Seized Chinese workers freed in Egypt

BEIJING (AP) ? A group of 25 Chinese taken hostage in Egypt has been freed, but a second group seized in Sudan over the weekend are still being held, state media reported Wednesday.

The incidents several days apart reflect the dangers China faces as it pushes more into unstable areas in search of energy and business.

The official Xinhua News Agency quoted the Chinese Embassy in Cairo as saying the 25 were freed Wednesday, a day after they were grabbed off their bus on the way to a cement factory in the northern Sinai town of Arish.

Xinhua said the people who seized the workers demanded that the Egyptian government release relatives who had been detained several years ago for suspected involvement in attacks in south Sinai. The workers were freed in good condition, the agency said, citing an embassy official.

China has already sent a crisis team to Sudan and summoned a Sudanese diplomat to express its shock after the 29 workers there were taken by militants in the South Kordofan region.

"The Chinese government attaches great importance to protecting overseas Chinese nationals," Vice Foreign Minister Xie Hangsheng was quoted as saying in a statement posted on the ministry's website.

China hopes Sudan will "keep in mind the overall situation of bilateral friendship" and ensure their swift release, Xie told Sudanese Charge d'Affaires Omer Eisa Ahmed, according to the statement. China has close political and economic relations with Sudan centering on exchanging Chinese infrastructure projects for access to Sudanese oil.

China sent a group of security experts to assist in the rescue work and the head of the team, Qiu Xuejun, told Chinese state television in Khartoum that "as far as we know, the Chinese workers are safe. They are safe. They are not hurt."

Xinhua said 47 Chinese workers were caught in the attack in the South Kordofan region of Sudan. It said 29 were captured and the other 18 fled, and that one of those who fled remains missing. The attack took place near Abbasiya town, 390 miles (630 kilometers) south of Khartoum.

Sudanese officials have blamed the attack on the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North, a branch of a guerrilla movement that has fought various regimes in Khartoum for decades. Its members hail from a minority ethnic group now in control of much of South Sudan, which became the world's newest country six months ago in a breakaway from Sudan.

Sudan has accused South Sudan of arming pro-South Sudan groups in South Kordofan. The government of South Sudan says the accusations are a smoke screen intended to justify a future invasion of the South.

China has sent large numbers of workers to potentially unstable regions such as Sudan. Last year it was forced to send ships and planes to help with the emergency evacuation of 30,000 of its citizens from the fighting in Libya.

South Sudan and Sudan are in bitter dispute over oil, which is produced primarily in South Sudan but runs through Sudanese pipelines for export.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-01-31-AS-China-Sudan/id-ac3bcaeba4cf41cd8352b0b1c173f2c2

mirror mirror tanuki mirror mirror trailer bob knight bob knight lavar arrington hope solo dancing with the stars

Euro zone confidence improves, highlights divergence (Reuters)

BRUSSELS (Reuters) ? Confidence in the euro zone's economy strengthened in January for the first time since early 2011, EU data showed on Monday, but a recovery in Germany masked a deterioration in France and Italy, highlighting the bloc's diverging fortunes.

Germany has shown more resilience to the euro zone's troubles than many of its neighbors, helped by fiscal prudence, a competitive edge and good demand for its high quality goods.

France and Italy have struggled to keep up, facing questions about the sustainability of their own finances as Greece tries to agree a debt restructuring and Portugal comes under fresh scrutiny in financial markets.

The divergence complicates the task of EU leaders who are meeting in Brussels on Monday to try and sketch a path out of the economic slump.

The European Commission's economic sentiment indicator rose by 0.6 points in the euro zone to 93.4, the first improvement in sentiment since March last year as some confidence returned to services, consumers and construction.

"We're seeing a slight stabilization and we expect the recession the euro zone will end in the spring," said Christoph Weil, an economist at Commerzbank.

"But we can also see that the divergence in the euro zone is increasing and that is of great concern," he said.

The European Central Bank's decision in December to provide 3-year loans to banks averted a credit freeze, while the U.S. economy expanded strongly in the last quarter of 2011 and China has remained robust, maintaining demand for Europe's goods.

But budget austerity and political divisions over how to solve the two-year debt crisis continue to depress business in the euro zone and the wider European Union, with non-euro zone country Britain heading for a recession in early 2011.

The rising optimism is still tempered by EU leaders' inability to resolve the euro zone debt crisis and the sentiment indicator was slightly lower than forecast by economists polled by Reuters.

Following last week's surprisingly positive purchasing managers' indices, or PMIs, business climate rose for the second month in a row to -0.21, in line with economists' expectations.

But factory managers saw a deterioration in the view of their order books and although this was offset by a positive assessment of stocks, it confirmed the mixed economic picture.

Industrial confidence remained at the lowest level since April 2010 while confidence in services rebounded by 2 points in the euro zone and construction was up 0.6 points.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

For a graphic on the data: http://link.reuters.com/bas36s

For full multimedia coverage: http://r.reuters.com/xyt94s

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^>

GERMAN RENEWAL, GREEK PAIN

The European Commission forecasts 2012 economic growth of just 0.5 percent for the 17 nations in the euro zone, which generates 16 percent of global economic output.

The International Monetary Fund is more pessimistic, forecasting a 0.5 percent contraction in 2012 that it says could drag the world into recession.

EU leaders face a tough task at Monday's summit as they try and bridge the divergence in economic performance among the 27-nation bloc's economies and reconcile austerity with growth.

Recent data suggests Germany will avoid a recession, while non-euro zone member Britain, as well as euro states Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal, are likely to see their economies contract in 2012. Belgium and the Netherlands, also members of the single currency, will struggle to grow at all.

The Commission's data also supported that view, as economic sentiment improved in Germany by 2.3 points, the second consecutive monthly rise, but fell in France, Italy and the Netherlands.

While large economies such as France and the Netherlands will likely benefit from Germany's recovery, Italy and Greece must confront falling productivity and high debts to avoid years of stagnation.

"Weakened domestic economic activity, intensified fiscal tightening in many countries and still serious uncertainties and concerns over the euro zone sovereign debt crisis continue to limit an improvement in sentiment," said Howard Archer, chief European economist at IHS Global Insight.

(Reporting By Robin Emmott; editing by Rex Merrifield/Anna Willard)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/eurobiz/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120130/bs_nm/us_eurozone_sentiment

school closures mlk mlk being human being human chicago news chicago news

WATCH: Ferris Bueller Returns in New Super Bowl Ad

Honda is shaking it up (baby now!) with its 2012 Super Bowl ad: an homage to the 1986 classic Ferris Bueller's Day Off. After releasing a brief teaser last week, the auto company has unleashed a two-and-a-half-minute version, which showcases Matthew Broderick semi-reprising his role as slacking superstar Ferris. Watch it below!

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/matthew-broderick-revives-ferris-bueller-super-bowl-ad/1-a-423312?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Amatthew-broderick-revives-ferris-bueller-super-bowl-ad-423312

susan sarandon tampa weather motorola razr buckyballs buckyballs gilad annie hall

Oil prices dip below $99 a barrel (AP)

NEW YORK ? Oil prices ended lower Monday on concerns that the U.S. economy could slow, and investors' worries eased about supply disruptions in the Persian Gulf.

Benchmark crude fell by 78 cents to finish at $98.78 per barrel in New York on Monday. Brent crude, which is used to price foreign oils that are imported by U.S. refineries, lost 71 cents to end at $110.75 per barrel in London.

The Commerce Department said Americans kept a tighter grip on their wallets in December. Consumer spending was flat, even though incomes rose by the most in nine months. The economy relies heavily on consumer spending, and analysts say the economic recovery could stall and energy demand may stay weak if spending doesn't pick up.

Meanwhile, Iran welcomed international weapons experts into the country in hopes of refuting claims that it is building a nuclear weapon. That eased concerns about possible military action in the region. Still, Europe plans to embargo Iranian oil this summer to pressure Iran about its nuclear program. If that happens, Iran says it could retaliate by blocking passage through the Persian Gulf, where tankers carry one-sixth of the world's oil exports.

The U.S. is ready to implement sanctions on Iran's central bank that will make it harder for Iran to sell oil.

Gasoline pump prices rose by a penny on Monday to $3.43 per gallon, according to AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. A gallon of regular is 15.3 cents higher than it was a month ago and 33 cents higher than it was last year.

In other energy trading, heating oil fell 2 cents to finish at $3.05 per gallon and gasoline futures fell 6 cents to end at $2.87 per gallon. Natural gas futures fell 4 cents to end the day at $2.71 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/energy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120130/ap_on_bi_ge/oil_prices

amityville horror kim richards kellie pickler robert hegyes andrew bogut mary louise parker mary louise parker

DMARC Promises A World Of Less Phishing

Some 15 companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, PayPal plan to jointly work on a standard for blocking phishing e-mails by verifying that they come from legitimate companies. It seems obvious that trusted, legitimate companies could come together to do this, but it's only started happening in the last 18 months. DMARC.org - or the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance - is a new white-list system will be available for use across the Internet.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/G7pyDcYtd0g/

pepper spraying cop pepper spraying cop somaya reece padma lakshmi juelz santana juelz santana greg halman

Romney credits change in tactics for Florida surge (AP)

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. ? Looking for a convincing win, a confident Mitt Romney said Monday the Florida primary is breaking his way and urged voters to send Newt Gingrich "to the moon." Gingrich claimed he's gaining ground and will stay in the race until summer.

"You can sense that it's coming our way," Romney told reporters. The former Massachusetts governor was already looking ahead, making plans to stop in Minnesota on his way to Nevada on Wednesday, the day after Florida votes.

A day before the voting, Romney ridiculed Gingrich, his chief rival here: "Send him to the moon," Romney said at a rally early Monday, repeating an audience member's comment and using it to poke fun at Gingrich's claim to build a moon colony as president. Romney also scoffed at "the idea of the moon as the 51st state" as "not one that's come to my mind."

Gingrich countered that Romney is "pretending he's somebody he's not" and linked Romney to Obama, calling them the "twins of the establishment." Gingrich's allies, meanwhile, urged Rick Santorum to get out of the race to clear the way for conservatives to consolidate support behind the former House speaker.

In the final hours before Tuesday's critical primary, Romney sustained his barrage against Gingrich. He said he believes he bounced back from a tough South Carolina loss by aggressively answering Gingrich's attacks and hitting him for his ties to the government-backed, mortgage giant Freddie Mac.

Gingrich threatened a long slog. "I think he's going to find this a long campaign," Gingrich said.

"That's why they're trying to carpet-bomb us here in Florida," said former Gingrich aide Rick Tyler, who runs the pro-Gingrich political action committee Winning Our Future. "They're trying to end this thing. But it's not going to end."

Tyler visited the first of three rallies Romney had planned Monday to rail against Romney and urge Santorum to leave the race.

"I'm here to get as many cameras and microphones so I can talk about Mitt Romney's incessant failure to tell the truth," Tyler said, echoing Gingrich's recent claims about Romney's character. Tyler called Romney "despicable" and "disgraceful."

He also called on Santorum to leave the race to clear the way for Gingrich. "I think it would give us Mitt Romney, and I think Rick would hurt himself" by staying in, Tyler said.

Speaking to reporters, Romney said Gingrich's threats indicated desperation. "That's usually the case when you think you're going to lose," he said. "Everybody has a right to stay in as long as they think" they should, Romney said.

Gingrich kept up his attacks, saying Monday that on the big, philosophical issues, Romney "is for all practical purposes a liberal. I am a conservative."

"It's closing here in Florida," Gingrich said, "and I think the next 24 hours in going to make a big difference."

Gingrich also defended his ties to President Ronald Reagan after Romney supporters questioned Reagan's rapport with the former speaker. "Mitt Romney may not know about the Reagan years because he was not there," Gingrich told supporters in Pensacola.

Polls showed Romney running ahead of Gingrich in the state. Romney earned positive reviews after two debates last week and has put the former House speaker on the defensive over his ethics and ties to Freddie Mac.

But instead of stepping back and refocusing on President Barack Obama ? as he did in Iowa when it became clear that Gingrich had lost ? Romney is ratcheting up his rhetoric and attacking until the very end. He hopes to close the Florida campaign strongly to push Gingrich as far back as possible.

Gingrich said Monday he was closing the gap with Romney in Florida. He said the Republican Party needed a "clear conservative" to run against Obama in the fall, and that there was very little difference between Obama and Romney when it came to their policies and politics, such as health care.

"Mitt Romney will have a very, very hard time trying to differentiate himself," Gingrich said.

In what has become a wildly unpredictable race, the momentum has swung back to Romney, who was staggered by Gingrich's victory in South Carolina on Jan. 21. Romney has begun advertising in Nevada ahead of caucuses there next Saturday, illustrating the challenge ahead for Gingrich.

An NBC News/Marist poll published Sunday showed Romney with support from 42 percent of likely Florida primary voters, compared with 27 percent for Gingrich.

Santorum, trailing in Florida by a wide margin, skipped campaigning to be with his 3-year-old daughter, Bella, who was hospitalized. He planned to campaign Monday in Missouri and Minnesota.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who has invested little in Florida, also looked to Nevada. The libertarian-leaning Paul is focusing more on gathering delegates in caucus states, where it's less expensive to campaign. But securing the nomination only through caucus states is a hard task.

__

Associated Press writer Shannon McCaffrey in Pensacola, Fla., contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120130/ap_on_el_pr/us_gop_campaign

iphone update blackberry outage blackberry outage seal beach ca seal beach seal beach bhutan

A Little Bit of Luck

Last night, after the season finale of Boardwalk Empire, HBO aired the very fine pilot of Luck, presenting an early look at a horse-track drama that properly debuts on Jan. 29. To be sure, the channel's primary goal in this scheduling was to instigate some word-of-mouth marketing?to make a micro-event of a pseudo-premiere of a series created by two major talents, David Milch and Michael Mann, and starring genuine movie stars not yet put out to pasture, Nick Nolte and Dustin Hoffman. But nor can we escape the impression that HBO was generously offering viewers a kind of early warning. If you were gripped by the episode's thrilling race sequences and tense moments of drama but remain fuzzy on its nuances, then you've got a whole month and a half to figure out how your TV set's closed-captioning works.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=5bcd107ab6631e047e5797818842e812

john beck john beck mariska hargitay gmcr ohio news caracal beef wellington

Man arrested in slayings of SC officer, Ga. woman (AP)

AIKEN, S.C. ? A man accused of killing his girlfriend in Georgia and then gunning down a police officer in South Carolina had been dealing with mental problems before the slayings, the man's father said.

Police in South Carolina said Joshua Tremaine Jones, 26, faces charges of murder and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime in the death of Aiken police Master Cpl. Sandra Rogers. He is expected to appear in court in Aiken on Monday, according to Magistrate Judge Tracey Carroll.

The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division said that Rogers was shot Saturday morning while responding to a report of suspicious activity. The 49-year-old had spent nearly 28 years with the Aiken Public Safety department.

Jones was arrested hours later in Batesburg.

James Jones, the suspect's father, told reporters that his son had past run-ins with the law and "was going through some mental problems," though he didn't elaborate on those problems. Jones said his son had run away from home and moved in with his girlfriend. He said his son is from North Augusta and briefly lived in Atlanta.

In neighboring Georgia, The Augusta Chronicle reported Jones also faces murder charges in the death of his girlfriend, 21-year-old Cayce Vice. Police found her body in her apartment Saturday morning after she didn't show up for work at a Five Guys restaurant. She had been shot in the head.

Richmond County sheriff's Capt. Scott Peebles told the newspaper (http://bit.ly/yO5JS7) that the agency had obtained warrants for Jones for murder and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Peebles confirmed that Vice had filed a complaint against Jones for assault earlier this month.

A phone message left late Saturday for the Richmond County Sheriff's Office was not immediately returned.

Jones said that when he returned from work Friday, his son had taken his blue BMW without permission and left. Jones said he and his other son drove around searching but couldn't locate him.

Jones said his heart goes out to the victim' families, and that he's devastated as a father.

"I just went straight to God and said, `I cannot believe this.' After all that I have taught him, I just never thought that my family would have to deal with something like this," Jones said.

The Aiken public safety department issued a statement Saturday evening praising Rogers as "an invaluable street cop who exemplified the model of a Public Safety Officer," according to WLTX-TV in Columbia, S.C.

Last month, hundreds of people gathered to mourn another Aiken police officer killed in the line of duty. Officer Scotty Richardson, 33, died in the early hours of Dec. 21 after being shot in the head during a traffic stop at an apartment complex the night before. Aiken is a city of 30,000 that's located about 20 miles northwest of Augusta.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/crime/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120129/ap_on_re_us/us_multi_state_slayings

nba lockout over gone with the wind nba lockout news nba lockout news gifts for mom gifts for mom pepper spray

Alona Elkayam: Icon of the Day: In Search of Lost Time With Salon Tea

Nostalgia is making a serious comeback. So while you tell me about your new 4G phone, it won?t be non sequitur that I respond with an exquisite description of my grandmother?s old strawberry and whip cream dessert she used to make my brother and I every Friday night. Your current Super Bowl chit chat will be met with descriptions of my past as a teen in my living room making up various killer dance routines to Shannon?s ?Let the music play.?

Ahhhhhh, yes nostalgia sure is making a comeback. Woody Allen makes it the main character in his movie, Midnight in Paris; Urban Outfitters honors nostalgia with the USB turntable, among other throwback products; and Tracy Stern urges us to savor it with her Salon Tea brand.

While Woody focuses on the idea that every generation thinks the previous generation was simpler, Ms. Stern focuses on something less debatable: Lost time. All Ms. Stern wants is for us to put our iPhones down. Pour un instant s'il vous pla?t. She wants us to experience what Proust wrote about In Search of Lost Time when he bit into that madeleine and ?ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal." And she?s giving us a chance. From her line of teas named after turn of the century archetypes like ?The Dandy? or ?The Society Hostess? to her instruction book, Tea Party, there is a place for nostalgia in all of us.

If you men and women out there aren?t ready for tea parties (Boston or English) just yet, how about just cherishing the moments between Facebook updates, Siri results, or while staring at the Twitter whale -- preferably with a cup of tea.

Salon Tea Branded Teapot

1? of ?3

MORE SLIDESHOWS NEXT?> ??|?? <?PREV

Salon Tea Branded Teapot

CURRENT TOP 5 SLIDES

USERS WHO VOTED ON THIS SLIDE

?

Follow Alona Elkayam on Twitter: www.twitter.com/321takeoff

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alona-elkayam/tracy-stern-salon-tea_b_1234995.html

nfl power rankings week 12 nfl power rankings week 12 brine turkey brine turkey uc davis super committee walmart black friday ad 2011

4 Die In Maryland As Driver Goes Wrong Way On Route 50

CROFTON, Md. ? Maryland State Police say four people have died after a driver apparently went the wrong way on Route 50 in Anne Arundel County and collided with another car.

Police say the crash happened at around 3:30 a.m. Saturday on Route 50 near Davidsonville Road, which is between the Capital Beltway and Annapolis. Three people were dead at the scene, and one person died on the way to the hospital.

Police are investigating. The names of the victims were not released.

"; var coords = [-5, -72]; // display fb-bubble FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, 'top', {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: 'clear-overlay'}); });

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/28/maryland-wrong-way-crash_n_1239179.html

kristin cavallari jay cutler oscar nominations tax refund calculator joy division rough riders camille grammer

Senate Republicans take aim at PUC Chair Ellen Anderson (Star Tribune)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/192348762?client_source=feed&format=rss

packers bears boeing 787 johnny appleseed scrimshaw jacoby ellsbury jacoby ellsbury facebook charging

Activists: Shells hit oil pipeline in east Syria (AP)

BEIRUT ? Syrian opposition activists say an oil pipeline took a direct hit and caught fire as government troops shelled a town in the eastern oil-rich province of Deir el-Zour.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees say Saturday's shelling of the town of Qoriah killed at least one person.

The groups also reported intense clashes between troops and anti-regime army defectors in the central province of Homs and suburbs of the capital Damascus.

The Syrian uprising, which began last March with mostly peaceful protests, has become increasingly violent in recent months.

The United Nations estimates that more than 5,400 people have died in the turmoil.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/energy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120128/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_syria

rally squirrel rally squirrel scumbag steve scumbag steve day of the dead rocksmith blackbeard

Enormous solar outburst could dazzle your weekend

Auroras may dazzle more people than usual this weekend as Earth receives a glancing blow from an enormous solar outburst that erupted on Jan. 19.

Auroras may dazzle more people than usual this weekend as Earth receives a glancing blow from an enormous solar outburst that erupted on Jan. 19.

Skip to next paragraph

The outburst, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), was detected by sun-watching satellites.

Researchers at the University of Alaska's Geophysical Institute predict that auroras should be visible from Seattle, Des Moines, Chicago, and Cleveland, to Boston and Halifax, Nova Scotia Saturday and Sunday nights, weather permitting.

RELATED: Are you scientifically literate? Take our quiz!

Space-weather forecasters initially were concerned that Earth would take a direct hit, notes Joe Kunches, a space scientist at the National Weather Service's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo.

"Indications at the time were that this could be a fairly energetic event," says Mr. Kunches, a former operations chief at the center. The solar flare that triggered the coronal mass ejection covered a relatively large patch of the sun and released a lot of energy. Where other flares during the week lasted an hour or two, the flare that launched the CME lasted roughly 18 hours.

And the CME "was in the right spot," he adds. It emerged from just about the middle of the sun's disk.

It's the "just about," however, that led to the prediction of a glancing blow, rather than a direct hit. The CME emerged from a location just north of the sun's equator, so for the most part it will hurtle past Earth far above the North Pole.

Space Weather Center forecasters say they expect the encounter to generate a weak geomagnetic disturbance beginning around 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Sunday Jan. 22 and lasting through Jan. 23. It could trigger weak fluctuations in electricity flowing through the long-distance transmissions lines and have a minor effect on satellites.

Coronal mass ejections represent the sudden release of a vast, searingly hot cloud containing up to 200 billion tons of electrons and protons, as well as heavy atomic nuclei forged in the sun's nuclear-fusion furnace.

Hurtling from the sun at speeds of up to 2 million miles an hour, CMEs can generate intense disturbances in Earth's magnetic field that can trigger power and radio blackouts and disable satellites ? as well as generate spectacular aurora over the North and South poles.?

RELATED: Are you scientifically literate? Take our quiz!

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/DZTRnfwm4-Y/Enormous-solar-outburst-could-dazzle-your-weekend

golden globe winners 2012 ricky gervais golden globes epidermolysis bullosa law abiding citizen miss wisconsin packers safe house

Romney is the aggressor in final Florida debate (AP)

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. ? An aggressive Mitt Romney repeatedly challenged Republican rival Newt Gingrich Thursday night in the final debate before next week's critical Florida primary, demanding an apology for an ad saying he harbors anti-immigrant sentiments and ridiculing the former House speaker's call to colonize the moon.

"If I had a business executive come to me and say I want to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I'd say, `You're fired,'" Romney declared. That was just one particularly animated clash between two rivals struggling for supremacy in the race to pick an opponent to President Barack Obama in the fall.

Gingrich responded heatedly. "You don't just have to be cheap everywhere. You can actually have priorities to get things done." He said that as speaker of the House he had helped balance the budget while doubling spending on the National Institutes of Health.

The debate was the 19th since the race for the Republican nomination began last year, and the second in four days in the run-up to Tuesday's Florida primary. Opinion polls make the race a close one ? slight advantage Romney ? with two other contenders, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Texas Rep. Ron Paul far behind.

Gingrich's upset victory in the South Carolina primary last week upended the race for the nomination, and Romney in particular can ill-afford a defeat on Tuesday.

While the clashes between Gingrich and Romney dominated the debate, Santorum drew applause from the audience when he called on the two front-runners to stop attacking one another and "focus on the issues."

"Can we set aside that Newt was a member of Congress ... and that Mitt Romney is a wealthy guy?" he said in a tone of exasperation.

There were some moments of levity, including when Paul, 76, was asked whether he would be willing to release his medical records. He said he was, then challenged the other three men on the debate stage to a 25-mile bike race.

He got no takers.

In the days since Romney's loss in South Carolina, he has tried to seize the initiative, playing the aggressor in the Tampa debate and assailing Gingrich in campaign speeches and a TV commercial.

An outside group formed to support Romney has spent more than his own campaign's millions on ads, some of them designed to stop Gingrich's campaign momentum before it is too late to deny him the nomination.

With polls suggesting his South Carolina surge is stalling, Gingrich unleashed a particularly strong attack earlier in the day, much as he lashed out in Iowa when he rose in the polls, only to be knocked back by an onslaught of ads he was unable to counter effectively.

Thursday night's first clash occurred moments after the debate opened, when Gingrich responded to a question by saying Romney was the most anti-immigrant of all four contenders on stage. "That's simply inexcusable," the former Massachusetts governor responded.

"Mr. Speaker, I'm not anti-immigrant. My father was born in Mexico. My wife's father was born in Wales. ... The idea that I'm anti-immigrant is repulsive. Don't use a term like that," he added.

At the same time, Romney noted that Gingrich's campaign had been pressured to stop running a radio ad that called Romney anti-immigrant after Florida Sen. Marco Rubio called on Gingrich to do so.

He called on Gingrich to apologize for the commercial, but got no commitment.

About an hour later, Romney pounced when the topic turned to Gingrich's proposal for a permanent American colony on the moon ? an issue of particular interest to engineers and others who live on Florida's famed Space Coast.

The audience erupted in cheers when Romney said he'd fire an executive who came to him with such a costly plan, but he wasn't finished.

He said the former speaker had called for construction of a new Interstate highway in South Carolina, a new VA hospital in northern New Hampshire and widening the port of Jacksonville to accommodate the larger ships that will soon be able to transit the Panama Canal.

"This idea of going state to state and promising people what they want to hear, promising hundreds of billions of dollars to make people happy, that's what got us into trouble in the first place," Romney said.

Gingrich responded that part of campaigning is becoming familiar with local issues, adding, "The port of Jacksonville is going to have to be expanded. I think that's an important thing for a president to know." He went on to refer to completion of an Everglades project that he did not describe, then noted he had worked to expand NIH while he was speaker.

Gingrich raised questions about Romney's wealth and his investments. "I don't know of any American president who's had a Swiss bank account," Gingrich said. Romney replied that his investments were in a blind trust over which he had no control. "There's nothing wrong with that," declared Romney, who has estimated his wealth at as much as $250 million.

Earlier Thursday, it was disclosed that Romney and his wife, Ann Romney, failed to list an unknown amount of investment income from a variety of sources including a Swiss bank account on financial disclosure forms filed last year. His campaign said it was working to correct the omissions.

Gingrich also failed to report income from his 2010 tax return on his financial disclosure. The former Georgia congressman will amend his disclosure to show $252,500 in salary from one of his businesses, spokesman R.C. Hammond said.

Debating in a state with a large and influential Jewish population, Romney and Gingrich vied to stress their support for Israel rather than criticize one another.

And all four men were quick to name prominent officials of Hispanic descent who deserved consideration for the Cabinet. Gingrich trumped the other three, saying, "I've actually thought of Marco Rubio in a slightly more dignified and central role," an evident reference to the vice presidential spot on the ticket.

Immigration was a recurring theme.

Gingrich said Romney was misleading when he ran an ad accusing the former House speaker of once referring to Spanish as "the language of the ghetto." Gingrich claimed he was referring to a multitude of languages, not just Spanish.

Romney initially said, "I doubt it's mine," but moderator Wolf Blitzer read it aloud and pointed out that Romney, at the ad's conclusion, says he approved the message.

As for immigration policy, it was difficult to discern their differences.

Both men said they want to clamp down in illegal immigration, create programs to make sure jobs go only to legal immigrants and deport some of the 11 million men and women in the country unlawfully.

Gingrich has never said how many illegal residents he believes should be deported, preferring to say that the United States is not going to begin rounding up grandmothers and grandfathers who have lived in the United States for years.

Romney agreed that was the case ? and Gingrich said that marked a switch in position.

"Our problem is not 11 million grandmothers," Romney said. "Our problem is 11 million people getting jobs that many Americans, legal immigrants would like to have."

Romney and Gingrich also exchanged jabs over investments in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two mortgage giants that played a role in the national foreclosure crisis that has hit Florida particularly hard.

Gingrich said Romney was making money from investments in funds that were "foreclosing on Floridians."

Romney quickly noted that Gingrich, too, was invested in mutual funds with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He then added that the former House speaker "was a spokesman" for the two. That was a reference to a contract that one of Gingrich's businesses had for consulting services. The firm was paid $300,000 in 2006.

___

Associated Press writers Brian Bakst, Kasie Hunt and Steve Peoples contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120127/ap_on_el_ge/us_republicans_debate

cc sabathia ruth madoff ruth madoff in living color enews enews mona simpson

Many of us endorse term life insurance to associates right now ...

There are various possibilities open anytime finding out which unfortunately life insurance scheme most accurately fits your requirements accommodates your. Life insurance could very well be confusing and difficult to be familiar with. You might have a few children in addition to a home mortgage to spend. If your an abrupt, something happens for you personally, utterly unusual, for example a motor vehicle accident or anything all the more banal and your family remains devoid of one. Whenever the selected term is finished, the protection will no longer be reasonable plus the insurance holder ought to bypass policy and renegotiate policy during innovative estimates and even under innovative situations.

In the event your spouse to be?s salary is a significant part on your personal organizing, you should think about term life insurance to handle the losing the fact that source of income. Individuals protect lots of the resources of source of income one rely on, there is proper hardship to people individuals who reside. Even so, there does exist other problems. It is possible to benefit from preiswerte Risikolebensversicherung finden which include in fact those who?re bad. Become term life insurance pertaining to previous consumers for great offer you estimates and even rapid services. In case you are Half a century previous or higher and have a condition, microsoft xbox its own scheme to really succeed for many who would like to submit an application for insurance.

Corporations are actually presenting diverse term life insurance alternative to popular decide upon in order to appeal the requirements of my golden agers. In case you are trouble in need of a particular, you can aquire a the help of a financier to assist you to choose the best bargain for you personally. Furthermore this is suggested to people where the use had been denied and possess health conditions. It is possible to make available personal insurance for use on your spouse and children having term life insurance. In the event that getting life insurance, you will need to think about the level of policy.

Term insurance policy is now in a significant little period price level intelligent get benefit from nuetzlichen Risikolebensversicherung Vergleich machen during such affordable prices. Take your time to find out if one become eligible and buying any term insurance scheme. If he or she could give you any couple of months if not more amount family vacation even though even now cover then you certainly it can be substitute looking at. The best recommendation is to purchase any life insurance scheme if you end up newer plus the in term life insurance is lower. It can be good to possess a scheme that leave your wife the most prosperous widow at work should you transfer, but actually does your sweetheart really need really that finances.

Because of this ,, in between different serious things, you mustn?t avoid to perform in order to secure term life insurance policy for your organization. You can easily shell out the dough about whatever schedule you could have approved. Could potentially be all by yourself, your organization other half and any affiliate which plays an important role for use on your business. It is possible to protect your organization practically over any term life insurance scheme on your key individual and even take on the function connected with person. To illustrate, but if the business other half extremely important person and this man is used up all at once.

Lots of people are even now unacquainted with why getting life insurance enjoy the term life insurance. And also greater than 33 thousand households that have already simply no insurance policy by any means, there are deeper third which have been with your knowledge under policy holder. Term life will give you the best deal. There is not any different method discuss it, men and women are troubled to get by in this down economy and everybody needs ways to toned its expense plan. Term insurance compensates quick number of life insurance plus your rates and rate is locked in to have a selected term and numerous years. To ensure you know specifically what will you fork out each month and also you know specifically how much money the insurance small business will probably pay any beneficiaries.

The matter some people get can be putting off acquiring billigsten Risikolebensversicherung Test machen as they like possible until they have children or possibly a place of their own. However, expense of term insurance is located with your real age plus your health whenever you submit an application. We should pretty much put it off a number of years. The matter being mindful of this process is that you have no idea of what your overall health will undoubtedly be as with Two to five numerous years coming from today. Suppose you are person suffering from diabetes and achieve massive amount of extra fat. They didn?t want to eliminate any life scheme since they are that this will more than likely lead to a specific thing terrible taking place directly to them. Procuring a great insurance has become the greatest issues that that you can do, particularly if have a family.

A strong insurance scheme is a deal among anyone with a insurance small business the fact that compensates over some finances anytime selected the weather is met. It can be a style of guarding all by yourself in opposition to occasions the spot where you assume failures. In the event that thinking how much money insurance you require, work out how much cash your dependents will have but if the salary is forfeited. This may start with paying off lots of the most common obligations enjoy the property loan, and then leave plenty to repay lots of the daily payments. Term life doesn?t have money and outlay significance. The monthly payments cover the set in place quantity due should you meet your death inside of the moment. If you live past the set in place night out, lots of the monthly payments paid for really are forfeited. This is basically the low cost life insurance option for newer consumers.

Source: http://oulusymphony.net/many-of-us-endorse-term-life-insurance-to-associates-right-now/

lra collegeboard heart attack grill coco rocha coco rocha al sharpton izon

Teen saves school bus after driver dies

A teen with just two weeks of driving experience managed to steer her school bus to safety after her driver had a heart attack. WCAU-TV's Deanna Durante reports.

By NBCPhiladelphia.com

Graceann Rumer, 17, started driving only two weeks ago. But when her school bus driver collapsed from a heart attack Tuesday afternoon,?she didn't hesitate to use what she knew to?steer a bus full of children to safety.

"I just realized that there's no one driving this bus... I need?to do something,"?Rumer said.

The 17-year-old senior at Calvary Christian Academy in northeast Philadelphia had been driving herself to?school recently for practice,?but on Tuesday she opted for the?bus.

---

For more information, visit NBCPhiladelphia.com

Rumer and about three dozen other students were riding the bus home when 51-year-old driver Charles Duncan suddenly crumpled to the floor at about 3:30 p.m. Duncan died soon after.

With the driver obstructing the brake pedal, Rumer acted quickly?-- grabbing the wheel of the moving bus and making a U-turn to slow it down and change direction, as it was heading into oncoming traffic, witnesses say.

With still no access to the brake pedal, Rumer put the bus into park and successfully and safely stopped it, according to witnesses and bus company officials.

"I usually panic at like everything but I just reached over... grabbed the wheel and I pulled it over to the side and got off the road,"?Rumer said.?

None of the students were injured.

Parents of fellow students, friends and school officials all praised Rumer?s quick thinking and action.

"We had three of our children on the bus along with dozens of other kids and the outcome could have been much different," said Renee Lawsin, one of the parents. "She did something very heroic."

But Rumer dismisses being a hero, instead saying she was just the closest student to the front of the bus who had any driving experience.

"I don't think it was that heroic though. But it was a legit miracle," Rumer tweeted Thursday. "God really protected us."

More content from msnbc.com and NBC News

Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/26/10242761-teen-drives-school-bus-to-safety

groupon ipo breeders cup 2011 gwar gwar san diego weather tropic thunder justin bieber baby

How R Can Help Your Business

Looking for innovative ways to use R, the Big Data open source analytics language? Then take a gander at the two top winners of the first of a series of contests that R's corporate caretaker Revolution Analytics has produced. The winners, announced today, receive prizes that range from $1,000 to $10,000 for their submissions. It is an interesting collection and shows off the power of the language itself.

Warning: this is pretty geeky stuff, with lots of coding examples and descriptions of data sets. But it shows that R is moving mainstream and into common business uses. Revolution claims that R is being used by more than 2 million IT analysts all over the world.

Included is a demonstration of how to use R to collect tweets and apply a naive algorithm to estimate emotional sentiment for the airline industry. Airlines, as Jeffrey Breen states in his submission, rank below the Post Office and insurance companies in terms of customer satisfaction. His algorithm extracts text from the Tweets, estimates the sentiment expressed by the poster, and then scores them. As you can see, Southwest and Jet Blue do better than the traditional carriers, to no surprise. Breen won second place for this app.

The team of Shannon Terry and Ben Ogorek from Nationwide Insurance won the grand prize as well as a second honorable mention for two of their apps. The grand prize winner was for help in real-time forecasting of direct marketing activities, and shows the incremental benefit of a marketing tactic when only a fraction of the marketing responses have been observed. Their lesser prize was for how IT shops can quantify uncertainty in their project estimates.

The contest was judged by a panel of experts from within the R and business communities and included Edd Dumbill, Chair of O'Reilly's Strata Conference and writer for O'Reilly Media; David Menninger, VP and Research Director at Ventana Research; Steve Miller, technology writer and co-founder of OpenBI LLC; David White, Senior Research Analyst at Aberdeen Group; and Hadley Wickham, R package author and professor at Rice University.

Source: http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2012/01/how-r-can-help-your-business.php

ides of march miranda july joe paterno near death joepa sc primary heidi klum and seal divorce bill moyers

Are you a happy shopper? Research website helps you find out

ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2012) ? Psychologists have found that buying life experiences makes people happier than buying possessions, but who spends more of their spare cash on experiences? New findings published this week in the Journal of Positive Psychology reveal extraverts and people who are open to new experiences tend to spend more of their disposable income on experiences, such as concert tickets or a weekend away, rather than hitting the mall for material items.

These habitual "experiential shoppers" reaped long-term benefits from their spending: They reported greater life satisfaction, according to the study led by San Francisco State University Assistant Professor of Psychology Ryan Howell.

To further investigate how purchasing decisions impact well-being, Howell and colleagues have launched a website where members of the public can take free surveys to find out what kind of shopper they are and how their spending choices affect them. Data collected through the "Beyond the Purchase" website will be used by Howell and other social psychologists.

Graduate students in Howell's Personality and Well-being Lab will use the site to study the link between spending motivations and well-being, and how money management influences our financial and purchasing choices.

For his latest study, Howell and colleagues surveyed nearly10,000 participants, who completed online questionnaires about their shopping habits, personality traits, values and life satisfaction.

"We know that being an 'experience shopper' is linked to greater wellbeing," said Howell, whose 2009 paper on purchasing experiences, published in the Journal of Positive Psychology, challenged the adage that money can't buy happiness. "But we wanted to find out why some people gravitate toward buying experiences."

Participants' personality was measured using the "Big Five" personality traits model, a scale psychologists use to describe how extraverted, neurotic, open, conscientious and agreeable a person is. People who spent most of their disposable income on experiences scored highly on the "extravert" and "openness to new experience" scales.

"This personality profile makes sense since life experiences are inherently more social, and they also contain an element of risk," Howell said. "If you try a new experience that you don't like, you can't return it to the store for a refund."

The authors suggest that it could be easier to change your spending habits than your personality traits. "Even for people who naturally find themselves drawn to material purchases, our results suggest that getting more of a balance between traditional purchases and those that provide you with an experience could lead to greater life satisfaction and wellbeing."

Visit the Beyond the Purchase website at http://www.beyondthepurchase.org

Recommend this story on Facebook, Twitter,
and Google +1:

Other bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by San Francisco State University.

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

---

Journal Reference:

1. Ryan T. Howell, Paulina Pchelin, Ravi Iyer. The preference for experiences over possessions: Measurement and construct validation of the Experiential Buying Tendency Scale. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2012; 7 (1): 57 DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2011.626791

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

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120126143656.htm

bennett bennett daniel day lewis patti stanger pasadena pasadena famu

Obama speech echoes in town with failed factory (AP)

MOBERLY, Mo. ? After 19 years running state unemployment offices across northern Missouri, Steve Moore can rattle off the names of shuttered factories in this old railroad town with ease.

There's Matcor Automotive, a parts manufacturer that at its peak employed 300 workers but closed in June 2010 in response to declining production by General Motors. Textbook publisher Scholastic Inc. is closing its Moberly packaging center, costing the town another 100 jobs.

Then there's the biggest blow of all: the failed promises of Mamtek U.S. Inc., a Chinese-owned artificial sweetener factory backed by $7.6 million in state tax incentives and $39 million of local bonds that went belly up in 2011 when the company's bond payments dried up. More than 600 promised jobs went up in smoke, with the deal now facing scrutiny by Missouri lawmakers and a pair of investigations by the state's attorney general and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

"There was a lot of anticipation, and then a lot of disappointment," Moore said. "Let's be honest. Everybody had hoped that something was going to come out of it."

As President Barack Obama again pledged to repair the American economy in his annual State of the Union address Tuesday night, some Moberly residents chalked up his pronouncements as just more rosy rhetoric by a politician ? not unlike the July 2010 day when Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon and former Gov. Bob Holden came to the town of nearly 14,000 and hailed the Mamtek project's potential.

Others blamed an intractable Congress for not working more closely with the president to lift the country's economy. Still more held out hope that manufacturing companies lured by the region's low cost-of-living and central location would once again seek out Moberly, a 136-year-old railroad hub that became known as the Magic City in the late 19th century for its seemingly overnight emergence on once-empty prairie.

"We got a promise that he didn't keep," said business owner Diane Harlan. "He promised our economy was going to be better, and it's not. In this small community, we were under the false hope that everything was going to be OK, and it's not."

Harlan spent seven years as executive director of Main Street Moberly, which represents downtown business owners, before opening the Darn It Yarn store seven months ago after the business group cut her full-time job to 20 hours a week. She voted for John McCain in 2008 but hasn't yet made up her mind about the 2012 election.

While vacant storefronts dot downtown Moberly, Harlan said her business has succeeded beyond expectations, allowing her to drop that part-time job starting next week. A handful of similar small businesses have sprouted nearby, from a sewing shop to a secondhand furniture store.

"People are finally figuring out, we can't depend on our leader to get us out of something that we've created," she said. "We've got to go back to the grassroots. More self-sufficiency, doing things on our own, teaching our children, instead of depending on a man sitting in a white castle to take care of us and make things right."

David Gaines, a vice president with the Moberly Area Economic Development Commission, is among the local officials who helped court Mamtek in a deal given the code name "Project Sugar" before it was publicly disclosed. Count him among those looking for more leadership from those in the audience at Tuesday night's speech.

"It's not so much what he says but what they do," Gaines said, referring to Congress. "They need to quit talking and do something.

"That's what is holding consumer confidence down, is the inability of Congress on both sides of the aisle to do what the people elected them to do," he added.

After the speech, Gaines said he was heartened to hear the president urge lawmakers to work together, not against one another.

"I do like the fact that he said it's time to stop the divisiveness between the two parties," Gaines said. "If they set the right tone, everyone will follow along. If they don't, the nation will just drift."

Political affiliation aside, Moberly residents interviewed Tuesday tended to agree that improving the economy and creating more local jobs are the most important issues facing their community and the country. Look no further than a commuter parking lot along U.S. 63 packed with cars while their owners work 35 miles south in the college town of Columbia. Moberly, in turn, attracts workers from dozens of surrounding rural towns.

"Folks are regularly commuting 40 or 50 or 60 miles to go to work every day," Gaines said. "When we share that with the folks we talk to in Atlanta and Chicago and LA, they are quite amazed that people are willing to commute that far for a good job. But they have to."

Elsewhere in Moberly, Obama's speech was met with disinterest, if not outright scorn. At Nelly's Someplace Else restaurant, dozens of Republicans filed past a pair of televisions showing the president's address as the monthly meeting of the Randolph Area Pachyderms Club. Few stopped to listen, though some jeered as they walked past.

___

Follow Alan Scher Zagier at http://twitter.com/azagier

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

apple press conference apple event apple event buccaneers buccaneers bernanke bernanke

5 police shot dead in town outside Mexico City (AP)

VALLE DE BRAVO, Mexico ? Officials say five police officers were fatally shot after they stopped a vehicle in a town outside Mexico City.

Mexico State prosecutor Alfredo Castillo Cervantes says the municipal officers from the town of Ixtapaluca had stopped the vehicle when a taxi and a van pulled up and a group of attackers opened fire with high-powered weapons.

Castillo said Tuesday investigators suspected the Monday attack was an attempt to free people who had been stopped by the police. Two civilians were found at the scene, one dead and one wounded and unconscious. Police assume they were among the attackers or the suspects originally stopped by the officers' two patrol cars.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mexico/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120124/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_mexico_police_killed

flight 93 flight 93 al qaeda infiniti empire state building amazing grace wtc

In GOP response, Daniels blames Obama for economy (AP)

WASHINGTON ? President Barack Obama has resorted to "extremism" with stifling, anti-growth policies and sought to divide Americans, not unite them, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said Tuesday in the formal Republican response to the president's State of the Union address.

Eight months after deciding against a bid for his party's presidential nomination, Daniels used his nationally televised speech to lash out at Obama and cast the GOP as compassionate and eager to unchain the country's economic potential.

He took particular aim at Obama's efforts to raise taxes on the rich and castigate them for not contributing their fair share to the nation's burdens. Joined by Republicans on Capitol Hill and the presidential campaign trails, the GOP goal was to both blunt and shift the focus away from Obama's theme on Tuesday of fairness, which included protecting the middle class and making sure the rich pay an equitable share of taxes.

"No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant effort to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others," Daniels said, speaking from Indianapolis. "As in previous moments of national danger, we Americans are all in the same boat."

"This election is going to be a referendum on the president's economic policies," which have worsened the economy, said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. "The politics of envy, the politics of dividing our country is not what America is all about."

Also drawing frequent GOP attacks were Obama's proposed tax increases, which included making sure millionaire earners pay at least a 30 percent tax rate.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., said Obama's proposals to boost taxes on the wealthy and give tax breaks for domestic U.S. manufacturers and others were "nothing more than the usual Washington game that has led to a tax code already littered with lobbyist loopholes."

Daniels is a rarity in the GOP these days ? a uniting and widely respected figure, contrasting with the divisiveness emanating from the contest for the presidential nomination being waged among former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and others.

President George W. Bush's first budget chief and a two-term Indiana governor, Daniels often rails against wasteful spending big budget deficits, though critics note he served during the abrupt shift from fleeting federal surpluses to massive deficits early in Bush's term.

"When President Obama claims that the state of our union is anything but grave, he must know in his heart that this is not true," Daniels said. He added that while Obama did not cause the country's economic and budget problems, "He was elected on a promise to fix them, and he cannot claim that the last three years have made things anything but worse."

The night's rhetoric come at the dawn of a presidential and congressional election year in which the defining issues are the faltering economy and weak job market and the parties' clashing prescriptions for restoring both. Obama and congressional Democrats have focused on the more populist pathway of financing federal initiatives by taxing millionaires, while Republicans preach the virtues of less regulation and smaller government.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called Obama's address "a campaign speech designed to please his liberal base," and warned that he should keep legislation advancing his priorities "free from poison pills like tax hikes on job creators."

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who heads large group of House conservatives, said Obama's speech was riddled with "the ridiculous idea that America isn't fair because successful people get to keep too much of the money they earn."

Republicans fired back at Obama's vision of "an economy built to last," saying it was their party that understood the best way to trigger economic growth was to get the government out of the way.

"The extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy, or cancels a perfectly sane pipeline that would employ tens of thousands, or jacks up consumer utility bills for no improvement in either human health or world temperature, is a pro-poverty policy," Daniels said.

Obama has halted, for now, work on the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from western Canada to Texas' Gulf Coast. Republicans say the project would create thousands of jobs, a claim opponents say is overstated. The administration has also pursued policies aimed at reducing pollution and global warming.

To underscore Obama's decision on Keystone, Boehner invited three officials from companies he said would be hurt by the pipeline's rejection to watch the speech in the House chamber, along with a pro-pipeline legislator from Nebraska, through which the project would pass.

Obama was delivering his address during a rowdy battle for the GOP presidential nomination that has ended up providing ammunition for Obama's theme of fairness.

That fight has called attention to the wealth of one of the top contenders, Romney, and the low ? but legal ? effective federal income tax rate of around 15 percent that the multimillionaire has paid in the past two years. Romney, in Florida campaigning for that state's Jan. 31 primary, released his tax documents for the two-year period on Tuesday.

"The president's agenda sounds less like `built to last' and more like doomed to fail," Romney said in Tampa, Fla. "What he's proposing is more of the same: more taxes, more spending, and more regulation."

Romney's chief rival at this point, Gingrich, said in a written statement that the top question about Obama's speech was whether he "will show a willingness to put aside the extremist ideology of the far left and call for a new set of policies that could lead to dramatic private sector job creation and economic growth."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120125/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_state_of_union_gop_reaction

meteor shower 2011 meteor shower 2011 home depot center the replacements fleet week scarecrow festival scarecrow festival

Video: Apple's Blowout Quarter

A breakdown of the tech giant's Q4 earnings, which beat Street estimates, with Mike Abramsky, RBC Capital Markets managing director/software & wireless research, who says Apple is gobbling up the market share so much that it is a tsunami in its own rig...

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/46128695/

solar storm tim gunn tim gunn terrell owens terrell owens obama state of the union 2012 prince fielder

A win under belt, Gingrich lands in firing line (AP)

TAMPA, Fla. ? Fresh off his big South Carolina win, Republican Newt Gingrich found himself on the defensive Monday as the volatile GOP presidential contest shifted to Florida.

Chief rival Mitt Romney sharpened his attacks on the former House speaker, calling him "erratic" and pressing for disclosure of clients, contracts, records and other work he was paid to do after leaving Congress. Atop Romney's list are Gingrich's consulting arrangements with mortgage giant Freddie Mac and details of ethics investigations in the 1990s.

Romney also charged that Gingrich had engaged in "potentially wrongful activity" when he worked with former colleagues in Congress to create a prescription drug benefit for Medicare.

"We could see an October surprise a day from Newt Gingrich," Romney said after a round-table session with people struggling with home foreclosure problems.

Gingrich, who earlier had appeared on ABC's "Good Morning America," mocked 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.

The sniping between the two contenders opened a Florida fight that is shaping up as pivotal to determining which one of them will become the GOP's presidential nominee. The four candidates ? Gingrich, Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul ? were to meet Monday night in Tampa for the first of two debates heading into Florida's primary on Jan. 31.

Gingrich, who planned a pre-debate campaign appearance on Monday afternoon in Tampa, basked in his come-from-behind triumph in South Carolina two days earlier. The win made for three different winners in the first three states to hold contests, with Santorum winning Iowa and Romney taking New Hampshire.

Gingrich's campaign said it had raked in $1 million in the first 24 hours since South Carolina's primary Saturday.

Frequently the aggressor in the race, Gingrich is now the one taking fire from all sides.

Santorum described Gingrich as too "high risk" to be the Republican standard-bearer. Romney has been calling Gingrich a lobbyist. Gingrich flatly denied lobbying on behalf of Freddie Mac or other clients.

"It's not true. He knows it's not true. He's deliberately saying things he knows are false," Gingrich said. "I just think that's what the next week will be like."

Gingrich told ABC he has campaign lawyers working to make the Freddie Mac records public. He said the decision rests with the Center for Health Transformation, which he founded but no longer owns. Two former Gingrich companies earned $1.6 million over eight years from Freddie Mac. Gingrich has said he only earned about $35,000 a year himself.

Gingrich's work for Freddie Mac has come under scrutiny because of its role in the housing meltdown.

After the housing forum Monday, Romney told reporters that Gingrich should consider giving back any money he earned from the troubled mortgage company.

Gingrich said he was braced for more criticism from his remaining opponents and their allies. On Sunday, some Republican leaders voiced worry about Gingrich's combative style.

He also seemed to be enjoying the attention.

"I think you're going to see the establishment go crazy in the next week or two," Gingrich said.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120123/ap_on_el_ge/us_gingrich

matilda new jersey weather halloween movies halloween movies new york snow new york snow braxton miller

Defense: Stanford's empire "wasn't a fraud"

HOUSTON (AP) ? Texas financier R. Allen Stanford's financial empire was real, his attorney says, and not, as prosecutors contend, built on a foundation of lies, theft and bribes as part of an effort to rob investors of more than $7 billion through a vast Ponzi scheme that spanned more than 20 years.

"It wasn't a fraud. It wasn't a pie in the sky. It was an investment he hoped would make a real return," Robert Scardino, one of Stanford's attorneys, said as he prepares to defend the financier at his fraud trial in Houston federal court.

Prosecutors, who are set to present their first witness Wednesday, contend the financier ruined the dreams of people who deposited money in his Caribbean bank as part of efforts to save for retirement or for their children's education. Stanford is on trial for 14 counts, including wire and mail fraud.

"He told them lie after lie after lie. He stole from them, taking their hard earned savings so he could live the lavish lifestyle of a billionaire," federal prosecutor Gregg Costa told jurors Tuesday during his opening statement in Stanford's trial.

Stanford faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. The 61-year-old is expected to testify during the trial, which will likely last at least six weeks.

Costa told jurors that Stanford's business empire was built on a scheme centered on sales of certificates of deposit from a bank Stanford owned on the Caribbean island of Antigua, which promised substantially higher rates of return on the CDs than U.S. banks and promised investors their money was safe.

The prosecutor said Stanford instead sank investors' money in a variety of his own businesses, including two airlines, and that many of these businesses failed. Costa also accused Stanford of using up to $2 billion of investors' money as personal loans to buy homes and yachts and fund cricket matches.

"He treated depositors' savings like it was his own personal piggy bank," he told the jury.

Once considered one of the United States' wealthiest people, with an estimated net worth of more than $2 billion, Stanford became so prominent in his adopted country of Antigua, where he took on dual citizenship, that he was knighted by the Caribbean island's government and became known as "Sir Allen." His financial empire spanned the U.S., the Caribbean and Latin America.

Stanford's business empire was run through the Houston-based Stanford Financial Group, but at its heart was Antiguan-based Stanford International Bank.

Prosecutors say Stanford used money from the sale of the CDs, which were sold to clients from more than 100 countries, to pay off those purchased earlier once they matured and to support his other businesses.

Costa said more than $300 million of depositors' savings was funneled to two airlines Stanford ran in the Caribbean, $20 million to an entity whose purpose was to pay expenses related to Stanford's yacht and $37 million to a company whose purpose was to promote cricket tournaments in which Stanford gave out million-dollar prizes.

The prosecutor said Stanford and three former executives at his companies covered up their misdeeds by fabricating the bank's records and bribing Antiguan regulators and auditors with more than $3 million and with perks such as Super Bowl tickets.

Stanford's scheme fell apart in 2008 when his bank was running out of money and investors couldn't be paid back, Costa said.

But Scardino told jurors the financier was a clever businessman who for 22 years paid investors every penny he promised them. Scardino said Stanford didn't need to steal depositors' money and use it as personal loans.

Scardino suggested that the ex-chief financial officer for Stanford's company, James Davis, is the real culprit behind the financial fraud alleged by prosecutors. Davis has pleaded guilty and is expected to testify on behalf of prosecutors during the trial.

Scardino said Stanford had been paying back his investors but that stopped when authorities seized his companies and began selling them off.

Stanford has been in jail since his arrest 2? years ago. His trial was delayed after he was declared incompetent due to an addiction he developed in jail to an anti-anxiety drug and he underwent treatment. He was also evaluated for any long-term effects from being injured in a September 2009 jail fight. Stanford was declared fit for trial last month.

Once Antigua's richest citizen, primary banker and its largest private employer, Stanford had his assets seized and now has court-appointed attorneys.

The three other indicted former executives are to be tried in June. A former Antiguan financial regulator was also indicted, and he awaits extradition to the U.S.

Stanford and the former executives are also fighting a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit filed in Dallas that makes similar allegations.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-01-25-Stanford%20Trial/id-0e7b06dab2f949c0969924ba8868ae2f

chicago weather tupelo honey weather nyc gary carter open marriage doj department of justice