Stocks end lower on 'fiscal cliff' fears

1 hr.

Stocks closed near session lows in volatile trading Tuesday, with the S&P 500 breaking below 1,400, as ongoing worries over the "fiscal cliff" trumped a batch of positive economic reports and optimism over the Greek deal.

Stocks took another leg lower in the afternoon after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he is disappointed with the little progress made in the recent debt talks. Reid's comments echoed Senator Dick Durbin's cautious statement over the weekend.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 89.24 points, or 0.69 percent, to end at 12,878.13, dragged by Hewlett-Packard. Intel led the blue-chip gainers.

The S&P 500 declined 7.35 points, or 0.52 percent, to finish at 1,398.94. And the Nasdaq fell 8.99 points, or 0.30 percent, to close at 2,967.79.

The CBOE Volatility Index, widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, traded above 15.

Most key S&P sectors finished in negative territory, led by banks and energy. Utilities closed higher for a second-straight session.

?Consumer and investors alike are concerned about the fiscal cliff,? said David Kudla, CEO and chief investment strategist at Mainstay Capital Management. ?Market is going to suffer from headline risk until we get to that deal.?

Investors were focused on politicians? efforts to resolve the $600 billion ?fiscal cliff? of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts due to hit the U.S. economy at the end of the year. Negotiations are expected to resume this week as policymakers return to Washington from the Thanksgiving holiday.

European shares were higher after Greece's international creditors secured a deal to reduce the troubled nation's debt by 40 billion euros ($51.9 billion) and changed the debt target for the country to 124 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020, from 120 percent previously.

?Nothing else matters?everyone is focused on the resolution of the fiscal cliff,? said John Fox, co-manager of the FAM Value Fund. ?Stocks will most likely muddle through until we come to some solution.?

ConAgra agreed to acquire Ralcorp in a deal worth nearly $5 billion to become the biggest private label food company in North America.

Facebook rose to hit a four-month high after Nomura boosted its price target on the social-networking giant to $32 from $27 a share.

Yelp gained after Cantor Fitzgerald raised its rating on the business review site to "buy."

In a quiet day for earnings, home security firm ADT posted better-than-expected earnings and said its board approved a $2 billion share repurchasing program over three years.

Green Mountain and Analog Devices are scheduled to post earnings after the closing bell.

Corning rallied after the glass manufacturer said it sees stronger-than-expected fourth-quarter LCD glass volume and full-year sales of its gorilla glass approaching $1 billion, thanks to robust demand for LCD televisions and other consumer electronic devices in North America and China.

Dollar General will replace Cooper Industries to join the S&P 500 index after the close of trading Friday. The move comes as a result of Eaton's plans to acquire Cooper.

On the economic front, home prices rose for the sixth-consecutive month in September, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index. Meanwhile, consumer confidence rose to its highest level in 4-1/2 years in November, according to the Conference Board.

And durable goods were unchanged in October, according to the Commerce Department.

The government auctioned $35 billion in 2-year notes at a high yield of 0.27 percent. The bid-to-cover was 4.07.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/stock-end-lower-fiscal-cliff-fears-1C7287490

denver vs new england denver broncos vs new england patriots cruise ship sinking vernon davis starship troopers starship troopers cruise ship italy

Fostering Curiosity: Mars Express relays rocky images

ScienceDaily (Nov. 26, 2012) ? For the first time, ESA's Mars orbiter has relayed scientific data from NASA's Curiosity rover on the Red Planet's surface. The data included detailed images of 'Rocknest3' and were received by ESA's deep-space antenna in Australia.

It was a small but significant step in interplanetary cooperation between space agencies.

Early on the morning of 6 October, ESA's Mars Express looked down as it orbited the planet, lining up its lander communication antenna to point at Curiosity far below on the surface.

For 15 minutes, the NASA rover transmitted scientific data up to the ESA satellite. A few hours later, Mars Express slewed to point its high-gain antenna toward Earth and began downlinking the precious information to the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, via the Agency's 35 m-diameter antenna in New Norcia, Australia.

The data were immediately made available to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California for processing and analysis, proving again that NASA's amazing new rover can talk with Europe's veteran Mars orbiter.

Curiosity's ChemCam images Rocknest3

The information included a tremendously interesting image acquired on 4 October by Curiosity's ChemCam Remote Micro-Imager camera.

ChemCam comprises the camera together with a Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectrometer, which fires a laser at targets and analyses the chemical composition of the vaporised material.

The laser zaps areas smaller than 1 mm across on the surface of martian rocks and soils, and then the spectrometer provides information on the minerals and microstructures in the rocks.

"The quality of these images from ChemCam is outstanding, and the mosaic image of the spectrometer analyses has been essential for scientific interpretation of the data," says Sylvestre Maurice, Deputy Principal Investigator for ChemCam at France's Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP).

"This combination of imaging and analysis has demonstrated its potential for future missions."

ChemCam laser targets

A third image, relayed separately by NASA, indicates the locations of the laser target points on Rocknest3, as seen by the RMI camera.

'Rocknest' is the area where Curiosity stopped for a month to perform its first mobile laboratory analyses on soil scooped from a small sand dune. Rocknest3 was a convenient nearby target where ChemCam made more than 30 observations using 1500 laser shots.

A wide-angle context image was acquired by Curiosity's MastCam and shows Rocknest3 as targeted by ChemCam. Rocknest3 is about 10 x 40 cm, or roughly the size of a shoe box.

Fostering Curiosity -- and others

ESA's Mars orbiter has also relayed data for NASA's other surface missions -- Phoenix, Spirit and Opportunity -- since 2004, and it relayed Curiosity's radio signal during its arrival at Mars last August.

During the Curiosity mission, Mars Express is set to provide additional relay slots, while maintaining its own scientific observation programme, under an ESA-NASA support agreement.

It can also rapidly provide relay services in case of unavailability of NASA's own relay orbiter or if there is a problem on the rover itself.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:


Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by European Space Agency (ESA).

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


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://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/nasa/~3/iqKUdE5FOGY/121126130945.htm

project runway all stars elin nordegren tangled ever after kansas state last house on the left last house on the left rich forever mixtape

Columbine survivor struggles against foreclosure

By Robert Kovacik and James Hourani, NBCLosAngeles.com

Richard Castaldo fought for his life 13 years ago in Colorado when he was shot by two teens at Columbine High School. Now, he is struggling to keep his condominium in Southern California, trying to ward off foreclosure like millions of others.

Castaldo, who is confined to a wheelchair and has a bullet lodged permanently in his spine, was one of the first students shot on April 20, 1999, when he was 17.

Five years ago, he came to Los Angeles to attend a sound engineering school with the dream of pursuing a career in music. At the time, the Hollywood condo he bought seemed like a wise investment.

?I feel kind of stupid, honestly, because I should have known better,? he said. ?I kind of bought into the notion that of course the condo was going to go up in value, which, of course, obviously it hasn?t.?

Castaldo?s story mirrors that of countless homeowners who were hit hard by the housing crisis and fell victim to predatory lending. He was advised to take an interest-only loan to buy an overpriced property.

Read more from NBCLosAngeles.com

In February, he fell behind on his mortgage payments. While there were plenty of solicitors who offered to help, the assistance didn?t come without a hefty price.

?I get mailings every day from somebody, but of course they all want money up front,? Castaldo, now 31, said.

Inside the foreclosure factory, they're working overtime

Then, surfing the Internet, he found a group that knows all about eviction: Occupy Los Angeles. Ever since their encampment was evicted from City Hall,?they've?made it their mission to help homeowners facing foreclosure.

Occupy Fights Foreclosures says that it aims to ?support, educate and empower homeowners at risk to save their homes from fraudulent foreclosure.?

Foreclosure fallout cost nearby homeowners $2 trillion, report finds

?I feel like they?re really the only group that?doesn't?have an ulterior motive,? Castaldo said.

At one of their meetings, he met a lawyer who is now trying to help him, but he?doesn't?have much time. Castaldo?s condo is scheduled to be sold at a foreclosure auction in December.

?It?s nerve racking for sure,? he said. ?I?m not bitter in terms of me. I?m bitter that stuff like that in Aurora keeps happening. It doesn?t seem like it?s ever going to change.?

Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/27/15475241-columbine-survivor-turns-to-occupy-la-to-battle-foreclosure?lite

mark sanchez obama open mic jefferson county colorado extenze tenacious d steve smith zou bisou bisou

Old Japanese Architecture: Buy it to Save It ? Real Estate Japan ...

The market for historic homes in Tokyo attracts a fair amount of foreign buyers these days. Japanese buyers tend to choose modern homes so the market for traditional houses is driven by buyers from overseas.

According to Ken Arbour, president of Century 21 SKY Realty, a Tokyo-based real estate agency, anyone buying a house that is over 30 years in Tokyo is expected to do one thing: renovate. Some of the historic homes in Japan, which are more than 40 years old, exist in central Tokyo.

However, there are a few Japanese who still want to preserve the beauty of postwar Japanese architecture.

Toshiko Kinoshita, an architect in Tokyo, together with her husband, Juan Ordonez, came up with a unique preservation tactic. They decided to buy a classic postwar architecture in her neighborhood which was also likely to face demolition. They also organized a temporary exhibition at a gallery in Denenchofu, in southwest Tokyo, to showcase three properties that are up for sale, and match them to buyers who appreciate historically and culturally important houses. Though the exhibition ended without a sale, the couple says that they are hoping that their move would serve as a starting point to raise awareness on the difficulty of preserving Japanese architecture.

Outside Tokyo, Sotheby?s International Realty is looking to sell two traditional houses, one in Kyoto which is more than 50 years old and one in Kamakura built in 1972. Yukiko Takano of Sotheby?s commented that foreigners are more appreciative of old traditional houses in the area and are far more knowledgeable about Japanese architecture and landscape than the Japanese.

American developer, Jacob Reiner is also into the trend, revamping neglected houses for international buyers. Together with his team at Eden Homes, they refurbish kominka (traditional houses) in Shojiko, a lakeside village and one of the remaining undeveloped areas around Mount Fuji. Their company used to buy old houses, fix them and resell. However, he now prefers to sell houses that haven?t been modernized. He says that through this, they are able to encourage people to design their own homes and support them with planning and construction while preserving their historical and cultural value.

Tokyo Apartments For Sale | Tokyo Apartments For Rent | Real Estate Japan

Source: http://www.realestate.co.jp/2012/11/26/old-japanese-architecture-buy-it-to-save-it/

tebow broncos downton abbey season 2 2013 dodge dart shameless kwame brown martin luther king day blue ivy

A Conversation With Roy Y. Calne: Organ Transplant Pioneer Talks About Risks and Rewards

Sir Roy Calne is a pioneer of organ transplants ? the surgeon who in the 1950s found ways to stop the human immune system from rejecting implanted hearts, livers and kidneys. In 1968 he performed Europe?s first liver transplant, and in 1987 the world?s first transplant of a liver, heart and lung.

This fall, along with Dr. Thomas E. Starzl of the University of Pittsburgh, he received a 2012 Lasker Award for ?the development of liver transplantation, which has restored normal life to thousands of patients with end-stage liver disease.?

We spoke for two hours immediately before the awards ceremony. An edited and condensed version of the interview follows.

When you were studying medicine in early-1950s Britain, what was the prevailing attitude toward organ transplantation?

It didn?t exist! While a medical student, I recall being presented with a young patient with kidney failure. I was told to make him as comfortable as possible because he would die in two weeks.

This troubled me. Some of our patients were very young, very deserving. Aside from their kidney disease, there was nothing else wrong with them. I wondered then if it might be possible to do organ transplants, because kidneys are fairly simple in terms of their plumbing. I thought in gardening terms. Might it not be possible to do an organ graft, replacing a malfunctioning organ with a healthy one? I was told, ?No, that?s impossible.?

Well, I?ve always tended to dislike being told that something can?t be done. I?ve always had a somewhat rebellious nature. Just ask my wife.

When did you first think it might be a real possibility?

Around 1957. I was teaching anatomy at Oxford. I attended a lecture there by the great biologist Sir Peter Medawar, who showed slides of successful skin grafts between white mice and black mice. Though he insisted that there was ?no clinical application whatsoever,? I wondered, ?Why couldn?t we do something like that with kidneys??

Afterwards, I began to devote myself to the two main obstacles to transplantation. One was surgical and the other immunological. In America, at that time, Tom Starzl, then at Colorado, and Francis Moore at Harvard were separately working on the surgical techniques. But I was in Britain, and there was no one there who could teach me. And so I worked out the surgical problem for myself. I taught myself how to transplant kidneys in dogs.

Once I?d done that, the big problem was to find some way to prevent the immune system from rejecting the transplanted organs. I sought some way to make the immune system temporarily malleable, as it is in the fetus. If you performed the transplant during a period of plasticity, the hope was that you could avoid rejection. In those days, the only described method for doing that was X-ray irradiation, shutting down the immune system by destroying it.

Well, that didn?t work. It just made the dogs desperately ill and it didn?t stop rejection. That led me to wonder if there wasn?t some other method of immunosuppression we could consider ? a drug perhaps?

How long did it take you to find something effective?

The first sign that we might have something came in 1959, when we tried the anti-leukemia drug 6-mercaptopurine with dogs who?d had kidney grafts. Some lived quite a long time. And this was a big step. It changed something that had been total failure to a partial success. Even Peter Medawar thought we were on to something.

But cyclosporine was the real watershed. We tested it in my laboratory at the University of Cambridge during the mid-1970s. By 1977, it had moved the success rate from 50 percent to 80 percent. That really changed attitudes. Before cyclosporine, you had only 10 centers around the world doing organ transplants. Afterwards, it was 1,000. And now we had a whole new problem: not enough donor organs to meet demand.

Is there any solution to the shortage of donor organs?

I think an ?opt out? program would work better than what you currently have in the United States. They are doing this in Spain, and it has worked very well. It offers the option for people to say ?no? to have their organs used after death. If they don?t take it, this is regarded as permission. This changes the atmosphere and the perception.

Are you intrigued by the ethical questions your discoveries have brought?

Well, one of the reasons we have them is that the results are so good. If we hadn?t had successes, we wouldn?t have ethical concerns.

Still, it?s one thing to transplant organs from deceased donors and another to pressure people to donate while alive. My profession has been very cavalier about taking organs from live donors ? especially livers. Sometimes adults are willing to donate half their livers because of tremendous pressure from their families. With half a liver, there?s a definite mortality rate, probably around 1 percent, maybe 2 percent, for the donor.

I?ve seen tremendous disruption in families where a wife said, ?My husband wants to give half his liver to his brother, but he?s the breadwinner in our family and I don?t want him to do it.?

What about the growth of ?transplant tourism,? where patients from wealthy countries travel to poorer ones to find organs?

That?s terrible ? verges on the criminal, really. We?ve heard stories where a well-respected surgeon is asked to go to a third world country, and he gets there and the recipient has cirrhosis and the donor is his ?cousin.? In fact, the donor is probably some poor peasant who is apparently being paid for it. One hears of disasters where the surgeon has to work in countries with poor facilities and both the donor and the recipient have died. The surgeon returns home to this horrible news.

These kinds of events can occur in countries where power is abused. We can just imagine what would have happened in Nazi Germany if organ transplantation had existed in the 1930s.

You did a lot of your early experiments on dogs and pigs. What do animal rights activists think of your work?

They once sent me a bomb. I was suspicious and phoned up the army ? who blew it up. This was right around the time cyclosporine was first being used. A BBC director did a program on a child who?d been saved with it. And after that, I had no more trouble with animal rights. Not because they loved me. But that they thought it wouldn?t do them any good if they killed someone treating children.

The Lasker prize, which you and Tom Starzl just won, is often called the Pre-Nobel. Were the Lasker judges saying to Stockholm, ?Hey, isn?t it time you honored this world-changing discovery??

Well, I don?t know how they work in Stockholm. If you look at the amount of good that resulted from organ transplantation it fits very much into what Alfred Nobel wanted the prize to be used for.

I get a lot of satisfaction a different way. I have a patient and it?s been 38 years since his transplant. He?s just come back from a 150-mile trek bicycling through the mountains. That?s my reward.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/27/science/organ-transplant-pioneer-talks-about-risks-and-rewards.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

vanessa bryant Prince Harry naked Prince Harry Vegas Melky Cabrera Mayim Bialik Rich Kids of Instagram felix hernandez

Chris Brown deletes Twitter account

Jonathan Alcorn / REUTERS

By The Hollywood Reporter

Another day, another Chris Brown controversy.?The singer has deleted his Twitter account -- again -- on the heels of a heated exchange with comedy writer Jenny Johnson.

PHOTOS: Hollywood's Twitter feuds

According to E! News, Brown sent out a tweet reading, "I look old as [expletive]! I'm only 23...," that prompted Johnson to reply with: "I know! Being a worthless piece of [expletive] can really age a person."

Brown responded: "Take them teeth out when u Sucking my [expletive] HOE."

Apparently, several more tweets followed between the two. Johnson at one point corrected Brown's spelling -- "It's 'HO' not 'HOE' you ignorant [expletive]" she wrote -- and linked to a story about his 2009 assault involving then-girlfriend Rihanna. For his part, Brown -- whose Twitter handle was @ChrisBrown -- repeatedly insulted Johnson.

Celebrity Tweet has compiled the past month's worth of tweets from Brown, who reportedly had 11.6 million followers. The final few read: "To teambreezy... Know that I'm not upset. Just felt like entertaining the ignorance. These [expletive] crazy.. Further proved my point of how immature society is. #CarpeDiem Catch me in traffic..."

PHOTOS: Worst Twitter gaffes

Johnson's final tweet on the matter was posted Sunday.

"According to Team Breezy, if you have a difference of opinion with someone, 'eating a [expletive]' is the cure for any and all problems. ?#Knowledge," she wrote.

According to Huffington Post, Johnson has mocked Brown on Twitter since his 2009 arrest. Her tweet "Call me old fashioned, but Chris Brown should be in prison" has been retweeted more than 1,800 times.

Brown previously deleted his Twitter account in 2009 -- he was then using the handle @MechanicalDummy -- after going on a rant against Walmart and other major retailers, who he claimed had refused to carry his album "Graffiti "(Walmart, in fact, did carry the disc).

PHOTOS: Kanye West, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Chris Brown rock the BET Awards

At the time, he tweeted: "JUST WAS AT WALMART IN wallingford CT,844 north colony.. the didnt even have my album in the back... not on shelves, saw for myself...we talked to the managers and the didnt even know anything. wow!!! but they had alicia keys album ready for release for this tuesday comin...no disprespect to alicia at all.. just givin an example to whos album is loaded and ready to go next week."

He later wrote: "I WANNA THANK MY FANS FOR ALL THE SUPPORT. I LOVE YALL. GOODBYE!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Brown's latest Twitter-related controversy comes just a few weeks after he tweeted out a photo of himself dressed as a terrorist for Halloween, which many people called racist.

He also cursed out his critics on Twitter after the Grammys earlier this year before deleting those tweets.

Related content:

Source: http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2012/11/26/15453754-chris-brown-deletes-twitter-account-after-heated-exchange-with-comedy-writer?lite

voting hours election results Doug Martin Barack Obama & Joe Biden Am I registered to vote Voter registration snl

Gaza cease-fire raises hopes for reconstruction

A Palestinian boy looks from the rooftop of a destroyed house in Gaza City, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012. A leading Islamic cleric in the Gaza Strip has ruled it a sin to violate the recent cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas militant group that governs the Palestinian territory according a religious legitimacy to the truce and giving the Gaza government strong backing to enforce it. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

A Palestinian boy looks from the rooftop of a destroyed house in Gaza City, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012. A leading Islamic cleric in the Gaza Strip has ruled it a sin to violate the recent cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas militant group that governs the Palestinian territory according a religious legitimacy to the truce and giving the Gaza government strong backing to enforce it. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

(AP) ? Mohammed Falah Azzam has been through this before.

His mother's home was bombed in the 2008-09 Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip, which left hundreds dead and thousands of homes destroyed. In renewed fighting last week, an entire block of buildings housing his extended family was badly damaged in an airstrike that Israel said was aimed at a militant.

While none of his relatives was hurt, the 61-year-old retired schoolteacher once again has to worry about providing shelter for his family. Some relatives are sleeping in an empty shop, squeezed in with other family members. Others are spending their nights in rooms covered in plastic wrap to shield them from the winter rain because all the windows were blown out.

"This is going to cost thousands," Azzam said. "The longer I wait, the more damage will happen," he added, pointing to a heavily damaged building sitting atop tilting concrete columns.

Azzam finds himself caught again in a pile of paperwork to seek assistance, trying to secure hard-to-get construction materials. This time, he hopes the process will be smoother, thanks to both Israel's pledges to ease its longstanding border blockade and the newfound political clout of Gaza's Hamas rulers in the region.

Israel promised to ease the blockade as part of a cease-fire last week that ended eight days of intense fighting. But difficult negotiations lie ahead, and there is no firm timeline for lifting the restrictions.

Israel launched its offensive Nov. 14 in response to months of rocket fire out of Gaza. It carried out some 1,500 airstrikes during the fighting, while Palestinian militants lobbed a similar number of rockets into Israel.

The damage to buildings in Gaza appears less extensive than it was four years ago. The United Nations estimates 10,000 homes were destroyed or damaged, while Hamas has put the number at about 8,000, including 500 that were destroyed or heavily damaged. In comparison, U.N. relief agencies said as many as 40,000 homes were affected in the earlier round of fighting.

Israel says its airstrikes are aimed at militants, and it blames Hamas for the damage, accusing the group of using residential areas for cover.

Reconstruction since the 2008-9 fighting has been slow, in large part because of Israel's blockade. Israel imposed the restrictions in 2007, after Hamas, a militant group sworn to its destruction, wrested power over the coastal strip from the government of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Under international pressure, Israel loosened the blockade in 2010 but maintained tight restrictions on imports of glass, cement, metal and other construction materials, saying they could be diverted for military use. Only U.N agencies and international organizations in the Palestinian territory are allowed to import such material from Israel for their own projects.

To make up the shortage, a bustling smuggling industry through underground tunnels along the Egyptian border has sprung up. While prices for key construction goods have come down, they still remain expensive for the majority of the population in Gaza, where the unemployment rate is over 30 percent and 80 percent of the people rely on U.N. handouts.

"The blockade in terms of housing impacts us primarily ? the U.N. ?and the people who are most vulnerable who don't have access to jobs or economic opportunity," said Scott Anderson, deputy director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency. "People who have money, it is easily available."

In the short term, there is no relief in sight. During the recent offensive, Israel heavily targeted the tunnels, which are also used to bring weapons into Gaza. Residents along the border say that smugglers and tunnel owners are still inspecting the damage but that many of the tunnels still operate, though at reduced capacity.

An Egyptian security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, estimated that half the tunnels are not functioning.

With a sullied face and wearing only his undergarments, Azzam gave up his search for valuables in the rubble of his destroyed home on a recent day. He sat down to take a break and do some math.

His mother's house was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in 2009. Since then, he has barely managed to rebuild one of its two floors. A $25,000 grant he received from an Arab fund did not cover the costs, and materials for the project have been hard to come by.

The Hamas government has given him $1,000 to find a place to live for now, and each member of the extended family received a similar amount. With housing in tight supply and rents skyrocketing, Azzam said the money will not last long.

"As we look there are no places to begin with," he said. "If we find a place, rent will be around $300 or $400. Before it was $200."

Yasser al-Shanti, deputy of the ministry of public works and housing in the Hamas government, said construction materials will start flowing into Gaza again once the tunnels are up and running again.

But Hamas' real hope is that Israel and Egypt will lift border restrictions to allow large quantities of goods into the territory through proper border crossings. Hamas has high hopes for Egypt's new Islamist government, which is far more sympathetic to the Islamic group than the ousted regime of Hosni Mubarak.

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt is currently limited to foot traffic. Hamas, an offshoot of Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood, wants Egypt to turn the crossing into a bustling cargo terminal.

"We expect that international and Arab institutions are ready to help. We don't expect to have a problem," al-Shanti said.

Hamas has put the damage to Gaza's civilian infrastructure at roughly $750 million, a sum that will probably have to be raised through special U.N. emergency appeals and donations from wealthy Arab countries.

The future of the crossing will be a central issue in indirect, Egyptian-brokered negotiations between Israel and Hamas. Under the cease-fire, Israel made a vague commitment to ease its closing of Gaza. But the details must be negotiated.

With Hamas rejecting Israel's key demand ? that arms smuggling into Gaza be halted ? it remains far from certain whether Hamas will get what it wants. Egypt also has not been clear how far it is willing to open its border, fearing that this will allow Israel to "dump" Gaza on Egypt and undermine hopes for reconciliation between Hamas and Abbas' rival government in the West Bank.

Ayman el-Kholi, whose two-story home was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike aimed at militants, said Hamas government representatives and fighters, including Hamas strongman Mahmoud Zahar, visited him and promised compensation.

"They promised that after things calm down, they will begin to reconstruct all homes destroyed and not just ours," he said.

In the meantime, the 41-year-old banker has sent his six children to sleep at various relatives' homes, and he is staying with a friend. The rubble from the destroyed building was still in a heap on Sunday as he waited for the only government tractor to come remove it.

The entire block was damaged by airstrike. Shops were buried and a nearby workshop for electrical appliances was severely damaged.

"We don't save in banks. All my money was in the house. All of it is now under the rubble, around $10,000 plus my wife's gold," el-Kholi said. "We are waiting for an opening of the crossing. We are waiting for donor countries, from Arab countries, to help us rebuild the house again."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-11-25-Palestinians-Rebuilding%20Gaza/id-92022b1aea614820bb0dd91caeb64a42

who do you think you are superpac steve appleton bishop eddie long madonna give me all your luvin video roseanne barr president green party

Irish editor resigns following criticism over Princess Kate pics

The Sept. 15, 2012 edition of the Irish Daily Star had topless pictures of Britain's Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge.

By Isolde Raftery, NBC News

The editor of the Irish Daily Star has resigned following an internal investigation into his tabloid?s decision to publish topless photos of Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, while she was sunbathing in the south of France, the Irish Times reported.

Michael O?Kane, the editor, was suspended in September after investors of Independent Star Limited, the paper?s parent company, demanded O?Kane be removed from his position. Richard Desmond, whose Northern and Shell company co-owns the paper, demanded that the paper be shut down, according to the Times.

Following O?Kane?s resignation Saturday, the editors at the Irish Daily Star expressed a different view of the situation, according to itv.com: ?Mr. O?Kane acted at all times in a highly professional and appropriate manner and in the best interests of the newspaper,? they said in a statement.


The blurry, long-lens photos of the princess and her husband, William, were originally published in Closer, a French magazine. At the time, a statement from St. James? Palace in London said the couple was ?hugely saddened? by the publication. The royals contended they had ?every right to privacy in the remote house? where they were sunbathing.

The statement from St. James? Palace even drew a comparison to Princess Diana, William's mother and the Princess of Wales: ?The incident is reminiscent of the worst excesses of the press and paparazzi during the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, and all the more upsetting to The Duke and Duchess for being so.?

The images were not published in Britain, nor were they published in the Northern Ireland editions of the Irish Daily Star. Northern Ireland remains under British rule.

Both co-owners of the Irish Daily Star had criticized O?Kane?s decision to publish the photos but the Independent News and Media, which has holdings in Ireland, Northern Ireland and South Africa, ultimately decided that shutting down the paper would be unnecessarily extreme, according to the BBC.

More world stories from NBC News:

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/24/15414658-irish-daily-star-editor-resigns-for-publishing-nude-kate-middleton-photos?lite

national enquirer whitney houston casket photo jk rowling qnexa kingdom of heaven national enquirer whitney houston arizona republican debate arizona debate

US science could face fiscal cliff doom

The American science programs that landed the first man on the moon, found cures for deadly diseases and bred crops that feed the world now face the possibility of becoming relics in the story of human progress.

American scientific research and development stands to lose thousands of jobs and face a starvation diet of reduced funding if politicians fail to compromise and halt the United States' march towards the fiscal cliff's sequestration of federal funds.

  1. Science news from NBCNews.com

    1. Climate issue heats up after superstorm

      Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: The climate change issue has been virtually a non-issue during the presidential campaign ? but it's primed to take a higher profile after the elections, in part due to Hurricane Sandy's horrific aftermath.

    2. How to cope with lab-animal tragedy
    3. Elephant can speak Korean ? out loud
    4. Bulgaria claims to find Europe's oldest town

NEWS: What's the Fiscal Cliff?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 1,082,370 U.S. citizens employed in the life sciences, such as biology and genetics, as well as physical and social sciences. Of these, approximately 31,000 stand to lose their jobs if sequestration takes place, according to a study conducted for the Aerospace Industries Association by Steve Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis and professor of public policy at George Mason University.

These potential job losses represent approximately 3 percent of the total life, physical and social science jobs in the United States.

The possible $56.7 billion cut to the the Department of Defense (DOD) budget may result in 14,982 lost science jobs out of a total 325,693 lost, or 4.6 percent of the total DOD jobs cut, according to Fuller's report. Reducing the budgets of other agencies, such as the U.S. Geological Survey, by $59 billion could result in 15,980 science jobs lost, or 3.8 percent of the 420,529 total non-DOD jobs destroyed.

Unfortunately, the loss of research and development jobs is only the tip of the unemployment iceberg the fiscal cliff could create if scientific progress loses funding.

"The 31,000 figure does not include the indirect job losses, such as subcontractors, suppliers and vendors, or the induced job impacts," Fuller told Discovery News. "Induced jobs are those supported by employee's spending on goods and services, so these are unlikely to be STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) type jobs but rather retail, consumer services, education and health, construction and those types of occupations.

"The direct jobs are clearly the immediate losses and encompass most of the STEM-type jobs," said Fuller. "There will be some subcontractor job losses, including some STEM type jobs. For DOD contracts in general, subcontractor jobs are about 26 percent of the total where the direct jobs are about 30 percent. The remaining job losses, 44 percent, are induced."

NEWS: Fiscal Cliff: Just the Facts

Job losses would be spread across the nation, but certain states would be hit harder than others. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) calculated that California would lose the most research and development funding, with a $11.3 million loss. Maryland, Virginia, Massachusetts and Washington D.C. rounded out the list of top five biggest losers.

"We won't really know where the job losses will be until they happen," said Matthew Hourihan, director of the AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program, "but it will probably be most acute in those states with the most knowledge-intensive workforces, since most of these are substantial performers of federally funded science."

"Not only would research itself suffer, but the cutbacks would likely have ripple effects into the future, as young scientists and science students would have fewer opportunities," said Hourihan. "So the immediate and direct job losses don't really tell the full story, because you'll also have fewer opportunities for new jobs."

The job losses from the fiscal cliff would be tragic enough by themselves, but the loss would also set America further behind other nations in the race towards scientific and technological leadership. The nation which led the race to the moon could find itself looking up to nations it once left Earthbound.

"Sequestration would be dropping an anchor on the science enterprise, while many others are setting their sails," said Hourihan. "As an example, here are some factoids derived from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data: since 1999, the US has increased the research intensity of its economy by 10 percent. Over the same period, research intensity in Israel, Finland, and Germany have grown about twice as fast. In Taiwan, it's grown five times as fast. In South Korea, it's grown six times as fast. In China, the number two funder behind us, it's grown ten times as fast."

NEWS: Obama Hints at New Drive on Climate Change

Although he notes it is impossible to put an exact time line on how far back the fiscal cliff's sequestration would set back American science, Hourihan suggests agencies like the National Institute of Health could be set back by a decade or more.

A scarcity of federal research dollars means organizations will have to say no to more promising research. A report by the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) presented figures stating that the National Science Foundation could lose $586 million, which would result in the grant proposal success rate dropping from 22 percent to 16 percent. The National Institutes of Health would likely fund 700 fewer grants as a result of a $2.5 billion cut, which would represent a drop in the proposal success rate from 19 to 14 percent.

"This means that researchers start spending more time writing grants to keep their labs running and their lab personnel employed," said Robert Gropp, director of public policy at the AIBS. "In essence, they start doing less science ? there time is going to preserving funding. This can certainly slow scientific progress."

Gropp noted that the sequestration cuts would come on top of cuts that some agencies have been taking for a number of years. Funding for the U.S. Geological Survey, for example, has been essentially flat for a number of years. So, another deep cut is going to have a significant impact on the agency.

ANALYSIS: Most Americans Favor Action on Climate Change

New science may be delayed because of the importance of sustaining data monitoring for existing programs, said Gropp. Like the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, it will take all the running scientists can do just to stay in place monitoring the data coming in from existing programs. Cutting funding hamstrings scientists ability to run even faster and move forward.

"I think the federal agencies and the congressional appropriators have worked hard to carefully evaluate scientific research programs," said Gropp. "I think they have made the cuts to programs that were underperforming or of lower priority. I am not sure that there is much more that can be cut without very real and long-term negative ramifications."

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49958870/ns/technology_and_science-science/

kids choice awards ncaa final four 2012 texas chainsaw massacre uk vs louisville university of kansas buckeye west side story

Saxby Chambliss: One more Republican breaks ranks over anti-tax pledge

Republicans are grappling with growing rifts in their ranks over a no-new-tax pledge that has been rock solid for more than 20 years. That quiet debate within the GOP could determine how Congress deals with its looming 'fiscal cliff.'

By Gail Russell Chaddock,?Staff writer / November 24, 2012

President Obama, accompanied by House Speaker John Boehner (R) of Ohio, speaks to reporters in the Roosevelt Room of the White House as he hosted a meeting of the bipartisan, bicameral leadership of Congress to discuss the deficit and economy in Washington at a Nov. 16 meeting.

Carolyn Kaster/AP/File

Enlarge

The sharpest struggle in the lame-duck session of Congress, which picks up again on Monday, may well be within GOP ranks, as Republicans grapple with whether to relax a no-new-tax pledge that has been fixed party orthodoxy for nearly a generation.

Skip to next paragraph

' + google_ads[0].line2 + '
' + google_ads[0].line3 + '

'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { ad_unit += ''; } } document.getElementById("ad_unit").innerHTML += ad_unit; google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_client = "pub-6743622525202572"; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_feedback = "on"; google_ad_type = "text"; google_adtest = "on"; google_image_size = '230x105'; google_skip = '0'; // -->

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) of Georgia is the latest lawmaker to formally renege on the pledge. In a television interview on Wednesday, he said that he's no longer supporting the pledge because "times have changed significantly, and I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge."

Such breaks in GOP ranks could become decisive as GOP leaders negotiate with Democrats and the White House over how to resolve the "fiscal cliff," or some $600 billion in mandatory spending cuts and tax increases set to take effect in 2013.

Breaking a no-new-tax pledge can be toxic at the polls. President George H. W. Bush lost his bid for a second term after bypassing his 1988 "Read my lips: no new taxes" pledge in his budget agreement with a Democrat-controlled Congress in 1990. Since then, most GOP members of Congress and even a few Democrats have signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge by Americans for Tax Reform, an anti-tax group.

After Senator Chambliss's announcement, ATR President Grover Norquist shot back in a statement on Friday: "Raising taxes on the people of Georgia to pay for Obama's reckless spending is not the right thing to do for America or Georgia."

"We have a problem because Washington spends too much, not because Sen. Chambliss has failed so far to raise taxes on the hard-working men and women of Georgia," he added.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D) of Nebraska broke his no-new-tax pledge and soon after announced his retirement from the Senate in 2012. "[Senator Nelson] withdrew because polling showed he could not win a general election having both lied to his state and raised their taxes," Mr. Norquist said in Friday's statement.

Heading into the 2012 elections, 279 incumbent lawmakers in Congress had signed the pledge, up from 208 in 2010, according to the ATR website.? In addition, 286 challengers had taken the pledge, up from 241 in 2010. (The ATR site does not expunge the names of those who have since repudiated the pledge.)

But critics say that the pledge's influence is waning. Freshman Rep. Scott Rigell (R) of Virginia, who signed the pledge when he first ran for office in 2010, campaigned against the pledge in 2012 in a state with a strong tea party presence, yet won back? his seat with 54 percent of the vote.

Nine-term Rep. Steven LaTourette (R) of Ohio, one of the first House Republicans to publicly repudiate the pledge, notes that when he first signed on in May 1994, the national debt was nearing $4.7 trillion. Now, the nation is on track to owe $20 trillion. "To be beholden to some pledge when the future of the country is at stake is kind of silly," told the Monitor in November 2011. (Mr. LaTourette also declined to run for reelection in 2012, but appeared to be in no danger of losing his seat.)

In addition to Senator Chambliss, Sens. Tom Coburn (R) of Oklahoma, John McCain (R) of Arizona, Lindsey Graham (R) of South Carolina, Mike Crapo (R) of Idaho, and Lamar Alexander (R) of Tennessee have publicly repudiated elements of the pledge, especially its call to oppose eliminating tax breaks, unless offset by tax cuts elsewhere. Those six dissenters may mean that Republicans no longer have the votes to sustain a filibuster of any deal that includes tax hikes.

After a White House meeting on Nov. 16, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky said: "We're prepared to put revenue on the table, provided we fix the real problem," that is: a $16 trillion national debt and unsustainable entitlement spending. House Speaker John Boehner says that he is open to revenue as part of a solution to the fiscal cliff, but not to raising tax rates on "job creators."

President Obama, claiming a mandate on tax hikes for the wealthiest Americans in the 2012 vote, says he won't budge on the need to raise taxes on the richest Americans, that is individuals with incomes over $200,000 or? families with incomes over $250,000.

Norquist says that, in the end, Republicans won't blink either. "No one is caving," he said told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Saturday. "For 20 years Democrats have tried over and over to trick Republicans into breaking the pledge," he added. "It hasn't happened."

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/jBc2yscYWu4/Saxby-Chambliss-One-more-Republican-breaks-ranks-over-anti-tax-pledge

Pumpkin Pie Jack Taylor Apple Pie Recipe black friday green bean casserole How long to cook a turkey Turkey Cooking Time