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The lack of snow this year is creating big problems for ski resorts nationwide. NBC?s Mike Taibbi reports.
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The Apple rumor mill never takes a break, even during the holidays. In the past months we've heard two very specific allegations concerning the iPad — both out of Digitimes — focused on a smaller sized Apple tab at 8.75 inches and a release date of early 2012. As Devin explained so well, the notion of a smaller iPad out of Cupertino is a bit hard to believe. It would mean that Apple is going back on its word that the iPad is the right size. Today Digitimes somewhat confirms this with a new rumor: Instead of the 7.85-inch iPad, Apple will supposedly be bringing two new Retina-style iPads to the market to fill in the mid- and high-end market segments, while the current iPad 2 hangs around to take on the Kindle Fire.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/r0Qs6iBhSSY/
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By BETSY BLANEY
updated 5:57 p.m. ET Dec. 28, 2011
LUBBOCK, Texas - The mother of a Texas firefighter who died reaching to snag a baseball thrown by Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton this past summer said Wednesday she wants the star player to keep tossing souvenirs into the stands.
SuZann Stone said that taking home a game ball is a special memory. Her plea to Hamilton was in a letter sent not long after 39-year-old Shannon Stone died when he tumbled over a railing and plunged 20 feet onto concrete July 7 during a game at Rangers Ballpark.
Shannon Stone was trying to catch the ball for his 6-year-old son, Cooper, who witnessed the incident.
The late firefighter's mother says it would be a shame for Hamilton to quit tossing balls to fans.
"I just didn't want him to stop," SuZann Stone said. "How sad that would be because that's what little boys and their daddies go for. This was just an accident."
The mother's letter to Hamilton was first reported in the New York Times Magazine.
Rangers spokesman John Blake said attempts were being made to reach Hamilton for comment.
Shannon Stone had been a firefighter in Brownwood for 18 years. He and Cooper had gone to the game with the intent of getting a souvenir ball. They even stopped on the way to the game to buy a new glove for Cooper.
SuZann Stone was watching the game on television that night, scanning the stands where Cooper had told her they would be sitting. She didn't see the fall and learned of her son's death from his brother.
SuZann Stone knows how special it is to get a ball at a Rangers game. When Shannon Stone was about 12 or 13, she and her husband took him to a Rangers game where he got to watch his favorite player ? third baseman Buddy Bell.
"That was Shannon's hero at the time," she said.
Bell hit a foul ball that looked like it wouldn't be anywhere close to where the family was sitting. But the wind caught it and it came down nearby where the Stones were sitting. Getting that souvenir meant the world to her son, SuZann Stone said, coming from his favorite player.
She said she hasn't heard back from Hamilton since writing to him.
"Really, I didn't expect that I would. I wanted him to let him know our heartfelt sorrow for him," she said. "No way did we feel he was responsible for the accident. He was doing a really nice thing and it just didn't turn out right."
Cooper is doing as well as can be expected, his grandmother said. He and his mother, Jenny Stone, continue to get "phenomenal" support from Brownwood residents and firefighters.
"We have good days and we have bad days but through the holidays it's been pretty hard," SuZann Stone said.
The family's faith helps lessen the pain of her son's death, she said.
"We will see him again," SuZann Stone said. "Until that time it just leaves a pretty big void in our lives."
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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More newsHBT: San Francisco and Tim Lincecum are far apart in contract talks, with the Giants offering a four-year deal and the pitcher wanting one for eight years.
Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45809376/ns/sports-baseball/
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What do The Comedian and Nite Owl look like in the upcoming Watchmen comic book prequel? Want to watch some alternative takes from The Dark Knight and a feline take on The Dark Knight Rises? Does Superman Returns still suck? Would Deadpool be a good person to read a post-Christmas card? What did Supergirl get for Batgirl for Christmas and how many times was The Dark Knight Rises trailer downloaded in 24 hours? Read about all of this and more in today?s Superhero Bits.
Above, a new hi-res image of Christopher Nolan shooting IMAX on the set of The Dark Knight Rises via Comic Book Movie.
Here?s what the Comedian will look like in the upcoming Watchmen prequel thanks to Bleeding Cool. Nite Owl is on the next page.
Whoa. Insane Marvel paintings by Dennis Meheere via Geek Tyrant.
Kevin Smith tweeted this and I?d never seen it before, but you might have. It?s 3 minutes of alternative takes from The Dark Knight.
The Dark Knight Rises trailer was downloaded 12.5 million times in its first 24 hours last week, beating The Avengers record of 10 million a few months prior.
Striking Harley Quinn cosplay by Ryoko-Demon photographed by kifir. Thanks to Geek Tyrant.
Chris Hemsworth spoke to FilmInk (via CBM) about Thor?s role and mindset in The Avengers:
Thor has more of a personal investment. It?s not just some bad guy that he?s gotta take care of; for him, it?s family. There?s a sense of,?I'll beat him up and teach him a lesson, not you guys.? It?s the first time in ages since he?s seen his brother, and it?s amongst all this chaos.
A second Community/Batman mashup image has surfaced by kinjamin.
Sony has launched the full website for Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Thanks to SHH for the heads up.
This is rad. A Batman gig poster by Dean Reeves for an upcoming screening in Canada.
Confused by all the superhero porn parodies? Nerd Bastards has you covered with a guide covering them all.
Due to the amount of graphics and images included in Superhero Bits, we have to split this post over TWO pages. Click the link above to continue to the second page of Superhero Bits.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/slashfilm/~3/nb_WJWL7CFs/
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Created by calendar on 7/19/11 at 9:50am
Modified by dkeefe on 12/14/11 at 3:05pm
| Summary | Christmas Holiday Observed - University Closed |
|---|---|
| Starts | 12:00am on Monday, December 26th 2011 |
Source: http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/calendar/event.php?id=113747&cid=17&oid=0
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Fitness watches are one thing, but how about a fitness watch that lets you play a few levels of Angry Birds in between wind sprints? Motorola's MotoACTV debuted alongside the Droid RAZR not too long ago, and one developer has finally taken it upon itself to unleash its full potential.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/x_JZYTa78eg/
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Officials said the fire, which was reported shortly before 5 a.m., killed two adults and three children. Two others escaped. Their names have not been released.
"It is a terrible, terrible day for the city of Stamford," Stamford Mayor Michael Pavia told reporters at a news briefing at the scene of the fire. "There probably has not been a worse Christmas day in the city of Stamford."
Acting Fire Chief Antonio Conte said attempts by firefighters to rescue the house's occupants were pushed back by intense flames and heat.
He said fire officials do not yet know the cause of the blaze and will not likely get clues for a few days until fire marshals can enter the house "and figure out what happened."
Conte said he did not know the conditions of the two survivors.
"We had our hands full from the moment we arrived on the scene," he said.
A neighbor, Sam Cingari Jr., said he was awakened by the sound of screaming and that the house was entirely engulfed by flames.
"We heard this screaming at 5 in the morning," he said. "The whole house was ablaze and I mean ablaze."
Cingari says he does not know his neighbors, who he said bought the house last year and were renovating it. Power also was out in the neighborhood, he said.
Charles Mangano, who lives near the scene, told The Advocate of Stamford he saw a barefoot man wearing boxers and a woman being led out of the house.
The woman said, "`My whole life is in there,"' he said. "They were both obviously in a state of shock."
The 3,349-square foot, five-bedroom home sold for $1.7 million in December 2010, according to the Stamford assessment office's website. It's located in Shippan Point, a neighborhood that juts into Long Island Sound.
Tony Low-Beer, another neighbor, said he was awakened by a neighbor after 4 a.m. who told him about a "raging fire" next door.
"Cinders were flying all over the place," he told The Associated Press.
He said he secured his three dogs and put his iguana in a carrying case because he was concerned he might have to evacuate. As of Sunday afternoon, he was still at his home.
Stamford, a city of 117,000 residents, is about 25 miles northeast of New York City.
Source: http://www.kval.com/news/national/Mayor-House-fire-kills-5-in-Stamford-Connecticut-136203383.html
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Apple co-founder Steve Jobs is receiving a posthumous Grammy for his technological innovations in the arts.
Jobs is among a dozen people, music groups or companies receiving honorary awards Feb. 11, the day before the Grammys. He died of cancer in October.
The Grammys are honoring Jobs with one of the group?s Trustees Awards, citing the late Apple boss? advancements that ?transformed the way we consume music, TV, movies, and books.?
Grammy organizers called him a ?creative visionary? for Apple Inc. innovations that include the iPod, iPhone and iPad.
Others receiving honorary awards the day before the Grammys include Diana Ross, the Allman Brothers, Glen Campbell, Antonio Carlos Jobim, George Jones, the Memphis Horns and recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder.
Source: http://www.pbpulse.com/music/music-news/2011/12/23/apples-late-boss-steve-jobs-to-receive-grammy/
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'Dateline NBC,' the signature broadcast for NBC News in primetime, premiered in 1992. Since then, it has been pioneering a new approach to primetime news programming. The multi-night franchise, supplemented by frequent specials, allows NBC to consistently and comprehensively present the highest-quality reporting, investigative features, breaking news coverage and newsmaker profiles.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032600/vp/45781657#45781657
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The claim came as the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission was working on a landmark report about abuses in the country. The United States and the European Union are worried that such violations, along with widespread corruption, are undermining their efforts to stabilize the nation and defeat the stubborn Taliban insurgency ? threatening their goal of crafting a strong central government to take over when NATO leaves.
Nader Nadery said Friday that he and two colleagues have been told of the decision to replace them, and that an official announcement would follow. "We have heard that we're being removed, but we haven't been notified yet," he said.
There was no immediate comment from Karzai's office.
Nadery is Afghanistan's most outspoken human rights advocate. He has been critical of electoral fraud, corruption, land grabs by the wealthy, and torture and killings of civilians by the warring sides.
Also dismissed from the nine-member body were Ahmad Fahim Hakim, who criticized fraud in the 2009 and 2010 elections, and Moulawee Ghulam Mohamad Ghareb, a cleric from Kandahar.
Karzai has been under increasing pressure by foreign donors to combat graft and improve respect for rule of law in Afghanistan.
Last year's near-collapse of Kabul Bank, once the nation's largest private lender, created economic and political turmoil, prompted the freezing of some international aid and became a symbol of the country's deep-rooted corruption. The case was seen by international donors as a test of government's pledges to root out patronage and graft and to show accountability to world financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund.
The human rights commission has been working on a 1,000-page report detailing human rights abuses in Afghanistan starting in 1978 and ending in 2001, when a U.S.-led effort ousted the Taliban regime. The report is said to be highly critical of some of the leaders of the mujahedeen, U.S.-backed Islamic guerrillas who fought the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The warlords, who remain prominent in government today, have angrily denied allegations of corruption and wholesale violence. Instead, they have insisted that they deserve a place of honor as holy soldiers, because they freed Afghanistan from the decade-long Soviet occupation in 1989.
The Independent Human Rights Commission was set up in 2002. Its members are appointed by the government.
___
Associated Press writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.
Source: http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~r/CBSNewsGamecore/~3/Ir--AWAoZ3U/
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(Reuters) ? Walgreen Co (WAG.N) posted a lower quarterly profit as the largest U.S. drugstore chain's margins were hurt by lower reimbursement rates for the prescriptions it fills, fewer flu shots and its spat with pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts Inc (ESRX.O).
Its shares were down 7.1 percent in premarket trading on Wednesday.
Walgreen, which has more than 7,800 U.S. drugstores, reiterated that is does not plan to renew its contract with Express Scripts, which is set to expire on December 31, but Chief Executive Greg Wasson said the chain remains "open to any fair and competitive offer" from the PBM.
If the contract does expire as planned, patients who fill Express Scripts prescriptions at Walgreens stores will have to go elsewhere, cutting into Walgreen's sales.
Walgreen estimated that it will have 97 percent to 99 percent of last year's prescription volume in fiscal 2012, assuming it does not resolve its impasse with Express Scripts.
But seeking to downplay the potential impact of the dispute on its business, Walgreen said that more than 100 health plans, employers and various Express Scripts clients told it they have either had changed PBMs or made sure patients would still have access to Walgreens pharmacies in 2012.
Walgreen said the decision to part ways with Express Scripts cost it a penny per share in comparable pharmacy sales in the first quarter, and 1 cent per share in expenses.
Walgreen earned $554 million, or 63 cents per share, in the fiscal first quarter that ended on November 30, compared with a profit of $580 million, or 62 cents per share, a year earlier.
As of November 30, Walgreen had given 5 million flu shots this season, down from 5.6 million last year at the same point.
Sales rose 4.7 percent to $18.16 billion, the company said in early December. Sales at stores open at least a year, or same-store sales, rose 2.5 percent. Prescription sales, which make up nearly two-thirds of business, rose 2.6 percent at drugstores open at least a year.
Its shares fell $2.38 to $31.12 in premarket trading.
(Reporting By Phil Wahba in New York and Jessica Wohl in Chicago; Editing by Maureen Bavdek)
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 15, 2011) ? Any multicellular animal, from a blue whale to a human being, poses a special difficulty for the theory of evolution. Most of the cells in its body will die without reproducing, and only a privileged few will pass their genes to the next generation.
How could the extreme degree of cooperation multicellular existence requires ever evolve? Why aren't all creatures unicellular individualists determined to pass on their own genes?
Joan Strassmann, PhD, and David Queller, PhD, a husband and wife team of evolutionary biologists at Washington University in St. Louis, provide an answer in the Dec. 16 issue of the journal Science. Experiments with amoebae that usually live as individuals but must also join with others to form multicellular bodies to complete their life cycles showed that cooperation depends on kinship.
If amoebae occur in well-mixed cosmopolitan groups, then cheaters will always be able to thrive by freeloading on their cooperative neighbors. But if groups derive from a single cell, cheaters will usually occur in all-cheater groups and will have no cooperators to exploit.
The only exceptions are brand new cheater mutants in all-cooperator groups, and these could pose a problem if the mutation rate is high enough and there are many cells in the group to mutate. In fact, the scientists calculated just how many times amoebae that arose from a single cell can safely divide before cooperation degenerates into a free-for-all.
The answer turns out to be 100 generations or more.
So population bottlenecks that kill off diversity and restart the population from a single cell are powerful stabilizers of cellular cooperation, the scientists conclude.
In other words our liver, blood and bone cells help our eggs and sperm pass on their genes because we passed through a single-cell bottleneck at the moment of conception.
The social amoebae
Queller, the Spencer T. Olin professor, and Strassmann, professor of biology, moved to WUSTL from Rice University this summer, bringing a truckload of frozen spores with them.
Although they worked for many years with wasps and stingless bees, Queller and Strassmann's current "lab rat" is the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum, known as Dicty for short.
The social amoebae can be found almost everywhere; in Antarctica, in deserts, in the canopies of tropical forests, and in Forest Park, the urban park that adjoins Washington University.
The amoebae spend most of their lives as tiny amorphous blobs of streaming protoplasm crawling through the soil looking for E. coli and other bacteria to eat.
Things become interesting when bacteria are scarce and the amoebae begin to starve. They then release chemicals that attract other amoebae, which follow this trail until they bump into one another.
A mound of some 10,000 amoebae forms and then elongates into a slug a few millimeters long that crawls forward (but never backward) toward heat and light.
The slug stops moving when it has reached a suitable place for dispersal, and then the front 20 percent of the amoebae die to produce a sturdy stalk that the remaining cells flow up and there become hardy spores.
Crucially, the 20 percent of the amoebae in the stalk sacrifice their genes so that the other 80 percent can pass theirs on.
When Strassmann and Queller began to work with Dicty in 1998, one of the first things they discovered was that the amoebae sometimes cheat.
Dennis Welker of Utah State University had given them a genetically diverse collection of wild-caught clones (genetically identical amoebae). They mixed amoebae from two clones together and then examined the fruiting bodies to see where the clones ended up. Each fruiting body included cells from both clones, but some clones contributed disproportionately to the spore body. They had cheated.
How can a blob of protoplasm cheat? The answer, it turns out, is many different ways.
"They might," Queller says, "have a mutation that makes an adhesion molecule less sticky, for example, so that they slide to the back of the slug, the part that forms spores."
"But there are tradeoffs," Strassmann says, "because if you're too slippery, you'll fall off the slug and lose all the advantages of being part of group."
Natural born cheaters
Mulling this over, Strassmann and Queller began to wonder if it would be possible to break the social contract among the amoebae by setting up conditions where relatedness was low and each clonal lineage encountered mostly strangers and rarely relatives.
Together with then-graduate student, Jennie Kuzdzal-Fick, they set up an experiment to learn what happened to cheating as heterogeneous (low relatedness) populations of amoebae evolved.
"At the end of the experiment, we assessed the cheating ability of the descendants by mixing equal numbers of descendants and ancestors and checking to see whether the descendants ended up in the stalks or the spores of the fruiting bodies," Strassmann says.
They found that in nearly all cases, the descendants cheated their ancestors. What's more, when descendent amoebae were grown as individual clones, about a third of them were unable to form fruiting bodies.
Many of the mutants, in other words, were "obligate" cheaters. Having lost the ability to form their own fruiting bodies, they were able to survive only by freeloading, or taking advantage of the amoebae that had retained the ability to cooperate.
This result, Queller and Strassmann say, shows that cheater mutations that threaten multicellularity occur naturally and are even favored -- as long as the population of amoebae remains genetically diverse.
What happens in the wild?
But the scientists were aware that obligate cheaters are either very rare or altogether missing among wild social amoebae. They had not found any obligate cheaters in the more than 2,000 wild clones they have sampled.
They also knew that in the wild, the amoebae in fruiting bodies are close kin, if not clones.
What prevents cooperation in wild populations from degenerating into the laboratory free-for-all? Could the difference be that the amoebae in the laboratory were distant relations and those in the wild are kissing kin?
Suppose, the scientists thought, one amoeba ventured alone into a pristine field of bacteria. As it grew and multiplied, making copies of itself, how long would it take for cheating mutations to appear (what was the mutation rate) and how successfully would these mutations proliferate (how strongly would they be selected)?
To establish the mutation rate, Strassmann and Queller together with graduate student Sara Fox ran what is called a mutation accumulation experiment.
In this experiment, amoebae that mutated didn't have to compete against amoebae that were faithful replicators. In the absence of selection, all but the most severe mutations were also reproduced and became a permanent part of the lineage's genome.
The scientists allowed 90 different lines of amoebae to accumulate mutations in this way.
"At the end," Queller says, "we found that among those 90 lines not a single one had lost the ability to fruit. So that's almost 100 lines, almost a thousand generations, so 100,000 opportunities to lose fruiting and none of them did.
"That allowed us, using statistics, to put an upper limit on the rate at which mutations turn a cooperator into an obligate cheater," he says.
The rate was low enough that if fruiting bodies were forming in the wild from amoebae that were all descended from one spore, cheating would never be an issue.
What this has to do with elephants and blue whales
But the scientists were inquisitive enough to ask another, bigger question. They used calculations invented for population genetics to ask how many times the amoeba could divide -- theoretically -- before cheating became a problem.
What if, they asked, we let an initial single amoebae divide until there were as many of amoebae as there are cells as a fruit fly and then transferred one amoeba and allowed it to divide until the daughter colony reached fruit-fly size, and so on?
What if we let the colonies grow to human size? To elephant size? To blue whale size? Would the cheaters bring down the whale-sized Dicty colony?
The answer, it turned out, was no.
A whale-sized Dicty colony is not the same thing as a whale, but nonetheless the experiments suggest how organisms, over the course of evolution, have sidestepped the cheating trap and maintained the levels of cooperation multicellular bodies demand.
"A multicellular body like the human body is an incredibly cooperative thing," Queller says, "and sociobiologists have learned that really cooperative things are hard to evolve because of the potential for cheating.
"It's the single-cell bottleneck that generates high relatedness among the cells that, in turn, allows them to cooperate, " he says.
Our liver cells have no kick against our sperm or egg cells, in other words, because they're all nearly genetically identical descendants of a single fertilized egg.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Washington University in St. Louis. The original article was written by Diana Lutz.
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Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111215141615.htm
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SYDNEY ? Three men who plotted a suicide attack against an Australian army base because they believed Islam was under threat from Western nations were sentenced Friday to more than 13 years in prison.
The men ? Australian citizens originally from Somalia or Lebanon ? were convicted last year of conspiring to plot a terrorist attack against Holsworthy Barracks, an army base on the outskirts of Sydney. Officials said the group planned to send a team of men with automatic rifles into the base in a bid to kill as many soldiers as possible.
Police said the men were motivated by a belief that Islam was under attack from the West, and planned to keep on shooting until they were killed.
On Friday, Victoria state Supreme Court Justice Betty King sentenced Wissam Mahmoud Fattal, 35, Saney Edow Aweys, 28, and Nayef El Sayed, 27, to 18 years in prison, with a non-parole period of 13-and-a-half years. They had faced a sentence of up to life in prison.
"Your plans were evil," King told the trio.
During the trial, prosecutors said the men were upset about Australia's involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Officials said one of the men visited Somalia in the hopes of gaining approval for the attack from an Islamic cleric. The men were accused of having ties to Somalia-based al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaida.
Terrorism in Australia is extremely rare and Australian Federal Police Commissioner Tony Negus has said the attack would have been the most serious ever carried out in the country had it been successful.
The men refused to stand for the judge when she entered the courtroom and Fattal was thrown out of court after he later stood and shouted, "This is corruption!"
King said the three men should be ashamed for plotting an attack against a country that had embraced them.
As El Sayed and Aweys were led out of the courtroom, El Sayed said to the judge: "Allah gives us justice ? not these courts."
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Don't expect an Amy Winehouse biopic to hit theaters anytime soon. The late singer's father, Mitch Winehouse, has decreed that his daughter, who died in July at age 27, will never be the subject of an autobiographical film -- not if he can help it, anyway.
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Insight on why printing money is not the way to solve global debt problems, according to Julian Robertson, Tiger Global Management, who says Mitt Romney has the right economic plan to lead the nation.
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Even as Pattie Dunn died at age 58 after a long battle with cancer, she lived a full life. Her life started as an urban fairy tale: When I met her for the first time in 1999, Dunn told me about growing up as the daughter of a Las Vegas impresario and a showgirl, starting her career as a secretary at Wells Fargo (WFC), and rising through the banking world to CEO of Barclays Global Investors (BCS). That job, overseeing the world's largest institutional money manager, made her No. 11 on Fortune's Most Powerful Women list that year.
Dunn's life turned in 2001, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer--then, melanoma in 2002, ovarian cancer in 2004, and a recurrence, in the liver, in 2006. With great will and vigor, she powered through her illness and then through all sorts of messes at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), where she was on the board. As non-executive chairman, she played a key role in the ouster of CEO Carly Fiorina in 2005. A year later, Dunn herself got embroiled in a board probe gone awry. The state of California indicted her and then dropped charges related to spying on fellow directors and journalists. But Dunn lost her HP board position.
In 2007, I went to Dunn's home in Orinda, CA, east of San Francisco, to do an exclusive interview with her about weathering all these storms. She was the picture of health and remarkably gracious--perhaps realizing that after all she had been through, she could handle anything.
Dunn with her husband, Bill Jahnke
Dunn and I didn't talk again after that Q&A ran. (She emailed me to complain that she disliked the headline, "The survival of Pattie Dunn.") But ever since, I've thought of Dunn almost everyday. That's because her name appears in my address book right before my own name; when I send an email to myself, "Pattie Dunn" pops up before "Pattie Sellers." This morning, I found an email she sent me eight years ago, after we invited her to appear on a panel with two other cancer survivors, then-CEO of Autodesk (ADSK) Carol Bartz and current Morgan Stanley (MS) CFO Ruth Porat. Dunn couldn't make it to the Summit; she was doing R&R in Australia, where she and her ex-banker husband, Bill Jahnke, owned a winery. In regretting Fortune's invitation, Dunn sent this email, which I read from the stage:
"My situation is stable and each day is a gift. My attitude is that we are ALL borrowing every day from death, but some of us have been rudely reminded that this is the case--which is not all bad. And one can still be determined to fight for every day."
Dunn is survived by two daughters and 10 grandchildren. She also wrote this to me in 2003, when she had no idea how long she would live with her cancer:
"As your MPW surveys mature with the years, there will be? women who become ill, or die for whatever reason. To reduce the stigma of illness, I'd recommend noting these developments if the individual in question (in instance of illness) agrees. I've actually had people who thought I died because I was no longer listed! That's actually a great testament to the impact of your work! ?Best regards, ?Pattie"
I trust that Dunn wouldn't mind that I'm sharing this with you today. For a while at least, I'm not deleting her name from my address book.
Source: http://postcards.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/12/06/remembering-pattie-dunn-how-she-lived-with-cancer/
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TOKYO ? A panel probing an accounting scandal at Japan's Olympus Corp. said Tuesday an elaborate scheme to cover up $1.5 billion of investment losses was orchestrated by a group of top executives who were "rotten to the core."
The panel also credited the company's ex-CEO, Michael Woodford, for bringing the deception at the camera and medical equipment maker to light. Woodford, a Briton, was fired in October after questioning the dubious transactions that have become one of Japan's biggest corporate fiascos.
Led by former Supreme Court judge Tatsuo Kainaka, the third-party panel found that as of 2003, Olympus had racked up 117.7 billion yen ($1.5 billion) in investment losses dating back to the 1990s.
"The management was rotten to the core and contaminated what was around it, creating in the worst sense a group mentality of the typical salarymen," the report said in a reference to Japan's culture of corporate loyalty.
It said it found no involvement of "anti-social groups," a euphemism for Japanese criminal gangs, as some news reports have speculated. The panel said it traced the money and the various funds used to cover up investment losses, and no underworld groups were involved.
Olympus initially denied any wrongdoing, but later admitted it had used a $687 million fee for financial advice when it bought British medical instruments maker Gyrus Group, as well as overpayments for acquisitions, to hide losses from past investments gone bad.
Olympus said it took the panel's report "very seriously," but also noted that no new off-book liabilities or gangster involvement had been found.
The company was considering measures to restore confidence, it said. President Shuichi Takayama is scheduled to address the panel's findings at a news conference Wednesday.
The panel identified at least six Olympus employees as part of the scheme, including President Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, Executive Vice President Hisashi Mori and auditor Hideo Yamada, all of whom have resigned.
It said other board members were familiar with the cover-up that started from about 2006 and lasted through last year, and recommended they resign too.
It also said that, when scheme management expenses were added, the loss cover-up ballooned to 135 billion yen ($1.7 billion).
It urged Olympus to beef up its corporate governance to prevent future problems, pointing to a small group of people who engineered the deception but were protected from scrutiny so that the dubious accounting could be kept secret for so long.
The panel pointed to one board meeting in which a part of the scheme was approved in just 15 minutes.
Woodford praised the panel for calling for a new board, as he had earlier, and said he wanted to work with shareholders and employees to revitalize Olympus.
"Today's report must be the beginning, and not the end, of our efforts to discover what has happened at Olympus," he said in a statement. "Elucidating the full extent of the wrongdoing cited in the panel's report will require a wide-ranging investigation."
The Tokyo Stock Exchange said it is looking at the panel's report for possible reasons to remove Olympus from the stock market. The company was already at risk of delisting after failing to report its earnings. It was given a new deadline of Dec. 14.
The panel stressed its findings, summarized in a 24-page document released at a press conference at a Tokyo hall Tuesday, were based on voluntary hearings and analysis of company computers, but that it was not authorized to pursue a criminal investigation.
Japanese financial and criminal authorities are investigating the Olympus scandal.
Kainaka, the former judge, said that some Olympus people may face criminal charges, while declining to give names. He said none had pocketed the money for personal gain.
Olympus risks being delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange if it doesn't rectify past filings with regulators by reporting revised earnings by Dec. 14.
The company's bookkeeping is now under investigation in Japan, the U.S. and Great Britain. Woodford has met with authorities in all three countries.
The scandal has cast a harsh light on Japanese corporate governance, which has been criticized as lagging global standards.
Last week, Economy Minister Yukio Edano defended Japan, saying its corporate governance standards were on par with the U.S. or even better. He didn't specify any cases, but there have been a string of accounting scandals at major U.S. companies, including Enron and AIG.
Kainaka denied the Olympus scandal exemplified Japan Inc.
"This is not just a Japan problem. It could have happened anywhere in the world," he said.
But others say Japan needs more transparent, accountable and knowledgeable boards at companies.
Nicholas Benes, head of The Board Director Training Institute of Japan, a nonprofit group that specializes in corporate governance training, said the panel was a start but it lacks legal authority under Japanese law.
"I applaud, but obviously its work hasn't been finished," he said.
Tuesday's panel report raps the Olympus board as insular, calling for better outside members.
"Most board members were mere yes-men," it said.
Olympus stock, which at one point lost 80 percent of its value after Woodford's whistleblowing, has recovered over the last three weeks, and surged 9 percent Tuesday amid optimism the company may avoid delisting. The panel released its findings after trading ended in Tokyo.
___
Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at http://twitter.com/yurikageyama
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PARIS (Reuters) ? The euro faces a decisive week as European Union leaders, urged on anxiously by the United States, seek agreement on a convincing rescue plan that has eluded them for two years.
Despite short-term market optimism about a possible deal to tackle Europe's sovereign debt crisis and underpin the survival of the single currency, the outcome is far from certain as the EU gears up for a summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.
"This week, the stable future of the euro and thus the economic recovery in Europe and employment are at stake," EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn told Reuters. "This calls for a convincing package of measures from the European Council (summit)."
Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho went further.
"We have to find a response" to the crisis, he told the daily Publico. "If we don't, clearly that could represent the end of the European Union."
If all goes according to plans being hatched in Berlin and Paris, the EU will have taken a step towards fiscal union by Friday night, agreeing on a treaty change to anchor coercive budget discipline for the 17-nation currency area.
The European Central Bank will have cut interest rates on Thursday to counter a looming recession and taken new measures to provide longer-term funding for Europe's teetering banks.
And new prime ministers in Italy, Greece and Spain will have demonstrated their commitment to tough austerity measures and structural economic reforms to tackle their debt problems and restore investor confidence.
World financial markets rallied last week on the prospect of such a masterplan after ECB chief Mario Draghi signalled that in response to a new "fiscal compact" in the euro zone, the central bank could act more decisively to fight the crisis.
A convincing show of political determination to stand behind the euro and surmount the crisis through closer euro zone integration could prompt the ECB to do more to support Italian and Spanish bonds, cementing that reversal of market sentiment.
"It all comes down to what the ECB does, and whether political leaders produce a sufficiently convincing plan to give the ECB a basis to intervene," a senior EU government source said, speaking on condition of anonymity to respect the independence of the central bank.
However, if the 27-nation EU is unable to agree, or settles for another half-measure after months of dithering, the flight from euro zone bond markets may accelerate, confidence may ebb further and the crisis could become acute in January, when Italy has to start a massive refinancing campaign.
The chief executives of leading Dutch multinationals published a joint newspaper ad warning it was now "one minute to midnight" for the euro zone.
"There is almost 1,000 billion euros in refinancing that needs to be done next year, while the risk premium on interest rates is increasing strongly. That means that it will be almost impossible for many countries to refinance. That indicates how urgent it is to take measures now," Frans van Houten, CEO of electronics giant Philips told TV programme Buitenhof.
MERKEL PERMISSIVE?
Underlining Washington's vital interest in averting a euro zone meltdown, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will visit Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris, Marseille and Milan from Tuesday -- his fourth trip to Europe since early September -- to urge key European officials to take decisive action.
Sources close to German Chancellor Angela Merkel say she is prepared, despite hostility from the German Bundesbank, to see the ECB step up buying of troubled states' bonds as a short-term bridging measure until stricter budget controls take hold.
But things may not go entirely according to plan.
Merkel visits French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris on Monday to outline joint proposals on economic governance, but Berlin and Paris still have significant differences about how the euro zone would control national budgets.
Merkel wants to empower the executive European Commission to veto national budget plans that breach EU limits before they go to parliament, with automatic sanctions for deficit sinners and the possibility to take serial offenders to the European Court of Justice for punishment.
Sarkozy, struggling to win re-election next May, wants euro zone leaders to have the final say, with no new supranational powers for EU institutions.
Several other governments, notably Britain, Ireland and the Netherlands, do not want treaty change at all because of the domestic political risks. Some fear it would be hard if they have to win public backing in referendums.
European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, who chairs the crucial end-of-week summit in Brussels, will present options for stricter budget control without touching the treaty, as well as steps that would require amendments, aides said.
European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek warned last Friday that treaty change could be divisive and "dangerous." But diplomats say it is a political must for Merkel.
Veteran former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, 92, urged Germans on Sunday to soothe growing fears of German dominance in Europe and help rescue debt-stricken euro zone partners, warning that Berlin faced isolation otherwise.
For British Prime Minister David Cameron, the choice is between enraging eurosceptics at home by letting treaty change go ahead without winning a return of key powers to London, or seeing the 17 euro zone states reach a separate agreement outside the treaty that could cement a two-speed Europe.
SHORT-CIRCUIT
Germany and France want to short-circuit the complex treaty amendment procedure by wrapping the new budget procedures into a single amended protocol 14 on the euro zone. They hope to avoid a parliamentary convention and spare most, if not all, countries the need for a referendum on ratification.
That has outraged some lawmakers who say the EU's major powers are sidelining national parliamentary budget sovereignty without any democratic accountability.
In their defence, Paris and Berlin argue the debt crisis is an emergency that requires swift executive action to avert disaster, and that member states already signed up to the budget rules in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.
New Prime Minister Mario Monti brought forward to Sunday a cabinet meeting to approve rigorous austerity measures and economic reforms designed to save Rome from requiring the next international bailout. And bailed-out Ireland will be presenting an eye-watering 2012 austerity budget.
Italy has become the centre of the debt crisis since yields on its 10-year bonds shot up above 7 percent, levels at which Greece, Ireland and Portugal were forced to seek EU/IMF help.
Government sources say Monti's mix of cuts and tax rises will total some 20 billion euros ($27 billion) over two years. About half will go to reduce the deficit and balance the budget by 2013 despite an economic downturn and rising borrowing costs.
The rest will free up resources to try to regenerate Italy's recession-bound economy.
On Tuesday, the Greek parliament is due to give final approval to a draconian 2012 austerity budget that is a condition for a second bailout package still under negotiation with private creditors, euro zone governments and the IMF.
On Wednesday and Thursday, centre-right leaders who control most EU governments meet in Marseille, France. That will provide the platform for incoming Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to outline his commitment to radical budget cuts and economic reforms to restore Madrid's parlous public finances.
It will also give "Merkozy" -- as the Franco-German leadership team has become known -- a last chance to lobby reticent partners, with Geithner in the wings, to accept treaty change as a crucial part of the long-term plan to secure the euro before the summit starts with a dinner on Thursday evening.
(Additional reporting by Madeline Chambers and Andreas Rinke in Berlin, Catherine Hornby in Rome and Gilbert Kreijger in the Netherlands; Writing by Paul Taylor, Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111204/bs_nm/us_eurozone
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Thousands of workers unemployed overnight. Businesses shuttered. Oil towns becoming ghost towns. This was the picture painted by the Bismarck Tribune on November 27 as what might happen if the Environmental Protection Agency puts a moratorium on fracking.
It could happen, says North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources director Lynn Helms, the Tribune reported, as soon as January, when the EPA releases its guidance document to states, governing how they must comply with the federal Safe Drinking Water Act and how permits must be issued when diesel fuels are used in fracking fluids. Helms' department will then rewrite state rules. He believes that the process will stop the state's hydraulic fracturing program for one to two years. Although diesel is only a small part of the fluids used for fracking, he explained, North Dakota's cold requires the use of it. And it's diesel fuel and how it relates to fracking as a Class II well that seems to be causing the EPA concern.
According to Chris Faulkner, CEO of Texas-based Breitling Oil & Gas, who participated in a recent debate published by U.S. News & World Report, critics of fracking have little to worry about when it comes to the potential of groundwater pollution through the use of fracking fluids. Because fracking involves deep drilling - far below the aquifer - and the well is encased in steel pipe before fracking fluids are ever released, there is little chance of pollution happening.
Lee Fuller, Vice President of Government Relations for the Independent Petroleum Association of America agrees, citing remarks by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson herself as proof. Jackson, in testimony to the House of Representatives that was covered by Fox News earlier this year, stated that she was not aware of any proven case where the fracking process has affected groundwater.
Not everyone agrees, though. In New York, on Wednesday, November 30, environmentalists called for a ban on hydraulic fracturing in that state, the Associated Press reported. New York placed a moratorium on drilling permits in 2008 and has spent the past three years reviewing its regulations. The state is now in the midst of a 90-day comment period on its review of impacts from fracking and its proposed regulations. State Sen. Tony Avella has authored a bill banning the practice, stating that the costs of regulating the industry outweigh the economic benefits of it.
6,000 people turned out for the four public hearings on New York's proposed fracking regulations, the New York Times reported, with more than 10,6000 written public comments received as of Thursday, December 1. The state's Department of Environmental Conservation extended its public comment period on the matter from Dec. 12 to Jan. 11.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The top U.S. Republican in Congress, in an abrupt shift, agreed with President Barack Obama on Thursday that extending a popular payroll tax cut would boost the struggling U.S. economy.
"I don't think there is any question that the payroll tax relief, in fact, helps the economy, in allowing more Americans ... to keep more of their money," said John Boehner, Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Boehner's comments were in sharp contrast to what members of his party were saying just days ago. Some Republican lawmakers are skeptical that extending the tax cut beyond this year will help job creation and say it will have only a temporary effect on the economy.
The White House, investment banks and some economists have warned in recent days that U.S. economic growth could suffer in 2012 if the cuts are allowed to expire.
Until earlier this week, Republicans had been lukewarm to extending the payroll tax cut, but they have come under political pressure to do so in advance of the 2012 presidential and congressional elections.
Boehner said his party was sticking to its demand that the tax cut be paid for and not add to the country's $15 trillion debt. Obama has proposed a tax increase on wealthy Americans, but Republicans have rejected that, saying it would hurt business owners who generate jobs.
Senate Republicans offered a plan on Wednesday to cover the projected $120 billion cost of extending the tax cut. It would continue a pay freeze for federal workers through 2015 and gradually reduce the federal workforce by 10 percent.
White House spokesman Jay Carney rejected the Republican plan, calling it an "unbalanced approach" that fell far short of Obama's funding proposal.
The Senate could begin voting as early as Thursday evening on competing funding plans by Democrats and Republicans. Both proposals will likely fail, triggering intensive negotiations on a compromise.
Without congressional action by December 31, the payroll tax that workers pay would revert to 6.2 percent, up from the current, temporary 4.2 percent tax. On average, it would cost American families about $1,000.
(Additional reporting by Donna Smith, Rachelle Younglai and Caren Bohan; Editing by Ross Colvin and Vicki Allen)
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ArtSpotter's new iPhone app has just gone live in the App store and if you like art you should check it out. It's an interactive art map that lets you discover art around you and add to the map. This is version one, but the next one will allow sharing on Facebook and Twitter. Think Foursquare meets Timeout for art. Venues can get data on what people are doing via the app.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/T-fqhLsMv2g/
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FILE - In this May 22, 2010 file photo, civilians look on as Indian firefighters and rescue personnel try to extinguish the fire around the site of an Air India plane that crashed in Mangalore, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. From 2011-2030, Boeing and Airbus both predict Asia will account for about a third of global aircraft deliveries worth a total of more than $1 trillion. To keep up with growth and replace retiring pilots, Boeing forecasts Asia-Pacific will need 182,300 new pilots over the next 20 years, with about two-fifths of that demand coming from China. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - In this May 22, 2010 file photo, civilians look on as Indian firefighters and rescue personnel try to extinguish the fire around the site of an Air India plane that crashed in Mangalore, in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. From 2011-2030, Boeing and Airbus both predict Asia will account for about a third of global aircraft deliveries worth a total of more than $1 trillion. To keep up with growth and replace retiring pilots, Boeing forecasts Asia-Pacific will need 182,300 new pilots over the next 20 years, with about two-fifths of that demand coming from China. (AP Photo/File)
FILE - In this April 29, 2011 file photo, passenger jets from Air India, India's national carrier, stand at Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, India. From 2011-2030, Boeing and Airbus both predict Asia will account for about a third of global aircraft deliveries worth a total of more than $1 trillion. To keep up with growth and replace retiring pilots, Boeing forecasts Asia-Pacific will need 182,300 new pilots over the next 20 years, with about two-fifths of that demand coming from China. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer, File)
In this Nov. 30, 2011 photo, a pilot from Japan's ANA airline walks in the Hong Kong International Airport in Hong Kong. From 2011-2030, Boeing and Airbus both predict Asia will account for about a third of global aircraft deliveries worth a total of more than $1 trillion. To keep up with growth and replace retiring pilots, Boeing forecasts Asia-Pacific will need 182,300 new pilots over the next 20 years, with about two-fifths of that demand coming from China. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
In this Nov. 30, 2011 photo, two pilots from Cathay Pacific walk in the Hong Kong International Airport in Hong Kong. From 2011-2030, Boeing and Airbus both predict Asia will account for about a third of global aircraft deliveries worth a total of more than $1 trillion. To keep up with growth and replace retiring pilots, Boeing forecasts Asia-Pacific will need 182,300 new pilots over the next 20 years, with about two-fifths of that demand coming from China. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
FILE - In this May 1, 2011 file photo, Air India pilots who are on strike shout slogans against corruption near to the Gateway of India monument in Mumbai, India. The pilots demanding more pay refused to work for a fifth day, defying a court order to end their strike and forcing the beleaguered national carrier to cancel most of its scheduled flights. To keep up with growth and replace retiring pilots, Boeing forecasts Asia-Pacific will need 182,300 new pilots over the next 20 years, with about two-fifths of that demand coming from China. (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade, File)
HONG KONG (AP) ? Fast-growing Asian and Middle Eastern airlines have signed orders recently for hundreds of new airplanes ? now they face the problem of finding enough pilots to fly them. For safety-conscious travelers, that means sticking with the big, well known airlines who can afford to lure the best staff as the scramble to fill the cockpit intensifies.
While there have been warnings for several years of a pilot shortage in Asia, the latest orders add to the urgency. The region is forecast to account for the lion's share of global aircraft deliveries over the next two decades as demand for air travel surges amid strong economic growth. It's also forecast to need the largest number of new pilots and the widening shortage of experienced staff is raising safety concerns and playing havoc with flight schedules.
"Quite a number of carriers are increasing their orders. So where are the pilots coming from? The shortage is going to manifest itself certainly as we go into next year because there'll be a lot of planes coming in then, so these guys are going to have a hard time finding the pilots to fly them," said Shukor Yusof, an aviation analyst with Standard & Poor's.
Last month, Indonesia's Lion Air ordered 230 Boeing Co. 737s with options for 150 more. Qatar Airways ordered at least 55 jets from Airbus SAS while Emirates ordered 50 Boeing 777s. From 2011 to 2030, Boeing and Airbus both predict Asia will account for about a third of global aircraft deliveries worth a total of more than $1 trillion.
To keep up with growth and replace retiring pilots, the International Civil Aviation Organization forecasts Asia will need 229,676 new pilots over the next two decades ? up from 50,344 in 2010. In the most likely scenario, Asia will be short about 9,000 pilots a year because it will need about 14,000 but have capacity to train only about 5,000.
"Never in human history have we seen a time when 2 billion people will enter the middle class and demand air travel. That time is now," said William Voss, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Flight Safety Foundation.
Some airlines are already acting.
Emirates has announced plans to set up a dedicated $109 million flight training center in Dubai that will be able to train up to 400 students at a time. Earlier this year, Canadian flight-training company CAE Inc. said it was expanding its training center in Zhuhai, China that it runs jointly with China Southern Airlines.
But Roei Ganzarski, Boeing's chief customer officer for flight services, warns that recruiting pilots will be a long-term problem for the aviation industry. "We've already heard of a few airlines that have either reduced their operations or even grounded their airplanes because they don't have enough people to fly them."
Training a commercial airline pilot takes time ? up to three or four years. Trainees must obtain a Private Pilot's License and then a Commercial Pilot's License. Then they need an Air Transport Pilot's License ? the advanced credential required to fly a commercial airliner ? which involves logging about 1,500 flying hours. It's an expensive and time-consuming entire process that rookies starting from scratch will need two to three years to complete.
Once they're hired by an airline as a first officer, candidates will need more time for additional conversion training for the type of aircraft they'll be flying, which could take another year.
Aviation industry executives say small airlines will be hit hardest because they can't compete with big, rich carriers such as Dubai-based Emirates, the Middle East's biggest airline.
Capt. Alan Stealey, senior vice president for flight operations, said Emirates isn't facing problems recruiting its target of 600 pilots this year, up from about 400 or 450 in past years.
Emirates lures staff with generous salaries and benefits. First officers earn tax-free annual salaries averaging $95,000 while captains get about $135,000 as well as free housing, medical benefits and tuition fees.
Emirates also operates some of the world's newest, most advanced jets ? another draw for recruits.
"We're an airline of choice from a pilot's point of view," said Stealey. "The shortage will not be in carriers like Emirates," but rather will hit smaller, regional carriers hardest, he predicted.
The crash of an Air India Express jet in May 2010 highlighted the problems smaller airlines are facing. An investigation blamed the Serbian pilot for the disaster in which a Boeing 737 operated by the national carrier's low-cost arm crashed while landing at Mangalore's airport, killing 158 people.
The probe found that the pilot slept through more than half the flight and woke up disoriented when it was time to land the aircraft.
India's pilot shortage has been driven by fierce demand as a slew of carriers have started up in the past decade and expanded rapidly. Pilots complain that they don't have enough rest time between flights, a violation of international aviation safety practices.
Indian airlines have been forced to look abroad for staff, which comes with its own problems as some Eastern European pilots had difficulties with English ? the international language of aviation.
By hiring pilots from countries where English isn't spoken widely, "you have to accept that there's potential for confusion, or less comprehension," said Gideon Ewers, a spokesman for the U.K.-based International Federation of Airline Pilots' Associations.
Airlines across Asia have been recruiting foreigners. China has at least 1,300 foreign flight captains, according to the state-run China Daily newspaper. Garuda Indonesia and Korean Airlines have also been forced to hire foreign pilots. In China, state media quoted an American pilot for Spring Airways complaining he had to rely on his Chinese first officer to communicate with air traffic controllers who wouldn't or couldn't speak English.
Experts say while some smaller airlines are forced to hire pilots on short-term contracts, they don't have as much control over the quality of the pilot's training and experience as big airlines with cadet programs do. The result is that while airlines may have crews that meet the minimum training requirements, some airlines will have crews that are excellent but others are "dangerously marginal," said Voss.
At airlines where safety and training standards are closely followed, the pilots in the cockpit "correct the missteps and correct problems on the spot. All of those little corrections eventually define the safety culture of that airline," said Voss.
"If the crews are all on six-month contracts, that doesn't happen. Risky behavior goes unchallenged, professionalism decays, and disaster inevitably follows."
A potentially even graver shortage looms of maintenance personnel, aviation groups say. Boeing forecasts that Asia will need a quarter-million new technicians over the next two decades, up from about 46,500 now.
"It is a more difficult problem to solve," said Voss,"since the job is very unattractive and harder to train."
___________
AP Business Writer Adam Schreck in Dubai, Aviation Writer Slobodan Lekic in Brussels and AP Writer Nirmala George in New Delhi contributed to this report.
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