Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/155145108?client_source=feed&format=rss
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সোমবার, ৩১ অক্টোবর, ২০১১
রবিবার, ৩০ অক্টোবর, ২০১১
Weekend Movie Reviews: In Time, Puss in Boots, The Rum Diary & More!
It's shaping up to be a busy weekend at the box office and our partners at Movie Fanatic have reviewed all the new offerings in advance of their Friday openings.
Let's get right to it, shall we?
In Time: Justin Timberlake headlines this action packed, sci-fi thriller from Gattaca mastermind Andrew Niccol. It's a true mind-bender that asks the question:
What if money was replaced by time?
Amanda Seyfried co-stars in a movie that will make you think much of the time without wasting a second of yours. Check out Movie Fanatic's In Time review.
The Rum Diary: This Johnny Depp picture is not a blockbuster for everyone, but for fans of the star and the late Hunter S. Thompson, The Rum Diary delivers.
As Movie Fanatic's Rum Diary review notes, it's a work that blends powerful messages with complex performances from its cast and an exquisite '60s feel.
Puss in Boots: An odds-on favorite to run away from the box office competition, Antonio Banderas brings his swashbuckling Shrek character back for the lead role.
Adventurous, sweet and uncannily smart in its introduction of new characters such as Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek) and Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis), Puss’ origins story takes audiences back to the beginning and is fun for all ages.
Follow the link now for Movie Fanatic's Puss in Boots review!
The Double: Richard Gere and Topher Grace star in a CIA thriller about an agent (Gere) who retired after spending a career tracking an international assassin.
Anonymous: Screenwriter John Orloff, after extensive research, presents Anonymous and its idea that William Shakespeare did not write all his masterpieces.
While clearly different, Anonymous also falls under "origins" stories with Rum and Puss in Boots. Read Movie Fanatic's full Anonymous review for more insight.
Which of these films do you think you might check out?
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James Brown's ex-manager gets 3-year home sentence (AP)
AIKEN, S.C. ? James Brown's former manager has been sentenced to three years of home confinement on charges he took more money than he was allowed under contract from the late soul singer in his final years.
The Aiken Standard reported Friday that 72-year-old David Cannon of Barnwell entered an Alford plea to two counts of breach of trust (http://bit.ly/vBvUkA). The plea does not admit guilt, but acknowledges there is enough evidence for a conviction.
Prosecutors said Cannon was supposed to receive 5 percent of whatever Brown made in a year but instead gave himself close to 15 percent. Cannon was also accused of stealing part of a $900,000 check, but his defense says that was a misunderstanding. Attorney Gregory Harris says Cannon was owed the money.
Brown died on Christmas Day 2006.
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Greek protesters force cancellation of parade (AP)
THESSALONIKI, Greece ? Thousands of anti-austerity protesters in Greece's second largest city forced the cancellation on Friday of an annual military parade commemorating the nation's entry into World War II.
The demonstrators heckled President Karolos Papoulias and other attending officials, calling him a traitor, and some anarchists spat at retired military officers.
In several other Greek cities, officials were heckled but most of the commemorative parades went ahead as scheduled, two days after Europe's leaders announced a strengthened financial rescue plan that includes bigger write-downs of Greek debt and new injections of capital into weakened European banks.
In Thessaloniki, the protesters blocked the parade route, forcing police to intervene and protect the officials' stand until it was evacuated. After waiting in the parade stand for about 30 minutes, Papoulias left, but not before launching a broadside against the protesters.
"When I was 15, I fought against Nazism and the German occupiers. Who are they calling me a traitor? Shame on them," Papoulias told reporters before leaving the parade stand. Papoulias, 82, joined the Greek resistance in 1944, during the last months of the three-year German occupation of Greece.
The protesters included leftists, anarchists, neo-Nazis, people fed up with the government's austerity policies, and fans of the local soccer club Iraklis, which was pushed out of the top division because of financial irregularities.
Asked if the protesters were justified, given the government's biting austerity measures and Greece's deep recession, Papoulias said the demonstrators represented "a small minority."
"The great mass of the people accept all these austerity measures that hit the weakest because they hope for a better day, when we will overcome the crisis and clean our house," Papoulias said.
The protesters mingled among tens of thousands of people who had come to watch the parade, making it difficult to push them back, police said.
In chaotic scenes after the officials left, some people tried to march as if the parade could be held, including retired military officers. Tensions rose when some anarchists spat at them, but most protesters applauded the officers.
A student parade through Athens commemorating the day ended without a major incident, but some protesters carried banners with slogans such as "No to the selling out of the country," and "Merkel equals Hitler," referring to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who played a big role in negotiating the new euro-nation rescue plan.
The demonstrators were condemned by the government and the conservative opposition, but justified by some leftist parties.
"This was a subversion of democratic institutions," said government spokesman Elias Mossialos.
"This is a calamitous response to (the government's) calamitous policies. ... Only our enemies would like to see us divided thus," said opposition leader Antonis Samaras.
On Thursday, heavily indebted Greece was provided with a second bailout package worth euro130 billion ($184 billion) to stave off bankruptcy. A first package of euro110 billion ($156 billion) by the euro zone countries, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank was agreed in May 2010 and has been partially disbursed.
___
Demetris Nellas and AP Photographer Thanassis Stavrakis contributed from Athens.
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Investigation into Auschwitz crimes reopened
WARSAW, Poland?? Polish authorities have reopened an investigation into World War II crimes committed at Auschwitz and its satellite camps that was closed in the 1980s because of the country's isolation behind the Iron Curtain.
One aim of the new probe is to track down any living Nazi perpetrators, according to an announcement Thursday by the Institute of National Remembrance, a state body that investigates Nazi and communist-era crimes.
Nazi Germany opened Auschwitz in 1940, months after it invaded and occupied Poland. Over the next five years of war, German and Austrian Nazis murdered up to 1.5 million people there at the expanded Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex, most of them Jews from across Europe, but also Poles, Roma, gays and others.
The investigation was opened by a branch of the remembrance institute in Krakow, which is located near Auschwitz. Germany also operated other death camps across Poland ? like Chelmno, Treblinka and Belzec ? and it was not immediately clear if new investigations into them are also planned.
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A leading international Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff, praised Poland's reopening of the investigation. He said it "could have tremendous implications" in paving the way for new prosecutions thanks to the precedent set by the conviction of Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk in Germany earlier this year.
Demjanjuk was convicted of 28,060 counts of accessory to murder. It was the first time Germany convicted someone as a Nazi camp guard based on the theory that if he worked there, he was part of the extermination process, even without direct proof of any specific killings.
That has opened the door to many more possible prosecutions, and German authorities have since reopened hundreds of dormant investigations of Nazi death camp guards ? men who are now so old that time is running out for prosecutors.
Track down perpetrators
Zuroff said that should the Polish investigation track down any German perpetrators, he would expect them ? like Demjanjuk ? to be tried in a German court since Berlin requests extradition in such cases.
"I welcome any investigation that could lead to convictions," Zuroff, the main Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Associated Press.
However, he also noted that Poland is the country with the most ongoing investigations into Nazi crimes, but that these almost never result in prosecutions.
Story: After theft, Auschwitz sign won't go back to gatePoland's Institute of National Remembrance "excels in opening up investigations. They don't excel in prosecuting Nazi war criminals," Zuroff said.
Poland originally launched investigations into crimes at Auschwitz in the 1960s and 1970s, but closed them in the 1980s without any indictments being made. Poland had difficulty questioning witnesses and perpetrators living abroad because it was cut off behind the Iron Curtain.
The Institute for National Remembrance said it has already begun questioning witnesses as part of the revived investigation. It said the probe is aimed in part at "finding and, if needed, detaining the perpetrators."
The last time Poland prosecuted anyone for Nazi crimes was in 2001, when a Pole, Henryk Mania, was sentenced to eight years in prison for taking parts in acts of genocide at the death camp of Chelmno.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45064695/ns/world_news-europe/
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শনিবার, ২৯ অক্টোবর, ২০১১
Video: European Shares Mixed at Close
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Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/45078012#45078012
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2 workers plead guilty to murder in abortion case
This undated photo provided by the Philadelphia Police Department shows Andrea Moton. Moton and another abortion clinic worker pleaded guilty Thursday, Oct. 27, 2011, to third-degree murder in two deaths at a Philadelphia clinic where seven babies were allegedly killed with scissors and a woman died from a drug overdose. (AP Photo/Philadelphia Police Department)
This undated photo provided by the Philadelphia Police Department shows Andrea Moton. Moton and another abortion clinic worker pleaded guilty Thursday, Oct. 27, 2011, to third-degree murder in two deaths at a Philadelphia clinic where seven babies were allegedly killed with scissors and a woman died from a drug overdose. (AP Photo/Philadelphia Police Department)
This undated photo provided by the Philadelphia Police Department shows Sherry West. West and another abortion clinic worker pleaded guilty Thursday, Oct. 27, 2011, to third-degree murder in two deaths at a Philadelphia clinic where seven babies were allegedly killed with scissors and a woman died from a drug overdose. (AP Photo/Philadelphia Police Department)
PHILADELPHIA (AP) ? Two abortion clinic workers pleaded guilty Thursday to third-degree murder in deaths that occurred at a Philadelphia clinic where seven babies were allegedly born alive, then killed with scissors, and a patient died from an overdose of painkillers.
Andrea Moton, 34, admitted her involvement in the stabbing death of one late-term baby that she pulled from a toilet where it had been delivered.
Sherry West, 52, pleaded guilty in the February 2009 death of Karnamaya Mongar, a Bhutanese immigrant who was 19 weeks pregnant. Neither worker was trained or licensed for the work they did at the clinic run by Dr. Kermit Gosnell, authorities said.
Gosnell and nine employees, including his wife, were charged earlier this year after a grand jury report detailed the macabre conditions at the West Philadelphia clinic. Gosnell, the only doctor, and other staff are accused of performing illegal late-term abortions and killing babies born alive by severing their spinal cords with scissors.
Gosnell, who denies the allegations, is being held on $2 million bail.
Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams called the clinic a "house of horrors" in announcing the charges in January.
Moton, of Upper Darby, knew Gosnell through his niece. She worked evenings to assist with abortions, but, like the others, had no relevant training or license. She assisted with procedures and cut the spinal cords of aborted babies, the grand jury report said.
Moton and West each pleaded guilty to related charges, including taking part in a corrupt organization. West also pleaded guilty to drug delivery causing death.
West, of Newark, Del., may have administered at least some of the fatal dose of Demerol that killed 41-year-old Mongar in November 2009, defense lawyer Michael Wallace said after the hearing. However, he noted that she was the only clinic employee to accompany Mongar to the hospital as she was dying.
According to the grand jury report, West and co-defendant Lynda Williams overmedicated the 4-foot-11, 110-pound Mongar when Gosnell was not at the clinic. West then grabbed her medical file and rode to the hospital with Mongar's family, who spoke little or no English.
"West told them that Mrs. Mongar was unconscious, but not to worry," the grand jury report said.
The medical file was altered by the time hospital doctors got it, and "grossly underestimated" the amount of drugs the woman had received, the report said.
"She's very sorry about the death of that young lady," Wallace said Thursday. "She got caught up in a series of things (at the clinic) that probably she did not realize the significance of."
West was a longtime patient who sought work at the clinic after 22 years with the Veterans Administration, he said. She lost her job there after contracting hepatitis C, the grand jury report said.
She started at Gosnell's clinic in October 2008, making $8 to $10 an hour in cash to perform ultrasound exams, administer anesthesia and monitor patients in the medical room. Prosecutors said she was not licensed or trained to perform those duties, but Wallace disputed that.
"She was doing the same things she was doing at the VA," he said.
West has been in custody on $2 million bail since her arrest in January. She has been cooperating and will continue to do so, even if it means testifying against Gosnell, Wallace said. Gosnell's lawyer did not return a call for comment.
West faces up to 140 years in prison but would likely get far less time given that cooperation.
"She knows she will do time," Wallace said.
Staff had warned Gosnell that West and Williams were sloppy and careless with their work, the grand jury report said. Despite her hepatitis, West often did not wear gloves or take other precautions, and they were haphazard about the amount of drugs given to patients, the report said.
Moton faces up to 120 years in prison. She was one of three employees who were so startled by the size of a nearly 30-week fetus allegedly born alive and killed that they each took pictures of the infant. Moton gave her cellphone photo to the FBI, the grand jury report said.
Neither prosecutors nor her lawyer, Thomas L. McGill Jr., commented after the hearing, citing a gag order.
Ten clinic workers were charged in all in the case. In addition to the pleas entered Thursday, clinic worker Elizabeth Hampton has pleaded guilty to a perjury charge.
Seven others are still awaiting trial, including Gosnell and several others charged with murder.
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Don't lose the context! Response to: Are you maternal enough to be a woman?
Are you maternal enough to be a woman? I saw this headline on Scientific American blogs, and was intrigued. As a researcher in intra-sex variation in personality, I was eager to see any reference to maternal inclinations, given that it is the subject of my most recent paper. Hang on a sec? I realised this was about my most recent paper! Both Kate Clancy and Scicurious seemed to have very strong reactions to the paper, and I was quite surprised at their responses. I felt compelled to reply, firstly to clear up several misrepresentations of our paper, but also to provide some balance to the misconceptions about evolutionary psychology as a discipline.
In case you haven?t read them, have a gander at the two blog posts I?m talking about (Framing and definitions: Are you maternal enough to be a women? and The more feminine you look the more children you want. It must be science.)
Before I talk about the blog posts, I?ll give you a quick synopsis of the results of our research. In the first study, we found a significant positive correlation (0.436) in young women (aged 18-21) between urinary estrogen metabolite levels (at late-follicular stage of menstrual cycle) and self-reported desired number of children; that is, women with higher estrogen levels reported wanting a higher number of children, than those with lower estrogen levels.
Late-follicular urinary estrone-3-glucuronide levels (E1-3G: creatinine ratio) and reported ?ideal number of children? in 25 nulliparous women aged 18?21 (from Law Smith et al. 2011)
For the second study, we made composite faces (?averaged? the facial characteristics) of women who wanted the most children and the least children, in two independent samples. We asked people to look at the pairs of faces and decide which one they thought looked most feminine. We found that both men and women judged the faces of those wanting many children, to look more feminine, than the faces of those wanting fewer children. Have a look for yourself at the pairs below.
Composite faces of 18 women with lowest ?ideal number of children?: Mean=1.39 children, SD=.69 (left) and 18 women with highest ?ideal number of children?: Mean=4.33 children, SD=.85 (right) from Sample 1 (n=84) (from Law Smith et al. 2011)
Ok, so back to the blogs. Scicurious admits she got pretty angry after reading this paper and that she found it hard to step back and approach in a scientific manner. Kate was a little more measured. This is the intriguing bit for me. What is it about this kind of research that makes rational scientists get so hot under the collar? They both concede the methods, data, and analysis are sound, and our conclusions were appropriate ? we made no wild conclusions of causation (as it is a correlational study). So why all the fuss?
Kate Clancy?s post was titled ?Framing and definitions: Are you maternal enough to be a women?? and she writes on the blog titled Context and Variation. So I found it a little ironic to see the paper taken so out of context:
?in the introduction, they point out only the biological underpinnings of maternal tendencies in a way that is essentialized, reduced to an individual?s hormones prenatally and in adulthood??
Steady on there. Let?s get a bit of context. There are obviously HUGE effects on ?ideal number of children? preferences from social, cultural, and circumstantial factors. Who in their right mind would dispute this? This paper certainly does not. But to cover all those in an introduction in a research paper in a specialist journal would be inappropriate, as we were not investigating any of these variables. I could understand the objection, if we had written only about hormones in the context of a broad review paper of maternal behaviour, or a piece for popular consumption in a newspaper. But scientific research is necessarily specific.
We are evolutionary psychologists working in the field of how hormones relate to behaviour; Our research question was investigating possible links between hormones and behaviour (in this case, maternal preferences); We published in the journal ?Hormones & Behaviour?! Our study follows on from previous research in women demonstrating hormonal and physical correlates of maternal tendencies. All these studies come in the broader comparative context of well established links between maternal behaviour and hormones in many species of animal. And there lies the rationale for investigating this in humans.
Of course there are undoubtedly MASSIVE effects on maternal inclinations from social, cultural and circumstantial pressures. Our results certainly support this. In our sample, estrogen levels could predict 19% of the variance in ?ideal number of children?. Although this is statistically pretty impressive for a biological correlate of personality (a correlation of 0.436), this still means that 81% of the variance is up for grabs. So that?s the vast majority of variance we can speculate is related to the plethora of social, cultural, and circumstantial variables. But scientific progress is about acquiring little bits of knowledge, one study at a time. No study would, should, or could attempt to answer all the questions, all at once.
Both bloggers criticise our use of a WIERD sample (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic). Aside from loving this acronym (which is brilliant!) I have to point out that from a design point of view, when looking at hormones, a sample has to be homogenous; as there is so much variation across ages and ethnicities in hormonal profiles. It is the nature of good research design to try and reduce down the possible confounding variables which would mask any effects if they were present. Further studies should certainly look at samples of different ages, ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds and across multiple cultures to see if the hormonal associations we found are present in different samples. But this does not undermine the results of this study. We found what we found, no more, no less.
I can?t help but wonder, would all these criticisms be made of a research paper looking at ? hmm let?s say.. genetic variation and osteoarthritis? A paper of this ilk would no doubt be published in a genetics journal, and would not review the lifestyle and other circumstantial factors that relate to arthritis (of which there are many), but instead it would focus on concisely reviewing previous genetics related evidence, providing the rationale for the study. The sample would certainly be homogeneous in terms of ethnicity, in order to minimise confounding variation. The results might show a certain significant percentage of variance in risk for arthritis that can be linked to variants in specific genes. The results would be published, most likely reported in the scientific and popular press. And that would be that ? no one would get angry. So why, when it comes to studies like ours, do scientists from other disciplines momentarily forget their scientific training and opt for emotional responses, personal anecdotes, and sweeping generalisations about a broad academic field of study? I can?t help but think there is something about the nature of evolutionary psychology research that makes some people distinctly uneasy.
It seems that evolutionary psychology has got a bit of a bad name. For some, it conjurs up ideas of universals, blanket claims of specialised behaviours, evolved modules in the brain for the smallest of preferences, and ?just-so? stories for how behaviours we possess have came to be. No scientific discipline is immune from a few dubious studies. But the overwhelming majority of evolutionary psychology research is none of the above, it is the scientific investigation of preferences and behaviours in humans in the context of evolutionary theory; encompassing human behavioural ecology, comparative psychology and traditional Evolutionary Psychology (EP). It is a relatively young discipline by scientific standards, and early pioneering studies in the late 1980s investigating sex differences (e.g. finding that men prefer youth in a partner, whereas women prefer resources, across 37 cultures, Buss 1989), were the essential building blocks for later work. These ?main effects? needed to be established before individual differences and intra-sex variation could be explored. It is this variation which much of the current research in evolutionary psychology investigates.
I felt the final line in Kate Clancy?s blog post was quite inflammatory, which again took our findings completely out of context, much like the emotive headline of ?Are you maternal enough to be a woman??
?Not wanting a baby today, or any day, does not make you less feminine.?
If I?d read this in a newspaper, fair dues, such are the perils of science reported by journalists in the popular press. But on a science blog, written by scientists? I was a little disappointed. It seems to be the proverbial straw-man fallacy, the setting up of a caricatured argument, as it is easier to criticise than the facts. Arriving at the interpretation that our study suggests not wanting a baby makes a woman less of a woman is, at best, wildly out of context; at worst, provocative and misleading.
I think that the two authors? emotive reactions to the study, may not necessarily have been about what the paper apparently implies to these authors, but rather a reaction to the actual data and what it showed. I think it perhaps came down to how our findings made them feel. Is this paper really so threatening to how we feel about ourselves as women? Only if we seek to define ourselves only in relation to our ability or preferences for having children.
So what if a small proportion of our desire for children turns out to be associated with our hormone levels? So what if it does actually turn out that estrogen is one of the causal factors? So what! What is it that made this notion so repugnant? We should celebrate our diversity in personality and preferences, and embrace all the factors that have shaped us; culture, upbringing, circumstances, and, heaven forbid, some natural biological variation.
A hot topic at the moment is the concept of neurodiversity, it?s mostly used in the context of Asperger?s Syndrome, an area I currently research. But in general, neurodiversity can be applied to any variation in personality or way of being and perceiving the world, that may have partly biological roots. Neurodiversity is about celebrating our differences, and appreciating that there no right or best way of being, no normal and no abnormal, just a whole spectrum of being, with each personality difference bringing its own unique platter of strengths to the table. It takes women of all sorts to make the world go round, of all shapes and sizes, and of all personality styles and types. Finding that there may be some biological links to some of this diversity does not undermine or denigrate all the other experiential factors that undoubtedly shape us.
References:
Buss, D.M. et al (1989) Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 12, 1-49.
Law Smith, M.J., Deady, D.K., Moore, F.R., Jones, B.C., Cornwell, R.E., Stirrat, M., Lawson, J.F., Feinberg, D.R., Perrett, D.I. (2011). Maternal tendencies in women are associated with estrogen levels and facial femininity. Hormones and Behavior. DOI: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2011.09.005
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=a9a808631dedddce0981951fbe48b83d
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Eddie Murphy Admits "SNL" grudge (Reuters)
NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) ? Eddie Murphy explains in a new Rolling Stone interview that he's kept his distance from "Saturday Night Live" for years because of jokes his former show made about him.
"They were shitty to me on 'Saturday Night Live' a couple of times after I'd left the show," he said. "They said some shitty things."
Those things included an early 1990s "Weekend Update" jest in which David Spade showed Murphy's face and said, "Look, children, a falling star."
"I made a stink about it, it became part of the folklore," Murphy, star of the new "Tower Heist," told the magazine. "What really irritated me about it at the time was that it was a career shot ... I felt shitty about it for years, but now, I don't have none of that."
Though Murphy is one of the biggest names to come out of the show, he's separated from the casts that have made jokes about him in one way: He joined during the show's Jean Doumanian era, when she replaced Lorne Michaels as executive producer for ten months from 1980-81, before being replaced by Dick Ebersol. Michaels returned in 1985.
Discovering Murphy -- known for such classic "SNL" roles as Gumby, Mr. Robinson, and Buckwheat -- is widely considered Doumanian's greatest contribution to the show.
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tv/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111026/tv_nm/us_eddiemurphy
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শুক্রবার, ২৮ অক্টোবর, ২০১১
Europe crafts debt deal that pleases markets (AP)
BRUSSELS ? European leaders clinched a deal Thursday they hope will mark a turning point in their two-year debt crisis, agreeing after a night of tense negotiations to have banks take bigger losses on Greece's debts and to boost the region's weapons against the market turmoil.
After months of dawdling and half-baked solutions, the leaders had been under immense pressure to finalize their plan to prevent the crisis from pushing Europe and much of the developed world back into recession and to protect their currency union from unraveling.
World stock markets surged higher Thursday on the news. Oil prices rose above $92 per barrel while the euro gained strongly ? a signal investors were relieved at the outcome of the contentious negotiations.
"We have reached an agreement, which I believe lets us give a credible and ambitious and overall response to the Greek crisis," French President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters. "Because of the complexity of the issues at stake, it took us a full night. But the results will be a source of huge relief worldwide."
Sarkozy later called his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao and pledged to cooperate to revive global growth, but there was no word on whether Beijing might contribute to Europe's bailout fund.
The fund's chief executive is due to visit Beijing on Friday to talk to potential investors. Beijing has expressed sympathy for the 27-nation European Union, its biggest trading partner, but has yet to commit any cash.
The strategy unveiled after 10 hours of negotiations focused on three key points. These included a significant reduction in Greece's debts, a shoring up of the continent's banks, partially so they could sustain deeper losses on Greek bonds, and a reinforcement of a European bailout fund so it can serve as a euro1 trillion ($1.39 trillion) firewall to prevent larger economies like Italy and Spain from being dragged into the crisis.
After several missed opportunities, hashing out a plan was a success for the 17-nation eurozone, but the strategy's effectiveness will depend on the details, which will have to be finalized in the coming weeks.
The most difficult piece of the puzzle proved to be Greece, whose debts the leaders vowed to bring down to 120 percent of its GDP by 2020. Under current conditions, they would have ballooned to 180 percent.
To achieve that massive reduction, private creditors like banks will be asked to accept 50 percent losses on the bonds they hold. The Institute of International Finance, which has been negotiating on behalf of the banks, said it was committed to working out an agreement based on that "haircut," but the challenge now will be to ensure that all private bondholders fall in line.
It said the 50 percent cut equals a contribution of euro100 billion ($139 billion) to a second rescue for Greece, although the eurozone promised to spend some euro30 billion ($42 billion) on guaranteeing the remaining value of the new bonds.
The full program is expected to be finalized by early December and investors are supposed to swap their bonds in January, at which point Greece is likely to become the first euro country ever to be rated at default on its debt.
"We can claim that a new day has come for Greece, and not only for Greece but also for Europe," said Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, whose country's troubles touched off the crisis two years ago. "A burden from the past has gone, so that we can start a new era of development."
Not all Greeks were convinced. Prominent left-wing deputy Dimitris Papadimoulis said the agreement would doom Greeks to a deeper recession.
"The deal puts Greece in a eurozone quarantine," he said. "We are now locked in a system of continuous austerity, haphazard privatization, and continuous supervision by our creditors."
He also noted an inherent conflict of interest in the plan.
"Those who monitor us do not have our interests in mind. Their priority is that we pay back our loans," Papadimoulis said.
Since May 2010, Greece has been surviving on rescue loans worth euro110 billion ($150 billion) from the 17 countries that use the euro and the International Monetary Fund since it can't afford to borrow money directly from markets.
In July, those creditors agreed to extend another euro109 billion ? but that plan was widely panned as insufficient.
Now, in addition to euro30 billion in bond guarantees, the eurozone leaders and IMF said they will give Greece euro100 billion ($139 billion) in new loans.
With the banks being asked to shoulder more of the burden, though, there were concerns they needed more money in their rainy-day funds to cushion their losses. So European leaders have asked them to raise euro106 billion ($148 billion) by June.
The last piece in the complicated plan was to increase the firepower of the continent's bailout fund to ensure that other countries with troubled economies ? like Italy and Spain ? don't get dragged into the crisis. The third- and fourth-largest economies of the eurozone are too large to be bailed out like the smaller euro nations Greece, Portugal and Ireland have already been.
To that end, the euro440 billion ($610 billion) European Financial Stability Facility will be used to insure part of the potential losses on the debt of wobbly eurozone countries like Italy and Spain, rendering its firepower equivalent to around euro1 trillion ($1.39 trillion).
That should make those countries' bonds more attractive investments and thus lower borrowing costs for their governments.
In addition to acting as a direct insurer of bond issues, the EFSF insurance scheme is also supposed to entice big institutional investors to contribute to a special fund that could be used to buy government bonds but also to help states recapitalize weak banks.
Such outside help may be necessary for Italy and Spain, whose banks were facing some of the biggest capital shortfalls.
On the markets, European trading was buoyant from the outset Thursday on the news. Britain's FTSE climbed 2.9 percent to 5,712. Germany's DAX jumped 4.9 percent to 6,311 and France's CAC-40 gained 5.5 percent to 3,344. Shares in Asia posted solid gains earlier in the day.
___
DiLorenzo and Greg Keller contributed from Paris. Juergen Baetz and Geir Moulson in Berlin, and Raf Casert, Don Melvin and Robert Wielaard in Brussels, and Sylvie Corbet in Paris also contributed.
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Motorola Droid 4 surfaces ... wait, already?
It seems like just yesterday the Motorola Droid 3 was released, and now we already are seeing the Motorola Droid 4? Yikes -- released just three months ago, the Motorola Droid 3 brought a larger screen and better keyboard but was lacking LTE out. Looks like that will change with the Droid 4. In addition to the picture the folks at Droid-Life were able to get some specs on the device, and they are as follows:
- 4-inch screen (assuming Super AMOLED Advanced)
- Full 5-row illuminated keyboard
- RAZR styling
- 4G LTE
- Non-removable battery
- Android 2.3.5
- 1080p video recording (assuming 8MP)
- Front camera
- HDMI out
- MotoACTV syncing
Non-removable battery, eh? Basically, think Droid RAZR with a keyboard. No word on release date, but it wouldn't surprise us in the least to see Verizon slip this one into its lineup sooner rather than later, especially since it apparently is lurking around a store or two.
Source: Droid-Life
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বৃহস্পতিবার, ২৭ অক্টোবর, ২০১১
Video: Disaster du Jour: McDermott Falls on Lowered Guidance
Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/45066006#45066006
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"Wife-sharing" haunts Indian villages as girls decline (Reuters)
BAGHPAT, India (TrustLaw) ? When Munni arrived in this fertile, sugarcane-growing region of north India as a young bride years ago, little did she imagine she would be forced into having sex and bearing children with her husband's two brothers who had failed to find wives.
"My husband and his parents said I had to share myself with his brothers," said the woman in her mid-40s, dressed in a yellow sari, sitting in a village community centre in Baghpat district in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
"They took me whenever they wanted -- day or night. When I resisted, they beat me with anything at hand," said Munni, who had managed to leave her home after three months only on the pretext of visiting a doctor.
"Sometimes they threw me out and made me sleep outside or they poured kerosene over me and burned me."
Such cases are rarely reported to police because women in these communities are seldom allowed outside the home unaccompanied, and the crimes carry deep stigma for the victims. So there may be many more women like Munni in the mud-hut villages of the area.
Munni, who has three sons from her husband and his brothers, has not filed a police complaint either.
Social workers say decades of aborting female babies in a deeply patriarchal culture has led to a decline in the population of women in some parts of India, like Baghpat, and in turn has resulted in rising incidents of rape, human trafficking and the emergence of "wife-sharing" amongst brothers.
Aid workers say the practice of female foeticide has flourished among several communities across the country because of a traditional preference for sons, who are seen as old-age security.
"We are already seeing the terrible impacts of falling numbers of females in some communities," says Bhagyashri Dengle, executive director of children's charity Plan India.
"We have to take this as a warning sign and we have to do something about it or we'll have a situation where women will constantly be at risk of kidnap, rape and much, much worse."
SECRET PRACTICES
Just two hours drive from New Delhi, with its gleaming office towers and swanky malls, where girls clad in jeans ride motor bikes and women occupy senior positions in multi-nationals, the mud-and-brick villages of Baghpat appear a world apart.
Here, women veil themselves in the presence of men, are confined to the compounds of their houses as child bearers and home makers, and are forbidden from venturing out unaccompanied.
Village men farm the lush sugarcane plantations or sit idle on charpoys, or traditional rope beds, under the shade of trees in white cotton tunics, drinking tea, some smoking hookah pipes while lamenting the lack of brides for their sons and brothers.
The figures are telling.
According to India's 2011 census, there are only 858 women to every 1,000 men in Baghpat district, compared to the national sex ratio of 940.
Child sex ratios in Baghpat are even more skewed and on the decline with 837 girls in 2011 compared to 850 in 2001 -- a trend mirrored across districts in northern Indian states such as Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan and Gujarat in the west.
"In every village, there are at least five or six bachelors who can't find a wife. In some, there are up to three or four unmarried men in one family. It's a serious problem," says Shri Chand, 75, a retired police constable.
"Everything is hush, hush. No one openly admits it, but we all know what is going on. Some families buy brides from other parts of the country, while others have one daughter-in-law living with many unwedded brothers."
Women from other regions such as the states of Jharkhand and West Bengal speak of how their poor families were paid sums of as little as 15,000 rupees ($300) by middle-men and brought here to wed into a different culture, language and way of life.
"It was hard at first, there was so much to learn and I didn't understand anything. I thought I was here to play," said Sabita Singh, 25, who was brought from a village in West Bengal at the age of 14 to marry her husband, 19 years her elder.
"I've got used to it," she says holding her third child in her lap. "I miss my freedom."
Such exploitation of women is illegal in India, but many of these crimes are gradually becoming acceptable among such close-knit communities because the victims are afraid to speak out and neighbours unwilling to interfere.
Some villagers say the practice of brothers sharing a wife has benefits, such as the avoidance of division of family land and other assets amongst heirs.
Others add the shortage of women has, in fact, freed some poor families with daughters from demands for substantial dowries by grooms' families.
Social activists say nothing positive can be derived from the increased exploitation of women, recounting cases in the area of young school girls being raped or abducted and auctioned off in public.
UNABATED ABORTIONS
Despite laws making pre-natal gender tests illegal, India's 2011 census indicated that efforts to curb female foeticide have been futile.
While India's overall female-to-male ratio marginally improved since the last census in 2001, fewer girls were born than boys and the number of girls under six years old plummeted for the fifth decade running.
A May study in the British medical journal Lancet found that up to 12 million Indian girls were aborted over the last three decades -- resulting in a skewed child sex ratio of 914 girls to every 1,000 boys in 2011 compared with 962 in 1981.
Sons, in traditionally male-dominated regions, are viewed as assets -- breadwinners who will take care of the family, continue the family name, and perform the last rites of the parents, an important ritual in many faiths.
Daughters are seen as a liability, for whom families have to pay substantial wedding dowries. Protecting their chastity is a major concern as instances of pre-marital sex are seen to bring shame and dishonour on families.
Women's rights activists say breaking down these deep-rooted, age-old beliefs is a major challenge.
"The real solution is to empower girls and women in every way possible," says Neelam Singh, head of Vatsalya, an Indian NGO working on children's and women's issues.
"We need to provide them with access to education, healthcare and opportunities which will help them make decisions for themselves and stand up to those who seek to abuse or exploit them." (TrustLaw is a global news service on women's rights and good governance run by Thomson Reuters Foundation. For more information see www.trust.org/trustlaw)
(Editing by Sugita Katyal)
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Iowa accuses filmmaker of theft in tax credit case (AP)
DES MOINES, Iowa ? Iowa has filed charges against a California filmmaker who received film tax credits in a state program that has since been shut down.
Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller has charged Donald Borchers, a Beverly Hills producer and director, with first-degree theft and fraudulent practices. Miller alleges Borchers submitted inflated cost claims for the remake of the 1984 horror film "Children of the Corn" and accepted state tax credits based on inflated expense claims.
The tax credit was shut down in 2009 after a state audit showed millions of dollars were awarded improperly.
The Des Moines Register (http://bit.ly/sRycG8) says Borchers declined to comment on the charges Wednesday. The Associated Press could not reach him. The online court system does not list an attorney for him.
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বুধবার, ২৬ অক্টোবর, ২০১১
Britney Spears Tweets Condolences to Fallen Fan
A 31-year-old woman was killed when she fell from a fairground ride set up right outside Dublin's O2 arena after a Britney Spears concert there Monday.
The singer took the news particularly hard.
"I was saddened to hear of the tragic accident in Dublin. My heart goes out to the family. - Britney," Spears personally tweeted after the incident.
"We can't say [what happened], it all happened so quick," Kenneth McFadden, owner of fair operator McFadden Entertainment, told Dublin's Independent.
"We are just in bits at the moment, we are just devastated."
The woman was identified as Siobhan Healy. She reportedly fell off of a ride called the Tip Top. The National Police Service is investigating Healy's death.
Earlier in the night, fans waiting to get into the show were caught in a heavy downpour that prompted severe weather warnings to be issued countywide.
Britney Spears performed in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Tuesday and will play two shows in London this weekend as her Femme Fatale tour rolls through Europe.
Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2011/10/britney-spears-tweets-condolences-to-fallen-fan/
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Smart TV gaming startup PlayJam raises $5M round | VentureBeat
Gaming startup PlayJam has raised a new $5 million round of funding to bring games to smart TVs and set-top boxes, the company announced Tuesday.
PlayJam is known for producing games on internet-connected TV platforms from Samsung, LG, Sony and Panasonic. The company says its seen over 6 billion game downloads on those platforms alone.
However, with the increase in devices that give televisions web connectivity ? like Blu-ray players, game consoles, set-top boxes, etc. ? PlayJam is in a unique situation to start producing games that are independent of any one distribution platform, especially now that it has money in the bank.
The Smart TV gaming market is just getting started, but PlayJam is poised to become the market leader. The company said half of? customers that download and play free games eventually buy a premium game. Also, its consumers spend an average of 23 minutes per session. (I?m guessing session is the time it takes someone to start and then stop playing a game without any pauses or breaks.)
The new round, PlayJam?s first, includes participation by GameStop Digital Ventures, Adobe Ventures, Endeavour Ventures, London Venture Partners and others. Founded in 1999, the London-based startup has over 550 games in its library to date.
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Companies: PlayJam
Source: http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/25/playjam-5-million-round/
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মঙ্গলবার, ২৫ অক্টোবর, ২০১১
Nikon D300s travels to the edge of space, survives to share the results
[Thanks, Udi]
Continue reading Nikon D300s travels to the edge of space, survives to share the results
Nikon D300s travels to the edge of space, survives to share the results originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 23 Oct 2011 14:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Canoel International Energy Ltd (CIL) - Financial and Strategic SWOT Analysis Review - new company profile
Canoel International Energy Ltd. is engaged in acquisition, exploration and production of oil and natural gas properties in Canada.
Canoel International Energy Ltd Key Recent Developments
Jan 25, 2011: Canoel International Energy Establishes New Italian Subsidiary
Jan 25, 2011: Canoel International Energy Provides Argentina Operations Update
Mar 03, 2011: Canoel International Energy Director Emmanuel Olympitis Resigns
Mar 23, 2011: Canoel International Energy Announces Board Changes
Nov 29, 2010: Canoel International Energy Announces Management Changes
This comprehensive SWOT profile of Canoel International Energy Ltd provides you an in-depth strategic analysis of the company's businesses and operations. The profile has been compiled to bring to you a clear and an unbiased view of the company's key strengths and weaknesses and the potential opportunities and threats. The profile helps you formulate strategies that augment your business by enabling you to understand your partners, customers and competitors better.
This company report forms part of a 'Profile on Demand' service, covering over 50,000 of the world's leading companies. Once purchased, a highly qualified team of company analysts will comprehensively research and author a full financial and strategic analysis of Canoel International Energy Ltd including a detailed SWOT analysis, and deliver this direct to you in pdf format within two business days. (excluding weekends).
The profile contains critical company information including*,
- Business description - A detailed description of the company's operations and business divisions.
- Corporate strategy - Analyst's summarization of the company's business strategy.
- SWOT Analysis - A detailed analysis of the company's strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats.
- Company history - Progression of key events associated with the company.
- Major products and services - A list of major products, services and brands of the company.
- Key competitors - A list of key competitors to the company.
- Key employees - A list of the key executives of the company.
- Executive biographies - A brief summary of the executives' employment history.
- Key operational heads - A list of personnel heading key departments/functions.
- Important locations and subsidiaries - A list and contact details of key locations and subsidiaries of the company.
- Detailed financial ratios for the past five years - The latest financial ratios derived from the annual financial statements published by the company with 5 years history.
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Note*: Some sections may be missing if data is unavailable for the company.
Key benefits of buying this profile include,
You get detailed information about the company and its operations to identify potential customers and suppliers.
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Understand and respond to your competitors' business structure and strategies, and capitalize on their weaknesses. Stay up to date on the major developments affecting the company.
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Equip yourself with information that enables you to sharpen your strategies and transform your operations profitably.
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Scout for potential investments and acquisition targets, with detailed insight into the companies' strategic, financial and operational performance.
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Gain key insights into the company for academic or business research.
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Click for report details: Canoel International Energy Ltd (CIL) - Financial and Strategic SWOT Analysis Review
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TransWorldNewsCurrentReleases-Business/~3/r6YMfXOX-hU/NewsStory.aspx
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সোমবার, ২৪ অক্টোবর, ২০১১
Bruno Mars' 'Breaking Dawn' Video Delayed
'It Will Rain' was set to premiere Wednesday on MTV, but Mars is still working on the clip.
By James Montgomery
Bruno Mars
Photo: Kevin Winter/ Getty Images
Bad news, Twilighters: You're going to have to wait a little longer for the video for Bruno Mars' "It Will Rain," the first single from the "Breaking Dawn - Part 1" soundtrack.
Originally, the clip was set to premiere Wednesday night on MTV — with a special live-stream event to follow on MTV.com — but those plans have been put on hold for the foreseeable future because the video isn't finished just yet.
Mars himself took to Twitter on Monday (October 24) to break the news about the "Rain" delay and to beg forgiveness from all the "Twilight" fans out there.
"Hey guys, I'm still working on the 'It Will Rain' video," Mars wrote. "The MTV premiere will happen in a couple weeks. Be patient for ya boy. Love y'all."
A spokesperson for Mars' label, Atlantic Records, could not be reached for comment on the delay, and while the news is sure to disappoint "Twilight" folks, there is a new development that will surely help soften the blow: Even though "Rain" has been pushed back, there will still be a "Breaking Dawn" video premiering Wednesday for Christina Perri's "A Thousand Years," a song she told MTV News she wrote specifically for the film's star-crossed protagonists, Bella and Edward.
So fret not, "Twilight" fans. You'll still get your fix Wednesday, October 26, when Christina Perri's "A Thousand Years" video premieres at 6 a.m. ET/PT on AMTV, MTV Hits and MTV.com. And as soon as we get an update on "It Will Rain," you'll be the first to know about it, we promise.
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German satellite expected to hit Earth on weekend (AP)
BERLIN ? German scientists say they expect pieces of a defunct satellite hurtling toward the atmosphere to hit Earth this weekend.
Andreas Schuetz, a spokesman for the German Aerospace Center, said Friday the best estimate is still that the ROSAT scientific research satellite will impact sometime Saturday or Sunday.
The center says parts of the minivan-sized satellite will burn up during re-entry but up to 30 fragments weighing a total of 1.87 tons (1.7 metric tons) could crash into the Earth with a speed of up to 280 mph (450 kph).
The satellite orbits the Earth every 90 minutes and scientists can only say that it could hit Earth anywhere along its path, between 53-degrees north and 53-degrees south ? a vast swath of territory that includes much of the planet outside the poles.
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রবিবার, ২৩ অক্টোবর, ২০১১
Romney comes to defense of Florida Sen. Rubio
FILE - In this Aug. 23, 2011 file photo, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., speaks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. Rubio is fighting allegations that he embellished his family's history by saying his parents were Cuban exiles. His parents emigrated to the U.S. in 1956, three years before Fidel Castro took power. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
FILE - In this Aug. 23, 2011 file photo, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., speaks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. Rubio is fighting allegations that he embellished his family's history by saying his parents were Cuban exiles. His parents emigrated to the U.S. in 1956, three years before Fidel Castro took power. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
File - In this Nov. 2, 2010 file photo, Republican Marco Rubio, left, stands on the stage with his mother Oria Rubio, right, after winning his Senate in Coral Gables, Fla. Rubio is fighting allegations that he embellished his family's history by saying his parents were Cuban exiles. His parents emigrated to the U.S. in 1956, three years before Fidel Castro took power. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)
MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) ? Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is coming to the defense of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who's fighting allegations that he embellished his family's history by saying his parents fled Cuba before Fidel Castro's communist revolution.
Romney says Rubio ? a rising GOP star who's often discussed as a potential vice presidential pick ? and his family deserve the highest praise and recognition. Romney calls the recent news reports an attempt to smear Rubio, and Romney describes the stories as "unfortunate" and "bogus.
Romney made the comments to reporters Saturday in his New Hampshire campaign headquarters.
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Mesa Robotics' mini-tank is perfectly happy on point (video)
Continue reading Mesa Robotics' mini-tank is perfectly happy on point (video)
Mesa Robotics' mini-tank is perfectly happy on point (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Oct 2011 04:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink |Wired | Email this | CommentsSource: http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/22/mesa-robotics-mini-tank-is-perfectly-happy-on-point-video/
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