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Source: http://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/95209
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Thursday, February 28, 2013
IKEA stops selling all minced meat products from main supplier
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - IKEA stopped selling all minced meat products from its main supplier, two days after taking its trademark meatballs from the same Swedish supplier off menus over concerns they contained horsemeat.
The world's No. 1 furniture retailer, known also for restaurants at its huge out-of-town stores, said on Wednesday it had withdrawn Familjen Dafgard's IKEA-branded wiener sausages from stores in France, Spain, Britain, Ireland and Portugal, as well as stuffed cabbages and veal burgers in Sweden.
Tests in the Czech Republic on Monday showed a batch of meatballs from Sweden's Familjen Dafgard contained horse.
"Based on some hundred test results that we have received so far, there are a few indications of horsemeat," IKEA said in a statement. "We are now, together with our supplier and third party experts, reviewing how we can reinforce routines to avoid similar situations in the future."
A scandal erupted last month when tests in Ireland revealed some beef products contained horsemeat, triggering recalls of ready-made meals in several countries and damaging confidence in Europe's vast and complex food industry.
Familjen Dafgard is the only Swedish firm so far to confirm undeclared horse in its meat products amid the scandal. On Wednesday it said its own tests confirmed the batch tested by Czech inspectors, and three other batches, contained horse.
All these samples contained 1-10 percent horsemeat, said Lennart Nilsson, a veterinary inspector at Sweden's National Food Agency of the tests run by Familjen Dafgard.
The supplier said it was still trying to establish where its own meat suppliers had sourced the meat in the four batches.
Nilsson said Familjen Dafgard buys meat in Sweden and elsewhere in the European Union although the meat may well originate from third parties outside the union.
IKEA stopped meatball sales in stores across most of Europe, and in Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia and the Dominican Republic, all supplied by Sweden's Familjen Dafgard. No food sales have been stopped in IKEA stores that have other suppliers, such as in the United States, Canada, Russia, Australia and Japan.
(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom; Editing by Louise Ireland)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ikea-stops-selling-minced-meat-products-main-supplier-151014737--finance.html
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Wednesday, February 27, 2013
JPMorgan cuts 19,000 jobs, calls it a good sign
JPMorgan cuts 15,000 jobs from its troubled mortgage sector, citing healthier home mortgages. The other 4,000 job cuts come from consumer banking.
JPMorgan's headquarters in New York. JPMorgan is cutting its workforce by 6.5 percent, the second year in a row it has cut jobs.
Mark Lennihan / AP / File
EnlargeJPMorgan?will trim about 19,000 jobs over the next two years but cast a positive spin on the news: It is shrinking the unit it had beefed up to handle troubled mortgages.
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The bulk of the cuts, about 15,000, will come at the mortgage unit, which had swelled to about 50,000 workers from a pre-financial crisis roster of 20,000 because the bank needed more people to process defaulted mortgages. The bank said it hopes to find jobs in other parts of the company for displaced workers through a "redeployment" program.
The rest of the cuts, about 4,000, will come from the consumer banking business, mostly the branches. JPMorgan?said those cuts will come through attrition, not lay-offs.
The bank noted that it's also adding jobs in certain areas, such as commercial banking and asset management. Overall, it expects its payroll to be down by about 17,000 at the end of 2014. That means it would fall to about 242,000 from its current 259,000, a 6.5 percent reduction.
The cuts were revealed in a presentation to investors Tuesday and are part of the bank's bigger cost-cutting campaign.?JPMorgan?increased its profits and revenue in 2012 and has weathered the financial crisis and its aftermath better than most.
But like its peers, it's facing a host of challenges. Banks are navigating new government regulations that have crimped some old sources of revenue, like issuing credit cards to students. The banks have also said that complying with the new regulations is costing them more money.
The move could signal a new direction for staffing:?JPMorgan?already shed about 1,200 jobs in 2012, after adding jobs in 2011 and 2010.
Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs all trimmed jobs in 2012. Morgan Stanley's current round of job cuts has focused on senior ranks and investment bankers. Bank of America has also said it needs fewer people to work through problem mortgages, though it has cut jobs in other areas. Citigroup is scaling back in countries that it no longer sees as growth engines.
Shares of New York-based?JPMorgan?Chase & Co. ended Tuesday down 10 cents at $47.60. The stock has gained about 24 percent in the past year.
Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/pShNSDMz15k/JPMorgan-cuts-19-000-jobs-calls-it-a-good-sign
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Investing News: Expert Analysis, Investment Tools, Stock Screeners ...
It increasingly appears that the rise of ?shareholder democracy? is leading, in some cases, to a perverse game in which so-called activist investors take to the media to pump or dump stocks in hopes of creating a fleeting rise or fall in a company?s stock price.
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Tuesday, February 26, 2013
White House: No price tag for Obama access
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Facing tough questions about President Barack Obama's past pledges to help curb the role of money in politics, the White House pushed back Monday against suggestions that donors to a new group supporting his agenda will have special access to the president.
Weeks after top Obama allies announced plans to convert his victorious re-election campaign into an unprecedented nonprofit, questions remain about how the group, dubbed Organizing for Action, will interact with the White House. Chief among them is what benefits will be offered to those who shell out hefty sums to help bolster Obama's legislative priorities.
Asked Monday whether there was a price tag to see the president, White House press secretary Jay Carney said emphatically that there was not. But he wouldn't directly address reports that donors who give or raise $500,000 will be invited to quarterly meetings with Obama.
"Administration officials routinely interact with outside advocacy organizations," Carney said. "This has been true in prior administrations and it is true in this one."
Organizing for Action picked up where the White House left off, arguing that those opening their wallets to help the fledgling group were doing so because they want Obama's agenda to succeed ? not to score face time they would otherwise be denied.
"No one has been promised access to the president," said the group's spokeswoman, Katie Hogan, who served in a parallel role in Obama's campaign.
Organizers of the nonprofit group have outlined plans to raise tens of millions of dollars for the organization, according to someone who has been briefed on the plans. The group has reached out to 50 top Obama donors who intend to raise at least $500,000 this year, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to describe the group's plans publicly.
The donors, many of whom served on the Obama campaign's National Finance Committee, are expecting they'll receive benefits similar to what they received in the campaign, he said. Those benefits included briefings from top White House officials, campaign operatives and access to Obama. But an explicit menu of benefits available to those who raise specific amounts has not been offered.
That's something of a departure from the campaign, when top-dollar donors often knew exactly what to expect. At a campaign luncheon last summer in San Francisco, for instance, a $5,000 contribution bought a ticket to the 250-person event, but a $35,800 ticket gave 25 donors the chance to talk politics with the president at a private round-table event.
Republican Mitt Romney had a similar set of perks offered to those who bundled contributions for his campaign. And former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton both reserved seats at exclusive state dinners for supporters who made substantial financial contributions to their re-election campaigns.
But Organizing for Action is not a campaign. In fact, it says it will woo Americans from both parties and has vowed not to support or endorse candidates.
Still, the post-election effort to raise millions for a group whose sole mission is to promote Obama's agenda has raised serious concerns for advocates of stricter campaign finance laws.
"It's not illegal, but it's another example of how money is soiling and corroding democracy," said Bob Edgar of Common Cause, a government watchdog. He pointed out that Obama, in his first campaign and during his first term in office, made a point of decrying money's outsize influence in politics ? even chiding the Supreme Court when it cleared the way for corporations to spend unlimited sums on campaign ads.
Organizing for Action has said it will accept donations from individuals and corporations, but in an attempt to be transparent, will voluntarily disclose its donors and will refuse all donations from federally registered lobbyists.
Carney, Obama's spokesman, said White House officials won't have a hand in fundraising efforts. "While they may appear at appropriate OFA events, in their official capacities they will not be raising money," he said.
But the grassroots group's close ties to the White House are difficult to miss. Its national chairman, Jim Messina, was Obama's campaign manager, and former White House official Jon Carson serves as its executive director. The group also runs Obama's vaunted Twitter handle, (at)BarackObama, which has more than 27 million followers.
Carson and Messina are among those who have met with Obama's top fundraisers in recent weeks to discuss the group's agenda and to secure financial support. Top donors are expected to gather in Washington on March 13 to attend a "founders summit" for those willing to raise $50,000 or more. About 75 donors are expected to attend the event.
___
AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-no-price-tag-obama-access-223916069--politics.html
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In shift, Syrian regime says it's ready to talk to rebels
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said in Moscow that the Assad government wanted to engage in 'dialogue with anyone?who's willing for it, even those who carry arms.'
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem attends a meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, unseen, in Moscow on Monday, Feb. 25, 2013.
Ivan Sekretarev/AP
EnlargeFor the first time since the Syrian civil war began almost two years ago, a top member of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government today offered to engage in talks with rebel leaders to find a diplomatic resolution to the fighting. But the opposition leadership has reportedly dismissed the offer, insisting that the president must first step down.
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Arthur Bright is the Europe Editor at The Christian Science Monitor.? He has worked for the Monitor in various capacities since 2004, including as the Online News Editor and a regular contributor to the Monitor's Terrorism & Security blog.? He is also a licensed Massachusetts attorney.
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Speaking at a press conference in Moscow before talks with his Russian counterpart, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said that "We're ready for a dialogue with anyone who's willing for it, even those who carry arms," reports the Associated Press.
"We are confident that reforms will come about not with the help of bloodshed but through dialogue," he added. The AP notes that it is unclear whether he meant that the government would be willing to negotiate with rebels before they laid down their arms.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also called upon Syria to open negotiations with the rebels, saying that "the situation in Syria is at a crossroads now."
But in an email to the Guardian, Khalid Saleh, a spokesman of the Western-backed Syrian opposition umbrella group known as the Syrian National Coalition, called Mr. Moallem's offer "empty" and "deceitful." Mr. Saleh insisted that talks could not involve Mr. Assad or his allies, and that Assad must resign.
There is nothing new in what Moualem said. It is more of the same empty offers the regime has been putting out for the last few months.
We are not looking for a dialogue. We are offering negotiations with those who have not committed crimes against Syrians to transfer powers from the Assad regime to the Syrian people.?Moualem's offer is deceitful, and it seems that he wants to divide up those who are fighting against Assad. It will be more appropriate for?Moualem ? who is offering dialogue with those carrying weapons ? to ask his regime to stop using scud missiles against those who are not armed.
We need serious movement from Assad regime not repeated empty offers.
Still, Moallem's comments come amid signs from both sides of the conflict ? and from the US and Russia ? in favor of a diplomatic solution. Despite Saleh's rejection of Moallem's proposal, it was only a few weeks ago that Mouaz al-Khatib, the SNC's leader, called for Assad to open negotiations with his organization. BBC News reported that Mr. Khatib's offer displeased many in the SNC, which has long insisted that Assad's resignation was a precondition for any talks.
And Mr. Lavrov is scheduled to meet with newly appointed US Secretary of State John Kerry in Berlin on Wednesday. The New York Times notes that even before the meeting was planned, Mr. Kerry had indicated that he had new ideas toward resolving the Syrian conflict, and that working with Russia, a staunch ally of Mr. Assad, appears to be part of those ideas.
Reuters notes that there are multiple sticking points before even an initial meeting could take place. One is the venue: the rebels insist that any negotiations would have to take place abroad or in rebel-held territory, while the Syrian government insists that it should host someplace within state control.
Further, the rebels demand that any peace talks must ultimately lead to Assad's departure from the government. Assad told UN envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi that he intends to complete his term and run for reelection in 2014.
And even if talks were held, Reuters adds, the Syrian opposition's political leaders, who would be conducting the talks, are in large part disconnected from the rebels on the ground, who appear to be willing to fight until Assad is toppled.
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Helen Hunt's Oscars Dress 2013 Is H&M (PHOTOS)
Helen Hunt always looks demeure and feminine, and we except the 2013 Oscars to be no different. Though many stars opt to wear couture on the red carpet, Helen Hunt shocked us all with her choice to wear H&M to the biggest award ceremony of the year.
The "The Sessions" star is nominated for Best Supporting Actress, which is not her first Academy Award nod (she was previously nominated for Best Actress in "As Good as It Gets" -- an award she won in the late '90s).
See the California native's H&M dress at the 2013 Academy Awards and tell us what you think!
PHOTOS:
See the rest of the red carpet glam:
Want more? Be sure to check out HuffPost Style on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram at @HuffPostStyle.
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Do you have a style story idea or tip? Email us at stylesubmissions@huffingtonpost.com. (PR pitches sent to this address will be ignored.)
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/24/helen-hunt-oscar-dress-2013-photos_n_2737876.html
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Jeter about 2 weeks away from games
New York Yankees' Derek Jeter takes batting practice during a workout at baseball spring training, Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
New York Yankees' Derek Jeter takes batting practice during a workout at baseball spring training, Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
New York Yankees' Derek Jeter fields a grounder during a workout at baseball spring training, Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
New York Yankees' Derek Jeter smiles while talking with the media during a workout at baseball spring training, Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) ? Yankees captain Derek Jeter is about two weeks away from playing in a game for the first time since breaking his ankle last fall.
New York general manager Brian Cashman said on Sunday that the shortstop should be ready to play in spring training games around March 10.
"Physically, he's capable of doing everything," Cashman said. "We're being very cautious."
Also, Yankees outfielder Curtis Granderson left in the first inning of Sunday's split-squad game against Toronto he got hit near the hand by J.A. Happ's pitch. New York said Granderson had a bruised right forearm and was taken for X-rays.
Jeter practiced on-field running and agility drills for the second straight day Sunday. He expects to be ready for opening day against Boston on April 1. The 38-year-old broke his left ankle lunging for a grounder in the AL championship series opener against Detroit on Oct. 13 and had surgery a week later.
"When I first got here, I was a couple weeks behind what everyone was doing anyway, so on that schedule, I don't see any reason why not," Jeter said.
Jeter also continued hitting and fielding grounders before the Yankees' second exhibition game.
Cashman said the timetable for the possible return of third baseman Alex Rodriguez, who had hip surgery, is still in July. A-Rod is doing rehab work in New York.
"We're told that he's going to be back at the All-Star break, and that's what we believe," Cashman said. "His rehab is going well."
Yankees ace CC Sabathia (left elbow bone spur surgery) is scheduled to throw batting practice for the first time Monday. Closer Mariano Rivera (knee surgery) is set to have his second BP session.
NOTES: RHP Phil Hughes (bulging disk) is set to start three to five days of working out in a pool. ... LHP Andy Pettitte had a 30-pitch bullpen session and will throw batting practice in a few days. ... RHP Hiroki Kuroda threw BP split into segments.
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Monday, February 25, 2013
Wall Street edges up after Italy exit polls
Playing off his?pre-Oscars prediction?that everyone would hate him at the Oscars, Seth MacFarlane spent the first 19 minutes of the Academy Awards on Sunday making sure everyone would, in fact, hate him.?After some real stinkers, the main conceit was William Shatner descending on a screen as Captain Kirk, from the future, to tell MacFarlane to do a better job of hosting, in a kind of alternate-reality bit that turned pretty sordid?and pretty fast. ...
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/wall-street-edges-italy-exit-polls-144646183--finance.html
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Sunday, February 24, 2013
Prince to appear on Jimmy Fallon's show Friday
NEW YORK (AP) ? Prince is continuing to ramp up his public profile. This week, he'll make an appearance on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon."
A rep for the late-night talk show confirmed the pop legend will appear on the show Friday and will perform two songs. It's not clear whether he'll perform new material or some of his classics.
The reclusive star has been back in the spotlight recently. He presented record of the year trophy at the Grammys, released the song "Screwdriver" on his new website and is due to perform several dates in Europe this summer.
___
Online:
Prince: http://www.prince2013.com
"Late Night with Jimmy Fallon": http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/prince-appear-jimmy-fallons-show-friday-185309952.html
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Bear Grylls Likes The Kyocera Torque, Doesn't Take Shit From Other Smartphones
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John Shinal's Tech Investor: How big will the Apple freak-out be?
By John Shinal
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) ? I?m guessing the executive team and other top managers at Apple are freaking out a little bit right now, after a preliminary court victory by hedge-fund manager and dissident shareholder David Einhorn late Friday.
David Einhorn, president of Greenlight Capital, speaks in October 2010 at the New York Value Investing Congress.If the air of invincibility at Apple /quotes/zigman/68270/quotes/nls/aapl AAPL +1.06% ?wasn?t pierced with the death of Steve Jobs, it should be clear to the executive management team now that it needs to take greater account of shareholders than Jobs ever did.
Granted ? and just to be clear ? this is a preliminary victory for Einhorn, who?s won the right to have the issue voted on separately from other shareholder proposals at Apple?s annual meeting in Cupertino, Calif., next week.
/conga/story/2013/02/oscars.html 250972And the fact that he lost on his second motion for an injunction against Apple took some luster off this first-round win in the legal battle. I?m also not a big fan of Einhorn?s motivation, which looks to be greed. But the financing of public tech companies is a capitalist undertaking, and he clearly knows the rules.
Einhorn is trying to prevent Apple from democratizing the process of handing out preferred shares, which dilute the ownership stakes of common shareholders. Presumably, Einhorn is guessing that if you let common shareholders have a say in the matter, they?ll vote to spread the wealth around. In other words, they will choose to have Apple dole out cash with dividends paid to all owners of Apple stock, over a proposal that rewards a smaller number of preferred shareholders.
Fighting as hard as Einhorn is to stop Apple from handing out its cash the way CEO Tim Cook and the board want to is a dangerous move for anyone who would also wish for Apple?s long-term success.
Presumably, Einhorn is guessing that if you let common shareholders have a say in the matter, they?ll vote to spread the wealth around.
Einhorn was denied his bolder legal desire, which was to have an even greater say in how Apple hands out dividends.
Cook?s tenure has grown rocky over the past year, as the features of the iPhone 5 underwhelmed a bit ? while the new video technology was a breakthrough for the company, that was about it ? and because Apple?s stock has gotten chopped down to $450 from $700 last summer. Related column by Howard Gold: Four reasons Apple won?t see the $700 mark again.
The company recorded meager profit growth in the fourth quarter, fueling the late-January selloff that triggered Einhorn?s action. See full report on Apple?s first-fiscal-quarter earnings and Mark Hulbert column: Apple?s drop shows price of popularity.
/quotes/zigman/68270/quotes/nls/aapl AAPL 450.81, +4.75, +1.06%Off peak
Apple shares over past year.
Cook and his team don?t need any further distractions, and now they must make an argument to shareholders in favor of the democratization plan he and the board put together.
Einhorn?s becoming worked up about how Apple takes care of income investors ? i.e., those in it for dividends rather than growth ? suggests that he doesn?t see much in the way of capital gains coming from his current stake in the company.
The slowdown in Apple?s growth rate late last year is one piece of evidence ? maybe not a conclusive piece but neither an immaterial one ? that the company has reached a different phase in its life cycle.
If true, Apple would have become more like its fellow tech titans, including Microsoft /quotes/zigman/20493/quotes/nls/msft MSFT +0.98% ?and Cisco Systems /quotes/zigman/20039/quotes/nls/csco CSCO +0.67% , each of which also grew into a market cap that made it the world?s most valuable company ? for a time.
/quotes/zigman/68270/quotes/nls/aapl
US : U.S.: Nasdaq
Volume: 11.58M
Feb. 22, 2013 4:00p
Market Cap$418.88 billion
/quotes/zigman/20493/quotes/nls/msft US : U.S.: Nasdaq
Volume: 30.50M
Feb. 22, 2013 4:00p
Market Cap$230.26 billion
Rev. per Employee$774,085
/quotes/zigman/20039/quotes/nls/csco US : U.S.: Nasdaq
Volume: 19.87M
Feb. 22, 2013 4:00p
Market Cap$110.69 billion
Rev. per Employee$709,074
John Shinal, a former technology editor of MarketWatch, is based in San Francisco.
Source: http://feeds.marketwatch.com/~r/marketwatch/pf/~3/7FHS2K5ZqZw/story.asp
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Saturday, February 23, 2013
London Fashion Week Street Style AW 2013 - Part 2
We're back with our second installment of London Fashion Week Street Style, as we tie up our LFW coverage for another season by showing you some of the stylish people we bumped into during the 5-day event.
On Sunday, our intrepid street style photographer Hannah headed to both Somerset House and the Topshop Show Space at the Tate Modern's incredible Tanks, where she snapped celebs, chic mag editors, super-stylish bloggers, crafty rock royalty and even spotted a bit of Mary Katrantzou for Current Elliott out in the wild.
Click the image above to view the full gallery, or click here to view part one.
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Patriots in Turkey send clear warning to Syria: Germany
KAHRAMANMARAS, Turkey (Reuters) - Germany's defense minister inspected Patriot missile batteries close to the Syria-Turkey border on Saturday and said they delivered a "clear warning" to Damascus that NATO would not tolerate missiles being fired into Turkey.
Thomas de Maiziere and his Dutch counterpart Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert travelled to the Turkish cities of Adana and Kahramanmaras to inspect the batteries provided by their countries at Turkey's request. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was scheduled to visit the same area on Sunday when she begins a two-day visit to Turkey.
The United States has also sent Patriots, which are capable of shooting down hostile missiles in mid-air.
"Our presence here serves to make sure that Syria doesn't turn its capabilities into action," de Maiziere said, while also saying that the risk of attack was "minimal".
"We can see from here that Syria is using rockets - often several times a day."
Syria is believed to have more than 1,000 rockets with a range of up to 700 km, and around 1,000 tons of chemical weapons material.
Turkey is a staunch supporter of the nearly two-year uprising against President Bashar al-Assad and has harbored both Syrian refugees and rebels. Violence has sometimes spilled over the border.
Tensions increased in recent weeks after NATO said it had detected launches of short-range ballistic missiles inside Syria, several of which have landed close to the Turkish border. Turkey has scrambled war planes along the frontier, fanning fears the war could spread and further destabilize the region.
"The Patriot system is strictly for defense, and placing them on our soil within the NATO framework was to protect our people and our soil against possible attack," said Turkish Defence Minister Ismet Yilmaz, travelling with his Dutch and German counterparts.
(Reporting by Sabine Siebold; Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul; Writing by Alexandra Hudson; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/patriots-turkey-send-clear-warning-syria-germany-154704954.html
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Friday, February 22, 2013
In artist's show, creation merges with destruction
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) ? It took Ryan Travis Christian four days to fill the paper sheet stretching 6?-by-30 feet and push-pinned to the white museum wall. Spreading charcoal with a chamois and Latex-gloved hand, he conjured a dreamy cloudscape of reclining, mouthless ghosts, zigzag patterns and disembodied duck heads.
Then, on the fifth day of the two-week installation at the Contemporary Art Museum, he began blacking over his original design. By day's end, it was gone ? swallowed in the undulating coils of a gigantic black and white snake.
"That's how it goes in my studio," the Chicago-based artist said nonchalantly as he stood beside the re-imagined piece. "There's a lot of pieces that I'll work on, become unhappy with, eradicate them, come out with something completely different. It's all very responsive. But yeah. People were nervous about it ? and surprised."
CAM Executive Director Elysia Borowy-Reeder admits she was initially taken aback when she saw Christian's radical new direction. But that's why she gave the 29-year-old artist this show in the first place.
"It's like the biggest blind date, you know?" says Borowy-Reeder, who first began following Christian's career while working at the Art Institute of Chicago. "I always believe in the artist's intent ... You want to fuel that creativity and that freedom."
Christian was a tad nervous himself. After all, the installation is his first museum exhibition.
"That's a really frustrating thing to feel when you're kind of in a high-pressure situation ? which I'd consider this," he says. But it's also exhilarating.
Borowy-Reeder took over CAM Raleigh in May 2011. During a visit to Chicago later that year, she caught Christian's "River Rats" show at the Western Exhibitions gallery and was mesmerized.
"His imagery is inventive. It's memorable," she says. "He has all this new text ... He juxtaposes it against older cartoons from the Dust Bowl era. He has this nice tension between what's old and what's new."
And that is why she gave him free rein in the museum's "emerging artist" gallery, housed on the lower level of this converted downtown warehouse.
Christian, who studied graphic design and painting at Northern Illinois University, says his "all-time biggest inspiration and favorite artist all around" is Ub Iwerks, the Oscar-winning Disney animator who created Mickey Mouse. Christian adapted the sinister, phantom-like figures that populate many of his recent works from the late cartoonist's famous dancing ghosts.
"I just love them, how they're adorable, but they're menacing," Christian says of the characters, which vaguely resemble condoms.
Christian, who normally works in graphite, also integrates '80s pop patterns and video game imagery into his pieces.
He says his works are "a metaphysical diary, plugged in through, like, a throwback cartoon language and patterns. And it's slowly changing always."
In the finished work, the snake stretches in an accordion pattern across the entire wall as a bug-eyed frowny face, grinning banana and one of his ghost heads pop from the black background. In addition to charcoal, Christian used spray paint, car finish and gesso ? a mixture of white paint, chalk and gypsum.
Christian calls the piece "You Had to Be Here."
The show opened Friday and will run through June 17.
Christian has done several other large-scale works, but they were drawn right on the walls. This is the first that won't be erased when the show is over.
"After the exhibition, it will get rolled up in a massive tube and, who knows after that?" he says. "I may rework it again, as I'm prone to do."
___
Online:
CAM Raleigh http://camraleigh.org/
Western Exhibitions http://westernexhibitions.com/christian/
___
A. Breed is a national writer, based in Raleigh, N.C. He can be reached at features(at)ap.org. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/(hash)!/AllenGBreed
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/artists-show-creation-merges-destruction-135508879.html
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Hotel guests used water with dead body in it
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- British tourist Michael Baugh and his wife said water had only trickled for days as they brushed their teeth, showered and drank from the taps at the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, but they could not have imagined the disturbing reason.
The body of a Canadian woman was later discovered at the bottom of one of four cisterns on the roof of the historic hotel near Skid Row. The tanks provide water for hotel taps and would have been used by guests for washing and drinking.
"The moment we found out, we felt a bit sick to the stomach, quite literally," Baugh said.
Los Angeles County Department of Public Health officials were expected to release the results of tests on the water on Thursday.
When the body was discovered on Tuesday, they issued a do-not-drink order while a lab analyzes the water, said Terrance Powell, a director coordinating the department's response. The disclosure contradicts a previous police statement that the water had been deemed safe.
Powell said the water was also used for cooking in the hotel; a coffee shop in the hotel would remain closed and has been instructed to sanitize its food equipment before reopening.
"Our biggest concern is going to be fecal contamination because of the body in the water," Powell said. He said the likelihood of contamination is "minimal" given the large amount of water the body was found in, but the department is being extra cautious.
Powell said the hotel hired a water treatment specialist after the department required it to do so to disinfect its plumbing lines.
A call to the hotel was not returned.
The remains of Elisa Lam, 21, were found by a maintenance worker at the 600-room hotel that charges $65 a night after guests complained about the low water pressure.
Police detectives were working to determine if her death was the result of foul play or an accident.
LAPD Sgt. Rudy Lopez called it suspicious and said a coroner's investigation will determine Lam's cause of death.
Before she died, hotel surveillance footage showed Lam inside an elevator pushing buttons and sticking her head out the doors, looking in both directions. She was later found in the water tank.
Lam, of Vancouver, British Columbia, traveled alone to Los Angeles on Jan. 26 and was last seen five days later by workers at the hotel.
Lopez said the hotel has four cisterns on its roof that are each about 10 feet tall, 4.5 feet wide and hold at least 1,000 gallons of water pumped up from city pipes.
Lam's body was found Tuesday morning at the bottom of one cistern that was about three-quarters full of water, Lopez said.
The opening at the top of the cistern is too small to accommodate firefighters and equipment, so they had to cut a hole in the storage tank to recover Lam's body.
The cisterns are on a platform at least 10 feet above the roof.
To get to the tanks, someone would have to go to the top floor then take a staircase with a locked door and emergency alarm preventing roof access.
Another ladder would have to be taken to the platform and a person would have to climb the side of the tank.
Lopez said there are no security cameras on the roof.
Lam intended to travel to Santa Cruz, about 350 miles north of Los Angeles. Officials said she tended to use public transportation and had been in touch with her family daily until she disappeared.
The Cecil Hotel was built in the 1920s and refurbished several years ago. The hotel is on Main Street in a part of downtown where efforts at gentrification often conflicts with homelessness and crime. It had once been the occasional home of infamous serial killers such as Richard Ramirez, known as the Night Stalker, and Austrian prison author Jack Unterweger, who was convicted of murdering nine prostitutes in Europe and the U.S., the Los Angeles Times reported.
By noon Wednesday, the Cecil Hotel had relocated 27 rooms used by guests to another hotel, but 11 rooms remained filled, Powell said. Those who chose to remain in the hotel were required to sign a waiver in which they acknowledged being informed of the health risks and were being provided bottled water, Powell said.
Baugh and his wife, who were on their first trip to the U.S., had planned to go to SeaWorld on Wednesday. Instead, they were trying to find a new hotel. Their tour agency placed them in another downtown hotel with a less than sterling reputation, from what they heard.
"We're just going from one dodgy place to another," Baugh said, resigned, "but at least there's water."
___
Tami Abdollah can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/latams. Shaya Tayefe Mohajer contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/water-tested-body-found-la-133817325.html
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Video: Al competes in South Beach barbecue cook-off
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Source: http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/50903497/
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Thursday, February 21, 2013
Google to sell Internet glasses to contest winners
Google co-rounder Sergey Brin wears Google Glass glasses at an announcement for the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences at Genentech Hall on UCSF?s Mission Bay campus in San Francisco, Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Google co-rounder Sergey Brin wears Google Glass glasses at an announcement for the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences at Genentech Hall on UCSF?s Mission Bay campus in San Francisco, Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Google co-rounder Sergey Brin, left, wears Google Glass glasses at an announcement for the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences at Genentech Hall on UCSF?s Mission Bay campus in San Francisco, Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2013. Google is giving more people a chance to pay $1,500 for a pair of the Internet-connected glasses that the company is touting as the next breakthrough in mobile computing. The product, dubbed "Google Glass," will be offered to "bold, creative individuals" selected as part of a contest announced Wednesday. Participants must live in the U.S. and submit an application of up to 50 words explaining what they would do with the Google Glass technology. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Google is giving more people a chance to pay $1,500 for a pair of the Internet-connected glasses that the company is touting as the next breakthrough in mobile computing.
The product, dubbed "Google Glass," will be offered to "bold, creative individuals" selected as part of a contest announced Wednesday. Participants must live in the U.S. and submit an application of up to 50 words explaining what they would do with the Google Glass technology. Entries must include the hash tag "ifihadglass" and be submitted through Google Plus or Twitter by next Wednesday. Google did not say how many glasses it will sell this way.
Winners will receive the "Explorer" version of Google Glass, a forerunner of the product that is expected to be released to the mass market next year. Google Inc. already sold an unspecified number of the glasses to computer programmers who also paid $1,500 apiece at a company conference last June.
The people picked to buy this next batch of glasses will be notified in mid- to late March. They will have to travel to New York, Los Angeles or the San Francisco Bay area to pick them up.
Google Glass is supposed to perform many of the same tasks as smartphones, except the spectacles respond to voice commands instead of fingers touching a display screen. The glasses include a tiny display screen attached to a rim above the right eye and run on Google's Android operating system for mobile devices.
Because no hands are required to operate them, Google Glass is supposed to make it easier for people to take pictures or record video wherever they might be or whatever they might be doing. Online searches also can be more easily conducted by just telling Google Glass to look up a specific piece of information. Google's Android system already has a voice search function on smartphones and tablet computers.
In the latest demonstration of the product's potential, Google posted a video showing people wearing the glasses while skydiving, riding a rollercoaster, skiing, riding a horse and even swinging on a trapeze. The company, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., also posted photos of the glasses in five different colors: charcoal, tangerine, shale, cotton and sky blue.
To gauge how people might use its glasses, Google is encouraging entrants in its contest to include up to five photos and 15 seconds of video with their applications. The company doesn't want to see any nudity or violence. "Basically, don't add anything you wouldn't be OK with your Mom seeing," Google advised.
Google Glass is at the forefront of a new wave of technology known as "wearable computing."
When he demonstrated the glasses at last June's company conference, Google co-founder Sergey Brin acknowledged the company was still working out bugs and trying to figure out how to extend the product's battery life. Brin has been overseeing the work on Google Glass, which the company first began developing in 2010 as part of a secretive company division now known as Google X.
Now that Google Glass is no longer a secret, Brin is often seen wearing the product in public. He sported a pair of the glasses during a Wednesday appearance at an event announcing the creation of a $3 million annual prize for outstanding achievements in medicine and biology. Brin, who owns Google stock currently worth nearly $20 billion, is helping to fund the annual awards.
Brin has said the mass-market version of Google Glass will cost less than $1,500, but more than a smartphone.
___
Online:
How to apply: http://www.google.com/glass/start/how-to-get-one/
Video of Google Glass in action: http://www.google.com/glass/start/how-it-feels
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Doctors list overused medical treatments
WASHINGTON ? Nearly 100 medical procedures, tests and therapies are overused and often unnecessary, a coalition of leading medical societies says in a new report aimed at improving healthcare and controlling runaway costs.
The medical interventions ? including early caesarean deliveries, CT scans for head injuries in children and annual Pap tests for middle-aged women ? may be necessary in some cases, the physician groups said. But often they are not beneficial and may even cause harm.
"We are very concerned about the rapidly escalating cost of healthcare," said Dr. Bruce Sigsbee, president of the American Academy of Neurology, which was among the 17 medical groups contributing to the list of procedures. "This is not healthy for the country, and something has to be done."
Development of the list, which was organized by the American Board of Internal Medicine's ABIM Foundation, is a minor milestone in efforts to enlist physicians to rein in unnecessary services, a leading cause of the skyrocketing healthcare tab.
In 2011, the ABIM Foundation published a similar list of procedures submitted by nine other medical societies as part of its Choosing Wisely campaign.
The United States spends more than $2.5 trillion a year on healthcare, or more than $8,000 per person. That is 21/2 times as much as the average spent by other industrialized nations, according to data collected by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, whose members include the richest nations.
Studies show that the high cost of U.S. healthcare is driven in large part by prices. American hospitals and doctors charge much more than their international counterparts.
But U.S. physicians also perform many more tests and elective procedures. For example, American doctors order nearly twice as many CT and MRI exams as doctors in other industrialized countries do. They perform more knee replacements and deliver more babies by caesarean section.
Some of this extra care may result in better outcomes. The U.S. has some of the highest cancer survival rates in the world, for instance.
But America lags far behind other industrialized countries in caring for children with asthma and adults with chronic bronchitis and emphysema, among other illnesses.
A growing number of experts have concluded that much medical care in the U.S. is wasteful and even dangerous for patients. A 2012 report from the independent Institute of Medicine estimated total waste in the system at 30%, or $750 billion a year.
"Millions of Americans are increasingly realizing that when it comes to healthcare, more is not necessarily better," said Dr. Christine K. Cassel, president of the ABIM Foundation.
For example, despite the popularity of early caesareans, there is growing evidence that babies born before 39 weeks' gestation have higher risks of learning disabilities and even death.
Whether, or how quickly, the initiative to curb unnecessary procedures will yield results remains unclear.
Persuading doctors to be more conservative can be difficult, said Dr. Lowell E. Schnipper, an oncologist at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and chairman of a national task force on controlling the cost of cancer care. "These diseases can be fatal," Schnipper said. "The stakes are high. And families very often push the doctor, who wants to take care of the patient as best he or she can."
Recent warnings from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that screenings for breast and prostate cancers often do more harm than good drew huge backlashes from patient advocates. Similarly, the Obama administration's efforts to raise awareness about unnecessary medical care and to improve data on best medical practices as part of the 2010 healthcare law prompted many Republicans to characterize the ideas as rationing.
But Dr. Manoj Jain, a leading health quality advocate in Memphis, Tenn., said more aggressive efforts may be needed to reduce wasteful and dangerous medical practices.
Like many experts, Jain advocates more evaluation of physicians and new ways to pay for healthcare that reward better outcomes and higher efficiency instead of the current fee-for-service system, which pays doctors for every procedure they do.
"If we really are going to bend the cost curve, we have to get really serious," Jain said.
Among the medical societies that identified overused procedures prescribed by their members were the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the Society of Thoracic Surgeons.
The ABIM Foundation effort also drew support from leading consumer and business groups, including Consumer Reports, the AARP and the National Business Group on Health.
noam.levey@latimes.com
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Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood still operates secretively
CAIRO (AP) ? Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi speaks publicly of firsthand knowledge of a meeting where opponents allegedly plotted against him.
A few months earlier, the most powerful man in his Muslim Brotherhood group, Khairat el-Shater, says he has access to recordings of former military rulers and electoral officials engineering his disqualification from last year's presidential race.
In Egypt, those statements are seen by security officials, former members of the Islamist group and independent media as strong hints that the Brotherhood might be running its own intelligence-gathering network outside of government security agencies and official channels.
Such concerns dovetail the Brotherhood, which has a long history of operating clandestinely, to suspicion that it remains a shadowy group with operations that may overlap with the normal functions of a state.
Brotherhood supporters also demonstrated militia-like capabilities at anti-Morsi protests in December.
Another oft-heard charge comes from the Foreign Ministry, where officials complain that the president relies more on trusted Brotherhood advisers than those inside the ministry in formulating foreign policy.
The Brotherhood emerged from Egypt's 2011 uprising as the country's dominant political group and Morsi was elected president in June of last year as the group's candidate.
The motive for setting up parallel operations could be rooted in the fact that many government bodies, such as security agencies and the judiciary, are still dominated by appointees of the ousted regime of longtime authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak or anti-Islamists with long-held suspicions of the Brotherhood.
The perception that such agencies are hostile to the country's new Islamist leaders lends their rule an embattled aspect despite a string of electoral victories.
"The problem with the Brotherhood is that they came to power but are still dealing with the nation as they did when they were in the opposition," said Abdel-Jalil el-Sharnoubi, former editor-in-chief of the group's website who left the Brotherhood in May 2011.
"Because they cannot trust the state, they have created their own," he added.
The notion of a state within a state has precedents elsewhere in the Arab world. In Lebanon, the Iranian-backed Shiite Hezbollah is the de facto government in much of the south and east of the country and has its own army and telephone network.
To a lesser extent, followers of Iraq's anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr are de facto administrators of Shiite districts in Baghdad and in parts of the mostly Shiite south.
In Egypt, the situation reflects a chasm that has emerged since the uprising over the nation's future. In one camp is the Brotherhood, their Islamist allies and a fairly large segment of the population that is conservative and passively inclined toward the ideas of Islam as a way of life.
Arrayed against them is a bloc of comparable size that includes not only those who served under Mubarak in the state and security structures but also moderate Muslims, liberals, secularists, women and Christians who account for about 10 percent of the population.
The Brotherhood denies that any of its activities are illegal or amount to a state within a state.
"The Brotherhood is targeted by a defamation campaign, but will always protect its reputation and these immoral battles will never change that," said spokesman Ahmed Aref, alluding to claims that the group was running a parallel state.
"There is still an elite in Egypt that remains captive to Mubarak's own view of the Brotherhood," he added.
For most of the 85 years since its inception, the Brotherhood operated secretively as an outlawed group, working underground and often repressed by governments.
But even after its political success, the group is still suspected of secretive operations.
The Brotherhood counters that it has legitimacy on its side, having consistently won at the ballot box since Mubarak's ouster. And they accuse the opposition of conspiring with former regime members in an attempt to overthrow a democratically elected administration.
The two most powerful Brotherhood figures, wealthy businessman el-Shater and spiritual leader Mohamed Badie, are seen by many in Egypt as the real source of power ? wielding massive influence over Morsi and his government.
El-Shater, according to the former Brotherhood members and security officials, is suspected of running an information gathering operation capable of eavesdropping on telephones and email.
He was the Brotherhood's first choice for presidential candidate in last year's election but was disqualified over a Mubarak-era conviction.
Following his disqualification, he publicly said last summer that he had access to recordings of telephone conversations between members of the election commission and the military council that ruled Egypt for nearly 17 months after Mubarak's ouster.
The conversations, he claimed, were to engineer throwing him out of the race. He did not say how he knew of the contacts or their contents.
Again in December, he suggested that he had access to information gathered clandestinely.
Addressing Islamists in a televised meeting, he said he has "detected from various sources" that there were meetings of people allegedly plotting to destabilize Morsi's rule.
He did not identify the alleged plotters nor say how he had learned of the meetings.
A spokesman for the Brotherhood's political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, said at the time when asked for comment that it was to be expected from a group as big as the Brotherhood to have its own "resources." That was taken as virtual confirmation of a parallel intelligence gathering operation.
Morsi was also seen as suggesting that the Brotherhood was spying on critics when he spoke to supporters outside his presidential palace in November. He said he had firsthand knowledge of what transpired in a meeting of several of his critics.
"They think that they can hide away from me," he said.
The words of El-Shater and Morsi were taken as strong hints that the Brotherhood has its own intelligence gathering operation. But in a country fed on a steady diet of conspiracy theories, no hard evidence has come to light, only suspicion and talk.
A former Brotherhood member, Mohammed el-Gebbah, claimed the group had six "mini intelligence centers," including one housed in its headquarters in the Cairo district of Moqqatam.
He did not provide evidence to back his claim and another Brotherhood spokesman, Murad Ali, denied that the group has such capability.
In an off-the-cuff remark, Brotherhood stalwart Essam el-Aryan said last October that Morsi's presidential palace secretly records all "incoming and outgoing communications." The president's spokesman swiftly denied it.
But it only fed the notion of a Brotherhood parallel intelligence gathering operation with Morsi's support and cooperation.
Another concern that has arisen is whether the Brotherhood might be running its own militias outside of government security agencies.
That fear arose from a wave of mass protests that turned violent in December. Protesters for and against Morsi faced off over decrees, since rescinded, that gave the president near absolute powers.
In early December, the Brotherhood posted a "general alert" on its official Facebook page and the next day, groups of armed Brotherhood supporters attacked opposition protesters staging a sit-in outside Morsi's palace.
Thousands of Morsi supporters and opponents poured into the area and street fighting continued well into the night.
Video clips later posted on social networks showed Brotherhood supporters stripping and torturing protesters in makeshift "detention centers" set up just outside the palace gates, partly to extract confessions that they were on the opposition's payroll.
On-camera testimonies by victims to rights groups spoke of police and palace workers standing by and watching as they were being abused by Brotherhood supporters.
At least 10 people were killed and 700 injured in the clashes on Dec. 5.
The next morning, groups of Morsi supporters staged military-style drills in residential areas near the palace.
Ali, the group's spokesman, denied the existence of any kind of militias.
"We have no military or non-military formations. None whatsoever," he said.
Aref, the other spokesman, disputed the version of events outside Morsi's palace on Dec. 5, saying 11 of the group's supporters were killed by thugs and nearly 1,500 injured, including 132 who were shot.
"The facts of that day were turned upside down to mislead public opinion and the victims became the culprit," he said.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egypts-brotherhood-still-operates-secretively-062411823.html
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Wednesday, February 20, 2013
News Summary: Average credit card debt falls in 4Q
HOLIDAY HANGOVER: Credit reporting agency TransUnion says ramped-up holiday season spending likely kept many Americans from making timely payments on their credit cards in the last three months of 2012.
HIGHER DELINQUENCY RATE: The rate of U.S. credit card payments at least 90 days overdue jumped to 0.85 percent in the fourth quarter from 0.78 percent a year earlier and increased versus the third quarter, when it was 0.75 percent.
SMALLER BALANCES: Average credit card debt per borrower was $5,122. That's down 1.6 percent from the fourth quarter of 2011, but up 2.5 percent from the July-September quarter.
Source: http://www.theolympian.com/2013/02/19/2429743/news-summary-average-credit-card.html
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