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LOS ANGELES Aloe Blacc raised the spirits of attendees at a pre-Grammy concert that celebrated giving back. The singer, whose album "Lift Your Spirit" is up for best R&B album at this year's ceremony, was among more than a dozen performers Thursday night for "Lean On Me: A Celebration of Music and Philanthropy," the Grammy Foundation's 17th annual legacy concert. Blacc kicked off the event on stage at the historic Wilshire Ebell Theatre with the protest song "We Shall Overcome" and his own "Love is the Answer." He was later backed by Melissa Etheridge on guitar for their soulful take on the Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps." "More than any public speaker, more than any other art form, music has the power to bring us together, to waken our better selves and to set us on some course of action," said Neil Portnow, president and CEO of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. In a tribute to their Farm Aid organization and benefit concert series, John Mellencamp and Willie Nelson performed their tunes "Longest Days," ''We Don't Run" and "On the Road Again." "We're glad to be here tonight, and we wanted to do a song that pretty much personifies the fight that the farmers are going through," Nelson said before launching into "We Don't Run." Erica Campbell, who is nominated for both best gospel album and gospel performance/song for "Help" at Sunday's 57th annual Grammys, joined Robin Thicke for Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground." Thicke also delivered his version of Sting's "Fragile." "When musicians unite for the greater good, inevitably something magical happens," said Scott Goldman, vice president of the Grammy Foundation. "You've seen it here tonight." Other performers included Rozzi Crane, Riley Bria, Lindsey Stirling and Walk the Moon, who was joined by Deborah Cox for the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter." The band Plain White T's filled in for Cyndi Lauper on "True Colors." Goldman said Lauper, who was originally scheduled to perform at the event, couldn't make it because of a family emergency. Etheridge capped off the night with a performance of her Oscar-winning tune "I Need To Wake Up" from the Al Gore documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and a stirring rendition of "Lean On Me." "Do whatever you can for your brothers and sisters, for everyone around you, but start with yourself," said Etheridge. "You can't do good for anyone else until you're good with yourself." ___ Online: http://www.grammyfoundation.org ___ Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang
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When he discovered his newborn son had Down syndrome, a New Zealand man living in Armenia was horrified not by the condition, but by the assumption that he wouldn't want to keep little Leo. When the boy was born, "the doctor came out, he said, 'There's a real problem with your son,'" Samuel Forrest tells ABC. "They took me in to see him and I looked at this guy and I said, 'He's beautiful he's perfect and I'm absolutely keeping him,'" he says. But his Armenian wife told him she would leave him if he didn't agree to put the boy up for adoption, and when he declined, she filed for divorce a week after the boy was born on Jan. 21. "When a baby like this is born here, they will tell you that you don't have to keep them," Forrest says. "My wife had already decided, so all of this was done behind my back." The wife confirmed to ABC that she had a baby with Down syndrome and has left her husband, but she declined to discuss details. Forrest, a freelance business contractor, started a GoFundMe page for help taking Leo to live in New Zealand and has had an overwhelming response, TVNZ reports. With a $60,000 target, he has now raised more than $200,000 and plans to use the extra funds to support programs that help abandoned children in Armenia and families with disabled children. (A woman who asked for a few birthday cards for her son with Down syndrome received truckloads of responses .)
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health
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Marussia's attempts to compete in this year's Formula One world championship have suffered a major setback after their request to use last year's car in 2015 was rejected. The cash-strapped British-based team went into administration and missed the closing three grand prix of 2014 in the United States, Brazil and Abu Dhabi. Marussia are still hoping to come out of administration this month but the decision not to allow them to use last season's car has closed the door on them lining up for the season-opening race in Melbourne on March 15. Their request was turned down by the Formula One Strategy Group meeting in Paris on Thursday. "They wanted to come in with last year's car and it didn't get accepted," F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone told Britain's Independent newspaper on Friday. He added: "It needed all the teams to agree and there were three or four of them that didn't agree." The decision was taken the same day as fellow F1 backmarker Caterham's assets were put up for sale meaning no return for them either in 2015 after they went into administration like Marussia in October. Reports in Britain suggest Marussia are still hoping new owners can be found to get them racing sometime in 2015. Under F1 rules, a team is allowed to miss three races during a season, meaning they could still line up in Bahrain in April.
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BATA, Equatorial Guinea (AP) Africa's football body is under pressure to heavily punish the country that stepped in to save its showpiece tournament after crowd violence marred Equatorial Guinea's exit in the Cup of Nations semifinals. However, the third-place game involving Equatorial Guinea and Congo on Saturday at the same stadium in Malabo where the violence took place on Thursday will still go ahead, the Confederation of African Football said. Equatorial Guinea fans threw rocks, bottles, and other missiles at Ghanaian supporters, players, and officials, causing the semifinal to be stopped for over 30 minutes in the second half with Ghana leading 3-0 and the home team on its way out. Riot police fired tear gas at the angry home crowd, and evacuated Ghana's fans to protect them, and a helicopter hovered low over the stands at Malabo Stadium, trying to restore order. The troubles were highly embarrassing for Africa's top soccer tournament, local organizers, and CAF, all of which were under scrutiny after the tournament's last-minute change of host country. Ghana's football association described the scenes as a ''war zone,'' as its fans came under attack from missiles, forcing some to seek sanctuary on the field behind one of the goals during the game. Ghana players also had to be shielded by riot police when they left the field at halftime as missiles rained down on them. A British reporter posted pictures on social media of large jagged pieces of glass, broken plates, and rocks, which he said he found on the field after the chaos. CAF had already fined Equatorial Guinea's federation $5,000 and warned it to control its fans after crowd trouble in its quarterfinal, a contentious 2-1 win over Tunisia at Bata. CAF spokesman Junior Binyam told The Associated Press on Friday that the third-place game was ''not in danger'' of being called off. But CAF met early Friday and would announce any disciplinary decisions and give details of injuries from the crowd trouble in a statement after lunch local time, Binyam said. He didn't give details of the meeting or any decisions taken by CAF. Some Ghana fans suffered minor injuries in the stadium from being hit by objects, while there were reports that local fans attacked the Ghanaians again when they were leaving the stadium. The African Cup had been running relatively smoothly until Equatorial Guinea's quarterfinal. Morocco conceded its hosting rights because of fears over the spread of Ebola, forcing CAF to approach Equatorial Guinea just two months ahead of kickoff.
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When it comes to Kobe Bryant's wife Vanessa Bryant, we know she's beautiful, that's she's the mother of his two children and that she has a sick shoe collection. But did you know Mrs. Bryant's got game? Kobe is out for the remainder of the season due to an injury, but he's still spending time at the Staples Center with his wife.
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Unlimited vacation doesn't seem to be working for businesses much bigger than startups. For example, Tribune Publishing rescinded its unlimited vacation policy only a week after it was implemented because of employee complaints. The concern? They did not want to stand out as "the do-nothing" who took too many vacation days. Since then, commentators have declared that unlimited vacation is " awkward ," " too much of a good thing ," and " a failure ." And the criticism is valid: why provide this vacation policy if employees aren't going to use it? The Society for Human Resource Management notes that only 1% of companies offer unlimited vacation days. These companies include Netflix, Groupon, Evernote, Hubspot, and my own company, Capterra , an online directory of business software. And, like these other companies, we have seen nothing but success with an unlimited vacation policy. The reason why unlimited vacation isn't working at larger companies is not an inherent problem with unlimited vacation itself it's a problem of culture. Create a culture where high performance is met with high freedom, and an unlimited vacation policy can scale to most major companies. We launched an unlimited vacation policy at the beginning of last year. Before the switch, we offered our employees three weeks paid vacation (which grew to four in their third year) and 10 paid holidays. Our incentive to switch was two-fold: Firstly, we had just bought attendance-tracking software to monitor our employees' vacation days as many growing companies are wont to do. Immediately after implementing the software company-wide, I felt the software's inherently bureaucratic nature clash with Capterra's startup culture . I hit the abort button, and started to think more critically about what we wanted from a vacation policy. Americans are not good at taking vacation. A study from Glassdoor reports that American employees only take 51% of their available time off and 15% take no time off at all. And these statistics are not good for business; studies have shown again and again that vacations are intimately tied to higher productivity, workplace morale, and employee retention. We decided to give our employees the ability to use their best judgment and take as much vacation as they decided they needed, when they needed it. Following in the footsteps of Netflix, we took a leap of faith and implemented the unlimited policy. Our first year was hands-down a success. We require everyone to post their days off in a company-wide GoogleDoc for the primary purposes of planning and communication. People need to know if someone else is taking a day off if they are working on something together. From this information, we could both make sure people are taking time off as well as to see if people were "taking advantage" of it. According to our own data, an employee that's been with the company for a year or more takes an average of 24.5 days off, including holidays, and 0.9 sick days during the year. The holidays that most everybody at the company takes are New Year's, July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving (two days), and Christmas. Half the company takes Memorial Day off. The rest of the federal holidays are taken by about a third to a quarter of employees. In other words, our employees take far fewer sick days than the nation's average ( eight days ) and actually use their vacation time. I couldn't be more thrilled. And our success can be replicated in any industry from tech to hospitality to manufacturing given that the industry isn't schedule-driven (like law, education, and retail). The trick is to strike at the root: company culture. First, establish trust between employees. At Capterra, we don't clock our employees in and out; some employees arrive prior to 7am and others arrive after 10am, but we trust our employees to put in the time to get their work done. By focusing on "great results" as opposed to "face time," Capterra has grown its revenue for each of its 15 years, this past year being our most impressive with over 80% growth. Next, treat your employees like adults. Forcing employees to take vacation or discouraging them from doing so is juvenile at best. I have taken the position that if a policy (like unlimited vacation) applies to me as CEO, it can apply to the whole company. The expectation to be responsible doesn't stop at the C-Suite. Finally, realize that your employees are much more than resources; treat them as such. Allow them the flexibility to dedicate their creative energy to the company. Let them take on new projects to benefit the company and listen when they say they need time to recharge. It may very well be the source of your next major business innovation. Unlimited vacation policies can work for most companies that have a cultural foundation in high freedom and high responsibility. After so many wasted vacation days in this country, your employees deserve the break. We welcome your comments at [email protected] .
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Clean Bandit have hit back at Kasabian for suggesting they don't write their own songs. The 'Rather Be' hitmakers - Grace Chatto, Milan Neil Amin-Smith, Jack Patterson and Luke Patterson - have responded angrily to guitarist Serge Pizzorno who expressed his anger at his band being snubbed for a BRIT award while they're up for the Best British Group prize. Responding to Serge's comment that ''it's an outrage'' as ''Clean Bandit don't even write their own tunes'', Grace said: ''It's so weird and odd. We do write our own music. It's just so funny that he would say that. ''Maybe he just assumed that because we've had this hit with 'Rather Be' it's the sort of pop that has millions of writers behind. But we didn't. I think it was about us being nominated in the best band category. It was a surprise for us - maybe it wasn't a nice surprise for them.'' However, the 28-year-old cellist insists she won't let the 34-year-old musician's insults get her down as she's not a huge fan of he and his bandmates' - Tom Meighan, Christopher Karloff and Christopher Edwards - work. She continued: ''Maybe it's jealousy. I don't really care. I don't know a lot of Kasabian's music. I am into rock music but I don't know their stuff.'' The blonde beauty also insists she and her bandmates will be letting their hair down to celebrate their amazing year if they do take home the gong at the awards ceremony at London's O2 Arena on February 25. She told the Daily Mirror newspaper: ''We'll definitely party. We like to party.''
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It's become fashionable to hate on the upper-middle class; Slate's Reihan Salam made an entire column out of it. We'll never get true "middle-class economics," the theory goes , because the upper-middle class cherishes their federal benefits, and will lash out if anyone tries to take them away. This came to a head over the flameout of President Obama's proposal to end the tax break on 529 college savings accounts, most of which goes to families making over $200,000 a year, and target that money toward lower-income families who need more help with education expenses. Amid an outcry, the White House had to pull back that idea within days. But what about policies to stop those at the very top from robbing the upper-middle class, along with everyone else? There's an imminent fight looming with that profile, over whether financial advisers should be prohibited from cheating their clients when working with over $11 trillion in retirement savings. The Department of Labor is scheduled to advance the "fiduciary rule," which would legally require advisers who offer individual investment advice for a fee to act in their clients' best interest. Right now, they are subject to a lower "suitability" standard, where the broker must reasonably believe the recommendation is suitable for their client. This standard is vague and easily gamed by the industry. The new proposal would be the first update to the rule in 40 years and would finally cover employment-based retirement accounts like 401(k)s, which didn't exist in 1975. The upper-middle class is disproportionately represented in these plans. While 69 percent of households making over $200,000 a year have an Individual Retirement Account (IRA), only 21 percent of households below the median income of $50,000 a year have one, according to a report from the Investment Company Institute. This matches government data on retirement accounts offered at work. The lack of a fiduciary rule for these accounts subjects investors to being ripped off. Under current law, IRA and 401(k) advisers can recommend products in which they have a financial stake, making the whole advisory process more like a racketeering effort . Financial advisers can get back-door payments from the providers of the products they recommend. So they steer savers into high-cost actively managed funds (which perform worse than low-cost passive index funds) and complex, expensive annuities, or recommend rollovers from cheap 401(k) plans into high-fee IRAs. They also create "churn" through constant buying and selling of stocks and funds, earning a new fee on each sale. Essentially, investment advisers prey upon their clients' lack of financial knowledge to reach into their accounts and skim off the top. This self-dealing is routine, as brokerage firms are often organized with the sole purpose of pushing clients into these products. "The situation we have now is a mess," said Marcus Stanley of the coalition Americans for Financial Reform. The White House outlined the true cost to retirement account holders in a leaked memo , showing unusual strength against a Wall Street-led scam. Citing numerous academic studies, Jason Furman and Betsy Stevenson of the Council of Economic Advisers write that investors lose between $8 billion and $17 billion a year in their investment accounts, money siphoned directly into the pockets of advisers, because of excess fees and lower returns. IRA and 401(k) holders can expect to lose 5 percent to 10 percent of their returns over the life of the account, or 1-3 years' worth of retirement withdrawals. Furman and Stevenson point out that the Labor Department rules are actually less stringent than companion rules in other countries, which ban all kickback payments from investment providers and advisory firms and prohibit other conflicts of interest. In facts, experts like the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College believe the government's new rule doesn't go nearly far enough. But this hasn't stopped Wall Street firms from waging a years-long battle to preserve their nice profit center. The Labor Department first proposed the rule in 2010, but pressure from finance lobbyists and their allies in Congress led them to withdraw it . The industry argument was that they would have to shut down unprofitable divisions and deprive millions of savers professional investment advice, basically saying that they cannot help clients unless they're allowed to steal from them. The indomitable Phyllis Borzi , an assistant secretary at the Labor Department, tried to re-submit the rule in 2014, but industry pressure and White House concerns forced a second delay . The date was re-scheduled for this January, and the leaked memo suggests that the White House is finally on board. But last month, trade groups made personal appeals to top presidential advisors Valerie Jarrett and Jeffrey Zients. The rule has not yet been sent to the White House's Office of Management and Budget for administrative review. A call to Labor Department spokesman Mike Trupa was not returned. You can expect Wall Street to employ Congress in this fight as well. In 2013 the House passed a bipartisan bill that would have delayed Labor Department action until the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has overlapping jurisdiction and is seen as more Wall Street-friendly on this issue, wrote its rule first. That bill never made it through the Senate. But with Republican control of both chambers, lobbyists will surely take another run. Orrin Hatch, new chair of the Senate Finance Committee, wants to combine a bill expanding "starter" 401(k) plans for small employers with a provision shifting jurisdiction on the fiduciary rule from Labor to the Treasury Department. Treasury would need to start over, delaying the rule for years and putting it in a venue more susceptible to Wall Street pressure. Treasury would also have to consult with the SEC on the rule under Hatch's legislation. Financial advisers wield significant power in Washington, as the industry delivers plenty of campaign contributions, and local brokers live in practically every district. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, a large trade group, has a letter signed by 183 members of Congress, including 118 Democrats, attacking the Labor Department rule. On the other side, a coalition of union groups and financial reform advocates that supports the Labor Department's rule, called Save Our Retirement , simply doesn't have the resources to compete. Our retirement system is bad enough , even if clean. Plans based on the rise and fall of the stock market, instead of defined-benefit pensions, shift risk to the individual and weaken retirement security. But the idea that people have to tolerate conflicted advice in order to save for their golden years is ludicrous. President Obama wants to expand employer plans to lower-income and part-time workers and allow everyone to save in a stock account, but we don't need a Wall Street solution to the retirement crisis. In a perfect world, the government would significantly expand Social Security , using the tax advantages for IRAs and 401(k) plans to fund a bigger universal payout. At the absolute minimum, we can do something to stop financial managers from pulling money out of the $11 trillion retirement account kitty. The upper-middle class should play a vital role in this fight, since it's largely their money being stolen. But this matters to anyone who wants to experience a dignified retirement someday, and anyone who cares whether the financial sector will be able to hold onto a policy of legalized theft.
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Skift Take: When things go bad, people look to new destinations. We're looking forward to seeing which places take this frown and turn it upside down. Rafat Ali Last month we launched our first ever magazine, " Megatrends Defining Travel in 2015 ", where we identify the global trends in travel in 2015 and beyond, and focus on three emerging key themes: Mobile. Seamless. Experiential. Below is an extract from the one of the trends in the magazine. For many travelers, the world has lost its mystery thanks to globalization of commerce, real- time Instagram uploads, tweets from distant lands, and the access that digital technology gives us to information around the world. Want to see a 360 view of Machu Picchu? There's an app for that. But the world is not as simple as the 1s and 0s of the digital world. Despite the appearances from tourism brochures and websites, travel doesn't exist in a vacuum. Armed conflict, economic uncertainty, labor unrest, and political turmoil can turn a sunny paradise or historic site into a no-go zone in moments. On the flip side, once off-limits destinations can turn into overnight tourism hotspots, as we've seen in Myanmar. In 2013, the Arab Spring shut off tourism in a number of north African states, from Tunisia to Egypt. While some countries have bounced back (good job, Tunisia) others still struggle amidst political uncertainty (we're looking at you Egypt), while others are constantly on the edge of descending into conflict (we're rooting for you Lebanon). This summer's conflict between Israel and Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip restricted tourism in both Israel and Egypt. Southeast Asian tourism has seen a remaking as Thailand's political battles turned to a military takeover and trampling of human rights and press freedoms for many. And despite the tourism board's attempt at poorly thought-out plans like a plastic surgery competition, or its attempt to sway the world's opinion by hosting impressionable bloggers, it hasn't seen a return to its pre-junta days. China's crackdown on corruption has lead to record losses in luxury destinations such as Las Vegas and Macau, while the focus on more independent travel has aided Japan and other Asian destinations. In South America, Colombia is now considered a safe destination, as opposed to Argentina, where currency woes have led to ridiculous restrictions on outbound travel and a rise in violent crime. Brazil weathered its World Cup this year with relative success and is preparing for the 2016 Olympic games with the wind at its back, despite regular flare-ups by anti-development protests. And don't get the airlines started about Venezuela. Thanks to mass unemployment and Russian aggression, European tourism is suffering Spain to Crimea. Outbound Russian tourism has plummeted, even to places in occupied Ukraine where Russia is paying people to travel. Switzerland is looking to Asia and North America to make up for the missing Europeans that aren't hitting the slopes this winter. If nothing else, Europeans are working on mastering the staycation this year. The continent of Africa was hard hit this fall, thanks to both Ebola and the world's ignorance of geography; no, you won't get Ebola in Namibia. Meanwhile, Kenya's promising tourism sector has been upended by lethal attacks by religious extremists at beach resorts and in shopping malls. It's truly telling that Kigali, Rwanda is seeing more tourism growth than Nairobi. Airlines and hotel brands are not immune to being used as pawns. When InterContinental Hotels opened a property in Lhasa, pro- Tibet protesters disrupted World Travel Market in London and hijacked the event's Twitter hashtag. During this summer's Gaza conflict, airlines such as Delta became a pawn in the pro/anti-Israel campaign when they cancelled flights due to nearby rocket attacks. As much as travel can be about escape, we can't always escape the realities of the world we live in. This is an extract, get this and all the other trends, download the magazine for full trends for 2015. We want to thanks our magazine sponsors Virgin Atlantic , Amadeus and Egencia for making this possible. Download the copy for deeper read. Share it if you like it and think others can benefit from them. DOWNLOAD THE SKIFT 2015 MAGAZINE
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The White House is gearing up for what's likely to be the most headache-inducing tax season yet as the struggling Internal Revenue Service begins enforcing the more than 40 new Affordable Care Act tax provisions. Many are crucial to the success of the health care law. The IRS is responsible for enforcing the individual mandate, which requires everyone to have health coverage or pay a penalty. It's also in charge of the premium tax credit, which is given to people who get federal subsidies under the health care law. These, along with the employer mandate, will be a trial run for the IRS. Will it be prepared to play such a huge role in the implementation of Obamacare? The agency's new responsibilities come just as Congress slashed its budget by $346 million this year. The IRS's budget which is no stranger to cuts is now at about $10.9 billion--$1 billion less than it was five years ago. IRS officials have constantly warned lawmakers that cutting the agency's budget will result in a hellish filing season for taxpayers. IRS Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson estimated that the cuts and staffing reductions mean IRS agents will only be able to answer 43 percent of the calls the agency receives from taxpayers this year, she said in her annual report. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen also warned that the agency will likely face furloughs this year because of the cuts. But on top of its usual responsibilities, the agency will now have to be prepared for its new role policing Obamacare penalties and subsidies. The White House, meanwhile, is asking Congress, to beef up the IRS's budget. In the president's $4 trillion budget proposal for 2016, he requests $13.9 billion for the IRS---roughly $3 billion more than this year in order to help the agency take on its new responsibilities. Related: Why the Cash-Strapped IRS Isn't Ready for Obamacare So, what changes for taxpayers this year? When filing taxes this year, taxpayers will be required to check a box identifying whether or not they have health coverage to comply with the health law's individual mandate. Those filing for exemptions will have to fill out a separate form. There are at least 33 exemptions that people can claim and file for and the IRS will need to verify every single one. Then there are the penalties. People who did not have coverage and do not apply for exemptions will need to pay the penalty which is 1 percent of their annual income or $95 whichever is greater. To pay the penalty, people will need to fill out a form, which identifies when they were without coverage. The penalty will either be added to a person's tax bill, or deducted from their refund. Don't forget about the subsidies. People receiving insurance subsidies for health coverage will also need to fill out new forms and answer questions about their current income, since the amount of subsidies they received this year was determined based off of their 2013 tax return meaning their income could be different. If they made less than before, they may receive a larger subsidy included in this year's tax return, but if their income has increased since they applied and qualified for subsidies, they might end up owing the government money the IRS is in charge of processing all of that. Indeed, there is plenty for the IRS to do, not to mention it's normal enforcement and collections responsibilities. So it's not hard to understand why the agency is begging Congress to increase its budget. At the same time, the GOP-controlled Congress is hesitant to give the agency more money, especially after the agency targeted conservative groups last summer and spent millions on lavish conferences. Still, Koskinen, who was not at the agency during that time, has vowed to get back in Congress's good graces…though it doesn't appear to be happening anytime soon. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: How to Prepare for Obama's Spending Avalanche 5 Stupid Tax Proposals Hidden in Obama's Budget 10 Tax Facts the IRS Doesn't Want You to Know
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Bad news, Madridistas. Sergio Ramos club vice-captain, dominant central defender, red card collector extraordinaire has torn his hamstring and will miss the next six weeks of the season, including, perhaps, two of the toughest games of the La Liga campaign. The injury certainly rules him out for tomorrow's Madrid derby, as well as the forthcoming Champions League round of 16 game against Schalke. It must also make him a doubt for the March 22 visit to Barcelona , as well as Spain's upcoming Euro 2016 qualifier against Ukraine. He should, however, be back in time for any Champions League quarter-final, which will be played in April. It's not quite a disaster for Madrid, since they have the precocious Raphäel Varane in reserve, as talented a replacement as any side could hope for. But as the season approaches a crucial phase, the absence of a onfield leader as experienced as Ramos will be keenly felt.
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All you notice is the sweet chocolatey taste, but what ingredients are you really consuming when you sip on a mug of instant hot chocolate?
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Lee Westwood stayed on track to defend his Malaysian Open title on Friday, topping the leaderboard for a second straight day with a five-under-par 67 in Kuala Lumpur. The Englishman was in a tie for the halfway lead with Spain's Alejandro Canizares, who shot Friday's lowest round in the field, a bogey-free 65. Westwood's first-round co-leader, former Major winner Graeme McDowell, tumbled down the board, however, shooting a one-over 73 including three bogeys and a double at the Kuala Lumpur Golf and Country Club. That left the Northern Irishman six strokes off the pace. But Westwood, who won last year by seven strokes and carded a 66 on day one, posted yet another steady round on a course that seems a perfect match for his game. "I played nicely again and probably only hit one poor shot all day, from the middle of the fairway on the fifth hole," said Westwood, who suffered his sole bogey on that hole. He made amends with six birdies sprinkled across the rest of his card. "But other than that it was very good and I felt very comfortable. It was great to birdie two of the last three and go from one in front to the three in front," he said. Canizares, meanwhile, said he had "fun" posting the day's best score. "I made some great-up-and-downs when I missed a shot, and I'm happy overall. It's a great position to be in and I couldn't ask for any better," he said. Austria's Bernd Wiesberger was in sole third after shooting a 66, with England's Paul Waring and Ireland's Peter Lawrie a shot further back. Thailand's Kiradech Aphibarnrat, who won in 2013, was among those who failed to make the cut, as his second-round 69 was not enough to make up for an 80-stroke debacle the previous day. The $3 million event is co-sanctioned by the Asian and European Tours.
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3 in 4 web users look for health information online
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German engineering giant Siemens AG said Friday that it will cut nearly 8,000 jobs worldwide as part of a global restructuring program that is expected to save the company about one billion euros ($1.15 billion) in operating costs. The company's decision comes as it attempts to simplify regional operations and trim its divisions from 16 to nine, Deutsche Welle reported , citing a company statement. Joe Kaeser, Siemens' CEO, had announced the plan to streamline businesses and divisions in May 2014, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). However, last month, the company declared a 25 percent drop in net profit for the first quarter, citing sluggish oil prices as the main factor. The company currently employees over 300,000 people, about 115,000 of whom are based in Germany. "In a drive to streamline administrative and overhead functions, about 7,800 jobs are to be cut worldwide, including some 3,300 in Germany," the company said, in a statement, according to AFP, adding: "The savings achieved will be invested in innovation, productivity and growth initiatives, a considerable part of which will be in Germany." Last month's results showed that the company's flagship health care and energy generation units suffered the worst losses across divisions, though Kaeser said that most divisions performed according to expectations, Deutsche Welle reported. He also said that he intended to increase profit per share by at least 15 percent. In September 2013, Kaeser had announced 15,000 job cuts in order to save €6 billion ($8.11 billion). In 2011, the company, under Peter Löscher, had announced it would lay off 17,000 people. In November, Siemens ADR agreed to sell off its hearing-aid business to European private equity firm EQT Partners and Germany's Strüngmann family for 2.15 billion euros ($2.69 billion). In September, the company announced it would buy U.S. oil-field equipment maker Dresser-Rand Group Inc for $7.6 billion to improve its oil and gas business in North America. In May, Siemens said it would buy the energy business of Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc for $1.3 billion. However, analysts and experts are now questioning the move as oil prices have fallen to near record-lows, Deutche Welle reported. In Friday trading, the company's stock was down 0.71 percent.
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Carla McGriff, 51, works in one of the fastest-growing fields in the country. As a caregiver for Allied Healthcare in West Hartford, Connecticut, she cooks and cleans for her clients. She feeds them and changes their clothes. She makes $13 an hour. "I love my job. I love being a home caregiver, but the money sucks," McGriff said. "I do a lot, and it's like, this is all you're giving me?" As federal job reports highlight every month, the nation's unemployment rate has dropped considerably since the Great Recession. Standard economic theory holds that, at some point, sinking unemployment will translate into wage gains: When companies have a smaller pool of talent to choose from, they tend to offer more attractive salaries. By the same token, when workers have a sense of job security, they're more likely to ask for a raise. This hasn't happened. In 2014, the average hourly wage rose from $24.17 to $24.57 hour -- a 1.65 percent uptick barely keeping pace with inflation . Over the last four years, average wages have effectively remained the same. Meanwhile, the sectors that have added the most jobs are among the lowest-paying in the nation: retail, administrative and waste services and the personal and home care industry that employs McGriff. Another booming field is food service, where Anquanesha Rodgers found a job. A 23-year-old single mom with aspirations of becoming a licensed practicing nurse, Rodgers has worked at the McDonald's in the Tampa General Hospital for the past three years. As a cashier, she now makes $8.30 an hour -- a slight increase from the $7.25 wage she got when she started. She said the salary for her current position is "maxxed out." "I really don't make anything right now," said Rodgers, who lives with her grandmother and one-year-old baby. "I'm struggling day-to-day to take care of my son." Is the long-promised pay hike ever coming to millions of low-wage workers like Rodgers? One issue, most economists acknowledge, is that the official unemployment rate masks a severe problem in the labor market: Millions of Americans have stopped looking for work and therefore aren't counted as belonging to the labor force. Last fall, the labor force participation rate fell to 62.7 percent -- the lowest it has been since 1978. "We've had enormous amounts of people dropping out of the labor force and I don't think it's plausible to say these people have decided they just don't feel like working," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "Many of them have been looking for quite a long time and haven't found anything, so it's understandable they aren't currently looking for work. But they do want a job." That means the real unemployment rate towers above the official rate. Baker does have some policy recommendations to speed up job growth: Governments could spend more; fixing the trade deficit by lowering the value of the dollar might help too. But overall he sounded a cautiously optimistic note that payroll gains will translate into wage gains -- eventually. "I haven't run any empirical work on this, but I'd want to see the unemployment rate a lot closer to 5 percent, maybe even slightly below, before I would expect to see that we'd get significant wage pressure," said Richard McGahey , an economist at the New School and former economic policy adviser for Sen. Edward Kennedy. Still, deeper problems loom. Shrinking union density has boosted the share of profits going to bosses rather than workers, McGahey said. One recent study estimated the unionization rate hasn't been as low since the 1910s . On top of that, increased reliance on the financial sector has discouraged corporations from investing in job creation. That means there's less of an incentive to hire any workers at all. Richard Wolff, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, said the problem with American wages is even more structural than that. "There has been for the last 40 years, at least, a major relocation of capitalist enterprises out of the United States, and into Latin America, Asia and elsewhere. That's an overarching reality," Wolff said. "The whole outlook of American corporate enterprise has changed. They're just not interested in the American labor force the way they once were. They don't care." McGriff, for her part, feels like she deserves a raise. She wants $15 an hour. "I think the company can pay for it. They're holding back. They pay for a lot of other things, why not that?"
| 3 | 9,715 |
finance
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Preparing for our own death may not be the most fun, but it is important . Since we usually don't know how or when our life will end, it's a good idea to get our personal affairs in order as soon as possible. It turns out there is more to the equation than calculating how much life insurance you need. Some of the seemingly smaller pieces are just as significant specifically, choosing your beneficiary. What's a Beneficiary? A beneficiary is the person (or the entity) you name that will receive any cash payment or benefits upon your death as outlined in your life insurance policy. You can have more than one beneficiary. For example: You can specify that a certain percentage goes to one person and the remainder to another. In addition, it is a good idea to have both a primary beneficiary as well as a contingent beneficiary, in case your primary beneficiary predeceases you. It's important to be very specific when naming your beneficiary by including the person's full name and, if possible, their Social Security number. Why Bother? Many people forget or ignore the very important step on the assumption that if they don't name someone, the benefits will just go to the next of kin. But if you don't name a beneficiary, your insurance proceeds will be doled out according to the beneficiary provision in your policy. This likely means they will pass to your estate and are subject to probate, incurring all of the expenses and delays associated with its settlement. Naming a beneficiary ensures your assets are given to the person you choose. And it makes sure the money is received almost immediately after your death this can help your surviving family members avoid debt when dealing with the high cost of funeral arrangements. Considerations It's important to choose wisely when it comes to life insurance beneficiaries they will be inheriting your benefits. It's a good idea to think about who will be left with funeral costs and those you would like to provide with support. This will most likely be your legal dependents but could include elderly parents, siblings or friends. Remember, if your beneficiary is underage, you may want to set up a trust and designate a trustee who can receive and hold the proceeds on behalf of the minor. It is also important to consider that when you become legally incompetent, you will not be able to name or change your beneficiary. Every state has different regulations regarding insurance, beneficiaries and death benefits. If you need further life insurance education , try researching online or speaking to a local financial adviser or estate attorney for clarification. No matter how or when you tackle the necessary project of life insurance, it's important to be sure you choose beneficiaries carefully. This article originally appeared on Credit.com .
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finance
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How important is one's credit score in a relationship? It's probably not what first attracted you, but it can be pretty important those three-digit numbers can tell you if someone typically manages finances well. And yet asking about it can feel awkward. Awkward or not, the conversation shouldn't wait much past the time a couple decides to make the relationship exclusive, says Tiffany "The Budgetnista" Aliche says and there's actually a way to make a money conversation romantic, or at least not positively unromantic. "You can say something like, 'You know, I'd love for us to be able to go on vacation together how can we start saving?'" Then you can begin to learn about each other's financial lives. A goal to look forward to can make the sharing of financial information a little less uncomfortable. Tiffany also cautions against looking for a certain number when you see your partner's score. "The score is not scary," she said. "It's the behavior that led to it. I don't mind mistakes sometimes it's due to a lack of knowledge. And I've made mistakes." She didn't have to ask her boyfriend about his credit, but she was quick to react when he mentioned that he always had to get co-signers for cars. (Worse, the vehicle he was driving when they met had a loan co-signed by an ex-girlfriend. Tiffany was less than thrilled that he was still tied to his ex.) When she asked why he had needed a co-signer in the first place, he explained that his credit was " not so great ." Puzzled, she asked if they could look at his scores together. (You can get your credit scores for free online .) He was right; his credit was bad a score of 610, usually considered fair or poor. And yet he was, as far as Tiffany could tell, responsible with his money. She wanted to see what was going on, and why his score was so low. What Went Wrong It wasn't as if he hadn't tried to improve his score. He'd gotten a secured credit card because he'd been told that would help him build better credit and he wanted to do that. And with the best of intentions, he had made a giant mistake. With a credit limit of $500, he charged about $495, and then, methodically and incrementally, started paying it off. He had been told that showing you could handle credit would raise his score, and that those on-time payments (and even that big balance) would show he was responsible with money. He was unaware that a high ratio of the amount of credit he used relative to credit limit was actually hurting his score. (Debt usage accounts for roughly 30% of a credit score.) And using virtually all of his available credit was affecting his credit exactly the opposite of how he intended. "It was a mistake," Tiffany says. "But he didn't know." The fix was relatively easy; he paid off the bill and then put a monthly $8 Netflix payment on the card and automated payment. A few months later, he noticed a mysterious $500 deposit in his checking account. It turned out the deposit for his secured card had been returned to him and the issuer had approved him for a new, unsecured card. He had achieved his original goal in getting the card: His credit score had improved to 750. Oh, and that car his ex-girlfriend co-signed for? It's gone now; he saved up and bought a used car instead. Image courtesy Tiffany Aliche This article originally appeared on Credit.com .
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finance
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Willpower. It's something we all have, in varying quantities. It's the essence of our self-control. It allows us to recognize the right decisions to make, and then make them. And it fails -- a lot of the time. Sure, we all agree with Mahatma Gandhi's famous saying, "Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will," but that doesn't mean we maintain that mental toughness the way we would like to 100 percent of the time. And with good reason: According to Roy Baumeister, a renowned psychologist, self-control researcher and co-author of Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength , willpower is a finite resource. We all hit decision overload at some point, and, in our weakened state, allow ourselves to fall back on bad habits we wish we could abandon for good. The type of decision we're facing doesn't matter -- whether it's choosing the healthier food, buying the right birthday gift for a loved one or solving a problem at the office. We only have so much stamina and determination each day to deal, which means we need to focus instead on making the best use of it. Feeling like you're lacking in the self-control department? Here are 10 ways to boost your willpower that won't make you feel like a failure. 1. Learn from your weakest moments. There's a reason you're not supposed to go grocery shopping when you're hungry -- you're giving your self-control an extra energy-zapping test at a time when it's performing at its lowest. It's important to not only recognize the times you lack willpower but also avoid tempting fate during those moments. Notorious for stress eating? Don't stock your work desk with snacks. Refuse to get up before the sun? Don't plan for early-morning exercise. Go with the grain -- not against it. 2. Meditate. Stress and willpower will forever be at odds -- while one initiates the body's "fight or flight" response, the other requires its "pause and plan" mode. Meditation can be one of the quickest, most effective means of calming the body and centering the mind in any place at any time, which is important if you feel your self-control slipping away. Setting aside a few minutes for meditation each day doesn't just reduce stress but boosts willpower as well. 3. Tackle the tough stuff first. Because our daily doses of willpower are limited, Baumeister suggested we address our biggest decisions of the day earlier in the morning when we feel strong and energized rather than in the evening when we are drained and tempted to fall back on unhealthy behaviors. Try working on that big work project over your morning cup of coffee rather than cramming it in at the end of the day (or just procrastinating altogether), or running your most exhausting errands first so it doesn't matter as much if you crave a little down time in the afternoon. This particular piece of advice might seem counterintuitive for night owls, but it's worth giving it a try. 4. Retrain your worst impulses. There's no doubt that emotions often trump logic when it comes to managing willpower, but a new experiment from researchers at Maastricht University in the Netherlands found that we can alter the impulses that go along with our guiltiest of pleasures . Using hard-to-resist chocolate as their delivery system, the researchers had one group of subjects associate pictures of the treat with the phrase "no-go" and the other with the phrase "go." Those in the "no-go" group subsequently ate less chocolate during the taste test after the exercise, where every participant was told they could eat as much as they wanted. So just because many of us associate sweets with overeating now doesn't mean we have to in the future. 5.Think beyond the short-term. One of the best ways to move beyond in-the-moment impulses is ask yourself how your current decision will affect relevant goals down the line. Visualizing that success can often be just the motivation you need to keep your willpower in check. And remember that "down the line" doesn't actually have to be that far away. For example, if you're trying exercise more frequently, focus on how good you will feel after a sweat session rather than the number of pounds you will drop after a few dozen of them. Moving beyond the "I don't want to do this right now" mentality and into the "But it will make me feel so much better" space is critical. 6. Take a nap. Willpower wanes when general energy levels drop, so it's key that you catch enough z's each night to remain sharp and focused for any challenge that arises during the day. If you find yourself really feeling the effects of the midday slump, trade that extra cup of coffee for a nap. "We shouldn't need to be told something so obvious, but cranky toddlers aren't the only ones who resist much needed naps," wrote Baumeister in his book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength . "Adults routinely shortchange themselves on sleep, and the result is less self-control." 7. Allow for (a little) indulgence. Even if your goal is to limit your sugar intake or lose weight, science reveals a correlation between depleted willpower and low blood sugar. One of the best ways to counter both problems is -- you guessed it -- eat something sweet! Researchers at Florida State University found that when their study participants drank a glucose-filled drink before attempting to complete tasks involving willpower, their self-control was not impaired the way it was when they didn't consume the sweet stuff. Just remember: keep the portions reasonable. 8. Exercise your mental muscle. Just like the other muscles in your body, your willpower needs to be worked and challenged in order to grow stronger. Over time persistent willpower converts into automatic habits, so going through the motions of resisting certain impulses can become second nature if you work for it. Push yourself a little bit each day by sticking with a difficult puzzle, trying not to laugh when watching a funny movie or calming the mind during a frustrating commute home. These practices will use up your willpower in the short-term but improve your reserve capacity in the long-term. 9. And then give it a rest. We will all eventually reach those points where our reserve of willpower runs dry, and that's okay. Instead of trying to force it into overdrive, adjust your environment instead. Relocate to the bedroom to end the Netflix binge, stash sweets deep in the pantry and turn off the kitchen lights, and set out your workout clothes for the following morning. These visual signals send the message that there isn't a decision to make after all. And when you can't bring yourself to even make these moves, recruit technology. There are plenty of gadgets out there that force -- ahem, help -- you do what your typically mentally strong self would do. 10. Be nice to yourself. No one is perfect -- we are all going to have our not-so-proud moments and backslide a little on our healthy lifestyle goals, no matter how important they are to us. So rather than beating yourself up about the few times you slipped up, give yourself a little encouraging smile or wink in the mirror for all the times you've gotten it right. That optimism will prove far more constructive in building healthy habits and stronger willpower than scolding will.
| 7 | 9,718 |
health
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Orlando parted ways with the young coach largely because of the team's minimal growth his third season, said Rob Hennigan in a Thursday news conference. Making a coaching change in the middle of the season is something that no professional sports organization wants to do, no matter what the circumstances may be. For the Orlando Magic , however, firing head coach Jacque Vaughn on Thursday proved to a move they had to make, even if it was hard on many involved. After losing their 10th straight to the San Antonio Spurs , the team where Vaughn got his start coaching, the Magic did what was rumored to happen since an ugly loss to the Milwaukee Bucks last week. It seemed like the perfect time to let Vaughn go, even in reality there is no "perfect time" to make a move so large. "We went into the season wanting to see some progress, we wanted to see growth. We just didn't feel like we were seeing the type of growth that we wanted to see, so that led us to this point." Rob Hennigan on firing Jacque Vaughn General manager Rob Hennigan, who joined the team at the same time Vaughn did, said that at a news conference Thursday there really is no ideal time to make a change of this magnitude, but it needed to happen. "You know, as the season progressed we just felt like a change needed to be made and we felt this was a time to do it. Plain and simple," said the young general manager. "I think as we observe the team throughout the season, we were trying to get our hands around the inconstancy that we were seeing on the floor and there were a lot of reasons for that; Jacque's not the only reason for that," said Hennigan. "We're all in this together and we're all responsible for it; I'm responsible more than anyone and I take full responsibility for it." Hennigan, and CEO Alex Martins, also talked about how the team's failure to "turn the corner" had an impact on making the move. "We went into the season wanting to see some progress, we wanted to see growth. We just didn't feel like we were seeing the type of growth that we wanted to see, so that led us to this point," said Hennigan. The third-year general manager called the team's recent stretch a "bump in the road, not a road block," and said that he had total faith that the team would get out of the rut that it's currently in. Hennigan went as far as saying his team was in a situation of someone whose car broke down on the side of the road. With just 30 games left in the season, the Magic need to find something that can help them propel into the offseason, and hopefully into a strong campaign in 2015/16. Hennigan said he felt as though his team needed to "reignite its competitive spirit," over the final nearly two and a half months of the season. "We've got guys on this team that want to compete. We believe in our players, we believe in our players wholeheartedly and I think for the remaining portion of the season, what should be on the top of their mind should be regaining that competitive consistency," he said. "Going out there and just competing, plain and simple, competing, and doing it with a tenacity and a ferocity and a togetherness. If we can start there and create that, and establish that as a staple, then I think we'll continue to make good strides." Replacing Vaughn will be former lead assistant James Borrego , who coached the team during the 2013 Orlando Pro Summer League, and for a portion of one game during the 2012/13 season when Vaughn earned an ejection for picking up two technical fouls. Rumors have swirled that the Magic could be looking to bring in a coach who has more experience for the remainder of the season, with the likes of Scott Skiles and Mark Jackson being two of the hot names. While Hennigan wouldn't fully commit to Borrego -- he said the team would "take it day-by-day"-- he said multiple times that "JB is our coach." "We're supporting JB, our players are supporting JB. We'll continue to evaluate the team and how we're doing on a daily basis like we always have and I'm not going to get into any specifics into a coaching situation other than the fact that JB is our coach and that's how we'll move forward." A very emotional Borrego said that it was a tough day, and thanked Vaughn for everything he did for him. "I want to thank Jacque Vaughn for the opportunity he gave me. He could've chosen any assistant out there as his lead assistant and he chose me. We grew together, we fought together, we sweated together, and we bonded, you know it's a hard day. I'm gonna miss him on a daily basis. I learned under him, he was a mentor, he was a friend, and that friendship will last, that's not going away. But, I love that guy and will continue," said the Magic's new coach. Even though the team as a whole might not be in the position developmentally that it would like, management feels as though its young guys will continue to get better thanks in large part to their great work ethics. "I think our players continue to get better, and that's a function of their work ethic, that's a function of their desire to want to get better and that's a function of our ability to develop them over the last couple of years and I think we want to continue to build on that. We have hungry guys, guys who want to get better, who love the game, and those are great qualities to have. So, the goal is to just continue to build on that and and not be satisfied, continue to want more, continue to strive for excellence and strive to be great and that's the goal and I know our players carry that mindset." The fact that firing Vaughn made sense didn't make the decision easy on anyone involved. Both Hennigan and Martins thanked Vaughn for everything he did for the organization, both on and off the court. They raved about how great of a man Vaughn is, how much of a pleasure it was to work with him, and wished him the best in his future endeavors. With Vaughn out of the picture, the team can no focus on the remainder of the season, with hopes of building something that can make them a dangerous team moving forward. They have a lot of work to do, but, under the guidance of Borrego on the sideline, and Hennigan in the front office, the Magic hope to be making noise for all the right reasons very, very soon. Keep up with all of our Magic coverage Twitter Follow on Twitter Facebook Like on Facebook check Check out all of our Magic content
| 1 | 9,719 |
sports
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BEAVER CREEK, Colo. Bode Miller's world championships are now over. His career? On hold for the moment. Miller underwent surgery to fix a torn right hamstring tendon when his ski appeared to slice him after a gruesome crash in a super-G race Thursday. The injury is supposed to sideline the 37-year-old for at least two months. Might be longer. Maybe even for good. The six-time Olympic medalist was on the fence about a return to ski racing next season long before the crash. He had back surgery in November and his aim was to return in time for worlds. He did. But in his first race this season, he wiped out. A bad wipeout, too. Miller's not the kind to return to the World Cup scene simply for a farewell tour or anything. That's not his style. "If this is it, then I'll talk to my wife and make a plan," Miller said last month after squeezing in some training at Beaver Creek to test his back. "If my body feels good, maybe I keep skiing? "I've had a remarkable run and put my body through so much. To expect it to come back again and not run into the same things you see 21-, 22-year-old kids running into? I'm not delusional. "It's a risk." On the course, he's all about risks. And for the first half of his race Thursday, he was vintage Miller. "Bode was skiing outstanding," U.S. men's coach Sasha Rearick said. "He was going for it." Then Miller's left arm hooked a gate, sending him spiraling out of control. Both of his skis popped off and he rolled head-over-ski-boots down the hill. After coming to a stop, he slowly got up, gathered his skis, clicked back in and finished his run, even with a deep gash on his leg. He waved to the crowd, perhaps one final nod to the fans who've always rooted for him because of his gambler's mentality. "Bode is an exciting racer to watch," teammate Ted Ligety said. "He knew he had to put it on the limit in order to get on the podium today. " This is the second straight world championships in which the Americans have lost a big name. Two years ago at worlds in Austria, Lindsey Vonn tore ligaments in her right knee after a crash. She missed the 2014 Sochi Olympics following a second knee operation, but was able to return to the slopes this season and recently broke the all-time women's record for most World Cup wins. There may not be a comeback quite like that in Miller's future, though with him, anything is possible. Here are things to know heading into a women's downhill race Friday, with Vonn of nearby Vail the crowd favorite: MOVING TRIBUTE: Before the super-G on Thursday, there was a moment of silence for two U.S. Ski Team prospects killed in an avalanche in Austria last month. There were green-painted signs honoring Ronnie Berlack, 20, and Bryce Astle, 19, saying, "Ski in Peace." The tributes touched Berlack's father. "Bryce and Ronnie were two bright stars and sometimes the bright stars leave the night sky first," Steve Berlack said. "That's just sadly what happened here." Sam Morse, a good of Ronnie Berlack, was one of the forerunners for the race and skied with "RB" and "BA" stickers on his helmet and with his friends on his mind. REICHELT'S COURSE: Hannes Reichelt of Austria loves this hill. His first-ever World Cup win was a super-G race at Beaver Creek in 2005. He won another super-G event here in December and now a world title Thursday. "I said, 'OK, you have to repeat the success of December,'" Reichelt said. "To repeat something is so difficult." JANSRUD UPDATE: Much like Miller, Norway's Kjetil Jansrud banged his arm on a gate. He didn't fall, but the mistake cost him time as he finished tied for fourth. He also hurt his shoulder, but the Norwegian team said the Olympic super-G champion in Sochi should be OK for the downhill Saturday. COOL BREEZE: While wind was a factor in the women's super-G earlier this week blowing several skiers off track, including Vonn the forecast is calling for minimal gusts at the time of the downhill race. Anna Fenninger of Austria proved aerodynamic in winning the super-G. She will be a favorite Friday, along with Vonn, Lara Gut of Switzerland and Tina Maze of Slovenia. MAKING FRIENDS: Maze had a fast training run Thursday, finding the right line. Her secret? "Finally, I became friends with this slope," said Maze, who tied Dominique Gisin of Switzerland for the Olympic downhill gold medal in Sochi.
| 1 | 9,720 |
sports
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Britain's budget chain Poundland on Friday snapped up rival group 99p Stores for £55 million ($84 million, 74 million euros) in a deal underlining the nation's booming discount retail sector. The group, which floated on the London stock market last year, announced in a statement that it has agreed to buy the family-owned 99p Stores chain in a cash-and-shares deal. Poundland, which charges one pound per item, operates a network of almost 600 stores across Britain and Ireland with an estimated five million customers per week. Rival chain 99p Stores, which sells items at 99 pence each, has 251 branches and around two million weekly customers. "This is a good deal for both businesses and will benefit customers and shareholders," said Poundland chief executive Jim McCarthy in the statement. "Through working together, Poundland will improve choice, value and service for 99p Stores' customers, bringing Poundland's proven know-how and range to 99p Stores. "We also believe that we can improve the performance of the 99p Stores estate and generate further value for Poundland's shareholders." Poundland will pay £47.5 million in cash plus £7.5 million in new shares, while the deal will be partly funded by a share placing but remains subject to regulatory approval. Discount chains boomed in Britain during the economic downturn, as consumers tightened their belts to save cash, and remain popular.
| 3 | 9,721 |
finance
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Conversations about affordable housing are often dominated with the question of how to get lower-income residents in expensive cities like New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco (and their surrounding areas) safe, affordable places to live. That makes sense: Often urban hubs are a good bet for jobs and economic vitality, but they're also prohibitively expensive for many creating well-known housing problems. But cities aren't the only places that are lacking when it comes to adequate housing at affordable prices. In rural America, it's both prices and the terrible condition of existing homes that are problematic. Few people think about rural communities not only when it comes to housing issues, but at all. It's mostly a numbers game. According to data from the Housing Assistance Council (HAC), in 2012 only about 21 percent of Americans lived in rural areas, which means that not many people outside those areas or about 80 percent of Americans probably feel much association with rural issues. And that can make it difficult to shed light on the problems that happen there. Making the case to divert funds and attention to parts of the country that house a mere 20 percent of the total population can be an uphill battle, especially in difficult economic times. It can be hard to understand how finding affordable housing could be an issue in areas where housing is substantially cheaper than it would be in the nearest city or suburb. But the fact of the matter is, despite lower costs of living, income for many in rural areas is also significantly lower thanks to limited economic opportunities and struggling industries, like coal. "When we are looking at areas that are most challenged economically we're also finding some of the most challenging housing conditions," says David Dangler, the director of Rural Initiatives at NeighborWorks America, an organization that advocates for affordable housing and acts as a network for nonprofit housing groups. Poverty is high in rural areas, with about 17.2 percent of rural residents living below the poverty line in 2012 versus 14.9 percent nationwide, according to 2012 data from the HAC. "Much of the affordable-housing stock in rural housing areas is old and in need of repair. Many of the people who live there don't have the resources that they need in order to keep the houses in good repair," says Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low-Income Housing Coalition. For example, take Lynne Bouknight, who moved back to her childhood home in Elk Creek, Virginia, after her mother moved away for a job. When she was younger, Bouknight says that her father was able to take care of the upkeep of the place a two-story, grey brick house tinkering with things and fixing them as they broke. But by the time she was living in it, the house built in 1949 by her grandfather began to show its age. "The water went first," Bouknight remembers. At first it wasn't so bad she says, she was in good health then, and she could haul water inside after the pump broke, and pick up kindling and timber from her property to make fires on her wood-burning stove. "I could build a fire in about a minute. The colder it is the faster I could build one," she said chuckling. She had a friend who'd swing by to help her with small maintenance issues and she could visit neighbors and friends for showers and laundry. But then things took a turn for the worse. The wind began to tear away at the roof, and rip tin off the house. And some of the windows started to give way, too. Her friend, who would help her out with household maintenance, was killed in a hate crime she said. And Bouknight had a stroke. "As the house came apart, my health deteriorated with the house," she said tearfully. With the extensive damage, it was easy for the elements to take even more of a toll on the property. Bouknight found herself relegated to a small section of her home living upstairs in her childhood bedroom the one place where it was dry and where the roof remained in tact. She tried to get help from the USDA, the group that is largely responsible for administering housing aid to rural communities, but they said they couldn't do anything to help her rehab her property, she said. Then help came from somewhere else. A woman who worked for a human-service organization called HOPE Inc., agreed to take a look at her situation to see if they might be able to assist. "One day she came out to the house, I wasn't at home. She looked around and I suppose her heart was touched. She couldn't believe someone could live in those conditions," Bouknight said. With the help of HOPE Inc., which provides housing aid and support for those living in rural areas, Bouknight's home was salvaged and she received access to what many might consider basic necessities, like running water. The help came just in time, too. Bouknight says with her depleted health, there's no way she could have carried on with the house in the state it was prior to the intervention. Bouknight's hardships might sound extreme, but dangerous or unhealthy housing conditions aren't an anomaly in many rural areas. Residents who aren't able to save their homes, or find new homes that they can afford are often forced to double up with family members, or they become homeless, says Crowley. "It's not visible because people aren't on the streets: They're living in cars and they're living in campgrounds." According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, on average there are 14 homeless individuals per every 10,000 people in rural areas versus 29 homeless people per every 10,000 in urban areas. When it comes to creating new homes, interest is often thin and those that do opt in, face many unique hurdles. "Developers can't count on any kind of municipal infrastructure to help them," says Dangler. When it comes to building, things that are often taken for granted in more urban areas, like water, sewers, and even access to quality roads, aren't guaranteed, which can make building a quality house much more challenging." Aid is somewhat sparse too, for both building and rehabilitating properties. "There's a handful of programs that serve people in rural communities. They tend to be much smaller in scale in terms of the amount of money than the HUD programs. They also tend to be lost in the bureaucracy," says Crowley. That's particularly problematic because "rural areas have been traditionally more dependent upon public subsidies and publicly-funded programs than their urban counterparts," according to Dangler. "There can be a disproportionate pain in rural areas as we attempt to right our financial books by cutting back on federal-housing programs." And in fact, funds for rural housing provided by the USDA via the 502 Direct Loan program one of the government-aid programs for purchasing or rehabilitating homes in rural areas, cited by several people as a resource for very-low-income residents have decreased over the past few years, dropping from about $2.1 billion in 2010 to around $828 million in 2013.* Some still say that there isn't enough money, and some even point to the current administration specifically. Jim King, the president of Fahe, a nonprofit housing organization that serves Appalachia, says that the problem is more indicative of the lower prioritization of rural issues overall than it is about one administration in particular. "In light of all the other issues, this is just one that lays further down for almost everybody," says King. And finding funds from other agencies for rural projects can be difficult and highly competitive, he says, leaving rural residents in a tough spot. That may be why many rural communities are taking the task of rural revitalization into their own hands with the help of rural-focused nonprofits that help provide everything from advocacy to actual loans. More work done by these groups is cropping up all over the country: In Appalachia Knox Housing Partners built an affordable senior-housing complex. And NeighborWorks of West Vermont successfully helped rehab hundreds of homes for increased energy efficiency, a cause that's particularly important for low-income, rural residents. Some nonprofits are also leveraging what they call sweat-equity, which calls for community members to actively participate in the manual labor of creating and repairing not only their own homes, but the homes of those who live around them as well decreasing the financial burden of building while, hopefully, forging strong community ties. Rural housing advocates are also urging residents to consider a type of middle ground between homeownership and renting manufactured housing. These, prefabricated homes, commonly referred to as trailer homes, are smaller than traditional homes, but offer most of the amenities of a house at a lower price. Rural areas typically have a higher rate of homeownership than the national average, about 72 percent versus 66 percent in 2012, according to HAC. And the desire to own, rather than rent is a hard one to shake, especially when few rental properties exist in these communities. "Because there's such a lack of rental housing, manufactured housing in some aspects fills that void. That is a foot in both worlds," says Lance George, director of research at HAC. That is, if people can manage to get over the stigma once associated with these properties. Many housing experts agreed that often the case for investing in rural housing on a large scale feels like a difficult one to make. In a way, it seems counterintuitive: funneling money into communities where population numbers are stagnant, if not declining, as more young residents head to cities and suburbs in search of jobs. And some wonder: Why don't others just leave, too? But some residents don't have the means, and others feel tied to their homes, communities, and lifestyles. Many are also older. The population of rural America is aging more rapidly than the nation as a whole, thanks in part to the exodus of young people. That means rural residents are less likely to pick up and move, but they will also require updated homes, facilities, and new infrastructure that can allow them to live safely and access services, like hospitals, which they will probably use more frequently as they age. Rural housing advocates admit that the task of revitalizing rural communities isn't a small or simple one. But that doesn't mean that organizations should shy away, give up, or turn a blind eye says King. "The stakes are very high in rural places if we don't figure some stuff out. People and places shouldn't be disposable."
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1) Wenger's goalkeeping hierarchy When Brendan Rodgers dropped Simon Mignolet earlier this season, and when Manuel Pellegrini dropped Joe Hart last season, both goalkeepers were told in no uncertain terms that their performances had not been acceptable and they needed to smarten up if they ever wanted to get back into the team, even if, in Mignolet's case, that meant playing Brad Jones instead. Both eventually came back stronger. Arsène Wenger, publicly at least, has taken a different approach with Wojciech Szczesny, dropping the Pole while simultaneously reassuring him that he remains the club's No1. It is a curious method for two reasons: firstly, because Szczesny, perhaps like Jack Wilshere , comes across as guy who could do with a more forceful warning to refocus, and secondly because David Ospina has been flawless in the last month, spreading clam and keeping clean sheets in each of the four games that he has played. In Szczesny's only appearance during that spell, Arsenal conceded two at Brighton. There is no obvious reason for Wenger to pick his "No1" for the north London derby, nor, indeed, to keep referring to Szczesny by that title. 2) The return of Tottenham's midfield linchpin Spurs have lost only one of their last six matches against Arsenal that was at the Emirates back in September 2013 when, according to one report, the winning goal was scored by NBC news anchor Brian Williams. Their chances of enjoying a positive result this time are enhanced by the return from the Africa Cup of Nations of Nabil Bentaleb. The Algerian had quietly become the linchpin of Tottenham's midfield prior to his departure, binding the team with toughness and astute passing. Spurs missed him while he was gone, with his absence, rather than genetic perverseness in Spurs' make-up, being chief among the reasons why they lost at Crystal Palace immediately after trouncing Chelsea. Spurs enjoyed a strong win at West Bromwich Albion last week but it is unlikely that any of Mousa Dembélé, Ryan Mason, Benjamin Stambouli or Étienne Capoue have done enough in the last eight matches to convince Mauricio Pochettino not to put Bentaleb straight back into the starting line-up. 3) A royal rumble between Leicester and Palace at the King Power Purple dildos may have been kept in check this year but transfer deadline day remains an undignified farce in much of the media and the colour yellow has been irredeemably tainted. That shame notwithstanding, Crystal Palace fans had reasons to cheer their club's dealings over the last month and Alan Pardew now has a decent array of options as he takes his team for a vital showdown at the King Power Stadium. For a start, the arrival of Pape Souaré means the manager can now deploy a left-back who is genuinely comfortable in that position and perhaps return Joel Ward to the right. Lee Chung-yong could also be used at left-back or further forward and has enough ability to suggest his £1.5m capture from Bolton could turn out to be a bargain. The prospects of Pardew wringing more out of Jordon Mutch than Harry Redknapp managed to during the midfielder's mysterious stint at QPR seem good, and Wilfried Zaha's confidence can only be high after he made his loan move from Manchester United permanent. Add in Yaya Sanogo and Shola Ameobi, or at least the fact that Mile Jedinak is back from international action, and Palace will travel with optimism this weekend. And not just because they are going to Leicester. Nigel Pearson's team have only won one of their last eight matches at home and scored just three goals in that time. Mind you, they did encouraging business themselves in January, and Andrej Kramaric and the returning Riyad Mahrez should increase their goal threat. Both teams, then, will fancy their chances of gaining three points from a clash that promises to be intense. 4) The Merseyside derby Brendan Rodgers keeps pointing out that his sides are always stronger in the second half of the season than in the first. But to continue that trend Liverpool are going to have to navigate their way through a busier end of term than they have ever experienced under the Northern Irishman. Last season they were not in Europe and exited the League Cup early doors; the year before that they also suffered an early League Cup elimination and were gone from the FA Cup after the fourth round. This season Liverpool reached the League Cup semi-final, losing only after two gruelling duels with Chelsea, and they hope to go far in the Europa League and FA Cup as well as complete their recovery in the Premier League by finishing in the top four, which would be a fine achievement after their appalling start. There is little sign of Rodgers prioritising any of those aims over the others at the moment and it will be interesting to see if Liverpool can continue improving until the end of the season as they compete on three fronts. Everton will be keen to make Rodgers regret fielding a nearly full-strength side in the FA Cup at Bolton just three days before the Merseyside derby. 5) West Ham to test Manchester United It is often said that getting good results when not playing well is the sign of a good team. But, of course, it could also be the sign of a jammy team whose luck will eventually run out. Sooner or later, then, we are going to find out which applies to Manchester United: either Louis van Gaal is going to mould them into a fluent unit or they are going to tumble down the table. This weekend's match at Upton Park could serve as a useful indicator. As it happens, injuries to West Ham players could either help the visitors or complicate things for them: the possible absence of most of West Ham's first-choice defenders would be an obvious boon, but the absence of Andy Carroll might not because it means that Sam Allardyce will likely revert to the scheme that served him so well earlier in the campaign, with Diafra Sakho and Enner Valencia paired together up front and Stewart Downing roaming free in front of a formidable midfield triumvirate. West Ham gave United a serious scare at Old Trafford in September once they recovered from a timid start, and they should be more fearsome at home. 6) Things to get worse for QPR before they get better? Harry Redknapp seemed frustrated by the lack of incoming players, but does the manager's departure mean that, actually, Queens Park Rangers had a decent transfer window? No definitive answer to that can be given until we find out how the new permanent manager does and whoever it is , they have been left with quite the salvage mission even if Rangers' points tally is not disastrous but there is good reason to believe that the team could benefit from a new approach. QPR need not be quite as bad as they have looked at times this season (and not just away) and the new regime might, for instance, find a more varied way of serving Charlie Austin than continually launching long balls for Bobby Zamora to flick on to him. The new man might pluck some gems from the youth team - caretaker Chris Ramsey's first act this was to promote the youngsters Darnell Furlong and Brandon Comley to train with the first team. The new man might find a way to get Eduardo Vargas to show his undoubted talent in more advanced positions rather than as a midfield scrambler. He might inspire the players in a way that reduces the number of basic mistakes they make. He might rehabilitate Adel Taarabt or even Shaun Wright-Phillips, or coax consistency from Junior Hoilett and Matt Phillips or persuade Mauro Zárate that he can be useful as more than a symbol of puzzling management. You would not want to be staking your savings on any of those things happening, but the odds look slightly better now than they did under Redknapp. But Southampton should still be strong favourites to get back on track after last week's defeat by Swansea, especially as Morgan Schneiderlin and Victor Wanyama look set to return. 7) Manchester City's captain needs to regain his dependability Vincent Kompany has been generally below par since way before he suffered an injury that kept him out for most of December and January. And he has looked wobbly in the two matches he has played since returning to action. Admittedly those were difficult assignments to be thrust straight back into against Arsenal and Chelsea but he will have no excuse if he struggles this weekend against blunt and beleaguered Hull, even if he did goof against the same opponents when getting sent off at the KC Stadium last season. 8) Rare Joy at Villa Park for someone Pos Team P GD Pts 16 Aston Villa 23 -19 22 17 Burnley 23 -17 20 18 Hull 23 -13 19 19 QPR 23 -18 19 20 Leicester 23 -16 17 José Mourinho has never managed a team to victory at Villa Park, whereas historians claim that Paul Lambert has. The Portuguese will surely be confident of ending that strange record this weekend even if Diego Costa and Cesc Fàbregas are still unavailable . Villa had hinted at an upswing in form before capitulating pitifully at Arsenal last weekend, and Chelsea could unleash new signing Juan Cuadrado , who should prove a welcome addition to the Premier League. Villa, meanwhile, will be no great loss to it if they don't perk up soon. 9) A highly satisfying position One pleasing feature of the Premier League season so far has been the emergence of a fleet of high-calibre, relatively low-profile left-backs. While the most expensive young recruits Luke Shaw and Alberto Moreno have not quite taken off yet despite brimming with potential, Ryan Bertrand has thrived and found a new home at Southampton , Andrew Robertson has been one of the few sources of light in Hull's season of gloom, Paul Dummett has excelled at Newcastle, and Aaron Cresswell has adapted seamlessly to the top-flight since joining West Ham from Ipswich Town. And since returning from shoulder injury at the start of this year, Patrick van Aanholt has performed well enough to suggest that Sunderland nabbed a bargain when they bought him from Chelsea last summer for just £1.5m last summer. The Dutchman has been especially effective since Gus Poyet switched to wing-back system. He has defended stoutly and attacked with great energy and incision, suggesting that, at 24, he could be poised to fulfil the potential that seemed stunted until recently. 10) Will Ireland keep answering the call? Stephen Ireland is such an enigmatic, frustrating and talented player that it is amazing he has never been on Newcastle's books. Oh that's right, he was . He spent five months on loan there back in 2011, making two substitute appearances in one of several spells in his career when it has been difficult to understand his lack of influence on the pitch. This weekend he faces Newcastle with a chance to start showing he can be a consistent source of creativity for his team. Stoke and Mark Hughes, a manager who has shown faith in him, need the 28-year-old Irish non-international to deliver in the absence of Bojan Krkic. So far he has done so, playing beautifully after replacing the injured Krkic against Rochdale and then following that up with an excellent performance against QPR last weekend , including a delicious backheel for one of the three goals by Jonathan Walters, who, in return for the assist, offers a perfect example of a player who consistently gets the best out of himself. More on MSN Sport: Premier League weekend preview (MSN) Adebayor 'not a bad egg' (The Independent) Sanchez 'keen to play' derby (Sky Sports)
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From strong leadership to disruptive products, there's a lot of corporate DNA shared by Apple and Tesla. It turns out, however, there's also a lot of actual DNA shared as well. A Bloomberg report on Tesla's hiring practices says the carmaker poaches more employees from Apple than it does from any other company even from competitors in the auto industry. Tesla has reportedly hired at least 150 former Apple employees, including engineers and lawyers. Tesla CEO Elon Musk reportedly steps into the interview process for software developers himself, taking advantage of his background in coding to "geek out" with potential key hires. Tim Cook might have a degree in industrial engineering, but he certainly couldn't go toe-to-toe with Musk on programming. Telsa's ability to attract top coders will be more important as cars get more high-tech These high-performing employees are reportedly attracted by Tesla's status in the automobile industry comparable, they say, to Apple's place in the computing world 15 years ago. But for Telsa (and its rival carmakers) these hires are about more than just recapturing the spirit of '00. As the software that is used to control cars becomes a larger part of their value, car companies that can attract top-flight coding talent will have a massive advantage over competitors. If even Apple is incapable of hiring employees away from Tesla (Musk says the iPhone-maker has gone as far as offering his staff $250,000 signing fees and 60 percent salary increases), then Detroit's finest are unlikely to have much of a chance. And with Telsa's software updates capable of delivering not just new app animations but tangible increases in a car's ability to drive really fast , it's not hard to see why Apple's talent is tempted to jump ship.
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WASHINGTON Steady economic growth and consumer spending likely led U.S. employers to hire at a healthy pace in January and extend last year's solid job gains. Economists have forecast that the economy gained 230,000 jobs in January, according to a survey by FactSet. The unemployment rate is expected to stay at a six-year low of 5.6 percent. The January jobs report will be released at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time. The predicted job gain would mark the 12th straight month above 200,000, the longest such stretch since 1994. And hiring has intensified recently: Job growth has averaged 264,000 a month in the past six months, up from an average of 194,000 during 2013. But faster hiring has yet to lift Americans' wages much. Average hourly earnings rose just 1.7 percent in December compared with 12 months earlier. That was barely ahead of the 1.3 percent increase in inflation, according to the Federal Reserve's preferred measure, which excludes the volatile categories of food and gas. The Fed is closely monitoring wages and other job market data as it considers when to begin raising the short-term interest rate it controls from a record low near zero. The Fed has kept rates at record lows for more than six years to help stimulate growth. Most economists think the central bank will start boosting rates as early as June. There are now nearly 3 million more Americans earning paychecks than there were a year ago. That additional spending money is lifting consumer spending, which drives about 70 percent of economic growth. Still, some analysts note that there are reasons to be cautious about the January data. Though surveys of manufacturing and services firms show that they were hiring last month, they were doing so at a slower pace than in previous months. And the number of people applying for unemployment benefits rose in January after staying at historically low levels since fall. The number of applications typically reflects the pace of layoffs. Applications have since fallen back, suggesting that the increase reflected mainly layoffs of temporary employees who had been hired for the holiday shopping season. Most economists think steady economic growth has encouraged companies to keep hiring. The economy expanded at a 4.8 percent annual rate during spring and summer, the fastest six-month pace in a decade, before slowing to a still-decent 2.6 percent pace in the final three months of 2014. More hiring, along with sharply lower gasoline prices, has boosted Americans' confidence and spending power. Consumer confidence jumped in January to its highest level in a decade, according to a survey by the University of Michigan. And Americans increased their spending during the final three months of last year at the fastest pace in nearly nine years. A more confident, free-spending consumer could lend a spark that's been missing for most of the 5½-year-old economic recovery. Americans have been largely holding the line on spending and trying to shrink their debt loads. Signs that they are poised to spend more have boosted optimism that the economy will expand more than 3 percent this year for the first time in a decade. One sector that has benefited from consumers' increased willingness to spend has been the auto industry. Auto sales jumped 14 percent in January from the previous year, according to Autodata Corp. Last month was the best January for sales in nine years. Purchases of autos, appliances and furniture are helping keep factories busy even as weak economies in Asia and Europe and a stronger dollar have dampened demand for U.S. manufactured goods. A rising dollar makes U.S. goods more expensive overseas. Orders for U.S. factory goods have dropped for five straight months. And exports fell in December, widening the U.S. trade deficit.
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BEIRUT A video of a Jordanian pilot being burned to death was exceptional in its brutality, even for the Islamic State group, and also was a sign that the militants intend to raise the stakes in their propaganda efforts, experts say. It also offered confirmation to the belief that the airman was killed days or weeks before its release. The 22-minute clip that appeared on websites Tuesday was a complex, extravagant work that would have taken a significant amount of time and organization to script, stage, produce and distribute, they said. It also suggested that the demands last week for a prisoner swap for the pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kasaesbeh, were a cynical charade to increase the drama around his killing, because he most likely was already dead. Jordanian state TV had said al-Kasaesbeh, who was flying missions for the U.S.-led campaign of airstrikes, was killed as long ago as Jan. 3, shortly after his F-16 came down in Islamic State-controlled territory in December. "The more gruesome the executions are, the more attention they get," said Brigitte Nacos, a professor of political science at Columbia University. "When President Obama responds to each of their killing videos ... that gives them the feeling of being a powerful political actor that legitimate actors have to deal with," she said. The video featured production techniques used in other clips from the militants. But unlike those that showed beheadings in which the hostages or their killer delivered a message before being killed, the pilot video is longer and involves a story-telling narrative and at least four cameras, along with advanced editing techniques. It bore the logo of the Islamic State group's al-Furqan media service and included footage of Jordan's king committing to the fight against IS and meeting with U.S. officials. The pilot was shown explaining his mission on the day his jet crashed. Finally, he was seen in an outdoor cage as a masked militant ignited a line of fuel leading to it. It also included a list of purported Jordanian pilots wanted by the group. "This is simply the most horrific, disgusting thing I have seen from Islamic State in the last two years. It is shocking," said Shiraz Maher, senior fellow at the International Center for Study of Radicalization at King's College in London. Nacos said the video is "cleverly shot with different camera angles." "They're basically rejecting everything that is Western, yet they're borrowing in their media management, staging, directing, choreography everything that you can learn from Western filmmakers and media people," she said. Nacos said the video's brutality risks turning public opinion and potential recruits away from the Islamic State group; al-Kasaesbeh's killing already has been denounced by Muslim clerics across the region, including some jihadi ideologues. Christopher Davidson, an academic at Durham University, said the video was not perfectly produced, but had "very powerful political messages which clearly resonate with impressionable youth." Hassan Hassan, an analyst at the Abu Dhabi-based Delma center, said having a captive pilot from the U.S.-led coalition bombing campaign was a rare opportunity for the extremists to deliver a strong message. "It was a chance to humiliate not only Jordan but the international community fighting against it," he said. Aymenn al-Tamimi, an expert on rebel and Islamic extremist groups, said the video suggested the group's violence would only become more gruesome as its fighters and supporters became increasingly desensitized to human suffering. "The beheadings that have been happening so frequently it's no longer surprising to any audience," al-Tamimi said. "They upped the ante." Al-Tamimi said the group also had to keep offering something new to its members, supporters and those under its rule if only to keep them in a perpetual state of terror. Maher agreed. "Every time you think they cannot commit anything worse they open up another trapdoor," he said. ___ Associated Press writers Diaa Hadid in Beirut, Vivian Salama in Baghdad and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this story.
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German engineering giant Siemens said Friday it was slashing 7,800 jobs worldwide, more than 3,000 of them in Germany, as part of an ongoing restructuring plan aimed at saving about one billion euros. "In a drive to streamline administrative and overhead functions, about 7,800 jobs are to be cut worldwide, including some 3,300 in Germany," the company, which employs more than 300,000 staff, said in a statement.
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"Top Ten Little-Known Grammy Award Categories" from February 5, 2015.
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FRANKFURT Siemens AG on Friday said it would cut 7,800 jobs globally as part of Vision 2020 cost-cutting program. The company's management and labor council met Thursday to discuss the job cuts, of which 3,300 are expected in Germany. The job cuts will help streamline administrative and overhead functions, eliminating certain positions completely, Siemens said. "Our Vision 2020 concept will enable us to get our company back on a sustainable growth path and close the profitability gap to our competitors," Chief Executive Joe Kaeser said, referring to the restructuring program announced last year. Siemens adopted a new structure in October last year that pared the number of divisions to nine from 16. Mr. Kaeser told an investor conference in May that organizational changes could affect 11,600 jobs at Siemens, but didn't say how many jobs would be eliminated. However, the company expects the total number of employees world-wide to remain virtually stable, since it hired more than 11,000 people world-wide in the first four months of the current fiscal year alone. At the end of September 2014, the company had around 357,000 employees world-wide. The organizational changes will help Siemens save €1 billion ($1.13 billion), which will be realized in large measure by the end of 2016 and be used to invest in growth initiatives, mostly in Germany, Siemens said. Write to Neetha Mahadevan at [email protected]
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GREENWOOD, S.C. Along Main Street in a small South Carolina city, there is a war memorial honoring fallen World War I and II soldiers, dividing them into two categories: "white" and "colored." Welborn Adams, Greenwood's white Democratic-leaning mayor, believes the bronze plaques are relics of the South's scarred past and should be changed in the spirit of equality, replaced like the "colored" water fountains or back entrances to the movie theater that blacks were once forced to use. Yet the mayor's attempt to put up new plaques was blocked by a state law that brought the Confederate flag down from the Statehouse dome in 2000. The law forbids altering historical monuments in any way without approval from legislators. Historians, black and white, have reservations about replacing the plaques, saying they should serve as a reminder of the once-segregated U.S. military. "Segregation was the accepted social order of that time," said Eric Williams, who spent 32 years as a historian with the U.S. Park Service. "If we alter the monument, we alter its historical integrity." The memorial is owned by the American Legion post in Greenwood and is on city property. On two of its sides, it lists soldiers who died in World War I and World War II that were from Greenwood County. A third side lists Korean and Vietnam War dead from the county without any racial distinction because the military was integrated by that time. Adams said he asked other South Carolina mayors and doesn't know of any other similar memorials in the state. Several historians also said they haven't heard of a monument where fallen soldiers are separated by race. About a year ago, American Legion post members asked the mayor if he thought he could raise $15,000 privately to change the monument. He was so sure he could, he took out a loan to pay for the new plaques so they could be dedicated on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Forty-three donors, almost all white, came through with the money. Adams wrote a $1,000 check himself. But there was opposition, in part because of a quote from the mayor in a December story in The Index-Journal of Greenwood. "I think if history offends people it needs to be rewritten if possible," Adams said. The mayor acknowledged he didn't choose his words carefully. He later said he meant that while history doesn't change, the way a community presents itself does. Days before the King Day ceremony, opponents threatened to try to have Adams arrested perhaps on a misconduct in office charge if he went forward with the new plaque. The mayor said he cried in his office when the city's lawyer told him that opponents were right about the law. "I wonder if some of the opposition is racism hiding behind history," said Adams, who was elected mayor in 2008 in this city of 23,000, where about 45 percent of the population is black. The Confederate flag law says no historical monument, erected by the state or by a local government, may be relocated, removed, disturbed, or altered without a two-thirds vote from state lawmakers. The law lists 10 wars, including the "War Between the States," the genteel, Southern name for the Civil War. The purpose of this part of the law was to appease people who worried 15 years ago that Confederate memorials and street and park names in honor of generals would be torn down in wake of the flag being removed from the Statehouse dome and being put in front of the South Carolina Capitol alongside a Confederate soldier monument. The flag is still a sore point for the NAACP and other black leaders. A bill has been filed to change the Greenwood memorial and half of the members of the state Senate are listed as sponsors, but some legislators who helped craft the Confederate flag law are leery to bring the divisive issue up again. "I'll look at the bill," said Sen. John Courson, a Republican from Columbia who has been in the Senate since 1985. "But I don't want to reopen the whole debate. That was last century's battle." Williams, the former Park Service historian, has been one of the most vocal critics. Williams, who is white, wants to see a small display nearby saying the military was segregated back then and that's why the names are listed the way they are. Activist Joseph McGill, who spends the night in old slave cabins to get attention to preserve them, agrees. He says talk about switching plaques reminds him of schools that don't want students reading "Huckleberry Finn" because racially offensive language from the 1800s is in the book. "That could just spread the perception that segregation did not exist or wasn't that bad," McGill said. Chad Williams of Brandeis University near Boston has extensively studied black soldiers in World War I. He said he understands the desire to correct a historical injustice, but another sign explaining why the soldiers were separated by race is much more powerful and historically accurate. "I think it is important to acknowledge the specific context in how African-American soldiers had to serve in the military," Williams said. Will Moredock, a freelance journalist trying to get South Carolina to remove the statue of segregationist Gov. Ben Tillman from the Statehouse grounds, said that is shortsighted. Americans are given the power to change laws and even the framework of its government with amendments to the Constitution. So why should historical monuments be any different? "Every generation has the right to choose the people and the causes it wishes to enshrine in its public places," Moredock said. The mayor planned to put the old plaques in the county museum. For now, they remain on the monument and the new ones sit in City Hall storage, waiting for the Legislature to act. "I am fully aware this is much tougher than I ever expected," Adams said. "But it's the right thing to do." ___ Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at http://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP .
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FRANKFURT, Germany Industrial machinery maker Siemens AG says it will cut 7,800 administrative jobs worldwide as part of an effort to streamline the sprawling company and its many businesses. Munich-based Siemens said in a statement Friday that 3,300 of the job losses will be in Germany. Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser said the cuts were part of an ongoing restructuring whose aim was to "get the company back on a sustainable growth path and close the profitability gap to our competitors" Siemens said the cuts would save 1 billion euros ($1.14 billion) this year alone that the company could put into growth initiatives such as research and development. As a result, it said overall company head count would remain roughly the same. Siemens has some 343,000 employees in more than 200 countries.
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Pope Francis has backed parents who smack their children, providing the child's "dignity" is maintained. He made the remarks during his weekly general audience at the Vatican, which was devoted to the role of fathers in the family. The Pope outlined the traits of a good father, as someone who forgives but is able to "correct with firmness" while not discouraging the child. Some child welfare campaigners have questioned his comments. The Pope said: "One time, I heard a father in a meeting with married couples say 'I sometimes have to smack my children a bit, but never in the face so as to not humiliate them.' "How beautiful," he added. "He knows the sense of dignity. He has to punish them but does it justly and moves on." 'Drawing the line' John Bird a spokesman for the National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC), said it took a zero tolerance approach to the corporal punishment of children. Referring to the Pope's comments, Mr Bird said: "I don't know what he had in mind when he said this. It's about interpretation and where you draw the line." NAPAC's founder, Peter Saunders, who is part of a Vatican commission on protecting children from abusive priests, will attempt to raise the issue with the Pope during a meeting on Friday. Mr Bird added: "There is room for discussion and I'm sure Pete will have that discussion today." The Church's position on corporal punishment came under criticism last year during a grilling by members of a UN human rights committee monitoring implementation of the UN treaty on the rights of the child. The Vatican argued that it in no way promoted corporal punishment, and the head of the delegation said he would take the recommendations back to Rome for review.
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Tax-related identity theft was the most common complaint consumers filed with the Federal Trade Commission in 2014, as it has been in previous years, and the number of complaints increased more than 2,300% no, that figure isn't missing decimal points. Those complaints cover all sorts of things, from reports of callers impersonating the Internal Revenue Service to people whose Social Security numbers were used to file fraudulent tax returns. The latter is a particularly frustrating experience for consumers, who then have to worry about the fact that their Social Security numbers have been compromised, not to mention the time and money it may take to straighten out their taxes and get any refund they rightfully deserve. In 2012, the IRS started a program to help consumers and law enforcement investigate matters of tax-related identity theft , and in 2013 it expanded from its pilot status in Florida to a nationwide effort, the IRS Law Enforcement Assistance Program (LEAP). The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) audited it and recently released a report on the program . Spoiler alert: The IRS isn't doing a great job with it. Here's a quick overview of the program, before we get into the problems the IRS has had executing it: Law enforcement officers use Form 8821-A, IRS Disclosure Authorization for Victims of Identity Theft, to get victims' permission to request their tax information from the IRS. That information is used by law enforcement to track down scammers and resolve identity theft cases. The audit investigated the speed, accuracy and security with which those forms were processed by the IRS. Between Jan. 3 and Sept. 27, 2013, the IRS processed 2,481 of these forms. TIGTA audited a statistically representative sample of them (194 to be exact) to see how LEAP was working. The audit found significant delays and inaccuracies in this process, which is supposed to help law enforcement officers prosecute identity theft cases. Here are the highlights of the audit: Thirty-nine requests were rejected, but eight should not have been. That's a 21% error rate. Seven percent "were invalid or incomplete and should not have been processed due to the risk of unauthorized disclosure." That's a security issue. Fifty-eight percent of the accepted requests were not processed within 10 business days, as required. The IRS did not maintain records of the information furnished to law enforcement in 72% of the sample cases. In short not a great job, IRS. Granted, the agency isn't exactly firing on all cylinders and continues to suffer from budget cuts, even as demand for tax-related identity theft detection and resolution rises. TIGTA made recommendations to the IRS for ways it can improve this program, as it will likely see increasing volume, but the directive is pretty simple: Execute this program in a timely, accurate and secure manner. The IRS responded to the report, saying it plans to incorporate the recommendations. "As the threat of identity theft and its impact on victims has continued to grow, we recognize the importance of ensuring the LEAP services requests by law enforcement officials are processed in a timely, accurate and secure manner," wrote Debra Holland, commissioner of the IRS's Wage and Investment Division, in the official management response. "We are also addressing report findings that some requests were not processed within established timeframes and accuracy guidelines by evaluating our quality review procedures, enhancing procedural guidance, and improving instructions to employees and managers that reinforce the importance of timely and accurate service delivery." Tax-related identity theft can happen in conjunction with other types of identity theft like new-account fraud, since fraudsters can use information like your Social Security number to kill two birds with one stone. You can monitor your credit for signs of fraudulent accounts that may have been opened in your name. You can check your credit scores for free online ; any unexpected changes to your scores could signal identity theft and you should pull your credit reports to confirm (you get free credit reports once a year under federal law ). This article originally appeared on Credit.com .
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finance
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While we got an early look at Windows 10 running on phones during Microsoft's press event last month, we weren't allowed to explore the operating system fully. That's about to change soon with the release of a Technical Preview of Windows 10 for phones, but for now we're starting to learn of a few new features that are coming, thanks to leaked screenshots. Chinese site ITHome has posted a number of screenshots from the early Technical Preview. The first obvious addition is the inclusion of a new audio recording app. Windows Phone 8 used to achieve this by storing audio clips directly in OneNote, but this wasn't ideal and the recordings were often heavily compressed. Windows 10 for phones has a separate app that lets you send recorded files via email or store them on OneDrive. It won't support recording of calls, but it's perfect for recording a meeting or a friend attempting to sing. Microsoft isn't changing a lot in terms of user interface with Windows 10 on phones, but it appears some of the context menus are being altered to more closely match the desktop and tablet versions of the operating system. We already saw a new joystick addition to the keyboard last month, but there's also new keyboard options to split the keys left or right. This appears to be designed for one-handed use, and might come in useful for devices like the Lumia 1520 or new rumored large-screen Lumia phones that are expected to be unveiled at Mobile World Congress next month. Alarms have also been updated to match the universal Windows 10 app, and voice input has moved to the top of the keyboard. These latest screenshots come just a day after several others leaked showing off an expanded notification center and improved settings organization that Microsoft demonstrated at its event last month. One screenshot, a message that appears after the Windows 10 update is installed, also includes a quote from Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson: "every setback has a major comeback." Microsoft is obviously hoping that Windows 10 will be the company's major comeback. Microsoft is planning to release its Technical Preview version of Windows 10 for phones this month, but not all devices will be supported initially. While the software maker is planning to support some 512MB of RAM devices, it's not clear if every device running Windows Phone 8.1 will be able to install the preview initially. Microsoft has promised that all Lumia Windows Phone 8 devices will be upgraded to Windows 10 once the operating system is available later this year.
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Jordanian jets carried out airstrikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. CNN's Becky Anderson shows you powerful video images.
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People buy cookbooks for a variety of reasons: to inspire, impress, beautify, edify and love. For famed cookbook author and food writer, Nika (Standen) Hazelton, however, there was only one reason to purchase a cookbook: to cook from it. The daughter of a German diplomat, Hazelton was born and grew up in Rome. In addition to international travels with her father, she attended the London School of Economics and worked as a reporter in Europe, before marrying and moving to the United States in 1940. It was stateside that her cookbook-writing career took off. Esteemed as a specialist of European cookery, she penned cookbooks dedicated to the cuisines of Scandinavia, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, France, Denmark and Germany. At the time of Hazelton's death in 1992, Molly O'Neill , food columnist for The New York Times Magazine, declared Hazelton's "American Home Cooking" (Bobbs Merrill, 1967), "French Home Cooking" (Viking Penguin, 1979), "International Cookbook" (Harper & Row, 1967) and "The Italian Cookbook" (Henry Holt, 1979) standards. Hazelton published 30 cookbooks throughout her career and wrote countless articles for major food magazines and newspapers. No title better communicates her unwaveringly simple, straightforward and unpretentious perspective on food and cooking, however, than her 1974 cookbook, "I Cook As I Please." Conceding her "literal mindedness," Hazelton laid out in a 1963 article in "The New York Times" exactly how one might judge a cookbook to determine whether it is not just delightfully escapist, politically radical or aesthetically pleasing, but well and simply good. Hazelton's advice rings as true today as it did in the 1960s, at least if you are shopping for a cookbook that aligns with her functional, no-nonsense approach. Accuracy and clarity For Hazelton, "Accuracy is the first virtue when writing about cooking." Recipes ought to list all ingredients at the beginning of the recipe and with accurate measurements. Authors who arrange ingredients "more coyly" do readers a disservice as they forsake clarity. Directions ought to be lucidly written, one step at a time, and in order. If recipes include misspellings or confusing instructions, beware, as these reflect poorly on the author. Specificity Well-written recipes notify the reader of specific details, such as the type of pan, the size of baking dish or whether a dish should be cooked covered or not. Such specifics indicate the thoroughness of the recipe writer's testing process. A lack of specifics, on the other hand, can reveal a writer's laziness, an unforgivable failing according to Hazelton. Reliability Recipes ought to turn out if followed correctly and, equally important, to work every time. Since reliability is impossible to blindly predict, Hazelton recommended purchasing cookbooks from only respected authors and publishers, remarking, "Few newcomers to cookbook writing do reliable recipes." Character Hazelton not only firmly asserted that a recipe "should be correct and the best of its kind," but also that it ought to "promote the cause of good food and not of brand names." Further condemning the likes of packaged-food cuisine and back-of-the-box recipes , Hazelton believed, "Commercial recipes, however splendid, belong to advertising and publicity." Authenticity Writing in 1963, Hazelton lamented, "Really authentic and first-class foreign cookbooks are few and far between," as recipes were often revised for American styles, tastes and measurements, losing their magic along the way. Good cookbooks of this sort require time and investment to retest the recipes, but are worth it, processes with which Hazelton had significant experience. With these strict criteria, Hazelton recommended an elite group of reliable authors. She "saluted" Craig Claiborne, James Beard, Julia Child, Paula Peck, Helen Evans Brown, Dione Lucas, the Chamberlains, Ann Seranne, Marian Tracy, June Platt and John Gould. She also cited the editors of the McCall's, Ladies Home Journal and Good Housekeeping cookbooks, reasoning that their quality was "reliable if not always inspired, because the editors know their business can't afford to make their readers mad with poorly done work." Main photo: Julia Child, Craig Claiborne and James Beard were among Hazelton's recommended cookbook authors. Credit: Emily Contois
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JERUSALEM Like so many parents, Ori Gruder was grappling with how to talk to his 10-year-old son about sex. Being a member of Israel's ultra-Orthodox religious community, which tends to keep discussions of sexuality to a whisper, made the task even more difficult. So Gruder created "Sacred Sperm," an hour-long documentary in which he tries to tackle the hard questions he can expect from his son. The film presents an intimate, informative and at times awkward look at the insular religious community and its approach to sexuality, fleshing out deeply entrenched taboos in the conservative society. "What is it about that little sperm that looks like a tadpole and has everyone so hot and bothered?" Gruder ponders in his narration of the film. Gruder, a 44-year-old father of six who once worked for MTV Europe and didn't become religious until age 30, gives the viewer a rare peek into private ultra-Orthodox lives, taking the camera into his own home, into ritual baths and circumcision ceremonies, to the religious school system and more. The film already has been shown in Jerusalem, London and California and is touring the U.S. festival circuit, including Atlanta on Feb. 15. It begins with a visit to a rabbi, who grants Gruder his blessing to create the movie but implores him to do so "modestly." Gruder's wife expresses reservations about the project because it could elicit unwanted attention from the community. "Maybe that's why I should do it, because people don't talk about it," Gruder responds. Under Orthodox Judaism, masturbation is forbidden, seen as a violation of an age-old covenant with God that promotes and encourages procreation. Sex is viewed as a sacred act and intercourse is permissible only after marriage. "One who spills his seed literally kills his sons," Prosper Malka, one rabbi interviewed in the film, tells Gruder. Gruder explains the theological reasoning behind the Jewish ban on spilling sperm: "The reproductive organ is called the 'covenant.' Spilling one's seed is called 'damaging the covenant.' And abstaining from masturbation is called 'guarding the covenant.'" While other world religions such as Roman Catholicism take a similarly dim view of masturbation and premarital sex, the film makes clear how much more ultra-rigorous the ultra-Orthodox Jews are. They live strictly regulated lives according to Jewish law that governs everything from diet to dress. Procreation is seen as a "mitzvah," or commandment from God. For this reason, large families are common in Orthodox communities. But talking freely and openly about sex is taboo. Many Orthodox Jews do not touch members of the opposite sex except their spouses, and the sexes are usually separated in school and prayer. Sex education is largely not taught in schools, although young brides and grooms are given counseling before they wed. Gruder brings viewers into an education session for a soon-to-be-married young man, in which the perplexed bridegroom is told that "all positions are permitted, but our sages tend to say that the best way is for the husband to be on top of the wife." The film details the precautions that many ultra-Orthodox men take to prevent themselves from becoming aroused. It's not merely a matter of averting their eyes from women. One rabbi, longtime friend Yisrael Aharon Itzkovitz, holds up his baggy white underpants and explains he buys them a few sizes too big, because snug-fitting undies might stimulate the wearer by accident. Many ultra-Orthodox men do not touch themselves when they urinate, Itzkovitz explains, even if that means they misfire. Gruder describes his own journey from secular to Orthodox Jew, recounting the guilt he felt knowing that he previously had sinned. To repent, he said he has taken seemingly countless ritual baths, fasted, given to charity and rolled around naked in snow at a ski resort in northern Israel. He said that was a purifying experience. Judaism expert Menachem Friedman said the movie, which was shot in Israel and Ukraine, offered a unique "anthropological window" into the ultra-Orthodox world. "It is about a very intimate subject which nobody talks about," he said. Gruder expressed hope that the film would help ultra-Orthodox Jews to become better understood by outsiders. "It's a first look into a keyhole that needs to be opened more," he said. ___ Associated Press reporter Ami Bentov in Jerusalem contributed to this report. ___ Follow Tia Goldenberg on Twitter at www.twitter.com/tgoldenberg
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entertainment
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Finance ministers from the 19 countries that use the euro will hold an extraordinary meeting in Brussels on Wednesday to discuss the stand-off over Greece's debt, the group's chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem said. "Extra Eurogroup on Greece on Wednesday 11 Feb," the day before a summit of EU leaders, Dutch Finance Minister Dijsselbloem announced on Twitter.
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finance
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Richard Sherman may not have another Super Bowl victory under his belt, but other things are going well for the Seahawks cornerback. His girlfriend Ashley Moss has given birth to the couples first child. The baby boy was born on quite a fitting day.
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Spaniard Alejandro Canizares picked up three shots in his last four holes to card a spot-free seven-under-par 65 and surge into a tie for the lead with champion Lee Westwood at the halfway stage of the Malaysian Open on Friday. Former world number one Westwood, tied for the lead overnight with Ryder Cup team mate Graeme McDowell, produced a 67 in his second round in the $3 million event at the Kuala Lumpur Golf and Country Club that is co-sanctioned by the European and Asian tours. The Englishman, who also won the event in 1997, mixed six birdies with a lone bogey in his second round to open up a three-shot lead at one point, but a strong finish from Canizares for the lowest score this week left him equal on 11-under. "I played nicely again," Westwood said. "It was pretty solid again and I probably only hit one poor shot all day, from the middle of the fairway on the fifth hole - I was going in with a five iron and blocked it right into the water. "Other than that it was very good, and I felt very comfortable out there. I hit a lot of fairways and some good iron shots and made some nice putts. "It was great to birdie two of the last three and go from one in front to three in front." The duo were three strokes ahead of Austrian Bernd Wiesberger (66) in third on eight-under, with England's Paul Waring (68) and Ireland's Peter Lawrie (66) a stroke further back in fourth. Canizares came to Malaysia riding some good form having already finished 12th in Abu Dhabi and eighth in Qatar this year, and he will hope to finish even higher this week. "It was a lot of fun and I played really well," the 32-year-old said. "I wasn't so good off the tee today, but I putted really well. "I made some great up-and-downs when I missed a shot, and I'm very happy overall. I can't wait for the weekend - it will be a lot of fun. "It's a great position to be in and I couldn't ask for any better. Hopefully I can keep it going." McDowell's round was spoiled by a bogey and a double-bogey on the 11th and 12th holes and he finished on 73, for a two-day total of five-under and eighth place. (Writing by Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai; editing by Stephen Wood)
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sports
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In late 2013, Nigeria's then central bank governor Lamido Sanusi wrote to President Goodluck Jonathan claiming that the state oil company had failed to remit tens of billions of oil revenues it owed the state. After the letter was leaked to Reuters and a local news site, Jonathan publicly dismissed the claim and replaced Sanusi, saying the banker had mismanaged the central bank's budget. A Senate committee later found Sanusi's account lacked substance. Sanusi has since become Emir of Kano, the country's second highest Islamic authority, and has smoothed over relations with the president. He declined to discuss his earlier assertions. Before he was sacked, though, the central banker submitted to Nigeria's parliament more than 300 pages of documentation in support of his claim. Reuters has reviewed that dossier, which offers one of the most comprehensive studies of waste, mismanagement and what Sanusi called "leakages" of cash in Nigeria's oil industry. Detailed here, the dossier includes oil contracts, confidential government letters, private presidential correspondence and legal opinions. Sanusi's letter and documents do not state whether he thinks the money was stolen or lost through mismanagement. Nor did he make allegations of illegal acts against any specific individuals or entities. Both corruption and bad governance are perennial problems in Africa's most populous nation, and central issues in elections due on Feb. 14. Nigeria's oil industry accounts for around 95 percent of the country's foreign exchange earnings. If Nigeria continued to leak cash at the rate described in his letter to the president, Sanusi said at the time, the consequences for the economy would be disastrous. Specifically, the failure of state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation "to remit foreign exchange to the Federation Account in a period of rising oil prices has made our management of exchange rates and price stability ... extremely difficult," he wrote. "The central bank of Nigeria is always blamed for high rates of interest," but "given these leakages, the alternative is a devalued currency ... and financial instability." That is exactly what has happened. As oil prices have plummeted to around $55 a barrel, half their level at the beginning of 2014, Sanusi's successor Godwin Emefiele has devalued the naira, Nigeria's currency, by 8 percent, and raised interest rates for the first time in more than two years. Nigerian foreign exchange reserves are down around 20 percent on a year ago, while the balance in the country's oil savings account has fallen from $9 billion in December 2012 to $2.5 billion at the start of this year, even though oil prices were buoyant over much of that period. Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told reporters at a press conference in November that a significant portion of that money was distributed to the powerful governors of Nigeria's 36 states instead of being saved for a rainy day. Nigerians are rarely shocked by stories of billions going unaccounted for, or ending up with politically powerful individuals. Africa's largest oil producer has for years consistently ranked toward the bottom of Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. Sanusi handed his documents to a parliamentary inquiry set up last February to investigate the assertion in his letter that billions of dollars in oil revenue had not reached the central bank. He told the inquiry that state oil group NNPC had made $67 billion worth of oil sales in the previous 19 months. Of that, he said, between $10.8 billion and $20 billion was unaccounted for. A spokesman for the president declined to comment on the specific contents of Sanusi's dossier. He referred to a statement made at the time the banker was pushed out. It said the government "remains committed to ensuring integrity and accountability and discipline in every sector of the economy ... And indeed we look forward to a situation whereby Mr. Sanusi will continue to assist the legislature in their investigations." Those investigations include a "forensic audit" of the oil industry set up by Okonjo-Iweala. The audit was given to Jonathan on Feb. 2 and he said he would hand it on to Nigeria's auditor general. NNPC said on Feb. 5 it had received a copy of the audit, before it was made public. The firm said the audit cleared it of wrongdoing, although it found NNPC owed the government $1.48 billion for a separate shortfall. A spokesman for NNPC rejected Sanusi's allegations and referred Reuters to last August's Senate inquiry. The inquiry expressed satisfaction that most of the money not remitted was withheld for legitimate reasons. But it urged the NNPC to remit $700 million that the committee said it could not account for. Diezani Alison-Madueke, the oil minister who oversees NNPC, did not respond to a request for comment. She told the inquiry at the time that the correct sum for money not remitted was $10.8 billion, which was to pay for subsidies. The NNPC has consistently said it did nothing wrong. The oil company said last year that Sanusi's allegations came from his "misunderstanding" of how the oil industry works. The central bank is "a banking outfit ... how will they understand petroleum engineering issues?" then managing director Andrew Yakubu asked journalists. "They are not auditors." Sanusi's claims were seen by some Nigerians as part of the historic tensions between the country's wealthy, Christian south and poorer Muslim north. Jonathan and oil minister Alison-Madueke are Christians from the oil-producing Niger Delta in the south. Sanusi is a Muslim from the country's north, as is Muhammadu Buhari, a former military ruler of Nigeria who is the main presidential candidate running against Jonathan. The two regions have historically taken it in turns to hold the presidency. Since 2009, though, Jonathan has broken with this tradition. Sanusi has said any notion there were religious or ethnic politics behind his allegations is absurd. He has declined to be interviewed since becoming the Emir of Kano. But last April, two months after he was sacked but before he took on his new role, Sanusi told Reuters he worried that the sheer quantities of cash going missing were "unsustainable." "You are taking what doesn't belong to you and transferring it to private hands," he told Reuters. "The state is captive to vested interests." NO-BID CONTRACTS Sanusi's documents identify three key mechanisms through which Nigeria has allegedly allowed middlemen to channel oil funds away from the central bank. Among the recipients, Sanusi alleges, are government officials and high-flying society figures. The three mechanisms are: contracts awarded non-competitively to two companies that did not supply services but sub-contracted the work; a kerosene subsidy that doesn't help the people it is meant to; and a series of complex, opaque "swap deals" that might be short-changing the state. Sanusi's concerns around the first of these mechanisms center on the 2011 sale by Royal Dutch Shell of its interests in five oil fields. The blocks were majority-owned by NNPC. The government, keen to end the domination of the oil industry by foreign oil majors, had been encouraging Shell and others to sell to local firms. Shell sold its interest in the fields to companies in Poland and Britain. But the new owners did not get the same rights Shell had. To promote local control, the NNPC gave the right to operate the fields to its own subsidiary, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC). Without soliciting bids, the NPDC signed "strategic partnership agreements" worth around $6.6 billion with two other local firms to manage them. One firm, Seven Energy, signed for three fields; another, Atlantic Energy, for two. Seven Energy was co-founded in 2004 by Kola Aluko, an oil trader and Christian southerner. Aluko also co-owned Atlantic with another southerner, former oil trader Jide Omokore. Atlantic was incorporated the day before it signed the deals. Geneva-based Aluko is a high-profile member of Nigeria's elite. He owns a fleet of supercars, including a Ferrari 458 GT2 that he races with Swiss team Kessel Racing. He also owns a $50 million yacht, according to Forbes magazine, and divides his time between a $40 million home in Los Angeles, an $8.6 million duplex on Fifth Avenue in New York, and homes in Abuja and Geneva. A colleague describes him as a "work hard, play harder kind of guy. He's extravagant. That's just his style." Aluko, whose stake in Seven is now minimal, did not respond to emailed questions. Omokore has also become rich from oil and gas. Forbes has estimated annual revenue at another of his companies, Energy Resources Group, at $400 million. His jet-setting lifestyle is a regular feature in the local press. Omokore could not be reached for comment. Reuters has reviewed the contracts the firms signed with NPDC. They give Seven Energy 10 percent of profits in the three oil blocks it operates, while Atlantic gets 30 percent of profits in its two blocks. The contracts also show that, unlike Shell, neither firm pays royalties, profit tax or duties to the state. Both companies quickly sub-contracted production work to other operators, according to Sanusi's submission to parliament and several market sources. The companies did not disclose terms of these contracts. Atlantic does not publish accounts, but Seven's 2013 annual report shows its deal with NPDC helped its revenue more than triple to $345 million. In May 2013, Nigeria's parliament threatened to investigate the NPDC contracts because they were not issued through competitive tender. But the NNPC argued no tender was needed because the contracts involved no sale of equity in the oil fields; the probe did not go ahead. Sanusi did not accuse Seven and Atlantic of any illegalities, but he did question why the NPDC chose those companies. His report said the deals' only purpose seemed to be "acquiring assets belonging to the federation (state) and transferring the income to private hands." Asked about this, NNPC referred to the Senate report, which found that no-bid partnership agreements are not new. It also said that "it may be good policy to encourage indigenous players by giving them greater participation," but called for such deals "to be conducted in a transparent and competitive manner." Seven did not comment. It says on its website its agreement with NPDC pre-dated the Jonathan administration and included an allowance for taxes. The company says it has invested more than $500 million, more than doubled production from its three blocks, and paid $48.8 million in taxes in 2013. Atlantic did not comment. KEROSENE SUBSIDIES The second mechanism Sanusi's report identifies as problematic is a decades-old state subsidy provided to retailers of kerosene, the fuel most Nigerians use for cooking. Nigeria lacks the refining capacity to make kerosene, so imports it instead. The government then sells the kerosene to retailers at a cheaper price than the import price. This subsidy is meant to make kerosene affordable for the poor. In reality, though, retailers have long hiked prices so consumers pay much more than official levels. In June 2009, Jonathan's predecessor, Umaru Yar'Adua, ordered a halt to the scheme on the grounds that it was not working. But the subsidies carried on regardless. The NNPC told parliament last February that it still deducts billions of dollars a year from its earnings to cover it. In his report, Sanusi called the kerosene subsidy a "racket" that lines the pockets of private kerosene retailers and NNPC staff. The report estimated the cost of the subsidy at $100 million a month. It said kerosene retailers there are hundreds of them around the country routinely charged customers much higher prices than the government pays to import the fuel. Sanusi's report included an analysis of kerosene prices across Nigeria's 36 states over two years. It found that the government buys kerosene at 150 naira per liter from importers and then sells it to retailers at just 40 naira per liter. Sanusi's analysis found consumers pay an average of 170-200 naira per liter, and sometimes as much as 270 naira. "The margin of 300 percent to 500 percent over purchase price is economic rent, which never got to the man on the street," Sanusi wrote. NNPC said in a statement last year that it can't force retailers to sell kerosene at the subsidized price. SWAP DEALS The third mechanism Sanusi identified involves other types of refined petroleum products, such as gasoline. Like kerosene, these are also imported. Nigeria is Africa's biggest oil producer but it depends on imports for 80 percent of its fuel needs because its refining capacity is tiny. To pay for the imported products, Nigeria barters its crude oil. Sanusi's dossier focuses on these barter exchanges, which are known as "swap deals." The idea is that importers who bring in refined fuel worth a given amount receive an "equivalent value" in crude oil. How that equivalent value is determined is unclear. Sanusi said he was uncertain how much, if anything, is lost in these deals. But he expressed concern at the sheer value of oil that changes hands and the lack of oversight. His report estimated that between 2010 and 2011, traders involved in swap deals effectively bartered 200,000 barrels of crude a day worth nearly $20 million at average crude prices over the period - for a loosely determined equivalent value in refined products. It is impossible to tell, he said, if all the refined products were delivered, let alone if the terms were fair. "It was clear to us that these transactions ... were not properly structured, monitored and audited," he wrote. Sanusi wrote in his report that mismanagement and "leakages" of cash in the industry cost Nigeria billions of dollars a year. Since the price of oil has fallen by around half since the start of 2014, such losses are even more significant. As it approaches elections, Nigeria faces plummeting oil revenues and a lack of buffers to shield the economy. Construction projects are on hold and the government is struggling to pay its sizeable workforce. Multiple scandals in the oil sector since Jonathan took power have boosted the popularity of his rival, former military leader Muhammadu Buhari. Remembered by some for deposing a civilian government in a 1983 coup and trampling on civil liberties, the sandal-wearing general often promises to "free Nigeria from corruption." Jonathan, too, says he will "clean up" Nigeria. By using technology and strengthening institutions, "I will solve the problem of corruption in this country," he told a crowd in Ibadan in January. (Edited by Sara Ledwith and Simon Robinson)
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news
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Libor Voncina, CEO of Sunrise Communications, discusses why the company decided to float on the Swiss Stock Exchange and how investors reacted.
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finance
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Kids as young as 13 can shoot military-grade firearms at America's newest gun themed attraction. At Machine Gun America in Florida, USA, gun lovers are given full access to an arsenal of high calibre automatic weapons. And for £66 and up, customers can spray submachine gun bullets at target posters of Osama Bin Laden. Even visitors with no prior weapons training are handed heavy weaponry such as the MP5, M4, and the Glock 17 to destroy targets.
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video
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When was the last time you felt really jazzed about your work? Do you look forward to Monday mornings, or is your jump out of bed more like a slow drop and roll? I study the opposite of thriving, which is burnout. Burnout is a process of chronic disengagement that usually starts at work and can impact lots of areas of your life. Thriving employees are valuable to organizations. They report less burnout because they're able to create job resources (those things at work that sustain your energy each day and help you achieve your goals), and they miss fewer days of work and make fewer visits to the doctor. When people thrive at work, they also report more job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Thriving is defined as learning infused with vitality. Vitality represents feelings of zest and enthusiasm during the day, and the positive emotions given off by people who feel excited about their work is contagious. People who experience learning on the job are able to master tasks and grow in their roles by gaining new knowledge and skills. Here are four ways you can increase your thriving at work. Strategy 1: Be a Job Crafter Job crafting involves actively changing the content or design of your job by choosing tasks, negotiating different job content and assigning meaning to different components of your job. Research shows that job crafting is predictive of work engagement, and to the extent employees proactively adjust their work environment, they can stay engaged and perform well. People are motivated to job craft because they want more meaning at work, more high-quality connections with others, more fulfillment and more ability to cope with adversity. Strategy 2: Look for Opportunities to Learn Thriving employees want to continually get better at what they do. Seek out feedback from your managers so you can zero in on opportunities to gain new skills and continue to grow. Another way to experience growth is to identify times when you are in "flow." Flow is a term coined by psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi to describe a person's optimal balance between boredom (the task falls short of our capabilities) and anxiety (the task exceeds our capabilities). It's the mental state where people feel like they're "in the zone," engaged and working in their sweet spot. Strategy 3: Invest in Relationships That Energize You There's nothing worse than having to spend eight to 10 hours a day surrounded by people who drain your energy. Relationships that drain your energy have four times the negative effect as energizing relationships. High-quality connections are sources of energy for you at work, and are marked by a sense of trust and mutual respect. Strategy 4: Focus More on Your Energy, Less on Your Time Many of the busy women I work with completely leave themselves off their own to-do lists. As a result, they aren't able to harness energy when they need it. According to Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, authors of "The Power of Full Engagement," there are four sources of energy you need to build and maintain: mental, physical, spiritual and emotional. When you feel drained, make note of which area needs a boost. Thriving employees bring a lot to the table they help organizations flourish and enjoy many personal benefits. These four strategies will help your Mondays go from manic to marvelous in no time! Copyright 2015 U.S. News & World Report
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health
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The name Hannah Davis is suddenly on everyone's lips after the gorgeous model was named the 2015 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover model. Many of you sports fans probably recognize this beauty. Davis has been dating recently retired New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter since 2012.
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Our northern neighbors just might have the hangover cure to end all hangovers. Find out if poutine, a French-Canadian comfort dish loaded with french fries, gravy, and cheese curds, can do the trick after a long night of hard-drinking
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Uber Technologies Inc. will launch its in-app panic button feature on Feb. 11, the California rideshare startup said in a blog post on Thursday, after local media reports said that its app-based service would be barred in the western Indian city of Mumbai. Uber had previously said its product engineers were working on such a feature, when it resumed service in the Indian capital of New Delhi after a temporary ban. The ban of Uber and its local competitors in India, such as SoftBank Corp.-backed Ola Cabs, had been triggered by a complaint from a New Delhi passenger that her Uber cab driver had raped her in December. Rideshare firms have since worked with local authorities around the world to introduce more safety measures. In addition to the panic button, which will alert local police to the cab's location in an emergency, Uber will also launch a "Safety Net" feature on the same day. The feature allows a passenger to share her route and expected time of arrival in real-time with up to five friends and family members who can be saved as emergency contacts on the app. Uber, which has raised billions of dollars in funding is looking to expand aggressively in Asia, where it is seeing strong competition from local rivals such as Ola Cabs in India, KuaiDi Dache in China and GrabTaxi in Malaysia. Japan's SoftBank has emerged as a major backer of Uber's local rivals in Asia.
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Chocolate and peanut butter. Beyonce and Jay Z. Wine and cheese. Some things are just meant to be together. But finding love isn't always easy, which is why we're on an insuppressible search to create an algorithm to connect us with The One. Cheese Cupid is the Tinder of wine and cheese, except there are no missed connections, and soulmates always swipe right. The online tool and free iPhone app selects compatible cheese and wine pairings, but it's not monogamous. To use Cheese Cupid, start with either a type of wine (or beer or liquor) or a type of cheese. You will then be presented with a few eligible cheese or wine bachelors, all of which are guaranteed to result in a fairytale ending. For example, you and your pals may want to get down with a gooey hunk of brie. To keep brie happy, all you'll need to do is select brie in the cheese section and -- voila! -- Cheese Cupid springs its heart-shaped arrow across the bar, striking a bunch of libations that would love nothing more than to spend some time with brie. With Cheese Cupid, you never have to settle down. Rather, you romantically maintain a rotation of trustworthy flings to keep the spark alive.
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Britain's GCHQ violated human rights by accessing intelligence from the NSA's mass surveillance programs, a UK court ruled today, though the agency is now considered compliant after disclosing details of the arrangement late last year. In a ruling handed down Friday morning, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) said the GCHQ, Britain's NSA-equivalent, violated rights to privacy and free speech under an intelligence sharing arrangement that allowed it to access data from the NSA's PRISM and upstream surveillance programs. The IPT is the only court with the authority to oversee the GCHQ and Britain's other intelligence services. This marks the first time in its 15-year history that the tribunal has ruled against an intelligence and security agency. A mixed result for privacy advocates The ruling follows a December 2014 decision in which the IPT said that the GCHQ's bulk data collection programs were in accordance with the law. But details of the intelligence sharing arrangement between the NSA and GCHQ weren't made public until the December hearings. In today's ruling, the tribunal determined that the agency violated European human rights law by not disclosing those details prior to December 2014, though now that they're public, the program is in full accordance with the law. "We are pleased that the Court has once again ruled that the UK's bulk interception regime is fully lawful," a GCHQ spokesperson said in an email statement. "It follows the Court's clear rejection of accusations of 'mass surveillance' in their December judgment." The GCHQ's surveillance programs were challenged by Amnesty International, Privacy International, and other rights groups. More challenges are on the way "For far too long, intelligence agencies like GCHQ and NSA have acted like they are above the law," Eric King, deputy director of London-based Privacy International, said in an email statement. "Today's decision confirms to the public what many have said all along over the past decade, GCHQ and the NSA have been engaged in an illegal mass surveillance sharing program that has affected millions of people around the world." But the rights groups remain dissatisfied with the court's decision that the disclosure of certain safeguards is sufficient to consider it legal. They say they will challenge the December decision in the European Court for Human Rights. "[T]he Intelligence Services retain a largely unfettered power to rifle through millions of people's private communications and the Tribunal believes the limited safeguards revealed during last year's legal proceedings are an adequate protection of our privacy," said James Welch, legal director for the rights organization Liberty, which was among the groups filing the initial complaint. "We disagree, and will be taking our fight to the European Court of Human Rights."
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If you have a white-collar job, there's a good chance your employer offers you a 401(k) retirement plan. Participating is usually a good idea especially if your employer offers to match your contributions. But there's also a good chance you're getting ripped off. The most expensive mutual funds charge more than 20 times as much as the most affordable ones. And the evidence suggests that they're not worth the money. In fact, choosing an expensive plan can cost you tens of thousands of dollars in lost earnings over the course of your career. So here's what you should do to avoid getting ripped off by mutual fund companies: Put money into a 401(k), especially if there's an employer match For most investors, choosing a "target retirement" fund from Vanguard or State Street is a good idea. If those are not available, Fidelity's Spartan funds are another good choice. If your employer doesn't offer any low-cost mutual funds and doesn't match your contributions, consider an individual retirement account (IRA) as an alternative. Read on for details about how to get the most out of your retirement savings. Trying to beat the market is a bad strategy A lot of people on Wall Street make a lot of money by convincing ordinary investors that they can provide better-than-average returns. But the reality is that beating the market is really difficult. Most people who promise to do it don't deliver. Some mutual funds spend a lot of money doing market research to decide which stocks to invest in. In the 1960s, academic researchers started studying whether these funds produced higher returns for their investors. Surprisingly, the answer was no: the average returns for these "actively managed" funds wasn't much better than you'd get by choosing stocks with a dart board. This research led to the rise of a new type of mutual fund known as an index fund. Rather than trying to beat the market, these passively-managed funds simply buy every stock in an index such as the S&P 500. Index funds allow investors earn the average market return. And because they don't have to hire a bunch of people to do research, they're very cheap to run. As a result, their returns after expenses tend to be higher than those of actively managed funds. A half-century later, studies are still finding that passively managed funds consistently overperform actively managed ones , once expenses are taken into account. So when choosing mutual funds, don't worry about which funds have earned the best returns in the past. Those funds probably just got lucky, and past performance is no guarantee of future results. Every mutual fund publishes an "expense ratio," which is the percentage of your investment that will get eaten up by management expenses each year. Whenever you have a choice between two similar funds, you should pick the one with lower expenses. The best option is a low-cost target retirement fund Which fund should you buy? The best option for a novice investor is a "target retirement" fund but only if it has reasonable expenses. A good example is Vanguard's Target Retirement funds. You pick the year you want to retire (for example, if you're in your late 20s you'd pick the Target Retirement 2050 plan), and Vanguard automatically allocates your savings to a mix of stocks and bonds that's appropriate for your expected retirement date. It has a modest 0.18 percent expense ratio, meaning that consumers pay just $18 for every $10,000 invested. ( Disclosure : I have most of my retirement savings in Vanguard mutual funds, and because Vanguard is structured as a cooperative, that technically makes me a Vanguard shareholder.) Last year, State Street Bank began offering low-cost target retirement plans too. With an expense ratio of 0.17 percent slightly cheaper than Vanguard's these are another great option. But other mutual fund companies' target retirement funds are a lot more expensive. For example, Fidelity's Freedom 2050 fund and T. Rowe Price's Retirement 2050 funds have expense ratios of 0.78 percent and 0.76 percent, respectively. If you invest $10,000 in these funds, you'll lose $70 every year (and more as your money grows). That's a terrible deal. Otherwise, you'll need to build your own portfolio Most investment advisors recommend investing your retirement savings into three types of assets: domestic stocks, international stocks, and bonds. Target retirement accounts do this for you automatically based on your desired retirement date. But if your employer's 401(k) plan doesn't offer you an affordable Target Retirement plan one that charges 0.20 percent or less then you might need to do it yourself. This chart can help. For each of these three categories, you'll want to choose the broadest fund with the lowest expense ratio. For example, Fidelity's Spartan Total Market fund, with an expense ratio as low as 0.05 percent, is a good choice for domestic stocks. It invests in more than 3,000 US stocks. Fidelity also has a Spartan International fund (0.12 percent expense ratio) for international stocks and a Spartan U.S. Bond fund (0.10 percent expense ratio) for bonds. Unfortunately, many mutual fund companies don't offer low-cost index funds. And mutual fund companies seem to make this process as confusing as possible. In the chart above, I've listed the most affordable funds I could find from each company (the last column is the average cost assuming you invest 60 percent in stocks and 20 percent in the other categories). However, many mutual funds are offered in several different "classes" with wildly different fees. Take JP Morgan, for example. I've listed the company's Equity Index Fund as having a respectable 0.20 percent expense ratio based on the fund's "select" share class. However, JP Morgan also offers another version of the exact same fund, called "Class B," with an insane 1.2 percent expense ratio, 24 times the cost of Vanguard and Fidelity's funds. So if your employer is offering JP Morgan mutual funds, it's important to read the fine print. The "select" version of the fund is a pretty good deal. Other versions are not. What to do if your employer doesn't offer any good options It's possible your employer's 401(k) plan won't offer any low-cost funds. In that case, you have a few options: Skip your employer's 401 and invest in an individual retirement account instead. IRAs offer most of the same tax benefits as a 401(k), but are not tied to an employer. That means you, not your employer, choose which mutual funds company to use. You can sign up for a Vanguard IRA here or a State Street IRA here . There are two big downsides to this strategy: first, you miss out on any matching contributions your employer might offer, and these will usually be worth more than the extra fees you have to pay. Second, the contribution limits are lower for IRAs: currently $5,500 for an IRA versus $18,000 for a 401(k). So if you earn an above-average income, you will probably want to save more than the IRA limit. Still, you can max out your IRA first and then invest any remaining amount in your 401(k). You can roll your 401(k) contributions into an IRA when you leave your job. High fees add up over the course of a career, but they're not necessarily a big deal if you're only paying them for a year or two. Once you leave your job, you'll be able to transfer the money to an IRA managed by a lower-cost fund. Lobby your HR department to switch to lower-cost options. Your HR department may not realize how many thousands of dollars of employee savings are being wasted by mutual funds that charge too much. While switching retirement plans isn't trivial, it can be done, and your coworkers might thank you for it. Right now, Vanguard offers the broadest range of low-cost funds, but Fidelity and State Street also offer good options.
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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured three of Jupiter's moons marching across the huge planet's disc, a stunning sight that happens only once or twice every 10 years. The rare triple-moon conjunction on Jupiter , which Hubble witnessed on Jan. 24, involved Io, Callisto and Europa three of the gas giant's four Galilean moons (so named because they were discovered by astronomer Galileo Galilei in the early 17th century). "The moons in these photos have distinctive colors. The ancient, cratered surface of Callisto is brownish; the smooth icy surface of Europa is yellow-white; and the volcanic, sulfur-dioxide surface of Io is orange," representatives of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, which operates Hubble, wrote in a statement today (Feb. 5). [ See more photos of Jupiter's rare triple-moon shadow dance ] The conjunction lasted about 42 minutes. The fourth Galilean moon, Ganymede, was outside Hubble's field of view during the triple transit, STScI representatives said. Volcanic Io is the innermost of the Galilean moons, completing one lap around Jupiter every 1.8 days. Europa, Ganymede and Callisto have orbital periods of 3.6, 7.2 and 16.7 days, respectively. With a diameter of 3,270 miles (5,260 kilometers), Ganymede is the largest natural satellite in the solar system. Indeed, it's bigger than the planet Mercury. Europa is the smallest Galilean moon, at 1,900 miles (3,100 km) wide, but it generates excitement and intrigue disproportionate to its size. The satellite harbors an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy shell, and this ocean is thought to be in contact with Europa's rocky mantle, making possible all kinds of interesting chemical reactions. Indeed, many scientists regard Europa as the solar system's best bet to host alien life. NASA is mapping out a robotic mission to Europa , which agency officials say should be ready to launch by the mid-2020s. Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+ . Follow us @Spacedotcom , Facebook or Google+ . Originally published on Space.com . Hubble Scopes Out Three Moons Transiting Jupiter | Time-Lapse Video Touring Jupiter's Big Moons: Io, Ganymede, Europa, Callisto Photos: The Galilean Moons of Jupiter Europa May Harbor Simple Life Forms | Video
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Malala Yousafzai, the world's most famous advocate for girls' right to education, speaks with CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
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A 10-month-old baby girl weighs as much as a 5-year-old. The Doctors discuss the medical conditions that could have caused her rapid weight gain.
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The all-WiFi phone service Cablevision announced in January is now available. Unlike the usual mobile carrier, the Freewheel phone (currently a $100 second generation Moto G ) only operates on WiFi -- to keep costs down it doesn't look for 3G, LTE or any other kind of signal. Of course, if you're consistently in the range of wireless hotspots then that's not a problem, and it's pre-programmed to log in to any of 1.1 million Optimum hotspots in the New York area or "Cable WiFi" hotspots elsewhere. As promised, it's $10 per month for customers with Cablevision's internet service or $30 without, all to get unlimited calling, data and text messaging with no annual contract. For now it's a curious alternative to traditional cellphones -- we've asked whether that Moto G can be used on regular carriers if things don't work out but haven't heard back yet -- even though it's not cheaper than competitors like Republic Wireless . The company is already considering rolling out the service as an app that works on other smartphones, and promises unspecified features on the way that "underscore WiFi's superiority over the legacy cellular model." Those interested can check out the FAQ or sign up on the Freewheel website , and mind the 30-day return policy if they find themselves stuck in a WiFi-less backwater one too many times. Freewheel
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The United States and Europe must stand together over Ukraine as it battles for survival in the face of escalating Russian military involvement, Vice President Joe Biden said during a visit to Brussels on Friday. "We, the US and Europe as a whole, have to stand with Ukraine at this moment," he said, amid reports of transatlantic divisions over whether to send weapons to support the Western-backed Kiev government. "Russia cannot be allowed to redraw the map of Europe." Biden also criticised Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is to meet the leaders of France and Germany in Moscow later Friday, of riding roughshod over peace efforts. "Ukraine is fighting for their very survival right now," Biden told reporters alongside EU president Donald Tusk. "Russia continues to escalate the conflict by sending mercenaries and tanks and, as we euphemistically say in the United states, little green men, without patches, very sophisticated special operations soldiers. "President Putin continues to call for new peace plans as his troops roll through the Ukrainian countryside, and he absolutely ignores every agreement his country has signed in the past." Tusk -- the former Polish premier who has spoken out strongly in the past against Russia's alleged support for pro-Kremlin separatist forces in Ukraine -- said the West must keep up pressure on Russia. EU officials said Thursday that the bloc will blacklist more Russian individuals over Ukraine, but divisions within the 28-nation bloc, particularly with the new Greek government, have prevented further broad economic sanctions. "The European Union and the United States need to continue standing shoulder to shoulder, coordinate our efforts and uphold the pressure on Russia for as long as necessary," said Tusk. In an apparent warning to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande as they visit Moscow, Tusk warned against any deal with Moscow that would break up Ukraine. "We cannot compromise on Ukraine's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity," he added.
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Like clockwork, every night at 2 a.m. the house would ring out with gasps for air, cries for help, and screams. My parents, all too familiar with these frightening sounds, would brace themselves for what would be one of many sleepless nights. Those nights, filled with terrifying images and haunting sounds, never went away for me. Fourteen years later, I found myself within the confines of the Sleep Disorder Institute in New York, looking for answers to why I still wake myself up screaming in terror. Night Terrors Exposed The rare sleep disorder goes by many names: night terrors, sleep terrors, pavor nocturnus, or AXIS I: 307.46 (The DSM's code). It remains a medical mystery. What medical researchers do know is that night terrors are caused by an over-arousal of the central nervous system (CNS) during sleep. In children, this may be the result of the CNS still maturing it has long been believed that the CNS's maturation process ends in early childhood (although several recent studies suggest it may continue to develop through around age 25). They also have been able to isolate when night terrors occur in the sleep cycle. Typically, these sleep episodes occur during the transition from stage three non-rapid eye movement (REM) sleep to stage four non-REM sleep. During stage three, delta waves are produced from the brain and the waves gradually become slower as the sleep cycle begins. This is also the point in the night where a sleeper's heart rate, blood pressure, and arousal tend to decline and, perhaps counter intuitively, when night terrors are most likely to occur. The Profile Of A Parasomniac Occasionally as an adult, for days on end, months at a time, I wake to find myself in a state of panic, clutching my chest, gasping for air, drenched in sweat. This is typical of those who suffer night terrors; most report some or all of the following: tachycardia (increased heart rate), tachypnea (increased breathing rate), and sweating during episodes. Night terrors are rare but are more common in kids, especially those who are overtired or ill, stressed, or fatigued, taking a new medication, or sleeping in a new environment or away from home. "Three to six percent of children, between the ages of 4 to 11 years old, get night terrors," says Donna Housman , a clinical psychologist in Weston, Mass. "It's a scary thing for parents." About 80 percent of kids who have night terrors have a family member who also experienced them, or sleep walking, indicating there might be a genetic component. One family that has had their share of sleepless nights are the Hurds, in Burleson, Texas. Tiffany Hurd has a family history of various arousal disorders including sleep terrors, sleepwalking, and various other "parasomnias." (Parasomnia is an umbrella term used to describe sleep disorders that include abnormal movements, behaviors and emotions during sleep.) Hurd says that both she and her sister Trista suffered "pure terror" at night when they were young; her brother sleepwalked. This is the terror that haunts me in my sleep, and how I fight back to keep it at bay. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock Hurd's two children, daughter McKenzie, 10, and son Maverick, 9, both suffered from night terrors from an early age, initially leaving Hurd feeling helpless. "[McKenzie] started having them when she was 2 and a half years old, and it was terrifying because we didn't know what was going on," she says. "We thought she woke up from a bad dream and was throwing a fit." They feared McKenzie's night terrors would lead to self-harm; even after her mother tried to console her, she would continue to scream and hit her bed. Night Terrors Vs Nightmares Night terrors are often mistaken for nightmares, but doctors warn parents that there are telltale signs that can help distinguish the two. Nightmares often occur during the second half of the night when dreaming is most intense during REM sleep. They are "horrific dreams that we recall after awakening, and originate from dream sleep, so dream images are vivid and specific," says Dr. Peter Fotinakes , medical director of St. Joseph Hospital's Sleep Disorders Center in Orange County, Calif. Night terrors on the other hand, are often not remembered on waking. That's because in most cases, non-REM dreams (such as night terrors) primarily consist of brief, fragmented impressions that, compared to REM-state dreams (such as nightmares), are less emotional and less likely to involve visual images. Despite the common belief that children just "grow out of it," sleep terrors can persist well into adulthood. Dennis Palumbo , a psychotherapist in Los Angeles, Calif., has several adult patients who report night terrors. He believes more adults are suffering from chronic fatigue and emotional fatigue, which may account for the upsurge in sleep episodes he's seen in his private practice. Anxiety suppressed during work life, or deep-seeded issues, takes a toll on a patient's sleep quality. The literature on night terrors in adults is scarce since the parasomnia is commonly associated with children. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine estimates 6.5 percent of all children are affected by night terrors, followed by 2.2 percent of adults, while it remains a rare occurrence for those over the age 65. In adulthood, the sleeping disorder is suspected to be triggered by a strong genetic and family link, but there has yet to be clear empirical evidence to establish this link. A 2014 study published in the journal Sleep found although nightmares and night terrors are a normal part of childhood development, it may also be an early indicator of mental health issues in adolescence. Children who have a frequency of nightmares before age 12 are about four times more likely to have psychotic experiences during adolescence, while those who have experienced night terrors in this group double the risk of these problems, according to the study. The researchers suggest nightmares or night terrors that occur over a prolonged period of time that persist into adolescence can be an early indicator of something more significant later in life, but that has yet to be known. Adult Night Terrors: My Case Study After suffering from night terrors throughout my adolescence and into young adulthood, I decided to get some answers. A self-diagnosis wasn't good enough; I needed professional confirmation as to why my sleep had been plagued by this disorder. Feburary of last year, I found myself seated inside the office of Dr. Maha Ahmad , the associate director and attending physician for adults and children at the Sleep Disorders Institute. As I twiddled my thumbs, I answered Ahmad's row of evaluation questions with either "yes," "no," or "I'm not sure." I had no history of depression or anxiety known to trigger night terrors nor have I, or anyone in my family, ever sleepwalked. Based on my answers, Ahmad was convinced my sleep terrors are benign, and told me that they're not caused by a psychological issue. However, she did want to delve deeper into the root of my sleep terrors, and so suggested that I sleep overnight at a lab being observed by sleep specialists. I agreed, and on the Friday night of my planned sleep study, I hesitantly walked into a different wing of the Sleep Disorders Institute lab, where I was greeted by lab personnel. They escorted me down a long, narrow hallway and soon I was staring at an overwhelmingly bright red digital clock next to "Room 1." I anxiously entered what was to be my bedroom, and I was quickly overcome with a feeling of calmness and familiarity the laboratory bedroom felt, more or less, like a standard hotel room. Overnight sleep study at the Sleeping Disorders Institute in New York City. Lizette Borreli A sleep technician joined me to apply the two dozen electrodes small metal sensor discs to my body. These sensors would monitor my body's activities while I slept. Nine out of the 24 wires were gently placed on my head, followed by flexible elastic belts around my chest and abdomen to measure my breathing. Throughout this process, a ringing noise filled my ears as I began to feel light-headed and dehydrated I was already anxious about what the night would bring. After being hooked up to two dozen wires, a finger pulse oximeter, and soft silicone plugs in my nostrils which act as as a device to detect breathing difficulties I received the go-ahead from the sleep technician to fall asleep. Despite the electrodes and wires all over my body, I assumed my customary sleep position on my back, and closed my eyes to get what I hoped would be a good night's sleep. Two hours or so into sleep, I was still only half awake and half asleep. But the next thing I knew, I was being awakened by the sleep technician who said, "Good morning Liz, the sleep study is now over," via intercom. It was 5:50 a.m. Saturday morning, and I could only think one thing: "I want more sleep." The analysis and interpretation of the sleep study would be evaluated by a sleep specialist who reviews 1000 pages of data including: brain waves, muscle movements, and eye movements. My results would be made available in three to seven days. Though day to day the night terrors don't keep me from living a normal life, the long-term effects of the disorder may be cause for concern. The National Sleep Foundation suggests a normal, healthy adult needs seven to nine hours of sleep each night, and untreated sleep disorders that keep you from it can raise the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, and other medical conditions. The Results So I was pleasantly surprised when, two days later, Ahmad called to tell me that I had "beautiful sleep architecture." Sleep architecture is based on the percentage of time a sleeper spends in each stage of sleep, and it's a model used to determine if an individual is getting enough REM sleep. Atypical sleep architecture is usually exhibited when patients experience frequent arousals like those seen in night terrors during sleep, that cause a disturbance in the normal distribution of sleep stages. An insufficient amount of REM sleep that can cause health issues ranging from depression to a decrease in cognitive skills. What Ahmad did tell me was that they had seen an abrupt change from a deeper stage of sleep to a lighter stage during Stage N3, or slow-wave sleep. In this stage, parasomnias such as night terrors can occur, due to the abnormally high levels of brain activity during the sleeper's mixed state of being both asleep and awake. The reasoning behind these arousals are not entirely clear, Ahmad said, but they can be triggered by sleep deprivation, stress, fever, a new sleep environment, or even run in the family. Ahmad told me it was pretty benign and the National Sleep Foundation agrees: sleep-related behaviors due to arousal disorders are not considered medically significant, nor do they indicate psychiatric or psychological problems. But the truth is that doctors have yet to determine the underlying mechanism in these frequent night disturbances or why they occur during the deepest stage of sleep. Night terrors are underreported many who suffer simply accept the disorder as a part of their life, and many others are children, who have to rely on parents to report any problems. As a result, extremely limited data is available. And the bottom line is good sleep hygiene may not be enough to ward off these bouts of terror that fill people with fear and horror in their most vulnerable act of all, sleep. My Life With Night Terrors, One Year Later Now a year has passed since my sleep study, and although I don't always get a good night's rest, the night terror episodes have slowly subsided. There is no magic bullet for this sleeping disorder, but there is the modification in lifestyle such as diet, exercise, and time management. Practicing yoga four to five times a week before bed has helped keep my episodes at bay, as I am able to rid of any stress and anxiety I have built up from the day. Sometimes reducing the occurrence of night terrors may be as simple as taking a deep breath in and a deep breath out.
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When searching for a new home, buyers usually consider the usual suspects: square footage, number of bedrooms, amount of sunlight. Vanessa Pappas had another factor in mind as well: coffee shop proximity. When Pappas and partner C.C. Hirsch recently closed on a three-bedroom property in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, it didn't hurt that her favorite macchiato place was only a half-block away. "Coffee is important," says Pappas, 36, global head of audience development for YouTube. "It's our daily ritual, and we always go to see our friends who work there. It makes us feel like part of the neighborhood." It turns out that easy access to quality java has broader implications. Call it the Starbucks Effect: Proximity to a local coffee shop has a very real, and positive, effect on home values, new data shows. "We looked for certain markers for where homes appreciated faster than others," says Stan Humphries, chief economist at real estate marketplace Zillow and co-author (with Chief Executive Spencer Rascoff) of the book "The New Rules of Real Estate." "Coffee houses emerged early on as a big predictor of future home value. Within a quarter mile, close enough to smell the coffee brewing, that ring appreciates faster than rings further out," Humphries says. How much faster? Over 17 years tabulated by Zillow, leading up to 2014, homes adjacent to the local Starbucks almost doubled in value, up by 96 percent. Those further out appreciated by 65 percent over the same period. And apparently not all coffee shops are created equal. Zillow researchers compared homes near Starbucks locations to those near Dunkin Donuts. Dunkin Donuts-adjacent properties also outperformed the wider market, rising 80 percent over 17 years, but they lagged those in the shadow of Starbucks. Of course, there is a chicken-or-egg question here: Are coffee shops causing a boost in home values, or are the popular chains merely locating in promising neighborhoods that are already on the upswing? Humphries' discovery: Within the first few years of opening, Starbucks locations are actively helping local home values. After that, the outperformance of the broader market tends to diminish. WHOLE FOODS EFFECT The coffee shop is hardly the only symbol of neighborhood gentrification. Researchers have found other amenities can have an even more powerful effect on home values. Nearby specialty grocers, for instance, can lead to a 17.5 percent home-price premium, according to Portland, Oregon-based real estate consultancy Johnson Economics. That compares to a more modest 4.5 percent for coffee shops. In that sense the Starbucks Effect might be more accurately be termed the Whole Foods Effect, according to the firm's principal, Jerry Johnson, referring to the natural food supermarket chain. Also significantly affecting nearby home prices, according to the Johnson Economics study: cinemas, wine shops and garden stores. Given Starbucks' massive resources, it is perhaps not surprising that the Seattle-based chain is adept at picking out promising spots. After all, the company employs entire teams of professionals devoted to pinpointing optimal locations. "Where we choose to locate our stores is as important as how we design them," says Michael Malanga, Starbucks' senior vice president of store development. For potential homebuyers, it's like heading into an exam with the answer key. Assuming that significant market research has gone into every store opening, buyers can piggyback on those positive conclusions. "There are substantial resources spent by Starbucks headquarters to figure this stuff out and find where the best locations are going to be," says Zillow's Humphries. "So for homebuyers, you can essentially draft off the work that Starbucks has already done for you." As for YouTube's Pappas, she's not a fan of Starbucks. She prefers her local Brooklyn spot - Krupa Grocery. But she isn't surprised that coffee shops turn out to be a reliable predictor of home-price appreciation. "Especially in New York City, you want to be able to walk to everything," says Pappas. "Having a coffee shop within eyesight is a big plus." (Follow us @ReutersMoney or at http://www.reuters.com/finance/personal-finance; Editing by Lauren Young and Leslie Adler)
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Broadway hit Kinky Boots is stomping its way over to London's West End. Based on the film of the same name, it tells the true story of a Northampton shoe factory which turns around its fortunes by catering to drag queens. It won best musical and best original score for its writer - pop star Cyndi Lauper - at the 2013 Tony Awards. The London production will be staged at the Adelphi Theatre, which recently announced the closure of Gemma Arterton musical Made In Dagenham. No cast has yet been announced. "We are thrilled and deeply honoured to be bringing Kinky Boots back home to British shores, where this inspirational story is set," said producers Daryl Roth and Hal Luftig in a statement. "The show is big-hearted and filled with joy and we trust that it will be warmly embraced by audiences in the UK." Critics won over The original film saw Chiwetel Ejiofor play a drag queen who forms an unlikely business relationship with the owner of a shoe factory. It was itself based on a BBC documentary, Trouble at the Top: The Kinky Boot Factory, which was broadcast in 1999. It followed Steve Pateman who, in his 30s, replaced his father as boss of WJ Brookes - a traditional factory in the village of Earls Barton in Northamptonshire which had existed for more than a century. Struggling with changes in fashion and competition from abroad, Pateman had started to look for new markets. He was persuaded by an unexpected phone-call to think about expansion into "kinky boots" - women's shoes in men's sizes for transgender people. It seems an unlikely inspiration for a musical, but critics were (reluctantly) won over when it debuted on Broadway in April 2013. The New York Times called it "a shameless emotional button pusher", but praised its "zip and zeal". And New York Magazine commented: "It's never boring. It's never shocking. You are likely to leave entirely entertained and satisfied. Can't argue with that." The UK production will begin previews from 21 August, with a press night on 15 September. Tickets go on sale from 2 March. There is no confirmation of what will fill the gap between Kinky Boots and Made In Dagenham, which closes in April after a six-month run.
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HEALTHY AND FRUGAL AGING The U.S. population is aging as baby boomers swell the ranks of the senior cohort. By 2030, nearly one in five Americans will be 65 or older. Getting older isn't easy for anyone, and the physical and financial costs can be substantial. But there are ways to age well that don't cost a lot of money. GET MOVING Maintaining good physical health is a crucial part of aging well. Fortunately, you don't need to spend a lot of money to get into shape. A growing body of research indicates that one of the simplest forms of exercise, walking, offers an excellent way to stay healthy. According to the American Heart Association, walking just 30 minutes a day produces a wide range of benefits, including reduced risk of heart disease, improved blood pressure, weight control, and a reduced risk of developing breast cancer, colon cancer, and diabetes. Walking is also one of the cheapest forms of exercise, requiring little more than a decent pair of shoes and a clear path. For those who prefer to take their exercise indoors, try a good cheap treadmill. BUILD MUSCLE Building and maintaining stamina through aerobic exercise is essential, but there are other ways to improve your physical health. In particular, working with weights and other forms of resistance provides numerous benefits, including better balance, stronger bones, weight control, and improved sleep. The benefits are so pronounced that American College of Sports Medicine now recommends the use of weights for all people over the age 50. And while the advantages of weightlifting are substantial, the cost doesn't have to be. You can use household objects like cans of food or milk jugs filled with sand or gravel, and rubber resistance bands cost just a few dollars. Hand weights and simple barbells can be found for less than $100 -- check Craigslist for good deals on weight sets. Many communities have gyms with inexpensive memberships; check for senior discounts. EAT WELL Americans aren't famous for their healthy diet. The country that brought the world Coca-Cola, cheese-filled pizza crust, and supersized French fries still has a lot to learn about healthy eating and the benefits of homemade food. But the good news is that learning to eat well is free, and making your own healthy food can cost less than buying unhealthy food. While organic products can be pricey, many healthy foods are inexpensive. For example, oatmeal is both better for you and cheaper than pancakes and sausage. Homemade vegetable stir-fry is better than pizza. And a roast chicken is a better option than a hamburger combination meal. Cheapism has lots of information about eating well for less; for starters, try this guide to cheap foods available at Whole Foods. GET YOUR SLEEP This is an easy one, since sleep is free. Researchers are learning more every day about the benefits of getting enough sleep. These benefits include improved memory, reduced inflammation, weight control, less stress, better attentiveness, and -- best of all -- a longer lifespan. The advantages of sleep are so overwhelming that the only question is how to make sure you get enough. Getting to bed early always helps, and avoiding the use of electronic screens before bedtime has been shown to encourage getting to sleep sooner. Naps during the day provide another good option. Try a 20-minute power nap in the afternoon to improve your focus. STAY SHARP Physical health is important, but your mind needs exercise too. Researchers have found that mental stimulation benefits the brain in the same way that physical stimulation benefits the body. Simple mental workouts like puzzles, cards, and board games have been shown to help maintain cognitive function in older people. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that older people who regularly challenge their brains with puzzles are less likely to develop dementia; physical activity also helps maintain normal brain function. There are many options for inexpensive or free puzzles and games. Local libraries are good sources, and many "brain games" are available on the Internet. EXPLORE NEW FIELDS Puzzles are a fun way to keep your mind sharp, but some people are looking for more serious intellectual stimulation. A good way to give your mind a regular workout is to learn something new. Love Paris? Take up French. Interested in the Civil War? Bone up on 19th century American history. Like computers? Learn how to code. Developing knowledge in new fields helps keep you connected to the larger world, and wrestling with new ideas is a good way to exercise your brain. There are many ways to explore new fields for little or no money. Libraries and the Internet are the obvious starting points. For more formal pursuits, many colleges and universities reduce or eliminate tuition for older students. STAY CONNECTED While it's wise to focus on your mental and physical well-being as you age, it's important to maintain your connections with other people. For most of us, family comes first, and spending time with family is an important and healthy part of our lives. It's also important to keep up with old friends, and when we lose touch, it's good to make new ones. A fun way to stay connected is to enjoy healthy activities together. Go for a (free) walk with friends, make a nice (inexpensive) dinner for a group, take (reduced tuition) classes together. Like mental and physical exercise, spending time with friends and family keeps paying dividends over time. VOLUNTEER Giving back to the community is a good way to stay engaged while helping others. Most communities have volunteer organizations that are looking for help. Food banks and soup kitchens always need a helping hand, and local schools are usually looking for tutors. The list of national organizations that need volunteers is long and includes Habitat for Humanity, Easter Seals, and the American Red Cross. And online services like Volunteer Match are making it easier to connect with groups eager for your help. WRITE IT DOWN Everyone has an interesting story to tell. Why not put yours down on paper for future generations? Think how satisfying it would be if you could read your great-grandmother's life story, written in her own words. Consider giving that gift to your descendants, or at least to some future historian. You can use free blog software online to collect your thoughts, or a 99-cent notebook. TEND THE SPIRIT Aging makes us aware of the fragility and impermanence of life. This can be a difficult realization for many people, and it makes sense to deal with the emotional turmoil it can bring. Religious groups are good sources of support, but even more secular-minded people have plenty of options to explore. The important thing is to be sure you address the spiritual aspects of aging, in whatever way makes sense to you. And though it can be a challenging process, its fiscal toll is negligible.
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Real Madrid defender Sergio Ramos will be out of action for five weeks, coach Carlo Ancelotti confirmed on Friday. Spain international Ramos, 28, suffered a torn hamstring in Wednesday's 2-1 La Liga win over Sevilla and limped off after just nine minutes, replaced by Nacho. "Sergio's injury is a serious one. He'll be out for five weeks," Ancelotti said. Ramos, who had already been ruled out of Saturday's derby against Atletico, could also miss both legs of Champions League round of 16 against Schalke, on February 18 and March 10. The centre-back's absence is a major blow for Real, who already had to do without James Rodriguez (foot), Pepe (rib) or Luka Modric (thigh). Against their Madrid rivals, Real are set to start with Raphael Varane, 21, and Nacho, 23, at the heart of the defence. "I trust those two players. They are very good players. They are dedicated and willing to play. I am convinced they will do good things on Saturday", Ancelotti said. Real, currently top of the league with 54 points, face Atletico on Saturday for the 10th time in the past year in all competitions.
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Detectives in Washington state busted a massive, illegal marijuana grow-house that was cultivating pot next-door to a day care center, and helping to undercut the state's legal marijuana market. Pierce County deputies found nearly 800 pot plants at the house in Gig Harbor, about 30 miles southwest of Seattle, the News-Tribune reported. Marijuana is legal in Washington, but only when it is sold through licensed dispensaries. The raid on Tuesday dismantled a black market operation, officials said. Officers arrested tenant Gian Minh Ly during the bust one of the largest in Pierce County in 20 years. Deputies originally went to the rented home to cut off the power because Ly was using far more juice than the meter showed. Peninsula Light said Ly stole more than $10,000 in power since April. When an officer knocked on the door, he smelled pot, and the raid began. Inside, deputies said they found 798 marijuana plants in an "an elaborate three-stage marijuana growing operation." Plants covered the bedroom and basement, and the house was covered in mold, officials said. Safe Harbor Child Care Center which enrolls children from ages 1 to 5 is next-door to Ly's house. Investigators believe the grow-house's ringleaders could be based outside of the U.S. Ly, who claimed he had authorization to grow marijuana for medical use, is likely a low-level employee in the operation, investigators said. He was charged with unlawful manufacturing of a controlled substance and third-degree defrauding a public utility. His arraignment is set for Thursday. Washington Initiative 502, which legalized the sale of small amounts of marijuana, passed in 2012 and was implemented over a year ago. Washington's Economic and Revenue Forecast Council estimates that the marijuana industry will bring in more than $694 million in revenue to the state through the middle of 2019. With News Wire Services
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A dongle created by Columbia University researchers can turn any smartphone (whether iPhones or Android devices) into an HIV and syphilis tester. Even better, it only takes 15 minutes and a tiny drop of blood to get a result -- the device doesn't even need a battery to work. According to the paper the researchers published in Science Translational Medicine , the dongle performs enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to detect HIV antibody, treponemal-specific antibody for syphilis, and non-treponemal antibody for active syphilis infection. Labs don't currently offer the three tests needed to detect those in a single format. ELISA machines, by the way, cost around $18,000, but each of these dongles only cost around $34 to manufacture. To test, you prick a finger and put your blood on the device's plastic collector. After that, you'll have to launch its accompanying app and physically push a button down to release the reagents needed for the test (as shown in the video below). It's pressing a button, instead of automating the process, that allows researchers to eliminate the need for a battery. The device gets whatever little processing power it needs from the smartphone, tablet or computer itself -- yep, it works with other types of electronics, because it plugs in via the headphone jack. The group of researchers was led by Samuel K. Sia, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering. Sia and his team have been developing mobile HIV/syphilis testing labs for a long time, and one of their earlier creations is the mChip , which is a credit card-sized device that can also test for those STDs. Each mChip only costs around a $1 each, but unlike this dongle which works any phone, it needs a $100 diagnostic kit in order to work. The dongle recently underwent pilot testing in Rwanda, where it was used on 96 patients, mostly from prevention-of-mother-to-child-transmission clinics and voluntary test centers. Unfortunately, it incorrectly identified some patients as infected when they weren't, but its creators are working to improve its accuracy before doing a bigger trial run. Science , Columbia University
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Billionaire Richard Branson travels all around the world for business and pleasure. Find out which three things he can't travel without.
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John King, Jackie Kucinich and Peter Hamby on a new WMUR Granite State poll that looks at the GOP 2016 presidential field.
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A panel of experts appointed by Google to advise it on how to implement an EU ruling ordering it to remove links to some personal information from search results has backed the company's view that links be removed only from websites in Europe. That puts the so-called Advisory Council at odds with the European Union's data protection regulators who said at the end of last year that Google should remove links worldwide, including from Google.com. Google set up its eight-member panel last year to draw up a report, published on Friday, on how to implement the surprise "right to be forgotten" ruling from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in May. The conclusion had been expected. The report is non-binding and carries no legal weight. The panel, which includes a former German justice minister and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, concluded that Google should only remove links to personal information deemed inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant from its European websites, such as Google.de in Germany or Google.fr in France. "It concludes that removal from nationally directed versions of Google's search services within the EU is the appropriate means to implement the ruling at this stage," the council said in the report. However, one member, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a former German justice minister, dissented, saying that de-listing search results should be global. "The Internet is global, the protection of users' rights must also be global," she wrote in the report. "Since EU residents are able to research globally the EU is authorized to decide that the search engine has to delete all links globally." The panel held seven public hearings across Europe last autumn. The geographic scope of the ruling has highlighted the difficulty of applying national law to the Internet. The issue of whether Google or any other search engine should inform the original publisher that a link to their site will no longer appear under searches for a person's name has also been divisive. People who have been denied the right to have links removed can turn to their national data protection authority (DPA) to contest the decision. The Advisory Council, however, said that the original publisher of the information should also "have a means to challenge improper delistings before a DPA or a similar public authority". EU regulators previously said there is "no legal basis for such routine communication under EU data protection law."
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HITACHI, Japan A snake-like robot designed to examine the inside of one of three melted reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant is ready to begin its expedition. Assessing the damage inside the reactors is a crucial step in the decommissioning of the plant, which was badly damaged by a 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Use of a remote-controlled robot is essential because no humans can go close to the reactor chambers because of their fatally high radiation levels. Using information gathered by the robot, the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., plans to repair the damaged chambers enough so they can be filled with water in preparation for the removal of melted radioactive debris, planned in about a decade. The 60-centimeter (2-foot) -long robot, developed by electronics giant Hitachi and its nuclear affiliate Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy, was demonstrated this week at a Hitachi-GE facility in Hitachi, northeast of Tokyo. It has a lamp at the front and is designed to crawl like a snake through a 10-centimeter (4-inch) wide pipe into the containment vessel. From there it must dangle and descend onto a steel-mesh platform just below the reactor core. There, the robot is to transform into a U-shape auto-drive crawler and capture live images and temperature and radiation levels and transmit them to a control station outside the building. After its trip, technicians plan to store the robot in a shielded box because of its extremely high radioactivity, and it will not be reused. Different robots must be designed for each reactor, since all are slightly different. Computer simulations indicate that all of the fuel rods in the Unit 1 reactor probably melted and fell to the bottom of the containment chamber, but until now there has been no way of confirming that. A brief fiberscope observation was conducted in 2012 but the images were scratchy and limited. Because of the reactor damage, large volumes of cooling water continue to leak from them, causing contamination and hampering the plant's cleanup process. ___ Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed this report. ___ Follow Mari Yamaguchi on Twitter at twitter.com/ mariyamaguchi
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"Breaking Bad" spinoff "Better Call Saul" premieres Sunday. and it's probably one of the most-anticipated new series of the year. We've already seen it , and "Breaking Bad" fans should really enjoy it. So it shouldn't be a big surprise the series has already been renewed for a second season. If you can't wait for "Better Call Saul," but need to know a bit more before the show's premiere, here's everything you need to know about the spinoff. Is this a prequel or a sequel? The majority of the series is set in 2002, six years before Saul ever met Walter White. However, the show definitely has some elements of a sequel, too, as viewers will see in the premiere's first frew minutes. So, yes, you'll get to see what became of Saul Goodman after he left Walt and Jesse Pinkman. When we spoke with Odenkirk a while back while he was doing press for his Oscar-nominated film "Nebraska," the star told us he wanted the show to be both a prequel and sequel . It looks like he got his wish. Who will star in the spinoff? Here's who's joining Odenkirk on the series: Jonathan Banks will reprise his role as Mike Ehrmantraut. Michael McKean will play Saul's older brother Chuck who is a partner at a law firm in Albuquerque. Patrick Fabian plays Howard Hamlin while Rhea Seehorn ("Whitney") stars as Kim, two lawyers at Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill. Michael Mando ("Orphan Black") plays a criminal named Nacho Varga. So, what will this be about? The show will follow Saul Goodman before he's the cocky, confident lawyer, when he's just known as Jimmy McGill. McGill's strapped for cash and drives a rundown car. He's trying to make a living as an honest attorney. What should follow in the series is how McGill goes from a scrappy, hungry young lawyer to a well-known name in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Why did Saul get his own spinoff? The show has been in the works for a while in the "Breaking Bad" writers room. Creator Vince Gilligan told Hitfix it kind of started off as a joke . It started as a lark, which is another word for joke, in the writer's room. It started and it really came from the fact that I love working with Bob, just as we love working with really every actor on "Breaking Bad." But we also loved the character. We love writing for the character. We love putting words in his mouth. And we had so much fun indeed doing that that it started as a lark; we'd come up with some great term or phrase and we'd laugh about it in the writer's room. And then we'd say, 'You know, when we're doing the Saul Goodman show we'll be able to blah, blah, blah, blah.' And we made that comment so many times that it started to dawn on us that it wasn't a lark; there was truth to it. It was not just a joke, but a potentially good idea. If I like "Breaking Bad," will I enjoy it? I think you will. From what I've seen in the first two episodes (I'm waiting out to watch the third at the moment), there are plenty of nods to the original series while not feeling forced. You'll see a few familiar faces including Jonathan Banks, and the visuals and montages will feel straight out of "Breaking Bad." However, don't go into this show wanting another "Breaking Bad." You'll be disappointed. This will be its own show, focused on Goodman, er Jimmy McGill's, growth into a sleazy criminal lawyer. At this year's Television Critics Association press tour, co-creator Peter Gould has said they're not going do nods to the previous show and bring back former characters just because they can do it. "We're trying to make something that stands on its own, that has an entertainment value that's not just seeing a series of old favorites, or 'Remember when?' It's not the series equivalent of a clip show," said Gould . "We try to balance these things out." When will it air on AMC? "Better Call Saul" will premiere Sun. Feb. 8 at 10 p.m. after the mid-season return of "The Walking Dead." After that, it will head to Monday nights at 10 p.m. starting Feb. 9. NOW WATCH: Bryan Cranston returns as his 'Breaking Bad' character in a Super Bowl ad
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Located just off the Venezuelan coast in the southern Caribbean Sea, Curaçao might be the largest of the Netherland Antilles (Dutch Caribbean) islands, but it still enjoys a reputation of being rather off-the-radar. This island paradise sets itself apart from the neighboring tourist hub of Aruba with a unique blend of Creole, Dutch, and Spanish cultures; stunning, secluded beaches; and a bustling capital city that also happens to be an UNESCO World Heritage Site. JetBlue Airways' recent addition of direct flights from New York city to Curaçao has sparked renewed interest in this historic Dutch territory, so if you're looking for a relaxing beach vacation without throngs of tourists, go soon before the word really gets out. Willemstad: Center of Culture Scoop up Amsterdam, drop it into the Caribbean Sea and add some Spanish Colonial flair, and you have Willemstad , Curaçao's capital city, a center of both culture and business.The island's rich and eclectic history is on display here, especially in the form of its architecture. Both Spanish and Dutch Colonial buildings are present in an array of bright tropical colors, a nod to the Curaçao's diverse influences throughout the centuries. Start at the Otrabanda to take in the picturesque lined townhouses across the water, and then head to the must-visit Museum Kurá Hulanda . Situated in an 18th-century Dutch merchant's former house and slave yard, the museum contains the largest collection of African art in the Caribbean. A sad yet vital part of Curaçao's cultural history is its role as a center for slave trading in the 17th century, and Kurá Hulanda serves as both a moving testament to a harrowing time period, and also as an inspiring tribute to the customs and culture of Curaçao's early inhabitants. Afterward, cross the famous Queen Emma Pontoon Bridge (at night, this structure is illuminated in magnificent colors) and check out the floating market, where vendors pull their fishing boats directly up to the canal and sell fresh produce from neighboring Venezuela under covered market stalls. Insider Tip: Take an architectural walking tour with local architect and history buff Anko van der Woude , who gives interesting and insightful facts about the buildings and will show you some hidden gems you would be less likely to stumble upon on your own. Exotic Beaches If you're staying at the Marriott , you can enjoy the stunning, soft-sand beaches of Piscadera Bay from under your private palapa, but it's a great idea to rent a car and explore the coast on the west end of the island especially lively Cas Abao , arguably one of the best beaches on Curaçao. This popular spot has lounge chairs available for rent as well as bars and restaurants where you can kick back and enjoy a cold beer with the incomparable view. There is also a large, wooden raft moored just offshore, perfect for sunbathing and diving. If you're looking for a more remote spot, try Jeremi Beach. It's a bit of a rocky path to get here, but the calm dazzling water and sheltered cove is worth the trek. To experience Curaçao below the surface, book a snorkeling or diving excursion. Head to Caracas Bay, a popular snorkel spot where a sunken tugboat sits just below the surface, surrounded by an abundant coral reef. National Parks One of the most interesting things about Curaçao is the variety of its topography. While the southwestern coast is a stretch of stunning beaches and crystal-clear waters, a vast majority of the island is a wild, undeveloped, desert-like landscape dotted with cacti. Take a jeep tour through the rocky terrain and stop at spots like Boka Pistol, where waves crash against the cliffs to form huge spurts of sea mist, which has earned it the nickname of "The Breath of Curaçao." Don't miss Christoffel Park , the island's largest national park and wildlife preserve. Insider Tip: Make sure to wear sneakers, or you won't get to hike up to Seru Bientu (Windy Mountain) to see one of the best panoramic views of Curaçao and beyond. Lively Nightlife Curaçao's nightlife is a lively and unique mix of jazz lounges, salsa clubs, and, of course, casinos, but before you head out for the night, start with happy hour at the nearest beach bar to sip on a cocktail and watch a truly spectacular sunset. The Boardroom Beach Bar on Piscadera Bay is a small wooden surf shack right on the water, with a laid-back vibe, great music, and even some rope swings to perch on as you take in the view. Another great spot is Pirate Bay, which has a long-standing reputation as one of the island's best happy hour locales. If you're looking for the hottest nightclub, it's best to ask a Curaçaoan the hot spots change on any given night. Unlike other Caribbean islands, some clubs here pulse straight into the early hours of the morning, and you can dance 'til dawn to live salsa and reggae music. Try Mambo Beach for dancing on the sand and the ever lively Blues Bar & Restaurant at the Avila Hotel for some great live jazz. Insider Tip: You can't go to Curaçao without trying a cocktail with the local liquor, (aptly named Blue Curaçao) but be warned: blue tongues are hard to avoid. Unique Cuisine Adventurous foodies will revel in the unique cooking that Curaçao offers. Called " Krioyo " ( Criollo in Spanish, which means "Creole"), the cuisine is a unique blend of Caribbean, Dutch, and Latin American flavors. Traditional dishes like kadushi (cactus soup) and the famous Keshi Yena (a huge ball of baked gouda cheese stuffed with a stewed mix of meat, raisins, and olives) are not to be missed and can be found in restaurants all over the island, though be warned: k adushi is a rather acquired taste. Insider Tip: Make a reservation at hot spot Restaurant & Café Gouverneur de Rouville . This restaurant is housed in a historic 18th-century building with views of the Otrobanda waterfront, live music, and an elegant courtyard perfect for dining under the stars.
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Employers in the U.S. added more jobs than forecast in January, capping the biggest three-month gain in 17 years, and workers' earnings jumped. The 257,000 advance in payrolls last month followed a 329,000 gain in December that was bigger than previously reported, figures from the Labor Department showed Friday in Washington. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 228,000 increase. The unemployment rate climbed to 5.7 percent as the improving job market lured more Americans into the labor force. A stronger economy has encouraged companies to boost hiring, creating a virtuous cycle of growth as Americans spend newfound incomes on goods and services. Sustained job growth will probably help assure Federal Reserve policy makers that the expansion is well-rooted and can withstand an increase in interest rates later this year. "We're at a phase of the cycle where the labor market is shoring up household finances and that generates more demand, and it becomes a very self-reinforcing cycle in a positive way," Aneta Markowska, chief U.S. economist at Societe Generale in New York, said before the report. Average hourly earnings jumped 0.5 percent, the most since November 2008, from the prior month. They were up 2.2 percent over the past year, the biggest increase since August. Payroll gains averaged 336,000 over the last three months, the strongest since a comparable period ended in November 1997. A striking aspect of the report was an upward revision to prior months. Employment in November was revised up to a 423,000 gain, the most since May 2010. Private payrolls, which exclude government agencies, soared 414,000 that month, the biggest advance since September 1997. Job gains in January were led by retailers, construction firms and health-care companies. Survey Estimates Estimates in the Bloomberg survey of 98 economists for payrolls last month ranged from increases of 180,000 to 286,000. To calculate the data, the Labor Department surveys businesses and households for the pay period that includes the 12th of the month. The agency's survey of households, used to derive the unemployment rate, showed about 1.05 million people entered the labor force and 759,000 found work. These numbers also reflect new estimates on the size of the population. The participation rate, which indicates the share of working-age people in the labor force, increased to 62.9 percent from 62.7 percent in December. Private hiring increased by 267,000 in January after an advance of 320,000 the month before. Employment at retailers climbed about 46,000 last month, while payrolls in health care and social services rose by almost 50,000. Construction, Manufacturing Construction companies added 39,000 workers and factories took on 22,000. Not all industries boosted payrolls. Employment fell in transportation, mining and at temporary-help agencies. The average workweek for all employees held at 34.6 hours, the Labor Department's report showed. Even as job growth has firmed over the past year, a pickup in wage growth has been slower to take hold. Fed policy makers are closely monitoring worker pay as they consider a time table for their first increase in borrowing costs since 2006. Falling commodity costs and weakness in overseas economies have been slowing inflation, which is below the central bank's target of 2 percent. Federal Reserve Inflation "is anticipated to decline further in the near term," the Federal Open Market Committee said in a Jan. 28 statement. Meanwhile, "labor market conditions have improved further, with strong job gains and a lower unemployment rate." Economists surveyed by Bloomberg from Jan. 9 to Jan. 14 projected the economy will add 230,000 jobs per month this year, with an average unemployment rate of 5.4 percent. Staffing firm Robert Half International Inc. has been among companies seeing the improvement in the labor market firsthand. Sales and earnings at the Menlo Park, California-based company that works on temporary and permanent placements beat analysts' estimates amid growing demand for its services. "The U.S. labor market has strengthened in recent months, and skill shortages persist in professional disciplines such as accounting and information technology," Chief Executive Officer Harold Messmer said on a Jan. 29 earnings call. 'Heating Up' The company is seeing "classic signs that the labor markets are heating up, that candidates are getting tighter, that a larger and larger premium is placed by our clients on recruiting of candidates," the company's Chief Financial Officer Keith Waddell said on the call. The Labor Department's figures also included its annual benchmark update, which aligns employment data with corporate tax records. The revision showed payrolls grew by an additional 67,000 workers, on an unadjusted basis, from April 2013 to March 2014. Additionally, the agency incorporated new Census Bureau population estimates into the household survey. The adjustment boosted the estimated size of the labor force by 348,000. --With assistance from Kristy Scheuble in Washington. To contact the reporter on this story: Victoria Stilwell in Washington at [email protected] To contact the editor responsible for this story: Carlos Torres at [email protected] Vince Golle
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Jadeveon Clowney is underwent microfracture surgery to repair his right knee, but can he come back from his injury? Dr. Peter DeLuca gives us some outlook for Clowney's return.
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Samantha Brown aboard the Carnival Breeze. Carnival / https://www.youtube.com/user/Carnival/getstarted Skift Take: Pick the right personality who your brand's target audience can relate to. Joyce Manalo Carnival isn't sure if people really know how to cruise, so it turned to YouTube and travel television personality Samantha Brown in an attempt to educate consumers. For over a decade, Brown's show host tenure at Travel Channel has included Great Weekends, Passport to Europe, Passport to Latin America, and Great Hotels. Her new series 50/50 will air later this year. "The content of the Samantha Brown video series aims to help consumers in their vacation planning journey by providing them clear, easy to understand answers on their common cruising questions," Stephanie Evans-Greene, Vice President of Brand Communication at Carnival says. "We believe Samantha's credibility and recognition as a travel expert works across all channels." As part of its launch, Carnival hosted a Twitter chat and had Brown takeover their account. Audiences joined the Q&A by hashtagging their tweets with #AskSamanthaBrown. After the session, they tweeeted a link to the YouTube channel showcasing a selection of videos. You're in luck, first time cruisers! @CarnivalCruise & I launched a new series onCruising 101 http://t.co/pVWBsbj373 http://t.co/RwgeBIjQKS Samantha Brown (@SamanthaBrown) February 5, 2015 To Carnival, video views is the return on investment that they are looking for. Evans-Greene said, "We'd like to see video views as well as earned views of our other YouTube channel content." Their YouTube custom tab features a branded experience with five videos in the "How to Cruise Series" that explains the basics of cruising; choosing the right trip and itinerary; how to get traveler's money's worth and professional cruiser tips. Each of the videos take the travelers aboard the Carnival Breeze to give viewers a more realistic experience of what vacation life is like, on board. Here's the first featured YouTube video in the series:
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Google ( GOOG ) is well known for its popular search engine, email service, web browser, and various online tools we use daily at work, at home, and on the go. What many don't think about day-to-day, however, is that all of these services are free. So how does Google make money? (For more, see: Baidu Versus Google: Who Will Win The Global Search War? ) AdWords and Search Advertising The bulk of Google's $66 billion revenue in 2014 came from its proprietary advertising service, Google AdWords . Of that revenue , 68 percent or just over $45 billion came from Google's own websites. When you use Google to search for anything from financial information to local weather, you're given a list of search results generated by Google's algorithm. The algorithm attempts to provide the most relevant results for your query, and, along with these results, you may find related suggested pages from an AdWords advertiser. AdWords advertisements integration touches almost all of Google's web properties. Any recommended websites you see when logged into Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, and other Google sites are generated through the AdWords platform. To gain the top spot in Google advertisements , advertisers have to outbid each other. Higher bids move up the list while low bids may not even be displayed. Advertisers pay Google each time a visitor clicks on an advertisement. A click may be worth anywhere from a few cents to over $50 for highly competitive search terms, including insurance, loans and other financial services. (For more, see: Google Ads Vs. Facebook Ads .) AdSense Network In addition to featuring search advertising on its own sites, Google's AdSense program enables non-Google websites to incorporate Google display advertising on their pages. AdSense ads work similarly to Google's own onsite advertising but are displayed on Google approved sites anywhere on the Internet. When a visitor clicks on a display advertisement on a member website , a portion of the revenue is paid to the site owner while Google keeps part of the fee. According to Google Vice President of Product Management Neal Mohan, there were "well over a million" websites in the Google Display Network as of 2010 . Due to the breadth of companies advertising through the network, entire businesses depend on AdSense as their primary source of income. Revenue from AdSense advertising made up 21 percent, or nearly $14 billion, of Google's total 2014 revenue. Other Revenue The remaining nearly $7 billion, or 11 percent of Google's 2014 revenue came from an assortment of non-advertising related projects. These initiatives, at times loathed by investors due to their disconnect from Google's core advertising business, include a diverse set of projects from both online and offline businesses. Included in the list of "other revenues" is income from related online, media, and cloud computing businesses such as the Play Store, Chromecast, Chromebooks, Android, Google Apps, and the Google Cloud Platform. Offline projects include Google's famous self-driving cars , Google Glass, and an investment in a solar power plant the Mojave Desert . Analysts have criticized Google's investment in these projects, many of which have yet to generate revenue, let alone profit , as mounting expenses from non-core businesses cut into profit margins for the entire company. Major Misstep: Motorola Mobility Just because Google's advertising business is a revenue cash cow doesn't mean the company is without faults. Google's largest financial mistake in recent years was the $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility in 2011. By January 2011, Google had become the owner of the world's leading smartphone platform thanks to the success of its Android operating system. Although Google already participated in the mobile market as a software vendor, the company made a $13 billion bet on Motorola Mobility. Google believed it could grow Motorola's handset business through a natural synergy with the Android software development team. This deal turned out to be the biggest flop in Google history. It led to a major $9.6 billion write-down when Lenovo bought Motorola Mobility for $2.91 billion from Google two years after the deal's completion. For its efforts, Google retained ownership of the majority of the 17,000 patents gained through the acquisition. A Global Business Google is a completely global business. The majority of the company's revenue comes from outside the United States, with 56 percent of Q4 2014 revenue coming from abroad. In the aforementioned period, 44 percent of revenue came from the United States, 9 percent from the United Kingdom, and the remainder from the rest of the world. The Bottom Line Over the last three years , Google's annual revenue has grown from $31.2 billion to over $45 billion. During that time, revenue from Google websites has comprised a relatively consistent 67 to 68 percent of total company revenue. With the inclusion of the advertising network, Google earns about 90 percent of its entire income from advertising. While other businesses contribute billions to Google's income each year, Google makes most of its money through online advertising. Despite the company's investments in other ventures, that doesn't appear to be changing any time soon.
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finance
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King Abdullah II of Jordan, a member of the US-led coalition battling the Islamic State group, faces the toughest challenge of his 16-year reign after IS murdered a downed pilot. One of Washington's closest allies in the region, Abdullah was catapulted into the forefront of the conflict with the jihadists after IS burned the captured Jordanian airman alive. The British- and US-educated Abdullah became king in 1999 following the death of his father Hussein, a seasoned statesman who had weathered many challenges of his own. On Wednesday, the day after IS released a video purporting to show F-16 pilot Maaz Kassasbeh being burned alive, Jordan executed two Iraqi jihadists, including would-be suicide bomber Sajida al-Rishawi. She had been on death row for her role in 2005 triple hotel bombings in Jordan that killed 60 people, and the jihadists had demanded her release. On Thursday, dozens of Jordanian warplanes raided IS targets, with the military vowing that the campaign to avenge Kassasbeh had just begun. Analysts say Abdullah, who celebrated his 53rd birthday on January 30, was decisive in his response. "King Abdullah is very realistic when faced with crises," said Mohammad Abu Rummaneh, a researcher at Jordan University Center for Strategic Studies. Robert Danin, a senior fellow at the US-based Middle East Studies Council on Foreign Relations, agreed. "King Abdullah has been clear-minded in seeing IS as a threat both to the kingdom and to the regional order in the Middle East," he said. - 'Quick and decisive' - "King Abdullah was quick and decisive to act. First in ordering the execution of the two convicted terrorists, and then in intensifying the military campaign against IS," Danin said. "This is important because it signals that the threat posed by IS is real and unacceptable." Abdullah, a military man who was thrust into the limelight of politics following his father's death, cut short a visit to Washington and vowed a harsh revenge for the execution of Kassasbeh. The king attended Britain's prestigious Sandhurst Military Academy like his father, earned his wings as a Cobra attack helicopter pilot and also commanded Jordan's Special Forces before becoming monarch. He is married to Queen Rania, 44-year-old Kuwait-born Palestinian, an asset in a country where almost half the population of seven million is of Palestinian origin. They have four children -- Crown Prince Hussein, Princesses Iman and Salma and Prince Hashem. Jordan's constitution gives Abdullah extensive powers. He appoints governments, approves legislation and can dissolve parliament. He has solid ties with tribes that form the backbone of the Hashemite kingdom. Abdullah has described Jordan as a country wedged between "a rock and a hard place" -- a reference to its location between war-wracked Iraq and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. - 'Delicate balancing act' - The war that has raged for nearly four years in neighbouring Syria has added to the challenges facing Jordan and the brutal rise of IS has put the country further on edge. In September, Jordan joined the US-led coalition of Arab and Western countries, launching air strikes on jihadist targets in Syria where IS has set up a "caliphate" that also straddles areas it holds in Iraq. Nadim Shehadi, director of the US-based Fares Centre for Eastern Mediterranean Studies, said "Daesh", the Arabic acronym for IS, poses a clear threat to both Jordan and coalition partner Saudi Arabia. "One should not underestimate the danger that Daesh presents for both Jordan and Saudi Arabia as opposed to the danger it poses to Iran and (Syrian President Bashar al-) Assad," he said. "For Iran and Assad, fighting Daesh gives them legitimacy and serves their interests; for Jordan and Saudi Arabia, fighting Daesh is a very delicate balancing act and one with potentially grave results. "Daesh challenges them on their own ground, so Daesh is a much greater threat to them," he said. Danin said the battle against IS was "thrust" on Jordan and other regional states, describing it as "a war of self-defence". He also underlined the strength of US-Jordanian relations, noting that in just two months Abdullah had met President Barack Obama twice at the White House. "It is clear that the United States is looking to Jordan as a model of stability and moderation in an extremely turbulent region," Danin said.
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news
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MANCHESTER, England (AP) Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal says he will contest a charge by the English Football Association that he implied a referee was biased against his team during an FA Cup match. Van Gaal said after United's 0-0 draw with fourth-tier Cambridge on Jan. 23 that ''every aspect of the match is against us - the pitch, the referee. Everything that you can think about this is against you.'' He was charged by the FA for bringing the game into disrepute. The Dutchman says Friday ''I never said anything wrong. I never say something about the referee, never.'' Van Gaal added ''I am not angry, I am very disappointed. For nearly 30 years I have been a trainer, coach or manager and I have never been charged.''
| 1 | 9,774 |
sports
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The Gerbers are gorgeous! Cindy Crawford, Rande Gerber and their kids Presley and Kaia attended Celebrating Omega and Orbis International's Hospital In The Sky screening Thursday at the New York Historical Society, and as you can see, they really are a picture perfect family! The supermodel mom, 48, is a big supporter of Orbis International , a sight saving and international blindness prevention charity that actually operates the world's only flying eye hospital. Along with handsome hubby Rande, 52, she's showing her 13-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son the importance of using their star power to highlight a worthy cause. Cindy isn't about to force her kids into following in her famous footsteps, though. Although daughter Kaia nabbed a Young Versace campaign when she was 10 and posed for a few modeling shots since (including these snapped by her big brother ), she's not quite ready to fully commit to the catwalk. "I've seen my mom do it, and it seems exhausting," Kaia told Teen Vogue in an interview last year. "It's not easy you're in heels all the time and constantly having to dress up. If that's your job, jeans and a T-shirt are all you really dream of." Cindy's happy for Kaia to just be a teen for now, too. "She doesn't want me to start a career too young," her daughter explained. "She started modeling when she was 16, but that world is very different now." There's no need to rush into anything, though, because based on Kaia's famous parents, she's going to have those model good looks for many years to come, too!
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entertainment
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New for 2015 The 2015 Chevrolet Cruze receives minor styling revisions and LED daytime running lights on all models except the LS trim. Chevrolet has also added text message alerts, Apple Siri integration, and available Wi-Fi hotspot with 4G LTE connection through OnStar. Vehicle Summary The 2015 Chevrolet Cruze is a compact sedan slotting beneath the midsize Malibu and above the subcompact Sonic. It is sold in four grades and with three engine choices, including a fuel-efficient diesel. Overview The 2015 Cruze is available with a choice of three engines paired to a six-speed manual or automatic transmission. A 1.8-liter I-4 with 138 hp and 125 lb-ft of torque serves as the base engine and achieves 25/36 mpg city/highway with the manual and 22/35 mpg with the automatic. A turbocharged 1.4-liter I-4 making 138 hp and 148 lb-ft will be the engine that most Cruzes will come with and is rated at 26/38 mpg in the LT and LTZ trims. Cruze Eco models, which are optimized for fuel economy, get 26/42 mpg with the manual and 26/39 mpg with the automatic. For those looking for the most frugal model, the Cruze Diesel with its 2.0-liter turbocharged diesel I-4 producing 151 hp and 264 lb-ft (280 lb-ft with overboost) has the best gas mileage at 27/46 mpg. Driving dynamics is average for the class with decent acceleration and handling that allows the car to feel lighter than it is. Refinement is where the 2015 Cruze excels with a comfort-minded chassis, "low road noise and relatively supple ride," making it a good choice for long drives. The car's slow-shifting transmission and lack of power, however, detracts from its overall performance, putting it behind competitors such as the Mazda3 and Ford Focus. Interior space in the 2015 Cruze is average because of the cramped rear seats while cargo space is good with gas-powered variants at 15 cubic feet. Diesel models have a smaller 13.3 cubic feet in the back due to the 4.5-gallon tank of urea used to clean the car's exhaust fumes. A large drivetrain hump in the rear renders the center position unusable for adults, making the Cruze a four-seat car. Center stack controls are logical and easy to use but the plastics used are hard and low-quality particularly in the dash and door panels. The Chevrolet Cruze has a five-star overall safety rating from the NHTSA (out of a possible five stars). UPDATE: In IIHS evaluations, the 2015 Cruze received a Good score in four categories and Marginal in the small overlap front crash test (Good is the highest possible score). What We Think The 2015 Chevrolet Cruze is an average entry in the compact car segment due to its weak powertrain and cramped interior. In a 2013/2014 Comparison of Hybrid and Diesel sedans , we said that the car's interior was tightest on legroom in the rear due to "a space-robbing center floor hump." Its driving dynamics, while average for the class, didn't impress due to its heavy weight and underpowered gas-powered engines. The diesel-powered Cruze impresses with its range and good fuel economy, making it ideal for long drives while the car's overall refinement make it a good choice for commuting. You'll Like Available diesel engine Comfortable ride Well-laid out center stack You Won't Like Underpowered gas engines Slow-shifting automatic transmission Cramped rear seats Key Competitors Toyota Corolla Honda Civic Mazda3 Ford Focus Kia Forte Rating 2 star
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autos
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Katy Perry may be hard at work on her video game , but her lawyers are busy being the fun police. After the Left Shark made a lasting impression during the singer's Super Bowl XLIX halftime show last weekend, artist Fernado Sosa uploaded his 3D-printable character for folks to order at Shapeways . Well, the pop star's legal team didn't take too kindly to Sosa's creation, and they demanded the site remove the item. According to the official paperwork, Left Shark is Perry's intellectual property and that the character's image is copyrighted. If you want to help stick it to the man, you can nab the production files for the 3D-printable Left Shark over at MakerBot's Thingiverse ... for now. Of course, while it's a free download from its current home, you'll have to handle the printing yourself. [Lead photo credit: Kevin Mazur/WireImage] Gigaom
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news
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The postseason NIT will experiment with new rules this season, including a 30-second shot clock and a 4-foot restricted area around the basket. Welcome news, perhaps, during college basketball's lowest-scoring, slowest-paced season in years. Officials hope a 30-second shot clock 5 seconds fewer than the regular clock, which has been in effect since the 1993-94 season will boost scoring and speed up the pace of play. The restricted-area arc is being extended a foot to determine whether that change reduces the number of collisions under the basket. The rules will be in effect for all 31 games of the tournament. According to an NCAA release, coaches who participate in the tournament will be surveyed about how they prepared and practiced to compete using the experimental rules. The NCAA men's basketball committee, which meets May 13-15 in Indianapolis, will use data from the NIT to discuss possible rules changes and identify ways to improve college basketball. "The committee discussed both of these potential rule changes during its May 2014 meeting, knowing that the May 2015 meeting would be the committee's next opportunity to make a change to either of these rules," said Rick Byrd, head men's basketball coach at Belmont University and chair of the NCAA Men's Basketball Rules Committee. "Although the committee will discuss a number of potential rules changes at the meeting, having specific data on these two rules should help the committee make a decision about whether such potential rule changes might further improve the flow and competitiveness of college basketball. "The NIT has always been recognized as a pioneer event in postseason college basketball and at this key time in college basketball's history and evolution, it is fitting that the NIT can help provide valuable analysis on the potential effect of these experimental rules changes," said the NCAA's Vice President of Men's Basketball Championships Dan Gavitt. "We think this is an important initiative for the NIT to take a leadership role for the future benefit of our game."
| 1 | 9,778 |
sports
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U.S. workers are getting bigger paychecks just as their cost of living is set to drop Hiring surged over the past three months, wages rebounded in January and the workweek is hovering at its longest in six years. What if there was a way to combine all that into one neat package to show what's going on with total worker pay? There is. It's called the aggregate weekly payroll index, and it's one of economists' favorites buried deep in Friday's Labor Department jobs report. So what's it telling us? When you combine the number of people working with the number of hours they work and how much they are getting paid per hour, the result is a sizeable gain in total income. But wait. There's more. That pay is worth even more now that plunging fuel prices are dragging down inflation. The chart below shows year-over-year changes in aggregate weekly payrolls for all workers adjusted for inflation. It's up 5.8 percent in the 12 months through January, the best performance in records dating back to 2007 (that's based on Newedge USA LLC economist Omair Sharif's estimate that consumer prices fell 0.2 percent in the 12 months through January). Taking a look at just production workers -- namely anyone who's not considered a manager (which is roughly 80 percent of the workforce) -- the chart below shows the 12-month gain is 5.7 percent, the best since February 1998. "The economy is putting people to work at a rapid pace, and that new-found income buys a little more now given that headline inflation will be weak for some time," said Sharif. "An increase in real spending is sort of baked in the cake." More money jingling in American workers' pockets may be just what Federal Reserve officials want to hear before they start to raise interest rates -- an economy humming with rising wages, stronger demand and faster inflation. The question is: Will consumers indulge or squirrel it away? We'll find out more next week with the Commerce Department's retail sales report. To contact the authors on this story: Carlos Torres at [email protected] Vince Golle at [email protected] To contact the editors on this story: Brendan Murray at [email protected] Aki Ito at [email protected]
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finance
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Marvel Comics has gathered an all-female team of Avengers, who will begin saving the world this May. Fan favorite characters like She-Hulk, Dazzler, Medusa and Nico Minoru star in "A-Force," a new monthly series that will follow these women as they fight evil. It's written by G. Willow Wilson and Marguerite K. Bennett , with artwork from Jorge Molina. "We've purposefully assembled a team composed of very different characters -- from disparate parts of the Marvel U, with very different power sets, identities and ideologies," Wilson said in a statement. "They'll all have to come together to answer some big questions: what would you sacrifice to succeed? What is being a hero worth?" The A-Force will also introduce, Singularity, a cosmically charged brand new super hero to the universe. "Our heroines embody the ideals of what we can each strive to be," Bennett said in the same statement. "A-Force" is Marvel's 15th female-led comic series and represents a dramatic shift in comic culture. Last September, Marvel made waves when it announced that the new Thor would be a woman . "Marvel has always celebrated the diversity of its family of characters and creators," series editor Daniel Ketch said. "This new series will unite Marvel's mightiest heroines with the exceptionally creative minds of writers G. Willow Wilson and Marguerite Bennett to craft a story full of epic battles, personal triumphs, and heart-stopping peril ... and an all-new character who will push the boundaries of diversity in comic books even further." Check out the first image:
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entertainment
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Rescue workers in Taiwan say they no longer expect to find any survivors, following an air crash in Taipei.
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video
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The first frequent flier mile was awarded in 1981, when American Airlines started its AAdvantage program. The airline hoped the program, geared toward the growing business traveler market, might attract as many as 50,000 members, thus generating repeat business. Within a year, it had one million members, according to a 2010 Columbia Business School case study. The point of the program was to appeal to business travelers, who are unique in that they typically don't pay for their own tickets. That means they're not as price-sensitive as your average leisure traveler, and they also tend to be repeat customers. Awarding them frequent flier miles that they could then use toward personal travel would give those consumers an incentive to spend with American, and to spend as much as possible so as to maximize the miles they accrued. The program was a raging success for American, drawing loyal customers and slashing advertising costs. Naturally, other airlines caught on, and today it's hard to find an airline without some sort of rewards program. But those programs can also be complicated, with arcane and sometimes unpredictable rules guiding their use. An entire community of bloggers and aggregators has developed to help consumers to get the most out of their frequent flier miles and to avoid wasting them. Here are some of their most essential tips and how they explain the way that frequent flier miles work, and don't. 1) Figure out which program best suits your travel habits If you have 5,000 miles on United Airlines and 5,000 on American Airlines those are two very different things. There are two main ways that points programs work they're either revenue-based or miles-based. And the emphasis in recent years has moved strongly toward revenue-based systems. That means airlines reward you not for how many miles you travel but how much money you spend. Delta recently switched to a revenue-based earning system, and United will in March as well. American Airlines, meanwhile, is sticking to a miles-based program. Fly from Chicago to California regularly on a revenue-based system, and you might earn different amounts for each flight, depending on how much you pay at booking. Fly on a miles system, though, and you'll get the same number of miles every time. That's especially applicable if you fly occasionally pricy but short commuter routes, for example, in which case you are often better served by flying on an airline with a revenue-based miles system. 2) Sign up for lots of programs, but focus on just one or two Let's start with earning. On the one hand, you might think it's worth it to earn as many miles as you can, through as many avenues as possible. It's free to sign up for an airline's points program, after all, and just being a member can give you some rewards, says Randy Petersen, editor in chief of BoardingArea. "There are instances when just being a member of a program can lead to benefits that non-members don't have access to," he says. "When a flight is canceled or other types of inconveniences and as well, opportunities for special fares, being a member of a program, even a general member may have some value to you." But once you're signed up everywhere, if you scatter your miles over a lot of airlines especially if you don't fly that often they could easily expire before you can use them. Many airlines' miles expire after two or three years if you don't keep flying somewhat regularly. Instead, you should focus on a smaller number of airlines, or even one. If Southwest operates a direct flight that you take cross-country for Christmas every year, for example, that might mean that's a good program to focus a bit more on. You might also consider the airport you use most. If you live in Dallas, for example, you're right next to an American Airlines hub (DFW airport), and in Minneapolis you're at Delta's hub. That means you're going to get a lot of flights from those airlines out of those airports. Also consider airline alliances. These are sorts of partnerships between airlines the three big ones are Star Alliance, One World, and SkyTeam. You can often redeem miles earned on one airline though other airlines in that alliance (but different alliances have different rules about how this works). The bottom line is that you want to be able to spend your points once you have them. Focusing on one program can also earn you special status with that airline, which gets tangible perks as well as often more opportunities to earn miles. Attaining elite status might mean you get free checked bags, upgrades, or early boarding, for example. And having a lot of miles helps you earn more miles. On Delta , for example, you can earn six extra miles per dollar spent if you have high-ranking diamond status versus two if you have silver status. 3) Pay attention to the points-to-dollars ratio Credit cards and flying are the two big ways that people earn points, but there are many others. Signing up for a non-retirement account through Fidelity or paying your bill with some utility companies, such as Reliant or Energy Plus, will earn you points with certain airlines. For a more complete rundown of points systems outside of flying and credit cards, Lifehacker has compiled a list, as has The Points Guy . When you're earning those points, try to think in terms of what you pay to get each incremental one. That will help you determine which programs are worth the money. A credit card that gets you a lot of miles but also overloads you with fees or worse, tempts you to spend unnecessarily might not look like such a deal when you think about it this way. Then keep that math in mind when you go to spend your miles on flight. Different experts on points have different rules of thumb for how to know when you're getting your points' worth Randy Peterson, founder of BoardingArea , tells Vox that miles should have around 1.2 cents in value each when you spend them. That means a flight that would cost you 25,000 points round-trip should be worth at least $300 in cash (0.012 times 25,000, that is). Brian Kelly, founder and editor-in-chief of The Points Guy , says your threshold should be higher, and that a point should get you 1.5 to 2 cents in value. But the point is that you don't want to spend them on just any flight spending a huge sum of points on an already-cheap flight doesn't make sense. 4) Don't sit on your miles spend them Hoarding miles can backfire in two ways. First, they can expire. One way to know when your miles are going to expire is to use a program like Awardwallet , which helps you track your miles for free. Second, airline points can lose value. As Brian Kelly explains, miles operate in an environment where inflation is usually climbing quickly. There are more points being created (or earned) all the time, but the number of flights (or miles flown) isn't increasing alongside those points. It wouldn't make any sense to sit on a pile of cash for too long while inflation is going out of control, and it doesn't make sense to hold onto your points for years either. This "inflation" shows up when airlines change their rules to make individual miles worth less, which happens fairly often. This can take the form of simply devaluing miles, or it can involve making the rules more complex. British Airways , for example, recently made earning miles harder for economy passengers and easier for first-class passengers, and it made the "price" of redeeming them steeper. American Airlines likewise made redeeming its miles more complicated, in many cases charging customers more points per flight. Airlines change the rules often, especially when an improving economy reduces the amount of unsold flight inventory they have on hand. Airlines can change the rules on your miles anytime, though often with plenty of lead time. Still, it's better to be ahead of the curve. Further reading The Points Guy is a great place to go for information, particularly its great beginners' guide to frequent flyer programs, including a discussion of what makes a good rewards credit card. CBS News' Peter Greenberg wrote this great piece last year on just how much money airlines make off of frequent flyer programs. A few more great sites to follow: Airfare Watchdog , Flyertalk , UPGRD , and InsideFlyer (subscription needed for most features) .
| 2 | 9,782 |
travel
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New for 2015 The 2015 Chevrolet Impala adds an engine stop-start system for models equipped with the 2.5-liter I-4, three new exterior colors, an available built-in Wi-Fi hotspot with 4G LTE connection through OnStar, and a new bi-fuel 3.6-liter V-6 with 260 hp and 247 lb-ft of torque with gas or 230 hp and 217 lb-ft with CNG. Vehicle Summary The 2015 Chevrolet Impala is a front-drive full-size sedan sold in five grades and three engine choices. In addition to the new CNG-capable V-6, a 2.5-liter I-4 with 196 hp and 186 lb-ft is the base engine while a 3.6-liter V-6 making 305 hp and 264 lb-ft is optional. All 2015 Impalas are equipped with a six-speed automatic transmission. Overview While the 2015 Chevrolet Impala's suspension setup veers towards comfort, it doesn't handle clumsily and "maintains its composure when pushed hard." There is little body roll when the car is hustled due to the well-tuned chassis, which strikes a nice balance between maintaining a smooth ride and decent driving dynamics. The 305-hp V-6 is the pick of the 2015 Impala range among the three powertrains because it provides excellent acceleration. Its transmission, however, is disappointing due to its fuel-efficiency-minded gearing and lack of responsiveness. Additionally, the manual mode controls on the gear shifter is finicky and unintuitive to use. Compared to the 2.5-liter, which achieves 22/31 mpg city/highway, the V-6 gets 19/29 mpg but has an extra 109 hp and 78 lb-ft. CNG-capable models have not yet been rated by the EPA. Interior space is generous in the 2015 Impala, with a large rear seat and a generous 18.8 cubic foot trunk on non-CNG-capable models. Center stack controls are easy to use and "worked well," making the car easy to live with on a day to day basis. Furthermore, the quiet cabin makes the Impala a pleasant car for long drives. The 2015 Chevrolet Impala has a five-star overall safety rating from the NHTSA (out of a possible five stars). UPDATE: Optional safety aids include rear cross-traffic alert, blind spot warning, lane departure warning, adaptive cruise control, forward collision alert, and automatic front braking. In IIHS evaluations, the 2015 Impala received a Good score in two categories (Good is the highest possible score). What We Think The 2015 Chevrolet Impala is an excellent full-size sedan with a spacious, well laid out interior, and an available V-6 engine. In a 2014 First Test review , we said that it offers a great balance between refinement and handling with a suspension setup that made V-6 equipped LT and LTZ models feel "surprisingly agile" but without hurting the car's comfortable ride. Its high-quality interior is another strong point because of its quietness and generous space for five passengers. While its engines, particularly, the V-6 are excellent, the six-speed automatic detracts from the car's otherwise well-done powertrain with its lack of responsiveness and its tendency to shift to the highest gear as soon as possible. You'll Like Available V-6 engine Good balance of ride and handling Quiet cabin You Won't Like Unresponsive transmission I-4 isn't as fuel-efficient Finicky manual mode controls Key Competitors Toyota Avalon Chrysler 300 Kia Cadenza Hyundai Azera Nissan Maxima Rating 4 star
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autos
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As a 20-something (or even a 30-something), you realize that adulthood is, well, a gradual process. For some, it happens quite quickly. For others, growing up takes a bit of time. And there's nothing wrong with that! But let's just say... when you've made it, you've really made it - although it's a little bittersweet. Here are the 31 signs that you've made it - read 'em and weep (like really, you might actually start weeping). You go to your parents more often to catch up than to seek out advice. There is a complete set of matching glasses and silverware in your kitchen. You have a 401(k). You don't get carded as often as you'd like. Your college memories are no longer your fondest. You go to buy groceries before you completely run out of food. You can't remember the last time you had to ask your parents for gas money. You didn't need a guarantor's signature on your most recent lease agreement. Wine has become very important to you. You know your social security and driver's license numbers by heart. You caved and bought cable. (Netflix and Hulu aren't your only options.) Not each and every one of your home appliances is from IKEA. You actively think about what you're eating and how it affects your body. (Where as before you couldn't care less.) You've moved into a place and paid for movers (or did it yourself). You fold your laundry on a semiregular basis. Sleep is very, very important to your livelihood, and you often find yourself getting to bed at a reasonable hour. A lack of clean socks is no longer one of your biggest issues. Your checks are customized and actually have your name on them. You own more than one credit card. You find yourself becoming less and less concerned about keeping up with your social media feeds. You have more friends who are married or in committed relationships than you do single friends. You feel steady and settled in your current job. You didn't have to ask your parents a ton of questions when purchasing your last insurance policy. There are multiple kids in your life who refer to you as "aunt" or "uncle." You vote in elections on a regular basis. Your taxes consist of more than one form. You've been on vacations that didn't involve theme parks (or your parents). Everything in your home has a legitimate and permanent place. Your male friends seem to have less hair on their heads and more on their faces. Your meals involve less instant ramen and more gourmet cooking, and you often talk recipes with your friends. For the first time, you have a pretty concrete five-year plan ahead of you.
| 4 | 9,784 |
lifestyle
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New York's Baccarat Hotel has yet to check in a single guest, but it is about to become the most highly valued hotel in the U.S. after a Chinese insurer agreed to buy it for more than $230 million. Sunshine Insurance Group Co. is paying real-estate mogul Barry Sternlicht's firm and a partner more than $2 million a room for the Midtown Manhattan property, according to people familiar with the matter. One person said the valuation beats the previous record set by the Plaza Hotel, the New York landmark that was sold in 2012 to India's Sahara Group for $2.04 million a room, according to hotel data tracker STR Analytics. The Baccarat is the latest trophy property to wind up in the hands of Chinese investors in recent months as buyers take advantage of new rules allowing them to invest more easily abroad. Real-estate brokers and analysts said Chinese companies see luxury hotels, especially in major global capitals, as long-term investments that can provide steady income in a period of low interest rates. Moreover, some say the properties confer prestige on their owners. "Chinese insurers are buying for 50 or 100 years, and they are not worried about value going down in markets like New York," said Ryan Meliker, hotel analyst for investment bank MLV & Co. "It's a great place to park money long term." China's Anbang Insurance Group Co. in October agreed to pay $1.95 billion to Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. for the famed Waldorf-Astoria on New York's Park Avenue. China property investor Dalian Wanda Group Co. last year put $900 million toward a Chicago skyscraper with a luxury hotel. Chinese investors also have bought hotels in Sydney, Washington and Los Angeles in the past year. Real-estate broker JLL estimates Chinese companies will spend more than $5 billion on overseas hotel investments this year, up from $920 million last year and $130 million in 2012. The Chinese government's recent liberalization of rules that had limited corporate investments abroad is helping to fuel the buying, said Gilda Perez-Alvarado, head of the Americas for JLL's global hotel group. Under the new rules, Chinese firms can invest up to $1 billion without seeking government approval, up from $100 million before last year's changes. Mr. Sternlicht's Starwood Capital Group LLC built the luxury hotel and high-end condominium project with Tribeca Associates, a New York real-estate developer. The two haven't disclosed how much they spent on the project. Starwood, which acquired French crystal maker Baccarat in 2005, will continue to manage its namesake hotel. Mr. Sternlicht founded Starwood in 1991, and it has expanded into one of the world's largest real-estate investment firms. He also was chief executive of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. before leaving the company in 2005. The opulent 114-room property features 15,000 pieces of crystal stemware and 17 chandeliers from France's Baccarat factory. Minibars are stuffed with treats from Parisian gourmet shop Fauchon, and the property features a spa offering six kinds of facials. Suites are expected to fetch up to $18,000 a night. The Baccarat is slated to open its doors next month. It is rare for a buyer to commit to a luxury property that has no track record and no guarantee it can get the $900 to $1,000 a night that Starwood plans to charge for standard rooms. That makes it a more speculative investment than the Plaza Hotel, which has been operating for more than a century. "This only occurs in very robust market conditions," said Sean Hennessey, chief executive officer of Lodging Advisors, a hotel-consulting firm. Because hotels aren't preleased like office buildings, the risk of filling the guest rooms now falls to the new owner, rather than the developer, he said. Some brokers said that if the Baccarat can charge what it hopes, the hotel could be valued at more than what Sunshine is paying. Hotels also are the most resistant type of property to inflation because room rates can be reset at any time. A luxury hotel like the Baccarat should produce annual adjusted operating income of about 3% to 4% of the purchase price, or roughly twice the yield of 10-year U.S. Treasury notes, said Mr. Meliker, the MLV analyst. There are also strategic reasons for closely held Sunshine to buy before the opening, Mr. Hennessey said. The company gets a new asset in a crucial market without having to wait years to develop a similar property. This isn't the first wave of foreign buying of trophy U.S. commercial properties. Japanese conglomerates were big buyers during the 1980s, and there has been a steady stream in recent years of petrodollars from Middle Eastern and Asian government funds. Chinese insurers have been particularly active buying hotels and other real estate overseas. Only about 1% of these insurers' assets are in real estate, said JLL's Ms. Perez-Alvarado, who expects that number to climb closer to the 4% she says is more common among Western insurers. Sunshine was established in 2005 as a property and casualty insurer, later adding a life-insurance unit and asset-management arm. Its website says the company has more than 130 million customers. In November, Sunshine agreed to pay $380 million for a Sheraton hotel in Sydney. The Baccarat sale would follow a record-breaking year for the hospitality industry. U.S. hotels had their highest-ever average daily rate of $115 a night and revenue per available room of $74, according to STR. Leisure travel remained robust, while group travel rebounded 4.4% in 2014 after a 0.7% decline the year before. Scott Berman, head of the hospitality group for PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC, said 2015 looks just as strong. He points to an improving U.S. economy aided by falling oil prices, continued strength in business travel and limited new supply in most cities. In 2013, foreign buyers invested $229 million in Manhattan hotels, just 12% of the total investment that year. Last year, foreign investors accounted for $1.9 billion, or 58%, of Manhattan's total hotel investment, according to JLL. The Waldorf Astoria sale alone would match all of last year's foreign hotel investment in Manhattan. Anbang is expected to close its deal to acquire the landmark property sometime during the first quarter, according to people familiar with the matter. The $1.95 billion price tag, or about $1.4 million a room, would be the highest overall price paid for a U.S. hotel. Broker Eastdil Secured advised the sellers on the Baccarat and Waldorf sales. Write to Craig Karmin at [email protected] and Esther Fung at [email protected]
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Suspected felon captured after police pursuit
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Structured bows, dramatic trains, plunging cuts: check, check, check. Halle Berry Renée Zellweger Charlize Theron Sarah Jessica Parker Hilary Swank Beyoncé Michelle Williams Nicole Kidman Jennifer Lopez Cameron Diaz Heidi Klum Miley Cyrus Emily Blunt Sarah Jessica Parker Scarlett Johansson Sandra Bullock Rihanna Mila Kunis Zoe Saldana Rooney Mara Rihanna Nicole Richie Katy Perry Kate Hudson Anna Kendrick Diane Kruger Diane Kruger Halle Berry Cameron Diaz Anne Hathaway Cate Blanchett Florence Welch Michelle Williams Lea Michele Kate Hudson Lily Collins Irina Shayk Fergie Carrie Underwood Maria Menounos Nicole Kidman Julianne Moore Jennifer Lawrence Jessica Chastain Halle Berry Amy Adams Anne Hathaway
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lifestyle
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Islamic State said on Friday that an American woman hostage it was holding in Syria was killed when Jordanian fighter jets bombed a building where she was being held, but Jordan expressed doubt about the Islamist militant group's account of her death. In Washington, U.S. officials said they could not confirm that the woman, 26-year-old humanitarian worker Kayla Mueller of Prescott, Arizona, had been killed. Mueller was the last-known American hostage held by Islamic State, which controls wide areas of Syria and Iraq. The group has beheaded three other Americans, two Britons and two Japanese hostages - most of them aid workers or journalists - in recent months. Mueller was taken hostage while leaving a hospital in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo in August 2013. The group's latest claim, detailed by the SITE monitoring group, came just days after it released a video on Tuesday showing a captured Jordanian pilot, Mouath al-Kasaesbeh, being burned alive in a cage. Jordan's King Abdullah, who was in Washington discussing how to deal with Islamic State militants when the video was made public, vowed to avenge the pilot's death and ordered a stepped-up military role in the U.S.-led coalition against the group. Jordan said it had carried out a second straight day of air strikes on Friday on Islamic State positions. "We are looking into it but our first reaction is that we think it is illogical and we are highly skeptical about it. ... It's part of their criminal propaganda," government spokesman Mohammad Momani said in response to Islamic State's account of what happened to Mueller. "How could they identify Jordanian war planes from a huge distance in the sky? What would an American woman be doing in a weapons warehouse?" Momani added. Hours after the release of the video showing the pilot burning to death, Jordanian authorities executed two al Qaeda militants who had been imprisoned on death row, including a woman who had tried to blow herself up in a suicide bombing and whose release had been demanded by Islamic State. A representative of Mueller's family said the family had no information on Islamic State's statement. White House National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said the United States is "deeply concerned" over the report but had not seen "any evidence that corroborates" the group's account. Islamic State, in a message monitored by SITE, said Mueller died when the building in which she was being held outside Raqqa, a stronghold of the group, collapsed in a Jordanian air strike on Friday. "The air assaults were continuous on the same location for more than an hour," Islamic State said, according to SITE. The group released photos of what it said were the building's wreckage but did not include photos of Mueller. French journalist Nicolas Henin, a former captive of the group in Syria who gained his freedom last April, said on Twitter, "Kayla Mueller was among the very last of my former cellmates still detained. I was full of hope she could have a way out." The U.S. military last summer carried out an unsuccessful mission to rescue American hostages held by the group in Syria. Reuters and other Western news organizations were aware Mueller was being held hostage but did not name her at the request of her family members, who believed the militants would harm her if her case received publicity. 'WHERE IS THE WORLD?' Mueller, a 2009 Northern Arizona University graduate, had a long record of volunteering abroad and was moved by the plight of civilians in Syria's civil war. "For as long as I live, I will not let this suffering be normal - something we just accept," Mueller's local newspaper The Daily Courier quoted her in 2013 as saying. "When Syrians hear I'm an American, they ask, 'Where is the world?' All I can do is cry with them, because I don't know," Mueller said. She had worked for a Turkish aid organization on the Syrian border and volunteered for schools and aid organizations abroad including in the West Bank, Israel and India. "The common thread of Kayla's life has been her quiet leadership and strong desire to serve others," according to a statement from her family's representative. Islamic State previously executed American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid worker Peter Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto and Goto's friend, Haruna Yukawa. Among the hostages still thought to be held by the group is British photo journalist John Cantlie. Jordan is a major U.S. ally in the fight against militant Islamist groups. It is home to U.S. military trainers bolstering defenses at the Syrian and Iraqi borders, and is determined to keep the jihadists in Syria and Iraq from crossing its frontiers. (Additional reporting by Alistair Bell and Susan Heavey in Washington; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Tom Brown and Sandra Maler)
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Morocco were kicked out of the 2017 and 2019 Africa Cup of Nations Friday while Equatorial Guinea were punished for the unrest in Thursday's semi-finals in which 36 fans were injured. Morocco were also fined $1 million (€8.8m) and ordered to pay just over €8 million ($9m) in compensation after they refused to host this year's event due to fears over Ebola. The Confederation of African Football (CAF) executive committee also announced that Equatorial Guinea, who stepped in to host the 2015 event, were being fined $100,000 after violent scenes in their 3-0 semi-final defeat to Ghana. Meanwhile, Tunisia's soccer chief was banned from all African football activities for claiming his team was cheated out of a quarter-final win against the hosts. CAF refused to accept Morocco's reasons for pulling out of hosting the 2015 event. "The CAF executive committee considered that, contrary to what the Royal Moroccan Football Federation cited, force majeure cannot be accepted for the benefit of the federation," said CAF. "CAF decided to suspend the national team of Morocco from the next two editions of the Africa Cup of Nations, 2017 and 2019, and to impose on the federation the regulatory fine of $1 million. "...they decided by a separate measure to be borne by the Royal Moroccan Football Federation the sum of eight million and fifty thousand euros in compensation for all material damage sustained." - 'repeat offenders' - Despite disturbances blamed on Equatorial Guinea fans in Thursday's semi-final defeat to Ghana in Malabo, supporters will still be allowed into the country's third-place playoff against Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday. CAF meted out the fine to the Nations Cup hosts "for aggressive behaviour and being repeat offenders" for crowd trouble, said a confederation statement. An order to play Saturday's third place playoff behind closed doors was suspended "to promote a spirit of Fair-play and brotherhood during the AFCON2015". But CAF made it clear that if there was more unrest then it would "automatically impose the sanction of playing behind closed doors the Equatorial Guinean team's next official match". Saturday's playoff is being held at the same 15,000-seater stadium in Malabo where Equatorial Guinea's supporters pelted Ghanaian fans with plastic bottles and chairs on Thursday night. The game was halted for over half an hour with Ghana eventually winning 3-0 to set up a final on Sunday with Ivory Coast in Bata. As the missiles rained down, the 500 visiting Ghana fans poured onto the pitch and play was halted eight minutes from time as security officials battled to regain control. The Ghana Football Association (GFA) described the scene as a "war zone." After the match, the Ghanaian supporters were kept at the stadium for several hours while further chaos ensued outside the ground. Equatorial Guinea supporters broke street light poles and overturned vendors' tables. The Ghana team were escorted to Malabo airport for the short flight from the island city to Bata on the mainland. Equatorial Guinea's governing Democratic Party blamed the country's "eternal enemies" for Thursday's violence in Malabo. It hit out at "the acts of provocation designed to create the disorder... perpetrated by the eternal enemies and detractors of our people and by their agents who wanted to disturb the peace". - unfairly treated - Tunisia football chief Wadie Jary was banned from all CAF activities on Friday following claims his side were unfairly treated during their defeat to Equatorial Guinea. CAF ordered Jary and the Tunisian federation to apologise or provide evidence to back up their complaints before midnight on Thursday. However when no apology was forthcoming, CAF suspended Jary until an apology materialised. Tunisia were warned they also face the same fate as Morocco and will be banned from the 2017 Cup of Nations if they fail by March 31 to supply either an apology or proof of bias. Tunisian tempers flared after Mauritian referee Rajindraparsad Seechurn awarded the hosts a dubious stoppage-time penalty which resulted in the equaliser in their quarter-final clash. When the final whistle sounded after Equatorial Guinea won 2-1, riot police had to protect the match officials from furious Tunisian players. CAF banned Seechurn for six months and dropped him from the elite referees panel.
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Steelers running back Le'Veon Bell will enter a 15-month probationary program in an attempt to clean up his record, according to the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette . Bell was admitted to Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition, a program for first-time offenders, on Friday. If he completes it, Bell could have marijuana charges filed against him last summer dismissed. MORE: Bell makes Sporting News' 2014 NFL All-Pro team Bell was pulled over by Ross (PA) Police on Aug 20, 2014. Officers said the car smelled of marijuana and charged him with possession of the drug, as well as driving under the influence. The program requires Bell to abstain from drugs and alcohol, pay a $100 fee and court costs, and complete a safe driving class. His license will also be suspended for 60 days. "He's relieved to have the matter finally resolved with the opportunity to earn dismissal and expungement," Attorney Robert Del Greco said. "I expect Le'Veon will not be a repeat offender." Bell rushed for 1,361 yards in 2014 before injuring his knee in the regular season finale, the reason he missed the Steelers' wild-card game against the Ravens. Del Greco said he isn't sure what type of punishment the league will hand out to Bell. "I cannot predict the outcome, but the guidelines would suggest maybe a one- or two-game suspension."
| 1 | 9,790 |
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"Fifty Shades of Grey" will not be released in Malaysia, reports Variety . The highly anticipated and controversial S&M-themed movie was not granted a certificated by the LPF, which is the Malaysian Censorship Board. Chairman Abdul Halim Abdul Hamid said in a statement: "[The film is] more pornography than a movie ... The board made a decision in view of the film containing scenes that are not of natural sexual content. The content is more sadistic, featuring scenes of a woman being tied to a bed and whipped." "Fifty Shades of Grey," which stars Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson as the mysterious Christian Grey and his sexual protegé Anastasia Steele, is based on the best-selling and wildly popular E.L. James novel. The Cut reported that the movie features 20 minutes of sex out of its 100-minute running time. However, it notably contains much less explicit sex than in the book. Gawker's Kelly Conaboy points out that director Sam Taylor-Johnson and E.L. James have been fighting over how much sex to feature in the film. But even 20 minutes of sex is enough to encourage sexually conservative countries to ban the film. Time also reports that domestic violence activists are boycotting the film. "Fifty Shades of Grey' hits theaters on February 13, 2015. NOW WATCH: Here's what everyone gets wrong about the WWE being fake
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The ladies are taking the lead in one of Marvel Comics' top comic book properties, with an all-female Avengers team called "A-Force" debuting as the company intensifies efforts to bring more girls and women into its male-dominated fan base. Not only will the book feature some of Marvel's well-known female heroes, it will be written by two of Marvel's female comic book writers, Marguerite K. Bennett and Willow Wilson. Wilson, a Seattle comic book writer who helped break ground in 2013 with her "Ms. Marvel," the story of a Muslim female superhero, said women were rarely the focus of comic book superhero teams, usually in the role of a girlfriend or damsel in distress. This book will challenge that script, Wilson said. "I think that we're kind of asking some implicit questions with this lineup and one of them is: Do we respond to female superhero teams in the same way that we respond to superhero teams composed primarily or entirely of men?" Wilson said. "So it is a bit of a risk, but it's a risk that's been shown to work. " A-Force won't be Marvel's first all-female team, with successful runs of an all-female mutant team in "X-Men." When it debuts in May, it will join Marvel's 14 other female-led books, like Ms. Marvel and "Captain Marvel," which is scheduled to become a Marvel movie. DC Comics also has several female leads, including Batgirl, Catwoman, Batwoman and Wonder Woman, the longest-running comic book with a female hero. A-Force which will feature characters like She-Hulk, Dazzler and Medusa, as well as a new hero called Singularity will hopefully get more women and girls to transition from successful superhero movies like "Marvel's The Avengers" and "The Dark Knight" to reading comic books, Wilson said. Part of the way forward is to have female characters take the same kind of journeys taken by superheroes like Batman and Spider-Man and told from a female point of view, she said. "There's a big push ... to have that same kind of recognizable, really enduring storytelling that appeals not just to women readers but to men as well and that reflects that same journey, that same coming of age, that same struggle that we all identify with through the eyes of female characters," Wilson said. And while the majority of comic book buyers are male, millennials and Generation Xers are becoming more accepting of stories told from different points of view, she said. "In the past, when you had teams that were composed entirely of men and with maybe one woman, that was considered something very usual but to do the reverse was somehow unthinkable," she said. "We're at a time now where we can ask why that is."
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Catherine Herridge reports from Washington, DC
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Some people had more than a little fun this winter The British Are Coming! Fetch your plows and snow shovels this is sure to be a battle. I'm Melting! Baby, It's cold outside. (But apparently not cold enough). Keeping Up With the Snowwomen Somewhere Kanye West is blushing. Meal Time or Mail Time? His attitude may seem cold, but don't worry he doesn't bite. Seeing Double The mastermind of this snowman knows that two heads are better than one, especially when radiation is involved. Fun in the Sun A snow day is a state of mind. Peeping Tom He sees you when you're sleeping ... he knows when you're awake. Ready for Battle The most loyal soldier in the Rebel Alliance. RAAAAAAWR! Not even the garage could keep this car safe. Ummm, can you say hipster? This is one "cool" snowman. Party Boy Did someone say keg stand? Only snowmen 21-plus, please! It's Too Soon for Snow This kid REALLY wasn't ready for winter weather. Who looks more unhappy: boy or snowman?
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lifestyle
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You can often pay less without sacrificing quality Sometimes, when you see two products that are designed to do the same thing, paying more is actually a good idea (think toilet paper or tissues). You really do want thicker and softer, and it's worth paying for. But other times, going the cheap route makes perfect sense and any differences are all but undetectable. Here are some instances in which you can pay less without sacrificing quality. 1. Groceries Approaching Sell-By Dates If it looks fine to you, and you can freeze it or cook it right away, go ahead. Grocery stores mark food way down when it's close to the date they cannot sell it at all. This can be a great way to save on meats and produce in particular, but you'll want to make sure you prepare or freeze right away. You don't want to end up throwing away what the grocery store didn't have to because you bought it! 2. Books If you have an e-reader (or an app such as Goodreads), there are many, many books that you can read for free. (Project Gutenberg includes more than 46,000 free books.) Think of it as a library that never closes. It can also be useful for children who forget about a book report until the night before it is due … the book is right there. No frantic trip to the mall and, in many cases, no fee. And if you enjoy shopping for books? Check out used books. They are usually far less expensive than new. And don't forget your local library even some late fees can still cost you less than buying the book outright. 3. Razor Blades & Disposable Razors Whether you choose disposables or blades for a safety razor, you're paying much less than you would for an electric razor or a razor with cartridges. And if you want those cheap blades to last longer, here's a tip: Keep them dry, meaning wipe them off after every shave. 4. Dishes The cheap ones hold up just as well as the expensive ones. You may prefer the more expensive ones, but the others are just as functional, and it's likely less traumatic when they get broken. The same goes for glassware. 5. Spices You may see them at the dollar store or in ethnic sections of the supermarket and the prices are often significantly lower than those in the spice display at your supermarket. Don't be afraid to try them. 6. Children's Clothes If kids are still growing or if this is a special occasion outfit that will likely be worn just once don't worry about getting top qualify. It will be outgrown before long, and you'll need the savings to buy more clothes for your growing child (unless you are lucky enough to get hand-me-downs). Many parents' groups hold sales of gently used children's clothing you may be able to pick up some bargains there as well. 7. Cellphone Plans Know yourself before you do it but if your usage is well within what is permitted, you may find that a cheaper plan offers significant savings. But do not assume you'll get what you pay for, and therefore the most expensive phone/plan is the best. A cheaper one may not be noticeably different for you, and the savings can be enormous. I recently cut my family's cellphone bill in half when I switched from a major carrier to one that piggybacks on free Wi-Fi when available. It's not perfect; there are some dead zones where we can't place or receive calls, but it works fine about 98% of the time, which is good enough for us. Whether you're working to pay off debt or just want to avoid paying more than you need to, choosing products that do what you need them to do but cost less can help you get closer to your goals. And getting in the habit of evaluating everyday spending can help you stay alert to whether you think you are getting your money's worth when you choose to pay more. It's easy to go over budget and get into debt a scary idea for many, especially considering the lifetime cost of debt. There are many, many more ways to spend less without feeling shortchanged, and many of them, like cellphone plans, depend on how you use the item in question. If you use it frequently, it may be worth it to you to buy the highest possible quality. Other times, cutting corners won't be noticeable at all and you may feel freer to dispose of no-longer-needed purchases (think holiday decorations from the dollar store). This article originally appeared on Credit.com.
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The family of the American aid worker held by ISIS has released details about her, including why she was in Syria prior to her capture in 2013.
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By Chase Thomas According to Marc Spears of Yahoo! Sports , New York Knicks forward Amar'e Stoudemire "plans to use the All-Star break to decide whether to ask the New York Knicks for a contract buyout that could free him to potentially sign with a playoff contender." Stoudemire is in the last year of the five-year, $100 million contract he signed when things, and the outlook, of the franchise looked far different than the gloomy, ambiguous state it's in today. Amar'e also had this to say in the piece: "All possibilities at this point are still open," Stoudemire said of a possible buyout. "The door is still open for that. But at the same time, I am with the Knicks now. I got to stay optimistic about things and what we are doing here. I can't really focus on the future because it's not here. "We still have a couple weeks left before it's all said and done. It's a decision I have to make with my family to figure out the best scenario for the near future." Amar'e took a leap of faith leaving Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns for the New York Knicks almost five years ago and things haven't worked out, to say the least, for the former six-time All-Star. Still, Amar'e has enough left in the tank to give a contender quality minutes off the bench in the right situation. Western Conference contenders like the Portland Trail Blazers, Los Angeles Clippers and Oklahoma City Thunder could all use the services of Stoudemire. Even teams not in contention for the title could be nice fits for Amar'e like the Milwaukee Bucks who need all the big man help they can get the Miami Heat, or the New Orleans Pelicans. Amar'e has appeared in 32 games for the Knicks this season, averaging 24.9 mpg, 12.2 ppg and 7.0 rpg.
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The trains that carry millions of people in and around New York City every day are also teeming with thousands of bacteria species a parade of life forms too small to see, including traces of bubonic plague and anthrax. "When you think about it, the subway is a giant laboratory where we all experience the world," said Chris Mason, a genomics researcher from Weill Cornell Medical School in New York City. On a typical weekday, more than 5.5 million people pass through turnstiles and enter the underground behemoth that is the New York City subway system. Clinging to them are microscopic stowaways from the surface world. The genetic echoes they leave behind become a part of the subway ecosystem. To get a clearer picture of what that ecosystem is made of, Mason and his team set out to map the vastness of the urban microbiome. Using nylon swabs and mobile phones, the group identified 15,152 different organisms lurking on railings, trash cans, seats, and kiosks in 466 New York City subway stations. Their findings were published this week in the journal Cell Systems . The team also found that, on a microscopic level, the subway is littered with leftovers evidence of what New Yorkers like to eat. Cucumber particles were the most commonly found food item, along with traces of kimchi, sauerkraut, and chickpeas. Bacteria associated with mozzarella cheese coated 151 stations. And other traces of pizza ingredients such as sausages and Italian cheese were everywhere. ( The Wall Street Journal transformed much of that data into a clickable map that lets you explore the findings by subway line.) And although Mason and his team also found particles of harmful bacteria related to the bubonic plague and anthrax, the levels were so low that they pose little danger to humans. "The important fact is that the majority of the bacteria that we found are harmless," Mason said. Much more common were the protective bacteria that eliminate toxins and make the subway cleaner. "They represent a phalanx of friends that surround us," he said. "The most surprising thing was the fact that almost half of the DNA we found matched no known organism to humanity," Mason told me. "We've never seen it before, we have no idea what it is, until now." Of the more than 10 billion DNA fragments that the team sequenced, about 5 billion were unaccounted for. That's not to say that these DNA fragments belong to never-before-seen organisms. Rather, it shows that the library of sequenced genomes still has many empty shelves. Where beetles and flies were most prevalent in this sampling, evidence of cockroaches was absent not because New York isn't crawling with them (it is), but because scientists haven't fully sequenced the cockroach genome yet. Once that information becomes available, cockroaches will become better represented in the sampling, according to Mason. His team's next goal is to streamline the real-time mobile swabbing and sequencing process. Such a system would enable subway riders, if they really wanted, to track the little bits of bacteria and leftover pizza particles on the seats next to them. "We want to make the city more responsive to the molecules that are present in it," Mason said. "It's a little bit futuristic but not too far away." This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/02/new-york-city-subways-are-covered-in-microscopic-pizza/385260/
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This week, the Remodelista editors just said no to giant, exploding, oversized houses. Taking matters into their own hands, they're thinking small with compact kitchens, simple marble tables, and a genius new collection coming from Ikea: Above: In a 639-square-foot flat in a Victorian row house in Hermon Hill, London, the architects channel (and re-interpret) William Morris. Above: Do you love your kitchen tools enough to display them? Julie discovers 13 Kitchens with Artful Utensil Rails. Above: Julie put Ikea's new collection to the test and came up with her list of 10 Favorites: Best of Ikea 2015. (We're particularly partial to this $7.99 curtain rod set.) Above: Meredith asks: Why are contemporary kitchens so big? She found one one that isn't, hidden in plain sight. See it? Above: The world's most beautiful coffee table, made to order, has a marble top. What else did you miss this week on Remodelista? Read all the posts from this week's issue at The Humble Abode. More Stories from Gardenista Table of Contents: Living Small Current Obsessions: Street Names Can Help Home Values (Checking Ours Now) Trending on Remodelista: House Envy
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