Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/154971713?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Monday, October 31, 2011
Michael Lohan denied bail in Florida
Closed captioning of: Michael Lohan: Arrested 12 hours after release
>> hasn't been a really good month for the loaf hans. michael lohan , the father faced charges on domestic violence. not 12 hours from being released from that incident, he was arrested again, this time for contacting that girl friend . sadly new mug shots for him and lindsay. lindsay performed a pop song about ongoing struggles and strange relationship with her father. daughter and dad are now five for five, five each in their shug shot collections. back after this. credit
Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45101546/ns/today-entertainment/
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Find Yourself Some Great Deals This Weekend [Weekendhacker]
We all like saving money, so why pay full price for something when you can almost always get a better deal? This weekend, we're brushing up on the tips, tricks, and tools you can use to save yourself some money, online and off.
Photo remixed from an original by sdc2027.
How to Bargain Hunt Online
Obviously, one of the first places you'll probably look for something is on the internet?after all, why get out of your chair if you don't have to? The internet's full of different places to shop, and trying to compare prices can be insane?not to mention hunting for coupons. Luckily, we've got some of our favorite tools to help. We've talked about these on numerous occasions, but it never hurts to have a refresher.
By far the easiest way to compare prices across different sites is a browser extension like previously mentioned InvisibleHand or PriceBlink. As you shop, it will search around the rest of the net and find a better deal for you. PriceBlink will even search for related coupons and rebates, which is pretty handy. Though, you can also find great deals through deal-specific sites like Dealnews or SlickDeals?not to mention you can search for coupons to specific stores through sites like RetailMeNot.
If you're a little more adventurous and don't mind a little impulse spending (or you just need some inspiration for this weekend's restaurant of choice), you can try a deal-of-the-day site instead. If you want a detailed faceoff of these daily deals sites, we've looked into five of them for more specific pros and cons. Couple all these sites with a few well-placed RSS feeds?or even your Twitter account?and you'll always be up on the latest savings. If you'd prefer to keep away from constant temptation in your feeds, you can also search a deal aggregator like Bing Deals instead when it's time to shop.
Buy Used on eBay or Craigslist
While coupons and daily deals are great, sometimes the best deal is in somebody's basement, just waiting to be unearthed and sold for a low price online. Their search engines aren't great, though, so you might want to pump them up with a few tools. Storeslider is a great way to search eBay without all the wasted space (and with nice big thumbnails), while Craiggers is a great Craigslist interface that makes browsing and searching much better than the plain, white interface you're used to. You can even get email alerts for saved Craigslist searches with Notifinder. And, if you want to get a little evil, you can break the seller's confidence to get better deals. Just make sure you don't get scammed, and know what to do in case it happens anyway.
Know When and Where to Buy
While hunting around is always good, it can be helpful to know where you can traditionally find certain things for cheap?and when. We've rounded up the best times to buy anything throughout the year, if you can wait. When it comes to gadgets, it's more dependent on the latest product refreshes, so check a site like Decide to see the price trends in a product, or find out when the latest product refresh was. For example, Apple computers are usually pretty easy to predict?MacRumors even has a simple guide for doing so.
Similarly, even the time of day can matter. You can often save some money on your groceries late in the evening, especially on Wednesdays. If you're looking for thrift store deals, Spring is the best time to go. Check out our list of the best things to buy at popular retailers for more info. And remember, if you're a student (or even if you're not), you can get great discounts through a number of different retailers and companies, not to mention your student union.
Employ These Strategies to Get You the Best Deal Possible
Lastly, while these tools might take you pretty far, sometimes the best thing you can do is learn a bit of shopping strategy. Taking part in the next Woot-Off? We've got a guide to getting the loot you want. Trying to book a hotel? You can actually start a bidding war between two places to get the best price. And, of course, you always have the fine art of haggling?which you can do yourself or employ a friend to do for you. One of the best ways to get a lower price on anything is to just ask. Check out our top 10 tips for talking your way into a better deal, and don't forget the top 10 things you can get for free or cheap either. You might also want to learn how to spot when a sale really isn't a sale, just in case.
Got any of your own tips and strategies for saving money while shopping? Share them with us in the comments.
You can contact Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
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The Greatest Moments In Miami Sports History
The Magic City is no stranger to hosting the biggest and most exciting moments in the world of sports. So before ?Mania invades the MIA, take a look back at the city?s rich history of competition.
Namath?s Guarantee?Jan. 12, 1969
Undeterred by the heavily favored Baltimore Colts, Jets quarterback ?Broadway? Joe Namath famously guaranteed his team would leave Super Bowl III as champions. Namath threw for over 200 yards, and the Jets pulled out a 16-7 win in their first and, to date, only championship.
The Perfect Season?Jan. 14, 1973
The ?72-?73 Miami Dolphins ran roughshod over their opponents, to the tune of a 14-0 regular season. From there, they swept the playoffs, closing out the season with a 14-7 win over the Washington Redskins at Super Bowl VII.
Bad Boys?Jan. 1, 1984
Long before Michigan?s ?Fab Five? revolutionized college basketball, a team of brash, young, racially diverse football players brought a new swagger to the college game. Their wild season culminated in the ?Miracle in Miami,? in which the Hurricanes?who had no All-Americans on their squad? stunned the Nebraska Cornhuskers in the Orange Bowl on New Year?s Day 1984, winning the U?s first National Championship.
The Hail Mary?Nov. 23, 1984
There are some Orange Bowl moments that Miami fans would choose to forget if they could, like the dramatic final seconds of this 1984 matchup between the Hurricanes and the Boston College Eagles. Down 45-41 with six seconds left, Doug Flutie uncorked a 48-yard pass to receiver Gerard Phelan, stunning the ?Canes and securing the Heisman Trophy for the diminutive quarterback.
Marino Sets A Record?Dec. 17, 1984
Dan Marino threw for 340 yards and two touchdowns against the Dallas Cowboys in this season?s final home game. It brought his yearlong passing total to an astounding 5,084 yards?a record that has yet to be eclipsed in more than 27 years.
The U Rolls On?Jan. 1, 1992
On New Year?s Day in 1992, the Hurricanes again met the Nebraska Cornhuskers in the National Championship game, and, once again, the ?Canes were victorious?for the fourth time in eight years. Also on this National Championship-winning squad was a young Dwayne Johnson.
Home Field Advantage?Sept. 3, 1994
The 1994 Miami Hurricanes set a home game record, winning their 58th consecutive matchup at the Orange Bowl, with a 56-0 rout over Georgia Southern University. The streak would end two weeks later, against Washington University, and ultimately be eclipsed by the Boise State Broncos in 2010.
The Marlins Win The Series?Oct. 26, 1997
The Marlins and Indians were tied 2-2 in the bottom of the 11th inning of Game 7 of the 1997 World Series, when Marlins shortstop Edgar Renteria lined a single over Charles Nagy?s head to score Craig Counsell and give the Marlins the walk-off win. It was the first World Series trophy for the Marlins, who were in their fifth season at the time.
The Return To Dominance?Jan. 3, 2002
Backed by a coterie of future NFL Pro-Bowlers (Jeremy Shockey, Clinton Portis and Ed Reed), the Miami Hurricanes put together an undefeated season. It ultimately set the school back atop college football, as the program won its fifth National Championship.
The Fish Do It Again?Oct. 22, 2003
For the second time, the Marlins got a big walk-off World Series hit from a shortstop, when Alex Gonzalez homered in the bottom of the 12th inning of Game 4 at Pro Player Stadium off Yankees reliever Jeff Weaver. The Marlins went on to close out the series days later at Yankee Stadium.
Rookie Of The Year?June 18, 2006
The Miami Heat won its first NBA Championship in 2006, carried by veterans Shaquille O?Neal and Gary Payton, as well as rookie sensation Dwayne Wade. While the team clinched the title on Dallas?s home turf, it wouldn?t have done so without Wade?s dominating 43-point performance in Game 5?s overtime victory at American Airlines Arena.
Watney Wins Big?March 13, 2011
Down two strokes to fellow American Dustin Johnson entering the final round of the WGC-Cadillac Championship at Doral, golfer Nick Watney shot a 67, including a run of four birdies in five holes, to win his first PGA tournament event, netting the tourney?s $1.4 million prize.
Source: http://www.wwe.com/shows/wrestlemania/28/greatest-moments-in-miami-sports
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Sunday, October 30, 2011
Libyans want back property taken by Gadhafi
TRIPOLI, Libya?? Abdullah Ahmed Belal had all but given up on the sprawling seaside villa his family lost to squatters decades ago because of a provision in Moammar Gadhafi's Green Book saying anybody who lives in the house should own it.
Belal, a 48-year-old naval officer, is one of many Libyans who want their properties back now that the hated dictator is gone.
Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, head of the governing National Transitional Council, has called for such disputes to be settled legally. Belal is willing to be patient, but others have taken matters into their own hands ? a sign of the post-revolutionary fights that threaten to rattle Libya as it transitions from decades of autocratic rule to what its interim leaders say will be democracy.
Armed men have tried to force families out at gunpoint, and neighbors have been caught in the crossfire as they tried to intervene. Even original owners willing to wait have spray painted their names on the concrete walls surrounding the buildings.
"The NTC keeps asking people to postpone trying to get their rights back until a committee is formed and it can be done legally," said Abdullah Belal, a Tripoli contract lawyer and a nephew of Abdullah Ahmed Belal. "They say you've waited 42 years, you can wait another month or two, but some people don't want to wait."
He described one instance in which the original owners came back with machine guns to force a Palestinian family from their home in Souk al-Jumaa, giving them no time to pack more than the belongings they could gather that night.
"We desperately need to get our properties and rights back, but at the same time we don't want anybody to be hurt because in the end the only one to blame is Moammar Gadhafi," the lawyer said.
Quirky manifesto
The question of legality is murky in a country that was governed by the whims of one man for nearly 42 years.
The Green Book, the slain leader's quirky political manifesto that dictated the lives of Libyans, allowed people to occupy empty houses that had been purchased as rentals or vacated by landlords traveling abroad. High rises and other commercial buildings also were taken, often with no compensation.
It may be hard now to prove original ownership because the building holding property records burned down in 1982 under mysterious circumstances, and those who initially confiscated the property often resold it with new documents.
In some cases, gunmen laying claim to homes were not in fact the original owners.
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In 1977, a colonel in Gadhafi's army is said to have seized a house on a side street in Tripoli's affluent Hay al-Andalous neighborhood.
On Sept. 8, nearly 35 years later, a man armed with a machine gun showed up around midnight to reclaim what he said was his.
Witnesses told The Associated Press that neighbors rushed to the scene and tried to calm him down, saying he should wait until the issue could be resolved in a court of law, but the man was drunk and refused to listen. His friend got out of the car and they both opened fire.
One of the neighbors, Tarek Abu Aisha, 38, was shot and killed, and two others were wounded. Bullet holes still pockmark the pavement as well as the iron door of a four-story apartment building across the street.
Seif Saad al-Jarushi, 36-year-old school bus driver who lives down the street, said the gunmen fled as revolutionary forces arrived.
He said the man currently occupying the house took his family away and only comes home at night.
He and other neighbors said they learned that the colonel who seized the house in the late 1970s had sold it to three different people after the uprising against Gadhafi took root in mid-February. The armed man who came to claim it was one of them.
Al-Jarushi said neighbors are ready to fight if the man comes back to try again.
"Even if he has the right, he should not be trying to get his rights this way. He should do it through legal means," he said, swatting away flies during an interview on a corner near the house.
Verifying ownership
The nationalization of businesses and property was one of the most glaring examples of Gadhafi's efforts to force his version of socialism on the desert nation of 6 million people. With the introduction of the property law in the late 1970s, thousands of landlords lost homes when tenants claimed them as their own. People also were allowed to occupy empty buildings.
Apparently sensing public anger over the issue, the regime late last year offered compensation to Libyans who could prove that they had owned confiscated property ? part of purported reforms initiated by Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam.
"This decision should have been taken many years ago," said Mustafa Bushaal, a member of the newly established Libyan Association for Justice and Development, which is discussing various ways to resolve the housing problem. He said the process was fraught with corruption.
Some solutions being floated include giving newly evicted families apartments being built by the government on Tripoli's outskirts or offering them compensation so they can find a new place to live.
Bushaal said the Tripoli city government already has asked claimants to present documentation for their property.
"The first thing is to convince the family that it's not their house, then find alternative housing for the other family," he said.
It is impossible to know just how many homes were confiscated by the Gadhafi regime, which destroyed many of the original documents.
Belal, the naval officer, said his father bought the seaside home in 1975 and eventually gave it to him.
Belal said he allowed a foreign company to rent it when he went abroad to study. When he returned to Libya in 1984 to start a family, he found that squatters had moved in after the company left.
He said the police told him the Green Book had given the family the right to move into the house.
Belal, who currently rents an apartment with his family, says he does not want to kick the family out of his original home until they have somewhere else to go. But he said a legal solution must come very soon.
"There are so many people with similar problems," he said. "The government should move very fast to solve this problem or there will be another civil war."
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/45082061/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/
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Lewis Hamilton accepts the risks of racing (Reuters)
NOIDA (Reuters) ? McLaren's Lewis Hamilton has said he accepts the risk of dying in a Formula One car as he follows his passion for racing to the limit.
On an Indian Grand Prix weekend where the sport is remembering IndyCar racer Dan Wheldon and MotoGP rider Marco Simoncelli, both killed in races in the last two weeks, Hamilton faced his own fears head on.
"Everyone will have (Wheldon and Simoncelli) in their minds," the 2008 world champion told British newspaper reporters ahead of Sunday's race.
"But you have got to do what you do because you love it. It is a sacrifice and a risk that we all take. No one wants to be in those situations but, for me, if I was to pass away, I cannot imagine a better way, personally," said the 26-year-old.
"I have always said if I was going to go, then in a racing car would be the way to do it. It is what I love."
Seven times world champion Michael Schumacher, still racing for Mercedes at the age of 42, told reporters earlier in the week that he took a fatalistic approach to a sport he has been involved in for two decades.
The German said total safety was impossible in any walk of life but pointed out to the huge improvements made in Formula One since the death of triple champion Ayrton Senna in 1994, the sport's last driver fatality in a race.
"If on top something happens, then that's what I would call fate and fate is something that we all have to face sooner or later," said Schumacher.
"I'm certainly very touched by what has happened for both of the drivers that we have lost but unfortunately you have to say that's life."
BIGGEST HAZARD
Many of the drivers will carry tributes to Wheldon and Simoncelli, with the Briton's initials and the Italian's racing number 58 on cars and helmets, but Hamilton hesitated to say their deaths had been down to fate.
"I don't know if I would agree with that," he said.
"My thoughts go out to their (Wheldon's and Simoncelli's) families. I cannot imagine what they are going through. It is the same for (his own late karting mentor) Martin Hines' family and all the people that are passing away at the moment."
Hamilton, who made a sensational debut in Formula One in 2007, has been criticised this season for his aggressive driving and repeated visits to the race stewards for collisions and controversies.
The Briton, who recently split with his American singer girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger, told reporters he was now fully focused on his Formula One career.
"I don't know how you turn a page in life, I don't think there's a textbook way of doing it. I think life is like a puzzle, you've just got to get things in place," Hamilton said after Saturday qualifying.
"Formula One is a massively competitive sport where you have to have clear thoughts, you just have to live and breathe Formula One. There's no room for anything else really.
"So I plan to eliminate everything else in my life outside, obviously not my family or anything like that, that can be a distraction. That's a start."
In a brutal self-assessment, Hamilton said his driving had been his 'biggest hazard' this season.
"I can improve, and that's what I'm working towards for next year, and also staying out of the stewards' office is a very big goal - top of my priorities for next year."
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Patrick Johnston; For Reuters sports blog Left Field go to: http://blogs.reuters.com/sport)
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Smithsonian hosts 'The Black List' portraits in DC (AP)
WASHINGTON ? Whoopi Goldberg, John Legend, Sean Combs and Serena Williams now have a place in the National Portrait Gallery in a show opening Friday, along with other leading black figures who may be lesser known.
"The Black List" features 50 large-scale photographs from Timothy Greenfield-Sanders in a project that also included a 2008 HBO film.
After a conversation with his friend, the writer Toni Morrison, Greenfield-Sanders began thinking of all the successful black figures he knows ? and how so many were unknown. He and collaborator Elvis Mitchell scribbled down 200 names on napkins over lunch.
"I've done the art world, I've done the music world, I've done the porn world, I've done politics ? I've done all these different worlds, and it's all about accomplishment," Greenfield-Sanders, who is white, told The Associated Press. "I thought it would be interesting: As a white guy, could I do this?"
Morrison, whose portrait is in the exhibit, and others encouraged him to pursue the idea.
His theme came from the historical term, "blacklist," referring to a marginalized group. Greenfield-Sanders wanted to turn the phrase into a roll call of distinction to show the broad range of achievements of African Americans.
The project began in 2006 before most people had heard of the man who would become the first black president. Then-Sen. Barack Obama was on Greenfield-Sanders' wish list, but he said his chances of photographing Obama became less and less as the 2008 campaign drew closer.
Between 2007 and 2009, Mitchell and Greenfield-Sanders arranged 50 interviews ranging from Laurence Fishburne and Tyler Perry to businessman Richard Parsons, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Gap fashion designer Patrick Robinson. Beyond celebrities, the project includes influential but lesser-known figures, such as playwright Suzan-Lori Parks and urban environmentalist Majora Carter.
"We knew we needed to have some celebrities," Greenfield-Sanders said. "You sell it by having Fishburne and Chris Rock and the other people that draw them in, and then they learn something from these other people."
After filming interviews with each subject, Greenfield-Sanders asked for a portrait sitting. Some gave him all the time he needed. In the case of music mogul Russell Simmons, he had 45 seconds.
Simmons, later a supporter of the project, was "difficult" at first, Greenfield-Sanders said.
"He had his cell phone in his hands throughout the interview," the photographer said. "I'm not going to mince words here."
The Smithsonian exhibit is the first to feature all 50 portraits and will be open through April 2012. A smaller version of "The Black List" has been shown in New York and Los Angeles. Greenfield-Sanders also created "The Latino List," with a similar concept that is on view now at the Brooklyn Museum.
For the Portrait Gallery, the exhibition brings more diverse faces into a museum that once barred living subjects from its collection. Its bylaws had required that anyone in the permanent collection be dead for at least 10 years.
"It tended to be more of a backward look at history, rather than a forward-looking one," said Ann Shumard, curator of photographs. "With the dropping of that prohibition, it has opened us up to addressing contemporary life and the individuals who are making American history as we speak.
"That's a far more diverse and interesting group perhaps than some of the folks ... in the past."
___
Online:
National Portrait Gallery: http://www.npg.si.edu/
___
Follow Brett Zongker at http://twitter.com/DCArtBeat
Saturday, October 29, 2011
49ers coach Harbaugh is a guy who shakes things up
Reporting from Santa Clara -- Jim Harbaugh is utterly comfortable with himself. This didn't just come to light when he was hired in January as coach of the San Francisco 49ers, or before that when he turned around the Stanford football program. It was obvious during his career as a tough-minded NFL quarterback, and before that at the University of Michigan.
Rewind almost four decades, to when he was a 12-year-old kid who spent his free time hanging around the Wolverines' players, practice field and locker room. He had free run of the place. His dad, Jack, was an assistant at the time under the legendary Bo Schembechler, coaching defensive backs from 1973 to 1979.
"In the room where the coaches dressed, there was a desk in the corner by Bo's locker," Jack recalled. "Bo and I walked in from playing racquetball one day, and Jim was sitting there tipping back his chair and he had his feet up on the desk. And Bo goes, 'Jimmy! You got your feet up on my desk!'
"And Jimmy said, 'Yeah, Bo, I do.' He didn't take his feet off the desk, and he didn't put his chair back on all four legs."
Schembechler paused, stared at the boy, then turned to the father.
"Jack," he said, "there's something about that kid I really like."
Rest assured, the sixth-grader got pulled aside for a talking to. (Said Jack: "I told him, 'Next time, get your damn feet off his desk!'") But the retelling of that family story underscores how the second son of Jack and Jackie Harbaugh unflinchingly does things his way, even if some toes get crunched in the process.
It's really no surprise, then, that Harbaugh didn't rush to apologize two weeks ago after his over-the-top enthusiastic handshake and backslap of Detroit Coach Jim Schwartz. San Francisco had just force-fed the Lions their first loss, on their own field, and the postgame exchange between the head coaches nearly triggered a brawl.
Alienating people doesn't worry Harbaugh, who says his older brother, John, coach of the Baltimore Ravens, is his only friend in the league. There's no debating the formula is working for the 49ers so far. Heading into Sunday's home game against Cleveland, San Francisco is 5-1, with the only loss coming in overtime against Dallas. The 49ers, who haven't made the playoffs since 2002, lost their first five games under Mike Singletary last year on their way to a 6-10 finish, their ninth consecutive non-winning season.
In short, this five-ring franchise ? which last won a Super Bowl at the end of the 1994 season ? has thirsted for success. So there's not a lot of hand-wringing in the 49ers locker room about Harbaugh's unapologetic style.
"Most people might look at it weird, we look at it as a positive," defensive tackle Ricky Jean Francois said of Harbaugh's personality. "He's crazy? Plus. He's comfortable with the way he is? Plus. OK, we've got us a ball coach."
Players say that contrary to his piano-wire-tight public persona, Harbaugh is at his most calm and composed when the pressure is highest, a quality that was obvious during his playing days when he earned the nickname "Captain Comeback," a moniker given before him to Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach.
"He's the most intense head coach I've ever seen and I love it, because he's very smart with it," 49ers tackle Alex Boone said of Harbaugh. "Instead of being intense and crazy, he's intense and gets into the game. He's very dialed in at all times.
"The coaches that are phonies are the ones who when you're down at halftime and they come in and they're yelling at you and screaming. You're like, 'OK, what is you yelling at me going to accomplish? Nothing. Calm down.' When we were playing Philly [and trailed the Eagles, 20-3, after two quarters], he came in at halftime and said, 'Look, we're going to play a little bit better, and we're going to win this game.' And that was it."
After Philadelphia opened the second-half scoring with a field goal, the visiting 49ers scored three unanswered touchdowns to win, 24-23.
San Francisco is getting clutch play from its 11th-ranked defense, but also from running back Frank Gore, the NFC's fifth-leading rusher, and quarterback Alex Smith, the former No. 1 pick many people thought the team would discard after last season.
Smith completed 13 of 17 passes with two touchdowns in the second-half comeback at Philadelphia, and in the victory at Detroit threw the winning six-yard touchdown pass to tight end Delanie Walker on fourth down with just less than two minutes to play.
"What I love about Jim is he's an offensive-minded coach and he knows quarterbacks, and in this town that's three-quarters of the work," said Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young, who won the 1995 Super Bowl with the 49ers. "I really love that he takes chances. He's a bold play-caller, and you just don't see many of those around the league.
"He calls a game to help Alex, and if Alex is playing well everyone is playing well. That's the way Bill [Walsh] used to do it. Anything that looks like Bill Walsh, I'm excited about."
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Could an Apple TV be the next big iProduct?
An Apple TV was very much on the mind of Steve Jobs, according to a new biography.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs "cracked" the secret of the television set, and was actively working on a prototype until his death on October 5. So says Walter Isaacson, the author of a new biography of Jobs.
Skip to next paragraph"I?d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use," Jobs told Isaacson. "It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud. It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it."
Apple has remained mum ? par for the course ? but Bloomberg is reporting that the Apple TV effort will be led by Jeff Robbin, who helped pioneer both the iPod and the iTunes store. So what will the Apple TV look like? Let the speculation begin!
Over at ZDNet, Scott Raymond argues that the "the product," whatever it is, "will likely be an attractive, quality device that will look stunning and be easy to use." Still, as Raymond admits, the road will be a steep for Apple. The market, he notes, is already chock full of inexpensive, high-quality units.
"I?m not saying that Apple should give up on a television product," Raymond writes. "I simply think that they should focus on an expanded product built on the existing Apple TV platform. Make it bigger. Add [recording] capabilities. Put Siri in it. Then allow it to be plugged into a TV of our own choosing. The market for televisions is huge because there are so many different categories that consumers want, based on size, location, affordability, and so forth."
Note that he's not writing about a TV set, but rather a box, much like the Apple TV box that already exists. A full TV set opens a whole new can of worms.
As Peter Pachal of PC World writes today ? headline: "5 big obstacles standing in the way of a real Apple TV" ? the television market isn't exactly like the smartphone market, or the tablet market, which Apple has sounded dominated for the last year. For one, the TV market seems to be shrinking, with Sony and LG posting major losses in the consumer electronics categories.
"The Consumer Electronics Association agrees: its own statistics have seen the overall size of the TV market drop from a peak of 34.8 million units sold in 2009 to a projected 32.6 million in 2012," Pachal writes. "On top of that, prices are in free-fall: In 2007 the average screen sold for $982; this year it's $545. Apple's brand is powerful, but is it strong enough to convince people to pay more for TVs while the market's pressuring everyone else to go cheaper?"
For more tech news, sign up for the weekly BizTech newsletter, which ships every Wednesday.
Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/wFylbIWvNlo/Could-an-Apple-TV-be-the-next-big-iProduct
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9 Ways Top Brands Use Social Media for Better Customer Service (Mashable)
Rohit Bhargava is SVP of global digital strategy at Ogilvy, an award-winning marketing blogger and the best-selling author of Personality Not Included, a book about creating a more human brand. His is currently writing his second book called Likeonomics on how to be more believable. When an irate traveler tweeted about how he had arrived late to The Four Seasons in Palo Alto and been ?bumped? to an inferior room, the hotel saw it immediately and responded, promising to make it up to him. Turns out, the customer spends about 60 nights a year in Palo Alto for work, and promised in his next tweet to spend many of those nights at The Four Seasons.
[More from Mashable: Top 5 Tools to Better Time Your Tweets]
The brand has had several similar stories posted online by delighted customers, and they are exactly the kind of successes that justify the investment in social media for customer service (which, in turn, drives sales).
Oct. 27 was the first day of the Social Media for Customer Care Summit in New York, a gathering of some of the largest brands in the world focused on how social service can be leveraged more effectively. Nearly every brand was struggling with the same three big questions, which became discussion topics and hashtags in their own right:
[More from Mashable: Occupy Wall Street: Who Is Donating to Keep it Afloat? [STATS]]
- How can customer care better integrate with other functions across a company, like marketing? #integration
- How can an organization take the efforts of one or two pioneering individuals and employ it brand-wide? #scaling
- How can social media be used to mitigate negative posts or a brand crisis? #crisis
#Integration
1. Don't allow any one team to own social media. (KLM)
In April 2010, Dutch airline KLM was thrown into the jaws of social media head first thanks to the Icelandic ash cloud that covered Europe and grounded flights across the continent for nearly a week. Moving quickly, KLM earned credit by creating a rebooking tool for Facebook within 24 hours and created a "multi-functional" team across customer service, marketing, PR and operations. For the world's largest airline, this forced integration was just what they needed to build a highly sophisticated view that social media belongs belongs everywhere across the company. When they recently launched 24/7 support on Twitter and Facebook, they did it through a highly engaging ?Live Replies? campaign in which they responded to tweets with a small army of staff in an airplane hanger holding up signs.
2. Go through the experience to really get it. (Telus)
Canadian telecom brand Telus shared an important lesson about walking in someone else's shoes. For them, it meant bringing executives into the real ?down and dirty? conversations that customers were having with service reps on social media channels. As Carol Borghesi, senior vice president of the brand's Customer First initiative candidly shared, Telus was rated high on the Canadian list of companies with the ?worst customer service.? Social media is a key component of how they plan to be the first telecom in Canada to make it off that notorious list.
3. Help your customer service people feel like rock stars. (Zappos)
Of course, no conference about customer service would be complete without a great Zappos story, and Scott Klein and Marlene Kanagusuku from its customer loyalty team certainly delivered. A key thread in their presentation was how every employee is required to take four weeks of customer service training, and they are planning to cash in for the holiday season by bringing everyone from across the company in to man the phones and work with customers directly during that busiest time.
#Scaling
4. Get top-level buy-in through stories and data. (Citi)
unique point of view on how and why social media for customer service is a failure, and how brands can fix it. One of his main points was that you need to combine data with real powerful stories in order to actually make a change. As he shared, ?I?ve never met a CEO who wanted to create a bad customer experience.? Amen.
5. Find your ROI formula to justify your own existence. (Xbox)
Everyone has his own secret strategy for how to answer the big ROI question. But Xbox pulled back the curtain on her relatively simple formula:
Unique customers engaged with Xbox on Twitter x The percent of people who say they would have called instead of tweeting x Average cost per call = $$ saved in call center costs.
It?s not a perfect methodology, but it's all about finding the right lens through which to view data your company cares about.
6. Consider and leverage employees' personal passions. (Best Buy)
No discussion of scaling a social media for customer service effort would be complete without delving into the amazing work of Best Buy and its here.
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Friday, October 28, 2011
Pink Floyd member's son loses jail term appeal (AP)
LONDON ? Appeal court judges on Friday upheld the 16-month jail sentence given to the son of Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour for a violent rampage during student protests last year.
Charlie Gilmour was one of thousands who demonstrated in December against rising university tuition fees and was among a group that broke away from the main demonstration and attacked a convoy carrying Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla. At Gilmour's trial earlier this year, a judge said Gilmour had jumped on the hood of a Jaguar in the royal motorcade and thrown a garbage can at the car.
Gilmour also kicked a store window, stole the leg of a mannequin and was photographed hanging from a Union flag on the Cenotaph, a memorial to British war dead.
The 21-year-old Cambridge University student, who has been in jail since July, pleaded guilty to violent disorder but challenged the length of his sentence.
But three appeals judges said the sentence was neither "manifestly excessive (nor) wrong in principle."
"We do not believe that violence in this context and of the kind displayed by this defendant can normally be met by other than significant sentences of immediate custody even for those of otherwise good character," said one of the three, Anthony Hughes.
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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=643bd83fccede64363aca86a0bdf2a17
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With Viacom?s purchase of Bellator, the future looks bright
Media conglomerate Viacom, the company that owns both Spike TV and MTV, has jumped into the MMA game with the purchase of Bellator Fighting championships. USA Today reports that Viacom now has a majority stake in Bellator, and their fights will start airing on Spike in 2013, moving from MTV2.
Spike had a longtime relationship with the UFC, beginning with "The Ultimate Fighter" in 2005. That will end this December when the 14th season of "The Ultimate Fighter" comes to a close, and the UFC jumps to Fox networks. Spike will have rights to the UFC library until the end of 2012. When that agreement ends, Spike will have Bellator and its tournament-based fights in place.
Bellator began airing preliminary fights on Spike's website earlier this year, and CEO Bjorn Rebney told Cagewriter in a previous interview that he was excited to work with Spike because they already understand MMA.
"We're a great position in that our deal is with MTV networks, so it's that larger corporate umbrella. They control Spike, MTV, MTV2. You never know what the future will bring. The foreseeable future will be what it is, which is MTV2 and Spike.com for the prelims, but Spike is better than anyone in this space. They get it better than anyone."
This is nothing but good news for fans. It ensures that Bellator will be viable for years to come, giving fans more choices for MMA. With the UFC on Fox networks and Bellator with Viacom, there will be a greater volume of fights. Though the move to Spike is more than a year away, it will also give fans the option to watch in HD, a choice that doesn't exist with MTV2.
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Thursday, October 27, 2011
Madoff's wife: We tried suicide after Ponzi arrest (AP)
NEW YORK ? The wife of disgraced Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff says the couple tried to kill themselves after he admitted to his loved ones that he'd stolen billions of dollars in the largest Ponzi scheme in history.
Ruth Madoff, who'll appear on Sunday's episode of CBS' "60 Minutes" in her first interview since her husband's December 2008 arrest, says they had been receiving hate mail and "terrible phone calls" and were distraught.
"I don't know whose idea it was, but we decided to kill ourselves because it was so horrendous what was happening," she says in the interview, according to excerpts released by CBS.
She says it was Christmas Eve, which added to their depression, and she decided: "I just can't go on anymore."
She says the couple took "a bunch of pills" including the insomnia prescription medication Ambien, but they both woke up the next day. She says the decision was "very impulsive" and she's glad they didn't die.
The couple's son Andrew Madoff also will talk about his experience.
Another son, Mark Madoff, hanged himself by a dog leash last year on the anniversary of his father's arrest. Like his parents, he had swallowed a batch of sleeping pills in a failed suicide attempt 14 months earlier, according to his widow's new book, "The End of Normal: A Wife's Anguish, A Widow's New Life."
Bernie Madoff was arrested on Dec. 11, 2008, the morning after his sons notified authorities through an attorney that he had confessed to them that his investment business was a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. He admitted cheating thousands of investors. He pleaded guilty to fraud charges and is serving a 150-year prison sentence in Butner, N.C.
Madoff, who's in his 70s, ran his scheme for at least two decades, using his investment advisory service to cheat individuals, charities, celebrities and institutional investors.
An investigation found Madoff never made any investments, instead using the money from new investors to pay returns to existing clients ? and to finance a lavish lifestyle for his family. Losses have been estimated at around $20 billion, making it the biggest investment fraud in U.S. history.
___
Online:
http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml
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Perry calls for sweeping tax cuts, benefit changes
Republican Presidential candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry speaks at the ISO Poly Films plant, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2011, in Gray Court, S.C. (AP Photo/ Richard Shiro)
Republican Presidential candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry speaks at the ISO Poly Films plant, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2011, in Gray Court, S.C. (AP Photo/ Richard Shiro)
Republican Presidential candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry speaks at the ISO Poly Films plant, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2011, in Gray Court, S.C. (AP Photo/ Richard Shiro)
Republican Presidential candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry speaks at the ISO Poly Films plant, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2011, in Gray Court, S.C. (AP Photo/ Richard Shiro)
Republican Presidential candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry speaks at the ISO Poly Films plant, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2011, in Gray Court, S.C. (AP Photo/ Richard Shiro)
Republican Presidential candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry speaks at the ISO Poly Films plant, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2011, in Gray Court, S.C. (AP Photo/ Richard Shiro)
GRAY COURT, S.C. (AP) ? Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry proposed dramatic tax and spending changes Tuesday, saying he would let Americans choose between a 20 percent flat tax and the current system, allow private Social Security accounts and slash government spending and regulation.
Perry, seeking to regain the momentum he enjoyed in late August, said his plan would significantly spur economic growth. But analysts from the left and right said he would need draconian federal budget cuts to avoid massive deficits.
In a pitch to conservatives, the Texas governor said his "Cut, Balance and Grow" plan was bolder than what his Republican rivals or President Barack Obama would do. His proposal calls for gradually increasing eligibility ages for Social Security and Medicare and for amending the Constitution to require balanced budgets.
"America is under a crushing burden of debt, and the president simply offers larger deficits and the politics of class division," Perry said in South Carolina, whose primary will follow early voting in Iowa and New Hampshire. "Others simply offer microwaved plans with warmed-over reforms based on current ingredients."
After weeks of calling Social Security a "Ponzi scheme," Perry proposed major changes to the program's funding and payouts. Benefits would not change for current and soon-to-be retirees. Eventually, however, the eligibility age would rise, and wealthier people would see reduced benefits.
Younger workers could steer some of their Social Security payroll taxes to private investment accounts, an idea President George W. Bush tried and failed to enact in 2005.
The heart of Perry's plan would reduce or eliminate an array of taxes. He would end taxes on Social Security benefits, estates, dividends and capital gains, which would most help upper-income people. He would lower the corporate income tax rate as well as the personal income tax rate for those who choose his 20 percent flat rate.
The top marginal tax rate on individual income is now 35 percent. It was 70 percent in the 1970s.
Perry's plan would let people exempt $12,500 of their income, plus $12,500 for each dependent, from taxation. He would keep popular deductions, such as those for mortgage interest, state taxes and charity gifts, for families making less than $500,000 a year.
Herman Cain was the first presidential candidate to propose a flat tax this year. He called for a 9 percent income tax rate ? and no deductions for most people ? along with a 9 percent sales tax.
By design, Perry's plan "must lose revenue" for the government, said Kevin Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the right-of-center American Enterprise Institute. To avoid higher deficits, Hassett said, the government would have to slash spending in ways not seen since the steep military drawdown after World War II.
Perry said federal spending is out of hand, and suggested such cuts are feasible. In the past, deep cuts have proven easier to pitch than to enact, no matter which party controls Congress and the White House.
Perry said his proposed deep cuts in tax rates and regulation would spur economic growth and thus generate significant new tax revenues. Economists and politicians have long debated the validity of such claims.
If Americans were allowed to choose between the current system and a 20 percent flat tax, several analysts said, the wealthy would get a big tax cut, and lower-income people would hardly be affected.
The Perry plan "hemorrhages revenue" for the government, said Chuck Marr, an economist at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "It's a massive tax cut for the richest people in the country," he said. But it would not demand higher taxes from middle- and low-income people, who would stick with the current tax code because they fare better under its progressive structure.
Those taxpayers would continue to deal with the complex tax code that Perry criticized Tuesday. They would be unable to file their returns on the postcard he waved before cameras to illustrate a flat tax's simplicity.
"Taxes will be cut across all income groups," Perry said in his 24-minute speech. "The net benefit will be more money in Americans' pockets, with greater investment in the private economy instead of the federal government."
Regarding Medicare, Perry would let Americans receive a payment or a credit for the purchase of health insurance instead of the direct benefits provided through the current program. He would gradually raise the eligibility age, and pay benefits based on people's income levels.
Perry acknowledged that many of his proposals, including the private Social Security accounts, are controversial.
"I am not naive. I know this idea will be attacked," he said. "Opposition to this simple measure is based on a simple supposition: that the people are not smart enough to look out for themselves" and invest their retirement savings prudently.
Currently, Social Security payroll taxes paid by workers go directly to today's retirees, with any surplus used for other government programs. Perry said private investment accounts would generate more money for future retirees.
Obama's campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said Perry's economic plan "would shift a greater share of taxes away from large corporations and the wealthiest onto the backs of the middle class." Some analysts, however, said middle class taxes might be unchanged because the flat tax would be optional.
Perry seemed eager to demonstrate boldness and the ability to present a comprehensive plan on a complex issue. Distracting from his speech, however, were new comments he made questioning whether Obama was born in the United States, a debunked claim kept alive on some conservative Web sites.
In an interview with CNBC, Perry said Monday it was "fun to ? to poke" at the president on the birth certificate issue. "I don't have a clue about where the president ? and what this birth certificate says," Perry said. He was defending an interview he did with Parade magazine, when he said he did not have a "definitive answer" about whether Obama was born in the United States.
Republican strategist Karl Rove, speaking of Perry on Fox News, said, "You associate yourself with a nutty view like that, and you damage yourself."
Perry's policy speech Tuesday sets him to the right of chief rival Mitt Romney, who wants to make less sweeping changes to the tax code. Perry plans to air TV ads in Iowa and has hired a roster of experienced national campaign operatives to help him. Perry's chief adviser on the economic plan is former presidential candidate Steve Forbes, who proposed a 17 percent flat tax when he ran for president in 1996.
Romney released a 59-point jobs plan in early September. Romney would lower rates on corporations and on savings and investment income for middle-class Americans.
In 1996, Romney criticized Forbes' flat tax plan as a "tax cut for fat cats." In the CNBC interview, Perry said if Romney renews that criticism, "he ought to look in the mirror, I guess. I consider him to be a fat cat."
Perry chose South Carolina, where he announced he was running for president, to unveil his economic plan. The first-in-the-South primary is critical to his path to the nomination, though he has fallen in the polls here just as he has dropped nationally.
He also planned a news conference in the state capital, Columbia, and a fundraiser at the home of former South Carolina GOP chairman Katon Dawson, his top South Carolina adviser.
___
Charles Babington reported from Washington.
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Italian government on the brink as EU plan stalls (AP)
MILAN ? The Italian government and a broad European plan to save the euro were both at risk on Tuesday, with Premier Silvio Berlusconi locked in a high-stakes battle with coalition partners to muster support for emergency growth measures demanded by the European Union.
Markets are looking to the EU's grand plan ? promised in time for an EU summit on Wednesday ? for a turnaround in the debt crisis that will avert a potential global recession.
But the plan risked being delayed, yet again, as governments failed to agree on details. Berlusconi's government, meanwhile, showed little sign of meeting the EU's demands for reforms, a prerequisite for the grand plan to go ahead.
The summit of EU leaders, meant to be a confidence-building day, risked going down as another failure in Europe's fight to stem its 2-year-long debt crisis.
EU officials say they will not present their comprehensive plan if Italy doesn't agree to new economic measures they demanded Sunday. But Berlusconi has been unable to get his key ally in parliament, the Northern League, to swallow an increase in the pension age. The Northern League says it will alienate its constituency of workers in the productive north.
Northern League leader Umberto Bossi conceded the government is at risk.
"Let's say the situation is difficult, very dangerous," he told reporters in Rome.
Berlusconi's heir apparent, Justice Minister Angelino Alfano, suggested Berlusconi's party had reached a deal with the Northern League ? but no details were announced and the premier's office remained silent.
"We hope to have identified a point of balance with the League that allows us to give a response to the European Union also on pensions," Alfano said during the taping of an evening talk show, the news agency ANSA reported.
Berlusconi has survived scandals, court cases and dozens of confidence votes, but experts say the economic plan he needs to get approved will be one of the most critical tests yet of his grasp on the country's leadership.
"Berlusconi has an immovable object at home which is Bossi and the Northern League, and an unstoppable force abroad which is the European Union, so he's in a very, very difficult position," said James Walston, a political science professor at American University in Rome.
A Cabinet meeting to draft the emergency growth measures ended Monday evening in silence ? a clear indication of discord within the government majority.
The EU wants Italy to raise its standard pension age from 65 to 67, change the legal system to encourage investment, and pass other reforms to improve growth. All are measures that have been talked about for years in successive governments, but there has been little political will to see through the unpopular decisions.
Bossi has said the Northern League will not support any increase in the pension age.
But it's a move that partners such as Germany view as critical. Germany is raising its pension age to 67 for anyone born after 1964 and Chancellor Angela Merkel will have a hard time explaining to voters at home why Europe's largest economy should be ready to help countries whose workers retire earlier.
A policy impasse this time could cost Berlusconi his power.
The failure of his majority in parliament to pass a routine measure earlier this month shows just how tenuous his hold on power has become. Berlusconi survived with a vote of confidence, but the impression remained that his government is weaker than ever ? and could fall on any test.
Ratings agencies have cited the government's inaction and failure to draft growth measures as reasons for downgrading Italy's growing debt, now euro1.9 trillion ($2.64 trillion), or nearly 120 percent of GDP and the second highest in the eurozone after Greece.
Despite the ratings agencies' lack of faith in Berlusconi, analysts in Italy caution that his ouster could bring months of political deadlock until a new parliament is elected. It would be up to Italian President Giorgio Napolitano to decide to retain Berlusconi in power pending new elections, or install a technical government, which also would require the cooperation of parliament.
"I believe at this moment, a government crisis would be a disaster, because in the next months we have a huge quantity of debt that needs to be refinanced. A government crisis would destroy the market trust," said Francesco Giavazzi, an economist at Milan's Bocconi University.
The outgoing governor of Italy's central bank, Mario Draghi, has already expressed concern that rising borrowing costs are threatening to eat up a chunk of the euro54 billion in austerity measures approved by parliament last month. For weeks, the ECB has been buying up billions in Italian bonds, trying to keep Italy's borrowing costs down.
Italy's fate is crucial to the eurozone because it is the bloc's third-largest economy and would be too expensive to rescue.
To avoid that scenario, the EU is working on a three-part plan ? writing off more of Greece's debt, raising ailing European banks' capital levels so they can deal with those losses on Greek bonds, and boosting the bailout fund's powers.
All three measures need to be agreed together in order to work, but it appeared that agreeing on the Greek writedowns and the bailout fund would take longer than expected.
The 10 EU countries that do not use they euro won't sign off on the move to force banks to raise new capital without the other two parts of the plan in place. They insisted to call off a meeting of finance ministers Wednesday, which was to iron out the technical details of the plan ahead of the leaders' summit later in the day, according to European officials said. The spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were confidential.
Without the finance ministers' meeting, it is likely that the summit's conclusions will remain vague.
The negotiations over easing Greece's debt load center on talks with banks and other private investors to take losses of as much as 60 percent on their Greek bond holdings. Negotiators for the banks, however, have indicated that they will not accept losses of that magnitude.
Forcing losses onto banks could trigger big payouts of credit insurance and cause huge turbulence in global markets, analysts warn.
At the same time, two schemes to give the euro440 billion ($612 billion) European Financial Stability Facility more firepower ? by using it to guarantee bond issues from shaky countries like Italy and Spain and attract private sector capital ? also still lack detail and broad agreement.
____
Gabriele Steinhauser in Brussels and Eugenio Montesano in Rome contributed to this report.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Africans remember Gadhafi as martyr, benefactor
FILE - In this March 19, 2011 file photo, supporters of besieged Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi cheer as they rally in support of him in the city of Bamako, Mali. While Western powers herald the death of Gadhafi, killed Thursday, Oct. 20, 2011, many Africans are mourning a man who poured billions of dollars of foreign investment into desperately poor countries. Gadhafi backed some of the most brutal rebel leaders and dictators on the continent, but tens of thousands are now gathering at mosques built with his money and are remembering him as an anti-colonial martyr, and as an Arab leader who called himself African. (AP Photo/Harouna Traore, File)
FILE - In this March 19, 2011 file photo, supporters of besieged Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi cheer as they rally in support of him in the city of Bamako, Mali. While Western powers herald the death of Gadhafi, killed Thursday, Oct. 20, 2011, many Africans are mourning a man who poured billions of dollars of foreign investment into desperately poor countries. Gadhafi backed some of the most brutal rebel leaders and dictators on the continent, but tens of thousands are now gathering at mosques built with his money and are remembering him as an anti-colonial martyr, and as an Arab leader who called himself African. (AP Photo/Harouna Traore, File)
FILE - In this March 19, 2011 file photo, supporters of beseiged Libya leader Moammar Gadhafi cheer as they rally in support of him in the city of Bamako, Mali. While Western powers herald the death of Gadhafi, killed Thursday, Oct. 20, 2011, many Africans are mourning a man who poured billions of dollars of foreign investment into desperately poor countries. Gadhafi backed some of the most brutal rebel leaders and dictators on the continent, but tens of thousands are now gathering at mosques built with his money and are remembering him as an anti-colonial martyr, and as an Arab leader who called himself African. (AP Photo/Harouna Traore, File)
BAMAKO, Mali (AP) ? Moammar Gadhafi's regime poured tens of billions of dollars into some of Africa's poorest countries. Even when he came to visit, the eccentric Libyan leader won admiration for handing out money to beggars on the streets.
"Other heads of state just drive past here in their limousines. Gadhafi stopped, pushed away his bodyguards and shook our hands," said Cherno Diallo, standing Monday beside hundreds of caged birds he sells near a Libyan-funded hotel. "Gadhafi's death has touched every Malian, every single one of us. We're all upset."
While Western powers heralded Gadhafi's demise, many Africans were gathering at mosques built with Gadhafi's money to mourn the man they consider an anti-imperialist martyr and benefactor.
Critics, though, note this image is at odds with Gadhafi's history of backing some of Africa's most brutal rebel leaders and dictators. Gadhafi sent 600 troops to support Uganda's much-hated Idi Amin in the final throes of his dictatorship.
And Gadhafi-funded rebels supported by former Liberian leader Charles Taylor forcibly recruited children and chopped off limbs of their victims during Sierra Leone's civil war.
"Is Gadhafi's life more important than many thousands of people that have been killed during the war in these two countries?" asked one shopkeeper in the tiny West African country of Gambia, who spoke on condition of anonymity fearing recrimination.
Some analysts estimate that the Gadhafi regime invested more than $150 billion in foreign countries, most of it into impoverished African nations.
"Gadhafi was a true revolutionary who focused on improving the lives of the underdeveloped countries," said Sheik Muthal Bin-Muslim, from the Gadhafi mosque in Sierra Leone's capital that was built with Libyan funds. Muslim worshippers were planning an all-night vigil in honor of the slain Libyan leader.
In Bamako, the capital of the desert nation of Mali, one huge Libyan-funded mosque was built right next door to the U.S. Embassy.
And in Uganda, Gadhafi built a mosque that can host more than 30,000 people. Libyan-funded companies ? everything from mobile phone companies to cookie factories ? are valued at $375 million and employ more than 3,000 people in the small East African country. Schoolchildren and Muslim supporters lined the roads, waving Libyan flags, whenever Gadhafi visited.
"Gadhafi was a godfather to many Ugandans," said Muhammed Kazibala, a head teacher at a Libyan-funded school in the country's capital.
The Libyan leader also built a palace for one of Uganda's traditional kingdoms. It was a fitting donation for a man who traveled to African Union summits dressed in a gold-embroidered green robe, flanked by seven men who said they were the "traditional kings of Africa."
Gadhafi used Libya's oil wealth to help create the AU in 2002, and also served as its rotating chairman. During the revolt against Gadhafi, the AU condemned NATO airstrikes as evidence mounted that his military was massacring civilians.
Gadhafi's influence even extended to Africa's largest economy: The Libyan leader supported the African National Congress when it was fighting racist white rule, and remained close to Nelson Mandela after the anti-apartheid icon became South Africa's first black president.
Current President Jacob Zuma also was one of the most outspoken critics of the NATO airstrikes in Libya, and he told reporters he thought Gadhafi should have been captured and tried, not executed.
The ANC Youth League described Gadhafi as an "anti-imperialist martyr" and a "brave soldier and fighter against the recolonization of the African continent."
For many of Gadhafi's supporters, the military operation to oust him was another example of the Western interference and neocolonialism that he railed against.
F. Mbossa, 52, a school teacher in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, said she was shocked by the "arrogance of the West" in carrying out the NATO airstrikes.
"It's clear that France and the others never truly wanted an independent Africa and that is why they never hesitated to kill all those who advocate for a strong and unified Africa," Mbossa said with tears in her eyes. "But for Africa, Gadhafi remains a martyr."
In Central African Republic, Gadhafi sent troops to support a government confronting coup attempts and an insurgency in 2001. But he also fomented instability. He funded rebel movements that committed some of the worst human rights abuses on the continent, including the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone. Gadhafi also supplied arms, training and finance to rebels in Liberia and Gambia, and invaded Chad from 1980-1989.
Historian Stephen Ellis called Gadhafi's World Revolutionary Headquarters, just outside Benghazi, "the Harvard and Yale of a whole generation of African revolutionaries."
In the 1980s, they included Charles Taylor of Liberia and Foday Sankoh of Sierra Leone, as well as former Congolese President Laurent Kabila.
While Gadhafi won praise from some for not fleeing Libya, others chastised him for failing to see how it all would end.
In Zimbabwe, businessman Daniel Musumba said Gadhafi had been trapped by his own ego.
"For a man who was telling his people they were rats and cockroaches to end up in a drain. Who is the rat now?" he said. "But the rat needed to be captured alive."
___
Larson reported from Johannesburg. Associated Press writers Godfrey Olukya in Kampala, Uganda; Michelle Faul in Johannesburg; Abdoulie John in Banjul, Gambia; Clarence Roy-Macaulay in Freetown, Sierra Leone; Louis Okamba in Libreville, Republic of Congo; and Gillian Gotora in Harare, Zimbabwe contributed to this report.
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