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Oklahoma women upend No. 10 Texas Tech 71-68 Jan 11 11:18 PM US/Eastern (AP) - Whitney Hand scored 24 points and freshman Sharane Campbell scored the final seven points as Oklahoma overcame a 10-minute stretch without a field goal to beat No. 10 Texas Tech 71-68 Wednesday night. Jordan Barncastle missed a contested 3-pointer from the right wing with 2 seconds left to try and tie it for the Lady Raiders (14-1, 2-1 Big 12), who suffered their first loss of the season after winning their first 14 games. The Sooners (10-4, 2-1) rushed off the bench in celebration when the buzzer sounded, celebrating a breakthrough win in a rare season that finds them outside the Top 25. Christine Hyde scored a career-high 21 points to lead the Lady Raiders. Kierra Mallard, Tech's top scorer and rebounder, didn't score over the final 31 minutes and fouled out with 2:33 remaining as the Sooners started to rally for the win.

Markets cheered by Fed rate outlook TOKYO (Reuters) - Equities, commodities and the euro extended gains on Thursday after the U.S. Federal Reserve said it would keep interest rates low for a much longer-than-expected period, providing ample liquidity to help spur growth. The prospect for unfavorable interest rate differentials undermined the dollar, pushing it to a five-week low against the euro as the U.S. central bank took the spotlight away from Europe's debt woes. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose to its highest in nearly 3 months and was up 1.1 percent, led by the materials and energy sectors as oil and gold extended their overnight rally. Hong Kong shares .HSI, which resumed trading after a three-day Lunar New Year holiday, outperformed Asian peers on fresh buying in commodities-related stocks, rising 1.4 percent. Financial spreadbetters expected Britain's FTSE 100 .FTSE, Germany's DAX .GDAXI and France's CAC-40 .FCHI to open up around 0.4-0.6 percent. FOMC statement word cloud: link.reuters.com/wud36s Economic, rate projections: link.reuters.com/zud36s Bernanke news conference: link.reuters.com/xud36s For a 24-hour gold technical outlook: here "Expectations for abundant liquidity available for a longer period of time supported markets across the assets, although the reaction was much stronger than anticipated," Yuji Saito, director of the foreign exchange division at Credit Agricole Bank in Tokyo. "The Fed also left the door open for a third round of quantitative easing to protect growth, and that, coming at this juncture, eased nervousness," he said. Japan's Nikkei average .N225 bucked the trend and closed down 0.4 percent, slipping from a three-month high. .T Copper rose for a second day, while Brent crude topped $110 a barrel and U.S. crude rose above $100. "Commodities are seen as a hedge against any weakness in the currency markets, especially after Bernanke's statement last night," Jackson Wong, vice-president for equity sales at Tanrich Securities. Gold climbed to a six-week high, adding to Wednesday's 2.5 percent gain to stay above $1,700 an ounce. "Bernanke's comments delivered the strongest message yet to highlight the fundamental factor supporting gold's rally over the past decade, which is that bullion's value is enhanced as a currency's value depreciates when lots of money is printed," said Yuichi Ikemizu, branch manager for Standard Bank in Tokyo. The euro rose to a five-week high around $1.3127 on Thursday, while the yen stood at 77.61 yen, after hitting a two-month low near 78.29 yen on Wednesday. The dollar index .DXY, measured against key currencies, hovered near five-week lows below 80. A prolonged period of super-easy monetary conditions is negative for the dollar, but the euro will remain pressured by the euro zone debt crisis and the market's focus will shift back to Europe, said Credit Agricole's Saito. The Fed said on Wednesday it would keep interest rates near zero through at least 2014, which was longer than many investors anticipated. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said at a news conference the central bank was ready to offer the economy additional stimulus. The Fed also took the historic step of setting an inflation target. Worries about Greece possibly facing a disorderly default persisted and curbed aggressive risk taking, but a report showing German business sentiment unexpectedly rose for the third month in a row in January eased concerns about Europe's largest economy falling into a recession. This followed data showing resilience in euro zone manufacturing and services, also suggesting the region may avoid a recession. The ample euro liquidity filtered through dollar funding markets, pushing the key interbank rate for dollars down further, away from around 30-months highs at the start of the year, while a gauge of dollar funding strains improved to levels not seen since August 2011 on Wednesday. <MMT/> Improved cross-asset sentiment spilled over to the Asian credit markets, with spreads on the iTraxx Asia ex-Japan investment grade index narrowing by 3 basis points. Additional reporting by Clement Tan in Hong Kong; Editing by Alex Richardson

Andrew Miller novel Pure wins Costa Book of the Year 2012 There may be a little frivolity, some nice shoes or something, but basically you live off it. He said he was not sure if his next novel would have a historical setting and he would follow the "curious path of my own obsessions." He said: "Writing is a kind of organised dreaming. So we do, we sit in a room and dream up strange places and strange people and set them running. Pure is the story of a young engineer sent to Paris on the orders of the king to demolish an ancient cemetery that is overflowing with the dead. Mr Miller said he even toyed with the idea of not writing any more novels after finishing this one, but said: "I don't really know if I could stop. It is in very deep and has been most of my life, reading and writing, I can't really imagine a life that doesn't involve both activities at the very centre. London Evening Standard editor Geordie Greig, who chaired the judging panel, praised the book's "vivid rendition" of the era, but admitted the panel had been split with "quite bitter dissent" with some judges backing Mr Hollis. He said the novel was "a morality tale that engrosses with its vivid rendition of pre-revolutionary France." The judges, who included novelist Patrick Gale and actor Hugh Dennis, spent 90 minutes before coming to a decision. Mr Greig said there had been "passionately held views over two books," adding: "It really was a fierce debate and there was quite bitter dissent and argument to find the winner." He described Mr Hollis' Now All Roads Lead To France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas as "an incredibly subtle brilliant biography." The other books in the running were Christie Watson's debut novel Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, Carol Ann Duffy's collection of verse, The Bees, and Blood Red Road by children's author Moira Young. Mr Greig said judging books in such different genres was like comparing bananas with chicken curry. Mr Miller, who has written five other novels and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001, was announced as the winner at an awards ceremony in central London tonight. Jonathan Ruppin, web editor for Foyles bookshops and a judge for the 2010 Costa Novel Award, said the win could give Bristol-born Mr Miller the "commercial success his stylish and absorbing novels have long deserved." He said: "Pure perfectly captures the mood of a downtrodden and angry nation, on the verge of overthrowing a self-serving and out-of-touch ruling class - it's very much a book for our time."

Record numbers of orphaned pups at a seal sanctuary in The Netherlands A seal sanctuary in The Netherlands has seen a massive increase in the number of seal pups washing up along the Dutch coastline. "There has been dramatic increase in numbers as a result of the recent winter storms in the Wadden Sea," said Karst van der Meulen, who runs a seal creche in Pieterburen, some 200 kilometres (120 miles) northeast of Amsterdam. Picture: Peter Dejong/AP

BBC News - Parents should be free to smack - David Lammy

Gov. O'Malley: "Stay tuned" for a transportation bill Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley addresses the House of Delegates on the opening day of the 2012 legislative session in Annapolis. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) said Sunday that he remains committed to introducing a transportation bill during the 90-day legislative session, even if raising additional revenue to pay for it is unpopular. "Doing nothing doesn't seem to be a responsible option," O'Malley said, acknowledging a tough sales job ahead. "There's no "easy" button. There's no magic wand. O'Malley weeks ago floated the idea of raising the gas tax to pay for additional transportation projects, but the legislation was not among a package of bills he formally unveiled last week. Since then, several lawmakers have questioned the prospects for passage of a transportation bill, particularly in the House of Delegates. A Washington Post poll published Sunday found that fewer than half of Marylanders support even a modest increase in the gas tax. O'Malley is scheduled to deliver his annual State of the State speech on Wednesday. "Stay tuned," he said, when asked if he would outline his plan at that time. O'Malley acknowledged to reporters that he is pushing an agenda this year that collectively asks a lot of lawmakers, including several tough votes. "Part of the responsibility leaders have is to make themselves vulnerable from time to time. . . in order to make the future better for the people of the state," O'Malley said.

Spain's Pomares wins at quirky Serbia film festival Spanish director Fernando Pomares won the top prize at Serbia's quirky Kuestendorf film festival in the rustic mountain village of Drvengrad, which ended Monday. The Kuestendorf festival, founded by Serb director Emir Kusturica, is a long way from Cannes with the red carpet treatment replaced by a carpet of snow and sweaters instead of tuxedos. Pomares won the Serbian festival's top prize, the Golden Egg, for his short film "Alto Sauce," the Tanjug news agency reported. The runners-up Silver Egg went to Serb filmmaker Jelena Gavrilovic for her short 'Momci gde ste' -- rough translation 'Where have all the guys gone?" while the Bronze Egg was awarded to Polish director Piotr Subbotko for his film "Glasgow." These films were deemed to be the best among some 20 independent movies in competition, including candidates from Belgium, Britain, Estonia, Italy, Canada, France and the United States. Kusturica -- a two-time Golden Palm winner at the Cannes film festival -- relishes mixing with the guests at Drvengrad, which has been his home since 2006.

Man locked daughter in cage SPRINGFIELD, Ohio, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- A Springfield, Ohio, father faces one count of child endangerment for allegedly tying up his daughter and locking her in a dog cage, police say. James Tapke, 41, is being held in Hamilton County jail for allegedly restraining his daughter "in a cruel manner" on Jan. 10. Court documents say Tapke bound the girl's hands and feet with duct tape, then threw her in a large dog cage and locked her in. He dropped small amounts of water on the girl's face while she was locked in the cage for 20 minutes until her brother let her out. The girl poured water on her father's head to get back at him. In response, he bound her up and put her back in the cage. He then ordered his son to get an electrical jump pack so he could electrify the cage, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported Friday. Despite threatening several times, Tapke did not attempt to electrify the cage. Instead, he left the jump pack in front of the cage where the girl could see it. During the whole ordeal, Tapke and his son snapped pictures of her and posted them to Facebook. The ages of the children have not been released and it is unclear who is caring for them while their father is in custody. Child welfare workers are looking into the situation.

Reader: Wahlberg's 9/11 boast ignores heroes Reader: Wahlberg's 9/11 boast ignores heroes - Celebrities Reader: Wahlberg's 9/11 boast ignores real heroes In our comment of the week, a reader says actor should be ashamed of remarks On "Mark Wahlberg says he'd have landed plane on 9/11" Gloria Baenen: "Easy to say ... and remarks like that detract from the bravery of those people on that flight, who lost their lives trying to save others. Shame on you, Mark. On "What the @#$%! is 'Family' tot about to say?" Erica Cable Meyer: "I think it's sad that swearing is considered 'adult language.' Why is it OK for adults to do it but not kids? We need to get back to the standards that we used to have that it was unacceptable for even adults to swear. That's my 2 cents. On "The Boss dives back into politics with new CD" Andy Tolsma: "Bruce has shown time and again with his music or his spoken word that he is a patriot. He doesn't kowtow to partisan politics. He just says it like he feels it. On "Personal stories taught child actor about 9/11" Nick DeStefano: "9/11 was 10 years ago. Can we please move on? Were people still acting dodgy around the subject of Pearl Harbor in 1951? I doubt it. We, as a nation, are acting like an abused person, constantly seeking pity and sympathy from ourselves and the rest of the world. Get with it, time to move on. On "Target offering 'Twilight' preview, wedding flower" Gina Drope: "I always buy the special editions from Target. I'll be getting the Blu-ray, not sure if the flower is in it. However, I will avoid the sneak peek. It would be a blast but there are going to be too many screaming fans, I'm sure. No thanks.

Kenya's Mutai to defend London Marathon title Kenya's Emmanuel Mutai will go head to head with compatriot Patrick Makau in a battle for the London Marathon title on April 22. Reigning men's champion Mutai will run the event in the English capital in what promises to be an enthralling battle with marathon world record holder Makau. Race organisers confirmed on Friday that the pair will be among six Kenyans competing just three months before the Olympic Games come to London. Kenyan selectors will name their final three entrants for the Olympic marathon just eight days after the London race. Mutai shattered the London course record to win the 2011 race in two hours four minutes 40 seconds and this year he will also be up against double world champion Abel Kirui and three-time London Marathon champion Martin Lel. London Marathon race director David Bedford said: "Last year was an amazing one for Kenyan marathon runners around the world and we are delighted to welcome this hugely talented half dozen to London for the 2012 men's race. With the Olympic men's marathon due to be held here exactly 16 weeks later, we expect the battle for podium places to be even more ferocious than usual.

Occupy squalor: the ultimate test for helicopter parents They are now sleeping under tarps, in the mud, rain and frigid temperatures, in an encampment that is home to an epic urban rat infestation. And their new neighbors are a sizable portion of the nation's hard-core homeless population. Next week hordes of them plan to Occupy Congress, a protest that could spark confrontations with the U.S. Capitol Police and lead to arrests. They eat donated or dumpster-scavenged food - peanut butter, bread and doughnuts (sorry, Hostess, no Twinkies) were lunch the other day - or they may even go on a hunger strike. Take that, helicopter parents. These are the mothers and fathers who demanded laws for bike helmets, car seats and warning labels on every plastic bag and bucket in the universe. They had the home number of every teacher from preschool to college. And they've even been known to call up their grown kids" new bosses after junior didn't get a promotion. But what happens when these highly groomed offspring go off and join the hundreds living in the Occupy movements camps? To whom do you file a complaint? Who gets the irate phone call? She still keeps asking me to come home. I get the calls. And the texts. Every day," answered one 18-year-old Occupier in D.C."s McPherson Square. The camps are full of a wide range of ages and socioeconomic backgrounds, sure. But the movement's biggest population and primary strategists are the twentysomething Millennials forever burdened with their parents" insistence on participation trophies for every team member. So now the Occuparents find themselves struggling with whether to support their child's participation in a sweeping, political protest movement and the fact that their cul-de-sac kids are living in total squalor. Sam Jewler, one of the four protesters who staged a dramatic hunger strike in the name of D.C. voting rights , fasted for 11 days - until his parents nagged him into eating. His dad, Chevy Chase resident Leonard Jewler, was featured in a Marc Fisher blog post years ago when he tried to answer parental school angst with a data analysis of whether kids from D.C. public schools ascend to the same caliber of colleges as kids who went to private schools. After enough carping from the "rents, young Jewler said he broke his fast last month with a glass of coconut juice and a bowl of miso broth. "I was feeling pretty much the same way I was the last week, but my parents were becoming increasingly distressed," Jewler told The Post's Tim Craig. I didn't feel like it was fair anymore to put that burden on them. Eat. On Wednesday, the protesters had a chance to do some of that nurturing themselves, when they found a baby wearing nothing but a onesie and mittens in one of the tents and called authorities. The father was arrested, and the baby was handed over to District child protective services. Not exactly a helicopter dad, right?

U.N. tries to reach 60,000 fleeing South Sudan violence KHARTOUM (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Friday it was trying to reach some 60,000 people who have fled tribal violence in a remote area of South Sudan and urgently need food, shelter and medical assistance. South Sudan declared independence in July under a 2005 peace agreement with Khartoum that ended decades of civil war. But the new African nation has been struggling to end tribal and rebel violence that killed thousands last year. Fighting broke out last week between members of the Lou Nuer tribe and the rival Murle tribe. Some 6,000 armed Lou Nuer members attacked the town of Pibor in Jonglei state bordering north Sudan on Monday. U.N. sources said fighting had now almost died down after the army took control of Pibor but 60,000 people were now hiding in the bush or trying to return to their communities. "The government says this is a disaster and we make every effort to reach them," Lise Grande, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for South Sudan, told Reuters. We are concentrating on five locations of which four we can only reach by air. Three of these locations have been burned to the ground," she said. South Sudan Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin said the number of casualties was still unclear because officials and aid workers had not reached all parts of the affected area. "So far, we have around 20 dead but we cannot say for sure because we need to assess first the situation on the ground," he said, adding that around 160 wounded were being treated in hospitals in the capital Juba. Doctor Without Borders (MSF), the only aid group active in the area, said last week it had suspended its work in the area after two of its clinics were damaged by fighting. Reporting by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Roger Atwood

NBA: Memphis 93, New Orleans 87 NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- Marc Gasol led Memphis with 22 points Wednesday and the Grizzlies fought off a late comeback to down New Orleans 93-87. Memphis scored seven straight points late in the third period and took a 72-67 lead into the final quarter. The lead grew to 12 with 5 minutes remaining before the Hornets ran off 10 straight points to get back in the game. O.J. Mayo stopped the New Orleans run by hitting a jumper with 67 seconds left and the Grizzlies pulled down four offensive rebounds during the final minute to protect their lead. Gasol had 12 rebounds and seven assists. Mike Conley had 18 points and 10 assists and Mayo had 16 points in the Grizzlies' fourth straight win. Jarret Jack hit 11-of-15 shots from the field and scored 27 points for New Orleans, which has lost five in a row.

Conference focuses on military challenges FAIRFAX, Va., Jan. 6 (UPI) -- U.S. defense spending, cyberwarfare and China's military buildup take center stage this month when military and industry experts meet in California. The venue is West 2012, the largest defense and information technology conference and exhibition on the U.S. West Coast sponsored by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association and the U.S. Naval Institute. The theme is "America's Military at the Crossroads: What's Out and What's In for 2012 and Beyond?" Among the scheduled speakers: U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. George J. Flynn, director for Joint Force Development, J-7, The Joint Staff; U.S. Navy Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, chief of Naval Operations; retired Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Navy Undersecretary Robert O. Work. AFCEA said in addition to panel discussions and exhibits of panel discussions, more than 400 exhibitors will display the latest products in the fields of communications, homeland security, biometrics and other defense technologies. In addition to the discussion panels, there will be technical sessions on specific technology programs being explored by the Navy and Marines, as well as seminars on veteran re-training and a career fair. The conference is Jan. 24-26 in San Diego.

The Blaggers Guide To...The Hatchet Job of the Year The inaugural Hatchet Job of the Year Prize has been created to reward "the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the last 12 months." Dreamed up by the editors of The Omnivore, a website that collates reviews, it seeks to champion professional literary criticism in a world of bloggers and online opinion-formers where "a tweet by Stephen Fry [has] greater impact on a book's sales than a dozen broadsheet reviews." The Omnivore's founders, Anna Baddeley and Fleur Macdonald want to promote "integrity and wit" in reviewers. However, time is running out: "The professional critic has yet to draw his last breath, but there's no mistaking the death rattle." On the shortlist are Mary Beard on Robert Hughes's Rome, published in The Guardian; Geoff Dyer on Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending, in The New York Times; Camilla Long on Monique Roffey's With the Kisses of his Mouth, in The Sunday Times; Lachlan Mackinnon on Geoffrey Hill's Clavics in The Independent; Adam Mars-Jones on By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham in The Observer; Leo Robson on Martin Amis: The Biography by Richard Bradford in the New Statesman; Jenni Russell on Honey Money by Catherine Hakim in The Sunday Times; and David Sexton on The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy in the London Evening Standard. The prizewinner will be announced on 7 February at a party in Soho boozer The Coach and Horses, formerly the domain of "Britain's rudest pub landlord," Norman Balon, subject of a long-running Private Eye cartoon strip. The practice of signing reviews is a relatively recent one; contributions to the Times Literary Supplement, for example, were anonymous until 1974. In Regency times anonymous or pseudonymous reviews were supposed to protect critics from duelling challenges. They also encouraged log-rolling. The poet Shelley not only rapturously reviewed his wife's novel Frankenstein, but also his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg's debut, the snappily titled Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff. Tibor Fischer's review of Martin Amis's Yellow Dog is often cited as one of the finest examples of a hatchet job. Yellow Dog isn't bad as in not very good or slightly disappointing. It's not-knowing-where-to-look bad ... It's like your favourite uncle being caught in a school playground, masturbating. But for ad hominem attacks, it would be hard to beat John Gibson Lockhart's 1818 dismissal of the young medical student and poet John Keats in the Edinburgh Magazine. This devastating piece finishes with the tremendous dismissal: "It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr John, back to 'plasters, pills, and ointment boxes,' &c. But, for Heaven's sake, young Sangrado, be a little more sparing of extenuatives and soporifics in your practice than you have been in your poetry. Shelley believed that bad reviews led directly to the collapse of Keats's health and his death in 1821. Byron wrote to Shelley: "I am very sorry to hear what you say of Keats. Is it actually true? I did not think criticism had been so killing. In Don Juan Byron famously quipped, "Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate: / 'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, / Should let itself be snuffed out by an Article.

5 Top San Francisco Meeting Places From sprawling ballrooms to intimate wine bars and upscale ball park eateries, San Francisco has a venue for everything from a luxe client dinner to a fully produced party. For Private Dining: Alexanders Steakhouse Recently opened in the SoMa district, this tri-level steakhouse offers a variety of classic dishes and cuts with a hint of Japanese flair. The restaurant houses two private dining rooms and one semi-private room. The lower-level Wine Library features a full bar and a floor-to-ceiling wine display, and can accommodate 80. The board room on the mezzanine level overlooks the main dining room, and the opening-and-closing shoji screens make it ideal for intimate gatherings. The board room can seat 18 around the mahogany dinner table, or hold 25 for cocktails. The semi-private mezzanine with loft-style seating also overlooks the dining room and can seat 32 or hold 50 for cocktails. 448 Brannan St., 415.495.1111, alexanderssteakhouse.com VENUE: The Terrace Room, Ritz-Carlton San Francisco (Photo Credit: The Ritz-Carlton) For Indoor/Outdoor Meeting Space: The Terrace Room, Ritz-Carlton San Francisco The Ritz-Carlton San Francisco recently opened the Terrace Room, a full-time event space that formerly housed one of the hotels restaurants. It can accommodate as many as 150 guests and can be booked with an adjoining brick courtyard that can be tented. The 336-room hotel also has a 9,500-square-foot ballroom and nine conference rooms. 600 Stockton St., 415.296.7465, ritzcarlton.com For Wining and Dining Clients: Prospect The casual sister restaurant to chef Nancy Oakes award-winning Boulevard, Prospect has a 60-seat lounge and a 120-seat main dining room. Executive chef Ravi Kapur serves new American cuisine such as halibut with carrots, pistachios, cippolini onions, and basil butter. A private dining room, the Candace (named for a whaling ship found during construction), has floor-to-ceiling windows, paintings by local artists, and can seat 45 or hold 60 for cocktails. 300 Spear St., 415.247.7770, prospectsf.com VENUE: Velvet Room (Photo Credit: Clift Hotel) For Post-Meeting Cocktails: Velvet Room The Clift Hotels Asia de Cuba restaurant became the Velvet Room in 2010. The 21,000-square-foot space, which has the same decor designed by Philippe Stark, can hold 200 for cocktails and is available for buyouts for private parties. A locally inspired menu of small plates and entrees is available. For larger groups, Velvet Room can be combined with the adjacent Redwood Room to create 4,000 square feet. 495 Geary St., 415.929.2303, clifthotel.com For a Celebrity Chef-Driven Menu: Wayfare Tavern Food Network personality Tyler Florence entered the San Francisco restaurant scene in 2010 with Wayfare Tavern. Florence gave the former Rubicon space a masculine look with reclaimed wood and antique details. The tri-level restaurant has two private dining rooms. Top-floor Bartlett Room has a flat-screen TV, a wine vault, and can accommodate 80. The cozy parlor on the second floor can hold 12 and has a pool table. The menu features American classics like fried chicken and burgers along with locavore touches like Monterey Bay seafood and produce from area farms. Recently the venue expanded its hours to include Saturday lunch. 558 Sacramento St., 415.772.9060, wayfaretavern.com 10 Corporate Party Venues in Miami 3 Nightclubs for Medium-Size Groups in Miami 3 Restaurants for Power Lunches in Chicago

Eagles swoops to oust Swans Bolton showed the value of being up for the cup with the sort of performance their manager feels can give an extra fillip to their Premier League form. Last year's semi-finalists progressed to the last 16 with a well-earned win over a much-changed Swansea side and despite the way his side's season fell apart after the semi last year, Owen Coyle is glad to be on that road again. "I thought we were excellent today," said the Bolton manager. It can only give us impetus and confidence to win other games. Brendan Rodgers made no less than 10 changes from his last Premier League line-up, while Coyle limited himself to a three-man readjustment to the team that beat Liverpool so convincingly. The young full-back Joe Riley gave Bolton much of their early attacking impetus, being responsible for a number of incisive runs and intelligent crosses, and they should have gone ahead on 19 minutes, when Chris Eagles put David Ngog through while Swansea waited for an offside flag. Ngog shot into Gerhard Tremmel's legs. Mark Davies also had a low shot well saved before Swansea began to stir. Wayne Routledge had the ball in the net from a clearly offside position, but there was no argument about the goal that put the Welsh club ahead. The ball broke from a tackle to Luke Moore, who held off David Wheater to slot it past the advancing Adam Bogdan. "It was a world-class finish," said Rodgers. The lead lasted only two minutes as another ex-Swan, Darren Pratley, who was barracked every time he touched the ball, had his revenge, heading home Martin Petrov's free-kick. Rodgers thought it was "fractionally offside." Petrov was also involved in what turned out to be Bolton's winning goal, 11 minutes into the second half. Cutting in from the left, he put in a shot which Tremmel spilled, allowing Eagles to turn, shoot and score. Leroy Lita and Pratley hit the woodwork at opposite ends and Petrov, Nigel Reo-Coker and Fabrice Muamba all went close for Bolton before the Swansea substitute Danny Graham headed against the post in the dying minutes. But Bolton held on to claim the fifth-round place they deserved. Just don't mention Stoke City and Wembley. Bolton (4-5-1): Bogdan; Riley, Wheater, Boyata, Rickets; Eagles (Tuncay, 90), M Davies, Pratley (Muamba, 78), Reo-Coker, Petrov; Ngog (K Davies, 74). Swansea (4-3-3): Tremmel; Richards, Williams, Monk, Bessone; Agustien, Gower (Allen, 78), McEachran; Routledge (Dyer, 65), Lita (Graham, 65), Moore. Referee: Anthony Taylor. Man of the match: Petrov (Bolton) Bolton Wanderers 2 (Pratley, Eagles) Swansea City 1 (Moore)

HS2 high-speed rail link gets green light and 'green' tunnels An artist's impression of a high-speed train crossing the Birmingham and Fazeley canal viaduct for the planned HS2 link. The biggest leap forward in Britain's rail network since the 19th century was announced on Tuesday with a £32.7bn investment in high-speed rail linking London with Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. The transport secretary, Justine Greening, said the HS2 high-speed rail scheme would build critical infrastructure, providing vital capacity and faster journeys on trains carrying up to 1,100 passengers each. The network, to be running by 2026 and completed by 2033, will almost halve some journey times between England's biggest cities and make it significantly quicker to travel from the north of England and Scotland to London. Greening promised that by attracting passengers away from roads and air services, "its benefits will be felt far beyond the network." The Department for Transport unveiled several tweaks to the first stage of the HS2 route to mollify opponents in the wealthy commuter belt north and west of London. An important concession is the building of extra tunnels in the picturesque Wendover area which will minimise disruption to the landscape and everyday life. Construction work will not start until 2017 at the earliest, with the first stage of the route seeing trains in 2026. The government confirmed that a link would be created in north London to the existing high-speed line to the Channel tunnel, meaning Birmingham could see direct high-speed services to Paris and Brussels in 14 years' time. Greening said: "At the heart is the need to address capacity shortfall. Unless we take action, by the 2020s the west coast main line will be full. The last time a whole new line had been built was the grand central main line in 1899, she said. Since then, we've used the rail network in a way the Victorians would be proud of. But there comes a time when you can't just patch things up. It's clear the existing network won't deliver. We need a new line. The transport secretary admitted the high-speed option would cost "around 10%" more than the alternative of upgrading the present infrastructure and trains but said the benefits would be substantial. She likened her decision to that of postwar planners choosing motorways rather than better A-roads. Almost 55,000 people responded to the public consultation, she said, with strong feelings on both sides. The government will also be offering an improved package of measures to reassure homeowners, including streamlined claims schemes for blight and compensation, and before and after surveys for those near tunnelling work. The economic case has long been questioned by opponents, but the government - while slightly downgrading its forecast for returns on investment - insisted the budget would not increase and the new "green tunnels" would save money by reducing the amount of earth removed from the Chilterns. Greening claimed the first phase alone would create 40,000 jobs. Andrew Adonis, transport minister in the last Labour government and architect of the plan, said the economic analyses were notional figures and distracted from "the real choice: open-heart surgery on the existing lines or a proper alternative." Leading transport commentators said that while all investment was welcome, the money could have been better spent. Railway expert Christian Wolmar said: "The government is driving through this project even though the evidence suggests that there are cheaper alternatives well worth looking at that would relieve other overcrowded parts of the network, such as lines out of Paddington and Victoria." Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, said it was "a profound disappointment it will go on a project for which the economic, business, social and environmental case is weak at best." He said scores of other road and rail projects would deliver greater benefits much sooner. The announcement was welcomed by business leaders and MPs in the Midlands and the north. The TUC said it was good news but demanded that the investment mean real jobs and apprenticeships. Cheryl Gillan, the Welsh secretary, had threatened to resign from the cabinet if HS2 went ahead, but on Tuesday welcomed the changes to the route, which will send future rail passengers through her constituency largely underground. She indicated she was still seeking more assurances from the transport secretary. With parliamentary legislation to build the London-Birmingham route to be introduced next year, and Labour having pledged to support it, a revolt is unlikely to upset the passage of the bill. However, Buckinghamshire county council, which has been co-ordinating an anti-HS2 alliance, said "there would appear to be nothing to dissuade us" from dropping a threat to seek a judicial review. While the Chilterns have hosted the best-funded campaigns and most vocal opposition to date, most of the 338 homes earmarked for demolition will be local authority flats around Euston station. Camden council said the plan was "incomprehensible folly." The options for the precise route north of Birmingham to Leeds and Manchester will be drawn up later this year with a full public consultation in 2014, and a final decision by December that year. The second stage will include a spur to Heathrow from the new Old Oak Common interchange in London. HS2 trains will be up to 400m long with 1,100 seats An extra 26,000 passenger seats each hour on intercity routes Trains to travel at up to 250mph Birmingham to London journeys now set to be 45 mins instead of 84 mins More than 22 miles of tunnel on the route A spur to Heathrow will be built by 2033

Spain's lost generation: youth unemployment surges above 50 per cent These people are delaying their advance into adulthood. It's a very scary time for young people," said Sara Elder an economist with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) which published a report into youth unemployment around the world. They find the path that worked for their parents is not working for them. The ILO report, published last October, warned that the consequences of mass youth unemployment could be dire. "Increased crime rates in some countries, increased drug use, moving back home with the parents, depression - all of these are common consequences for a generation of youth that, at best, has become disheartened about the future, and, at worst, has become angry and violent," it said. Spain already has one of the highest rates of cannabis and cocaine usage among its young in western Europe. The botellon, the social activity for younger people of drinking alcohol in public areas such as the streets, has also increased in popularity leading to police clampdowns. Young Spaniards led the protests throughout last summer, setting up camps in plazas across Spain in the movement that became known as "Los Indignados" - the Indignant ones. They complain that even a university degree leaves no guarantee of finding work. "When you go to university, you develop very high expectations, and then you leave and get a reality check," says Tomás Muñoz, a 25-year old graduate of Alicante University and a spokesman for the Juventud Sin Futuro (Youth without a future) platform. Analysts warn that youth joblessness could have a devastating effect on a nation that needs a dynamic young workforce to help economic recovery and lead Spain out of recession. "It's a problem not just for them, but for all of us," believes economics professor Gayle Allard from the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid. This is the generation that will be paying for the welfare state and pensions in the future. If they can't get started with relatively secure, well-paying jobs, start to put away some savings, start to accumulate assets, start paying into the welfare system, where does that leave the rest of us?

Olympus panel clears auditing firms of blame in scandal By Yoko Kubota and Nobuhiro Kubo TOKYO (Reuters) - Accounting groups KPMG and Ernst & Young have been cleared of responsibility for a $1.7 billion accounting fraud at Japan's Olympus Corp, one of the nation's worst corporate scandals, in a report issued on Tuesday by a company-appointed panel of lawyers. The panel placed the blame on five current and former internal auditors, which it said were responsible for 8.4 billion yen ($109 million) in damages. Olympus has been found to have used improper accounting to conceal more than $1 billion in investment losses under a scheme that continued for 13 years from the 1990s, when Japanese stock markets had fallen heavily and the yen strengthened markedly. KPMG's Japanese unit, KPMG AZSA LLC, was the firm's external auditor until 2009 when local rival Ernst & Young ShinNihon LLC took over as outside auditor. The roles of both firms have been questioned because they signed off on Olympus' parent accounts despite a string of questionable deals over the last decade, which were later found to have been at the heart of the cover-up. But the panel said neither KPMG AZSA nor Ernst & Young ShinNihon were found to have violated their fiduciary duties. The scheme, which a separate panel has concluded was engineered principally by two former Olympus executives, relied on transactions that were presented in financial statements as legitimate acquisitions or investments. It was only late last year that some of these deal payments were exposed to be shams, especially a $687 million advisory fee paid to a boutique U.S. financial firm for the $2 billion acquisition of British medical equipment firm Gyrus in 2008. At a third of the purchase price, the fee was the world's largest. The panel's report said former standing corporate auditors Minoru Ota and Katsuo Komatsu, current outside corporate auditors Makoto Shimada and Yasuo Nakamura, and current standing corporate auditor Tadao Imai had breached their fiduciary duty. The panel held Ota responsible for 3.7 billion yen ($48 million) in damages. He headed the accounting division in the 1990s, when the fraud began. The other four were collectively held responsible for about 4.7 billion yen in damages because they overlooked Olympus directors' illegal activities, it added. Olympus is expected to bring a damages suit against the five as early as Tuesday, according to the Nikkei business newspaper. It is already suing its president and 18 other executives, past and present, for up to 3.6 billion yen in compensation. Olympus President Shuichi Takayama will hold a news conference on Wednesday at 1 p.m., the company said, to discuss its response to the panel's report. Olympus shares showed little reaction to the report, rising 0.9 percent to 1,192 yen, compared with a 0.5 percent rise in the benchmark Nikkei average. Reporting by Yoko Kubota and Nobuhiro Kubo; Writing by Mark Bendeich; Editing by Chris Gallagher

Merkel to join Sarkozy in French campaigning Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, plans to join French president Nicolas Sarkozy on the campaign trail to help him in his bid for re-election, in an unusual move that underscores the close alliance they have forged during the eurozone crisis. "The CDU chairwoman, Chancellor Angela Merkel, will actively support Nicolas Sarkozy with joint appearances in the election campaign in the spring," the Christian Democrat party said in a statement on Sunday. The move, flagged on Saturday by Hermann Gröhe, CDU general secretary, at a meeting of Mr Sarkozy's centre-right UMP party in Paris, caused surprise in France as the president has yet to officially declare his candidacy and is not expected to do so for another month. The election takes place over two rounds, on April 22 and May 6. "France needs someone strong at its head and that is Mr Sarkozy," Mr Gröhe said. Mr Sarkozy, lagging in the opinion polls, has held up Germany's strong economy as an example France must follow if it is to regain its lost competitive industrial edge, regenerate growth and combat unemployment running at a 12-year high of close to 10 per cent of the workforce. He was set to unveil a set of reforms in a much heralded television appearance on Sunday night, including cutting labour costs and introducing more flexible employment terms, which owe much to similar reforms carried out in Germany in the last decade. Joint appearances on the campaign trail in France with Ms Merkel - cementing their joint "Merkozy" nickname - would mark a departure from past practice, where support during elections for fellow leaders of the same political hue is usually restrained. During the UK general election campaign in 2010, Ms Merkel pointedly withheld overt support for David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party. But although the relationship between her and Mr Sarkozy has been tense in the past, the two principal leaders in the eurozone have been forced to work very closely during the crisis and appear to have established a strong working rapport. Ms Merkel clearly wants to help prevent the defeat of Mr Sarkozy. He is struggling in the polls behind François Hollande, the opposition Socialist party challenger who has made a strong showing in the campaign over the past week. Mr Hollande has vowed to renegotiate the new "fiscal compact" for the eurozone largely constructed by Ms Merkel and Mr Sarkozy and due to be signed at Monday's European Union summit in Brussels. He also wants to forge a new Franco-German treaty, saying Germany must put more effort behind supporting growth in Europe. Mr Hollande reacted coolly to news of Ms Merkel's move. He said Mr Sarkozy was perfectly within his rights to invite her and she was "at liberty" to defend him. It would not prevent him being able to work with her, should he be elected, he said.

Jewellery worth £430,000 stolen from McTear's Auctioneers

Complaints against cabbies quadruple during the last year Published on Saturday 14 January 2012 12:07 COMPLAINTS against black cab drivers have quadrupled in the last year, new figures have shown. Passengers and fellow motorists have made nearly 200 complaints to the city council over instances including driving aggressively and being rude. Some passengers said cabbies appeared to take "winding" routes that were longer than necessary. Council officials received 196 complaints from the public in 2011, compared with 50 in 2010 and just 25 in 2009. Recent changes to the system now allow booking office staff to be reported to the council, which could be linked to the rise. The cab trade has called on the council to release details of each incident to reassure the public that the majority are minor. Raymond Davidson, secretary of the Edinburgh Taxi Association, said: "The number of complaints for the last year appear to be very high, but in the trade we've certainly not seen anything major. I'll certainly ask the council to allow us to see them in detail and I'm confident that many of these will be very minor. Far from anything serious, I would suggest a number of these could be down to a disagreement over the chosen route. Many drivers now have signs saying they will be more than happy to take the route that the passenger chooses. Mr Davidson said the standards in the trade are among the highest in the UK. He added: "The standards are very high in the black cab trade in Edinburgh and the drivers will be among the best in the country, if not the best. We very often get people arriving from London who remark on the quality of the service we provide, and describing how rude cabbies are in London. The complaints rate in London is horrendous. Councillors on the regulatory committee said the ease of the complaints system could be a factor in the increase. Louise Lang, vice-convener of the regulatory committee, said: "If passengers are unhappy they should absolutely complain, and the standards of service will only be maintained if problems are identified. I've always been impressed with how the companies deal with this, how quickly they act how seriously they take complaints. There's been nothing that we've seen on the committee that has caused any great concern. If I get in a taxi I feel in good hands, and I believe many of the complaints will be because of the booking process or communication rather than anything more serious. A spokeswoman for the city council said: "Recording of complaints against taxis has undergone significant changes in recent months, which may account for the apparent discrepancy between this and previous years" figures. It is also possible that our communication of ways to complain, such as by email, has encouraged greater numbers of people to submit complaints. Capital traffic on the road to nowhere THE queue of traffic heading west along Princes Street stretches from South Charlotte Street to Hanover Street. Cars are bumper to bumper, each locked in a battle of wills to ensure not one iota of space becomes available which might just let the nose of another vehicle edge in front. Dissent in ranks over plans for more taxis THOUSANDS of new cabs would hit the Capital's streets under plans by the competition watchdog to cut waiting times and tariffs in the taxi trade. Executive puts brakes on lifting taxi limits IT IS the sting in the tail of many a good night out. No matter how great the company, or how well the wine flowed, the absurd length of the queue for a taxi home late on Fridays and Saturdays can dampen the highest spirits. Taxis push through 7 per cent fares hike TAXI fares are to be hiked but no more black cabs will be allowed on the streets of Edinburgh, under proposals set to be approved by city chiefs. New cabbies facing skills test in drive for passenger safety NEW taxi drivers may have to sit tests before being allowed on the city's streets under plans being considered by council chiefs.

Coll. of Charleston's Cremins Takes Medical Leave The College of Charleston announced Friday that coach Bobby Cremins is taking an indefinite leave of absence for a medical condition and will not be back this season. Assistant coach Mark Byington will take over the team, which started the season 10-2 with wins over Clemson and Tennessee, but have lost six of their last eight. Cremins was at his home on Hilton Head Island when the announcement was made. The school did not specify Cremins' conditions or put a time frame on his return, and asked reporters to respect his privacy. Charleston athletic director Joe Hull did say Cremins' condition was not life threatening. "I personally hope he coaches for many years to come," Hull said. Byington said Cremins has not looked healthy for the past few weeks and called around 7:15 a.m. Friday to say he needed to take time off. "The despair in his voice last night and this morning, I knew something was wrong," Byington said. Cremins, 64, is in his sixth season with the Cougars after spending 19 years coaching Georgia Tech. He has led Charleston to 20 victories in each of his seasons, but his teams haven't been able to win the Southern Conference tournament to get to the NCAAs. He is 579-375 in 31 seasons of coaching, and the Yellow Jackets named their home court for him before he returned to coaching in 2006. Cremins grew up in the Bronx, came south to play for South Carolina and fellow New York-transplant Frank McGuire. He got his first head coaching job at Appalachian State, leading the Mountaineers to the NCAA tournament in 1979. Three years later, he left for Georgia Tech and the Atlantic Coast Conference. He led the Yellow Jackets to nine NCAA tournament appearances and reached the Final Four in 1990. He also won three ACC tournament titles and two regular-season crowns before the program tailed off and he was let go after the 2000 season. Cremins spent the next several years as a college basketball analyst, playing tennis on Hilton Head, until deciding to come back to coaching at the College of Charleston. Byington has been at Charleston nine seasons and has been Cremins' top assistant for all six of his years with the Cougars. He led the team's practice, telling them they needed to play well for Cremins and just concentrate on Saturday's game against Wofford. "We're going to make it through," Byington said. You're going to deal with worse things in your life.

GOP Battle for Latino Vote Heats Up as Florida Primary Nears MIAMI - On a hot and humid January day here, in a city that feels a million miles away from Des Moines or Manchester, Republican presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, for the first time in the campaign, spend much of their days on the trail trying to woo Latino voters. At a Univision forum Wednesday, Gingrich ripped Romney for an immigration policy that he called "a fantasy" from "a world of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island accounts and ... $20 million a year of no work." Romney hit back, admonishing Gingrich for barbs that he deemed "unbecoming of a presidential candidate" and emphasizing that "the immigrant population in this country has created great vitality in our economy as well as our culture." Looks like we're not in Iowa anymore. For much of the GOP race so far, the candidates" rhetoric toward Latinos has been nothing short of inflammatory, from Herman Cain joking that as president he would build an electric fence along the Mexican-U.S. border to Mitt Romney touting the endorsement of anti-immigration activist Kris Kobach. In the early days of the Republican primary, that strategy may have made sense, in a way, if it can ever be suggested that alienating the country's fastest-growing voting bloc ever made sense. The Hispanic population in early-voting states like Iowa and South Carolina hovers around 5 percent, while in New Hampshire it's less than 3 percent. In addition, Latinos tend to vote Democrat, further reducing their relevance to the GOP candidates. But with the Florida primary coming up Tuesday, and Romney and Gingrich locked in a virtual dead heat here, it's time to court the Latino vote. According to data from the Florida Division of Elections compiled by the Pew Hispanic Center, Latinos make up 13.1 percent of the state's 11.2 million registered voters. Nearly 1.5 million Latinos are registered to vote here, and as recently as 2006 more than half of them - now around 450,000 - are registered Republican, constituting 11 percent of all GOP registered voters. Simply put, Hispanics matter here - and in a big way. Just ask none other than Romney himself. In 2008, Romney's rival, Sen. John McCain, won 54 percent of the state's Hispanic vote, with only 14 percent going to the former Massachusetts governor. Romney lost the state, and his party's nomination. Five days before this year's primary, Romney appears to be faring much better. According to a new poll conducted by Latino Decisions for ABC News and Univision, Romney has a whopping 26-point lead over Gingrich among Latino Republicans in Florida, 49 percent to 23 percent. If you've been following the race closely, you might wonder how that's possible. After all, wasn't it Romney who campaigned with Kobach and who vowed that if elected he would veto the Dream Act, the Democrats" bill to provide a path to citizenship for some children of illegal immigrants who attend college in the U.S. or serve in the military? And wasn't it Gingrich who voiced the most moderate stance of all Republican candidates on immigration, who held Latino town halls in New Hampshire, who beefed up his Hispanic outreach efforts long before the race hit Florida? From Iowa to New Hampshire to South Carolina, in state after state, numerous Latinos have refused to vote for Romney because of his immigration policy. In Des Moines, businessman Juan Rodriguez said he would not support Romney because of the candidate's comments on immigration. The following week in Goffstown, N.H., Esteban Lopez, who will vote for the first time in the general election later this year, said he would not back Romney either. In South Carolina, college student Nivardo Vivar said the same. The answer is simple: Latinos in Florida are not like Latinos in the rest of the country. Unlike in states like Nevada, Arizona and Colorado, most of the Florida's Latino population does not come from Mexico. The state's most influential Latino-American voting bloc comes from Cuba, and Cubans tend to split from other Latinos on the issue of immigration. Cuban immigrants are granted sanctuary in the United States if they reach the country, making them immune to Republican policies that show little tolerance for undocumented immigrants. An illegal immigrant from Mexico, for instance, would be thrown out of the country if Romney's immigration policies took hold, but Cubans have no such fears. Earlier this month Romney hit Florida airwaves with a Spanish-language ad titled "Nosotros," meaning "us." The ad included a slew of key Florida Republicans of Cuban descent who back Romney, such as Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart and former Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart. Not included was the newest hotshot, Sen. Marco Rubio, widely expected to be one of the top candidates for the No. 2 slot on the eventual Republican ticket. Rubio, a Cuban-American elected to the U.S.Senate in 2010, opposes giving amnesty to undocumented workers but enjoys widespread backing among the Cuban community in south Florida. The senator has promised not to endorse any candidate until the party has a nominee, at which point he will campaign for that nominee. But in recent days he has sided with Romney over a controversial Gingrich radio ad that branded Romney as "anti-immigrant." Rubio's public rebuke of Gingrich prompted the former House speaker to pull the spot. So far it has all added up to strong support for Romney among Cuban-Americans here, a dramatic reversal from 2008 when McCain enjoyed 52 percent of the group's support, compared with 13 percent for Romney. Puerto Ricans are the second-most prominent faction of Florida Latinos. Like Cubans, Puerto Ricans, who are U.S. citizens, do not have the same immigration concerns that the other Latinos have. And they are becoming more and more crucial: The Puerto Rican population has nearly doubled in the past decade. In recent elections, they have wavered from side to side, supporting Rubio as well as the state's former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, but they backed Obama in 2008. Without much of a backlash from Florida Latinos for his immigration stance, Romney appears poised for a strong showing among this crucial voting bloc on Tuesday. But even if he emerges victorious in the primary and goes on to secure the nomination, Romney has work to do here for the general election. According to the Latino Decisions poll, Romney trails President Obama 40 percent to 50 percent in a hypothetical general election matchup. Picking Rubio as his running mate, though, would provide a massive boost. Sixty percent of Latino Republicans in Florida said they would be much more likely to vote Republican in November if Rubio was added to the eventual ticket. Fity-six percent of Florida Latino Republicans said they currently had a very favorable impression of the senator. Come fall, an estimated 12.2 million Latinos are set to vote, according to projections from the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, and perhaps no state could prove more important than Florida. The Republican Party picked the Sunshine State to host its 2012, convention and the state will also host the final presidential debate, set for Oct. 22, at Lynn University in Boca Raton. It's not lost on anyone, it seems, that in nine of the past 10 presidential elections, Florida - the state with the country's sixth-largest Hispanic population - has voted for the eventual victor.

Imogen Poots lands Marni for H&M campaign British actress Imogen Poots stars in the Sofia Coppola-directed advertising campaign for the hotly-anticipated Marni for H&M collection. Not content with making films with the likes of Orlando Bloom and James McAvoy for a living, 22-year-old Imogen Poots is dipping her toes - and natural beauty - into the fashion world. With roles in hit movies 28 Weeks Later and Jayne Eyre under her belt, Poots travelled to Marrakesh with fashion-loving film director Sofia Coppola to shoot the new campaign. Having already honed her poses thanks to an assignment for Chloé perfume last year, she carries all the grace of a professional clotheshorse. H&M announce collaboration with Marni The leaked image provides a teaser of what to expect from the high street collaboration: a shiny, paisley-print blouse (€69.95) with an oversized Peter Pan collar and matching trousers channel Marni's signature cocktail of bright tribal and Bauhaus graphics. The Milan Fashion Week's label's founder and creative director, Consuelo Castiglioni, said she wanted to "create a true Marni wardrobe by revisiting all our favuorite pieces in signature fabrics and prints. As always, I love juxtaposing prints and colours. David Beckham's debut underwear range for H&M The collection is due for global release on March 8, and follows on from the recent popularity of the Versace collaboration. Stay tuned for a first look at the range in full.

Woman Disputes TSA Portrayal of Her Cupcake A Massachusetts woman says federal safety officials are mischaracterizing a frosted cupcake in a jar that was confiscated from her at a Las Vegas airport. The Transportation Security Administration says it considered the icing on the cupcake a gel exceeding the 3-ounce limit for airline carry-on luggage. The limit is designed to stop terrorists seeking to evade detection by using explosives made of plastics, liquids or gels. The TSA says in a blog post the cupcake taken last month had a thick layer of icing inside the jar. But Peabody (PEE'-buh-dee) resident Rebecca Hains said Wednesday her jar consisted of three layers of cupcake, each topped with a medium layer of icing, not a thick layer. The bakery that makes the red velvet cupcake has renamed it National (Security) Velvet.

Sotera Defense completes acquisition - UPI.com HERNDON, Va., Jan. 3 (UPI) -- Potomac Fusion Inc., a Virginia company providing data analytics, cyber and visualization solutions, has officially become part of Sotera Defense Solutions. Sotera said it completed its acquisition of Potomac Fusion last Friday. "This business combination is a natural fit -- joining two organizations with the same emphasis on agility, ingenuity and integrity and a strong commitment to the national security mission," Sotera President and Chief Executive Officer John Hillen said. The addition of Potomac Fusion's expertise in cloud computing architectures, data fusion and data analytics expands the broad range of support we can provide to help our national security customers achieve their missions at home and abroad. Potomac Fusion's main customers are the U.S. Department of Defense and agencies in the intelligence community. Its projected revenues for 2011 are $40 million. Sotera Defense specializes in national security technology.

Volvo Ocean Race 2011/12: Groupama steal line honours as Abu Dhabi falter in homecoming But for Ian Walker's crew, who were desperate to dominate the first ever Volvo Ocean Race action in the Middle East, the view from start to finish was mainly one of four sterns after they were squeezed on the start line where two boats went off on a port tack from the right hand side of the course and two on a starboard tack from the left hand side. But gains were difficult as the fleet started a four hour reach, which saw Groupama, Camper and Telefonica stretch their legs reaching speeds of around 17 knots. They took it in turns to head the fleet as success came down to pure boat speed rather than tactics. Franck Cammas" team closed the gap on Telefonica to two boat lengths within 20 nautical miles of the finish then surged over the finish line first to claim their first victory of the race so far. Telefonica were runners up while Camper finished in third place to pick up four points, followed by Puma. Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing added two points to the six they notched up for winning the in port race in Alicante, by coming fifth. For those following the action, the experience proved a frustrating one with the tracker, which updates positions every 60 seconds on the race course, failing to show the true positions and video coverage restricted to short films coming in off the boats rather than live footage. Dozens of complaints were logged from around the world with official positions difficult to follow It's a shame to miss the video coverage on an opportunity like this. Never again will we have this kind of drag race in Volvo Ocean Race and then management misses out on this. Sorry to say but I am disappointed," one race follower wrote. Follow Volvo Ocean Race leaderboard and schedule

Man in wheelchair ordered off flight LONDON, Jan. 17 (UPI) -- A partially paralyzed man who uses a wheelchair says he was ordered off a budget flight from Britain to France because he couldn't walk to the emergency exit. The Mirror reported Martin Sabry, a 39-year-old businessman from Cambridge, England, who is paralyzed from the chest down, said he was first told by staff at Gatwick Airport in London he could take the flight. But the captain reversed the decision, and he was told all passengers flying alone had to be able to reach the exit. Sabry said he often flies for work and never had a problem. "It was so demeaning and unbelievable the way they treated me and the purser was obnoxiously rude," Gatwick told the Mirror Monday. After he waited 4 hours, EasyJet staff apologized, put him on the next flight from Gatwick to Toulouse and paid for his taxi transfer.

Breakfast buffet: National hot and spicy food day - Eatocracy Your tastebuds are going to tapping out a tasty tango because today is National Hot And Spicy Food Day. Let the fiery food celebration begin! Just be sure to keep a glass of milk close by if the burn proves a touch too much for you. Our forebears discovered the joy of spices in 7000 BC, and we've been using it ever since. Pungent hot sauces followed as a favorite condiment. Certain cultures acquired a taste for spicy food, and centered their entire cuisine around it, and we're still reaping the benefits today. One of the greatest perks for lovers of hot, spicy dishes is that they can follow the sizzle all over the globe. Indian, Japanese, Chinese and Mexican dishes are famed for their spicy nature, but flaming hot flavor can be found almost anywhere. Hot spices also fire up the immune system, libido and even stimulate the brain. So douse your lunch in hot sauce, chomp on a hot chili, throw some wasabi in the wok or light your fire with a fiery beef and rice noodle salad. Just beware of flamethrower breath - it's just not cool. Read - Heat-seeking eater seeks nuclear noshes

ET Solar Supplies PV Modules for a Government Solar Project in the UK NANJING, China, Jan. 6, 2012 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- ET Solar Group Corp. ("ET Solar"), a China-based vertically integrated producer and provider of Photovoltaic ("PV") modules and related solutions to the global solar market, today announces its supply of 600KW PV modules to various rooftop solar energy systems in the United Kingdom. Located in Newcastle, the systems were installed on 30 commercial rooftops of Your Homes Newcastle (YHN), an entity that manages properties on behalf of Newcastle City Council (NCC). Grid connected in October this year, the project was designed and installed by OPUS Green, a UK commercial project developer focusing on renewable energy solutions. Mr. Dennis She, Chief Executive Officer of ET Solar, commented: "We are pleased to have established business relationship with OPUS Green and supplied PV modules for NCC's solar project. The collaboration demonstrates our continued commitment to expand the role that we play in facilitating UK PV market growth. Chris Cassells, managing Director of OPUS Green, said: "We are pleased to have selected ET Solar as the module supplier for our solar projects. Impressed by its excellent product quality and customer services, we very much look forward to expanding our working relationship with ET Solar in the UK market next year. John Lee, Chief Executive of YHN, added: "This is a great example of a council taking a proactive approach to reduce its carbon footprint by adopting renewable energy solutions. Furthermore, it is also one of the first large commercial solar schemes in the region to benefit local residents for a clean source of energy and a better environment it offers. About ET Solar ET Solar is a China-based vertically integrated producer and provider of solar modules and related PV solutions to the global solar market. With local sales and marketing subsidiaries and offices in Asia, Europe, and North America, ET Solar has provided solar modules, turnkey solutions services and PV balance of system components to its customers in over 50 countries. To learn more about ET Solar, visit http://www.etsolar.com. About OPUS Green OPUS Green Ltd was set up by Gavin Richardson and Chris Cassels in 2010 and is a renewable energy installation company which focuses on design and installation of Solar PV, Solar Thermal and Air Source Heat Pump systems in UK commercial premises. To learn more about OPUS Green, visit http://www.opus-green.co.uk/ SOURCE ET Solar Group Corp.

NHL: Detroit 3, St. Louis 0 DETROIT, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- Jimmy Howard stopped 31 shots to log his fourth shutout of the year Saturday and the Detroit Red Wings whitewashed St. Louis 3-0. Howard improved to 12-0-0 in his last 12 home games with a 1.34 goals-against average for the Wings, who finished 2011 with their longest home winning streak since 2006-07. The Wings goalie held tough as Detroit was outshot 11-4 in the final period. Johan Franzen, Justin Abdelkader and Jiri Hudler each scored in the second period for Detroit. Brian Elliott turned aside 28-of-31 shots for the Blues, which lost a third straight game for the first time since Ken Hitchcock took over as head coach Nov. 8.

American Lung Association State of Tobacco Control Report Gives South Dakota Higher Grades PIERRE, S.D., Jan. 19, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Lung Association's annual State of Tobacco Control Report gave the state a "thumbs up" for adding some tobacco cessation coverage for state employees and for exceeding the recommended "investment per smoker" in funding its Quit Line telephone service. As a result, its grade for cessation coverage improved from an "F" in 2010 to a "D" in this year's report. Other grades remained the same, however. In the tobacco prevention and control spending category, the state's grade still earned an "F" still down from a "D" grade in 2009. Grades in the two remaining categories remained the same as last year: a "B" grade for smokefree air and a "C" for the state's cigarette tax, which is currently $1.53 a pack. The report also notes the recently withdrawn amendment to re-introduce smoking in the Deadwood casinos. "Dropping the Deadwood casino amendment is perhaps the clearest signal yet that South Dakotans have fully embraced and accepted smokefree indoor workplaces," said Pat McKone, a tobacco control director working with the American Lung Association in South Dakota. That said we still have some work ahead of us this year, starting with restoring the $1.5 million cut from tobacco prevention programs during the 2010 session. The adult smoking rate in South Dakota is now at historic lows, at 15.4 percent, the report notes. The high school smoking rate is much higher, however, at 23.3 percent. Smoking related deaths in the state is now estimated at 1,068 people a year. A link to the entire report is available online at www.stateoftobaccocontrol.org. SOURCE American Lung Association in South Dakota

GCC countries leave Arab League mission in Syria January 24, 2012 -- Updated 1329 GMT (2129 HKT) The six-nation GCC is an influential bloc It cites Syria's 'lack of commitment' to the Arab League plan Syria has rejected Arab League steps for its future Damascus, Syria (CNN) -- A key bloc of Gulf Arab nations has withdrawn from the Arab League monitoring mission in Syria, the group said Tuesday. The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council said it took the step because of the persistence of bloodshed in Syria and a "lack of commitment" by the government to fully adhere to the plan it agreed to with the Arab League. The bloc is composed of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman. Saudi Arabia decided to pull out its monitors Sunday and the other countries in the bloc followed Tuesday. An Arab League official in Cairo told CNN that 55 monitors from GCC countries have been withdrawn from the mission. The GCC called on other Arab countries to put pressure on Syria so it will implement Arab League decisions. It is also calling for the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China -- and other council members to ratchet up pressure on the regime. It wants the Security Council to support the Arab League's Syrian initiative by passing a resolution. The GCC has a lot of pull and power in the region. It brokered a presidential transition plan in Yemen and sent troops to Bahrain during the unrest there. The 22-member Arab League has called on President Bashar al-Assad's regime to stop violence against civilians, free political detainees, remove tanks and weapons from cities, and allow outsiders -- including the international news media -- to travel freely in Syria. The monitors had been observing activities and developments across the country. The league voted Sunday to extend the monitoring mission while it works on a proposal for al-Assad to transfer power to his vice president following the formation of a national unity government. The group's plan calls for the government to start talks with the opposition within two weeks and for the formation of a new government within two months. A new constitutional council would follow, as would a plan for parliamentary and presidential elections. The proposal is the clearest statement yet from the Arab League on what the league's member states would like to see happen in Syria. The league plans to take the idea to the United Nations in a bid to build international support. Arab League Secretary-General Nabil el-Araby said the Syrian government has not complied with some parts of its agreement with the league aimed at ending the violence. "The presence of the Arab monitors provided security to opposition parties, which held an increase in number of peaceful protests... in the areas where the monitors were present," el-Araby said. The uprising against al-Assad's regime, and the resulting government crackdown, have engulfed the country for more than 10 months. The United Nations last month estimated more than 5,000 people have died since March; opposition groups put the death toll at more than 6,000. The Syrian government has categorically rejected the Arab League plan for the transfer of power. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said the country is studying and considering an extension of the monitoring mission. Speaking to reporters at a press conference in Damascus, Moallem said the solution to Syria's problems "is a Syrian solution driven by Syrian interests," which would be based on achieving al-Assad's reform plan. Moallem also repeated his government's contention that the Syrian uprising is driven by a "conspiracy." "We are perfectly aware of the dimension of the conspiracy and we will deal with it firmly," the foreign minister said, adding that "it is the duty of the Syrian government to deal seriously and firmly with armed elements." CNN's Hamdi Alkhshali and journalist Mohamed Fadel Fahmy contributed to this report

Microblogging use in China quadruples in 2011: report SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Use of microblogging in China quadrupled in 2011 compared with the previous year, with nearly half of all Chinese Internet users now taking to the near-instant service to gather news and spread views, a government Internet think tank said Monday. Microblogging, or "Weibo" as it is known in China, allows users to send short messages of 140 characters or less to their followers. Twitter, the most popular microblogging platform in the world, is blocked by China's censors. Sina Corp and Tencent Holdings both run popular Weibo platforms in China, both firms claim to have more than 200 million users. Last year was a watershed year for Weibo with major events such as the Wenzhou high-speed train crash in July fuelling intense discussion on the platform. The vibrant discussion and rapid dissemination of information on Weibo caused hand-wringing within the Communist Party, which fears that losing control of information and opinion could threaten its authority. In December, city governments announced rules to regulate microblogging operators, requiring new users to register with their real names. The total number of Weibo users rose 296 percent to 249.9 million in 2011, data from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) showed, meaning nearly half of the Chinese Internet population used Weibo. CNNIC said in its report that by the end of December, there were 513 million Internet users in China, representing an Internet penetration rate of 38.3 percent. (here .pdf) Another spot of high-growth in the Internet sector was the group-buying industry that saw a 244.8 percent user growth in 2011, bringing the total to 64.7 million users at the end of December.

Google pumps up its lobbying effort SAN FRANCISCO - Google's U.S. lobbying bill more than tripled to $3.76 million in the fourth quarter as the Internet search leader fought proposed changes to online piracy laws and sought to influence a wide range of other issues that could affect its fortunes. The amount is the company's largest lobbying tab for any quarter since its Washington office opened in 2005. The company spent $1.24 million on lobbying during the final three months of 2010 and $2.38 million in the third quarter of 2011. For all of 2011, Google spent $9.7 million on political persuasion, nearly doubling 2010"s total, $5.2 million. The company disclosed its fourth-quarter lobbying figures in documents filed late Friday with the U.S. House clerk's office. Google's lobbying expenses have been rising steadily against a backdrop of intensified U.S. government scrutiny of the company's acquisitions and business practices. The focus has been prompted by complaints alleging that Google is abusing its dominance of the lucrative Internet search market to stifle competition and muscle its way into other markets. As a foil, Google last summer hired a dozen lobbing firms - Akin, Gump; Bingham; Capitol Legislative Strategies; Chesapeake Group; Crossroads Strategies; Gephardt Group; Holland & Knight; Normandy Group; Prime Policy; The First Group; The Madison Group; and the Raben Group - to supplement the team that it already employed in Washington. Google's emphasis on lobbying mirrors what Microsoft did during the late 1990s while the Justice Department pursued an antitrust case against the software marker. Microsoft eventually thwarted the government's attempt to break up the company, but not before years of legal wrangling that included a high-profile trial.

Scientists: Haiti, DR May Facing Big Quake Period Haiti and the neighboring Dominican Republic could be in for a period of periodic powerful earthquakes, according to a scientific study released Thursday. The study says Haiti's 7.0-magnitude earthquake two years ago is likely to be the first of several quakes of a similarly powerful magnitude. The Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake caused widespread damage in the Haitian capital and surrounding cities. Officials say the disaster killed 314,000 people and toppled thousands of crudely built homes. "The 2010 Haiti earthquake may mark the beginning of a new cycle of large earthquakes on the Enriquillo fault system after 240 years of seismic quiescence," lead author William Bakun of the U.S. Geological Survey wrote. The entire Enriquillo fault system appears to be seismically active; Haiti and the Dominican Republic should prepare for future devastating earthquakes. The authors document a series of four major earthquakes of magnitude 6.6 and higher that struck Hispaniola, the Caribbean island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The phase began in 1701, near the site of the 2010 quake, and ended in 1770. There was no evidence of significant earthquake activity on the Enriquillo fault system in the 240 years from 1770 until the 2010 disaster, except for an earthquake in 1860 that likely occurred offshore, the study said. The possibility that a newly active period has begun underscores the need for Haiti and the Dominican Republic to focus on building seismic-proof structures, Bakun said. "Whatever information people have to guide reconstruction efforts in Haiti ... is certainly useful," Bakun said by telephone from Merlo Park, California. The study appears in the February edition of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. Moderate quakes have struck the Dominican Republic in recent weeks but there were no reports of damage.

Soldier faces hearing at Afghan base over suicide KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - An American soldier charged with abuse that led to the suicide of a 19-year-old fellow soldier in Afghanistan is facing a preliminary hearing Sunday on a base in the country, the military said. The hearing came as two more members of the international force in Afghanistan died of what NATO described as "non-battle-related" injuries. Spc. Ryan J. Offutt is charged with offenses including maltreatment, involuntary manslaughter and negligent homicide in the death of Pvt. Danny Chen, the military statement said. Offutt is one of eight infantrymen charged in connection with the suicide. Chen shot himself in a guardhouse Oct. 3 in Afghanistan after what investigators say were weeks of racial slurs, humiliation and physical abuse. Offutt, 32, of Greenville, Pa. was charged in December along with seven others in the same unit. He joined the Army in 2006 and served 14 months in Iraq before being deployed to Afghanistan. An attorney for Offutt could not immediately be contacted. Chen, a native New Yorker of Chinese descent, had only been in Afghanistan for two months when he killed himself. He had told relatives he endured weeks of racial teasing and name calling while in training in the U.S. After arriving in Afghanistan, investigators said Chen was subjected to hazing by members of his unit, the 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division based in Fort Wainwright, Alaska. Chen's family has said investigators told them that at a remote base in southern Afghanistan, he was subjected to racial slurs and forced to do excessive sit-ups, push-ups, runs and sprints carrying sandbags. On the day of his death, he had reported to the guard tower without his helmet or adequate water and was forced to crawl about 100 yards (100 meters) across gravel carrying his equipment as his comrades threw rocks at him, a family representative has quoted investigators as saying. Sunday's hearing under Article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice will determine whether Offutt faces court-martial. The two most serious charges, involuntary manslaughter and negligent homicide, carry prison sentences of up to 10 years and three years, respectively. The hearing is being held at Kandahar Air Field, the sprawling base for U.S. and NATO operations in the south. Chen's family and Chinese community members in New York have called for legal proceedings related to his death to be held in the United States, so they could witness them. Offutt's mother, Carol Tate of Sharon, Pa., told The (Sharon) Herald last month that she has spoken to her son and thought there were other factors that have not been made public, but she declined further comment. The Army has identified the other soldiers charged as 1st Lt. Daniel J. Schwartz, 25, of Maryland (no hometown was given); Staff Sgt. Blaine G. Dugas, 35, of Port Arthur, Texas; Staff Sgt. Andrew J. Van Bockel, 26, of Aberdeen, S.D.; Sgt. Adam M. Holcomb, 29, of Youngstown, Ohio; Sgt. Jeffrey T. Hurst, 26, of Brooklyn, Iowa; Spc. Thomas P. Curtis, 25, of Hendersonville, Tenn; and Sgt. Travis F. Carden, 24, of Fowler, Ind. VanBockel, Holcomb, Hurst, Curtis and Offutt were charged with the most serious offenses, including involuntary manslaughter, negligent homicide, and assault and battery. The NATO-led force also said two service members in southern Afghanistan died Sunday of injuries that were not battle-related. A coalition statement did not say whether the injuries were the result of an accident, suicide, or other causes and it did not give the troops' nationalities. Sunday's deaths bring to 16 the number of coalition troops who have died in Afghanistan this month.

Airbus A380 jets to be inspected PARIS, Jan. 21 (UPI) -- Airline regulators in Europe have ordered 20 superjumbo Airbus A380 jets to be inspected after cracks were found in a wing bracket. The hairline fractures were first found on the Qantas jet that was forced to make an emergency landing in 2010 due to engine failure, the Financial Times reported Saturday. The cracks were discovered as that specific plane was being refurbished, The New York Times said. Nine of the giant 555-passenger jets have been inspected and tiny cracks in brackets called rib feet were found in two other planes. There are 68 superjumbo A380 planes in operation, but two of the 20 planes ordered by European Aviation Safety Agency to undergo testing are test planes owned by the manufacturer. The remaining 18 are flown by Singapore Airlines, Emirates Airline and Air France-KLM, a sources said. China Southern Airlines, Lufthansa, and Korean Air also operate A380 jets, but the mandated inspections were prorated depending on how long each jet has been in service. Half of the 20 planes are operated by Singapore Airlines, which took its first delivery of an A380 jet in October 2007. The regulator said planes with 1,800 or more takeoffs and landings needed to be inspected within four days. Planes with 1,300 to 1,799 takeoffs and landings need to be inspected within six weeks. Newer planes could wait until a four-year mandated maintenance check to have the parts inspected. "This condition, if not detected and corrected, could potentially (over time) affect the structural integrity of the airplane," the regulator said.

Olympia Dukakis to Play Prospero for Shakespeare & Company Olympia Dukakis will play a female version of the magician Prospero in a production of "The Tempest" this summer at Shakespeare & Company, based in Lenox, Mass., the theater announced on Tuesday. She will be joined on stage by her brother, Apollo Dukakis, who will play Gonzalo, and Rocco Sisto as Caliban. Tony Simotes, who is in his third year as Shakespeare & Company's artistic director, said in a phone interview that he first met Ms. Dukakis when she taught theater at New York University in the early 70s and that they have remained friends and colleagues ever since. He said he had wanted to cast and direct Ms. Dukakis for many years, recalling her portrayal of a female King Lear at Shakespeare & Company in 1998. "There were modern plays that could work," he said. Because we are both Greek, I wondered if we could do a classical Greek play. Eventually Mr. Simotes and Ms. Dukakis agreed on Prospero and "The Tempest," a play, Mr. Simotes said, "about this force of nature." "If there was anybody in my life that acts as that kind of magician, it is Olympia," he said. It's a character that creates a storm, with concentric circles spinning in on themselves to bring everybody to a point. I knew she could do it. Women have played lead male roles in Shakespeare productions over the years, including Diane Venora as Hamlet at the Public Theater in 1982; Fiona Shaw as Richard II at London's National Theater in 1995; and Seana McKenna as Richard III last year at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Helen Mirren played the lead role in Julie Taymor's film version of "The Tempest" last year; in that case the sex of the character, now named Prospera, was changed. Mr. Simotes said it was Ms. Dukakis's wish to play Prospero as a female character, although it was still to be determined if her name would be feminized. No other characters" sex will change. "We're looking at shifting the point of view from the father-daughter relationship to a mother-daughter relationship," he said. "How a daughter argues with her father is different from how she argues with her mother," he added. We haven't started rehearsals so I don't know what we'll discover, but how the family dynamic is played out will shift in the play. "The Tempest" is one of several productions to be presented by Shakespeare & Company for its 35th season, which begins on May 25 and continues through Sept. Among the company's other offerings are a new production of "King Lear," directed by Rebecca Holderness and starring Dennis Krausnick in the title role; and "Satchmo at the Waldorf," a new one-man show about Louis Armstrong starring John Douglas Thompson that was written by Terry Teachout, theater critic for the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Simotes said the company has successfully withered the financial turbulence of recent years, which resulted in layoffs and a restructuring of the theater's business model. He said the company finished in the black last season for the first time in several years.

Snow joke: altitude with a touch of attitude What's your agenda for a winter-sports holiday? Possibly little more than skiing or boarding, a few associated snow-sport activities, eating and sleeping, plus socialising in bars and nightclubs. But if you fancy something different, perhaps some film screenings, evenings of stand-up comedy or live rock music out on the slopes, there are ski resorts where you'll find each of those things, and more. Mayrhofen has the Altitude Comedy Festival, which ran for three years in Méribel but has now relocated to Austria. It will present a stellar line-up, including Jimmy Carr, Al Murray and Tim Minchin, from 26 to 31 March. Méribel still has a music event (previously the Little World Festival, now Méribel Live), taking place from 19 to 23 March; and the Portes du Soleil ski domain, on the French/Swiss border, will Rock the Pistes from 24 to 28 March. See page V for more details. And film screenings? Look out for the 2012 Festival of European Cinema at Les Arcs - the 2011 festival took place this season from 10 to 17 December. You will see, from that small sample of a fast-increasing number of events at winter sports resorts, that they take place mostly late in the season, during the off-peak period. That's when resorts have empty beds for entertainers, organisers and festival-goers. The Les Arcs festival is unusual in that it is largely a trade event, devoted to distribution deals, production-funding and the development of the European market during the day, with screenings, open to the public, in the evenings. For the local authority, which provides funding, its virtue lies mainly in the attention the resort gets from the French media, especially when popular actors and directors attend. And it takes place in the early season (also off-peak), when publicity is likely to stimulate immediate ski-holiday bookings. Did it seem strange going to a screening at a ski resort? Absolutely not: it's a perfect fit. Skiing finishes soon after 4pm, which leaves time afterwards for dinner followed by a film or two. The cinema at Arc 1850 is a stunning, all-wood conference venue which easily accommodates an audience of 500. The films are subtitled - in English and French for the German film, which was the only one I managed to see. Next December my attendance will not be so brief. More surprising than the notion of a film festival in a ski resort was the discovery I made in Val d'Isère, en route to Les Arcs. The new, upmarket chalet company Consensio (consensioholidays.co.uk) put me up for the night in one of its luxurious properties where, over dinner, I learned that British guests only just outnumber their Russian counterparts; by 43 per cent to 41 per cent. Once upon a time, my assumption that chalets were almost exclusively a British thing was correct. But the days of mucking in, sharing washing-up duties, and queuing for communal bathrooms are long gone. Now chalets are mostly well appointed and comfortable and, at the top end of the market, they offer a degree of luxury comparable with that of five-star hotels and much greater privacy, plus the possibility of bespoke food and service, which is where the affluent Russians come in. Consensio's managing director, Ceri Tinley, gave me a run-down on why chalets appeal to Russians. They like instant service, she says, and they don't like the word "no." Nor do they like waiting for the housekeeping round for the chalet to be cleaned. And they want to be served their vodka of choice, whether it's Absolut, Grey Goose or Belvedere, even if that involves the staff going out to negotiate the purchase of a couple of bottles from a nearby hotel. Tinley says that the firm "embraces" its Russian clientele, with a local representative in the country and a Russian-language website, computer keyboards with Cyrillic script in the chalets and a database of Russian nannies and ski guides. It has the properties to suit, too. New this season in Val d'Isère is the extraordinary Chalet Marco Polo (pictured); its jet-stream disco/pool is served by DJ equipment and a projection screen, and its reclaimed fixtures and fittings have been imported from Afghanistan, India and Thailand. The chalets sleeps 12 adults; and on the back of a large envelope I worked out how much each guest would have to pay to stay during the most expensive week. The answer was almost €6,000.

Stricker launches season with Kapalua win Mon Jan 9, 2012 9:18pm EST (Reuters) - Steve Stricker, ice-cool when it mattered most, recovered from a surprisingly slow start to clinch his 12th PGA Tour victory by three shots at the season-opening Tournament of Champions in Hawaii on Monday. Five strokes in front going into the final round, Stricker had his lead trimmed to just one early on the front nine before he regained control with five birdies in the last 11 holes. The American world number six, the highest-ranked player in the elite winners-only field of 27 at the Kapalua Resort, closed with a four-under-par 69 to post a 23-under total of 269. "It was tough," Stricker, 44, said greenside after being embraced by his wife, Nicky, and his daughters, Bobbi and Isabella. I never let up today. It's always tough trying to win and it's even more tough when you have a lead like I had. I played good though. Overall I am very proud of what I did today and this week. And it's always cool to get a hug from your family walking off after you win. Britain's Martin Laird birdied five of the last seven holes for a 67 to finish alone in second place in the limited-field tournament which brings together PGA Tour winners from the previous season. Stricker's playing partner Jonathan Byrd, the defending champion, signed off with a 68 to tie for third with fellow American Webb Simpson (68). However, no one could catch Stricker over the hilly back nine on the Plantation Course where the American proved to be the master for all four days, covering those holes in an aggregate of 17 under. He finished off the tournament in style, coolly rolling in a seven-foot birdie putt at the par-five last before pumping his right fist in delight and then doffing his cap to the crowd. "I played really steady today," Stricker said after booking his place at Kapalua for next year. I was proud the way I hit the ball, not so proud of the way I putted it but proud the way I hit it. For the second consecutive day, he had to recover from a slow start, having watched his five-shot cushion after round two also trimmed to one. He came under early pressure in the final round as Laird and Byrd each recorded two birdies in the first four holes to trim his overnight lead to three shots. Simpson, who had birdied the third, then rolled in a 40-foot eagle putt at the par-five fifth to lurk just two off the pace. Stricker, who had parred the first four holes, wasted a golden opportunity to birdie the par-five fifth when he three-putted from long range after reaching the green in two. He then surprisingly bogeyed the short par-four sixth, duffing a pitch from just 48 yards in the right rough and missing a five-footer to save par, for his lead to be cut to one. Stricker finally picked up his first shot of the day, rolling in a 24-footer at the tricky par-three eighth to move two strokes clear of the chasing pack at 19 under. He then gave himself extra breathing room with a tap-in birdie at the par-five ninth, where he chipped from just off the green to within a foot of the cup, to reach the turn three ahead. Though Byrd stayed hot on Stricker's heels with birdies at the 10th and 14th, the pacesetting American remained in front with birdies of his own at the 12th, 16th and the last. "I felt it kind of slipping away," Stricker said of his front nine. But I was still patient, frustrated but patient. I told myself if I could get a couple back before the turn I would be all right. That birdie on eight calmed me done quite a bit.

Illinois Beats UCLA 20-14 in Fight Hunger Bowl Terry Hawthorne returned an interception 39 yards for Illinois' first touchdown late in the third quarter and the Illini snapped a six-game losing streak by beating UCLA 20-14 in the Fight Hunger Bowl. Nathan Scheelhaase added a 60-yard touchdown pass to A.J. Jenkins midway through the fourth quarter to seal the first victory for Illinois (7-6) since beating Indiana 12 weeks ago. The game between two six-win teams who have already fired their head coaches matched the underwhelming expectations as there was little excitement before Hawthorne's third-quarter touchdown that gave Illinois its first lead. UCLA (6-8) was held to 18 yards rushing in its third straight loss. Kevin Prince threw two TD passes, including one in the closing minute to Nelson Rosario after the game had been decided. But it was an earlier pass by Prince that proved decisive and helped give Illinois its first bowl wins in consecutive seasons in school history. Three plays after Derek Dimke missed a 37-yard field goal for Illinois late in the third quarter, Prince dropped back and threw to his left looking for Shaquelle Evans. Hawthorne read the play perfectly and stepped in front of the throw for the interception and had a clear path to the end zone for the score that gave the Illini a 10-7 lead. Dimke added a 37-yard field goal early in the fourth quarter and Scheelhaase and Jenkins combined on their big play to make it 20-7 with 5:36 to go. Scheelhaase finished 18 for 30 for 139 yards with 110 yards rushing to lead the Illinois offense. UCLA tight end Joseph Fauria (8) lunges forward after a reception as Illinois' Patrick Nixon-Youman (4) and Tavon Wilson (3) defend during the first half of the Fight Hunger Bowl NCAA college football game in San Francisco, Saturday, Dec. 31, 2011. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez) Close Prince completed just 14 for 29 for 201 yards and the Bruins were held to a season-low in rushing, well below their 190.7 yard per game average, by the stout Illini front. The matchup between Big Ten and Pac-12 teams on New Year's weekend at a picturesque setting in California conjures up memories of Rose Bowls past. But this game was played on San Francisco's waterfront instead of with the San Gabriel Mountains in the background in Pasadena and was between two teams that had little to celebrate this season. Both teams fired their coaches after disappointing regular seasons with Ron Zook getting let go by Illinois after losing six straight games to end the season and Rick Neuheisel getting run out at UCLA after a 50-0 loss to rival Southern California in the regular season finale. Neuheisel coached the Bruins when they lost the Pac-12 title game at Oregon, leaving them as the first team to go to a bowl with a losing record since North Texas in 2001. With their head coaches gone and new coaches Tim Beckman at Illinois and Jim Mora at UCLA not set to take over until January, interim coaches Vic Koenning and Mike Johnson ran the Illini and Bruins respectively. The Illini, operating under interim offensive coordinator Jeff Brohm, opened up the playbook in the first half but still trailed 7-3 at the break. They called a throwback pass to Scheelhaase, a reverse, a fake field goal and went for it on fourth-and-1 from their own territory. UCLA stuffed Donovonn Young for a loss on that run from the Illinois 45, setting up Prince's 16-yard TD pass to Taylor Embree for the first score of the game. The Bruins were unable to capitalize after stopping the fake field goal. Holder Tim Russell flipped the ball over his head to Dimke, who was tackled by Shelden Price for a 4-yard loss. UCLA then botched a shotgun snap on the ensuing drive, giving the Illini the ball at the Bruins 30. Illinois settled for Dimke's 35-yard field goal on the final play of the half. The game, which is sponsored by Kraft, generated three meals for local food banks for each of the 29,878 tickets sold. Officials used an Oreo cookie for the opening coin toss.

High school soccer goalie shot and killed 17-year-old shot less than one hour after playing in match against rival high school NBCSports.com news services updated 9:43 a.m. A 17-year-old high school boys' soccer goalkeeper was shot and killed Wednesday evening in Winnetka, Calif., less than an hour after playing in a match against a rival school, according to multiple reports. Francisco Rodriguez, from El Camino Real High, was shot three times by someone in a car waiting for him to arrive home following the game, KNBC-LA reported. Police have not arrested any suspects yet. The boy was rushed to Northridge Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. I had just walked into the house when I got a call from one of my players asking me if I had heard (about Francisco). I tried to call his house and no one answered," said El Camino Real coach David Hussey, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. It's going to be really tough (today) because some of the kids are taking it really hard. Hussey and about 60 current and former players, along with coaches and friends, went to the hospital after hearing the news, the Daily News said. "We don't feel, by any means, that this was a random shooting," said Detective David Peteque. We feel the victim was targeted. Ian Kogan, another El Camino coach, said he recently spent 10 days in Hawaii with the victim and the rest of the team. He described him as a good person and a passionate player. "He was passionate," Kogan said. He loved to play the game. He cared a lot about the guys. He cared a lot about the school. © 2012 NBC Sports.com

Borobudur: The keyhole to nirvana Reporting from Yogyakarta, Indonesia - - Four a.m. is a terrible time of day, too late for night owls, too early for early risers. The exception is 4 a.m. at Borobudur, waiting for the sun to rise over the Kedu Plain in central Java with 504 figures of Buddha. The temple is one of three great religious sites in Southeast Asia, but it's older and more esoteric than Bagan in Myanmar and Angkor Wat in Cambodia. It was begun in the 8th century by the Sailendras, a dynasty of Buddhist kings who ruled central Java for almost 200 years until their power waned and the temple was abandoned. The stepped pyramid rises in nine levels to a single bell-shaped stupa surrounded by galleries. The pilgrims walk around them, meditating on stone reliefs that tell the life story of Siddhartha Gautama, an Indian prince who transcended life's pain and became the Lord Buddha. You can circle the monument with them or climb to the top, but only by looking at a diagram can you tell that the temple is shaped like a mandala, a mystical scheme of the Buddhist cosmos. The three levels denote states of consciousness, from human suffering to enlightenment. Little is known beyond that, leaving the cosmos locked shut while Borobudur reigns, silent and solitary, over the volcano-ringed garden of Java. I told friends I was coming to Southeast Asia in fall 2010 to see Angkor, a mission accomplished. But for no reason I understood, my real objective was Borobudur, less well known and off the beaten track in the world's most populous Islamic country and a feared breeding ground for Al Qaeda. Not only that, but Indonesia is also prone to natural disasters. The 9.0 earthquake off Sumatra on Dec. 26, 2004, launched a tsunami that killed 230,000 people in 14 countries across South Asia. A few days after my visit to Java, Mt. Merapi, over whose shoulder I saw the sun rise from the top of Borobudur, erupted. The trip was, despite everything, surprisingly peaceful, even dreamy. It was organized by Borobudur Tour & Travel, which offered a three-day itinerary in central Java, including a van, a driver and hotels, for $375, no deposit required. The rainy season had just begun when I flew from Singapore to Yogyakarta, about 35 miles southeast of Borobudur. The name of the town's airport, Adisucipto, seemed to me almost as imponderable as that of the province's sultan and elected governor, Hamengkubuwono. Fortunately, I had an easier time with my driver Noor, whom I spotted in arrivals holding a sign that said "Spano," presumably a name as baffling to Indonesians as theirs were to me. He had been told to meet a couple from Spain instead of a single female traveler from the U.S. Noor, a soft-spoken, amiable man, was unfazed. He was a reliable driver, and as a guide, he was good at pointing out aspects of everyday life. For instance, more than half the 230 million people of Indonesia live on the island of Java, which, at 50,000 square miles, is about a third the size of California but has more than three times the people. Indonesians tend to marry as early as 14 and have lots of children, which has prompted the government to promote a two-children-per-family policy. Indonesian men are allowed up to four wives. Noor had only one. I liked that about him. From the airport we took the traffic-clogged, two-lane ring road around Yogyakarta, passing cottage industries making wood furniture and replicas of temple statues. We saw a boy riding a small merry-go-round mounted on the back of a bike and greengrocery huts with exotic produce such as snake-skinned salak fruit piled high. Children bathed in an engorged river, and women in colorful head scarves did the wash. Rice paddies were filled to the brim with water and set like cloudy cut opals in the blazing green landscape. For a warmup, we stopped at Prambanan, a temple complex close to Yogyakarta built shortly after Borobudur, but architecturally more like Angkor Wat with a central artichoke-shaped stupa surrounded by four smaller ones. The compound, seriously damaged in 2006 by a 6.3-magnitude earthquake and partly covered by shaky bamboo scaffolding, looks as though it could collapse with the next tremor. Noor said, "Hati hati," which means "be careful" in Indonesian, then waited while I climbed the main stupa and paid my respects to a 10-foot-tall statue of the Hindu god Shiva. Together with Buddhist Borobudur, this chiefly Hindu place of worship is a testament to the theological melding that took place in the Middle Ages on Java. The two faiths borrowed from each other until Islam, brought by Arab traders, took root around 1400. The Yogyakarta region, with a population of about 3 million, is the only Indonesian province still ruled by a sultan, a special status recognizing the role the region played in the war for independence against the Dutch. The city is now home to several major Indonesian universities, which gives it a smart, young air. But its center remains Sultan Hamengkubuwono's palace (or kraton), a walled, whitewashed compound with open-air pavilions. A 175-piece gamelan orchestra, an ensemble of wind, string and percussion, performs here. It has its own bank, a 2,500-man military garrison, a museum of mostly hideous gifts given to sultans, 20 vehicles in the royal garage and 75 bird cages. On a tour arranged by Noor, an official palace guide pointed out the décor's myriad male and female symbols; even the cages have male and female birds, a feature that prompted the guide to divulge an interesting theory about the present sultan, who has just one wife and five daughters, unlike his father, another Hamengkubuwono, who had 21 children with four concubines. The sultan's sad lack of a male heir, the guide suggested, stems from the sexual aggressiveness of the queen consort, a condition that produces girl children only. Reflecting on that, I took a bicycle cab (or becek), the most common, cheap and practical form of transportation in teeming Yogyakarta, down the distracting hurly-burly of Malioboro Road. Lined by tightly packed rows of buildings with Dutch stepped gables, New Orleans-style balconies, galleries full of food and souvenir vendors - all cheerfully suffering the effects of recent earthquakes and tropical torpor - this main street quickly became one of my favorite places to shop in the world. I bought light cotton shirts and trousers for about $5 each at the Matahari Department Store, a bouquet of camellias from a flower stall, cheap batik scarves on the pavement and a basket in the local market where salesmen stacked comestibles I couldn't identify in tall pyramids. One of them spoke enough English to ask where I was from. When I told him the U.S., he beamed, saying that President Obama had lived in Indonesia as a boy. Later, I saw another instance of effective American diplomacy in newspaper photos of the first lady wearing a stylish head scarf, a relaxed form of head covering increasingly adopted by Islamic Indonesian women who until recently had gone unveiled. I stayed two nights at a hotel on Sosrowijayan Street just off Malioboro, an enclave for scruffy-looking backpackers. Pedestrian alleyways off Sosrowijayan were full of countertop tour agencies, cheap guest houses and cafes selling secondhand copies of the late Erich Segal's "Love Story," Rick Steves' 1986 guide to Europe, Western-style breakfasts and uniformly terrible coffee. Unwilling to accept that I couldn't get a good cup of joe on the island of Java, I roamed the soulful, animated city, never finding it but filling my new basket with additional treasures. Finally, we got to the main event: Borobudur, a few hours by van from Yogyakarta. Near a ramshackle village strung along a bumpy road, it is one of the least touristy UNESCO World Heritage Sites I've visited. I didn't see a hotel until we entered the temple gate and parked at a cluster of low buildings set around beds of orange cannas. This was the Manohara guest house, originally built for researchers and architectural historians that completed a major renovation of the temple in 1983. Now open to travelers, it provides a welcome drink ofCoca-Cola with tamarind, modest rooms, good food in an open-air dining room, a video introduction to Borobudur and easy access to the temple, especially for people who want to see it at sunrise. We arrived in the late afternoon, just as the skies were threatening. Nevertheless, I headed straight for the temple, hidden by trees until the very threshold. Then Borobudur made its appearance, a great layer cake of mottled gray stone supporting a mountain of needle-pinnacled stupas. The arched staircases from level to level are treacherously steep, overlooked by gaping-mouthed gargoyle water spouts, nymphs (or apsaras), dancing arms akimbo, and niches enshrining Buddha figures, each with hands in different symbolic poses (or mudras). His life story unfolds on the middle level, starting at the left side of the eastern entrance with stone panels of great vividness, recalling the medieval Bayeux tapestry in France. I ran my hand over a carving of Queen Maya in a carriage headed for Lumbini Park, where she gave birth to the Buddha. Just then a clap of thunder thwacked à la Macbeth, and guards began herding visitors to a gate far from the one I'd entered. When I told one of them that I needed to get back to the Manohara, he offered to take me there on his motor scooter. I figured I'd crack Borobudur's meaning the next morning. Meanwhile, I let fly on the ride of a lifetime around the temple. That night, I watched the Borobudur video, had a satay dinner at the restaurant, accompanied by gamelan music, and claimed a flashlight at the front desk for my sunrise visit to Borobudur. I slept soundly, without the interruptions I normally experience on the eve of a great event. Dawn was an hour away when I joined a small group of guests in the lobby and followed a guide across the lawn to the temple. He made no comment; there was nothing to say - except perhaps hati hati. This time, I climbed to the top levels, which are round, not rectangular, and bare except for their forest of stupas, perforated to allow peeks at Buddha statues inside. Experts say that Borobudur's more abstract upper precincts, especially its empty central stupa, reflect nirvana, a state of being beyond human consciousness. But how could they know? How could anyone know, even sitting atop the temple watching the pinkness of sunrise pool in a halo around soon-to-erupt Mt. Merapi, where the mystery of the cosmos remains secure? But if there is a keyhole to it anywhere, I'd wager it's at Borobudur.

UK admits to deploying "spy rock" in Russia Vladimir Putin has been handed a propaganda gift, according to some analysts, after an admission that British embassy officials deployed a fake rock to spy on Russia. The confirmation by Tony Blair's former chief of staff has left Britain's foreign intelligence service MI6 examining the lessons from a rare public airing of one of its controversial operations. In an interview with the BBC, Jonathan Powell confirmed that British spies had been caught red handed more than five years ago in an operation which involved equipment being hidden inside a fake rock left in a Moscow park. In 2006, Russian state television broadcast footage that appeared to show four British officials placing or retrieving the fake rock, and exposed the sophisticated communications equipment inside the plastic boulder. Commentators said Mr Powell's admission could increase pressure on Russian NGOs just as they are coming under renewed fire. Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister, has claimed the NGOs are being used by western powers to sponsor the wave of protests that have broken out over alleged vote fraud in December parliamentary elections, and the former president's planned return to power in elections in March. "In the current political situation, this admission [by Mr Powell] could be used as proof that Putin is right when he claims that foreign intelligence services are behind the protests," said Nikolai Petrov, analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Centre. If numbers fall at the next protest on February 4, then I think they will ratchet up this line to the full extent: that NGOs are receiving orders from the enemies of Russia to destabilise the country. Former prime minister Mr Blair declined to discuss the Russian allegations when in government, citing a long-standing policy not to comment on intelligence issues. However, Mr Powell told the BBC: "There's not much you can say, you can't really call up and say "I'm terribly sorry about that, it won't happen again." I mean, they had us bang to rights. Moscow said British officials and their Russia contacts had used pocket-sized computers to download data to and from a gadget hidden in the rock as they walked past it, a process which worked at a distance of up to 20 meters and took only one or two seconds. The 2006 incident damaged already tense relations between Russia and the UK. Relations between London and Moscow remain difficult today, mainly because of the failure of both sides to resolve issues relating to the murder in London in 2006 of Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer, by polonium poisoning. Russia has never agreed to the extradition to the UK of the man wanted by British prosecutors for the murder while Britain has maintained a package of sanctions imposed in 2007. In its 2006 report, Russian TV identified the four people visiting the rock as mid-level embassy officials, including one who it said had authorised grants from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to Russian NGOs, including the Moscow Helsinki Group and the New Eurasia Foundation. State television on Tuesday night hit out at the new US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, with suggestions his agenda was to foment revolution in Russia by supporting opposition leaders. It targeted him for meeting with opposition figures on his second day of work.

'Potter' wins big at People's Choice show LOS ANGELES, Jan. 12 (UPI) -- The final installment in the Harry Potter franchise won the People's Choice Awards for Favorite Movie, Action Movie and Ensemble at a ceremony in Los Angeles. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," the eighth film in the blockbuster series, also took the prize for Favorite Book Adaptation, while "Water for Elephants" was named Favorite Drama Movie and "Bridesmaids" Favorite Comedy Movie. Johnny Depp earned the accolade for Favorite Movie Actor, as well as the award for Favorite Animated Movie Voice for his work in "Rango." Emma Stone was voted Favorite Movie Actress and Favorite Comedic Movie Actress. Adam Sandler went home with the trophy for Favorite Comedic Movie Actor and Chloe Grace Moretz was deemed Favorite Movie Star Under 25. The Favorite Movie Icon prize went to Morgan Freeman and the Favorite Action Movie Star statuette was presented to Hugh Jackman.

No charges for Oklahoma teen mother who called 911 to ask permission to kill burglar Sarah McKinley, 18, shot and killed Justin Martin with a 12-gauge shotgun after calling police and asking in a near-whisper: "I've got two guns in my hand. Is it OK to shoot him if he comes through the door? "Well, you have to do whatever you can do to protect yourself," a dispatcher replied. I can't tell you that you can do that, but you have to do what you have to do to protect your baby. Police found Martin's body, knife in hand, slumped over McKinley's sofa, and determined the mother of a three-month-old baby - whose cancer-stricken husband died on Christmas Day - had acted in self-defense. "Our initial review of the case doesn't indicate she violated the law in any way," assistant district attorney James Walters told the Oklahoman newspaper. He should have thought about it before he went into someone's home. Martin's suspected accomplice Dustin Stewart, 29, who surrendered to police, was to appear in court Thursday. According to the latest FBI data, firearms were used in 215 cases of "justifiable homicide" in 2009 in the US, where every year guns figure in around 30,000 deaths ranging from murder to suicide and accidents.

After austerity, Italy's Monti looks to growth Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti has said that Europe cannot rely on austerity to fix its economic problems. The former European Commissioner told parliament that more efforts must be made to boost growth. On Wednesday he met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who praised Italy's plans to reduce its 1.9 trillion euro debt pile. Monti said EU leaders must soon agree new rules on fiscal discipline. He added. It's very important, without forgetting fiscal discipline, to go beyond that and invest more energy into growth. Italy appears to have eased market concerns about a blow-up of its public finances - at least for the time being. It sold 12 billion euros of bonds in its first debt sale of the year on Thursday morning. The interest rates on one-year bonds plunged to 2.7 per cent, from 5.9 per cent in a similar auction last month in what is being interpreted as a sign of improved investor confidence. More about: Angela Merkel, Economic growth, Eurozone, Italy, Mario Monti

Plan to charge for moorings at Rhyl's Foryd Harbour

OF Cody Ross Agrees to Sign With Red Sox Cody Ross agreed to sign with the Boston Red Sox, giving them an experienced hitter with postseason success on his resume to help replace J.D. Drew in right field. Foxsports.com and ESPN.com reported the contract is for one year and $3 million. Ross told The Associated Press in a text message late Monday that the deal won't be finalized until he takes a physical. The 31-year-old Ross batted .240 with 14 home runs and 52 RBIs for the San Francisco Giants last season while playing at least 22 games at every outfield position. Ross was the 2010 NL championship series MVP for the Giants and helped them win the World Series that year after they picked him up off waivers in August. He expressed his thanks on Twitter to San Francisco fans and wrote: "Looking fwd to meeting the (hash) redsoxnation fans!!" The right-handed hitting Ross and newly acquired Ryan Sweeney provide the Red Sox with a righty-lefty tandem to fill right field. Drew is a free agent after completing a $70 million five-year contract. He played only 81 games last year, batting .222 with four homers and 22 RBIs in an injury-plagued season. Ross and Sweeney also give Boston insurance in left field as Carl Crawford recovers from surgery on his left wrist. Crawford might not be ready for opening day. With the Red Sox, Ross would join a team in transition after manager Terry Francona was let go and replaced by Bobby Valentine. Boston went 7-20 in September last year, missing the playoffs with a record collapse. Now, Valentine's roster is taking shape. Late last month, the Red Sox landed a new man for the back of the bullpen when they acquired All-Star closer Andrew Bailey and Sweeney from the Oakland Athletics for outfielder Josh Reddick, infield prospect Miles Head and minor league pitcher Raul Alcantara. Reddick spent much of last season filling in for Drew and occasionally Crawford. Bailey gives the Red Sox a reliable ninth-inning reliever to replace Jonathan Papelbon, who signed a $50 million, four-year contract as a free agent with the Philadelphia Phillies in November. Last January, Ross avoided salary arbitration and signed a $6.3 million, one-year contract with San Francisco. It was a hefty raise for the former kid rodeo clown, who earned $4.45 million in 2010 and joined the Giants on a waiver claim from Florida on Aug. 22 that year. Ross then became one of the Giants' most reliable players - and a fan favorite - down the stretch and during an improbable title run. The franchise won its first championship since 1954 and first since moving West in 1958. He hit three of his five postseason home runs during the NLCS against Philadelphia, and the Giants won in six games against the favored Phillies as Ross received MVP honors. He drove in 10 runs during the 2010 postseason, two in San Francisco's five-game World Series win over the Texas Rangers. But Ross - son of a team roper and steer wrestler - never found a steady groove in 2011 and the Giants failed to return to the playoffs. It became clear the team was going in a different direction this winter. In November, general manager Brian Sabean acquired Melky Cabrera in a trade with the Royals.

John Hinckley Jr. hearing on visitations will resume A hearing is to resume Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington to help determine whether the man who shot President Reagan in 1981 eventually could be released from the mental hospital where he has lived since 1982. The proposal by St. Elizabeths Hospital would grant John Hinckley Jr. two 17-day visits, followed by six 24-day visits to his mother's home in Kingsmill, Va. After he completes the extended, unsupervised releases, Hinckley would get a convalescence leave. Hinckley's lawyers and treatment team envision his completing all eight releases within eight to 10 months, with the convalescence leave immediately afterward. TIMELINE: Presidential assassinations and attempts But U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman, who is presiding over the hearing, has said he's not likely to agree to any convalescence leave without another full hearing. Federal prosecutors opposed the proposal, contending that Hinckley remains a danger to society. They point to his low socialization skills, community resistance and questionable behavior on Hinckley's part, such as telling lies to his treatment providers. Several Secret Service agents are expected to testify about some of Hinckley's behavior, specifically about actions they reported during one of his recent trips to his mother's home. Assistant U.S. Atty. Sarah Chasson has said the Secret Service report indicates that Hinckley picked up a book about presidential assassins while visiting a bookstore. But Hinckley's attorney, Barry Levine, said the report didn't indicate that Hinckley picked up any particular book. Agents' testimony is expected to clarify the report. In 1982, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the 1981 shooting of Reagan and three other men. He has been under St. Elizabeths' care since then.

Are We Really Monolingual? - NYTimes.com AMERICANS are often told that in today's globalized world, we are at a competitive disadvantage because of our lazy monolingualism. "For too long, Americans have relied on other countries to speak our language," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said at the Foreign Language Summit in 2010. But we won't be able to do that in the increasingly complex and interconnected world. The widespread assumption is that few Americans speak more than one language, compared with citizens of other nations - and that we have little interest in learning to speak another. But is this true? Since 1980, the United States Census Bureau has asked: "Does this person speak a language other than English at home? What is this language? How well does this person speak English? The bureau reports that as of 2009, about 20 percent of Americans speak a language other than English at home. This figure is often taken to indicate the number of bilingual speakers in the United States. But a moment's reflection reveals that the bureau's question about what you speak at home is not equivalent to asking whether you speak more than one language. I have some proficiency in Spanish and was fluent in Mandarin 20 years ago. But when the American Community Survey (an ongoing survey from the Census Bureau) arrived in my mailbox last month, posing that question, I had to answer no, because we speak only English in my home. There are countless Americans who speak languages other than English outside their homes: not just those of us who have learned other languages in school or through living abroad, but also employers who have learned enough Spanish to speak to their employees; workers in hospitals, clinics, courts and retail stores who have picked up parts of another language to make their jobs easier; soldiers back from Iraq or Afghanistan with some competency in Arabic, Pashto or Dari; third-generation kids studying their heritage language in informal schools on weekends; spouses and partners picking up the language of a loved one's family; enthusiasts learning languages with computer software like Rosetta Stone. None of the above are identified as bilingual by the Census Bureau's question. Every census in the United States since 1890 (except for one, in 1950) has asked about language characteristics, and its question has always seemed to assume that English is the only language relevant for the aspects of life that take place outside the home. This assumption, though outdated, is somewhat understandable. After all, the bureau's primary goal in asking this question is not to paint a full and complete portrait of the language proficiencies of Americans but rather to track immigrants" integration into mainstream American society and to ascertain what services they need, and in what languages. In October, for instance, the Census Bureau released a list of jurisdictions with large numbers of voters who need voting instructions translated in a language other than English. Nonetheless, to better map American language abilities, the census should ask the same question that the European Commission asked in its survey in 2006: Can you have a conversation in a language besides your mother tongue? The answer, incidentally, dented Europe's reputation as highly multilingual: only 56 percent of the respondents, who tended to be younger and more educated, said they could. Until the census question is refined, claims about American monolingualism will almost certainly be overstated. The celebrated multilingualism of not just Europe but also the rest of the world may be exaggerated. The hand-wringing about America's supposed linguistic weakness is often accompanied by the claim that monolinguals make up a small worldwide minority. The Oxford linguist Suzanne Romaine has claimed that bilingualism and multilingualism "are a normal and unremarkable necessity of everyday life for the majority of the world's population." But the statistics tell a murkier story. Recently, the Stockholm University linguist Mikael Parkvall sought out data on global bilingualism and ran into problems. The reliable numbers that do exist cover only 15 percent of the world's 190-odd countries, and less than one-third of the world's population. In those countries, Mr. Parkvall calculated (in a study not yet published), the average number of languages spoken either natively or non-natively per person is 1.58. Piecing together the available data for the rest of the world as best he could, he estimated that 80 percent of people on the planet speak 1.69 languages - not high enough to conclude that the average person is bilingual. Multilinguals may outnumber monolinguals, but it's not clear by how much. The average American may be no more monolingual or less multilingual than any other average person elsewhere on the planet. At the very least, we can't say for sure - not in any language. Michael Erard is the author of "Babel No More: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners."

Radiant outlook for energy sector The year of the dragon has begun on an auspicious note with the S&P 500 having its best start since 1987, after a disappointing performance in 2011. The outlook for energy appears particularly radiant, especially compared to last year when the single worst-performing share in the S&P was First Solar, a maker of solar panels. A short on the shares was the most profitable position for some hedge funds such as Greenlight for 2011. Energy has always been the subject of hype - a perennial wild card for economies, financial markets and shares, as First Solar's dismal share price drop underscores. On the macro front, both instability in the wake of the Arab spring (which threatens to turn into an Arab winter) and the US efforts to encourage other nations to boycott Iranian oil have led some to fear a spike in oil prices. Any rise would lead to renewed inflationary pressures and discourage consumer spending at a time when global growth remains weak or non-existent. Many future deals will focus on traditional energy. But many others will also involve bets tied to the new technologies around gas generally - and shale in particular - in part because of such uncertainty. Meanwhile, the first US initial public offering of the year is an energy group, Renewable Energy, which priced on Thursday in New York. The company originally planned to list in 2008 and has been waiting nearly four years to make its debut. Moreover, so far this year, oil and gas is the most active sector for equity capital markets globally, according to data from Dealogic. In addition, much of the merger activity expected this year both into the US and outward bound from the US is likely to be energy deals, bankers say. Mergers and acquisitions in the upstream oil and gas industry in the US set records last year both in terms of the value and number of deals. Asian investors are all rushing to the US to gain exposure to new technologies and sources of energy, and companies that can bridge the two. For example, last year Temasek and RRJ Capital, controlled by investor Richard Ong, partnered to acquire 70 per cent of Frac Tech Holdings from Chesapeake Energy Corp for $3.5bn, making it one of the 10 largest Asian deals. And last month, China National Petroleum announced that it was working with Shell and ExxonMobil on projects in its home market. Nothing shows the transformation more dramatically than the way the focus has shifted at private equity groups such as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts from deals involving traditional energy to investments focusing on gas. In 2007, KKR teamed up with TPG to take over Texas utility TXU Energy in a record buy-out deal. For that deal to work out, natural gas prices could not drop too much. Today gas prices are less than half what they were then and KKR is valuing the investment at 10 cents on the dollar. Meanwhile, two of KKR's investments in shale gas ventures returned three to five times the money invested. At the end of last year, Japanese trading firm Itochu joined KKR in a $7bn investment in Samson, an Oklahoma energy firm while its great rival Marubeni is taking a big stake in a Texas oil and gas venture, according to Japanese press reports this month. The US is already exporting more energy than Opec member Ecuador, while the price of natural gas has sunk to levels that were inconceivable just five years ago. That trend has all kinds of second-order effects. Today, KKR is not only investing in capital intensive shale gas ventures, it is considering investments in the infrastructure to handle changing forms of energy and patterns of trade. KKR executives note that major petrochemical companies are building new complexes in the US for the first time in years as the economics of energy change in favour of the US. And, of course, they are also pondering who the victims of these changes are. Asset prices have already risen dramatically, leading some to believe that assets are already inflated and that there could be a correction. So perhaps the surest bet for 2012 is a bet on volatility?

iPhone 4S coming to China (and 21 other countries) on Jan. 13 Happy news for Apple fans across the world: The iPhone 4S will become available in China, as well as 21 other countries, on Jan. 13. According to Apple, on this particular Jan. 13 - which I should note, for the sake of the superstitious folks in the bunch, is a Friday - the iPhone 4S will also be available in Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, China, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Grenada, Guam, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos and Uganda. For those keeping track, this means that the popular mobile device will be available in over 90 countries at that time. According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, that will make the iPhone 4S rollout the "fastest iPhone rollout ever."

FSA fines insurance companies £2m for altering complaints Published on Thursday 19 January 2012 00:59 Insurance firms Direct Line and Churchill have been fined £2.17 million for fudging complaint files, including signature forgery, the City watchdog has said. Out of 50 complaint files requested by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) for review, 27 were "altered improperly" before they were submitted by the firms, which are owned by Royal Bank of Scotland. The FSA received the files in April 2010 and at the same time was tipped off that some of the paperwork was changed before they were sent, while it also discovered that seven internal documents contained staff signatures forged by one member of staff. Tracey McDermott, the FSA's acting director of enforcement and financial crime, said: "This is a serious breach. The firms failed to give clear instructions, resulting in staff making inappropriate alterations, with one individual even forging the signatures of colleagues. In February 2010, the FSA informed Direct Line and Churchill that it would be reviewing files to assess the effectiveness of the companies" complaint-handling processes. In preparation for this review, the firms asked a major accountancy firm to do a practice review and discovered that 28 per cent of the 110 files submitted failed to meet complaint-handling requirements. Before the two companies sent the 50 files off for the official review with the FSA, they conducted a conference call with staff in which they warned that any similar failure could lead to enforcement action for the firm. Staff were also told that, if they were found not to be operating to the required standard, they could face disciplinary investigation. Following the warnings to staff, the firms sent off the files, which were later discovered to contain the altered paperwork. Paul Geddes, chief executive of RBS Insurance, said: "We very much regret the findings of the FSA investigation. Although no customers were disadvantaged, we are very disappointed that we did not meet the standards we expect of ourselves and which the FSA expects of us. A spokesperson for consumer organisation Which? said: "This is a serious breach and seems to indicate that the firms were not taking complaints handling seriously and failing to record proper evidence about why they came to decisions." The two firms agreed to settle the case at an early stage and qualified for a 30 per cent discount - without the reduction, the FSA would have fined them £3.1m. In August 2010, the watchdog slapped what remains a record fine of £2.28m on the insurer Zurich after the firm lost the personal details of 46,000 of its general insurance customers. The data was on a tape that went missing in South Africa during a routine transfer two years ago. The loss came to light in October 2009. The FSA said Zurich UK had put its customers at risk of fraud and other crime by failing to protect the data, which included sensitive information including credit card and current account details.

Rogue lobbyists 'could face jail' under register plans

Ultra-Orthodox Jews and the Modesty Fight IS it possible for a religious demand for modesty to be about anything other than men controlling women's bodies? From recent events in Israel, it would certainly seem that it is not. Last month, an innocent, modestly dressed 8-year-old girl, Naama Margolese, living in Beit Shemesh, described being spat on and vilified by religious extremists - all men - who believed that she did not dress modestly enough while walking past them to the religious school she attends. And more and more, public buses in Israel are enforcing gender segregation imposed by ultra-Orthodox riders in and near their neighborhoods. Woe to the girl or woman who refuses to move to the back of the bus. This is part of a larger battle being waged in Israel between the ultra-Orthodox and the rest of Israeli society over women's place in society, over their very right to have a visible presence and to participate in the public sphere. What is behind these deeply disturbing events? We are told that they arise from a religious concern about modesty, that women must be covered and sequestered so that men do not have improper sexual thoughts. It seems, then, that a religious tenet that begins with men's sexual thoughts ends with men controlling women's bodies. This is not a problem unique to Judaism. But the Talmud, the basis for Jewish law, offers a perhaps surprising answer: It places the responsibility for controlling men's licentious thoughts about women squarely on the men. Put more plainly, the Talmud says: It's your problem, sir; not hers. The ultra-Orthodox men in Israel who are exerting control over women claim that they are honoring women. In effect they are saying: We do not treat women as sex objects as you in Western society do. Our women are about more than their bodies, and that is why their bodies must be fully covered. In fact, though, their actions objectify and hyper-sexualize women. Think about it: By saying that all women must hide their bodies, they are saying that every woman is an object who can stir a man's sexual thoughts. Thus, every woman who passes their field of vision is sized up on the basis of how much of her body is covered. She is not seen as a complete person, only as a potential inducement to sin. Of course, once you judge a female human being only through a man's sexualized imagination, you can turn even a modest 8-year-old girl into a seductress and a prostitute. At heart, we are talking about a blame-the-victim mentality. It shifts the responsibility of managing a man's sexual urges from himself to every woman he may or may not encounter. It is a cousin to the mentality behind the claim, "She was asking for it." So the responsibility is now on the women. To protect men from their sexual thoughts, women must remove their femininity from their public presence, ridding themselves of even the smallest evidence of their own sexuality. All of this is done in the name of the Torah and Jewish law. But it's actually a complete perversion. The Talmud, the foundation of Jewish law, acknowledges that men can be sexually aroused by women and is indeed concerned with sexual thoughts and activity outside of marriage. But it does not tell women that men's sexual urges are their responsibility. Rather, both the Talmud and the later codes of Jewish law make that demand of men. It is forbidden for a man to gaze sexually at a woman, whether beautiful or ugly, married or unmarried, says the Talmud. Later Talmudic rabbis extended this ban even to "her smallest finger" and "her brightly colored clothing - even if they are drying on the wall." To make these the woman's responsibility is to demand that Jewish women cover their hands, and that they not dry their clothes in public. No one has ever said this. At least not yet. The Talmud tells the religious man, in effect: If you have a problem, you deal with it. It is the male gaze - the way men look at women - that needs to be desexualized, not women in public. The power to make sure men don't see women as objects of sexual gratification lies within men's - and only men's - control. Jewish tradition teaches men and women alike that they should be modest in their dress. But modesty is not defined by, or even primarily about, how much of one's body is covered. It is about comportment and behavior. It is about recognizing that one need not be the center of attention. It is about embodying the prophet Micah's call for modesty: learning "to walk humbly with your God." Eight-year-old Naama could teach her attackers a thing or two about modesty.

Bashar al-Assad Says Outsiders Feed Unrest in Syria Damascus residents watched President Bashar al-Assad gave a live broadcast address, his fourth speech since the uprising in Syria began 10 months ago. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria on Tuesday said the 10-month uprising in his country was the work of what he called "outsiders," "terrorists," the international news media and the Arab League, stressing that he would use an "an iron hand" against his foreign enemies. "Those who stand in the middle are traitors," he told a cheering crowd in a speech at Damascus University that was broadcast live. There is no alternative. But to many Syrians, longtime allies and even his few remaining supporters, the problem increasingly is Mr. Assad himself. Trained as an ophthalmologist, Mr. Assad came to power 11 years ago with the promise of leading Syria into a new era of economic and political opening. But when he stepped to the lectern for only the fourth national address since the uprising started, he instead appeared a shallow image of his father, Hafez al-Assad, relying exclusively on his repressive and violent security forces to stay in power. But those tactics have proved ineffective, and increasingly, as his isolation at home and abroad intensifies, many are predicting it is only a matter of time before his government falls. "The father's playbook says "shoot," so they keep doing that," said Amr al-Azm, a Syrian-born history professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio. Mr. Assad denied that his government ordered security forces to shoot anyone, despite a death toll that the United Nations says has spiraled beyond 5,000 since mid-March in a relentless crackdown. And he promised a referendum on a new constitution in March, a step that seemed pale before the scale of the crisis, which has emerged as one of the bloodiest of the uprisings that began in the Arab world a year ago. But he never once deviated from the notion that he remains popular, a victim of a conspiracy financed by outsiders - offering the same kind of logic that was heard in Libya and Egypt before uprisings brought down longtime autocrats. "When I rule, I rule because that it is the people's will, and when I leave office, I leave because it is the people's will," Mr. Assad said in his first speech since June. Standing behind a wooden lectern , the Syrian leader left the impression that he is still scrambling to find a solution to the turmoil that is undermining his grip on power and slouching toward sectarian civil war. But he appeared empty-handed, lacking any new strategies. In the weeks after protests erupted in the southern town of Dara'a last March, Mr. Assad seemed to strike a conciliatory note, offering reheated promises of political reform. But those who met with him privately in those early months said he soon moved from even a pretense of compromise to confrontation. Right after the initial protests, a group of elders from Dara'a visited Mr. Assad, and as a show of respect they doffed their igals, the black braided ropes that Arabs used to keep their headclothes in place, said Charles Ayoub, editor of Ad Diyar, a newspaper in Lebanon. They said they would publicly pledge allegiance as long as he addressed the town's concerns, which were aroused when local children, mostly adolescents, had been imprisoned for writing antigovernment slogans on the walls. The president assured the elders that he would address their grievance. Instead he deployed his tanks there almost immediately, Mr. Ayoub said. It was from that point that management of the crisis began to run off the rails, analysts said, leading to a continuous cycle of protest, arrest, torture - leavened with the occasional and dubious announcements of an amnesty for prisoners. As the demonstrations in Dara'a continued, Hamza Khatib, 13, was arrested and returned to his parents castrated and bearing marks of torture. Mr. Assad promised an investigation, including whether a cousin Atif Najib, had any role as the head of security there. Though Mr. Najib was removed, the investigation never materialized. Instead an entirely different narrative emerged, one that defied the evidence. The marks on the boy's body were the result of decay in the morgue, not torture, Mr. Assad told visitors. He echoed that line with ABC News last month. Anthony Shadid contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.

5.8-Magnitude Quake Hits Philippine Island Region The U.S. Geological Survey is reporting a magnitude-5.8 earthquake in the Babuyan Islands region off the northern tip of the Philippines. The U.S.G.S. said the earthquake struck at 12:36 a.m. Sunday (1636 GMT Saturday). Its epicenter, with a depth of 15.8 miles (25.5 kilometers), is about 317 miles (511 kilometers) north of Manila. There are no immediate reports of injuries or damage. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center has not issued any warnings or advisories.

Patti Smith Cancels Concert at the Chelsea Hotel Patti Smith has canceled a private show she was going to perform for residents Thursday night at the Chelsea Hotel, according to Sam Himmelstein, a lawyer for the hotel's tenants association. Mr. Himmelstein said Ms. Smith called him Thursday night to inform him of her decision. Ms. Smith had announced earlier this week that she had planned to play a private show for residents on Thursday, triggering suspicions among residents that she was performing at the behest of the new owner, the Chetrit Group, which is feuding with the tenants. On Wednesday, Ms. Smith had defended her decision, saying the concert was her idea and that the hotel's preservation as a haven for artists was of paramount concern to her. But on Thursday, she apparently had a change of heart. In a statement, Ms. Smith said, "In respect for the wishes of the Chelsea Hotel Tenants Association, I have canceled tonight's performance. My motivation was solely to serve the tenants. If this serves them better, than I am satisfied. Mr. Himmelstein said, "She said she did it with the best intentions, that she has no relationship with the owner but she is friends with the architect, Gene Kaufman, who is overseeing the renovation." Several tenants had called on Ms. Smith to cancel the show, while others said they would not attend. The Chelsea Hotel Tenants Association respectfully declines the invitation of Patti Smith and the Chelsea Hotel management for this evening's concert. We consider the timing to be unfortunate both due to the publicity," Zoe Pappas, the tenant association president, wrote in a statement earlier Thursday, "and our legal situation."

Cruise Ship Scam Over Faked Death A trio of alleged scammers have been caught allegedly faking a death on the cruise ship liner Costa Concordia in the first sign that con artists are targeting the crippled ship. The scam was detected by New York lawyer Peter Ronai, who speaks Hungarian and is representing six Hungarian survivors from the ship wreck. Ronai's claims were corroborated by the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, which said they grew "suspicious" about a mother's claim that her daughter was missing on the ship when they discovered that the alleged missing woman's mother had been dead for three years. "It was absolutely clear that it was a fake story, so we treated the request as a face action," Jozsef Toth, the head of the press department at the Foreign Ministry of Hungary told ABCNews.com. We have initiated an investigation about the matter, who is this person and who made this report and what was the motivation? The investigation is ongoing. A spokesman for the ministry said all of the suspects would face criminal charges. The fraud became public as officials pulled another body from the wrecked ship, bringing the total of confirmed deaths to 16, with 16 others still missing. The missing include a couple from Minnesota. Click here to see photos from the cruise ship wreck off the coast of Italy. Ronai was in Budapest when he was asked to take a seventh case involving he ship a few days ago. I got an email saying, 'Can you please help us? My daughter is missing. She was on the Concordia,'" Ronai said. I ran out to her house and basically she told me her 5-year-old granddaughter was missing, too. The woman said she did not know what her 38-year-old daughter Eva Fiedlerne Puspoki was doing on the ship and that Ronai needed to speak to her daughter's boyfriend. He met with the alleged boyfriend who corroborated the woman's story. They also asked how much money they could expect to receive for the claimed deaths, Ronai said. But the next day, the "boyfriend" called back and told Ronai there had been a misunderstanding, that the child was not missing, the lawyer said. "The story started changing and changing, more and more," Ronai said and as the story changed, his suspicions grew. He told the boyfriend that if he did not see the child, he would have to report a missing person to the police. That night, he went to meet the boyfriend and brought the police with him. The child was there and they interrogated her. "When is the last time you saw mommy?" they asked. "Today," Ronai said the little girl replied. She said her mother had taken her to the park, to the swings. Are you sure you saw Mommy today? Ronai recounts asking the child. I saw her today. I saw Mommy today," the girl replied. The "missing" woman arrived, but even then Ronai said she insisted that she had been on the ship and injured her leg when she jumped off the boat. He said she showed no signs of injury. They confessed to everything after questioning. They confessed to pulling this scam to make money," Ronai said. The police arrested them. They didn't take them away to jail, but they'll face criminal procedures. When asked if he believe this will be the first of many cases of people attempting to take advantage of this tragedy, Ronai replied, "I think so." They're called 'jump-ons.' It's normal, this is just on a grander scale," Ronai said. People will do horrible things for money. When you think about it, I had contacts at the embassy spending money looking for these people when they could have been looking for others. He estimates that he spent about $10,000 on the fraudulent search, for expenses including a plane ticket, a private investigator, countless taxis and sky-high cell phone bills. In 20 years of doing this stuff, I've seen a lot of deaths and a lot of tragedies, but I've never met one family after losing a loved one that says, 'How much?' Ronai said. They always want to know, 'What happened? How did it happen? These people wanted to know, 'How much?' ABC News Dragana Jovanovic contributed to this report

Ruined drywall? Friday, March 18, 2011; 7:06 PM Leaking water can sometimes create a massive water blister in latex paint on a ceiling. You may mistake this for ruined drywall when, in fact, the drywall may not have to be replaced. Prick the large blister and let all water drain out. The day after the leak, test with your finger to see how stiff the drywall is. If it's solid, you may just have to repaint and not replace the drywall. The key is to minimize the amount of water that saturates the drywall. I've seen many a drywall ceiling that dries out and survives. It's not unusual at all. If you're worried that the drywall might fall from the ceiling at a later date, you can always install additional screws. If you have 1/2-inch-thick drywall, then use 1 1/4-inch coarse-thread screws. Be sure the drywall screw is countersunk about 1/16 inch. If you go any further, you will tear the paper around the bugle-head screw, rendering it ineffective.

Bomb blasts rock northeastern Nigeria January 4, 2012 -- Updated 2159 GMT (0559 HKT) No immediate report of casualties, military task force spokesman says "The target is obviously the local people," he adds Blasts are in northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri Jos, Nigeria (CNN) -- Two bomb blasts erupted late Wednesday in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri, a spokesman for a military task force there said. There were no immediate reports of casualties, said the spokesman, Lt. Col. Hassan Mohammed. "No military personnel or security agent was targeted," he said in a telephone interview. The area where the bomb went off is a local community where mainly local people populate, so the target is obviously the local people. From Hassan John for CNN

Mitt won, but does he look like a winner?

FT Alphaville " "Coronal Mass Ejection is headed towards Earth" Posted by Paul Murphy on Jan 23 15:05. While we wait for something approaching real news on the Greek PSI discussions, here's a decidedly non-financial graphic (click to enlarge) ... Rather than try and explain that we'll skip to this warning from the Space Weather Prediction Center, part of America's National Weather Service: The strongest Solar Radiation Storm since September, 2005 is in progress and continues to get stronger and a very fast Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) is headed towards Earth. Geomagnetic storming is a near certainty from this event, but pending preliminary analysis, no estimates are available yet for timing or strength of the storm. The associated solar flare peaked at the R2 (Moderate) level on January 23 at 0400 GMT (11pm Jan 22 EST). Radiation storms are a concern for astronauts, for communications at high latitudes, for satellites in space and for many rockets being launched... The model guidance is back and it shows the coronal mass ejection arriving Tuesday at 9am EST (1400 GMT). The "bump" on Jan 24 in the green traces is the coronal mass ejection arriving at Earth. The radiation storm is continuing. A correction is needed on the previous post, it is the strongest storm since December, 2006. So you've been warned: no launching of rockets tomorrow, certainly not after lunch, London-time. You can follow the action on this live chart feed from Boulder Colorado: Apparently, while the red line remains above the central dotted line, we're in alert territory. Related links: Space Weather Prediction Center - on Facebook This entry was posted by Paul Murphy on Monday, January 23rd, 2012 at 15:05 and is filed under Capital markets. Tagged with Space Weather Prediction Center.

Music Nation events in countdown to London 2012 Festival Music Nation is part of the BBC's contribution to the London 2012 Festival and the Cultural Olympiad. For all BBC Olympic related programming, news, general information visit www.bbc.co.uk/2012. Music Nation events For further information, include tickets please visit: bbc.co.uk/musicnation South Basingstoke Fri 2 March 7.45pm - The Anvil London Mozart Players: Four World Seasons LMP present world premiere at The Anvil Southampton Across the weekend: Turner Sims and other Southampton venues Southampton's Musical Alphabet An A to Z of music, from a cappella to zumba, delivered in 26 hours around Southampton. Sat 3 March 1pm: Turner Sims Southampton Youth Orchestra with Chloe Hanslip Part of Southampton's Musical Alphabet: an A-Z of music in 26 hours. Sat 3 March 8pm: Turner Sims Julian Joseph Trio Sun 4 March 1pm: Turner Sims Brodsky Quartet Wheel of 4 Tunes: part of Southampton's Musical Alphabet: an A-Z of music in 26 hours. Sun 4 March 7pm: Turner Sims Equivox South East Croydon Sat 3 March 7.30pm: Fairfield Halls London Mozart Players Works by Mozart, Richard Strauss and a new work by Roxanna Panufnik. South West Devon & Cornwall Sun 4 March All Day: Multiple venues from Land's End to Exmoor BBC Concert Orchestra Sound of the South West: from sunrise to sunset on Sunday 4 March 2012, the BBC Concert Orchestra invites everyone in Devon and Cornwall to celebrate the Olympic and Paralympic Games and take part in one extraordinary day of music-making. Dorset Sat 3 March 7.30pm: The Exchange, Sturminster Newton The Chalk Legends Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra's new music ensemble Kokoro presents The Chalk Legends. Led by Kokoro, BSO present two concerts as part of a large-scale music, dance and multi-media project. Orchestras, choirs, big bands, and ukulele groups join together in an evening of community music making. Kokoro premiere Stephen McNeff's Gessopia and Hywel Davies" Quickstep. Sun 4 March 7.30pm: Portesham Village Hall Led by the BSO new music ensemble, Kokoro, BSO present two concerts as part of a large-scale music, dance and multi-media project. Plymouth Sat 3 March 7pm: Plymouth Pavilions Party at the Pavilions: BBC Concert Orchestra present a one-off performance with special guest Seth Lakeman. Bristol Sun 4 March 3.30pm: St George's, Bristol Orchestras Live: Aurora Orchestra Aurora presents a programme inspired by the vibrant lives of cities around the world. Music Nation: Orchestras Live is a celebration of the best of British chamber orchestras performing innovative programmes across England. London Sun 4 March all day: Camden Roundhouse Voices Now & the BBC Singers A day of some of the UK's best choirs at the Roundhouse presented by Voices Now, Making Music and the BBC Singers. Across the weekend: Barbican Barbican Weekender Head to the Barbican for a packed weekend of concerts and free events for all ages with an urban twist. Fri 2 March 12pm: Kings Place (Hall 2) Academy of St Martin in the Fields: Musical Torch Academy players and Islington schoolchildren will create a new composition inspired by a phrase from Brahms" music; a phrase of this composition will inspire the work of the next school, and so on as the piece travels through participating schools. Fri 2 March 7.30pm: Kings Place Brahms Unwrapped at Kings Place This programme offers a wonderful opportunity to hear some of Brahms' greatest chamber music in London's newest creative hub. Sat 3 March 7.30pm: Kings Place This programme offers a wonderful opportunity to hear Brahms' powerful Serenade No. 2 in London's newest creative hub. . Across the weekend, all day: Kings Place Central St. Martin's College and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields Musical Torch installation Students from Central St. Martin's College with the schoolchildren from Islington create an interactive installation which explores the Academy's Musical Torch project. Sat 3 March 7.30pm: Barbican BBC Symphony Orchestra: Urban Classic A meeting of musical cultures featuring some of the biggest names in UK urban music. Sat 3 March 7.30pm: St Barnabas, gorringe park avenue, mitcham Carmina Burana presented by Colliers Wood Chorus & Merton Music Foundation Encapsulating all the theatre and dram of Carmina Burana by Carl Orff Sat 3 March 7.30pm: Cadogan Hall City of London Sinfonia: Conquering the Antartic: a landmark concert retracing the steps of Captain Scott's expedition to the South Pole. Sat 3 March 6pm & 7.45pm: LSO St Luke's LSO On Track Creative Day A creative day culminating with 2 repeat public concerts showcasing new work devised by exceptional young musicians from East London with the London Symphony Orchestra. Sat 3 March 7.45pm: Purcell Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall Nu Civilisation Jazz Orchestra: Firebird - A Stravinsky/Parker Sound Clash Discover an exciting, experimental place where jazz and classical music meet, including a remodelled version of Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto. The orchestra's composers and arrangers explore this musical mash-up and others in a collection of new works. Sat 3 March 3pm: Royal Festival Hall Foyers Surrogate Cities Exploded! You are invited to explore the public spaces of the Royal Festival Hall where you will discover inspiring performances of music, dance and film created by young people from across London, developed in response to Heiner Goebbels' Surrogate Cities, an extraordinary work which translates the mechanics and architecture of the city into music. Sat 3 March 6pm: Royal Festival Hall Surrogate Cities by Heiner Goebbels Hear Goebbels" landmark work performed by Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. Sun 4 March 4pm: Trinity Buoy Wharf - Chain Store Grand Union Orchestra and Water City Festival Orchestra What the River Sings: a diverse collection of performers reflects on the cultures and musical character of east London. Sun 4 March 5.30pm: Kings Place (Hall 2) Academy of St Martin in the Fields: Version 2.0 Ensemble Academy players will re-imagine classical music with young musicians from Islington. Creating a new ensemble, Academy musicians and participants will perform compositions, improvisations and interpretations of Brahms. Sun 4 March 7.30pm: Barbican BBC Symphony Orchestra with Rufus Wainwright Rufus Wainwright performs his Five Shakespeare Sonnets in a Shakespeare-inspired programme. Sun 4 March 11am: Queen Elizabeth Hall Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Tots: Let's get on the bus! The first Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Tots concert at the Southbank Centre. Suitable for those aged 6 and under and their families. Sun 4 March 7pm: Queen Elizabeth Hall Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment: Baroque Giants - Bach Hear some of Bach's most famous pieces at this concert directed by Laurence Cummings. Sun 4 March 1.30pm: Queen Elizabeth Hall Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment: Open Rehearsal A very special chance to catch the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in rehearsal. Sun 4 March 10pm: Queen Elizabeth Hall Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment: The Night Shift A "rules-free" music night, with live music and a DJ in the bar until late. Sat 3 March 1.30-6pm: London Coliseum ENO presents John Cage's MUSICIRCUS A host of performing talents take part in this promenade event of extraordinary sound and spectacle around the London Coliseum building. East Grays, Essex Sat 3 March 7.30pm: Civic Hall, Blackshots Lane Harmonie Concert Band presents Sporting Tracks The project will extend Aaron Parker's work with Harmonie Concert Band under Making Music's Adopt a Composer scheme. The final concert at Grays in Essex will be a musical and visual spectacle. Saffron Walden Sat 3 March 7.30pm: St Mary's Parish Church, Saffron Walden Maze Music Britten Sinfonia, Saffron Walden Choral Society, Granta Chorale and youth choir SignuptoSing present a Saffron Walden celebration and the premiere of MAZE by Janet Wheeler and Nick Warburton. Norfolk Sun 4 March 7.30pm: The Apex, Bury St Edmunds ORCHESTRAS LIVE: Academy of Ancient Music West Wiltshire Sat 3 March 7pm: Steam Museum, Great Western Hall, Swindon Superstrings: 'Vici' featuring Bellowhead World premiere of a new work by Pete Flood performed by Bellowhead and Superstrings. Sun 4 March 7.30pm: Wiltshire Music Centre, Bradford on Avon Birmingham Contemporary Music Group A collaboration with the South West Music School and Birmingham Contemporary Music Group has resulted in a dual event, a BCMG concert of British and internationally influential composers and a performance project with SWMS young players. Ludlow Sat 3 March 7.30pm: Ludlow Assembly Rooms Academy of Ancient Music A world class programme by the Academy of Ancient Music and award winning young violinist, Alina Ibragimova. East Midlands Nottingham Sat 3 March 7.30pm: Nottingham Royal Concert Hall Nottingham Youth Orchestra Journey through Olympic cities: Nottingham Youth Orchestra will present an evening in the Royal Concert Hall involving young athletes and schools in which musical reflections on past Olympic cities combine with the aspirations of Nottinghamshire's Olympic hopefuls. Hosted by Des Coleman, actor, presenter and West End Star. Derby Thu 1 March 7pm: Derby's Assembly Rooms Sinfonia VIVA Bright Spirits - a collaborative instrumental project bringing together the very best of Derby's professional and non-professional musicians in a unique shared performance involving new, devised work alongside existing repertoire. Sat 3 March 7.30pm: Derby's Assembly Rooms Sinfonia VIVA Invocation An inspiring evening of new music and dance from Sinfonia ViVA. Rutland Sat 3 March 7.30pm: Rutland County Museum Rutland Concert Band Multum in Parvo - A Celebration of Rutland. A story of Rutland's past, present and future inspired by the children who live there. West Midlands Shropshire Sun 4 March 3pm: St Mary's Church, Shrewsbury Northern Chamber Orchestra A concert featuring the world premiere of a new cello concerto by John Joubert alongside a programme of work by Sibelius, Delius and Mozart. Birmingham Fri 2 March 7.30pm: CBSO Centre, Birmingham A programme of Oliver Knussen, Gerald Barry, Colin Matthews, Aldo Clementi, Tansy Davies, Philip Cashian, Birtwistle, Maxwell Davies, John Woolrich, Donatoni and Thomas Adès. Sat 3 March 7.30pm: Carrs Lane Church, Birmingham Choir with No Name: One Nation Under a Groove A joyful concert performed by choirs made up of people affected by homelessness. Sat 3 March 4pm: Symphony Hall, Birmingham City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra: Tristan and Isolde Waner's timeless opera of illicit love, jealousy, death and transfiguration. Hanley Fri 2 March 8pm: Victoria Hall BBC Philharmonic An American adventure. East Yorks and Lincs Lincolnshire Sat 3 March 8pm: Stamford, Arts Centre European Union Chamber Orchestra This exciting programme features Romp by James Young, a new commission by the European Union Chamber Orchestra. Yorkshire Sheffield Sat 3 March All Day: various venues Alight - an All Day Festival Dozens of music, dance and visual arts events - something for everyone - led by Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus and featuring the Sheffield Giants. Sat 3 March 7.30pm: Sheffield city hall Alight, Twilight A unique, specially commissioned music & dance spectacular about the history of Sheffield from 1893 to the present, featuring over 600 local performers and including the world premier of Timothy Allen's Olympic Triptych. North West Manchester Sat 3 March 7.30pm: Bridgewater Hall Life, liberty and big, big tunes! Sat 3 March 7.30pm: George Lawton Hall Mossley Abney Orchestra & Choir Spinning a Yarn - a newly written musical work about the Industrial Revolution in the North West. Sun 4 March 7.30pm: George Lawton Hall Mossley Chester Sat 3 March 2pm: Chester Amphitheatre (Outdoors) A Handbag of Harmonies Women's choir A Handbag of Harmonies leads a massed choir of 400 in the performance of an original anthem, Across the World, with dance, live music and Chester's Giants. North East & Cumbria Cockermouth Sat 3 March 7.30pm: Christ Church, Cockermouth Orchestras Live The Scottish Ensemble The Scottish Ensemble features trumpeter Alison Balsom, including Seraph, a new work written for her by James MacMillan. Gateshead Across the weekend: Concourse, The Sage Gateshead Music Nation Weekend Concourse Performances Ensembles and performers of all ages from The Sage Gateshead's Learning and Participation programme will be showcasing their work throughout the weekend. Sat 3 March, 1pm: The Greggs Children's Room, The Sage Gateshead Planet Music Lively, fun and inclusive music-making activities for children aged 5 to 7 years and their families. Activities learnt in sessions can easily be used at home, creating a whole world of musical opportunity. Across the weekend: The Sage Gateshead The Sage Gateshead Young Musicians Programme: Weekend School Open Day Weekend School is an audition-based programme, providing top quality music tuition for talented young musicians aged 7-19. Today, potential new students, parents and teachers can come and see what Weekend School can offer. Throughout the day there will be performances by current students, the chance to observe some group lessons and tutors will be on hand to answer any questions, starting with a welcome talk in the Northern Rock Foundation Hall at 11am. Sat 3 March 12pm and 7pm concerts with workshops all day: Gateshead Old Town Hall Cobweb Orchestra A Celebration of English Music: join the award-winning Cobweb Orchestra for a day of participatory music-making and free celebratory concerts focusing on music by English composers. Sun 4 March 3pm: The Sage Gateshead - Hall 1 Northern Sinfonia Northern Sinfonia's Animal Antics: Orchestral entertainment for all the family Sun 4 March 8pm: The Sage Gateshead 20 000 Voices: A Gospel Celebration A showcase concert to celebrate 10 years of wonderful gospel music in the North East. Humberside Sun 4 March 7.30pm: City Hall, Hull The Scottish Ensemble Scotland Glasgow & W Scotland Glasgow Sat 3 March 7pm: Clyde Auditorium BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra A Sporting Fanfare: a spectacular celebration featuring Scottish musical and sporting stars of today and tomorrow. Renfrewshire all day Sat 3 March: various enues across Renfrewshire all day Sun 4 March: "The hub" - Paisley Town Hall, Paisley Abbey Weaving Musical Threads (Scottish Making Music) Celebrating Renfrewshire through the Arts: the people, history and its place in the world. 'Weaving Musical Threads' is an inspirational weave, showcasing talent and celebrating the Arts in and reflecting Renfrewshire. The most important thing is ... to take part. NE Scotland & N Isles Lerwick, Shetland Sun 4 March 7pm: Clickimin Leisure Complex The Sunday Symphony Full orchestral concert to include the world premiere of Chris Stout's new piece for the orchestra and Sibelius Symphony no 1, conducted by David Danzmayr. Shetland Across the weekend: various venues Royal Scottish National Orchestra Out and about workshops in local communities. Wales South East Wales Cardiff Sun 4 March 3pm: St David's Hall, Cardiff BBC National Orchestra of Wales: Music Nation Celebration This celebratory concert will showcase young talent from across Wales as they perform side by side with BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales. The concert will culminate in the world premiere of Songs of the Earth, created especially for the Music Nation celebration weekend by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins. Sat 3 March pm: 10.15am-1pm: St David's Hall Arts Active: Gamelan Taster Workshop Suitable for all 7 years upwards this is a fun and informal opportunity to have a go at playing the St David's Hall Gamelan set of Javanese percussion. Anyone can enjoy this session, no prior experience or musical expertise needed. Sat 3 March 11am-4pm: National Museum Wales, Cardiff Music at the Museum Regular performances throughout the day from young ensembles from Rhondda Cynon Taf, Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan Sat 3 March 11am-4pm: St Fagan's: National History Museum of Wales RWCMD chamber music at St Fagan's RWCMD chamber groups take over the Miners" Institute, giving free performances all day. Sun 4 March 11am-4pm: National Museum Wales, Cardiff Sun 4 March 11am-5pm: St Fagan's: National History Museum of Wales RWCMD Schools Opera at St Fagan's RWCMD Schools Opera brings stories from the Brothers Grimm to the Miners" Institute Sun 4 March 7pm: Dora Stoutzker Hall, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama BBC Young Musician Recital BBC Young Musician presents an evening of short recitals by Jennifer Pike (violin, BBC Young Musician 2002), Peter Moore (trombone, BBC Young Musician 2008) and Lucy Landymore (percussion, Category Winner 2010). Cardiff Bay Sat 3 & Sun 4 March 12 noon - 7pm: Wales Millennium Centre Foyer music on the Glanfa stage Free foyer music, with samba sessions, performances by community groups and showcasing of creative work in progress from WNO's Singing Club. Sat 3 March 7pm: Wales Millennium Centre WNO: The Marriage of Figaro A performance of The Marriage of Figaro in the WMC's Donald Gordon Theatre, including David Soar as Figaro. Sun 4 March 12 noon: Wales Millennium Centre National Cymanfa Ganu / Making Music Overture Led by Making Music Wales and Ty Cerdd, amateur groups across Wales are invited to take part in a simultaneous performance of traditional Welsh music and Orlando Gough's Making Music Overture, commissioned by Making Music. Newport Sat 3 March 7.30pm: The Riverfront Ensemble Cymru: National Tour The Ensemble's performances will feature music specially commissioned from composer Gareth Glyn for 16-piece Ensemble. North Wales Caernarfon Sat 3 March 7.30pm: Galeri Sinfonia Cymru: Celebration of Strings A wonderful array of music for strings, from Mozart's light-hearted Divertimento to Tchaikowsky's brilliantly colourful Serenade for Strings. North East Wales Mold Sun 4 March 7.30pm: Clwyd Theatre West Wales Cardigan Sun 4 March 8pm: Rhos y Gilwen All around Wales Caernarfon, Wrexham & Cardiff Sat 3 March 12 noon: Eagles Meadow Shopping Centre (Wrexham), Wales Millennium Centre & The Hayes (Cardiff) WNO: National Flash Mash An opportunity for singers to get involved and surprise passers-by in a Flash Mob performance of a mash-up of Welsh pop music and The Marriage of Figaro - anyone can join in! All materials downloadable from the web. Join a group at the organised venues, or start your own ... All over Wales A celebration of music making from Caernarfon to Cardiff with key events surrounded by performances. Sun 4 March 12 Noon: various venues Led by Making Music Wales and Ty Cerdd, amateur groups across Wales are invited to take part in a simultaneous performance of traditional welsh music and Orlando Gough's Making Music Overture, commissioned by Making Music. Joined the massed performance at the Wales Millennium Centre, or download the free sheet music and host an event of your own. Northern Ireland Belfast Sun 4 March 12.30pm: Belfast Waterford Hall Ulster Orchestra & RTE Concert Orchestra The Ulster and RTÉ Concert orchestras come together for the first time to perform a new work and BBC Radio 3 commission by Brian Irvine with words by Seamus Heaney. They will be joined on stage by Chapel Choir of Methodist College Belfast.

Israel accused of building record number of homes Israel's Peace Now movement has accused the government of Benjamin Netanyahu of overseeing a record year in settlement building on West Bank land claimed by the Palestinians. Peace Now says new building starts jumped by 20 percent in 2011. Building of Jewish homes on occupied land is one of the main reasons cited by the Palestinians for refusing to resume peace talks.

2 dead as storm moves across Britain LONDON, Jan. 4 (UPI) -- At least two deaths were blamed on the weather as winds of more than 100 mph scoured Britain and heavy rain fell Tuesday. The storm disrupted air and rail service, The Independent reported. Ferry service between Northern Ireland and Scotland and to the Isle of Wight was suspended, and ferries across the English Channel were delayed. The storm moved quickly across the country, leaving downed trees and power lines in its wake, The Guardian reported. More than 25,000 homes and businesses lost electricity in Britain. About 15,000 were without power in Ireland. Forecasters predicted more bad weather Wednesday, with winds diminishing to 60 mph. Wind gusts topped 100 mph Tuesday in Ireland, Edinburgh and in the northern Pennines in England -- with the highest speed, 106 mph, recorded at Great Dun Fell in Cumbria. One man was killed in southern England when an oak tree "completely crushed" his van in Royal Tunbridge Wells, police said. A crewman on a tanker off the southwestern coast was injured by a rogue wave and died after being airlifted to Derrifield Hospital in Plymouth. The Port of Dover was closed for almost 3 hours at midday. High winds forced the suspension of rail service between Newcastle-on-Tyne and Edinburgh and on a number of other lines.

Analysis: Romney tries pit bull approach in Fla. (AP) WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney spent years building a presidential candidacy based on corporate success, a squeaky clean image and an aura of electability that let him focus on President Barack Obama rather than his GOP rivals. South Carolina Republicans destroyed that strategy in an instant, saying they see Newt Gingrich, not Romney, as the man best positioned to beat Obama. Romney, who cast aside several moderate positions after leaving the Massachusetts governorship, repositioned himself in a more tactical sense Monday, tearing into Florida like a hungry underdog. No longer leaving his friends to handle the messy work of attacking Gingrich, Romney lit into the former House speaker with a gusto that changed the campaign's tone and arc in one day. Florida's Jan. 31 primary will prove whether the GOP establishment's buttoned-down favorite can turn himself into a pit bull without appearing desperate, phony or unpresidential. Campaigning in Tampa, Romney called Gingrich a "highly erratic" operative who possibly engaged in "wrongful activity" as a highly paid Washington consultant. Then Romney opened Monday night's televised debate by saying Gingrich "had to resign in disgrace" in 1998 after four years as speaker, only to spend the ensuing years "working as an influence-peddler in Washington." Gingrich's shift in tone was nearly as striking as Romney's, only in the opposite direction. After belittling reporters and electrifying studio audiences in two South Carolina debates, the usually combative Gingrich said Monday he wouldn't waste his time refuting Romney's charges point by point. "This is the worst kind of trivial politics," Gingrich said dismissively. Nonetheless, he spent several minutes explaining why the $1.6 million he received from mortgage backer Freddie Mac was for consulting work, not lobbying. He added, somewhat curiously, that his consulting firm brought in a "lobbying expert" to tell employees what was legal and what wasn't. The expert is "prepared to testify," Gingrich said. The live audience was silent. After his South Carolina thumping, Romney had little choice but to become the aggressor. Gingrich's sudden nice-guy aura may be slightly riskier, because his fire-breathing performances in South Carolina clearly touched resentful voters who feel Washington's "elites" look down on them. "Gingrich sees that he is increasingly in the driver's seat in the race, and was not challenged about his personal life, so he did not need to go out aggressively," said Republican strategist John Ullyot. Less is more at this stage, from his perspective. Romney still holds several advantages, however, starting with his superior campaign treasury. There's little doubt that much of it will go into TV ads and mailers attacking Gingrich. "I learned something from that last contest in South Carolina," Romney said in the Tampa debate. I'm not going to sit back and get attacked day in and day out without returning fire. Romney himself is now leveling the toughest accusations against Gingrich, rather than leaving them chiefly to allies such as former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu and a well-funded "super PAC." The super PAC's withering ads on Iowa television nearly wrecked Gingrich's campaign three weeks ago. Gingrich revived himself with two South Carolina debates in which he made journalists as much a target as Romney and Obama. There were no such fireworks Monday in Tampa. Romney, Gingrich and the other two candidates - former Sen. Rick Santorum and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas - will debate again Thursday night in Jacksonville. Romney, who made millions with a consulting and corporation-restructuring firm, is bracing for reports Tuesday when he releases his most recent tax returns. The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal reported late Monday that Romney paid an effective tax rate of about 14 percent on $21.7 million in income in 2010, nearly all of it from dividends or interest from investments. In Monday's debate, Gingrich - who paid a higher rate on the $3.1 million he made in 2010 - showed little interest in pursuing the subject. When Romney said he would have paid zero taxes under Gingrich's plan to eliminate capital gains taxes, Gingrich calmly said that would be fine, provided Romney used his good fortune to create jobs. Santorum, who finished a distant third in South Carolina, and Paul, who is not campaigning in Florida, were relegated to the sidelines in what now seems to be a two-person race. Santorum noted that the contest has held many surprises, and took a shot at the two frontrunners. Romney and Gingrich abandoned conservative principles, he said, by supporting elements of "cap and trade" legislation to curb pollution emissions from industrial sites. "When push came to shove, they were pushed," Santorum said. He will struggle to be heard in Florida, which dwarfs Iowa and New Hampshire in terms of size, population and cost of campaigning. The pushing and shoving between Gingrich and Romney will dominate Republicans' attention. If Romney's newly sharpened elbows don't stop Gingrich's momentum, the Republican establishment will face a hard choice. It can start making peace with the former speaker's mercurial ways and anti-elite rhetoric. Or it can heap even more criticisms on him in a contest that must be prompting at least a few smiles in the White House. Charles Babington covers politics for The Associated Press. WASHINGTON (AP) - Mitt Romney spent years building a presidential candidacy based on corporate success, a squeaky clean image and an aura of electability that let him focus on President Barack Obama rather than his GOP rivals. Scientific American

Detroit Auto Show: 2012 Mini Roadster Shown on Monday, Jan. 9: 2012 Mini Roadster. A two-seat version of the Mini Convertible, but this one has a ragtop that you open and close by hand, like the Porsche Boxster Spyder or your dad's old MG. Well, as of last week, you could order one on the Mini Web site. What they said: "Just like the Coupe, the Roadster went from development to production in only two short years," said Ian Robertson, the BMW board member responsible for sales and marketing. Indeed, a concept version of the Roadster was at the 2010 Detroit show. What they didn't say: BMW had a hit on its hands when it revived Mini in 2001, and the company has taken advantage of that popularity by producing what seem to be more varieties than Starbucks has lattes. And considering that the standard Mini doesn't have much of a back seat anyway, getting rid of it isn't much of an inconvenience. Also, the top, when stowed, doesn't stick up like the convertible's, which improves rear visibility. As with the brand's other models, the Roadster comes in three flavors. The base model is powered by a 121-horsepower 1.6-liter in-line four-cylinder, and the Roadster S adds a turbo, which pushes it to 181 horses. A John Cooper Works performance version hits 208. The base and the S come with a six-speed manual transmission or an optional six-speed automatic. The Cooper Works comes with only the manual, of course. The base version sells for $20,050, the S for $28,850 and the Cooper Works for $35,200. Mini, refreshingly, includes destination charges in the list prices "because that's what people actually have to pay," a spokesman said. Took the words right out of our mouths. The car will arrive in showrooms in March. Not like an MG. It's very Mini all the way around until you get to the very un-Mini rounded rear. There's also a rear spoiler that pops up at 51 miles per hour.

Golden Globes 2012: live coverage of tonight's ceremony 04.15 Here is an overview of the winners: DRAMA - "The Descendants" ACTOR IN A DRAMA - George Clooney, "The Descendants" SUPPORTING ACTOR - Christopher Plummer, "Beginners" DIRECTOR - Martin Scorsese, "Hugo" SCREENPLAY - Woody Allen, "Midnight in Paris" ORIGINAL SCORE - Ludovic Bource, "The Artist" ORIGINAL SONG - "Masterpiece" from the film, "W.E." Cecil B. DeMille Award - Morgan Freeman 03.58 The Golden Globe awards have just finished and there is a mad dash for the exit, but we'll be here live blogging with some reaction. 03.56 Wow, a good night for the Descendants. The film has just won Best Motion Picture. 03.49 George Clooney has won Best Actor for the Descendants. Here is a clip of him in the film: 03.42 And The Artist wins yet another award! They accept the award for Best Movie Musical or Comedy with an appearance from the dog in the film, naturally performing tricks on stage. The dog apparently has his own ticket to the event. 03.39 Meryl Streep wins Best Actress for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in the Iron Lady. She gives a gushing speech after swearing about losing her glasses. 03.22 Unfortunately, we're not able to take any photos from inside the ballroom, but we'll get some images up soon. Until then here is a gallery of the stars on the red carpet. 03.16 The stars are each finding their own way to get their own back at Ricky Gervais tonight (he just chucked in a "f***" swear word out of nowhere, not quite sure why). Antonio Banderas reeled off a very fast speech to Gervais in Spanish in retaliation - Gervais looked on bemused. That's him told. 03.12 Angelina Jolie is on stage now in a stunning red and cream silk dress. 02.55 Morgan Freeman is on stage to a raptouurs applause, he tells Helen Mirren that the way she handles a gun makes him realise he never wants to "piss her off." 02.44 Jane Lynch is on stage now - she's wearing a dark-coloured halterneck dress, not the same as she was spotted in earlier - perhaps a quick costume change? A silver-haired Matt Le Blanc, of Friends fame, has just won Best Performance by an Actor in a TV Series (comed or musical). 02.36 Dustin Hoffman presents an overjoyed Claire Danes with the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Series. This is the first time she has won the award since winning it for cult TV series My So Called Life. Another emotional speech, where she says she is finally able to thank her parents - something in the shock of the moment when she was 15, she forgot to do. Danes wins the award for her role in Homeland. 02.30 Crumbs, an appearance by Madonna. She has just put Ricky Jervais in his place telling him that if she is still "like a Virgin" then he'd better do something about it. Sadly no locking of lips between the pair but Jervais ran across the stage in joy behind her. Unexpected. Madonna presents Best Foreign Language Film, which goes to A Separation (Iran). 02.26 Oh dear Kate Beckinsale almost tripped over just in front of me - beautiful lace-detail dress but that is the trouble with long gowns. Other spots are Charlize Theron looking fantastic in a cream silk number and Queen Latifa in a sparkling dark-coloured gown. 02.23 Desperate Housewives star Felicity Huffman has sung a delightful introduction for the next award which has just been won by Jessican Lange for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role. 02.17 Here is a quick overview of who has won what so far. Actress, Musical or Comedy: Michelle Williams, "My Week With Marilyn." Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, "Beginners." Original Score: Ludovic Bource, "The Artist." Original Song: "Masterpiece" (music and lyrics by Madonna, Julie Frost, Jimmy Harry), "W.E." Series, Drama: "Homeland," Showtime. Actor, Drama: Kelsey Grammer, "Boss." Actress, Musical or Comedy: Laura Dern, "Enlightened." Miniseries or Movie: "Downton Abbey (Masterpiece)," PBS. Actress, Miniseries or Movie: Kate Winslet, "Mildred Pierce." Actor, Miniseries or Movie: Idris Elba, "Luther." 02.12 Ricky Gervais is back telling the audience: "you're so much better than last year's audience they had a right stick up their arse." He has just introduced George Clooney, who appears armed with what appears to be a putter. Gervais jests that one day Clooney will be good looking enough to host the Golden Globes. 02.01 Michelle Williams is up on stage saying "i consider myself a mother first and an actress second" as she accepts the award for best actress. She thanks her children for putting up with bedtime stories read in a Marilyn Monroe voice. 01.45 Some crazy people are now doing an odd jig on stage - oh wait those are the people presenting the next award. Now we've got War Horse and The Artist pitted against one another. And it's The Artist! This is its first award of the evening, there may be more to come. 01.36 Jane Lynch just walzed past in a stunning white gown - disappointed not to see a specially-designed tracksuit dress Glee's Sue Sylvester would have been proud to wear. 01.35 Ricky Gervais up now - he is having a cheeky dig at the stars for "taking too long" to give their acceptance speeches.

Specialty Food: Hot trends from last week's Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco: heritage grain products (quinoa, amaranth, chia) proliferate in snacks and pastas; pickling of beets, carrots, peas, okra and fruits is increasing; oats and almonds are coming to juice drinks; coconut is in everything, and the gluten-free category is expanding rapidly (gluten-free granola, anyone?). - Glenn Collins SF Weekly: Artisanal pickles are your Plan B? You might want to rethink that, pal. - Jeff Gordinier The Village Voice: Leering elves, a sickly-green giant, a gluten-bloated doughboy with dead eyes - and, of course, Little Debbie. A rogue's gallery of the 10 most disturbing food mascots. - Patrick Farrell Mail and Guardian: Sustainable urban farming picks up steam in South Africa. - Julia Moskin The New York Times: Population of the jack mackerel, a crucial food fish, has crashed in the last 20 years, and it may foretell a collapse of fish stocks everywhere. "This is the last of the buffaloes," one scientist says. "When they're gone, everything will be gone." - Eric Asimov Bloomberg Business Week: Stacking up the health claims of today's soft drinks against those of yesteryear. Did you know that 7-Up used to contain lithium citrate? - Nick Fox The Press Democrat: California wine shipments rose by about 5 percent in 2011, the most growth in a decade or more, with the greatest growth coming in sweet wines that bring in new consumers. - Eric Asimov Tasting Table: American drinkers and bartenders are starting to rediscover an obscure spirit that was originally created by far-flung and thirsty Swedish sailors. - Jeff Gordinier The New York Post: The Paula Deen feeding frenzy heads into the cheese course: Page Six reports that her sons wanted to bolt the family management over Mom's deal to hawk a diabetes drug; they worried about her switching to the new drug from a medication that had been working just fine. - Patrick Farrell Centives.net: Lehigh University students set up an online tool to calculate how much of a markup Domino's charges for each pizza topping. They say it averages 260 percent for the first one. This device cannot be used to calculate why anyone would want to buy Domino's pizza in the first place. - Nick Fox Gaz Regan: May I suggest, if you are the partaking kind, beginning your Friday evening with a sidecar, one of my favorite cocktails? Gaz Reagan examines the background of the sidecar, offers variations and generously links to the recipes of other cocktail mavens. - Eric Asimov The New York Times: A new variation on rotten tomatoes: tacos, delivered to the mayor of East Haven, Conn., after his bland response ("I might have tacos when I go home") to federal allegations that local police officers had beaten and harassed Latino residents. - Patrick Farrell Bloomberg Businessweek: Chipotle Mexican Grill reaches No. 18 in the new Bloomberg "Top 50 Consumer Stars" list of companies, with $2.2 billion in revenues and expansion to Paris and London. And there's that new Asian-themed restaurant, ShopHouse, in Washington. But higher menu prices are looming, to offset rising costs of beef, chicken, cheese, and sour cream. (Click on the Chipotle image for text.) - Glenn Collins Texas Monthly: Texans are amused by Brooklyn offerings of breakfast tacos. Perhaps they are unaware that in these parts Texas is known as Brooklyn South and Portland as Brooklyn West? - Eric Asimov The Guardian: Felicity Cloake on the high art of making ginger cake. - Jeff Gordinier Food Republic: Beyond basil, there are a passel of more interesting pesto alternatives: artichoke, cilantro, roasted corn, lemon-pistachio and mint. Get that blender warmed up. - Patrick Farrell Details: Things you might find in your cocktail these days: mushrooms, miso paste, blue cheese. - Jeff Gordinier The Daily Meal: Colman Andrews continues his reports on the Madrid Fusión food conference: Day One, Two and Three. - Nick Fox Zagat Buzz: Attention, unattached New Yorkers: Valentine's Day, otherwise known as Single Awareness Day, approaches. Here are 10 bars where you can meet your ideal date, from "well-to-do hipster" to "an "American Psycho" type." ... The Atlantic: ... And while you're there, impress your new friend with your mastery of the new wine lingo, like "biodynamic" and "sustainable." - Patrick Farrell Spenser Magazine: The magic of foraging for mushrooms on the California coast. - Jeff Gordinier Gourmet: Yeast has given rise to many things, including Peter Reinhart's career as a master bread baker. In a tight little package, he lays out all you need to know about the magical stuff. - Patrick Farrell YouTube: No night of surging "90s nostalgia would be complete without the Presidents of the United States of America and their propulsive paean to peaches. - Jeff Gordinier

Killed in Iran: Part of a Nuclear Trifecta Iranian security forces inspect the site where a magnetic bomb attached to a car exploded in Tehran Wednesday morning, killing an Iranian nuclear expert It has been a busy day or so on the nuclear front: An Iran nuclear scientist was assassinated Wednesday morning in Tehran. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock warning of nuclear war to 11:56 p.m. - one minute closer to the midnight when it believes nuclear war could break out. And the Nuclear Threat Initiative released its Nuclear Materials Security Index, a database charting publicly for the first time 32 nations that possess the fissile guts of nuclear weapons - and how secure they are. The trio consists of three discrete elements, but - like a radioactive Venn diagram - they overlap in disconcerting ways. "There is evidence today that the elements of a perfect storm are in place: an ample supply of weapons-usable nuclear materials - some of it poorly secured - and the determination of terrorist organizations that have publicly stated their desire to acquire and use nuclear weapons," says former senator Sam Nunn, co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative." NTI, which developed the index with help from the Economist Intelligence Unit, associated with the British magazine of the same name, believes that making information about securing nuclear materiel public will encourage tighter controls. It's plain that's one of the reasons why the folks at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists are increasingly nervous. The minute hand on their Doomsday Clock was set at 11:58 in 1953 at the height of the Cold War; after moving several times since, it was set all the way back to 11:43 in 1991 after Washington and Moscow inked the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. But a lack of global progress on nuclear weapons since then has allowed the hand to tick closer to midnight; after rumbles of never-realized arms-control progress two years ago, BAS moved the hand from 11:55 to 11:54. "Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face," the organization said in a statement announcing the latest change. "The path toward a world free of nuclear weapons is not at all clear, and leadership is failing," says Jayantha Dhanapalaa, a BAS official who served as the UN's undersecretary-general for Disarmament Affairs from 1998 to 2003. The world still has over 19,000 nuclear weapons, enough power to destroy the world's inhabitants several times over. But nuclear weapons remain the crack cocaine of world leaders, crazy or not, who want the security they seem to offer. And those who fear such weapons falling into what they deem to be the wrong hands are just as determined to see they don't get them. That certitude is apparently behind the killing of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a 32-year old Iranian chemist. He died after an unknown killer, riding a motorbike, affixed a bomb to his gray Peugeot 405 in northern Tehran that exploded moments later. "The bomb was a magnetic bomb and is the same as those previously used to assassinate scientists," Tehran Deputy Governor Safar Ali Baratlo said, "and is the work of the Zionists." Both Israel and the U.S. have denied involvement in such attacks. Ahmadi Roshan was skilled at developing the sophisticated membranes critical to enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels. Apparently his killer's overlords knew who he was, and how vital he was to Iran's nuclear ambitions. They also know that killing such key scientists - Ahmadi Roshan is at least the fifth to die in recent years - can snuff out the chain reaction that could lead to a Persian nuclear bomb. "Global nuclear security," Nunn said as he unveiled his organization's new index, "is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain." Nunn was speaking defensively, of course. But someone in Tehran Wednesday morning felt that offensive action was required.

Bartending Tips From Days Of Old What's old is new again, and nowhere is that more true than in the cocktail world. New twists on classic cocktails are popping up everywhere, but most of us haven't even figured out how to make them sans twists yet. Luckily, the bartenders of yore have reached forward in time to give us invaluable advice on mixing these drinks of yesteryear. And publishers looking to capitalize on the cocktail craze have reached back to the of bartenders at the turn of last century to reprint some of the most storied mixology guides. Long before every bartender with a retro-styled vest and an overblown mustache called themselves mixologists, these tomes were already filled with tips for a profession known for reinvention, and reprinting these is akin to unearthing the Rosetta Stone. While the origins, and even the original recipes of cocktails that have become classics are often shrouded in mystery and spark arguments as to proportions, ingredients and measurements, these books are as close to the definitive answer as is possible to get in many cases. It's not always the tastiest version, but it's certainly going to be one of the most authentic. We put three of these reissued guides to the test to see which one delivers the goods and turns even the most mild-mannered Chardonnay sipper into a bitters slinging machine. Daly's Bartenders' Encyclopedia Printed in 1903 for the bargain price of 50 cents, Daly's Bartender's Encyclopedia was written by Tim Daly. He chronicles his experiences of 20 years behind the bar - a career that kicked off in 1883, not all that long after the advent of the cocktail. And it shows. Daly focuses heavily on tips and tricks for those working behind the bar, from how the trays should be cleaned to how best to store bottles to prevent corks from drying out. But once past the introductory advice, Daly drills down into the meat of the matter - cocktails. He delivers a beautiful glimpse of drinking habits of yesteryear. From Beef Tea to Egg Lemonade, there's a long list of recipes meant to fortify, impart strength and vigor and "avoidance of unpleasant consequences." Interestingly though, his recipe for one of the most classic cocktails of them all, the martini. He breaks from what most consider tradition and uses Old Tom gin, a sweeter version of the breed. That theme continues throughout, with slightly different spins on what most consider the classics. Where the book truly shines, however, is in its warm drinks. With recipes like the Hot Gin Sling and Hot Irish Whiskey Punch, it's a book to keep close at hand until the Spring hits. The Complete Bartender: The Art of Mixing Cocktails, Punches, Egg Noggs, Smashes, Sangarees, Slings, Cobblers, The Fizz, Juleps, Flips, Toddys, Crustas, and All Plain and Fancy Drinks, in the Most Approved Style Apparently the late 1800s were not only a time of great change, they were also one of the wordiest eras on record. That incredibly lengthy title graces the cover of the 1884 bartender's guide by Albert Barnes. A relatively short tome at 64 pages, it nonetheless packs in a fairly ridiculous amount of information in a pamphlet-like space. Barnes, who manned the bar at the Metropolitan Hotel in New York City, wastes no time in getting right in to what he perceives as the most important part of the mix, the recipes. And what a list he compiled. Drinks not seen on menus for decades grace these pages, organized by the types laid out so painstakingly in the title. Where it gets truly interesting, however, is in the recipes Barnes lays out for creating flavored brandies and even a sweetened concentrated gin. Of course, making those recipes could involve a few Google searches as intrepid home bartenders attempt to figure out exactly how much liquid is in a gill (about one quarter of a pint) or drachm (1/16 of an ounce). It's well worth pushing through and making a few test batches. And if you have to drink a few not quite right cocktails in the name of science, thus defying #11 of Barnes' Bartenders' Maxims - "drink as little as possible behind your own bar," that's not such a horrible thing. The Bartender's Guide: How to Mix Drinks or The Bon Vivant's Companion (1862 Edition) The granddaddy of all bartenders' guides and the one currently most mined for inspiration by the world's top bartenders. Jerry Thomas' encyclopedic guide to the world of cocktails was one of the first cocktail guides ever published in the United States and its 258 pages were exhaustively researched. One of the best bartenders of his day, Thomas earned a stratospheric $100 per week at one point and did more to popularize the drinks of the day than any other mixologist of his day, or even most from today. The Bartender's Guide has been reprinted so many times, for good reason. It's the definitive guide to classic cocktails - coming as close as possible to the original version of each drink. It is, however, geared to the working bartender, with batch sizes in the gallons for example mint cordial and gin punch, among many others. But home and pro cocktail fans can benefit from the tips and tricks within these pages - even whipping together their own bitters based on the directions Thomas lays out. These tried and true recipes have stood the test of a century and a half, and while tastes have changed, few can argue with a drink mixed perfectly from this guide. It belongs on every mixologist's bookshelf, from amateur to pro.

Iran leader continues to Nicaragua on LatAm trip MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Daniel Ortega his "brother president" and Nicaragua a kindred revolutionary nation as he arrived Tuesday for the inauguration of the Central America leader's new term. Traveling to Managua after defending his country's nuclear program during a stop in Venezuela, Ahmadinejad drew parallels between the people of Iran and Nicaragua, saying they are "on the road to fight for the establishment of security and justice." On Monday, Ahmadinejad joined his ally Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in accusing the U.S. and its allies of using a dispute over Iran's enrichment of uranium to unjustly threaten the country. Both leaders dismissed U.S. concerns about Iran's intentions in the Middle East and its growing diplomatic ties with Chavez and his allies in Latin America. "They accuse us of being warmongers," Chavez said. They're the threat. The Iranian leader also plans to visit Cuba and Ecuador on a trip to promote relationships with some of his close friends in Washington's neighborhood shortly after the U.S. imposed tougher sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. Washington and other governments believe Iran is using the nuclear program to develop atomic weapons. Chavez and his allies back Iran in arguing the program is purely for peaceful purposes. Chavez on Monday accused the U.S. and its European allies of demonizing Iran and using false claims about the nuclear issue "like they used the excuse of weapons of mass destruction to do what they did in Iraq." Everyone knows that those words ... are a joke. "It's clear they're afraid of our development," Ahmadinejad said. They joked that their relationship shouldn't cause any concern. Chavez played on the same theme, saying Iran has been helping manufacture an "atomic bicycle" at a plant in the country. The Venezuelan leader said Iran has helped his country build 14,000 homes as well as factories that produce food, tractors and vehicles. Chavez said both Venezuela and Iran are peaceful countries that weather a battery of suspicion and accusations by critics. "When we devils get together ... it's like they go crazy," Chavez said. Laughing, Chavez said Ahmadinejad is traveling through "the axis of evil of Latin America." That development has increased fears among U.S. and European officials about Iran's nuclear ambitions. Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez told reporters on Monday the government had not made any oil-related agreements with Iran. Adding to the U.S.-Iran tensions, Iranian state radio reported Monday that a court in Iran convicted dual U.S.-Iranian citizen Amir Mirzaei Hekmati of working for the CIA and sentenced the former Marine to death. Neither Chavez nor Ahmadinejad referred to the case. Associated Press writers Fabiola Sanchez and Ian James in Caracas contributed to this report.

How To Watch The New Hampshire Primary MANCHESTER, N.H. - It's reasonable to expect that 40 percent of all eligible voters might participate in today's New Hampshire primary. In a nation where primary elections routinely draw turnout rates in the teens, that's a pretty remarkable thing. It's a testament to the seriousness with which New Hampshire residents take their jobs as participants in the first-in-the nation primary. It's something of a civic religion here. The previous Republican primary attracted 239,793 registered Republicans and independents, not much of a jump from the last open contest in 2000 when 236,802 voted on the GOP side. But in 2008, the action was on the Democratic side. This year the Red Team is the only game in town. As we saw with increased turnout in Iowa, even if Republicans and conservative-leaning independents are feeling a little crabby about their roster of candidates, they're still showing up to have their say. While Mitt Romney, frontrunner for four years, seems to be secure in his status as certain winner -- lapping his closest competitor, Rep. Ron Paul in the final pre-primary poll -- second, and maybe even third, matters a lot in a topsy-turvy national contest. While Paul would benefit from another strong showing, he's got his eye on the convention. His primary task is to take as many of the state's 12 delegates as possible and move on to the next task. But the others are not playing a numbers game. For the others, this is an exercise in social psychology, buzz generation and expectations. While Romney would be crippled by a loss here, there's almost no margin of victory the he can achieve that won't be automatically discounted by the establishment press. Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman is looking to be the Rick Santorum of New Hampshire and be the adopted hometown favorite of the state after an intensive focus here. For Santorum, the task is to stay in the conversation heading into South Carolina. To do that, he must avoid falling to fifth place behind Newt Gingrich. The reverse is true for Gingrich. He must not fall behind Santorum. As the results start to roll in after most polls close at 7:00 pm, here's what to watch for across the state. Hillsborough County Population: 400,721 2008 Result: Romney --35.1% McCain -- 34.9% Huckabee -- 10.4% Giuliani -- 8.7% Paul -- 7.5% Thompson -- 1.1% Nearly a third of all votes are likely to be cast in Hillsborough County. It home to the state's two largest cities, Manchester and New Hampshire, as well as many of the tax refugees from Massachusetts and Rhode Island. That's good news for Romney who is well known from his time as Massachusetts governor. He won Hillsborough in 2008 and it would be a very encouraging sign for him if he saw an increase in support here. This is where Romney will hope to deliver a knockout punch to Huntsman, but, also a place where more affluent, moderate voters might be open to some of the former ambassador to China's ideas. But with a lot of blue-collar Catholic voters, Hillsborough County will also be key to Santorum's effort to avoid a fifth-place finish. Rockingham County Population: 295,223 Romney -- 36.8% McCain -- 35.8% Huckabee -- 9% Giuliani -- 8.8% Paul -- 6.4% Seaside beauty spots and a business boom have made Rockingham County a favorite destination from new New Hampshire residents. Rockingham, particularly the towns of Portsmouth and Salem, is part of a revitalization on the southern coast of the state. It could also prove electorally unpredictable. While Romney will benefit from the same advantages he enjoys in neighboring Hillsborough, look for Paul and Huntsman to do well with the growing number of independents here. Merrimack County Population: 146,445 McCain -- 38.7% Romney -- 27.0% Huckabee -- 12.6% Giuliani -- 9.1% Paul -- 8.3% Thompson -- 1.0% Anchored by New Hampshire's third-largest city and capital, Concord, Merrimack County is a political power player. It tends to reflect the overall result of the state, and as New Hampshire's own Carl Cameron has pointed out, has two towns, Pembroke and Boscawen, that have picked the eventual winner of the state in every election since the Granite State achieved its preeminent primary status in 1952. Being in the heart of the state, Merrimack is a microcosm of the rest of the state. John McCain won handily here in 2008 and Romney underperformed. But Ron Paul's showing here was also better than the rest of the state and could be a big boost to his chances. Remember -- there are a lot of conservatives in Merrimack County. If Gingrich is going to break out of the pack of Not Romneys, he would need to score here. Strafford County Population: 123,423 McCain -- 37.5% Romney -- 25.5% Huckabee -- 14.1% Giuliani -- 8.9% Paul -- 8.6% Strafford County, home to the University of New Hampshire in Durham and more of the southern coast region, is heavily Democratic, which makes it extra interesting for this year's Republican primary. Aside from being the home base for a lot of Ron Paul's college supporters, it's also a place where disaffected Obama 2008 voters might show their support for Huntsman. You'll get a good sense of how liberal independents are trending when the vote comes in here. Grafton County Population: 89,118 McCain -- 45% Romney -- 20.2% Paul -- 10% Giuliani -- 7.4% Thompson -- 1.6% Grafton County on the Vermont border is home to Dartmouth College and the most scenic spots in the White Mountains. There are lots of vacation homes and resorts in the area. This is Robert Frost country, all the way The northern, more rural portion of the county tends to be more Republican while the area around Dartmouth tends to be more Democratic, but on the whole, liberals reign here. John McCain had his strongest showing here of any county in the state in 2008 and one of Romney's worst. These are very independent minded folks. Watch to see how Paul and Huntsman are splitting the vote here and you may see the trend for the rest of the state. Belknap County Population McCain -- 36.8% Romney -- 31.5% Huckabee -- 11.1% Giuliani -- 8.1% Paul -- 7.1% Located on scenic Lake Winnipesaukee, Belknap County is the Republican heartland of New Hampshire. In 2008, it reflected, almost to the decimal, the outcome of the overall vote in the state. The city of Lanconia is generally on the money, and one of Campaign Carl's eternal bellwethers, Sanabornton, is here too. Pay close attention to the vote here. Cheshire County Population: 77,117 McCain -- 36.7% Romney --26.5% Huckabee -- 15.1% Paul -- 8.7% Giuliani -- 7.1% Thompson -- 1.4% There aren't many Republicans in Cheshire County and its largest city, Keene. But there are a bunch of libertarians. Democrats tend to dominate politics, thanks in part to the faculties Keene State College and Antioch University, but the Free State Project, which urges libertarians to move to New Hampshire to take over state politics, has a footprint there. Watch for Ron Paul to improve his showing here, but also look for Santorum's presence in Cheshire. Social conservatives rewarded Mike Huckabee with his best showing in the state here. Carroll County Population: 47,818 McCain -- 39.1% Romney -- 31.9% Huckabee -- 10% Paul -- 7.9% Giuliani -- 7.2% A rural, mountainous stretch along the Maine border, Carroll County is rugged country. Many New Hampshire residents trek here to ski at Cranmore Mountain and Attitash. Though traditionally rock-ribbed in its Republicanism, Carroll went for the Democratic nominee for president in 2008 for the first time since 1912. Sullivan County Population: 43,472 McCain -- 40% Romney -- 24.7% Paul -- 7.6% Giuliani -- 8.5% Sullivan County tends to politically behave like its neighbors in the Connecticut River Valley, Grafton and Cheshire Counties - very Democratic in general elections. There are very few votes to be had in the Republican primary, but it is another place where liberal-leaning independents may make their mark on the Republican race. If Huntsman is doing well, he should do well here. Coos County Population: 33,055 McCain -- 39.9% Romney --18.7% Huckabee -- 17.5% Paul -- 8.1% Giuliani -- 9.5% Way up north in the state's panhandle, Coos County is sparsely populated and economically stunted. The paper industry once provided a core of good paying jobs, but the region now can count only nature tourism as a breadwinner. The biggest town, Berlin, boasts just over 10,000 residents. Remember, they pronounce both "o"s in the county -- like Kew-uhs.

NH Senate blocks eminent domain for Northern Pass Jan 25 03:43 PM US/Eastern CONCORD, N.H. (AP) - The New Hampshire Senate has voted 23-1 to pass an amended bill that would prohibit the use of eminent domain in building a 180-mile power project from Canada to southern New Hampshire. The Senate on Wednesday left the door open for future transmission projects whose power the region would need. It also added protections for property owners and created a commission to develop policies for burying power lines. The Senate was scrambling to fix a technical error before sending the amended bill back to the House sometime next week.

33-stone man told he's too heavy for taxi A MAN who weighs 33 stone has told how he burst out crying after being told he could not get in a taxi because he was too heavy. Ronnie Dickson, 64, from Prestonfield, had booked a cab to take him to a medical appointment. As he suffers from the skin infection cellulitis in both his legs and walks on crutches, he would normally use a disabled ramp to get into the car. But this week, he said he was stunned to be told he couldn't use the ramp over fears he would break it. Today the company involved, City Cabs, said it sympathised with Mr Dickson but pointed out he had already broken a taxi ramp the previous week. Mr Dickson, who is registered disabled, said: "It hurt inside and I burst out crying. I got myself all uptight. Mr Dickson's wife Hazel, 46, a full-time carer for her husband, said: "My husband needs to use the ramp to get into a taxi on his crutches, but on Wednesday the driver said he couldn't. Ronnie came back into the house and he was actually crying, he was very upset and I was angry. Mr Dickson has been in and out of hospital due to health problems over the last three months and relies extensively on taxis. Mrs Dickson said her husband has experienced similar problems with other taxi firms in the past. Company secretary of City Cabs, Les McVay, said: "Mr Dickson has been a customer with City Cabs for almost a year. In the past, Mr Dickson has been able to gain access to the taxi with the assistance from the driver. Unfortunately, Mr Dickson's mobility recently has deteriorated and a combination of his weight and the inability to bend his knees has meant that he has recently started requesting the use of the wheelchair ramp to gain access to the taxi. The wheelchair ramp is designed to take a load in excess of 33 stone, but spread over the whole ramp. If Mr Dickson was in a wheelchair, then City Cabs could continue to provide a service. Mr Dickson damaged a ramp last week. The vehicle was off the road and the driver had to meet the repair bill at his own expense. He added: "City Cabs fully recognise and are fully committed to all of our disabled customers. Obviously this incident has caused Mr Dickson some distress and that is regrettable, but due to his failing health, the inability to bend his knees and his weight, he can no longer safely gain access to a normal taxi. He requires specialised help and a specialised vehicle.

Research in Rare Genetic Disease Poised to Provide New Therapies, According to New White Paper from Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance SILVER SPRING, Md., Jan. 11, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new white paper from the Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance (TS Alliance), entitled Unlocking a Cure for Tuberous Sclerosis Complex: An Assessment of Scientific Progress and Research Needs, concludes that research on the rare genetic disease "is poised for providing new therapies that modify progression of the disease, and possibly even prevent some the most devastating manifestations," according to the publication's author, Vicky Holets Whittemore, Ph.D. Dr. Whittemore formerly served as the TS Alliance's Chief Scientific Officer. Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is a multi-system genetic disorder that causes tumors to form in vital organs, primarily the brain, heart, eyes, kidneys, lungs and skin. It's also the leading genetic cause of both autism and epilepsy. Approximately 50,000 people in the United States suffer from the disease, and it has an estimated incidence of 1 in 6,000 live births. More than 1 million people world wide have TSC. "Our goal with this white paper was to identify key areas of TSC clinical care and research where significant progress has been made, areas where research is needed, the barriers to progress in TSC research, and the unmet clinical needs of people with TSC," explains TS Alliance President & CEO Kari Luther Rosbeck. Dr. Whittemore interviewed 27 key opinion leaders to assess these issues, and the resulting publication provides a road map of where we've been, but more importantly, where TSC research needs to go to ensure a better quality of life for anyone affected by TSC. The publication describes key discoveries that led to recent clinical trials, which are providing new treatment strategies. Such achievements in TSC research include the identification of the genes causing TSC and the definition of the role of these genes in cellular pathways. While the cure for TSC has not been found, new, additional treatments offering the best quality of life for those with TSC while maintaining their health will continue to be indentified over the coming decade. Formed in 1974, the TS Alliance is the only U.S.-based non-profit organization dedicated to finding a cure for TSC while improving the lives of those affected. For more information, visit www.tsalliance.org or call 800-225-6872. The white paper is available for download at www.tsalliance.org/documents/TS_Alliance_White_Paper.pdf. For more information contact: Jaye D. Isham, Senior Director, Marketing & Communications (301) 562-9890, jisham@tsalliance.org SOURCE Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance

Honda sees sharp drop in profit on Thai floods TOKYO (AP) - Battered by the strong yen and supply disruptions from Thailand's floods, Honda said Tuesday that its net earnings in the October-December quarter tumbled 41 percent to 47.6 billion yen ($625 million) and projected a sharply lower full-year profit. The Japanese automobile and motorcycle maker forecast it would earn 215 billion yen for the fiscal year through March, down nearly 60 percent from the 534 billion yen it earned the previous fiscal year. Honda had scrapped its earnings forecast in October, when it reported its previous quarterly results, because the flooding in Thailand - a key Asian production hub for Honda and many Japanese companies - made the outlook too uncertain. Honda stopped making cars at its automobile assembly plant in Ayutthaya, north of Bangkok, in October after it was damaged in the worst floods to hit Thailand in 50 years. The company said in a statement that it was making progress on draining the plant of flood water and cleaning up equipment, and that production was expected to resume by the end of March. The flooding also disrupted the output at many Honda suppliers in Thailand, forcing it to reduce production as far away as the U.S. and Canada. Honda said production in neighboring Asian countries interrupted by the problems in Thailand was expected to return to normal by April. Quarterly sales slid 8 percent during the fiscal third quarter to 1.942 trillion yen. The strong yen, which erodes Japanese exporters' foreign earned income when repatriated, slashed 131 billion yen from that total, it said.

Ed Miliband: 'I am winning the battle of ideas' Why is he (David Cameron) coming on to my ground? Because he knows I'm talking about the right issues and the issues that matter to people. That's what gives me confidence. He said the last Labour government had been "too soft on vested interests," had "got it wrong" on bank regulation and had not delivered a diverse enough economy. But he went on: "We are changing the Labour Party and the process of change is always a hard process. I think we lost touch with people in government. But he rejected the suggestion that Labour had spent too much when it was in office. I'm not going to buy into the Tory myth," he said. Asked about criticism from Labour peer and former adviser Lord Glasman, Mr Miliband joked: "I rather hanker for an elected House of Lords after Lord Glasman, but there we go." Mr Miliband said he had agreed with Mr Balls to acknowledge the circumstances Labour would face if it were to win power in 2015. But he insisted Labour still believed the Government was "cutting too far and too fast." If the Government "didn't change course," Labour would "inherit a difficult set of circumstances, he said. Mr Miliband told the programme: "If Labour was in power now we wouldn't be making those changes, we wouldn't be cutting as far and as fast as the Government. We would be making cuts. So for example in the police we said that you could cut by £1 billion. We think you could protect frontline services but the Government decided to go further and faster. So when it comes to the next Labour government, if I was saying to you, 'I can absolutely promise to restore this cut or that cut', you would say 'Well, where is the money going to come for that? How to do you know? What circumstance you're going to inherit?' This is absolutely responsible opposition. And it is absolutely the right thing for us to be doing at this stage of the parliament. Mr Miliband said the Government's current strategy was "self-defeating" as it had to borrow £158 billion more than anticipated. The prospects for 2015 "looked pretty grim" as a result, he added. Mr Miliband said it was right to protect jobs before guaranteeing to lift the public sector pay freeze. In a speech yesterday, Mr Balls angered the unions when he effectively accepted the public sector pay freeze up to 2015, the year of the planned next election. "I can't just promise to people that I can just wave a magic wand and be able to spend more and tax less," he said. Mr Miliband said the stance was the right one to take. He said: "In the end there are no easy choices for government and the choices for the next Labour government will be harder than they have been in the past. I think it absolutely right that we say that we prioritise employment. Today, Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT, said Labour's policy had "doomed it to electoral defeat." He said: "Polls today show that support for Miliband and his policies has collapsed among labour supporters and the writing is on the wall. This isn't about personalities, it's about policies and the betrayal of those who expect the Labour party to support them when they are under attack.

Ministry of Defence faces £2 billion more cuts But sources have denied that there will be any further reductions to troop numbers, which are already being reduced by 32,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen across the three services. Mr Hammond said: "We had to take tough decisions to tackle the £38bn blackhole left by Labour at the MoD, but we are now close to achieving a sustainable and balanced budget for the first time in decades. This will mean we can again start ordering new equipment for the Armed Forces. We are still refining individual equipment projects, assessing each case for contingency and risk but I am increasingly confident that the MoD is turning a corner and will soon have a clear and affordable programme. We'll be spending over £150 billion on equipment and equipment support over the next decade. There is certainty that even with the Whitehall redundancies, the majority of the £2 billion savings will be achieved by a "ruthless approach" to renegotiating existing military contracts with the private sector. As part of the MoD reforms the Director General Finance will become one of the department's main power brokers and will now sit on the Defence Board, which makes the key decisions about the future of the armed forces. In a radical departure from previous administrations defence chiefs will no longer be able to spend money "they don't have," according to a senior source. One senior defence source said: "The days of dieting followed by binge spending are over. The top brass will no longer be able to spend what they don't have. Various "options" up for cutting were discussed at a Defence Board meeting held last Friday but it is unlikely that any new measures will be finalised and announced for several weeks. The £38 billion overspend has been reduced by a 7.5per cent cut to the MoD's annual budget designed to save around £10 billion over four years, together with cuts to some of the military's manpower and equipment programme. Some of the most controversial cuts were to the Royal Navy, which saw the Fleet Air Arm's entire Harrier force retired eight years early in a move which will save £1 bilion. All but two of the aircraft have been sold in a £110 million deal to the US Marine Corps, where the Harrier is still in service and admired for its capabilities. The Royal Navy also saw its strength fall by 5,000 personnel, losing four Type 22 Destroyers - a move which meant a saving of £235m - while as the Service's flagship, the carrier Ark Royal, was withdrawn, which alone will mean a cost saving of around £105m. The RAF also saw its personnel fall to its lowest level since its formation in 1918 with the loss of 5,000 airmen and women either through redundancy or natural wastage. It suffered a series of big cuts, most notably the cancellation of the £3.6 billion Nimrod MRA4 programme before the multi-million pound surveillance planes came into service. One of the Harrier's former bases, RAF Cottesmore, will close at the end of March and the future of the other RAF Wittering remains in doubt. The numbers of operational fighter aircraft - made up of the Tornado strike aircraft and the Typhoon - will also fall. Two RAF bases in Scotland will also become Army barracks to house troops being withdrawn from Germany. Cuts to the Army are still under discussion but its manpower will be reduced by almost 20,000 over the next eight years and for the first time since 1945 will be based solely in the United Kingdom with the complete closure of bases in Germany. Dozens of tanks and artillery pieces could be scrapped or mothballed and up to six of the Army's 36 infantry battalions could also be axed. But the cuts have left many in the military wondering whether the cuts have undermined Britain's fighting capability. One senior defence source said: "Britain has an RAF and Royal Navy that has just lost 72 planes, a Navy with no dedicated air cover and an Army with a morale problem. We are not best placed to deal with another Falklands-like crisis.