Seventeen dead as Syrians stage mass protests (Reuters)

BEIRUT (Reuters) ? Syrian security forces opened fire at protesters on Friday, killing at least 12, as hundreds of thousands filled the streets of restive cities to demonstrate against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, opposition activists said.

Five members of the security forces were also killed in a shooting in the city of Homs, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Assad, 46, has signed up to an Arab League plan for a verifiable withdrawal of his heavy weaponry and army from cities, where more than 5,000 people have been killed since March - many shot during peaceful anti-government protests but also many killed in rebel attacks and local defense actions.

But the presence of Arab League monitors in hotspots across Syria since Monday has, if anything, energized the protesters.

Demonstrators determined to show the strength of their movement to the monitors on Friday threw rocks at security forces in the Damascus suburb of Douma, where troops tear-gassed the chanting crowds.

Five people were shot dead in the city of Hama and five in the city of Deraa in the south as crowds braved army and police.

"We are determined to show them (the monitors) we exist. Whether or not there's bloodshed is not important," an activist named Abu Khaled said by telephone from the northern city of Idlib, one of the epicenters of nine months of unrest.

Most foreign media are banned from Syria and witness reports are hard to verify.

An opposition supporter named Manhal said thousands had tried to reach the main square to start a sit-in, but failed "because the security forces are firing a lot of tear gas and a few rounds of live fire."

"People hoped the presence of monitors will prevent fierce attacks. I believe we have partial protection, I don't think they would use live fire on us in front of the monitors."

The Observatory reported the deaths in Hama and Deraa. It said security forces had shot dead two people and wounded 37 in Idlib province. At least two dozen were also injured in the Damascus suburb of Douma, activists said.

VIDEO

Amateur video from Idlib showed monitors in white baseball caps and yellow safety vests wading through a sea of protesters.

Some rushed at the observers, trying to shout a few words over the thousands chanting "The people want to liberate the country!."

Protesters flooded the alleyways and streets of many protest centers, clapping and shouting "Peaceful, Peaceful" and "The people want you executed, Bashar!."

Some held up banners with the names of those shot dead in protests: "We will not forget your spilled blood," they read.

In parts of Hama, videos showed protesters fleeing the main streets as heavy gunfire erupted in the background. In one such segment, a few men rushed back, ducking in the crackle of gunfire, to carry away a man who had fallen limp in the street.

In the Damascus suburb of Douma, protesters bore away a man whose leg had been shredded by what they said were "nail bombs."

Activists in Idlib said the army had concealed its tanks in buildings on the outskirts or in dugouts.

WITHDRAWAL OF FORCES

The Arab League mission has met with strong skepticism from the outset - over its makeup, its small numbers, its reliance on Syrian government logistics, and an initial assessment by its Sudanese chief that the situation was "reassuring."

That comment was met with disbelief in the West on Wednesday but on Friday Syria's ally Russia accepted the judgment.

"Judging by the public statements made by the chief of the mission (Sudanese general Mohammed) al-Dabi, who in the first of his visits went to the city of Homs ... the situation seems to be reassuring," Russia's Foreign Ministry said on its website.

However on Friday al-Dabi, whom some link to war crimes in Darfur in the 1990s, said the reports of his comments were "unfounded and not true," a mission statement said. It said all future statements would be in writing.

Activist video from Homs over the months has depicted a trail of death and destruction sown by the military.

"Unfortunately, reports show that the violence has continued in Syria over the past few days," said Britain's Foreign Office minister for the Middle East and North Africa, Alistair Burt.

"I urge the Syrian government to meet fully its obligations to the Arab League, including immediately ending the repression and withdrawing security forces from cities."

In Brussels, a spokesperson for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the EU "urges Syria to comply with the action plan of the Arab league in all its components" including "an immediate end of violence, the release of political prisoners (and) pulling the military out of cities."

PARTNER FOR PEACE?

The monitoring teams have encountered a range of problems, from hostility when they turn up under army escort to random gunfire, shouting mobs and communications breakdowns.

An Arab League member from a Gulf State played down expectations for the mission, which has no peacekeeping mandate.

Even if its report turned out to be negative, it would not "act as a bridge to foreign intervention" but simply indicate that "the Syrian government has not implemented the Arab initiative," the delegate told Reuters.

The commander of the anti-government Free Syrian Army told Reuters its fighters had been ordered to stop offensive operations pending a meeting with Arab League delegates.

"All operations against the regime are to be stopped except in a situation of self defense," Colonel Riad al-Asaad said. "We have tried to communicate with them and we requested a meeting with the team. So far there hasn't been any success."

Just how widely the Turkey-based commander's order will be heeded by anti-government gunmen inside Syria is in question. A video shot by rebels this week showed the ambush of a convoy of army buses in which, activists said, four soldiers were killed.

The FSA, formed by thousands of defectors from Assad's army and financed by expatriate Syrians, has taken the offensive in the past three months, taking the fight to the state rather than simply trying to defend opposition strongholds.

Its decisions are potentially crucial to any peace plan.

Syria says it is fighting Islamist militants steered from abroad who have killed more than 2,000 of its troops. Activists do not dispute a significant toll among the security forces.

(Additional reporting by Thomas Grove in Moscow, Ayman Samir and Yasmine Saleh in Cairo, Justyna Pawlak in Brussels and Stephen Addison in London; Writing by Douglas Hamilton; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111230/wl_nm/us_syria

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Avastin can stabilize tumors in ovarian cancer, studies find

Avastin can stabilize tumors in women suffering from advanced-stage ovarian cancer, extending the period before the disease worsens by more than 3.5 months, according to the results of two large, international clinical trials conducted by separate research teams.

The findings, published in Thursday's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, come less than a week after the European Commission approved Avastin for treating women newly diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer. The drug, known generically as bevacizumab, has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat ovarian cancer in the U.S.

Though Avastin has not been shown to prolong the lives of women with ovarian cancer and does come with significant side effects, it offers some hope for treating what remains the deadliest of gynecologic cancers, researchers said.

Ovarian cancer affects an estimated 200,000 women worldwide and causes 125,000 deaths each year, including more than 15,000 in the U.S. The cancer is particularly difficult to treat because it usually found after it has already spread to other organs. Surgery can remove only some of the tumors, and the two chemotherapy drugs most commonly used aren't very good at killing the cancer cells left behind.

But the study results suggest that treatment for ovarian cancer could improve for the first time in 15 years, said Dr. Robert Burger, a surgical oncologist at Fox Chase Cancer Center and lead author for one of the studies.

"I think we finally have a third component of treatment that works differently and that may greatly complement our therapeutics for ovarian cancers," he said.

Avastin is a biological antibody that interferes with a growth factor that cancer cells need to grow new blood vessels. When used in concert with chemotherapy, the drug helps keep cancers that have metastasized from growing and spreading. The FDA has approved the drug for use in a number of different cancers, including non-small-cell lung, kidney, brain and colon cancer.

Most recently, its use in treating breast cancer has become a source of controversy, as the FDA last month withdrew its approval of Avastin for patients with advanced breast cancer because the modest benefits were not seen as outweighing the drug's side effects. Physicians, however, can still prescribe Avastin off-label.

Burger's team, known as the Gynecologic Oncology Group, looked at what's called progression-free survival ? the length of time before the cancer gets worse ? in 1,873 women with newly diagnosed stage III and stage IV ovarian cancers, which typically have 5-year survival rates ranging from 18% to 45%. The investigators found that patients who received Avastin throughout their chemotherapy treatment experienced 14.1 months of progression-free survival, compared with the 10.3 months for patients who received standard chemotherapy plus a placebo. (Patients who received Avastin only during the initial treatments had 11.2 months of progression-free survival.)

The second study, by the International Collaboration on Ovarian Neoplasms, looked at 1,528 ovarian cancer patients and found a smaller difference in progression-free survival ? 24.1 months for those who took Avastin versus 22.4 months for those who didn't.

But when they focused on the 465 patients with the most advanced cancers, they found a bigger benefit ? 14.5 months with standard therapy alone and 18.1 months with Avastin added. They also found that overall survival for these patients was better with Avastin, at 28.8 versus 36.6 months.

On the whole, however, the researchers said they would not able to say much about overall survival rates until the patients had been tracked for a few more years.

The studies documented some notable side effects from the drug, including an increased risk of hypertension and gastrointestinal wall disruption, when a hole develops in the gastrointestinal tract. But these problems did not affect patients' quality of life, both studies found.

Avastin does not come cheap. The drug, made by Genentech Inc., can cost about $50,000 to $100,000 a year, which may be a lot to pay for just a few months more of remission, said Dr. Joanne Mortimer, director of the Women's Cancers Program at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Duarte. Many insurance companies cover at least some of that cost.

"Is it worth it?" said Mortimer, who served on two of three FDA advisory panels that debated the use of Avastin for breast cancer. "These are positive studies, but are they meaningful differences?"

Though the answer for breast cancer was no, the answer for ovarian cancer may be different, she said. Drugs for breast cancer are held to a higher standard because much more is known about how to treat the disease. The bar is lower for ovarian cancer because the treatment options aren't as good, Mortimer said.

Dr. Timothy Perren, a medical oncologist at Spire Leeds Hospital in Yorkshire, England, who led the second study, said the trials were promising steps that would "cement the place of Avastin in treating ovarian cancer." But researchers from both groups noted that more work needed to be done to figure out which patients would benefit the most from the drug and the best way to administer it.

The studies were funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute for Health Research in Britain, Genentech and its parent company, Roche.

amina.khan@latimes.com

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/latimes/news/nationworld/nation/~3/z4bMX1jbu4Y/la-he-avastin-ovarian-cancer-20111229,0,3960902.story

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Over 65 million years, North American mammal evolution has tracked with climate change

ScienceDaily (Dec. 27, 2011) ? Climate changes profoundly influenced the rise and fall of six distinct, successive waves of mammal species diversity in North America over the last 65 million years, shows a novel statistical analysis led by Brown University evolutionary biologists. Warming and cooling periods, in two cases confounded by species migrations, marked the transition from one dominant grouping to the next.

History often seems to happen in waves -- fashion and musical tastes turn over every decade and empires give way to new ones over centuries. A similar pattern characterizes the last 65 million years of natural history in North America, where a novel quantitative analysis has identified six distinct, consecutive waves of mammal species diversity or "evolutionary faunas." What force of history determined the destiny of these groupings? The numbers say it was typically climate change.

"Although we've always known in a general way that mammals respond to climatic change over time, there has been controversy as to whether this can be demonstrated in a quantitative fashion," said Christine Janis, professor of evolutionary biology at Brown University. "We show that the rise and fall of these faunas is indeed correlated with climatic change -- the rise or fall of global paleotemperatures -- and also influenced by other more local perturbations such as immigration events."

Specifically, of the six waves of species diversity that Janis and her Spanish collaborators recently describe online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, four show statistically significant correlations with major changes in temperature. The two transitions that show a weaker but still apparent correlation with the pattern correspond to periods when mammals from other continents happened to invade in large numbers, said Janis, who is the paper's senior and second author.

Previous studies of the potential connection between climate change and mammal species evolution have counted total species diversity in the fossil record over similar time periods. But in this analysis, led by postdoctoral scholar Borja Figueirido, the scientists asked whether there were any patterns within the species diversity that might be significant. They were guided by a similar methodology pioneered in a study of "evolutionary faunas" in marine invertebrates by Janis' late husband Jack Sepkoski, who was a paleontologist at the University of Chicago.

What the authors found is six distinct and consecutive groupings of mammal species that shared a common rise, peak, and decline in their numbers. For example, the "Paleocene fauna" had largely given way to the "early-middle Eocene fauna" by about 50 million years ago. Moreover, the authors found that these transfers of dominance correlated with temperature shifts, as reflected in data on past levels of atmospheric oxygen (determined from the isotopes in the fossilized remains of deep sea microorganisms).

By the numbers, the research showed correlations between species diversity and temperature change, but qualitatively, it also provided a narrative of how the traits of typical species within each wave made sense given the changes in vegetation that followed changes in climate. For example, after a warming episode about 20 million years in the early Miocene epoch, the dominant vegetation transitioned from woodland to a savannah-like grassland. It is no surprise, therefore, that many of the herbivores that comprised the accompanying "Miocene fauna" had high-crowned teeth that allowed them to eat the foods from those savannah sources.

To the extent that the study helps clarify scientists' understanding of evolution amid climate changes, it does not do so to the extent that they can make specific predictions about the future, Janis said. But it seems all the clearer that climate change has repeatedly had meaningful effect over millions of years.

"Such perturbations, related to anthropogenic climatic change, are currently challenging the fauna of the world today, emphasizing the importance of the fossil record for our understanding of how past events affected the history of faunal diversification and extinction, and hence how future climactic changes may continue to influence life on earth," the authors wrote in the paper.

In addition to Janis and Figueirido at Brown, the other authors are Juan Perez-Claros and Paul Palmqvist at the University of Malaga and Miguel De Renzi at the University of Valencia in Spain. Figueirido is also affiliated with Malaga.

Grants from the Fulbright program, the Bushnell Foundation (to Brown) and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation funded the research.

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Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Borja Figueirido, Christine M. Janis, Juan A. P?rez-Claros, Miquel De Renzi, and Paul Palmqvist. Cenozoic climate change influences mammalian evolutionary dynamics. PNAS, December 27, 2011 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1110246108

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111227093055.htm

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paulstpancras: RT @This_is_Europe: #Roma's #Colosseum collapsing stone by stone while awaiting long-delayed restoration. http://t.co/Okdo4NjS #rome #it ...

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Victoria Jackson Hates Muslims, Loves Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum

Former SNL cast member Victoria Jackson is never one to hide her staunchly conservative political views. Her latest rant surrounds Muslim infiltration of the U.S.

Jackson, on her web talk show this week, claimed the United States is being overtaken by radical Muslims bent on bringing the nation under Sharia law.

Seriously. Citing insider knowledge, she said the following:

"I just went to a briefing in Washington DC, across the street from the Capitol, at the Longworth building at 8:30 am two days ago and it changed my life."

"For six hours, I saw pictures and names and dates and facts and Islamic law books and Korans, Surahs for six hours and they proved to me that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated our highest positions in government and this is serious."

"Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are the only GOP candidates to acknowledge the above facts and warn against the present threat of Islamic Law replacing the U.S. Constitution. Very few people in America are informed and educated as I am."

There you have it folks. "Few people are as informed and educated" as Victoria Jackson.

Perhaps she means that ironically, as in she is so ridiculously misinformed, paranoid and uneducated that few people could ever stoop to her level.

Eh, probably not. She also thinks Glee makes kids gay. But we need to subscribe to her Podcast for the unintentional comedy factor alone.

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2011/12/victoria-jackson-hates-muslims-loves-michele-bachmann-and-rick-s/

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Abingtons alumni talk about college, jobs

Erin L. Nissley / Staff Photo From left, Patrick Salmon, Stephen Page, Crystal Page, Jessica Ingalls and Morgan Fayocavitz speak about their experiences after graduating from Abington Heights High School. The group visited their alma mater Friday to meet with students interested in learning more about college and the job market.

SOUTH ABINGTON TWP. - Rob Gagliardi knows firsthand how tough the job market is right now for recent college graduates.

After graduating this year from Marywood University with a degree in health and physical education, the Abington Heights graduate has been spending time substitute teaching while looking for a job in his field.

"It's tough out there," he told a group of Abington Heights students Friday. "You have to set yourself apart from your classmates" to build a r?sum? before graduation.

Mr. Gagliardi was one of 11 alumni who gathered in the high school library to talk to students about life after high school. The group gave advice about getting involved on campus, getting around new cities and getting ready for the job market.

"I want (our students) to be as prepared as they can be," said Assistant Principal Andy Snyder. "The graduates here have a lot of poignant things to say."

Several alumni stressed the importance of gaining experience through internships and extracurricular activities to bolster r?sum?s - and of making sure the major you choose is what you really want to do. Others talked about applying for scholarships to help pay tuition bills and other needs in college.

And while many in the group said they felt like Abington Heights prepared them for the rigors of college classes, they agreed that the amount of homework and studying outside of class took some getting used to.

Still other members talked about all the new experiences they have had since leaving high school. After graduating from Abington Heights this summer, Morgan Fayocavitz began attending the University of Central Florida this year and said she was glad she chose a school far away from home.

"It's a lot of different experiences, being in a new place and making new friends," she said.

Contact the writer: enissley@timesshamrock.com

Source: http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/abingtons-alumni-talk-about-college-jobs-1.1248997?localLinksEnabled=false

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Samsung Galaxy S II Duos getting ready for a debut in China: dual-SIM powerhouse

Do you know what?s better than a brand new Samsung Galaxy S II? A dual-SIM Samsung Galaxy S II! And that?s exactly what Samsung will deliver to Chinese shelves in the near future.?

In a move previously reserved only for feature phones and then the most affordable smartphones, Samsung is stepping up the dual-SIM game seriously and possibly playing on carrier?s nerves with the upcoming high-end Samsung Galaxy S II Duos (aka Samsung I929).

Here?s how the spec sheet of the S II Duos is expected to look like:

- 4.52-inch Super AMOLED Plus WVGA display,?

- a 1.2GHz dual-core processor,?

- Android 2.3 OS,?

- 8MP and 2MP cameras,?

- 16GB internal memory, microSD card slot supporting up to 32GB,

- Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, GPS, FM Radio, MHL video-out support,?

- 1800mAh battery.

The upcoming Galaxy S II Duos will support CDMA2000 and GSM bands, but what we?re curious about is whether Samsung will bring this outside China. The Chinese market is used to dual-, triple- and even quad-SIM handsets, and other developing markets like the Asian, African and East European are also the first to come in mind when we speak about multiple SIM support. Carrier-centric markets like the States, though, are not keen on going after multiple-SIM handsets so our guess is that this one won?t be hitting US soil. Would you like to own one, though? Let us know in the comments below.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/phonearena/ySoL/~3/J05EqOG_3KU/Samsung-Galaxy-S-II-Duos-getting-ready-for-a-debut-in-China-dual-SIM-powerhouse_id25065

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Drifting snow makes travel tough in Great Plains (AP)

TOPEKA, Kan. ? A deadly storm that halted travel throughout the Great Plains weakened Tuesday as it headed east into Missouri and toward the Great Lakes, and officials reopened interstates in areas where motorists had been forced to adjust holiday plans mid-trip.

Authorities still were reporting snow drifts of up to 10 feet high in southeast Colorado, and Texas officials warned drivers to stay off the road in the Panhandle so crews would have a clear path to remove ice and snow. Major highways in the western half of the Oklahoma Panhandle remained closed.

Still, officials reopened Interstate 40 in the Texas Panhandle and New Mexico, and portions of Interstate 70 in western Kansas that had been closed. New Mexico reopened a closed section of Interstate 25, the main highway from Santa Fe to the Colorado line after crews cleared drifts as high as 5 feet. The storm dumped as much as 15 inches of snow as it hit parts of five states.

At least 40 people were stranded at the Longhorn Motel on Main Street in Boise City, Okla., where manager Pedro Segovia said blowing snow had created drifts 2- and 3-feet high and closed the main road.

"Some people cannot even get out of their houses. There is too much snow," Segovia said. "It's was blowing. We've got big piles. It's real bad."

Receptionist MaKenzee Grove sympathized with the 50 or so people stranded at the hotel where she works in Guymon, about 60 miles east of Boise City. She too spent Monday night there.

"I have this rinky-dink car that does not do well in this," Grove said. "If we wouldn't have had the wind, it wouldn't have been as bad. The winds ... made the drifts really bad."

A few guests traveling to Oklahoma City managed to leave Tuesday, but others would likely have to wait another night before all roads were clear, she said.

In Kansas, schools in Manhattan canceled classes Tuesday, anticipating several inches of snow. Topeka was pelted by a cold rain, which was expected to turn to a wintry mix of light sleet and snow later in the day, though forecasters expected the storm to become less potent as it moved northeast toward the Great Lakes.

Kansas Highway Patrol Trooper Ben Gardner said the patrol dealt with dozens of accidents in which motorists slid off highways Tuesday morning.

"We had ice-covered roads, covered by snow packed on top," he said.

The late-autumn snowstorm lumbered into the region Monday, turning roads to ice and reducing visibility to zero. Many of the areas hit Monday had enjoyed relatively balmy 60-degree temperatures just 24 hours earlier.

The storm was blamed for at least six deaths Monday, authorities said. Four people were killed when their vehicle collided with a pickup truck in part of eastern New Mexico where blizzard-like conditions are rare, and a prison guard and inmate died when a prison van crashed on an icy road in eastern Colorado.

___

Associated Press writers Jeri Clausing in Albuquerque, N.M.; Matt Curry in Dallas; and Tim Talley in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/weather/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111220/ap_on_re_us/us_winter_weather

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New to this site ;)

Hi there!

I am new to this site.
I am hoping to have fun on here, and make new friends and the like :) Course it takes some time to adapt to a new site, as always though I am going to to my best :)
Anyone who wants to be friends is always welcome ;)

I have expierience with roleplaying and I enjoy doing it when I have the time, my life is so busy from start to finish....

That's it so far..

C ya all around

Dark_Side_Forever

"It takes courage to follow your mind, but it takes everything to follow your heat" unkown author

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/4ti5DG6K4fw/viewtopic.php

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Football underdog "Rudy" sacked for stock fraud (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? Daniel Ruettiger, the legendary Notre Dame football underdog who inspired the 1993 movie "Rudy," couldn't do an end run around the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The SEC on Friday charged Ruettiger and 12 others with running a stock scam associated with Rudy Nutrition - a company Ruettiger founded to try to compete against Gatorade in the sports drink market.

The company sold modest amounts of the sports drink "Rudy" with the tagline "Dream Big! Never Quit!", but the company was primarily a pump-and-dump stock scheme that created more than $11 million in illicit profits, the SEC said.

The SEC said Rudy Nutrition, which is no longer in business, provided false and misleading statements to investors.

For example, the company said that "Rudy outsold Gatorade 2 to 1!" in a major U.S. Southwest test, and boasted that the drink outperformed Gatorade and Powerade by 2 to 1 in a blind taste test, the SEC said. Both claims were false, it said.

Ruettiger agreed to pay $382,866 to settle the case, without admitting or denying the charges.

"Investors were lured into the scheme by Mr. Ruettiger's well-known, feel-good story but found themselves in a situation that did not have a happy ending," SEC enforcement lawyer Scott Friestad said in a statement.

Ruettiger was an undersized walk-on football player for Notre Dame who in 1975 was called off the bench during his last chance to play for Notre Dame at home. In a dramatic turn for the underdog, he recorded a sack, and was carried off the field by his teammates.

An attorney for Ruettiger could not immediately be reached for comment.

The SEC said Ruettiger ran the company with a college friend out of South Bend, Indiana, until October 2007 when Rocky Brandonisio became the company's president and moved the company's operations to Las Vegas.

As the company struggled financially, Ruettiger and Brandonisio recruited Ruettiger's neighbor in Las Vegas, an experienced penny stock promoter, to orchestrate a public distribution of the company stock in late 2007, the SEC said.

The promoter, Stephen DeCesare, identified a shell corporation quoted on the Pink Sheets that Rudy could merge with in order to become a public firm.

The company hired a business consultant who was a disbarred California lawyer, Kevin Quinn, to execute the deal.

It began trading in February 2008 under the ticker symbol

RUNU.

Through false or misleading statements about the company, the team pumped up its stock price from 25 cents to $1.05 per share, the SEC said.

The agency said the scheme ended when the SEC issued a trading suspension against Rudy Nutrition on September 12, 2008, for delinquent regulatory filings.

Lawyers for Brandonisio and DeCesare did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for Quinn had no immediate comment.

(Reporting By Aruna Viswanatha; Editing by Karey Wutkowski, Gerald E. McCormick and Richard Chang)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/stocks/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111216/us_nm/us_sec_rudy

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Bayern overcomes Ribery ejection to beat Cologne

/

updated 4:39 p.m. ET Dec. 16, 2011

BERLIN - Bayern Munich overcame Frank Ribery's first-half ejection to beat Cologne 3-0 Friday night, ensuring it maintains at least a three-point lead going into the Bundesliga's four-week winter break.

Ribery was received his second yellow card of the game in the 33rd minute, penalized for grabbing at Henrique Sereno's face half a minute after both were shown cards for clashing in the penalty area.

Mario Gomez scored his league-leading 16th goal of the season to put the hosts ahead in the 48th. Substitute David Alaba scored in the 63rd, when Cologne failed to clear Toni Kroos' corner kick, and Kroos got the final goal in the 88th.

Bayern (12-4-1) has a six-point lead over Borussia Dortmund (9-3-4) and Schalke (10-5-1) going into the weekend's games.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Man U eyes top spot

LONDON (AP) -Manchester United could briefly forget about injury problems, Champions League elimination and its resurgent neighbor on Sunday.

Mike Stobe / Getty Images

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45702096/ns/sports-soccer/

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IDC: iPad maintains tablet dominance, HP's TouchPad fire sale burned brightly

While the Android tablets continue to roll in, Apple can still lay claim to the lion's share of the tablet market according to IDC's latest report. Its research suggests that the iPad holds onto 61.5 percent of the worldwide market share, down from 63.3 percent last quarter. Android devices in total also saw a slight contraction, down from 33.2 percent to 32.4 percent. This is partly explained by the HP TouchPad's final hurrah, which rocketed the ill-fated webOS tablet up to third place with a 5 percent of share of tablet sales and an estimated 903,354 devices sold. Samsung maintained its Honeycomb tablet crown, nabbing 5.6 percent of all tablet sales. The Korean manufacturer was closely tailed by Barnes and Noble's Nook Color with 4.5 percent and Asus, arriving at fifth place with a four percent share. Tablets in total sold less than the analysts had predicted, although E-readers outperformed estimates, with 6.5 million E-readers sold in the third quarter, up 165.9 percent from last year. IDC expects some disruptive new tablets will spice up the fourth quarter results and you can take a look at its findings and predictions at the full press release below.

Continue reading IDC: iPad maintains tablet dominance, HP's TouchPad fire sale burned brightly

IDC: iPad maintains tablet dominance, HP's TouchPad fire sale burned brightly originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Dec 2011 05:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/16/idc-ipad-maintains-tablet-dominance-hps-touchpad-fire-sale-bu/

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South Africa gallows site becomes museum, memorial (AP)

PRETORIA, South Africa ? Relatives of anti-apartheid militants hanged at South Africa's main gallows are gathering in Pretoria for a ceremony at which President Jacob Zuma will inaugurate the site as a national memorial and museum.

Organizers say the project opening Thursday offers closure for relatives, and a chance for society to confront the wounds of the past and then move on.

The gallows at Pretoria Central Prison was abandoned after the death penalty was abolished in 1995.

Renovations have included posting a sign on a freshly painted wall along a hallway leading to the gallows telling visitors some 3,500 South Africans were hanged over the last century. "Of these," it continues, "130 were patriots whose only crime was fighting oppression."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111215/ap_on_re_af/af_south_africa_gallows_museum

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'Mission Impossible': Five J.J. Abrams Regulars We Want Recruited Next

Producer J.J. Abrams has established a great tradition within the "Mission: Impossible" franchise: in the last two "M:I" installments, Abrams has called in fan-favorite actors from his television past for brief but awesome roles. First Keri Russell popped into "Mission: Impossible III" in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it death scene, and today's newest movie ? "Ghost Protocol" ? [...]

Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2011/12/16/mission-impossible-ghost-protocol-jj-abrams-josh-holloway/

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Insurance Companies Ready Push For 'Devastating' Rate Hikes On ...

WASHINGTON -- With the economy still weak, businesses may face a fresh blow from insurance companies next year, according to a new report published Thursday by the Center for Justice and Democracy at New York Law School. The report claims that insurance companies are colluding on major rate hikes that could send premiums skyrocketing for businesses in 2012.

"It's a completely unnecessary, unjustified, and devastating possible crisis that we may be facing next year," said Joanne Doroshow, one of the co-authors of the report, titled "Repeat Offenders: How The Insurance Industry Manufactures Crises And Harms America."

Since 2006, the insurance industry has been in a "soft market" that benefited consumers. Premiums remained low as insurers fought to attract new customers and pad their cash reserves, which they then invested. But industry representatives are now pushing companies to raise premiums and create a "hard market," where rates rise but coverage declines as insurers push for larger profits.

Companies claim that the industry now faces mounting losses from the combination of difficult economic times and years of low rates. In order to stay solvent and provide customers with continued protection, they say, insurers must raise premiums.

But the center's report charges that the insurance industry is simply manipulating the numbers to provide the appearance of financial instability. The losses that insurers use to justify rate hikes include a category called "losses incurred but not reported," which are only estimates of future payouts on claims. Companies then use these hypothetical numbers to ask state regulators for rate increases, demanding more money without actually paying out any more in premiums.

Far from being short on cash, the insurance industry had a surplus of $580 billion in 2010, according to data from Best's Aggregates and Averages included in the report. That figure does not include the money insurers set aside to cover the estimated costs of future claims.

The rate hikes will fall more heavily on businesses than customers with personal insurance, but the costs would still be substantial for both groups. Doroshow told The Huffington Post that, in line with past "hard market" cycles, "these rates could be going up 100 or 200 percent for businesses."

Insurance companies are able to demand such hikes because of their unique legal protections. The industry has had an antitrust exemption under the McCarran-Ferguson Act since 1944, which, according to the report, allows insurers to "pressure their own competitors to stop competing for premium dollars and to raise rates and reserves as an entire industry."

The ability to collude is backed up by weak regulation. "Businesses don't have the ability to fight, and because states are not properly regulating, the industry simply gets away with it," said Doroshow. She said that most states do not have any disclosure laws at all, allowing insurance companies to block information that could benefit policyholders.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners did not return a request for comment.

The hard market-soft market cycle is a common occurrence, according to both the report and insurance executives. There have been three such cycles since the mid-1970s, each one creating its own premiums crisis. But insurance companies have used the specter of damages from Hurricane Irene this year to justify higher premiums, saying the industry is in a uniquely dangerous financial situation. Insurers claimed that the storm had the potential to cripple the industry and ruin its ability to pay claims in a year that already had seen a decrease in profits.

However, given its large surplus, the industry was well-equipped to handle the resulting claims, according to the report. The storm's cost to insurers, initially estimated at as much as $14 billion, fell to approximately $2.6 billion after the damage was more accurately assessed.

According to recent data, insurers' efforts to move toward higher rates may have already paid off. MarketScout, an insurance underwriting and distribution company, reported that the insurance industry entered a hard market in November. That month, property and casualty premiums increased by an average of 1 percent -- the first composite premium rate jump since February 2005.

The Center for Justice and Democracy is urging legislators to beef up regulatory powers and repeal the industry's antitrust protections. A repeal of the exemption has been proposed in the past but has never passed, and stands little chance of doing so in 2012. But Doroshow is hopeful that the study will help draw public attention to the problem and force congressional action.

"Maybe eventually there will be enough pressure on them to take a look at what's happening," she said, "because right now they haven't."

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/15/insurance-companies-premiums-rate-hikes_n_1149685.html

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Paul, Bachmann spar over Iran and nuclear threat (AP)

SIOUX CITY, Iowa ? Republican presidential candidates Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann are trading barbs over Iran, with the Texas congressman saying the U.S. has no legitimate claim to block Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon and Bachmann calling his position wildly dangerous.

The two House members clashed during Thursday night's GOP debate while standing next to each other.

Paul says that terrorists want to harm the U.S. because it bombs innocent civilians and invades countries. The libertarian-leaning lawmaker says the worries over a nuclear Iran are merely the pretense for the U.S. to start another war.

Bachmann says that Iran is led by "an avowed madman" and committed to destroying Israel. She says Iran must be stopped.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iran/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111216/ap_on_el_pr/us_gop_debate_paul_bachmann

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?Ship Today, Update Tomorrow?: The Modern Tablet Credo

Of all the major hardware players, Amazon seemed best-equipped to battle Apple in the tablet market. Backed by Amazon’s massive resources, an online store full of content, and a very aggressive pricing strategy, the $200 Kindle Fire appealed to any consumer unwilling to spend $500 on an entry-level iPad 2.
Pre-orders were through the roof.
Unfortunately, [...]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/lmU6OiWY7KU/

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Top Colombian drug trafficker captured

CARACAS, Venezuela?? A top Colombian drug trafficker reputedly responsible for shipping tons of cocaine to the United States through Central America and Mexico has been captured in Venezuela, officials said Monday.

The U.S. had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of Maximiliano Bonilla Orozco, also known as "Valenciano," who was also on Colombia's most-wanted list.

Colombian authorities told The Associated Press that Bonilla was captured Sunday. The information was later confirmed by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who was in Venezuela meeting with President Hugo Chavez.

"He's one of the most recognized drug traffickers, who has caused terrible harm to our country," Santos told Chavez at the presidential palace. He added that Bonilla's capture was "truly a very high-value objective" for Colombian authorities.

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"We know that your people, your authorities ... were after this individual for some time, and look how God is on our side, the coincidence that last night you captured him and today we can give this magnificent news," Santos said.

Story: Colombian survivor: 'I ran the other way'

"This is a very good welcome gift," Santos told Chavez.

The Venezuelan leader called the arrest "a happy coincidence."

Both presidents said it was an example of increased cooperation between their authorities. It wasn't immediately clear how authorities tracked down Bonilla.

He will be deported to the United States to face charges, Venezuelan Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami said. Chavez had suggested earlier that Bonilla would be handed over to Colombian authorities.

Bonilla was captured in the central state of Aragua, El Aissami said.

U.S. officials allege Bonilla has sent tons of cocaine to the United States through Central America and Mexico, dealing extensively with Mexico's violent Zetas drug cartel.

Bonilla, 39, allegedly headed a Medellin-based criminal organization dating back to the 1980s that once recruited hit men for the late cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar.

Santos said Bonilla was the boss of an organization called the "Oficina de Envigado," named after the town of Envigado near Medellin.

The U.S. State Department listed Bonilla among its eight most-wanted Colombian drug traffickers after leftist rebels.

Wanted on a 2008 federal indictment from New York's eastern district for drug trafficking, Bonilla received cocaine from various sources in Colombia, including the rebels, Colombian and U.S. officials say.

___

Associated Press writers Vivian Sequera and Frank Bajak in Bogota, Colombia, and Patricia Rondon Espin in Caracas contributed to this report.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45469454/ns/world_news-americas/

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