses a massive threat to our present social, economic and political order. From a sociological perspective, resistance to change is to be expected, she said. People are individually and collectively habituated to the ways we act and think. This habituation must be recognized and simultaneously
addressed at the individual, cultural and societal level how we think the world works and how we think it should work. At the personal level, climatechange information raises fear about the future, a sense of helplessness and guilt. These emotions clash with individual and often national identity, sense of self-efficacy and the need for basic security and survival. In small groups, interactions often subvert political conversations and/or submerge the visibility of climate-change issues. At the macro level, or society at large, the co-authors point to an absence of serious discussion of climate change within U.S. Congressional hearings and in media coverage. In many discussions in the last 30 years, climate change has been seen as either a hoax or fixable with minimal political or economic intervention, said Norgaard, author of the book Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions and Everyday Life (2011, MIT Press). This kind of cultural resistance to very significant social threat is something that we would expect
in any society facing a massive threat, she said. The discussion, she said, is comparable to what happened with challenges to racism or slavery in the U.S. South. Norgaard clearly assumes that climate change science is settled but it still isnt. Just three days ago, for example, Princeton physics professor William Happer wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal under the headline, Global warming models are wrong again. Heres a bit of what he had to say: It is easy to be confused about climate, because we are constantly being warned about the horrible things that will happen or are already happening as a result of mankinds use of fossil fuels. But these ominous predictions are based on computer models. It is important to distinguish between what the climate is actually doing and what computer models predict. The observed response of the climate to more CO2 is not in good agreement with model predictions. We need high-quality climate science because of the importance
of climate to mankind. But we should also remember the description of how science works by the late, great physicist, Richard Feynman: In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience; compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. The most important component of climate science is careful, longterm observations of climaterelated phenomena, from space, from land, and in the oceans. If observations do not support code predictionslike more extreme weather, or rapidly rising global temperaturesFeynman has told us what conclusions to draw about the theory. Norgaard is surely right that there are plenty of unscientific reasons to wish to think climate change does not pose the threat some
scientists say it does. An acceptance of that hypothesized threat might impose certain obligations to, say, purchase a low emissions vehicle that a person might wish to avoid. Yet, there are surely plenty of unscientific reasons to wish to think climate change does pose the threat some scientists say it does. A desire for the power and latitude to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, for example, might motivate some politicians to accept climate science that they would not otherwise. In charged debates like this one, its not helpful to use rhetoric that suggests dissenters are diseased. Far better to patiently engage in respectful discussion. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
78
Politics/
Biden: Hey, how about a global minimum tax? Update: Romney attacks
Allahpundit (Hot Air Top Picks)
for companies that ship jobs overseas. Heres the relevant section from the White House fact Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:50:31 PM sheet: posted at 4:50 pm on March 30, At the same time as the President 2012 by Allahpundit is calling for immediate Drudge is having fun with this enactment of this plan, he is also but I think theres less to it than pushing forward on a framework meets the eye. Is Crazy Joe really for corporate tax reform that calling for some sort of new would encourage even greater global tax authority right before a investment in the United States, presidential election, knowing that while eliminating tax advantages the GOP can exploit that in its for outsourcing. This framework c a m p a i g n m e s s a g i n g i n a will include: thousand different ways? He is o Making companies pay a kind of a moron, but hes not that minimum tax for profits and jobs much of a moron. Remember, the overseas and investing the savings global minimum tax has come in cutting taxes here at home, up before: Last month Gene especially for manufacturing: The Sperling, the director of Os P r e s i d e n t i s p r o p o s i n g t o National Economic Council, eliminate tax incentives to ship mentioned it and it sent a shiver jobs offshore by ensuring that all through the righty blogosphere American companies pay a then, too. But theyre not talking minimum tax on their overseas about creating some sort of new profits, preventing other countries tax agency here. Theyre talking from attracting American business about tweaking the U.S. tax code through unusually low tax rates. so that American companies have The savings would be invested in less incentive to outsource. Said a cutting taxes here at home, White House official of Sperlings especially for manufacturing. remarks at the time, He was Theres no foreign agency referring to our proposal in the involved. Its just a new tool for Blueprint for an America Built to the IRS to reach an American Last that removes tax incentives companys profits no matter
Instead of promoting pro-growth tax policies that provide businesses with the economic freedom to grow and prosper, he is backing a global tax that would harm American competitiveness, Romney said in a statement released by the campaign. My plan to reform the tax code by cutting rates and encouraging reinvestment here in America is the right way to jumpstart an economic recovery and create new American jobs. Hes betting that tax cuts, by attracting more business, would actually end up raising more revenue for Treasury than the global minimum tax would. where in the world they might be depending upon how high the new Belated exit question: How bad i n v e s t e d . I n t h e o r y , t h a t l l minimum tax is and how many does the White House have to be e l i m i n a t e t h e c o m p e t i t i v e companies flee, could mean less at branding to have approved a advantage other nations have over overall tax revenue than before. term like global minimum tax? the U.S. by undercutting our But then, whats another $100 Good lord. Hire a professional, corporate tax rates. In practice, it billion in the hole when youre guys. could lead to more American already running deficits in the This entry passed through the corporations being sold to foreign trillions? Click the image to Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it investors: Because the U.S. only watch. on someone else's site, please read t a x e s t h e p r o f i t s o f U . S . Update: Romney unloads: companies, one way to dodge the Raising taxes on American job the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentnew global minimum tax would creators is apparently not enough only/faq.php#publishers. Five be to invite a takeover by a to satisfy Presidents Obamas Filters recommends: Donate to f o r e i g n c o m p a n y . W h i c h , trillion-dollar spending addiction. Wikileaks.
Politics/ News Photos
79
California state colleges consider asking students about sexual orientation on application forms
Tina Korbe (Hot Air Top Picks)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 2:30:27 PM
Photos of the Day: March 30 Wall Street Journal (blog)

Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:36:24 PM
posted at 3:30 pm on March 30, 2012 by Tina Korbe Is it a stretch to imagine activists might someday push for affirmative action programs for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students? For now, administrators are just weighing whether to include a question about sexual orientation on application forms to determine whether Californias state colleges are presently adequately serving the LGBT community: Californias state colleges and universities are laying plans to ask students about their sexual orientation next year on application or enrollment forms, becoming the largest group of schools in the country to do so. The move has raised the hopes of gay activists for recognition but the concerns of others about privacy. The questions, which students could answer voluntarily, would
be posed because of a littleknown state law aimed at gauging the size of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) populations on the campuses. The law encourages UC, Cal State and community colleges to explore whether they are offering enough services, such as counseling, for those students. It would be useful to know if we are underserving the population, said Jesse Bernal, the UC systems interim diversity coordinator. In addition, giving students the opportunity to answer such questions, he added, sends a positive message of inclusiveness to LGBT students and creates an environment that is inclusive and welcoming of diverse populations. Last fall, Elmhurst College in California became the first college in the country to ask about sexual orientation on a college application: Elmhurst College, a 3,400student school, asks applicants: Would you consider yourself a member of the LGBT (lesbian,
gay, bisexual, transgender) community? A positive response could help students qualify for scholarships given to diversify the student body, according to Dean of Admission Gary Rold. Some critics argued that the colleges move could be seen as a tool to bolster the gay population. The school was not seeking to be a pioneer or to advance any political stance, Rold said. That we are first is not of any great consequence, he said. We are just trying to collect information for our purposes to help out students. The negatives of this vastly outweigh the potential benefits. Not only could the information be improperly used say to either discriminate against or give preference to LGBT students but it also suggests sexual orientation is somehow relevant to education. The college admissions process should aim to determine what students would be able to meet the rigorous academic requirements of a university experience. While any number of
factors including family background, ethnicity, religion and state of health affect a students ability to succeed in college, its not necessary to know details about those aspects of students lives to know whether they have been successful academically in high school and whether they demonstrate a propensity to be able to effectively engage and internalize appropriate course materials. The more I think about it, the more I wonder why schools ask for any of that information. Why not look exclusively at demonstrated academic performance? This goes back to the expansion of the purpose of universities beyond education to some kind of fouryear rite of passage to adulthood. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentonly/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.
Ma'an News Agency Photos of the Day: March 30 Wall Street Journal (blog) By WSJ Staff LAND DISPUTE: Palestinians scuffled with Israeli policemen during a demonstration marking 'Land Day' in East Jerusalem Friday. The rallies are an annual event marked by Israeli Arabs and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to protest... Photos: Land Day across Israel and Palestinian territories Denver Post In photos: Hundreds mark Land Day at Bethlehem checkpoint Ma'an News Agency Photos: Land Day 2012 Alternative Information Center (AIC) all 616 news articles
80
Technology/
REPUBLICANS
to succeed." Sen. Mike Lee, Utah:"If Republicans want to repeal President Obama's unconstitutional health-care plan, restore limited government and individual liberty, they must unite behind Mitt Romney. He is the one candidate who will be able to win in November and implement policies that conservatives like me have been fighting for in the Senate." House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, California:"After a long and grueling primary, it is clear that Mitt Romney is the best candidate to face President Obama and fix the mess of his one and only term. Republicans need to unite and work together if we plan to take back the White House and put in place policies that will get our nation back on a path to prosperity by reducing taxes, shrinking government, and empowering the private sector." Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina: "I'm not only comfortable with Romney, I'm excited about the possibility of him possibly being our nominee. This is not a formal endorsement
and I do not intend to do that right now, but I just think we just need to look at where we are .... His leadership skills, the fact that he hasn't lived his life in Washington. There's a lot to like there."
coming around now, but as they confront the other side and get put on the defensive, they'll probably get more forceful in their insistence that he's their guy. There are people -- a few -- who feel passionately about Romney. But to some of the biggest names Note the formulaic quality of all in his own party, it's less love these statements of support; the affair than arranged marriage. admissions that Romney wasn't The GOP is falling in like with necessarily the first choice, Romney -- grudgingly, because especially in Rubio's case; the they have to. But clearly, it near-total lack of specific praise doesn't come naturally. for Romney's accomplishments in This article available online at: business and government; the http://www.theatlantic.com/ emphasis on electability and p o l i t i c s / a r c h i v e / 2 0 1 2 / 0 3 / coming together for the sake of republicans-struggling-to-praiseparty unity. In Jeb Bush's case, he mitt-romney/255280/ didn't even voice his support in This entry passed through the p e r s o n , o n l y o n p a p e r ; i n Full-Text RSS service if this is DeMint's, he made sure to note your content and you're reading it his supportive words weren't a on someone else's site, please read real endorsement. There's also the FAQ at fivefilters.org/contentremarkably little discussion from only/faq.php#publishers. Five Romney's backers of what it is Filters recommends: Donate to Brian Heater (Engadget) Submitted at 3/30/2012 4:28:00 PM their candidate has to offer as a Wikileaks. positive vision for the party and One of the more irritating aspects the country in his campaign. of touchscreen gaming is almost Presumably, over the coming certainly the inevitability of months, they'll get better at saying blocking the screen as you play -nice things about Romney. particularly with smaller devices They're in the early stages of like smartphones. A new peripheral being developed by Kelo University takes an interesting approach to the problem -- using the device to transform the gadget's camera into a three-axis joystick of sorts by detecting the movement of markings on the add-on.
Add-on turns a smartphone camera into a joystick (video)

According to its creators, the accuracy of the joystick depends largely on the precision of the phone's hardware. Check it out in action after the break. Continue reading Add-on turns a smartphone camera into a joystick (video) Add-on turns a smartphone camera into a joystick (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 16:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Diginfo| Email this| Comments
News Photos Social Network/
81
Old photos may be deceptive in Fla. shooting case - Boston.com

Submitted at 3/30/2012 3:54:36 PM
Boston.com Old photos may be deceptive in Fla. shooting case Boston.com This photo combo shows George Zimmerman. At left is a 2005
booking photo provided by the Orange County Jail via The Miami Herald, and at right is an undated but recent photo of Zimmerman taken from the Orlando Sentinel's website showing Zimmerman,... and more
New & Improved Matchup in Klout Labs!

Lan Nguyen (The Official Klout Blog)
Submitted at 3/30/2012 11:40:55 AM
Tweet Were excited to launch a new and improved MatchUp tool in
our Klout Labs! We are constantly working to improve Klout and wed like to hear from you, our users. Weve made the feedback process fun and easy. It goes like this: Well put a pair of users you know head-to-head and
you simply let us know who you
think is more influential. Bam! Well take that feedback to optimize Klout Scores. Right now, this first Klout Lab feature is available to a limited number of users, but we will be rolling it out to everyone soon!
Check your dashboard to see if youve got the new MatchUp tool. What do you think of our new MatchUp?

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