Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Sean Penn named ambassador for Haiti in ceremony

AAA??Jan. 31, 2012?11:53 PM ET
Sean Penn named ambassador for Haiti in ceremony
AP

U.S. actor Sean Penn, left, Haiti's President Michel Martelly, right, and Haiti's Foreign Minister Laurent Lamothe, center, make a toast as they pose for pictures after a special ceremony at the national palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012. Penn has been named ambassador at large for Haiti in recognition of his humanitarian work since the 2010 earthquake. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

U.S. actor Sean Penn, left, Haiti's President Michel Martelly, right, and Haiti's Foreign Minister Laurent Lamothe, center, make a toast as they pose for pictures after a special ceremony at the national palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012. Penn has been named ambassador at large for Haiti in recognition of his humanitarian work since the 2010 earthquake. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

U.S. actor Sean Penn, right, and Haiti's President Michel Martelly, shake hands as they pose for pictures after a special ceremony at the national palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012. Penn has been named ambassador at large for Haiti in recognition of his humanitarian work since the 2010 earthquake. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

U.S. actor Sean Penn, right, and Haiti's President Michel Martelly, pose for pictures after a special ceremony at the national palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012. Penn has been named ambassador at large for Haiti in recognition of his humanitarian work since the 2010 earthquake. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

U.S. actor Sean Penn, left, accompanied by Haiti's President Michel Martelly, delivers a speech during a special ceremony at the national palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012. Penn has been named ambassador at large for Haiti in recognition of his humanitarian work since the 2010 earthquake. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

(AP) ? Actor Sean Penn has been named ambassador at large for Haiti in recognition of his humanitarian work since the 2010 earthquake.

The Hollywood star received the honor from Haitiian President Michel Martelly at a special ceremony Tuesday evening at the National Palace.

Martelly thanked Penn for keeping the spotlight on the Caribbean nation.

The president joked that the "only downside" to Penn's new position is that he can no longer call the actor by his first name. Now Penn will be called "Ambassador."

Penn's J/P Haitian Relief Organization was set up a few months after the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake to oversee a settlement camp where thousands of people displaced by the disaster lived.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2012-01-31-CB-Haiti-Sean-Penn/id-08ed4dd481824aa7ad4d58c697263781

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Occupy the Toybox (Balloon Juice)

Share With Friends: Share on FacebookTweet ThisPost to Google-BuzzSend on GmailPost to Linked-InSubscribe to This Feed | Rss To Twitter | Politics - Top Stories News, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/193474117?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Monday, January 30, 2012

Congress tries to police itself on insider trading

(AP) ? Aware that most Americans would like to dump them all, members of Congress hope to regain some sense of trust by subjecting themselves to tougher penalties for insider trading and requiring that they disclose stock transactions within 30 days.

A procedural vote Monday would allow the Senate later this week to pass a bill prohibiting members of Congress from using nonpublic information for their own personal benefit or "tipping" others to inside information that they could trade on.

Insider trading laws apply to all Americans, but the CBS TV news magazine "60 Minutes" in November said members of Congress get a pass, citing investment transactions by party leaders and a committee chairman in businesses about to be affected by pending legislation.

The broadcast report raised questions about trades of House Speaker John Boehner; the husband of Democratic leader and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi; and Rep. Spencer Bachus, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

All three denied using any insider information to make stock trades, but the broadcast set off a flurry of efforts in Washington to deal with the public perception.

A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll of registered voters found 56 percent of them favor replacing the entire 535-member Congress. Other polls this year have given Congress an approval rating between 11 percent and 13 percent, while disapproval percentages have ranged from 79 percent to 86 percent.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said he's working on an expanded bill that would go beyond stock transactions and ban lawmakers from making land deals and other investments based on what they learned as members of Congress.

The Senate version of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act would subject any member of Congress who violates the ban on insider trading to investigation and prosecution by regulatory agencies and the Justice Department. It also directs the House and Senate ethics committees to write rules that would make violators subject to additional congressional penalties.

"We can start restoring some of the faith that's been lost in our government by taking this common sense step of making members of Congress play by the exact same rules as everyone else," said Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who with Republican Sen. Scott Brown, wrote the bill "We must make it unambiguous that this kind of behavior is illegal."

President Barack Obama endorsed the bill in his State of the Union speech last week, saying he would "sign it tomorrow." Brown used that opening to briefly speak with the president as he was exiting the House chamber after Tuesday's address.

"The insider trading bill's on Harry's desk right now," Brown told Obama, referring to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "Tell him to get it out, it's already there."

"I'm gonna tell him," answered Obama. "I'm gonna tell him, I'm gonna tell him to get it done."

Obama raised the issue again in his radio and Internet address on Saturday.

"The House and Senate should send me a bill that bans insider trading by members of Congress, and I will sign it immediately. They should limit any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact," he said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-01-29-Congress-Insider%20Trading/id-47b95466ba4e441da94a575a55d99253

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Slave port unearthed in Brazil

The Valongo Wharf in Rio de Janerio was the busiest of all slave ports in the Americas and has been buried for almost two centuries.

? A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.

Skip to next paragraph

Not far from here at least 500,000 Africans took their first steps into slavery in colonial Brazil, which took in far more slaves than the United States and where now half of its 200 million citizens claim African descent.

The ?Cais do Valongo? ? the Valongo Wharf ? was the busiest of all slave ports in the Americas and has been buried for almost two centuries under subsequent infrastructure projects and dirt.

That is, until developers seeking to turn Rio?s shabby port neighborhood into a posh tourist center allowed teams of archaeologists to check out what was being unearthed.

?We knew we had found the wharf,? says archaeologist Tania Andrade Lima, showing a ramp made up of knobbly, uneven stones used by slaves. It lay beneath a layer of smoother cobblestones from a dock installed later for the arrival of a Portuguese royal.

Ms. Lima and other community leaders are creating a walking tour that will include the wharf, a nearby cemetery for Africans who died soon after their arrival, and a holding pen called the ?Lazareto,? derived from Jesus? parable about a beggar named Lazarus, where newly arrived Africans were checked for diseases.

The wharf alone is nearly 22,000 square feet. ?This gives a dimension to how huge the influx of slaves was,? says Lima.

Get daily or weekly updates from CSMonitor.com delivered to your inbox.?Sign up today.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/C8HzhyUXmb0/Slave-port-unearthed-in-Brazil

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Sunday, January 29, 2012

Three killed when Sacramento commuter train hits vehicle (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? At least three people, including a toddler, were killed when a light rail train carrying 50 passengers hit a vehicle in Sacramento on Saturday, and investigators were working to determine the cause, police said.

A fourth person from inside the vehicle was taken to hospital in critical condition, and eight rail passengers were taken to hospital for medical checks after the crash.

"A vehicle was struck. The vehicle was on the tracks when it was hit," Watch Commander Lieutenant Steve Winton told Reuters. "Two people died at the scene and two went to the hospital."

One of those taken to hospital, a toddler whose age was estimated at around two, was later confirmed to have died, a police dispatcher said.

Local television station KCRA reported that witnesses said the vehicle may have tried to drive around safety barriers as the train approached. Police said the train would have been travelling at about 45 to 55 miles per hour at the time of the collision.

(Reporting By Cynthia Johnston; Editing by Dan Whitcomb)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120129/us_nm/us_crash_rail_sacramento

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SKorean activists send socks to NKorea in balloons (AP)

PAJU, South Korea ? South Korean activists have floated giant balloons carrying boxes of socks into North Korea.

The activists hoped Saturday that North Koreans could wear the socks or trade them for food during the harsh winter. Associated Press video showed five helium-filled balloons rising into the air at an observation post in the South Korean border city of Paju.

South Korean activists have used balloons in the past to send anti-North Korean leaflets across the heavily guarded border.

North Korea strongly denounces the leaflets but hasn't mentioned past efforts to send daily necessities.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/nkorea/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120128/ap_on_re_as/as_koreas_socks

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Saturday, January 28, 2012

Top lobbyists nix Egypt contract (Politico)

Three top U.S. lobbyists have ended their lucrative contract representing the Egyptian government, the latest fallout from a Dec. 29 Egyptian raid on U.S and European-backed groups monitoring parliamentary elections there.

Former Reps. Bob Livingston (R-La.) and Toby Moffett (D-Conn.), as well as high-powered Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta, have terminated their lobbying contract with the Egyptian government.

Continue Reading

The trio split a $90,000-plus per month lobbying contract to represent Egypt?s interests in Washington.

The tipping point for the high-profile lobbyists appears to have been the no-fly order instituted by Egyptian authorities that has prevented as many as 10 U.S. citizens, including the son of Transportation Sec. Ray LaHood, from leaving Egypt. Other elements of the Egyptian government, not the military, appear responsible for that decision. But the end result is a real risk of damaging what has been a longstanding alliance that is important to both Egypt and the United States in the Mideast.

And the loss of powerful friends in Washington will further isolate Egypt at a sensitive point.

Livingston confirmed on Friday night that he, Podesta and Moffett ? who set up the PLM Group to handle the Egyptian contract beginning in 2007 ? have ended the contract, but the former lawmaker declined to offer any further details.

?We all have? Livingston said in an e-mail when asked if his associates have also quit.

The PLM contract with Egypt had become a source of controversy since POLITICO reported earlier this week that a Livingston Group lobbyist had circulated talking points downplaying the Dec. 29 raid. In an earlier interview, Livingston insisted that he was not defending the Egyptian action but making sure members of Congress, Hill staffers, and Obama administration officials were aware of the Egyptian position on the raid, as required by his job as a registered foreign agent for the Egyptian government.

The raid by Egyptian security forces targeted at least 17 foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operating in Egypt. The groups involved included the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, all of which receive millions of dollars in U.S. government funds annually. None of the NGOs have been allowed to reopen their offices at this time and remain under investigation.

Egyptian authorities have also barred a number of Americans working for the NGOs, including Sam LaHood, the son of Transportation Sec. LaHood, from leaving Egypt. The younger LaHood runs the Egypt program for IRI and has been in the country to monitor parliamentary elections, the first since the fall of longtime President Hosni Mubarak last February.

The travel ban, also first reported by POLITICO, has infuriated U.S. officials and lawmakers, who are demanding that the Egyptians reverse their position and allow Sam LaHood and other Americans to exit the country. As of Friday evening, the Egyptians have not yet permitted the Americans to leave.

President Barack Obama and other top administration officials have warned that continued U.S. aid to Egypt, more than $1.5 billion last year alone, is conditioned on whether the Egyptian military ? which took over the country following Mubarak?s ouster ? is successfully transitioning the country to democracy.

Senate Appropriations Committee Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), in a Friday statement to POLITICO, warned that the United States was watching the Egyptian treatment of the foreign NGOs closely.

?It is my sincere hope that the government will reconsider its current actions, especially with regard to non-governmental organizations operating in Egypt, and will choose to continue down a path to genuine democracy for the Egyptian people,? Inouye said.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/politico_rss/rss_politico_mostpop/http___www_politico_com_news_stories0112_72102_html/44334296/SIG=11mp73mpk/*http%3A//www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/72102.html

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ZTE Score (Cricket Wireless)


How does this sound to you: $65 per month for unlimited talk, text, Web, and music with no contract. Pretty good, right? The catch: you're stuck accessing it all with a mediocre Android smartphone. That's the dilemma you face with the ZTE Score ($69.99) for Cricket Wireless. It's a great deal, in need of a better phone.

Design, Call Quality, and Plan Pricing
The ZTE Score measures 4.4 by 2.5 by .5 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.5 ounces. The front and back are made of glass, with a thick ring of matte black plastic separating the two. It looks sharp, and its size makes it comfortable to hold and use. The 3.5-inch touch screen sports 320-by-480-pixel resolution, which is standard for budget Android phones. The onscreen keyboard is a bit small, but I didn't have any trouble typing on it.

The Score is a triband EV-DO Rev A (850/1700/1900 MHz) device with 802.11b/g Wi-Fi. It connected to my?WPA2-encrypted Wi-Fi network?without a problem, but reception on Sprint's network here in New York was shaky and voice quality is mixed. Cricket uses its own network in about a third of the country, and Sprint's network in the rest.

Volume is low in the earpiece, and voices sounded thin and robotic. Calls made with the phone are easy to understand, but again voices sounded computerized and background noise cancellation was poor. Calls sounded better through a Jawbone Era?Bluetooth headset ($129, 4.5 stars) and voice dialing worked fine over Bluetooth without training. The speakerphone sounds fine, but its volume is far too low to use outside. Battery life was on the short side at 4 hours, 49 minutes of talk time.

Cricket offers unlimited smartphone plans with its downloadable Muve Music service for $65/month, which is more affordable than all the major carriers but still more expensive than Boost Mobile's $55/month smartphone plan, which can actually reduce to $40/month as you pay your bills on time. But that extra $10 per month for unlimited music is an attractive option, and one that will likely be a deciding factor for many users. MetroPCS recently started offering a similar plan where $60 per month will get you unlimited talk, text, and Web, along with unlimited music via Rhapsody. (Without Rhapsody, that plan costs $50.)

OS, Multimedia, and Conclusions
The Score runs Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread). There's no word on an update to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), and don't count on one. ZTE has added some light customizations to Android, but they're mostly visual. There are five home screens you can swipe between, and the phone feels surprisingly responsive given its outdated 600 MHz Qualcomm MSM7627 processor.

You get all of usual perks of Android, which include native support for Microsoft Exchange; free Google Maps Navigation for voice-enabled, turn-by-turn GPS directions; a solid?WebKit browser; and compatibility with more than 300,000 third-party apps in the Android Market.

There's a side-mounted microSD card slot on the right side of the phone. Slip the included card out and you'll notice it says "3GB Muve Music, 1GB Your Space." That means the card is divided into two partitions, and the Muve partition is hidden and encrypted. You can only see the extra 1GB on a PC. You also can't use standard MicroSD memory cards for Muve. Cricket doesn't yet sell the special cards the phone accepts, though replacement 4GB and 8GB cards are in the works.

In addition to the 1GB on the microSD card, there's also 110MB of free internal storage. Music sounded fine through both wired earbuds and?Altec Lansing Backbeat?Bluetooth headphones ($99, 3.5 stars), though bass response was somewhat lacking. Outside of Muve, the Score was able to handle AAC, MP3, OGG, and WAV music files. DivX, H.264, and MP4 video files played back smoothly at resolutions up to 800-by-480.

The 3.2-megapixel camera is weak. Test photos look average outdoors, but photos taken inside appear soft and blurry, almost hazy, like a scene from a bad music video. The camera also records video at a low 352-by-288-pixel resolution. Videos are tiny and grainy, and play back at a choppy 12 frames per second indoors, and 15 frames per second outside.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/Eob_LmyH7us/0,2817,2399408,00.asp

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Friday, January 27, 2012

Jostling for position

Jostling for position [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 26-Jan-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Dr. Kathrin Bilgeri
kathrin.bilgeri@lmu.de
49-892-180-6938
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt Mnchen

Competition is at the root of diversity in rainforests

Ecologists are still arguing about the nature of the factors that determine the species composition of ecological communities. On the one hand, there are those who view interspecies competition as the key element. A second group of influential ecologists postulates that random fluctuations in population structure and rates of species dispersal play the dominant role, particularly in the biological communities found in species-rich tropical rainforests. LMU biologist Professor Susanne Renner, who is Director of the Botanic Garden and herbaria in Munich, and Professor Robert E. Ricklefs of the University of Missouri in St. Louis have now analyzed data from censuses of tree species in rainforests around the globe and also taken advantage of fossil evidence, allowing them to chart diversity in both space and time. Their findings show that variation in species richness among families is very similar in all tropical forests in spite of millions of years of independent evolution and diversification. This correspondence strongly suggests that community structure in rainforests cannot be attributed to the action of stochastic factors. "The high degree of similarity was a surprise even to us," says Renner. "The results can be regarded as a nail in the coffin of the neutral theory." (Science online, 26. January 2012)

In even the best habitats, resources are inevitably limited. This means that species must compete with each other for access to them. And for many ecologists, interspecies competition for resources is the critical factor that determines the composition of the community found in a given environment. According to the principle of competitive exclusion, two species that depend on the same vital resource or ecological niche for their survival cannot stably coexist. The better adapted species will ultimately displace its competitor.

In contrast, what is known as "neutral" theory postulates that stochastic variations in factors such as the rate of dispersal and extinction of species determine the patterns of species abundance in different communities. The American ecologist Stephen Hubbell is the leading proponent of neutral theory, which he developed to explain species-rich communities, such as tropical rainforests.

In these environments it is not uncommon to find hundreds of tree species growing close together. Hubbell contends that this makes it very unlikely that segregation of ecological niches and the principle of competitive exclusion are the overriding forces that determine community structure. His neutral theory has received a great deal of attention in recent years.

LMU biologist Professor Susanne Renner and her American colleague Professor Robert Ricklefs have now challenged the theory with the help of quantitative data. In Central and South American, African and Asian rainforests, the two researchers compared the abundance patterns of different tree species growing in plots of between 25 and 55 hectares. In addition, they compared the relative abundance of different families of trees in a 55- to 65-year-old fossil flora from tropical Colombia with their representation there today.

On the basis of the neutral theory, which assigns a leading role to stochasticity, one would not expect to find much similarity in community structure over such a wide area and such a long span of time. However, the results of the new study show that when families are arranged in order of species richness, the rankings that emerge are very similar on all three continents.

"The correlation is statistically highly significant," says Renner. "So we have uncovered a very substantial degree of agreement between the seven forest plots; even the numbers of trees per unit area that belong to a given taxonomic family are similar in all three regions. Moreover, the families with the highest species diversity in the Colombian rainforests today were already dominant 50 million years ago. The findings are astonishingly clear-cut, and should suffice to rule out the neutral theory." (suwe/PH)

###

Publication:
Global correlations in tropical tree species richness and abundance reject neutrality
Ricklefs, R. E.; and S. S. Renner
Science Express, 26. January 2012

Contact:
Professor Susanne Renner
Department Biology
Phone: +49 89 17861 257
E-mail: renner@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Web: www.umsl.edu/~renners
www.bsm.mwn.de
www.botmuc.de


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Jostling for position [ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 26-Jan-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Dr. Kathrin Bilgeri
kathrin.bilgeri@lmu.de
49-892-180-6938
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt Mnchen

Competition is at the root of diversity in rainforests

Ecologists are still arguing about the nature of the factors that determine the species composition of ecological communities. On the one hand, there are those who view interspecies competition as the key element. A second group of influential ecologists postulates that random fluctuations in population structure and rates of species dispersal play the dominant role, particularly in the biological communities found in species-rich tropical rainforests. LMU biologist Professor Susanne Renner, who is Director of the Botanic Garden and herbaria in Munich, and Professor Robert E. Ricklefs of the University of Missouri in St. Louis have now analyzed data from censuses of tree species in rainforests around the globe and also taken advantage of fossil evidence, allowing them to chart diversity in both space and time. Their findings show that variation in species richness among families is very similar in all tropical forests in spite of millions of years of independent evolution and diversification. This correspondence strongly suggests that community structure in rainforests cannot be attributed to the action of stochastic factors. "The high degree of similarity was a surprise even to us," says Renner. "The results can be regarded as a nail in the coffin of the neutral theory." (Science online, 26. January 2012)

In even the best habitats, resources are inevitably limited. This means that species must compete with each other for access to them. And for many ecologists, interspecies competition for resources is the critical factor that determines the composition of the community found in a given environment. According to the principle of competitive exclusion, two species that depend on the same vital resource or ecological niche for their survival cannot stably coexist. The better adapted species will ultimately displace its competitor.

In contrast, what is known as "neutral" theory postulates that stochastic variations in factors such as the rate of dispersal and extinction of species determine the patterns of species abundance in different communities. The American ecologist Stephen Hubbell is the leading proponent of neutral theory, which he developed to explain species-rich communities, such as tropical rainforests.

In these environments it is not uncommon to find hundreds of tree species growing close together. Hubbell contends that this makes it very unlikely that segregation of ecological niches and the principle of competitive exclusion are the overriding forces that determine community structure. His neutral theory has received a great deal of attention in recent years.

LMU biologist Professor Susanne Renner and her American colleague Professor Robert Ricklefs have now challenged the theory with the help of quantitative data. In Central and South American, African and Asian rainforests, the two researchers compared the abundance patterns of different tree species growing in plots of between 25 and 55 hectares. In addition, they compared the relative abundance of different families of trees in a 55- to 65-year-old fossil flora from tropical Colombia with their representation there today.

On the basis of the neutral theory, which assigns a leading role to stochasticity, one would not expect to find much similarity in community structure over such a wide area and such a long span of time. However, the results of the new study show that when families are arranged in order of species richness, the rankings that emerge are very similar on all three continents.

"The correlation is statistically highly significant," says Renner. "So we have uncovered a very substantial degree of agreement between the seven forest plots; even the numbers of trees per unit area that belong to a given taxonomic family are similar in all three regions. Moreover, the families with the highest species diversity in the Colombian rainforests today were already dominant 50 million years ago. The findings are astonishingly clear-cut, and should suffice to rule out the neutral theory." (suwe/PH)

###

Publication:
Global correlations in tropical tree species richness and abundance reject neutrality
Ricklefs, R. E.; and S. S. Renner
Science Express, 26. January 2012

Contact:
Professor Susanne Renner
Department Biology
Phone: +49 89 17861 257
E-mail: renner@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Web: www.umsl.edu/~renners
www.bsm.mwn.de
www.botmuc.de


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-01/lm-jfp012412.php

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J.C. Penney gets rid of hundreds of sales (AP)

NEW YORK ? J.C. Penney is permanently marking down all of its merchandise by at least 40 percent so shoppers will no longer have to wait for a sale to get the lowest prices in its stores.

Penney said Wednesday that it is getting rid of the hundreds of sales it offers each year in favor of a simpler approach to pricing. On Feb. 1, the retailer is rolling out a three-tiered strategy that offers "Every Day" low pricing daily, "Month-Long Value" discounts on select merchandise each month and clearance deals called "Best Prices" during the first and the third Friday of every month when many shoppers get paid.

The plan, the first major move by former Apple executive Ron Johnson since he became Penney's CEO in November, is similar to Wal-Mart's iconic everyday low pricing strategy. The difference is that Penney's goal isn't to undercut competitors, but rather to offer customers more predictable pricing.

"Pricing is actually a pretty simple and straight forward thing," Johnson told the Associated Press during an interview ahead of the announcement at the company's Plano, Tex. headquarters. "Customers will not pay literally a penny more than the true value of the product."

Penney's plan comes as stores are struggling to wean Americans off of the profit-busting bargains that they have come to expect in the weak economy. The move is risky, though, because shoppers who love to bargain-hunt may be turned off by the absence of sales.

"The big question on investors' minds will be: `How customers will react to a single price point versus a perceived discount under the old strategy?'" says Citi Investment Research analyst Deborah L. Weinswig.

Here's how Penney's pricing strategy will work:

? Sale prices become everyday prices. The company will use sales data from last year to slash prices on all merchandise at least 40 percent or lower than the previous year's prices. So, a woman's St. John's Bay blouse regularly priced at $14.99 could have the "Every Day" price of $7.

? Fewer sales. The retailer will pick items to go on sale each month for a "Month-Long Value." For instance, jewelry and Valentine's Day gifts would go on sale in February, while Christmas decorations would be discounted in November. Items that don't sell well would go on clearance and be tagged "Best Prices," signaling to customers that's the cheapest price.

? New tags. The retailer used to pile stickers on price tags to indicate each time an item was marked down. But now each time an item gets a new price, it gets a new tag too. A red tag indicates an "Every Day" price, a white tag a "Month-Long Value" and a blue tag a "Best Price."

? Simpler pricing. Penney will use whole figures when pricing items. In other words, you won't see jeans with a price tag of $19.99, but rather $19 or $20.

? New advertising. Ads began airing Wednesday with a shopper screaming "No" to discounts as they look in their mailboxes, a pile of coupons and big sales signs. The company also has a new spokeswoman (talk show host Ellen DeGeneres) and logo (a red outline of a box that features JCP in the corner.) And a 96-page colorful catalog will be mailed each month to 14 million customers, along with other promotional efforts.

The strategy, unveiled at Penney's investor meeting on Wednesday, comes as the retailer tries to turn around its business. Heavy discounting has hurt department stores like Penney. The group generates an average of about $200 per square foot, less than half the $550 or $600 stores like Victoria's Secret and Lululemon generate per square foot, according to John Bemis, head of Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.'s retail leasing team.

But Penney has been a laggard even among department stores as its core middle-class customers have been among the hardest hit by the weak economy. It's also failed to attract a younger customer despite its efforts to add hip brands like Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's teen clothing collection called Olsenboye.

The stores also lack any "wow" factor. Johnson himself said during Wednesday's meeting that Penney stores are "tired."

For the 11 months through December, Penney's revenue at stores opened at least a year ? an indicator of a retailer's health ? rose 0.7 percent, while competitors like Macy's Inc. rose 5.4 percent, and Kohl's was up 1.1 percent. Penney posted a loss in the third quarter and cut its fourth-quarter earnings outlook after a disappointing holiday season when it had to heavily discount to attract consumers. Penney's gross profit margin has shrunk for six straight quarters.

The pricing strategy caps months of speculation about what Penney's future might look like under the leadership of Johnson, a former Target Corp executive and the mastermind behind the success at Apple Inc.'s stores.

Johnson, who joined the company's board in August, has begun to put his stamp on the retailer. He has tapped former colleagues at Apple and Target to join him at Penney. That includes Target's top marketing executive Michael Francis to be Penney's president.

Because of the success Johnson has had turning Apple stores into hip places to hang out and shop, many industry watchers were waiting with bated breath to see what he'd do in Penney's stores. In December, Penney announced that it will have homemaker doyenne Martha Stewart develop mini-shops starting next year.

And during Wednesday's meeting, Penney executives outlined plans to transform its stores in the next four years. That will include Main Street, a series of 80 to 100 brand shops similar to the Sephora cosmetics ones it has in stores to replace the dozens of racks common in department stores. It also plans to open areas in all stores called Town Square, a place that will offer services and expert advice, similar to Apple's Genius bars.

But perhaps the biggest challenge for Johnson and his management team will be to sell shoppers on its new pricing. For years, Penney, like many other stores, has artificially propped up ticketed prices even as costs have come down slightly over the past decade. The intent: to make it look like shoppers are getting great discounts.

Penney has been an especially big promoter. Last year, the company, which offered 590 sales events last year, had about 72 percent of its revenue come from merchandise that was discounted by 50 percent or more.

That's more than double the overall retail industry average. According to an estimate by management consultant firm A.T. Kearney, a typical retailer sells between 40 and 45 percent of its inventory at a promotional price, up from 15 to 20 percent 10 years ago.

The increased discounting has been a vicious cycle that only feeds into shoppers' insatiable appetite for bigger and better discounts. In fact, whereas it took 38 percent off to get shoppers to buy 10 years ago, it now takes discounts of 60 percent, Johnson says.

At Penney, the regular price on an item that costs $10 to make rose 43 percent, from $28 in 2002 to $40 in 2011. But because of all of its sales and other promotions, what it actually ended up selling for rose only 15 cents, from $15.80 to $15.95 during that same period.

"I have been struck by the extraordinary amount of promotional activity, which to me, didn't feel like it was appropriate for a department store," Johnson said during the interview. "My instinct was that it wasn't a good thing. Once you start to promote, the only way to beat a promotion was to make it bigger."

Walter Loeb, a New York-based retail consultant, says Penney's new pricing strategy is "visionary" and revolutionary."

But Charles Grom, a retail analyst at J.P. Morgan, says it will be difficult for Johnson to change shoppers' buying habits. Macy's, for example, cut back on coupons a few years ago, only being forced to ramp it back up after seeing sales suffer.

"Shopper fatigue has been building for several years," Grom says. "He has a lot of wood to chop."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120125/ap_on_bi_ge/us_penney_price_overhaul

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Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Okla. hospital must pay $1M to Garth Brooks

Country singer Garth Brooks leaves a courtroom during a civil trial at the Rogers County Courthouse in Claremore, Okla. on Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. Brooks says an Oklahoma hospital pledged to name a women's center for his late mother in return for $500,000, but a deposition unveiled Monday showed that, after filing a lawsuit, the country singer couldn't remember what he had been promised. (AP Photo/Tulsa World, Matt Barnard)

Country singer Garth Brooks leaves a courtroom during a civil trial at the Rogers County Courthouse in Claremore, Okla. on Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. Brooks says an Oklahoma hospital pledged to name a women's center for his late mother in return for $500,000, but a deposition unveiled Monday showed that, after filing a lawsuit, the country singer couldn't remember what he had been promised. (AP Photo/Tulsa World, Matt Barnard)

(AP) ? An Oklahoma hospital in Garth Brooks' hometown must pay $1 million to the country singer because it failed to build a women's health center in honor of his late mother, jurors ruled Tuesday evening.

Jurors ruled that the hospital must return a $500,000 donation to Brooks plus pay him $500,000 in punitive damages in Brooks' breach-of-contract lawsuit against IntegrisCanadian Valley Regional Hospital in Yukon. Brooks said he thought he'd reached a deal in 2005 with the hospital's president, James Moore, but sued after learning the hospital wanted to use the money for other construction projects.

The hospital argued that Brooks gave it unrestricted access to the money and only later asked that it build a women's center and name it after his mother, Colleen Brooks, who died of cancer in 1999.

"Obviously we are disappointed, particularly with the jury's decision to award damages above and beyond the $500,000," Integris spokesman Hardy Watkins said. "We're just glad to see the case come to a resolution."

During the trial, Brooks testified that he thought he had a solid agreement with Moore. Brooks said the hospital president initially suggested putting his mother's name on an intensive care unit, and when Brooks said that wouldn't fit her image, Moore suggested a women's center.

"I jumped all over it," Brooks told jurors in tearful testimony. "It's my mom. My mom was pregnant as a teenager. She had a rough start. She wanted to help every kid out there."

His attorney told the jury during closing arguments that Brooks kept his end of the agreement.

"This case is about promises: promises made and promises broken," lawyer John Hickey told jurors shortly before they started deliberating. "Mr. Brooks kept his promise. Integris never intended to keep their promise and never built a new women's center."

But hospital attorney Terry Thomas said Brooks' gift initially came in anonymously and unrestricted in 2005. He also noted that Brooks couldn't remember key details of negotiations with the hospital's president ? including what he'd been promised ? when questioned during a deposition after filing his lawsuit in 2009.

"At most, it was a misunderstanding between these two," Thomas told jurors during his closing argument. "Am I calling Mr. Brooks a liar? Absolutely not. It's perfectly understandable that he does not remember these events."

The jury began deliberating Tuesday afternoon in Rogers County District Court, and the judge told jurors she wanted them to work as late as midnight to come to a decision.

Before the verdict was read, Brooks said the day had been emotional. The country music star said he was simply trying to honor his mother.

"This little pistol, she deserves nothing but good," Brooks said.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2012-01-24-People-Garth%20Brooks/id-56f96efff4264aeeb04a4f4e322142cf

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Romney looks to hit back at Gingrich in Florida

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks to reporters after a discussion on housing and foreclosure, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks to reporters after a discussion on housing and foreclosure, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks to reporters after holding a discussion on housing and foreclosure, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Republican presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich walks inside of the Basilica of the National Shrine after Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine in Washington Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Republican presidential candidate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, arrives at PGT Industries in North Venice, Fla., Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, holds a discussion on housing and foreclosure, Monday,Jan. 23, 2012, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

(AP) ? Rocked in South Carolina over the weekend, an increasingly aggressive Mitt Romney looked to take the fight to Newt Gingrich in debate Monday night as the combative Republican presidential contest shifted farther south to Florida.

The fireworks began before they walked onto the debate stage.

Romney began running an ad that said Gingrich "cashed in" with home-loan giant Freddie Mac while Floridians were being crushed in the housing crisis.

Gingrich mocked Romney as someone campaigning on openness "who has released none of his business records."

Gingrich, the former House speaker, has suddenly seized the nomination momentum, following weak finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire with the solid victory over Romney Saturday in South Carolina. And recent Florida polls suggest he may have erased Romney's lead here.

While the fight has largely become a two-man contest, they will share the stage with former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron Paul.

The GOP rivals were clashing at the University of Southern Florida Monday night and will meet again Thursday night in the run-up to the Florida primary on Tuesday, Jan. 31. The winner of the nomination will face Democratic President Barack Obama in November.

Before the Tampa debate started, Romney went after Gingrich in person and on the Florida airwaves.

At a campaign stop, Romney likened Gingrich to a pinball machine and suggested the former House speaker engaged in "potentially wrongful activity" in his consulting work over the past decade.

Romney then released his first negative ad of the campaign.

"While Florida families lost everything in the housing crisis, Newt Gingrich cashed in," the TV ad says, noting that the former speaker made more than $1.6 million working for Freddie Mac. "Gingrich resigned from Congress in disgrace and then cashed in as a D.C. insider."

Gingrich never registered as a lobbyist, but said he was a consultant for Freddie Mac, the federally backed mortgage company that played a significant role in the housing crisis.

It remains to be seen if Romney can effectively use his newly aggressive stance on the debate stage, a forum in which Gingrich has excelled so far. Underfunded and overmatched by Romney's massive ground game across the country, Gingrich has relied upon strong debate performances to build support.

It appears Romney has brought in outside help to improve his debate technique.

Veteran debate coach Brett O'Donnell was spotted at a Romney campaign stop on Monday. He previously advised President George W. Bush and GOP nominee John McCain and was a senior adviser and speech writer for Michele Bachmann's abbreviated campaign.

Gingrich, meanwhile, is showing no signs of backing down.

During an appearance on ABC's "Good Morning America," he referred to Romney as "somebody who has released none of his business records, who has decided to make a stand on transparency without being transparent." After initially balking, Romney is set to release personal tax records on Tuesday.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2012-01-23-US-Republicans-Debate/id-42a950e580144a05b23614d54ee020b8

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Tuesday, January 24, 2012

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Matt Foreman: Investing in LGBT Leaders or Burning Them Out ...

It is the perennial challenge facing social change movements around the world: how to create the biggest impact with limited resources. The challenge becomes even more daunting for movements in which activists and nonprofits find themselves hugely out-funded by their opponents and fighting on ever-shifting terrain.

A case in point is the movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender equality. For many on the outside, the gay rights movement looks like a well-oiled and well-funded machine, making huge strides and delivering big wins. From the inside, however, it's a completely different reality. The overwhelming majority of organizational leaders feel besieged from all sides, including the demands of fundraising, managing personnel, keeping up with new technologies, and handling hostile media. Oh, yes, and then there's the actual mission -- fighting for equality against opponents with deep pockets and a seemingly bottomless bag of ugly tactics and attacks. It's little wonder there is so much burnout and leadership turnover in the movement.

At the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, we've had a firsthand view of how one LGBT organization has responded to these realities -- and grown its impact -- through a determined effort to strengthen its leadership, staffing, and organizational infrastructure. Before you stop reading this post at the mere mention of the words "organizational infrastructure," please check out a new video that tells the story of one organization's transformation in much more compelling and human terms.

The video was created by my colleagues here at the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund to show how the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) used a Flexible Leadership Award to address some very real and urgent challenges it was facing.

Here's the story: since its founding 35 years ago, NCLR built an astounding record of success in securing equal rights for and combating discrimination against LGBT people through the courts. Its Executive Director, Kate Kendell, and its Legal Director, Shannon Minter, are arguably the gay community's most respected and beloved leaders. Like virtually every other movement organization, however, NCLR put all its energies and money into this work, with little going into investing in the people who actually do it.

Beginning in 2004, the pressures and demands on NCLR started escalating, beginning with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ordering the issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Almost immediately, the organization found itself at the center of a raging national debate over marriage equality. That peak was followed by a historic NCLR victory in the California Supreme Court striking down anti-marriage laws as unconstitutional. Then came the campaign to defeat Proposition 8, an ugly, exhausting, expensive, and ultimately losing campaign to preserve the freedom to marry in NCLR's home state. Throughout it all, NCLR was attracting a surge of attention, support, and demand for its legal and policy work while its leaders were struggling to hold on and address all the challenges and opportunities presented by an ever-changing political environment. Put simply, they were stretched thin and weren't sure how to fix the situation.

"We were worn down, and I didn't think I could keep on going, as much as I truly loved my job. There were obstacles standing in the way of our success that we couldn't see," Kendell says in the video. "We now have the tools and resources to truly empower ourselves as leaders in the LGBT equality movement."

Thanks to consulting and coaching help supported by the Flexible Leadership Award, a senior team now works collaboratively to set strategy for NCLR, with team members playing key management roles that previously might have fallen exclusively on Kendell and Minter. As a result, NCLR has strengthened its fundraising operations its and communications with media, supporters, and donors, and the organization has maintained -- and grown -- a strong base of funding, even during the economic downturn. And last but not least, NCLR has developed a pipeline to nurture future leaders of the organization -- and of the LGBT movement in general.

The NCLR story is an important one not just for the LGBT movement but for all social change movements. The reason: it shows why special attention needs to be paid to developing and nurturing the leadership that organizations and movements must have to be successful. At the same time, we need to be real. In these hard times, nonprofits will inevitably choose to cut these kinds of investments rather than lay off program staff. That means it's up to philanthropic foundations and private donors to add dedicated support for leadership development to their grants and donations, recognizing that relatively modest investments can go a very long way in ensuring that the movements and the organizations they care about are able to meet new challenges and succeed.

When you watch the video, you'll also meet former NCLR Deputy Director Kris Hermanns. Just a few days ago, she became the Executive Director of the Pride Foundation in Seattle, one of the LGBT movement's largest and most successful community foundations. This is exactly the kind of growth and upward mobility we need in the movement. Hermanns will surely be missed at NCLR. But while several years ago this type of transition might have shaken the organization, now NCLR has built a strong foundation that can weather these changes that benefit the larger movement.

The Haas, Jr. Fund, through its Nonprofit Leadership Program, has invested more than $11 million since 2005 to support a culture of shared leadership among its grantees. And the results are clear: these investments produce significant returns in the ability of movements to advance fundamental rights and create opportunities for all.

For more on the Haas, Jr. Fund Flexible Leadership Awards, see my colleague Linda Wood's recent post on Beth Kanter's blog.

?

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-foreman/investing-in-lgbt-leaders_b_1214900.html

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Monday, January 23, 2012

Indian casinos struggle to get out from under debt (AP)

HARTFORD, Conn. ? The warning from the ratings agency could not have been more direct: The parent company of the Mohegan Sun faces a "wall of debt" due early this year as the casino, struggling with rising competition and a weak economy that's hammered consumer spending, tries to refinance hundreds of millions of dollars in loans.

The Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority has $505 million in loans outstanding and another $250 million due April 1, Keith Foley, an analyst at Moody's Investors Service, recently told investors. The gaming authority, parent company of casinos in Uncasville, Conn., and Wilkes-Barre, Pa., also has about $21 million in interest payments due Feb. 15, he said.

Mohegan Sun announced this month that fourth-quarter net income rose significantly, to $46.7 million, compared with a net loss of $26.3 million in the same period in 2010. But it also said it failed to reach an agreement to refinance debt, though lenders waived a possible default.

"They get to live another day," Foley said in an interview.

Executives at Mohegan Sun did not respond to a request for an interview.

Mohegan Sun is not alone as several Indian-run casinos ? some with plans for expansion that have been put on hold ? struggle to refinance debt after being caught short when the economy went into recession in December 2007.

Foxwoods Resort Casino in eastern Connecticut seeks to restructure debt, and the Mescalero Apache tribe restructured $200 million in bonds last year for casino resort property in New Mexico. A spokeswoman said Foxwoods is in debt talks, but would not provide details.

An advantage that Indian-run casinos have over their commercial counterparts is that they cannot file for bankruptcy and creditors can't foreclose on their properties because tribal governments are sovereign, said Clyde Barrow, director of the Center for Policy Analysis at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.

Valerie Red-Horse, an investment banker and financial adviser who worked on the Mecalero Apache deal, called it the "best model out there," in part because it preserved the casino's financial distributions to tribal members and tribal government while bond holders kept their stakes, she said.

Some tribes have been forced to agree to cut their distributions until debt is paid down, Red-Horse said. Making sure distributions continue is a "very delicate subject. It causes a lot of angst among tribes," she said.

Financial problems at the casino, the Inn of the Mountain Gods, were due in part to the slowing economy and faltering tourism, she said.

Indian-run casinos expanded rapidly because they are strong economic development tools for the tribes that run the casinos, said Peter Kulick, a Lansing, Mich., tax and gaming lawyer. The businesses survived economic downturns in the 1970s and 1980s and were seen as immune to recessions, he said.

"In the last go-round, that's not the case," he said.

Kulick and Barrow said competition is the newest threat to casinos, even as revenue is now rising as the economy slowly improves.

"There are some real pockets of recovery going on right now," Barrow said.

Massachusetts legalized casino gambling in November, but it will be years before the three casinos authorized will be operating.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced this month that he would work with the Genting Group, one of the world's largest gambling companies, to transform the Aqueduct horse track into a megaplex that would eventually include the nation's largest convention center, 3,000 hotel rooms and a major expansion of a casino that began operating in October.

For Connecticut's two casinos, "Aqueduct could be pretty substantial competitive pressure," Barrow said.

"I don't see real revenue growth for Connecticut's casinos, he said.

Declining or stagnant revenue is bad news for Connecticut state government, which takes 25 percent of what the casinos pull in. State revenue from the two casinos reached their peak in 2007 at more than $411 million, said Kevin Lembo, Connecticut's comptroller who tracks state revenue from all sources.

That's declined to $342 million in the state's budget year that ended last June 30, down $69 million, or 17 percent.

"The loss of revenue is one obvious and immediate impact for the state," Lembo said. "What happens to jobs? What happens to future development plans? These are areas of concern for everyone at this point."

Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman said the health of the two casinos is critical because they are destinations in southeast Connecticut, drawing tourists who also visit vineyards along the shoreline, the Mystic Aquarium and other sites.

"This is a big thing for us," she said.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120121/ap_on_bi_ge/us_indian_casino_financing

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S.C. Primary: Newt Gingrich Looks To 'Make History'

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Newt Gingrich is feeling it. Having slugged his way to the lead for the second time, the former House speaker spies victory in South Carolina, a win he has said repeatedly will "make history" and, ultimately, hand him the Republican nomination for president.

The former boast seemed as fanciful as Gingrich's Mars program a week ago. Today, it's conventional wisdom.

In Orangeburg on Friday, speaking to a two-room overflow crowd in a shopping mall, Gingrich held up and knocked down the gallery of elitist thugs he holds responsible for the wayward course of America: "anti-religious judges," "academic journalists," bureaucrats, Hollywood and, of course, "Obama" -- Gingrich never calls him "President Obama."

And Juan Williams. Gingrich paused to take time to toy with Williams, the FOX commentator who last Monday -- in the pivotal moment of the campaign here -- had questioned whether Gingrich was seeking to ?belittle people? by talking about the "food stamp president" and by suggesting that urban youths do janitorial work in schools.

Gingrich's sneering, "Well ... Juan," reply in that debate brought the crowd to its feet and launched him toward the lead. A much more sophisticated southern strategy than the one employed by his party in the 1970s, it nevertheless imparted a simple message, that Gingrich is the candidate who can articulately and passionately channel your rage.

"The man is a figher," South Carolina House Speaker Bobby Harrell told a crowd of supporters in a hangar of the USS Yorktown Friday. "He doesn't back down and that's what we need in Washington."

Harrell had previously been a Rick Perry backer, he told the crowd. But after the Texas governor dropped out, he switched to Gingrich, rallied by his fierce debate performances.

As if constructing a metaphor for his own campaign, Gingrich's day began with a cancellation due to lack of public interest, veered into a bizarre and extended visit to a hospital's emergency department, and ended with a packed and energetic rally.

The mood couldn't have been different for Mitt Romney, who'd hoped to come out of South Carolina with his third straight victory, but may improbably wind up instead with a record of 1-2, now that final vote tallies show he actually lost Iowa to Rick Santorum (who is still running, for what it's worth).

"When I was in Iowa I joked that the corn counted as an amber wave of grain," he told a crowd of about 300 people, after he quoted "America the Beautiful" on Friday morning. "That may account for my slim, uh, defeat there. I used to say that accounted for an eight-point win, but I had to change my rhetoric in the last couple of days."

He dropped the joke from a speech in North Charleston in the afternoon. There's little to laugh about for the former Massachusetts governor, unless he's chuckling awkwardly after saying he'd "maybe" release more than one year of tax returns next April.

South Carolinians say their state picks presidents. Mitt Romney used to say so too.

In South Carolina, six of the seven most recent surveys conducted this week now show Gingrich running slightly ahead of Romney, evidence of a collapse for the record books. The just-released Clemson University Palmetto Poll, conducted on Wednesday and Thursday nights, shows Gingrich leading Romney by a 32 percent to 26 percent margin, with Ron Paul and Rick Santorum running far behind (at 11 percent and 9 percent, respectively).

The HuffPost Pollster chart, based on all available public polls, shows a 13 percentage point jump for Gingrich in the last week. He now runs ahead of Romney by nearly five points (33.9 to 29.0 percent), followed by Paul running a distant third (at 13.9 percent).

The chart also shows support for Santorum plummeting about as much as support for Gingrich has increased, from a high of more than 22 percent just after the Iowa caucuses to just 8.4 percent now.

The latest Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey found, for example, that Santorum supporters choose Gingrich more often than Romney as their second choice (40 to 24 percent).

On Friday, Romney began to seriously dial back expectations. He said he had an "uphill battle" in South Carolina anyway, because Gingrich is from the neighboring state, and that it's more important to win delegates, who will make the eventual choice at the Republican National Convention in August should the race still be undecided.

"I want as many delegates as I can get -- I want the most delegates coming out of South Carolina," he told reporters in Gilbert. "But I don?t know what the numbers will be."

Former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, a chief Romney surrogate, made the same effort on Friday, telling reporters he expects a "long slog."

That long slog could drag all the way to Tampa, where Republicans hold their political convention in late summer. As long as Ron Paul continues pulling significant support, and a conservative alternative remains viable -- which, in the age of Citizens United, means having just one deep-pocked casino mogul, for instance -- it'll be difficult for any one candidate to lock up a majority of delegates.

That could mean a "brokered convention," where a candidate is chose by party elites behind closed doors. It could be anybody. "I've been talking quietly to the most powerful, I think, conservative movers-and-shakers in Washington over the past couple weeks, trying to get their read," MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, a former congressman, said Friday. "Every single one I've spoken to is trying to figure out a way to get to a brokered convention." (Of course, movers and shakers would enjoy a brokered convention because they'd be the ones doing the brokering.)

Whatever the outcome Saturday evening, it's clear that it won't be the knock-out blow Romney had hoped to deliver before turning his attention to President Obama. Instead, he'll limp to Florida, where he and his super PAC have been plastering television sets with ads long before other candidates had been able to get up and running.

Florida's primary, the Tuesday after next, will be followed Feb. 4 with a caucus in Nevada. A month later is Super Tuesday.

If Romney loses Saturday, it'll also be a stinging rebuke to the state's Tea Party-backed governor Nikki Haley. Campaigning with Romney Friday, she was off her game. "This current president wants to weaken our military and President Obama wants to strengthen our military and will never apologize for it," Haley said, according to a Patch report

"Oh, no. McCain did that two weeks ago, and, I just turned 40 today," she said.

Jon Ward and Howard Fineman contributed reporting

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/21/south-carolina-primary-2012_n_1220391.html

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Sunday, January 22, 2012

Italian pharmacists, professions aim to foil reforms (Reuters)

POTENZA (Reuters) ? Pasquale Brandi owns a 130-year-old pharmacy in the center of the southern Italian city of Potenza, on Via Pretoria, the street where the townspeople take their evening stroll or "passeggiata."

Despite the heavily frequented central location, revenue has been falling since sales of non-prescription drugs were deregulated in 2006, and as the country heads into a prolonged recession things have got worse, he said.

These drugs can now be bought at so-called "para-pharmacies" that also sell soaps and cosmetics, as well as in special sectors of some supermarkets.

If prime minister and former European competition commissioner Mario Monti gets parliamentary approval for his so-called "Grow Italy" measures to open up the country's highly regulated services sectors, then Brandi said he may have to let go both his employees.

"I feel like a dog chasing his tail," said the 43-year-old, who runs the pharmacy with his sister, Stella, also a pharmacist. They inherited the pharmacy and the license to run it from their mother, who in turn received them from her father.

Monti's reforms are intended to encourage competition by loosening the strict rules that govern a host of professional groups in Italy, from pharmacists and journalists to notaries and taxi drivers.

However, his efforts to open up the "closed shop" mentality that has grown up behind the professions is being fiercely opposed by the insiders who benefit from the way things have worked for years.

The first set of deregulation measures came up for discussion by the cabinet on Friday and Industry Minister Corrado Passera says similar packages will be passed every month.

DEBT CRISIS

With Italy in the frontline of the euro zone debt crisis, the stakes are high. Monti is desperate to convince markets that a chronically sluggish, hidebound economy can be reformed, even if some commentators question the growth-boosting potential of the raft of micro-measures.

"Maybe liberalizing taxis and pharmacies won't have a big impact on growth, but not doing it would give the impression that Monti can't even liberalize taxis and pharmacies," said Alberto Mingardi, director of the Istituto Bruno Leoni, a Milan-based free-market think tank.

In Italy, pharmacy licenses are limited to one every 4,000 inhabitants, and they are often passed down for generations, effectively blocking newcomers unless they purchase a license at a high cost from a current owner.

"I don't like to consider people who buy medicine as consumers," said Susanna Sbarigia, who owns a pharmacy with a staff of eight in Rome. Like Brandi, she inherited her license. "People who buy medicine are sick and are looking for the proper medicine to make them healthy again. It's a public service."

Currently all prescription pharmaceuticals can be sold only in a pharmacy. The new law would boost the number of licenses and allow some prescription drugs to be sold by para-pharmacies.

Unlike in the United States or Britain, there are no drugstore chains in Italy.

Guilds representing lawyers, notaries, accountants and journalists have pledged to fight the abolition of minimum fees, while petrol stations and many others are digging in against deregulation measures that would affect them.

Paradoxically however, the fact that Monti has taken on such a broad swath of groups may end up helping him because it means no vested interests can say they are being unfairly picked on.

"The only way to overcome this kind of opposition is to pass a whole battery of changes together," said Mingardi.

PRIVILEGES

With Italy mired in recession - the International Monetary Fund expects the economy to contract in both 2012 and 2013 - and businesses fighting to hold on to their privileges, the deregulation battle is a key part of Monti's goal to make the country more competitive in the long term.

"The world wants to see if there's a new Italy, or whether it's still blocked by the crossfire of vetoes from special interest groups," said Daniel Gros, director of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels.

But the professions have powerful allies in parliament. Of Italy's 945 lawmakers, almost a third are members of one guild or another. More than 130 are lawyers, 90 are journalists, 23 are accountants, 13 are architects and four are notaries.

Monti insists deregulation is "not against anyone, but in favor of all citizens." The aim is to lower costs, open up jobs for young people and plant the seed for long-term growth needed to pay down a debt worth 1.2 times the nation's annual output. A third of Italians between the age of 15 and 24 are unemployed.

The draft legislation before the cabinet on Friday combines an increase in the number of licenses for taxis and pharmacies with numerous other measures that, among other things, scrap minimum fees for all professions, deregulate discount sales by retailers, cap toll-road tariffs and open up the market for train transport.

The aim of the package is to boost Italian growth, which has trailed the euro zone average every year since 1996 when the European Union's statistics office Eurostat first began calculating comparative data.

By deregulating services, Italy could increase growth by 11 percent in the long run, with half of that coming during the first three years after the reforms, according to a 2009 study by the Bank of Italy.

As European competition regulator, Monti took on some of the world's biggest companies including Microsoft and General Electric. Failing to open up competition among Italy's taxi drivers and pharmacists would send the wrong message to investors whose confidence in the country is already low.

In 2006, former Prime Minister Romano Prodi's government passed two deregulation packages, but was forced to reverse those aimed at taxi drivers and to scale back the ones regarding pharmacies because of fierce lobbying.

Silvio Berlusconi's subsequent government then restored some of the old, more restrictive laws when he took over in 2008.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/meds/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120120/hl_nm/us_italian_pharmacists

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