via usatoday.com
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Bombing in Afghanistan kills 13 NATO force members - latimes.com
REPORTING FROM KABUL, AFGHANISTAN -- Insurgents mounted several attacks across Afghanistan Saturday, including a car bomb that hit a NATO military vehicle in downtown Kabul, killing thirteen.
A U.S. official told Associated Press all 13 NATO service members killed in the suicide bombing were American troops.
An attacker in an Afghan military uniform in the southern part of the country also turned his weapon on members of the U.S.-led military coalition, killing two before he was killed in return fire.
And in a third incident in Eastern Afghanistan, a female suicide bomber wearing a burqa tried to enter a government building. She was killed, according to local news reports, when guards became suspicious of her behavior and opened fire, prompting her to detonate her explosives.
She was the only casualty in the incident, which occurred near the local branch of the National Directorate of Security, the country’s spy agency, according to Abdul Sabor Allayar, Kunar province’s deputy police chief, although two agency employees and two civilians were wounded.
The Kabul car bombing took place at 11:30 a.m. on Darulaman Road, one of the capital’s busiest, which runs past parliament and Darulaman Palace -– or “abode of peace” -- built in the 1920s in a bid to modernize the country. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in text messages to media organizations.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Poll: Clinton favored over 2012 GOP candidates
A new Time magazine poll shows Clinton easily defeating the major Republican candidates, were she somehow to become the 2012 Democratic nominee for president.
Clinton leads Mitt Romney, 55% to 38%; Rick Perry, 58% to 32%; and Herman Cain, 56% to 34%, among likely voters in a general election.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Europe Bolsters Crisis-Fighting Tools, Pledging Details to Come - Businessweek
Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) -- European leaders bolstered their crisis-fighting toolbox with a plan that may generate only limited relief for stressed sovereigns unless it can be fleshed- out within weeks.
via businessweek.com
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Hurricane Rina to intensify to Category 3, quick showers on Wednesday - Miami-Dade Breaking News
Hurricane Rina, a Category 2 hurricane, is expected to turn into a Category 3 hurricane later on Wednesday. With intense winds up to 235 miles per hour Rina is being watched closely.
Rina is located 235 miles south – southeast of Cozumel, Mexico. Meteorologists, now dubbing it the misnomer the ‘Cone of Concern,’ are not sure going into the weekend, if Rina will fizzle to a tropical storm or plague South Florida with some serious winds and downpours.
A hurricane warning is in effect for both the Yucatan Peninsula and Belize.
Forecasters predict the moisture from Rina will bring more showers in the South Florida area toward the end of the work week
Wednesday’s forecast is a mix of sun and clouds with a 20 percent chance of quick showers predicted for later in the day. The high of Wednesday to be at 84 – the current temperature is at 77 degrees.
This article will be updated as more information becomes available.
via miamiherald.com
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
BlackBerry maker tries to soothe angry customers - BusinessWeek
The maker of the struggling BlackBerry tried to soothe tens of millions of frustrated customers Monday, offering more than $100 worth of free software to each one and giving some a month of technical support as compensation for last week's massive outage.
via businessweek.com
Monday, October 17, 2011
Kindle Update Adds Read Position Sync, Cloud Storage | Gadget Lab | Wired.com
A somewhat innocuous update for the Kindle looks like it’s not even worth a press release, but a closer look reveals it to be a pretty big deal. Kindle Keyboard Software update v3.3 brings Whispersync and cloud storage to personal documents.
While some might frame this as an answer to Apple’s iCloud, it seems like an obvious move for Amazon. Right now, you can redownload any purchased content — like ebooks, music, movies — from Amazon any time you like. This update (already included in the new Kindle and Kindle Touch) does the same for any content you add yourself.
via wired.com
Sunday, October 16, 2011
‘Shadow inventory’ of homes could topple real-estate recovery - Business
Officially, there are 3.5 million homes for sale nationwide. But there are millions more lurking in the shadows — hidden neatly away on banks’ balance sheets, stalled in foreclosure court proceedings, or simply occupied by nonpaying owners as lenders wait months or years before taking action.
The housing market’s ballooning shadow inventory — buoyed by a yearlong foreclosure slowdown — stands as its most menacing problem, threatening to stifle recovery for several years.
And South Florida, with some 200,000 homes either already owned by lenders or headed for foreclosure, has one of the nation’s largest collections of unseen inventory. The number of shadow homes dwarfs the 30,000 or so that are listed on the active market. Even as prices have shown signs of stability this year, an impending wave of foreclosures threatens to keep real estate values deflated in South Florida and across the country.
See the full-screen version of the map
“A lot of people don’t understand how much inventory is set to come online in the next 18 to 24 months,” said Jack McCabe, CEO of McCabe Research & Consulting in Deerfield Beach. “When you compare what the Realtors show is inventory to what’s out there, you realize we have a long way to go.”
A Miami Herald analysis of four years of foreclosure data and thousands of property records found record -high levels of shadow inventory in several housing markets across the nation.
Though these shadow properties are routinely left out of monthly reports by real estate trade groups, their influence on home values has grown sharply in recent years.
In the supply-and-demand reliant real estate market, the national supply of homes is officially listed at about 3.5 million, or nine months’ worth of homes (home sales are on track to reach about five million this year). But once shadow inventory is added, that supply more than doubles, to at least 7.5 million. A healthy housing market has about six months’ supply of properties, which would be about 2.4 million.
The wave of homes set to hit the market in the coming years consists of discounted distressed properties, which tend to drag down neighborhood values.
Economists insist that the housing industry will not normalize and recover until most of the foreclosures work their way through the system — a process that will likely last several more years.
Shadow inventory can be broken into three categories:
• Properties lenders have repossessed, but have not put up for sale. These homes are referred to as real-estate owned, or REOs.
• Properties caught up in the clogged foreclosure process.
• Properties that are severely delinquent in loan payments — almost certainly headed for foreclosure — but have not yet entered the process.
Calculating the size of the shadow market has proven difficult, and estimates range from 1.6 million to seven million homes. The Herald analysis, using data from several mortgage research firms, real estate trade group figures and public records, found the following shadow inventory in South Florida:
• 40,000 houses already owned by lenders but not yet for sale.
• 124,000 units whose owners have received an initial foreclosure notice, or notice of default, but have not yet been foreclosed upon.
via miamiherald.com
Romney, Perry and Cain Open Wide Financial Lead Over Field
Mitt Romney has raised far more money than Mr. Obama this year from the firms that have been among Wall Street’s top sources of donations for the two candidates.
That gap underscores the growing alienation from Mr. Obama among many rank-and-file financial professionals and Mr. Romney’s aggressive and successful efforts to woo them.
The imbalance exists at large investment banks and hedge funds, private equity firms and commercial banks, according to a New York Times analysis of the firms that accounted for the most campaign contributions from the industry to Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama in 2008, based on data from the Federal Election Commission and the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
It could widen as Mr. Obama, seeking to harness anger over growing income inequality, escalates his criticism of the industry, after a year spent trying to smooth ties bruised by efforts to impose tougher regulations.
Since this spring, Mr. Romney has raised $1.5 million from employees of firms like Morgan Stanley; Highbridge Capital Management, a hedge fund; and Blackstone, a private equity firm. Mr. Obama has raised just over $270,000 from firms that were among his leading sources of campaign cash in 2008.
Employees of Goldman Sachs, who in the 2008 campaign gave Mr. Obama over $1 million — more than donors from any other private employer in the country — have given him about $45,000 this year. Mr. Romney has raised about $350,000 from the firm’s employees.
Those figures do not account for all Wall Street giving, nor for the full force of each candidate’s robust network of Wall Street “bundlers,” wealthy individuals who raise money from friends, family members and business associates. And Mr. Obama continues to dominate Mr. Romney — and the rest of the Republican field — in overall fund-raising. He has raised close to $100 million so far this year for his campaign, three times more than Mr. Romney, as well as $65 million for the Democratic National Committee.
The gap in Wall Street giving to Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney underscores disenchantment with Mr. Obama in the industry and the challenges both candidates will face in grappling with public anger about the financial world.
For much of the last year, aides to Mr. Obama have sought to mollify Wall Street executives still bristling over the president’s criticisms of their profits and bonuses, while defending the administration’s program of tougher oversight and regulation as both necessary and beneficial to the industry in the long term.
But with Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor who once ran the private equity firm Bain Capital, the most likely Republican nominee, Mr. Obama’s campaign appears to sense an opportunity to harness public resentment over an industry that has largely thrived while the rest of the economy has not.
“There’s no doubt that Governor Romney has raised money off of his belief that Wall Street should be allowed to write its own rules again by repealing Wall Street reform,” said Ben LaBolt, an Obama campaign spokesman. “The president put in place protections to ensure that the financial crisis is not repeated and that unacceptable risks aren’t taken with Americans’ life savings.”
For his part, Mr. Romney is now pitching himself as the turnaround expert for an ailing national economy. He has personally wooed major Wall Street donors, successfully recruiting several senior financial executives poised to back Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey had he opted for a White House bid.
But anger at big banks — manifested by the growing Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City and elsewhere — is palpable enough that Mr. Romney must avoid being seen as a friend of an industry that many Americans blame for onerous bank fees and underwater mortgages.
Next Page »
- 1
- 2
Richard A. Oppel Jr., Susan Saulny and Derek Willis contributed reporting.
via nytimes.com
Friday, October 14, 2011
Rapper Rick Ross said to be unconscious after suffering seizure - Action News 5 - Memphis, Tennessee
MEMPHIS, TN -(WMC-TV) - Rapper Rick Ross, who is scheduled to appear at tonight's Memphis Madness event at FedExForum, is unconscious after having a seizure on an airplane.
The flight, from Fort Lauderdale to Memphis, made an emergency landing, according to CNN.
Meanwhile, TMZ is reporting that EMT workers were seen administering CPR to the rapper as his entourage looked on.
Stay with Action News 5 and WMCTV.com for updates on this story.
>>Text WMCNEWS to 56376 to receive breaking news text messages from Action News 5.<<
Copyright 2011 WMC-TV. All rights reserved.
via wmctv.com
Thursday, October 13, 2011
New Hampshire Considers Moving Primary to Before Christmas
New Hampshire Considers Moving Primary to Before Christmas
Ethan Miller/Getty Images(CONCORD, N.H.) -- While New Hampshirites are out Christmas shopping this December, they might also take a minute to duck into a voting booth to make their choice for the Republican presidential nomination.
It could happen, judging by the way Secretary of State Bill Gardner has been talking.
Furious about Nevada's determination to move up the date for the state caucus since Florida and South Carolina bumped up their primaries to January, Gardner wrote in a statement Wednesday that unless Nevada accepts Jan. 17 or later, New Hampshire might consider holding its primary on Tuesday, Dec. 13 or even Tuesday, Dec. 6.
Party officials say such a move would be disastrous because it would put the New Hampshire primary ahead of the Iowa caucuses and potentially giving Mitt Romney, who already has a conformable lead in the state, an unfair advantage when January rolls around.
According to New Hampshire law, the primary has to be at least seven days earlier than the Nevada caucuses, which are now tentatively scheduled for Jan. 14, thus killing New Hampshire's bid for a Jan. 10 primary.
Adding to the confusion is Gardner's refusal to communicate via cellphones or e-mails, making any negotiations with him extremely difficult.
Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio
via 670kboi.com
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Putin Says Russia Near China Deal on Supplying Natural Gas - Businessweek
Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Russia is nearing an agreement with China to supply natural gas to the world’s biggest energy consumer
“Those who sell always want to sell at a higher price, while those who buy want to buy at a lower price,” Putin said today at the start of a meeting with Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in Beijing. “We need to reach a compromise that will satisfy both sides.”
via businessweek.com
Monday, October 10, 2011
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Apocalyptic squattersville for recession refugees - American Spring
Of course, Slab City is no city, and no picnic. Some 640 acres of state-owned sand and scrub near the Salton Sea, it offers no electricity, no sewerage, no running water. Once, it was a Marine training base. When it was decommissioned, nothing was left but the concrete slabs where barracks once stood. Gradually, people with souls to mend or demons to kill started camping on the slabs.
Maybe after the apocalypse the world would look like Slab City. Slabbers live in trailers, trucks and old buses scattered as though a twister had tossed them up and dropped them. Power comes from solar panels, batteries and portable generators — you’re rich here if you have one. Signs and structures are made from tires, wires and spare parts.
Until recently, only about 75 to 100 people called Slab City home all year, and they have their own sad stories to tell, usually involving breakups, bankruptcies or booze. But these days, they’re more interested in talking about the newcomers, who’ve swelled the ranks of the year-round population to about 200.
It says something about the state of the nation, slabbers will tell you, shaking their heads, when Slab City is becoming more of a refuge for the down and out than ever before.
“Some people come by foot,” said Ben Morofsky, who is 49 and has lived in Slab City for 22 years. “They’ve lost everything.”
Tent cities started cropping up all over the country once the recession began taking its toll, and a couple, like Dignity Village in Portland, Ore., or Nickelsville, in Seattle, are officially sanctioned by city officials. Dignity Village even makes prospective residents fill out applications
But there is no squat in the country like Slab City. Here, residents make the rules as they go along, and county and state officials let them be unless real trouble happens. Rarely does a sheriff happen by. It’s even rarer still that one is summoned. Utter detachment from the rest of society may be Slab City’s main attraction.
While there are no official statistics on Slab City — no one counts who comes and goes — judging from interviews here, the newcomers are trekking to the slabs from all over. Seattle to Staten Island, San Diego to Tennessee. Single men, mostly, in their 40s and 50s. But couples, too. Even a few families.
“It’s not the best place for kids,” said James Edward, who moved to the slabs nine months ago from Montgomery, Ala., with his wife and two children, 11 and 14 years old. Edward, 38 years old, was working as a regional manager for the Applebee’s restaurant chain, he said, for many hours and not enough pay. He looked and looked, he said, but could not find a better job. So he and his wife decided to ride out the economy at the slabs.
People come here out of desperation. But like Edward, many also want or need a reprieve from the newest normal, where workers toil longer for the same pay in jobs they hate but fear losing. They’ve heard of Slab City through the 2007 film version of “Into the Wild,” and like the rich pageant of life the movie displays.
“Into the Wild’s” Slab City is a hobo-boho Shangri-La. People live free and happy, selling books to tourists for a living, cooking communal meals. They take visitors to Salvation Mountain, a three-story sculpture made of clay, straw and paint that stands near the entrance to the slabs. They have nightly concerts, strum guitars, clink beers around warming fires.
That’s the Slab City that a 25-year-old woman who hitchhiked to Slab City from Kansas wanted when she decided she didn’t want to worry about paying bills all the time. It’s the Slab City that attracted a 48-year-old man who had left his landscaping business in Staten Island for a relationship in Oregon that failed, leaving him with nothing. “Into the Wild” showed him, he said, that there was a happy alternative to going back to Staten Island a bum and moving in with his parents.
Slabbers are friendly. And Slab City does hold weekly concerts. But it is hardly a romantic life.
Only the strong or the mad survive here. During the summer, temperatures reach 125 degrees in the shade, and the runty Joshua trees are precious and few. Just living is a full-time job. Water, which residents buy in the nearby town, is always being hauled, boiled or bottled. Everything is rationed, and chores like washing dishes or cooking take twice as long as in the real world. Bathing is a luxury, one indulged only when very necessary.
The broken-down town of Niland, five miles west, provides a grocery store and post office. For gas or more shopping, slabbers head to Calipatria, 12 miles south, Brawley, 25 miles south, or across the border to Mexicali, about 50 miles down, where a dollar still buys more than it does in the States.
Most slabbers survive on government checks, food stamps and donations from ministries. Come winter, when hundreds of trailered retirees, or snowbirds, descend on the slabs for the season, the regulars make money doing odd jobs for them. Some newcomers come with a little money in their pockets. Others, like Carranco, rely on the kindness of slabbers.
Carranco, with no cellphone or post office box, had been waiting for word from his girlfriend, who had an actual job and a place to stay near Palm Springs, for nearly two months. Then she came back, broke up with him, took their Chihuahuas and his food stamp card.
“Thank goodness for charity,” Carranco said, rocking himself on the remains of a recliner outside his lean-to. It was 105 degrees, getting dark and he had no source of power save for a solar light on top of his camper and batteries for his portable stereo.
A wiry man with sharp cheekbones, black hair to his shoulders and a growing beard, Carranco looks like an apostle from Da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” After a couple of months, new slabbers look like they’ve lived here forever. The men grow beards, the women go gray. People age in dog years. Even the children.
Minister Patrick McFarland, who runs the Slab City Christian Center, a trailer more popular for its daily bread offerings than its sermons, has watched newcomers flee as if being chased.
“It’s kind of a raw experience,” McFarland said. “People don’t expect how hard it is.” He and his wife ran a ministry for outlaw bike groups in Joshua Tree, Calif., before moving here a year and a half ago. Then he was diagnosed with bladder cancer and had to leave for treatment. Back for six months, McFarland still seemed to be adjusting.
He was wondering, he asked an Imperial County sheriff’s deputy who had led an out-of-town visitor to the slabs, whether he could carry a firearm if it was concealed, or displayed?
Neither, without a permit, the deputy said.
“Then, I could carry a knife, I guess,” McFarland said.
The Christian Center had been burglarized a few times, Carranco said, as had his own encampment. The old-timers blamed newcomers who haven’t learned slabber rules.
Jerry Ray Jones, who has lived 62 years the hard way, 26 of them in Slab City, said any article should warn newcomers away.
When he arrived, he said, with a story too long to tell, only about 10 people lived in Slab City. They were bona fide loner types. Crack, meth and liquor brought more people to the slabs, and other reasons. Outright poverty was never No. 1 before now.
You’re a real slabber if you can stick out more than one summer, the saying goes here. But Mary Dillon and her husband had lasted three summers — “Into the Wild” brought them — and they never felt at home.
They were in Niland, buying ice and supplies to take on the road. Dillon, who is 52, said she and her husband were going back to Washington state. They had just sold their trailer, were checking their mail, and were taking off.
Dillon’s husband, a 66-year-old retiree, didn’t want to talk or give his name. He said it was just better that way, given the topic was Slab City.
“We don’t want no trouble,” Dillon said, though she managed to give a sheriff’s deputy an earful about some goings-on at the slabs. “We just want a normal life again.” They had 1,300 miles to drive, and were looking forward to it.
via life.salon.com
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Friday, October 7, 2011
World on brink of disaster: Bank of England boss
Governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King says there are growing signs of a global economic disaster.
THE world is facing the worst financial crisis since at least the 1930s, ''if not ever'', according to the governor of the Bank of England.
Sir Mervyn King was speaking after the decision by the central bank's Monetary Policy Committee to put £75 billion ($A119 billion) of newly created money into the economy in a desperate effort to stave off a new credit crisis and a recession in Britain.
Economists said the bank's decision to resume its quantitative easing (QE), or asset purchase program, showed it was increasingly fearful for the economy, and predicted more such moves ahead.
Advertisement: Story continues belowSir Mervyn said the bank had been driven by growing signs of a global economic disaster. ''This is the most serious financial crisis we've seen, at least since the 1930s, if not ever. We're having to deal with very unusual circumstances, but [will] act calmly and to do the right thing.''
Announcing its decision, the bank said that the euro-zone debt crisis was creating ''severe strains in bank funding markets and financial markets''. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) also said that the inflation-driven ''squeeze on households' real incomes'' and the government's program of spending cuts would ''continue to weigh on domestic spending'' for some time to come.
The ''deterioration in the outlook'' meant more QE was justified, the bank said.
Financial experts said the MPC's move would be a ''Titanic'' disaster for pensioners, savers and workers approaching retirement. Sir Mervyn (pictured) suggested that was a price worth paying to save the economy from recession.
Under QE, the central bank electronically creates new money which it then uses to buy assets such as government bonds, or gilts, from banks. In theory, the banks then use the cash they gain to increase their lending to businesses and individuals.
By increasing the demand for gilts, QE pushes down the interest rate yields paid to holders of these and other bonds. Critics of the policy say it pushes up inflation and drives down the pound.
The National Association of Pension Funds called for urgent talks with ministers to deal with the negative impact of lower gilt yields on pension funds. NAPF chief executive Joanne Segars said QE made it more expensive for employers to provide pensions and would weaken the funding of schemes as their deficits increased. ''All this will put more pressure on employers at a time when they are facing a bleak economic situation,'' she said.
Ros Altman, of Saga Group, said the latest round of QE was ''a Titanic disaster'' that would increase pensioner poverty. As well as fuelling inflation, she said, falling bond yields would make annuities more expensive, ''giving new retirees much less pension income for their money and leaving them permanently poorer in retirement''.
The MPC also voted to leave the bank rate at its historic low of 0.5 per cent, another decision that hurts savers. Protesters outside the bank's headquarters smashed a giant piggy bank to symbolise the situation of pensioners and others forced to raid savings to keep up with the rising cost of living.
Asked about the plight of savers, Sir Mervyn said it was more important to support the wider economy than to support them. He suggested that savers would not be helped by deliberately pushing the British economy into recession. The decision was the first move on QE since 2009, during the global credit crisis, when the bank injected £200 billion into the economy.
Some analysts believe that this round of QE could be less effective than the previous one, forcing the bank to create even more money this time.
Michael Saunders of Citigroup forecast that there could be as much as £225 billion more QE by next year. ''I think they will do lots more QE,'' he said.
''It's both that the economy is weak and also that the MPC's view is that QE is not a very powerful tool; or rather, it takes a large amount of QE to have much effect on the economy.''
The bank is supposed to keep inflation near a target of 2 per cent. Inflation now stands at 4.5 per cent, and the bank admitted it was likely to hit 5 per cent as soon as this month. The bank's own research shows that as well as stimulating the economy, QE pushes up prices.
The governor insisted that the MPC's decisions had been the correct response to events.
''The world economy has slowed, America has slowed, China has slowed and, of course, particularly the European economy has slowed,'' he said. ''The world has changed and so has the right policy response.''
TELEGRAPH
via smh.com.au
Poll: Cain surges, opens up 20-point lead on Romney - Yahoo! News
In news sure to inject shock and awe into the Republican political primary season, a Zogby poll released Thursday showed Herman Cain leading the Republican field, topping former front-runner Mitt Romney by an astonishing 20 points. Cain would also narrowly edge out Obama in a general election, the poll found, by a 46�“44 margin.
Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, would lose by a point to the president, 40 percent to 41 percent. Texas governor Rick Perry, who has slipped in the polls of late, would lose to the president 45 percent to 40 percent.
The poll found that 38 percent of Republican primary voters said they would vote for Cain if the primary were held today. Eighteen percent said they would throw their support to Romney, while 12 percent each said they would vote for Perry and Texas congressman Ron Paul. No other candidate attracted double-digit support.
This is the second month in a row in which Zogby has found Cain leading the pack; he has surged another 10 points ahead of his competitors since September. Romney, on the other hand, has remained in the same place, while Perry’s share of the primary vote in the Zogby poll has steadily declined since he announced his candidacy in August.
Other pollsters have found Cain at or near the top of the field, with Fox News declaring him a top-tier candidate following its poll last week. That poll found Cain had 17 percent of the vote, trailing Perry by just two points and Romney by five.
A CBS News poll released Tuesday found Romney and Cain tied at 17 percent, with Perry trailing at 12 percent; a YouGov/Economist poll released Thursday found Cain leading with 21 percent, four points ahead of Romney.
Though many have questioned Cain’s viability as a legitimate candidate, voters are clearly giving him another look.
The IBOPE Zogby International poll is based on an online October 3�“5 survey of 1,581 voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. The sample of likely Republican primary voters included 796 Americans, and has an margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Read more stories from The Daily Caller
Poll: Cain surges, opens up 20-point lead on Romney
TheDC Morning: Harry Reid: Suicide bomber
Mark Steyn: Why don't CNN, NPR, NY Times care about 'dead Mexicans'?
Progressives seek to co-opt diverse 'Occupy DC' movement
'Occupy DC' protest smorgasbord has everything from soup to nuts
via news.yahoo.com
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Nevada GOP sets caucuses for Jan. 14; other primaries could move to December - The Washington Post
Nevada’s Republican Party has set its presidential caucuses for Jan. 14 — a move that could increase the chances of the 2012 GOP nominating contest beginning in 2011.
Nevada is one of four states that the Republican National Committee has allowed to hold primaries before the rest; the others are Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. All four have moved their contests from February to January after Florida last week jumped ahead of them and set its primary for Jan. 31.
GOP choice of experienced Romney, novice Perry
The GOP presidential field apparently set, Republican primary voters are likely facing a choice between an experienced, establishment candidate in Mitt Romney and an insurgent presidential campaign novice in Rick Perry.
With three months until voting begins, that's the dynamic that's starting to emerge now that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have said they won't run for president in 2012.
via sfgate.com
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Steve Jobs of Apple Dies at 56
The death was announced by Apple, the company Mr. Jobs and his high school friend Stephen Wozniak started in 1976 in a suburban California garage.
Mr. Jobs had waged a long and public struggle with cancer, remaining the face of the company even as he underwent treatment. He continued to introduce new products for a global market in his trademark blue jeans even as he grew gaunt and frail.
He underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer in 2004, received a liver transplant in 2009 and took three medical leaves of absence as Apple’s chief executive before stepping down in August and turning over the helm to Timothy D. Cook, the chief operating officer. When he left, he was still engaged in the company’s affairs, negotiating with another Silicon Valley executive only weeks earlier.
“I have always said that if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s C.E.O., I would be the first to let you know,” Mr. Jobs said in a letter released by the company. “Unfortunately, that day has come.”
By then, having mastered digital technology and capitalized on his intuitive marketing sense, Mr. Jobs had largely come to define the personal computer industry and an array of digital consumer and entertainment businesses centered on the Internet. He had also become a very rich man, worth an estimated $8.3 billion.
Eight years after founding Apple, Mr. Jobs led the team that designed the Macintosh computer, a breakthrough in making personal computers easier to use. After a 12-year separation from the company, prompted by a bitter falling-out with his chief executive, John Sculley, he returned in 1997 to oversee the creation of one innovative digital device after another — the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. These transformed not only product categories like music players and cellphones but also entire industries, like music and mobile communications.
During his years outside Apple, he bought a tiny computer graphics spinoff from the director George Lucas and built a team of computer scientists, artists and animators that became Pixar Animation Studios.
Starting with “Toy Story” in 1995, Pixar produced a string of hit movies, won several Academy Awards for artistic and technological excellence, and made the full-length computer-animated film a mainstream art form enjoyed by children and adults worldwide.
Mr. Jobs was neither a hardware engineer nor a software programmer, nor did he think of himself as a manager. He considered himself a technology leader, choosing the best people possible, encouraging and prodding them, and making the final call on product design.
It was an executive style that had evolved. In his early years at Apple, his meddling in tiny details maddened colleagues, and his criticism could be caustic and even humiliating. But he grew to elicit extraordinary loyalty.
“He was the most passionate leader one could hope for, a motivating force without parallel,” wrote Steven Levy, author of the 1994 book “Insanely Great,” which chronicles the creation of the Mac. “Tom Sawyer could have picked up tricks from Steve Jobs.”
“Toy Story,” for example, took four years to make while Pixar struggled, yet Mr. Jobs never let up on his colleagues. “‘You need a lot more than vision — you need a stubbornness, tenacity, belief and patience to stay the course,” said Edwin Catmull, a computer scientist and a co-founder of Pixar. “In Steve’s case, he pushes right to the edge, to try to make the next big step forward.”
Mr. Jobs was the ultimate arbiter of Apple products, and his standards were exacting. Over the course of a year he tossed out two iPhone prototypes, for example, before approving the third, and began shipping it in June 2007.
To his understanding of technology he brought an immersion in popular culture. In his 20s, he dated Joan Baez; Ella Fitzgerald sang at his 30th birthday party. His worldview was shaped by the ’60s counterculture in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he had grown up, the adopted son of a Silicon Valley machinist. When he graduated from high school in Los Altos in 1972, he said, ”the very strong scent of the 1960s was still there.”
Steve Lohr contributed reporting.
via nytimes.com
Statement by Apple’s Board of Directors - Yahoo! Finance
CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today.
Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.
His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.
AP Reports Apple Says Steve Jobs Has Died - Techland - TIME.com
The Associated Press is reporting that former Apple CEO Steve Jobs has died.
Friendly's files for Ch. 11 bankruptcy protection - The Denver Post
NEW YORK—The parent of the Friendly's restaurant chain is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and says it has already closed 63 of its stores.The 76-year-old company known for its ice cream and hamburgers says the economic downturn coupled with higher costs and high rents drove it to file for bankruptcy protection.
via denverpost.com
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Monday, October 3, 2011
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Cain: Perry insensitive over name of hunting camp - Boston.com
WASHINGTON—Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain on Sunday criticized rival Rick Perry as being insensitive for not acting sooner in removing the racially offensive name from a rock outside the Texas hunting camp his family once leased.
via boston.com
Amazon to Sell Kindle Fire at a Loss, Still Make Nice Profit - International Business Times
Amazon.com Inc.'s recently announced 7-inch tablet -- Kindle Fire -- appears to have already stoked the flames of the tablet market, even before it has been released. However, reports suggest the Kindle Fire may not generate profits for the online retailer.
via ibtimes.com
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Technology News: Tech Buzz: Amazon's Kindle Catches Fire
The Amazon tablet has finally arrived. The Kindle Fire is a small and relatively stripped-down tablet, but while it may not be capable of matching an iPad feature for feature, its $199 price could draw a new wave of buyers into the tablet market. Meanwhile, Facebook takes another punch, Microsoft bags another Android device maker, and a big shark starts checking out Research In Motion.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)