Jan
27
2012
ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2012) ? A new study, using genetic analysis to look for clues about human migration over sixty thousand years ago, suggests that the first modern humans settled in Arabia on their way from the Horn of Africa to the rest of the world.
Led by the University of Leeds and the University of Porto in Portugal, the study is recently published in American Journal of Human Genetics and provides intriguing insight into the earliest stages of modern human migration, say the researchers.
“A major unanswered question regarding the dispersal of modern humans around the world concerns the geographical site of the first steps out of Africa,” explains Dr Lu?sa Pereira from the Institute of Molecular Pathology and Immunology of the University of Porto (IPATIMUP). “One popular model predicts that the early stages of the dispersal took place across the Red Sea to southern Arabia, but direct genetic evidence has been thin on the ground.”
The international research team, which included colleagues from across Europe, Arabia and North Africa, analysed three of the earliest non-African maternal lineages. These early branches are associated with the time period when modern humans first successfully moved out of Africa.
Using mitochondrial DNA analysis, which traces the female line of descent and is useful for comparing relatedness between different populations, the researchers compared complete genomes from Arabia and the Near East with a database of hundreds more samples from Europe. They found evidence for an ancient ancestry within Arabia.
Professor Martin Richards of the University of Leeds’ Faculty of Biological Sciences, said: “The timing and pattern of the migration of early modern humans has been a source of much debate and research. Our new results suggest that Arabia, rather than North Africa or the Near East, was the first staging-post in the spread of modern humans around the world.”
The research was funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, the Leverhulme Trust, and the DeLaszlo Foundation.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Leeds.
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Journal Reference:
- Ver?nica Fernandes, Farida Alshamali, Marco Alves, Marta D. Costa, Joana B. Pereira, Nuno M. Silva, Lotfi Cherni, Nourdin Harich, Viktor Cerny, Pedro Soares et al. The Arabian Cradle: Mitochondrial Relicts of the First Steps along the Southern Route out of Africa. The American Journal of Human Genetics, 26 January 2012 DOI: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2011.12.010
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/2012/01/120126123705.htm
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Jan
27
2012
(Reuters) ? AT&T Inc (T.N) posted a $6.7 billion quarterly loss as it was weighed down by a hefty break-up fee for its failed T-Mobile USA merger and other big charges on top of costly subsidies for smartphones such as Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) popular iPhone.
While the No. 2 U.S. wireless provider beat analysts’ expectations for subscriber additions, the growth came at a massive cost as its wireless service margins plummeted.
On top of the $4 billion break-up package charge, AT&T also took a big impairment charge for its telephone directory business, which it said it was considering selling.
While advanced devices like iPhones can help subscriber numbers and revenue, they also shrink earnings as operators like AT&T and its bigger rival Verizon Wireless heavily subsidize the devices to attract customers to two-year contracts.
AT&T’s wireless service margin fell to 28.7 percent, based on earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, from 43.7 percent in the third quarter and 37.6 percent a year earlier, missing already low analysts’ expectations.
“If there’s any reason to be upset, it certainly is the margins,” said Stifel Nicolaus analyst Chris King, who had expected a margin of 32 percent. However, he noted that strong smartphone sales should help AT&T in the long run.
Its shares were off 2 percent after the news. In a bid to help stem the decline, AT&T said it would begin to aggressively buy back shares under its 300 million share buyback plan.
In his first presentation to investors since the December collapse of his $39 billion bid to buy Deutsche Telekom’s (DTEGn.DE) T-Mobile USA , Chief Executive Randall Stephenson spent much of the earnings call criticizing the U.S. Federal Communications Commission for opposing the deal.
Stephenson, who had argued that AT&T needed the deal to get more wireless spectrum to support increasing demand for wireless data, said he would buy more spectrum once he is clear on the FCC’s spectrum rules.
“My interpretation is these rules are so fluid you could drink out of them with a straw right now,” he told analysts.
EYES MARGIN IMPROVEMENT
AT&T, which would have vaulted to first place in the U.S. mobile market if it had purchased No. 4 ranked T-Mobile USA, added 717,000 subscribers in the quarter, beating the average expectation for 570,000 from seven analysts.
But its subscriber growth still lagged well behind Verizon Wireless, whose parent Verizon Communications (VZ.N) reported 1.2 million subscribers in the quarter on Tuesday at its wireless venture with Vodafone Group Plc (VOD.L). Verizon Wireless margins were also hurt by smartphone sales, but not as much as AT&T. [ID:nL2E8CO1WK]
Roe Equity Research analyst Kevin Roe said that only time will tell if the race to sign on smartphone customers will be worth the massive drag on margins.
“Its not getting easier. It will be tougher in 2012,” he said. “The cost to capture and retain customers will increase as competition increases.”
AT&T said it expects to increase wireless margins to around 40 percent this year from 38.1 percent in 2011. The target assumes that 2012 smartphone sales will be similar to 2011, when the company sold 25 million smartphones.
AT&T forecast earnings growth in the mid-single-digit percentage range or better for 2012 and said it may be able to accelerate its earnings growth rate after 2012.
It forecast growth of about 2 percent for wireless average monthly revenue per user in 2012 and promised overall revenue growth without giving a specific target.
“They should at least do that. Hopefully they do better than 2 percent,” said Roe.
Along with pushing advanced phones, operators are spending billions of dollars on upgrading their networks. Like AT&T and Verizon Wireless, smaller rival Sprint Nextel (S.N) is also upgrading its network for advanced services this year.
On top of this, analysts see T-Mobile USA as a big competitive threat as it will be desperate to attract new subscribers growth since its AT&T deal failed.
AT&T posted a fourth-quarter loss of $6.68 billion, or $1.12 per share, compared with a year-earlier profit of $1.09 billion, or 18 cents per share.
Excluding the special charges, AT&T earned 42 cents per share, a penny below Wall Street expectations, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Revenue rose to $32.5 billion from $31.36 billion, compared with Wall Street expectations for $31.97 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
The company said it has set aside a budget of $20 billion for 2012 capital spending, similar to 2011 levels.
Shares of AT&T were down 2.21 percent at $29.54 in early afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
(Editing by Maureen Bavdek and Mark Porter)
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Jan
26
2012
SAN FRANCISCO ? Yahoo slipped further behind in the online advertising race during the fourth quarter as the Internet company entered the fourth year of a revenue slump.
The results announced Tuesday marked the latest in a succession of disappointing performances. The persisting malaise led to the firing of Carol Bartz as CEO four months ago.
Yahoo Inc. recently replaced Bartz with PayPal executive Scott Thompson, anointing him as the fourth CEO in less than five years to try to snap the company out of a funk that has depressed its stock. Thompson, who was hired just three weeks ago, promised to move quickly to fix the problems.
“There is no question we need to do better and we will,” Thompson assured analysts in a Tuesday conference call.
The company earned $296 million, or 24 cents per share, in the October-to-December period. That is down 5 percent from $312 million, or 24 cents per share, a year earlier.
The earnings matched analysts’ estimates, but the company missed Wall Street’s revenue target.
Fourth-quarter revenue dropped 13 percent from the previous year to $1.32 billion. After subtracting advertising commissions, Yahoo’s revenue totaled $1.17 billion, or $20 million below analyst projections. It’s the 13th straight quarter that Yahoo’s net revenue has declined from the prior year.
Although Thompson said it was still too early to share precise details about his turnaround strategy, he said he will close some Yahoo services. That could mean layoffs among Yahoo’s workforce. The company added 300 employees in the fourth quarter to end the year with 14,000 workers.
Bartz had also closed or sold some of Yahoo’s less popular services while jettisoning jobs to cut costs and sharpen the company’s focus. Those moves, though, didn’t increase Yahoo’s revenue or stock price, leading Yahoo to fire her in September with more than 15 months left on her contract.
Besides closing services, Thompson said Yahoo will expand into some fields where he sees opportunities to make money. He didn’t elaborate on that or on which services to close.
Thompson also pledged to develop more innovative products to keep Yahoo’s audience of 700 million users on its websites for longer periods. Accomplishing that could make Yahoo more attractive to online advertisers. Thompson said he hopes to harness the data that Yahoo collects about its audience to help advertisers do a better job of putting their marketing messages in front of the people most likely to buy their products.
“I’ll always ask a lot of questions and I’ll immerse myself in the details but when it comes to making decisions, I make them quickly and then push to move fast, fast, fast,” Thompson said.
But Yahoo isn’t promising a quick start under Thompson’s leadership. Yahoo predicted its net revenue in the current quarter will range from $1.02 billion to $1.1 billion. The mid-point of that target works out to $1.06 billion, unchanged from last year’s first quarter.
Investors appear to be taking a wait-and-see attitude with Thompson. Yahoo’s stock shed 15 cents to $15.54 in extended trading after the report came out. The stock price has fallen by about 40 percent from five years ago.
Yahoo’s downturn in revenue has occurred as advertisers are shifting more of their budgets to the Internet as people spend more of their time on the Web. The biggest beneficiaries of this boom so far have been Internet search leader Google Inc. and Facebook, the owner of the largest online social network.
While Yahoo continued to struggle during the final three months of last year, Google’s revenue rose 25 percent from the same period in 2010. As a privately held company, Facebook doesn’t disclose its financial results, but data compiled by independent research firms show that its website has been luring advertisers away from Yahoo.
Google has become so dominant in Internet search that Yahoo teamed up with another rival, Microsoft Corp., in an effort to become more competitive and save money. Yahoo’s search engine now relies on Microsoft’s technology to handle most requests. The alliance, forged in mid-2009, hasn’t generated as much revenue so far as Yahoo had hoped, although there were signs of progress in the fourth quarter.
Net revenue from search totaled $376 million in the fourth quarter, a 3 percent decrease from a year earlier. The company, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., had been suffering year-over-year declines of more than 10 percent in previous quarters.
As it tries to boost its revenue and lift its stock price, Yahoo is considering selling its stakes in China’s Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan. Yahoo is pursuing those negotiations with “great enthusiasm,” according to Tim Morse, the company’s chief financial officer. Neither Morse nor Thompson elaborated on when a deal might be reached.
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Jan
26
2012
Today the FFII sent a letter to the European Parliament about the EP legal service?s opinion on ACTA. (pfd version, see also press release)
Dear Members of the European Parliament,
In the coming months the Parliament will have to decide whether to give consent to ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) or not. In preparation, the INTA and JURI committees asked the Parliament?s legal service an opinion on ACTA.
We welcome the decision to release this opinion. We have compared the legal service?s opinion with multiple academic opinions on ACTA and some civil society analyses.
We found that many issues pointed out by academic opinions and the study commissioned by the INTA committee are not addressed by the legal service?s opinion.
The legal service fails to see major issues with damages, injunctions and provisional, border and criminal measures. The legal service consistently overlooks known issues. Taking the issues the legal service did not address into consideration, it is clear that ACTA goes beyond current EU law, the acquis.
The legal service underestimates problems with Internet governance and access to medicine. It fails to see ACTA is not compatible with fundamental rights, international agreements and the EU Treaties.
ACTA will negatively impact innovation, start up companies, mass digitization projects, access to medicines and Internet governance. ACTA threatens the rule of law and fundamental rights.
We call upon the Parliament to say no to ACTA.
Below we will present the main conclusions. Please find attached this letter as a pdf and the full analysis.
Yours sincerely,
Ante Wessels
Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure
MAIN CONCLUSIONS
1. Compatibility with current EU law
Damages: The legal service overlooks that ACTA?s damages based on retail price lead to damages based on an imaginary gross revenue, which is way beyond actual loss suffered. This issue has been pointed out by NGOs, the European academics Opinion and the EP INTA study. In our analysis, we provide some simple examples which show that ACTA?s damages are much higher than EU law damages.
Border measures: Both the European Academics Opinion on ACTA and the EP INTA committee study had pointed out there is a serious issue with the condition ?not discriminate unjustifiably?. The Commission did not provide the justification to limit ACTA to EU law. While the legal service quotes article 13 ACTA, it leaves out this condition. Since DG-Trade and the US Trade Representative undermine the Doha Declaration in other fora, there is also a threat to access to medicine.
Injunctions and provisional measures: The legal service does not address the issues with injunctions and provisional measures, pointed out in multiple academic opinions.
Compatibility: Taking the issues the legal service did not address into consideration, it is clear that ACTA goes beyond current EU law, the acquis.
2. Criminal measures: The legal service fails to see ACTA removes the scale element from the definition of the crime. The legal service fails to notice ACTA criminalises everyday computer use. ACTA can be used to criminalise newspapers and websites revealing a document, office workers forwarding a file, people making a private copy and whistle-blowers revealing documents in the public interest.
3. Internet: ACTA?s criminal and heightened civil measures will also apply to the digital environment. This will put pressure on Internet Service Providers, who may decide to pre-emptively censor Internet communications. ACTA incites privatised enforcement outside the rule of law.
4. Fundamental rights: To establish whether ACTA violates fundamental rights, fair balance tests are needed. The legal service does not provide any fair balance test. The 61 pages Douwe Korff & Ian Brown opinion provides many such tests. These tests show ACTA is manifestly incompatible with fundamental rights. Just providing a general reference to fundamental rights is not enough.
The ARTICLE 19 organisation ?finds that ACTA fundamentally flawed from a freedom of expression and information perspective. If enacted, it will greatly endanger the free-flow of information and the free exchange of ideas, particularly on the internet.?
Korff & Brown conclude: ?Overall, ACTA tilts the balance of IPR protection manifestly unfairly towards one group of beneficiaries of the right to property, IP right holders, and unfairly against others, equally disproportionally interferes with a range of other fundamental rights, and provides for (or allows for) the determination of such rights in procedures that fail to allow for the taking into account of the different, competing interests, but rather, stack all the weight at one end.
This makes the entire Agreement, in our opinion, incompatible with fundamental European human rights instruments and -standards.?
5. Public health: The legal service mentions references to the TRIPS agreement and the Doha Declaration in the ACTA text. But the combination of heightened measures with a non binding reference to the Doha Declaration, and undermining the Doha Declaration in other fora does not provide sufficient safeguards for access to medicine.
6. International agreements: The legal service does not address the global pricing problem and the right to take part in cultural life. ACTA is not compatible with article 15 of the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR),
The ARTICLE 19 organisation also notes issues with Article 15 of the ICESCR, and with articles 17 and 19 of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
7. EU Treaties: ACTA is not compatible with article 21 Treaty on European Union (TEU): ?The Union?s action on the international scene shall be guided by the principles (?): democracy, the rule of law, the universality and indivisibility of human rights and fundamental freedoms (?)?
Nor is ACTA compatible with articles 3.3, 3.5 and 5 Treaty on European Union.
Source: http://acta.ffii.org/?p=1057
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Jan
25
2012
The Pirate Bay filesharing site offers 3D objects
The Pirate Bay, one of the internet’s best-known sites for downloading copyrighted material, now offers 3D files to print physical objects at home
Erectile function restored with stem cells
Pig intestine coated with stem cells has been used to treat erectile dysfunction in rats with the hope that a similar therapy can be used in humans
Education campaigner wants to expel climate denial
Eugenie Scott has struggled to keep creationism out of the classroom – now her organisation is taking on climate change deniers too
Physics in a Minute: How wings really create lift
Watch smoke flow over an aerofoil as we debunk a common misconception about wing aerodynamics
Virtual projection lets you share your phone’s screen
The software lets you borrow any nearby computer screen to display images from your mobile phone
Chemists should effervesce about their science
Much technology relies on it, but chemistry is all but invisible to the general population – chemists should spread their excitement, says David Phillips
The solar system on paper
Astronomical showcases the scale of our solar system in book form, with tiny planets surrounded by pages and pages of deep black nothingness
One-way evolution: The ladder of life makes a comeback
The concept of progress has been purged from evolutionary theory. Is it time to let it back in?
Immune system may help to trigger the menopause
A review of genetic data from 50,000 women suggests genes involved in the immune system may play a part in stopping women’s biological clock
‘Lab lit’ is a chance to show what we’re really like
Science is Vital founder Jenny Rohn explains why she seeks to immortalise laboratory life in literature
Scotland’s social mind will settle independence vote
Will Scotland vote to leave the United Kingdom? A social psychological analysis may provide clues, say Dominic Abrams and Peter Grant
How a boa strangles its prey
Watch a boa constrictor wrap itself around a dead rat, showing how it suffocates its prey
Magnetic soap could clean up oil spills
The particles in a new form of soap contain a metallic centre that responds to a magnetic field
‘Newt Skywalker’ wins South Carolina primary
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich supports conservation and space exploration, but has back-pedalled on climate change
US Supreme Court rules GPS tracking requires a warrant
Police departments will need to acquire search warrants if they want to use GPS trackers on suspects’ vehicles, the Supreme Court ruled
Pupils constrict at the thought of brightness
Optical illusions designed to seem brighter than they are make your pupils constrict, suggesting we have evolved systems for anticipating dazzling light
YouTube sucks up one hour of video every second
Our appetite for crazy kittens, bad karaoke and video game conquests is apparently insatiable
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Jan
25
2012
Hard times mean more people are unable to afford legal services. But hard times also mean a reduction in support for Legal Aid of Arkansas, a Jonesboro-based agency that provides legal assistance in civil cases for those unable to pay in 31 counties.
Offices and staff are going to be cut back and work reorganized to cope, Legal Aid of Arkansas has announced. Its release follows.
NEWS RELEASE
JONESBORO, Ark. ? Facing steep funding cuts, Legal Aid of Arkansas has reorganized its service delivery system to continue to provide quality legal service to low income individuals and families in Arkansas.
A 14.9 percent federal funding cut to the Legal Services Corporation in 2012 and a four percent cut in 2011 equates to a loss of more than $300,000 for Legal Aid. The organization will likely face an additional 10 percent cut in 2013. Legal Services Corporation is Legal Aid?s largest funding source.
Adding to the problem, Arkansas? State Administration of Justice Fund, Legal Aid?s second largest funding source, has recently decreased by 18 percent.
?Because of the reductions in funding, we are going to have to be more strategic about how we allocate our limited resources,? said Lee Richardson, Executive Director of Legal Aid.
Legal Aid already laid off three staff attorneys and three support staff in 2011 in anticipation of funding cuts. Four attorney positions, three paralegal positions and three support positions will be cut in 2012.
Legal Aid?s delivery system is also getting an overhaul. The new system is based on four substantive law workgroups, which will focus on domestic violence, consumer matters, housing issues and economic justice. Management will also be consolidated into four regions: Northwest, Ozark, Northeast and Delta.
The Mountain View office will be closed and Legal Aid management will look to relocate other offices to smaller physical plants. Donated space will be used to ensure continued local access to Legal Aid services.
These cuts come in the face of an economic downturn that has seen more and more people in need of legal assistance. Legal Aid closed more than 7,000 cases in 2011, and for every client the organization provided assistance, another client was turned away because a lack of resources.
?The cornerstone of fairness in this country is based on the idea that the most humble among us should be the peer of the most affluent when seeking justice,? Richardson said. ?Unfortunately, this concept cannot be a reality unless both sides to an issue have legal counsel. Legal Aid is the only game in town for individuals with civil issues without resources to pay an attorney.?
Despite cuts, Legal Aid remains the place for low-income Arkansans to seek legal assistance.
In an effort to maximize scarce resources, Legal Aid has developed Medical Legal Partnerships with Arkansas Children?s Hospital and Walmart Corporate Legal Department and with Federally Qualified Health Clinics in Lee and Monroe County. Legal Aid also introduced the Justice for Arkansans AmeriCorps program, placing eight public interest attorneys throughout the state to tackle various civil legal issues.
?We will work tirelessly to develop new resources and partnerships to advance the cause of social justice,? Richardson said.
In addition to these new developments, Legal Aid continues its Equal Access to Justice and Arkansas Volunteer Lawyers for the Elderly Panels, which maintain more than 700 private attorneys who volunteer to represent clients referred by Legal Aid for free.
Legal Aid of Arkansas is a nonprofit organization that provides free legal services to low-income persons with civil legal problems in 31 counties from Benton County in Northwest Arkansas to Phillips County in the Mississippi River Delta. If you need legal advice or representation, call 100-9-LAW-AID (1800-952-9243) to apply for services. Visit www.arlegalaid.org to learn more about services and volunteer opportunities.
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Jan
24
2012
COLUMBIA, S.C. ? Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich took a giant step Saturday toward becoming the Republican alternative to Mitt Romney that tea partyers and social conservatives have been seeking for months.
Gingrich’s come-from-behind win in the South Carolina primary snatches away the quick and easy way for the GOP to pick its presidential nominee. Only days ago, it seemed that party activists would settle for Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who stirs few passions but who has the looks, money, experience and discipline to make a solid case against President Barack Obama in November.
Now, the party cannot avoid a wrenching and perhaps lengthy nomination fight. It can cast its lot with the establishment’s cool embodiment of competence, forged in corporate board rooms, or with the anger-venting champion of in-your-face conservatism and grandiose ideas.
It’s soul-searching time for Republicans. It might not be pretty.
Romney still might win the nomination, of course. He carries several advantages into Florida and beyond, and party insiders still consider him the front-runner. And it’s conceivable that former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum can battle back and take the anti-Romney title from Gingrich. After all, he bested Gingrich in Iowa and New Hampshire.
But Santorum’s third-place finish in South Carolina will doubtlessly prompt some conservative leaders to urge him to step aside and back Gingrich, as Texas Gov. Rick Perry did Thursday.
Even if Santorum revives his campaign in Florida, the fundamental intraparty debate will be the same. Voters associate Gingrich and Santorum with social issues such as abortion, and with unyielding fealty to conservative ideals. That’s in contrast to Romney’s flexibility and past embraces of legalized abortion, gun control and gay rights.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul will stay in the race, but he factors only tangentially in such discussions. His fans are largely a mix of libertarians, isolationists and pacifists, many of whom will abandon the GOP nominee if it’s not the Texas congressman.
Strategically, Romney maintains a big edge in money and organization. He faces a dilemma, however. Gingrich resuscitated his struggling campaign in this state with combative debate performances featuring near-contempt for Obama and the news media. Romney likely would love to choke off that supply by drastically reducing the number of debates.
Ducking Gingrich after losing to him in South Carolina would suggest panic or fear, however, and all four candidates are scheduled to debate Monday in Florida.
Gingrich is benefitting “from the inherent animosity and mistrust GOP primary voters have with mainstream media,” said Republican strategist Terry Holt. “Their first instinct is to rebel, and that’s what they did. The question is whether he can sustain that anger and build it into a legitimate challenge to the frontrunner.”
Gingrich tried to stoke that anger with his victory speech Saturday. He referred repeatedly to “elites” in Washington and New York who don’t understand or care about working-class Americans. He decried “the growing anti-religious bigotry of our elites.”
Gingrich made $3.1 million in 2010, but he nonetheless is tapping middle-class resentment in ways reminiscent of Sarah Palin. “I articulate the deepest-held values in the American people,” he said.
Despite their contrasting personalities, Romney and Gingrich don’t differ greatly on policy. Both call for lower taxes, less regulation, ending “Obamacare” and a robust military. They promise to cut spending and increase jobs without offering many details of how they would do so in a divided nation and Congress.
Romney vs. Gingrich in some ways mirrors the Democrats’ 2008 choice between Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, which turned mostly on questions of personality, style and biography. The Republicans’ choice, however, will plumb deeper veins of emotion and ideology.
Romney appeals to Republicans who want a competent, even-tempered nominee with a track record in business and finance. His backers are willing to overlook his past support of abortion rights and his seeming tone-deafness on money matters ? even if it feeds caricatures of him as a tycoon.
Until Saturday, GOP polls had shown Romney easily ahead on the question of who would be Obama’s toughest challenger. South Carolina exit polls, however, showed Gingrich with an edge among those who said it was most important that their candidate be able to beat Obama.
Romney will try to regain that advantage in Florida, which votes Jan. 31. It’s not clear what strategies will work. In his concession speech Saturday, Romney said Obama has attacked free enterprise and “we cannot defeat that president with a candidate who has joined that very assault on free enterprise.”
He was alluding to Gingrich’s past criticisms of Romney’s record running Bain Capital, a private equity firm. But Gingrich and a friendly super PAC dropped their references to Bain days ago.
Romney hinted at another approach. “Our party can’t be led to victory by someone who also has never run a business and never led a state,” he said. Gingrich’s background didn’t seem to bother South Carolina’s Republicans, however.
What they’ve done is steer the primary contest into more emotional, and possibly dangerous, waters. They rewarded a candidate who gave voice to their resentment of the news media, federal bureaucrats and what they see as undeserving welfare recipients and a socialist-leaning president.
Two South Carolina debate moments crystalized Gingrich’s rise. Both involved an open disdain for journalists, whether feigned or not.
In Myrtle Beach on Monday, the Martin Luther King holiday, Gingrich acidly told Fox News’ Juan Williams that he would teach poor people how to find jobs, and that Obama has put more Americans on food stamps than any other president. Gingrich repeated the food stamp lines in his speech Saturday night.
At Thursday’s debate in North Charleston, Gingrich excoriated CNN’s John King for raising an ex-wife’s claim that Gingrich once asked for an “open marriage,” to accommodate his mistress.
Conservatives inside the hall and out seemed to love the tongue-lashing. The details of Marianne Gingrich’s allegations, which Gingrich denied almost as an afterthought, seemed to matter much less to voters. That’s remarkable in a state whose GOP electorate is nearly two-thirds evangelicals.
Mike McKenna, a Republican strategist, said Gingrich seems to be drawing many people, including tea party activists, who are fairly new to politics. They don’t know or care much about Gingrich’s legacy of leading the 1994 Republican revolution in Congress, or his subsequently lucrative career as a writer and speaker that sometimes veered from conservative orthodoxies, McKenna said.
Instead, he thinks these voters are reacting emotionally to someone they hope “can take the fight to the president, to the media, to whomever. They are not particularly concerned about what kind of president he will be.”
Therein, of course, is the potential peril of a Gingrich candidacy. Along with his verbal fireworks he carries baggage that might give Democrats more to exploit than do Romney’s policy flip-flops and record at Bain.
Gingrich’s impressive South Carolina victory will force Republicans in Florida and other states to make a hot-or-cool choice.
They can pick the data-driven Harvard MBA grad who smoothed out the Winter Olympics and now runs a by-the-numbers nationwide campaign. Or they can pick the pugnacious firebrand who didn’t manage to get his name on the Virginia primary ballot but who wows an angry electorate that can’t wait to lay into Obama in debates next fall.
___
EDITOR’S NOTE: Charles Babington covers politics for The Associated Press.
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Jan
24
2012
LOS ANGELES — A Yosemite National Park employee has died after strong winds uprooted a huge tree that fell on his tent cabin.
Park spokesman Scott Gediman says 27-year-old Ryan Hiller, of Chapel Hill, N.C., was killed Saturday by a branch from the tree. Hiller worked as a park ranger during busy periods, but had been working as a park concessioner and stayed in the Yosemite Valley stable complex as he waited for the winter ski season.
The strong gusts were part of a winter storm sweeping across Northern California over the weekend.
Gedimane says rain fell on the park and winds knocked down many large trees, but no other injuries have been reported.
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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/23/ryan-hiller-yosemite-killed_n_1222812.html
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Jan
23
2012
Columbia, South Carolina (Reuters) ? Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney pledged on Sunday to release his tax returns this week, bowing to pressure from critics and hoping to make up for a misstep that helped rival Newt Gingrich win South Carolina’s primary race.
Long considered the frontrunner, Romney stumbled badly in debates last week on his delay in disclosing his tax returns and then lost his air of being the inevitable Republican nominee after a resurrected Gingrich soundly defeated him in the third contest.
Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, pounced on Romney’s surprising weakness and rode it to victory on Saturday, trouncing the former governor of Massachusetts by 40 percent to 28 percent in South Carolina.
Trying to regain his momentum as the race heads to the pivotal state of Florida, Romney sought to draw a line under the bad week and fix his error. He said he would release his 2010 returns and an estimate for 2011 on Tuesday.
“We made a mistake holding off as long as we did and it just was a distraction,” Romney said on Fox News Sunday.
Last week, Romney said he pays a tax rate of around 15 percent, a low rate compared to many American wage earners but in line with what wealthy individuals pay on income that largely comes from investments.
One of the wealthiest presidential candidates in history, Romney emphasized he was releasing two years of returns after Gingrich posted his taxes for one year — 2010 — on Thursday.
TURNING TO FLORIDA
Both candidates are gearing up for a tough fight on January 31 in Florida, one of the most important states in the contest to determine who will take on Democratic President Barack Obama in the November 6 election.
Gingrich, who has see-sawed in national polls and must prove to Republicans that he is the most “electable” candidate despite political and personal baggage, praised Romney and said the issue would be moot once the taxes were out.
“I think that’s a very good thing he’s doing and I commend him for it,” Gingrich said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“And as far as I’m concerned, that particular issue is now set aside and we can go on and talk about other bigger and more important things.”
But the tax issue will almost certainly not go away.
Income inequality has become a leading topic in the presidential race, and Obama has signaled he will talk about an economy that works “for everyone, not just a wealthy few” in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a prominent Romney supporter, sought to offset any backlash that Romney may get from reactions to his wealth, largely accumulated from his career as a private equity executive.
“I think what the American people are going to see is someone who’s been extraordinarily successful in his life,” Christie said on NBC.
“And I don’t think the American people want a failure as president. I think they like somebody who’s succeeded in whatever they’ve tried to do, and I think that’s what you’re going to see with Governor Romney.”
Gingrich’s South Carolina win reshaped the Republican race and virtually ensured that it could last for weeks if not months. Romney had hoped to wrap up the nomination after two candidates — Texas Governor Rick Perry and former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman — bowed out last week.
Despite his South Carolina loss, Florida presents logistical and financial challenges that appear to give an advantage to Romney’s well-funded campaign machine.
In Florida, he leads Gingrich by 40.5 percent to 22 percent, according to a poll of polls by RealClearPolitics.com. Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, a social conservative who won the Iowa contest but has struggled to gain traction since then, is third with 15 percent.
(additional reporting by Ros Krasny and David Morgan; Writing by Jeff Mason; editing by Mary Milliken and Jackie Frank)
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Jan
22
2012
ps2 emulaters have too many problems. I don’t know of a software that can convert it to a computer playable format. I use wine to make a pc app usable on a mac.
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Legal, probably, as long as you legally own a copy. Possible? Gooooood luck with the coding.
It isn’t legal if the copyright or terms of use prohibit this, but if its for your own use and your not sharing the information or the game for free or profit, then they likely won’t even know you’ve done anything.
Source: http://www.instructables.com/answers/Is-it-legal-and-or-possible-to-turn-an-owned-PS2-g/
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