Monday, February 28, 2011
U.S. Grants Nobel th
U.S. moves warships
U.S. Grants Nobel the First Permit for Deep-Water Drilling Since Oil Spill
Michael R. Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, said that Noble Energy had been granted permission to resume drilling in 6,500 feet of water off the coast of Louisiana. Work on the well was suspended, along with virtually all other drilling activity in water deeper than 5,000 feet, immediately after the Deepwater Horizon accident last April 20. The disaster killed 11 rig workers and spewed nearly five million barrels of oil into the ocean.
Still, there was no indication that drilling in the gulf would return anytime soon to levels preceding the BP well blowout last April. Mr. Bromwich made clear that each new permit would be closely reviewed on a well-by-well basis and that the old system of rapid approvals of drilling permits had been permanently changed.
Approval of the Noble Energy application comes as oil prices are rising in response to unrest in the Middle East and North Africa and many in Congress and in industry are complaining of burdensome rules that are thwarting the development of domestic energy resources. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar plans to testify before Congress this week in defense of his department’s budget and is certain to face harsh questioning about why it has taken so long to resume drilling in the gulf.
Judge Martin Feldman, of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, recently ordered the Obama administration to move quickly on permits for new deepwater wells in the gulf, saying that the continuing delays were “increasingly inexcusable.”
But in a conference call with reporters, Mr. Bromwich said that there were “absolutely no politics associated with the approval of this application.” He also said that the decision to grant Noble Energy the drilling permit was not a response to Judge Feldman’s order: he said the department disagreed with the ruling and was preparing a legal response.
It is not clear how quickly federal regulators will move to on the six pending deepwater drilling permits or how soon the normal flow of applications will resume after a nearly yearlong halt to deepwater activity.
“We are taking these applications to drill as they come in,” Mr. Bromwich said. “Industry has been waiting for signals that in fact deepwater drilling will be allowed to resume and many will take this as that signal.”
“I have no idea how quickly new applications to drill will be filed,” he added. “I have no idea how long it will take to approve the next one or the next one after that or the next one after that.”
Mr. Bromwich noted that Noble’s permit was the first in deep water since the BP accident but that 37 shallow-water applications had been approved over the past 10 months.
The decision was cautiously welcomed by the oil industry.
Gary Luquette, president of Chevron’s North America exploration and production, called the permit “a step in the right direction.” But he added, “It is time for the government to clear the backlog of deepwater drilling permit applications so industry can create the energy, jobs and economic growth our nation needs so badly.”
Lee Hunt, president of the International Association of Drilling Contractors, said the industry was seeking clarity on the pacing of additional permits. “A permit for any well prohibited by the moratorium represents progress,” he said. “The question now is how quickly will they proceed to approve other permits that are awaiting approval.”
Mr. Hunt said while the federal agency says that 6 deepwater permits are awaiting approval, the industry would put 33 projects to work if companies could obtain permits.
Mr. Bromwich said that Noble had met new safety and environmental rules that were put in place after the spill and had a contract with a company that is capable of capping a blowout and handling a discharge of as much as 69,000 barrels a day — roughly the same volume of oil that leaked from the crippled BP well for nearly three months.
The emergency well-capping system will be furnished by the Helix Well Containment Group, which Mr. Bromwich said was capable of meeting the government’s spill response requirements for the Noble Energy well.
Mr. Salazar and Mr. Bromwich were briefed in Houston on Friday by Helix executives and representatives of another group developing a new oil spill response system. The second group, a consortium of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, ConocoPhillips and BP, has developed a system designed to cap a well in up to 8,000 feet of water and collect 60,000 barrels of spilled oil a day.
The consortium is also working on a second system that by the end of the year will be capable of operating in up to 10,000 feet and contain 100,000 barrels a day.
Randal Luthi, former director of offshore drilling regulation at the Interior Department and now president of the National Ocean Industries Association, a drillers’ trade group, said the approval came at a critical moment.“With all the world-complicating factors, including rising oil prices, political turmoil in the Middle East and the loss of jobs in the Gulf of Mexico, this decision offers hope,” he said.
Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, sounded a less magnanimous note.
“This slow-moving process continues to stifle domestic production and puts thousands of jobs at risk in the gulf and around the country,” he said.
Senator Mary Landrieu, the Louisiana Democrat who has doggedly pressed the Obama administration to begin issuing deepwater permits at a steady clip, called the permit “long overdue.”
“I hope that this permit is the first of many to come, and I will continue to use every lever at my disposal to ensure that it is,” she said.
Obama will support l
The Middle East in c
Obama will support letting states opt out of health care law earlier
Obama will support letting states opt out of health care law earlierBY BILL LAMBRECHT • blambrecht@post-dispatch.com > 202-298-6880 St. Louis Post-Dispatch | Posted: Monday, February 28, 2011 1:56 pm | (9) Comments
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WASHINGTON • With the new health-care law under frequent attack, President Barack Obama said today he would support legislation letting states construct their own insurance system as early as 2014.
The president told a group of governors gahtered in Washington for the National Governors Association winter meeting that that states should be able to cancel the individual mandate or have flexibility to other make changes three years earlier than the 2017 date prescribed by the law.
"I think that's a reasonable proposal. I support it," Obama told governors gathered at the White House, referring to legislation in Congress.
White House aides later spelled out some stiff criteria that states would need to meet in order to obtain waivers: Their plans would have to be as comprehensive and affordable as coverage available in the new private insurance markets called exchanges.
In addition, a state insurance plan would need to cover as many people as the exchanges -- and it could not increase the federal deficit.
In Missouri, the GOP-led General Assembly is pushing for Missouri to join states formally challenging provisions of the health-care law.
Govs. Jay Nixon of Missouri and Pat Quinn of Illinois were among state chief executives on hand this weekend for the governors' gathering.
Some of the governors expressed worry about mounting Medicaid costs and pressing for the increased flexibility that would come from receiving their allotments in block grants.
Obama told governors he wasn't keen on the idea, an administration official told reporters this afternoon.
"He raised concerns that block grants could conceivably leave children vulnerable," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Obama referred to today to the ongoing fight in Wisconsin over a proposal to strip public employees of collective bargaining rights.
"I don't think it does anybody any good when public employees are denigrated or vilified or their rights are infringed upon," Obama told the governors, not mentioning Wisconsin by name.
Frank Buckles, Last
FoxNews.com – Gmai
AT&T to Start Sellin
AT&T to Start Selling Amazon’s Kindle E-Reader Next Month - Businessweek
Feb. 28 (Bloomberg) -- AT&T Inc., the second-largest U.S. wireless carrier, will begin selling Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle electronic reader in its 2,200 stores next month, aiming to boost revenue by luring more users to its network.
FoxNews.com - Gmail Glitch Wipes Out 150,000 Accounts
Flickr / Mario Antonio Pena Zapateria
Google's Gmail software finds fresh competition from Facebook and AOL.
Tens of thousands of Gmail users found themselves locked out of their accounts Sunday, a glitch Google engineers were still struggling to fix and fully understand Monday morning.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
USGS: Eathquake Hits Central Arkansas, Ground Shakes In NWA - NW Arkansas News Story - KHBS NW Arkansas
The U.S. Geological Survey reported a 4.7 magnitude earthquake in the Greenbrier area at 11:00 p.m. Sunday.Residents across northwest Arkansas and Oklahoma called the 40/29 newsroom and reported feeling the earthquake.
Magnitude 4.7 - ARKANSAS - USGS Report
Earthquake Summary
Tectonic Summary
EARTHQUAKES IN THE STABLE CONTINENTAL REGION
Most of North America east of the Rocky Mountains has infrequent earthquakes. Here and there earthquakes are more numerous, for example in the New Madrid seismic zone centered on southeastern Missouri, in the Charlevoix-Kamouraska seismic zone of eastern Quebec, in New England, in the New York - Philadelphia - Wilmington urban corridor, and elsewhere. However, most of the enormous region from the Rockies to the Atlantic can go years without an earthquake large enough to be felt, and several U.S. states have never reported a damaging earthquake. The earthquakes that do occur strike anywhere at irregular intervals.Earthquakes east of the Rocky Mountains, although less frequent than in the West, are typically felt over a much broader region. East of the Rockies, an earthquake can be felt over an area as much as ten times larger than a similar magnitude earthquake on the west coast. A magnitude 4.0 eastern U.S. earthquake typically can be felt at many places as far as 100 km (60 mi) from where it occurred, and it infrequently causes damage near its source. A magnitude 5.5 eastern U.S. earthquake usually can be felt as far as 500 km (300 mi) from where it occurred, and sometimes causes damage as far away as 40 km (25 mi).
FAULTS
Earthquakes everywhere occur on faults within bedrock, usually miles deep. Most of the region's bedrock was formed as several generations of mountains rose and were eroded down again over the last billion or so years.At well-studied plate boundaries like the San Andreas fault system in California, often scientists can determine the name of the specific fault that is responsible for an earthquake. In contrast, east of the Rocky Mountains this is rarely the case. All parts of this vast region are far from the nearest plate boundaries, which, for the U.S., are to the east in the center of the Atlantic Ocean, to the south in the Caribbean Sea, and to the west in California and offshore from Washington and Oregon. The region is laced with known faults but numerous smaller or deeply buried faults remain undetected. Even most of the known faults are poorly located at earthquake depths. Accordingly, few earthquakes east of the Rockies can be linked to named faults. It is difficult to determine if a known fault is still active and could slip and cause an earthquake. In most areas east of the Rockies, the best guide to earthquake hazards is the earthquakes themselves.
4.7 Magnitude Earthquake Hits Arkansas
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Action News 5
Breaking News...A magnitude 4.7 Earthquake just shook parts of Arkansas. The quake was roughly 4 miles from Guy and Greenbrier and 37 miles away from Little Rock.
Libya Unrest Lifts Oil Prices and Raises Questions
But the events unfolding in the Arab world, the epicenter of global oil production, are a sobering reminder that trading in oil, that mother of all commodities, is at heart a political game. Not since Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 have the politics of crude loomed so large. Like much of the Arab world, this market seems like a pocket full of firecrackers, just waiting for a match.
As rebels tightened their noose around Tripoli on Sunday, its critical oil supplies remained constricted. Production from most of Libya’s oil fields was down to a trickle. Several ports and refineries were left stricken by workers too afraid to go to work. And with most foreign oil company employees having left the country and armed men beginning to loot equipment left behind, a return to normal production appears weeks away at best.
About 80 percent of the nation’s oil production lies in rebel-held territory, though there is not a way to verify how much rebel leaders directly control.
Still, what has brought us to $100-a-barrel oil again — and set people on edge — goes beyond the possibility that the uprisings that toppled autocrats in Egypt and Tunisia might spread to other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in the Middle East.
For the moment, heavyweights like Saudi Arabia can make up the difference, and big consumers, like the United States, have stored millions of barrels of oil for just this kind of emergency.
But few oil experts are surprised that the unrest has so unnerved the market. The world is thirsty for oil, and supply and demand are in delicate balance.
There is little room for more disruptions in
supplies. Indeed, spare capacity — essentially that amount of extra oil that OPEC members are able to produce in a pinch — is now about five million barrels a day. That is about 6 percent of the oil that the world consumes every day. That cushion is greater than in 2008, when it equaled about 2 percent of daily consumption, but it remains worryingly thin. And that is not even taking into account the loss of about one million barrels a day exported from Libya.
“There is a vulnerability to tightness,” said David Knapp, senior energy economist at Energy Intelligence, a specialized publisher. “But for now, there are enough barrels out there in commercial storage and OPEC’s spare capacity and strategic reserves held by industrial countries to handle a medium-duration outage from Libya.”
The question on everyone’s mind is what if this goes beyond Libya. Costanza Jacazio, an energy analyst at Barclays Capital in New York, says further unrest — or simply fear of further unrest — could well drive oil prices higher. “The degree of geopolitical risk now is massive.”
Jan Stuart, an energy economist at Macquarie Securities, explained: “This brings back the political dimension to oil-price dynamics. For the best part of the past 25 years, the Saudis have bent backwards to make sure politics would be banned from discussions about oil supplies. The risk today is we could go back the other way again.”
The price of oil had been rising steadily even before the wave of pro-democracy protests swept much of the Middle East and North Africa. A recovering global economy had convinced traders that demand for oil was going to rise by about 2 percent in 2011. Some industry experts and Wall Street seers were predicting a gradual march back to $120 and even $150. The thinking was that investors would pour money into the commodity markets.
Oil futures in New York jumped nearly $12 last week to settle at $97.88 a barrel, their highest since October 2008; in London, benchmark Brent crude traded close to $115 a barrel.
Now economists worry that high and rising energy prices could hurt the economy just as it is beginning to revive. The price of gasoline averaged $3.29 a gallon on Friday, up from $3.11 a month ago. As a rule, every 1-cent increase takes more than $1 billion out of consumers’ pockets a year.
If prices keep climbing, consumers will in all likelihood tighten their belts. If prices stay high for long, the impact could be severe: every oil shock of the past 40 years has helped push the global economy into recession. Nariman Behravesh, senior economist at IHS Global Insight, said that every $10 increase in the price of a barrel of oil reduces economic growth by two-tenths of a percentage point after one year and a full percentage point over two years.
In some ways, something like this was bound to happen. This is not a “black swan” event — a sudden, unexpected occurrence — but a white swan one, said Michael A. Levi, senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“You can’t predict what the specific disruption there will be, but you can be sure there will be some disruption,” he said.
To calm markets, Saudi Arabia has started to increase its crude output to more than nine million barrels a day, roughly 700,000 barrels more than at the end of 2010, Energy Intelligence reported. Saudi officials are also asking European refiners, who are most directly affected by the drop in Libyan exports, how much and what grades of crude they need for quick shipment.
And the International Energy Agency, an organization of consuming countries, also helped defuse tensions in the markets when it said Thursday that the world had “the tools at hand to deliver adequate oil to the market,” including the availability of emergency stocks held by consuming nations.
Much now hinges on what happens next in the Middle East. The price spikes that accompanied the two Persian Gulf wars did not have deep impacts because of they did not last long enough. But several oil price increases have preceded economic downturns.
The biggest shock followed the 1973-74 OPEC embargo, which quadrupled oil prices and helped produce stagflation, a period of slow growth, high unemployment and inflation.
The 1979 Iranian revolution caused another shortage, and again American motorists were forced to wait in long lines for gasoline. Oil prices surged, but they did not stay elevated for long, as Mexico, Nigeria and Venezuela expanded production and OPEC lost its unity. Oil prices remained low for years, and the economy through the later half of the 1980s and most of the 1990s was generally strong.
If the current unrest helps drive the price of a barrel up by $40 to $50, back to its level of three years ago, that would really hurt.
“If gasoline prices go over $4 a gallon, there could be a big psychological effect,” Mr. Behravesh said, “but it would have to last.”
Stormy Monday: 75 MP
Chinese police face
BBC News – Winter�
BBC News - Winter's Bone director on upside of being 'underdog'
"I think its purpose was to be the underdog," she tells the BBC, "which meant we got showered with so much love and affection. People are so sweet to the underdog, it's a sweet place to be."
Granik has good reason to feel loved. The film won
Chinese police face down Middle East-style protests
Premier Wen Jiabao, meanwhile, used a morning Internet chat to promise to purge senior officials who are corrupt and to rein in inflation and rising home prices, directly addressing some of the most common grievances of ordinary Chinese.
Since the January uprising in Tunisia spurred similar anti-government protests across the Middle East and North Africa, threatening long-entrenched authoritarian regimes, China's Communist rulers have reacted nervously, with both defensive and aggressive tactics.
Officials have used state-run media outlets to dismiss any comparisons with China while at the same time stepping up public comments on the need to address "social conflict" and to tackle problems such as the growing income disparity between the rich and poor. They have also detained a number of activists and human rights lawyers, blocked Internet search terms considered sensitive, such as "Egypt," "Tunisia" and even U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman Jr.'s Chinese name. And they have issued warnings to foreign journalists to be mindful of reporting restrictions.
A previously unknown group has used an overseas-based Chinese language Web site to call for a series of peaceful, silent protests, named "jasmine rallies" after the Tunisian uprising, on consecutive Sunday afternoons in cities across China. The rallies were called for heavily trafficked commercial areas, public squares and parks, ostensibly so silent protesters could blend in with ordinary passersby to avoid arrest.
However, police on Sunday were out in huge numbers in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities at the sites where the rallies were supposed to take place. At the Wangfujing area of Beijing, a bustling commercial street with a McDonald's and a Gap store and close to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, blue-uniformed police officers and security volunteers with red armbands lined the streets. Other policemen patrolled with German Shepherd dogs, and a water truck normally used for street cleaning traversed back and forth.
Police in Beijing stopped some foreigners and asked for identification, turning away journalists from entering the area. At 2:30 p.m., about a half-hour after the scheduled start of the silent protest walk, officers blocked off the entrance to Wangfujing Street with police tape. The unusually heavy police presence seemed to attract curious onlookers who snapped pictures with cellphone cameras.
At the Peace Cinema in Shanghai, opposite the People's Square near the city's main municipal building, a few hundred people tried to gather. Policemen used loud whistles and loudspeakers to keep the crowd moving, and police converged whenever a group of more than a dozen people appeared to be forming. A street-cleaning vehicle spraying bursts of water also kept crowds at bay.
Some people in Shanghai said they heard about the "jasmine rally" and came to see if there would be any public speaker. Some openly complained about government corruption and the need for an opening of the system.
"I came here today to see how people protest against the government, which is corrupt and rules in an authoritarian way," said a 71-year-old man, who asked that only his family name, Cao, be used. "Democracy is the trend in the world. No country in the world can be an exception to the process."
Cao said the Communist Party in China was so strong that he expected reform would have to come from within the system. "For those fighting against the government, it is like eggs hitting the stone," Cao said. "With 10, 100, 1,000 and 10,000 eggs hitting the stone, the eggs will eventually succeed."
Another man, named Xia, 64, said there were about 400 to 500 people gathering at People's Square when he arrived around 1 p.m., but they were dispersed by the spray from the water truck. He said he would keep returning to try to protest because he was already in his 60s and not afraid.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
The Associated Press
The Associated Press: Envoy claims Libyans set up caretaker government
Envoy claims Libyans set up caretaker government(AP) – 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Libya's top envoy to the U.S. claimed Saturday that opponents of Moammar Gadhafi's regime are rallying behind efforts to establish an alternative government led by a former Libyan minister. He said the international community should back the movement.
The claim by Ambassador Ali Aujali couldn't be immediately verified and it was unclear what support the "caretaker government" led by ex-Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil commanded.
But Aujali said the U.S. and other countries could accelerate Gadhafi's exit by supporting Abdel-Jalil.
"He is a very honest man, a man with dignity," Aujali said. "I hope this caretaker government will get the support of Libyans and of the international community."
Abdel-Jalil has criticized Gadhafi's regime for its brutal crackdown on protesters and recently said he had proof the Libyan leader ordered the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people.
The State Department said it had no knowledge of Abdel-Jalil's effort, and Aujali didn't know any of the other leaders in the movement.
Abdel-Jalil and his team "will do everything to end this regime," Aujali said. "This government is for the whole of Libya."
The ambassador spoke shortly after President Barack Obama demanded that Gadhafi leave power, saying he no longer has any legitimacy to rule after his bloody crackdown on dissenters. The protesters control large parts of eastern Libya, but Gadhafi is clinging to power in the capital of Tripoli and has vowed to crush the rebellion.
In an interview with al-Jazeera television, Abdel-Jalil said his government would guide the transition for up to three months, until free and fair elections could be held.
He said the decision to form an interim government was made Saturday during a meeting of opposition figures in the eastern city of Benghazi, which is outside Gadhafi's control.
The interim government will be based there until Tripoli is "liberated," Abdel-Jalil said.
Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
AFP: World scrambles
AFP: World scrambles to evacuate thousands from Libya
World scrambles to evacuate thousands from LibyaBy Matthew Xuereb (AFP) – 55 minutes ago
VALLETTA — Thousands of foreign workers were evacuated from Libya by air, land and sea in dramatic scenes on Saturday as fears of a civil war in the oil-rich North African state triggered a desperate exodus.
British military planes evacuated 150 people from camps in the Libyan desert in one rescue mission, while a British warship and a Chinese-chartered ferry docked in the Mediterranean island of Malta loaded with 2,500 evacuees.
"It was very scary, the scariest experience of my life," George Camilleri, a Maltese national who fled violence in the now rebel-held eastern Libyan port of Benghazi, told AFP as he stepped off the ferry back onto his homeland.
Camilleri said he witnessed "fierce fighting" in the streets of Benghazi.
A Tunisian official told AFP meanwhile that more 38,000 people had fled across Tunisia's main Ras Jedir border since the start of the exodus a week ago.
The number included 18,000 Tunisians, 15,000 Egyptians, 2,500 Libyans and 2,500 Chinese, said Colonel Malek Mihoub of the Civil Protection authority.
Many are migrant workers who are part of a vast multinational workforce including domestic helpers, builders and oil workers on the move to escape the violence.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said about 15,000 Egyptians were stranded at the Ras Jedir border awaiting evacuation help.
It appealed for millions of euros (dollars) in emergency international aid.
Hundreds of foreigners including Egyptians, Iraqis and Syrians have also fled from Libya into Algeria through the Sahara Desert.
Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Nigeria, the Philippines and South Korea are among the countries that have or had large communities in Libya -- drawn by an oil boom that has brought billions of euros (dollars) in investments.
In Bangladesh, hundreds of angry relatives of workers stranded in Libya blocked a key highway northeast of the capital Dhaka, accusing the government of dragging its heels in rescuing the estimated 60,000 Bangladeshis there.
The impoverished South Asian country has said it is seeking to ensure the safety of its citizens, most of them low-paid contract workers in the construction industry, but it has no immediate plans to bring them home.
Many evacuations have had to be carried out in terrible weather conditions.
Britain's HMS Cumberland frigate left Benghazi on Thursday carrying 207 passengers but only arrived on Saturday as it was forced to travel at a reduced speed because of the high waves in the Mediterranean.
Richard Weeks, a 64-year-old British manager on the ship, told how he was robbed during the unrest.
"They were armed with knives and knew they could take what they wanted, so it was better to let them get on with it," he said.
The British defence ministry quoted him as saying it was "terrifying".
A ferry that docked in Malta later Saturday carried 2,216 Chinese nationals also from Benghazi, who will remain on board until planes come to pick them up.
Nearly 3,000 Chinese also landed on the Greek island of Crete on Saturday, as China said 16,000 of its 33,000 citizens have been evacuated so far.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China said it would send 15 aircraft a day for the next two weeks to speed up the evacuations of Chinese citizens.
Italy, Libya's former colonial ruler, said one of its warships with around 245 evacuees from the Libyan port of Misrata was to arrive in Sicily on Sunday.
Some 500 people from 25 countries also boarded two Turkish military vessels in Libya, together with about 1,200 Turks, officials in Ankara said.
India said two specially chartered planes had left for Tripoli to begin the evacuation of some 18,000 Indians in the strife-torn country.
And a ship carrying 148 Brazilian evacuees departed from Benghazi bound for the Greek port of Piraeus near Athens.
Meanwhile the first Filipinos out of 26,000 in Libya arrived in Manila.
A US-chartered ferry carrying hundreds of people from Tripoli including American diplomats docked in Malta on Friday after braving 20-foot (six-metre) waves, with at least two evacuees taken away on stretchers by paramedics.
A privately chartered ferry from Libya with hundreds of evacuees on board also arrived in Malta on Friday, along with two German warships set to take away German citizens airlifted out of Libya earlier this week.
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
Jules Kroll Tries Hi
Friday, February 25, 2011
Older Audience Makes
Older Audience Makes Its Presence Known at the Movies
But in the last few months an older audience has made a startling reassertion of its multiplex power. “True Grit,” “The King’s Speech,” “The Fighter,” “Black Swan” — all movies in contention for a clutch of Oscars on Sunday — have all been surprise hits at the box office.
And they have all been powered by people for whom 3-D means wearing glasses over glasses, and “Twilight” sounds vaguely threatening.
Hollywood, slower than almost any other industry to market to baby boomers, may be getting a glimpse of its graying future. While the percentage of moviegoers in the older population remains relatively small, the actual number of older moviegoers is growing explosively — up 67 percent since 1995, according to GfK MRI, a media research firm.
And the first of the 78 million baby boomers are hitting retirement age with some leisure hours to fill and a long-dormant love affair with movies.
“There is an older audience that is growing, and it’s an underserved audience, which makes for an obvious and important opportunity,” said Nancy Utley, co-president of Fox Searchlight, whose “Black Swan” has sold over $100 million at the North American box office. If the core audience for a particular film is over 50, she noted, “that’s now a gigantic core.”
There are glimmers of a shift. Aging action stars; theaters with adult fare, like better food; reserved seating; and, most important, movies like “The Social Network” and “The King’s Speech” that have become hits based on wit and storytelling, not special effects.
Theaters have long favored younger consumers in part because older moviegoers tend to skip the concession counter, where theaters make most of their money. The imbalance between young and old grew more pronounced over the last decade as theater chains, suffering the after-effects of overbuilding, cut back on maintenance.
Sticky floors and popcorn-strewn aisles have kept even more older people at home. That, and all those texting teenagers, “which is something that adult audiences really find irritating,” said Patrick Corcoran, director of media and research for the National Association of Theater Owners.
The very young still go to the movies more than anyone else — especially on those all-important opening weekends — but distribution executives say they are getting harder to lure in huge numbers. Social networking has sped up word of mouth, turning teenagers and young adults into more discerning moviegoers — a phenomenon pushed along by rising prices. People age 18 to 24 bought an average of seven tickets per person in 2010, down from eight in 2009.
And the industry is battling a generational quirk. When you can legally stream movies on laptops or order them from video-on-demand services soon after their release — or easily pirate them with high-speed Internet connections, often while they are still in theaters — it makes you less likely to buy a ticket.
Fewer teenagers, then, present an opening. Baby boomers are not their Depression-era parents, who grew up on radio and were very conscious of the price of a ticket. Baby boomers were weaned on movies.
“Our generation really had a love affair with the movies in a profound way,” said Nicholas Kazan, a screenwriter whose credits include “Reversal of Fortune,” which was nominated for an Oscar in 1991. “It was not a fling, not a casual relationship, but a real love affair.”
For many baby boomers, the relationship blossomed in 1969, as the movies belatedly caught up with the counterculture in a wave of films that included “Easy Rider,” “Medium Cool” and “Midnight Cowboy.” College film societies and an art-house circuit made generational heroes of foreign directors like Ingmar Bergman, whose “Cries and Whispers” had its New York debut in 1972. The “Godfather” series, from Francis Ford Coppola, forged the lexicon for a generation.
But then a younger, more fantasy-oriented generation asserted itself with “Star Wars” in 1977. Hollywood adjusted its output accordingly.
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Oil May Rise as Mide
Starbucks Clears Dis
Starbucks Clears Distribution Hurdle - WSJ.com
NEW YORK—A federal appeals court upheld a ruling that allows for Starbucks Corp. to begin distribution of its branded packaged coffee next month, a business previously operated by Kraft Foods Inc.
Kraft was appealing an earlier ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, which denied its request to block Starbucks from taking over distribution of Starbucks coffee. The appeals court declared Kraft's most recent arguments are without merit, representing a blow to the packaged-food giant, which earlier Friday argued it will suffer "irreparable harm" if the distribution deal ends next week.
Oil May Rise as Mideast Unrest Curbs Supplies, Survey Shows - Bloomberg
Oil prices may rise from the highest levels in 29 months next week as violent clashes in Libya and tensions in other parts of the Middle East disrupt crude shipments from the region, a Bloomberg News survey showed.
Twenty-three of 40 analysts, or 58 percent, forecast crude oil will climb through March 4. Nine respondents, or 23 percent, predicted prices will decline and eight estimated little change. Last week, 44 percent said futures would increase.
Crude in New York rose above $100 a barrel this week for the first time since October 2008 as a Barclays Capital report estimated Libya’s uprising reduced supplies from Africa’s third- biggest oil-producing country by as much 1 million barrels a day. The unrest follows the toppling of rulers by popular movements in Egypt and Tunisia.
“Oil will rise in what is the biggest threat to global oil supply since the Persian Gulf War,” said Phil Flynn, vice president of research at PFGBest in Chicago.
Countries in the Middle East and North Africa were responsible for 36 percent of global oil production and held 61 percent of proved reserves in 2009, according to BP Plc, which publishes its BP Statistical Review of World Energy each June.
The crude oil contract for April delivery rose $8.17, or 9.1 percent, to $97.88 a barrel this week on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices for futures closest to expiration increased 14 percent this week in New York, the biggest gain since the five days ended Feb. 27, 2009. Futures are up 25 percent from a year ago.
The oil survey has correctly predicted the direction of futures 47 percent of the time since its start in April 2004.
Bloomberg’s survey of oil analysts and traders, conducted each Thursday, asks for an assessment of whether crude oil futures are likely to rise, fall or remain neutral in the coming week. The results were: RISE NEUTRAL FALL 23 8 9To contact the reporters on this story: Mark Shenk in New York at mshenk1@bloomberg.net; Margot Habiby in Dallas at mhabiby@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bill Banker at bbanker@bloomberg.net
Libya oil production
Body Of Fourth Amish
Saudi raises oil out
Thursday, February 24, 2011
CBS, Warner pull plu
CBS, Warner pull plug on season of 'Two and a Half Men' | The Clarion-Ledger | clarionledger.com
LOS ANGELES — CBS and Warner Bros. Television say they are ending production on this season of "Two and a Half Men" in the wake of incendiary remarks by star Charlie Sheen.
In a statement Thursday, the network and studio said they were basing their decision on the "totality of Charlie Sheen's statements, conduct and condition."
Android 3.0 Honeycom
Android 3.0 Honeycomb First Impressions -- InformationWeek
After using Android 2.2 Froyo on the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the newest version of the operating system -- Android 3.0 Honeycomb -- on the Motorola Xoom is a bit of an eye opener. Where Froyo on the Tab felt like a glorified phone, Honeycomb on the Xoom feels like a more complete OS for a tablet.
Honeycomb offers five customizable home screens that can be accessed by swiping to the left or right. Out of the box, a few of these home panels were littered with app shortcuts and widgets, but they can all be moved around or deleted. The design of these home pages is far more "tablet-like" than what was available on the Galaxy Tab. The larger display and extra real estate also help to legitimize the feel of Honeycomb as a separate OS from the smartphone version of Android.
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The central home screen offers a number of new control elements. You can more or less toss any ideas you have about Android 2.3 or 2.3 out the window when it comes to the basics. The drop-down notification shade has been killed off, the phone controls are gone, and everything has been moved to the bars at the top and bottom of the screen.
The bottom action bar holds most of the controls, and persists even when you have apps open and running. On the left side, three software buttons let users go back one screen, access the home screen, or open the new multitasking bar. The multitasking bar pops up on the left side of the screen and shows the last five apps a user has accessed. Jumping back to one is as simple as pressing it.
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The right side of the action bar is where the clock and other notifications have landed. App alerts, new message alerts, and all the settings are accessed here. It's not exactly user friendly, and takes some hit-and-miss style navigation to figure out exactly how to operate this revised set of settings tools.
In the upper right corner of the display, there is a drop-down tool that lets you access some options for whatever app or activity is on the display. This sort of replaces the menu function that's available to Android smartphones, but it isn't as extensive (or as useful). There is also a software button here to access all the apps on the device. Apps are placed into one master set of apps where all of them are stored, and a user-defined set of favorites. Personally, I don't see the point in offering this set of favorites, as you have to open the main app menu first, and then swipe over to see your favorites. Chances are the app you want is on that first app screen.
In terms of using the OS to move around and perform tasks, it is reasonably good. I noticed a lot of jitters, app crashes, and herky-jerky movement of the software. It feels as though it hasn't been optimized quite yet. The Android Market was on board, but there are barely any apps present that work with Honeycomb, and it was rather crashtastic.
The browser offers some nice amenities that the iPad's Safari browser doesn't (real tabs, for instance), but it was frustrating for several reasons. First, Web developers haven't had time to figure out how to handle incoming requests from Honeycomb. The result is that most Web pages rendered in Honeycomb are the mobile-optimized versions of those apps rather than the desktop versions. That really takes away from the Web browsing experience. (The iPad, in comparison, gets this right.) The browser also lacks Flash, so embedded video content doesn't play.
My favorite feature so far are the improved widgets. The Gmail widget, for example, lets you swipe up and down through your in-box to see unread messages. Too bad you can't actually read them from the widget. Pressing on an unread email in the widget opens the full email application (which in and of itself is a decent mishmash of the HTML5 version of Gmail that Google offers to WebKit browsers and what Apple has done with its email app on the iPad). The larger screen available on the tablet form factor means developers can go wild with their widgets. Right now, there aren't enough available to really get excited about.
After playing with Honeycomb for a few days, my overall first impression is that it is in a 0.9 beta state. It's not 100% baked, but it is close. I fully expect Google will offer updates (hopefully in the near future) that solve many of the issues I noticed as user feedback begins to pour in.
Stay tuned for InformationWeek's full review of the Motorola Xoom in the days ahead.
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South Korea Seeks In
South Korea Seeks Internet Speed of 1 Gigabit a Second
By the end of 2012, South Korea intends to connect every home in the country to the Internet at one gigabit per second. That would be a tenfold increase from the already blazing national standard and more than 200 times as fast as the average household setup in the United States.
A pilot gigabit project initiated by the government is under way, with 1,500 households in five South Korean cities wired. Each customer pays about 30,000 won a month, or less than $27.
“South Korean homes now have greater Internet access than we do,” President Obama said in his State of the Union address last month. Last week, Mr. Obama unveiled an $18.7 billion broadband spending program.
While Americans are clip-clopping along, trailing the Latvians and the Romanians in terms of Internet speed, the South Koreans are at a full gallop. Their average Internet connections are far faster than even No. 2 Hong Kong and No. 3 Japan, according to the Internet analyst Akamai Technologies.
Overseeing South Korea’s audacious expansion plan is Choi Gwang-gi, 28, a soft-spoken engineer. He hardly looks the part of a visionary or a revolutionary as he pads around his government-gray office in vinyl slippers.
But Mr. Choi has glimpsed the future — the way the Internet needs to behave for the next decade or so — and he is trying to help Korea get there. During an interview at his busy office in central Seoul, Mr. Choi sketched out — in pencil — a tidy little schematic of the government’s ambitious project.
“A lot of Koreans are early adopters,” Mr. Choi said, “and we thought we needed to be prepared for things like 3-D TV, Internet protocol TV, high-definition multimedia, gaming and videoconferencing, ultra-high-definition TV, cloud computing.”
Never mind that some of these devices and applications are still under development by engineers in Seoul, Tokyo and San Jose, Calif. For Mr. Choi, nothing seems outlandish, unthinkable or improbable anymore. And the government here intends to be ready with plenty of network speed when all the new ideas, games and gizmos come pouring out of the pipeline.
“The gigabit Internet is essential for the future, absolutely essential, and all the technologists will tell you this,” said Don Norman, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, a leading technology consultancy in Fremont, Calif. “We’re all going to be doing cloud computing, for example, and that won’t work if you’re not always connected. Games. Videoconferencing. Video on demand. All this will require huge bandwidth, huge speed.”
The South Korean project is also meant to increase wireless broadband services tenfold.
Even as South Korea aims for greater, faster connectivity, Internet addiction is already a worrisome social issue here. Deprogramming camps have sprung up to help Net-addicted youngsters.
One South Korean couple, arrested last year, became so immersed in a role-playing game at an Internet cafe that their 3-month-old daughter starved to death — even as they fed and nurtured a virtual, online daughter named Anima.
But industry executives are plowing ahead.
“The name of the game is how fast you can get the content,” said Kiyung Nam, a spokesman for the Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung Electronics. “People want to download and enjoy their content on the go. But right now it’s not seamless. It’s not perfect.”
The idea of the gigabit Internet is not a new one, said Mr. Norman, the American consultant. But large-scale adoptions have not yet taken hold, especially outside Asia.
Hong Kong and Japan offer gigabit service. Australia has a plan in the works for 2018. Google is drafting pilot programs for part of the Stanford campus and other locales in the United States. And Chattanooga, Tenn., has started a citywide gigabit service, reportedly at a staggering $350 a month.
Any technical hurdles in upgrading the existing South Korean infrastructure are minimal, according to engineers and network managers. DSL lines — high-speed conventional telephone wires — will have to be replaced. But fiber-optic lines already widely in use are suitable for one-gigabit speeds.
South Korea, once poorer than Communist North Korea, now has the world’s 13th-largest economy. It recovered from the ravages of the Korean War by yoking its economy to heavy industries like cars, steel, shipbuilding and construction. But when labor costs began to rise, competing globally in those sectors got tougher, so “knowledge-based industries were the way forward,” Mr. Choi said.
South Koreans pay an average of $38 a month for connections of 100 megabits a second, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Americans pay an average of $46 for service that is molasses by comparison.
Mr. Choi declined to guess what private South Korean service providers might charge for the one-gigabit service. But he said it would be nowhere near the $70 a month charged for gigabit rates in Japan.
“I can’t imagine anyone in Korea paying that much,” he said. “No, no, that’s unthinkable.”
Mr. Choi’s gigabit program is just one of several Internet-related projects being coordinated by the government here over the next four years. Their overall cost is projected to be $24.6 billion, with the government expected to put up about $1 billion of that amount, according to the Korea Communications Commission.
Private South Korean firms, notably KT (the former Korea Telecom), SK Telecom and the cable provider CJ Hellovision, are the principal participants in the gigabit project. The government’s financial contribution in 2010, Mr. Choi said, would be just $4.5 million.
For now, most Korean consumers use their blessings of bandwidth largely for lightning Internet access and entertainment — multiplayer gaming, streaming Internet TV, fast video downloads and the like. Corporations are doing more high-definition videoconferencing, especially simultaneous sessions with multiple overseas clients, and technologists are eager to see what new businesses will be created or how existing businesses will be enhanced through the new gigabit capability.
One of the customers already connected to Mr. Choi’s pilot program is Moon Ki-soo, 42, an Internet consultant. He got a gigabit hookup about a year ago through CJ Hellovision, although because of the internal wiring of his apartment building his actual connection speed clocks in at 278 megabits a second.
But even that speed — about a quarter-gigabit — has him dazzled.
“It is so much more convenient to watch movies and drama shows now,” he said.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 24, 2011
An article on Tuesday about superfast Internet services in South Korea misstated the number of households involved in a pilot project. Under the program, which aims to connect customers to the Internet at speeds of up to one gigabit per second, 1,500 homes in five South Korean cities have so far been connected, not 5,000 homes.
Neill Family Compoun
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Gaddafi tightens gri
Americans, Turks amo
Americans, Turks among the thousands fleeing Libya | Top AP Stories | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
ANKARA, Turkey — Foreigners fled the chaos in Libya by the thousands Wednesday, with Americans and Turks climbing aboard ships, Europeans boarding evacuation flights and North Africans racing to border crossings in overcrowded vans.
Two Turkish ships whisked 3,000 citizens away from the unrest engulfing Libya as Turkey cranked up its largest-ever evacuation, seeking to protect an estimated 25,000 Turkish workers in Libya. More than 200 Turkish companies are involved in construction projects in Libya worth over $15 billion, and some construction sites have come under attack by protesters.
The safety of U.S. citizens was a prime concern after failed attempts earlier this week to get them out by plane. But hundreds of Americans safely boarded a 600-passenger ferry at Tripoli's As-shahab port on Wednesday for the five-hour journey to Malta, a Mediterranean island south of Italy.
Over a dozen countries — including Russia, China, Germany and Ukraine — sent planes in to help their citizens escape an increasingly unstable situation.
Tripoli airport was chaotic and overflowing with stranded passengers, said Carlos Dominguez, who flew from the Libyan capital to Madrid. He said people could not buy tickets online and Libyan Airlines was accepting only cash.
"The doors are locked and you can only get in if you have a ticket," he said.
Swarms of Egyptians who had lived in Libya were locked outside the airport, he said, "lying on the sidewalks with blankets and children" and all their belongings, even television sets.
"The army treats them very badly," he added.
Irina Kuneva of Bulgaria said tensions in Tripoli were rising sharply after strongman Moammar Gadhafi's defiant speech hinting at civil war with protesters in eastern Libya.
"He said people should either do what he tells them or there will be a civil war," she told reporters Wednesday as she arrived in Sofia on an evacuation flight. "People are very scared."
Two Turkish ships left the eastern Libyan port of Benghazi on Wednesday escorted by a navy frigate. They were heading to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Marmaris, where a soup kitchen and a field hospital were set up and buses were brought in to transfer evacuees. Turkey also sent two more ships to Libya and flew 250 more Turkish citizens back home.
Turkey has now evacuated over 5,300 citizens from Libya in the last three days.
"We are carrying out the largest evacuation operation in our history," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, adding that 21 countries other countries have asked Turkey to evacuate their citizens too.
Migrants also poured across Libya's land borders with Egypt and Tunisia on Wednesday, with vans piled high with luggage and furniture lining up at the Salloum border crossing with Egypt. Jemini Pandya, a spokeswoman for the U.N. migration agency, said thousands of migrants were fleeing Libya.
China was also gearing up for a massive evacuation of the 30,000 or more Chinese workers in Libya building railways, infrastructure and providing oilfield services. Greece was tapped to help evacuate around 13,000 Chinese workers to Crete by ship and China's first chartered evacuation flight left Wednesday for Libya.
Gadhafi has urged his supporters to strike back against Libyan pro-democracy protesters, escalating a crackdown that has led to widespread shooting in the streets. Nearly 300 people have been killed in the nationwide wave of anti-government protests — and possibly many more.
Libya is one of the world's biggest oil producers — responsible for nearly 2 percent of the world's oil — and many oil companies were evacuating their expatriate workers and families.
The Spanish oil company Repsol chartered a plane that carried 131 people from Tripoli to Madrid, evacuating all its staff from Tripoli.
Raymond Pasby of Britain, who was on the Repsol flight but works for a Kuwaiti construction company, said the Libyan capital was like a ghost town during the day but came alive at night with gunfire, protests and heavy ammunition blasts.
"It's chaos, it is almost civil war," the 62-year-old said. "It is really desperate. Gadhafi thinks he can do what he wants."
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said about 170 British oil workers and colleagues from other nations were stranded in desert camps and unable to reach the evacuation flights.
"These camps are remote, they're isolated, they are scattered over a large distance, they're dependent for food or water on supplies from Libyan cities that have been severely disrupted by the violence and unrest," he said. "They are in a perilous and frightening situation."
Britain was sending two Boeing 757s to Tripoli to evacuate U.K. nationals, and will send a third Thursday if necessary. The royal navy frigate HMS Cumberland was arriving in international waters off Libya on Wednesday night, ready to assist evacuations if the violence escalates, Hague said.
Evacuation planes from Libya spread out across Europe.
The first planeload of evacuated Russians landed in Moscow, bringing 118 people, and three more planes were expected. A ship was also setting sail for Ras Lanuf, the site of Libya's largest refinery and port, to evacuate up to 1,000 Russians, Turks, Serbs and Montenegrins there.
Two French military planes evacuated nearly 400 foreigners to Paris from Libya, and a third plane was en route from France. Two Bulgarian planes returned Wednesday from Tripoli with nearly 200 passengers and Dutch citizens flew home on a military plane.
Hundreds of Italians took Alitalia flights from Tripoli home, and an Italian air force plane landed Wednesday to evacuate others. Two Italian naval vessels headed to eastern Libyan ports to rescue citizens from Benghazi, Misurata, and other cities where airports had been damaged.
Arriving at Madrid's Barajas airport on a nearly empty Libyan Airlines plane, Venezuelan oil engineer Cesar Orta said he had never witnessed violence but had heard it.
"You could hear gunshots or fireworks and hear people shouting. I wasn't afraid, but I never left my house at night," he said, adding that Tripoli was generally pro-Gadhafi.
Orta said the Libyans he had talked to think the unrest will die down in a week or so.
"They say things will be OK and that Gadhafi will sort things out," Orta said.
Dominguez, who worked as an architectural consultant in Tripoli, said the Libyans he knows were furious with the international community for its hands-off approach.
"People are very angry with the international attitude," he said.
___
Giles reported from Madrid. Associated Press writers across Europe contributed to this report.
Bank Branch Closings
Bank Branch Closings Tilt Toward Poorer Areas
In 2010, for the first time in 15 years, more bank branches closed than opened across the United States. An analysis of government data shows, however, that even as banks shut branches in poorer areas, they continued to expand in wealthier ones, despite decades of government regulations requiring financial institutions to meet the credit needs of poor and middle-class neighborhoods.
The number of bank branches fell to 98,517 in 2010, from 99,550 the previous year, a loss of nearly 1,000 locations, according to data compiled by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
Banks are expected to keep closing branches in the coming years, partly because of new technology and automation and partly because of the mortgage bust and the financial crisis of 2008. New regulations will also cut deeply into revenue, including restrictions on fees for overdraft protection — a major moneymaker on accounts aimed at lower-income customers. Yet the local branch remains a crucial part of the nation’s financial infrastructure, banking analysts say, even as more customers manage their accounts via the Internet and mobile phones.
“In a competitive environment, banks are cutting costs and closing branches, but there are social costs to that decision,” said Mark T. Williams, a banking expert at Boston University and a former bank examiner for the Federal Reserve. “When a branch gets pulled out of a low- or moderate-income neighborhood, it’s not as if those needs go away.”
Mr. Williams and other observers express concern that the vacuum will be filled by so-called predatory lenders, including check-cashing centers, payday loan providers and pawnshops. The F.D.I.C. estimates that roughly 30 million American households either have no bank account or rely on these more expensive alternatives to traditional banking.
The most recent wave of closures gathered steam after the financial crisis in 2008, as banks of all sizes staggered under the weight of bad home loans. In some cases, banks with heavy exposure to risky mortgage debt simply cut branches as part of a broader restructuring. In other cases, banking companies merged and closed branches to consolidate.
Whatever the cause, there were sharp disparities in how the closures played out from 2008 to 2010, according to a detailed analysis by The New York Times of data from SNL Financial, an information provider for the banking industry. Using data culled from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and ESRI, a private geographic information firm, SNL matched up the location of closed branches with census data from the surrounding neighborhood.
In low-income areas, where the median household income was below $25,000, and in moderate-income areas, where the medium household income was between $25,000 and $50,000, the number of branches declined by 396 between 2008 and 2010. In neighborhoods where household income was above $100,000, by contrast, 82 branches were added during the same period.
“You don’t have to be a statistician to see that there’s a dual financial system in America, one for essentially middle- and high-income consumers, and another one for the people that can least afford it,” said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a group that advocates for expanding financial services in underserved communities.
“In those neighborhoods, you won’t see bank branches,” he added. “You’ll see buildings that used to be banks, surrounded by payday lenders and check cashers that cropped up.”
Wayne A. Abernathy, an executive vice president of the American Bankers Association, disputed Mr. Taylor’s conclusion, as well as the significance of the data.
“You need to look at the context,” he said. “We’re looking at a pool of more than 95,000 branches, and we’ve had several hundred banks fail, so what would be surprising is if no branches had closed.”
The Community Reinvestment Act, signed into law more than three decades ago in an effort to combat discrimination and encourage banks to serve local communities, requires financial institutions to notify federal regulators of branch closings. But legal experts say the federal watchdogs that are supposed to enforce the law have been timid.
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Christopher Maag contributed reporting.
Xoom tablet coming to Verizon Feb. 24 - FierceMobileIT
The Motorola Xoom tablet will debut on Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Wireless' 3G network on Feb. 24, and the operator plans to sell a subsidized version for $600 with a two-year contract. Otherwise consumers can buy the device outright for $800 without a contract.
The Xoom, which will run version 3.0 of Google's Android OS designed specifically for tablets, is being sold as a 3G device, and it will be upgraded to run on Verizon's LTE network during the second quarter.
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Verizon said 3G pricing for the device will fall under its previously established tablet pricing plans: 1 GB of data for $20 per month; 3 GB for $35; 5 GB for $50 and 10 GB for $80. The carrier did not disclose what it will charge for LTE data.
The Xoom incorporates a dual-core processor with each core running at 1 GHz, delivering up to 2 GHz of processing power, and features a 10.1-inch widescreen HD display. The device supports 1080p HD video and HDMI output to display content on larger HD screens. Additionally, the Xoom has a front-facing, 2-megapixel camera for video chats over Wi-Fi, 3G or LTE, as well as a rear-facing 5-megapixel camera that captures video in 720p HD.
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