Stocks fell Wednesday after Europe's central bank reported that its overnight deposits hit another record, the latest indication of worry among European lenders. NBC?s Lester Holt reports.
>>> a quick look at wall street . it was not one of the market's better days. the dow fell nearly 140 points, nasdaq down 35.
Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/45810054/
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LAS VEGAS ? Agustina Ocampo is the kind of foreign traveler businesses salivate over.
The 22-year-old Argentine recently dropped more than $5,000 on food, hotels and clothes in Las Vegas during a trip that also took her to Seattle's Space Needle, Disneyland and the San Diego Zoo. But she doubts she will return soon.
"It is a little bit of a headache," said Ocampo, a student who waited months to find out whether her tourist visa application would be approved.
More than a decade after the federal government strengthened travel requirements after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, foreign visitors say getting a temporary visa remains a daunting and sometimes insurmountable hurdle.
The tourism industry hopes to change that with a campaign to persuade Congress to overhaul the State Department's tourist visa application process.
"After 9/11, we were all shaken and there was a real concern for security, and I still think that concern exists," said Jim Evans, a former hotel chain CEO heading a national effort to promote foreign travel to the U.S.
At the same time, he said, the U.S. needs "to be more cognizant of the importance of every single traveler."
Tourism leaders said the decline in foreign visitors over the past decade is costing American businesses and workers $859 billion in untapped revenue and at least half a million potential jobs at a time when the slowly recovering economy needs both.
While the State Department has beefed up tourist services in recent years, reducing wait times significantly for would-be visitors will likely be a challenge as officials try to balance terrorist threats and illegal immigration with tight budgets that limit hiring.
"Security is job one for us," said Edward Ramotowski, managing director of the department's visa services. "The reason we have a visa system is to enforce the immigration laws of the United States."
Anti-immigration proponents argue travel to the U.S. is already too accessible and that allowing more visitors would put the nation at greater risk.
"Everybody would like to find a way to admit as many people as possible to visit here providing that they visit and then go home," said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigration group based in Washington, D.C.
"A lot of consular officers underestimate how much people want to come and live here," she said.
Nearly 7.6 million nonimmigrant visas were issued in 2001, compared with fewer than 6.5 million in 2010. The number of visa applicants also dropped sharply after 2001. Those combined forces pushed the U.S. share of global travelers down to 12 percent last year, from 17 percent before 2001.
The proposed immigration overhaul has largely been driven by the U.S. Travel Association, the tourism industry's lobbying giant, and has been endorsed by business titans such as the National Retail Federation, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, and Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. Republicans and Democrats in Congress are backing the proposed changes through six bills in the House and Senate.
Geoff Freeman, the travel association's chief operating officer, said the State Department should be required to keep visa interview wait times at a maximum of 10 days.
"Every day a person is waiting for that interview is a day a person cannot be here supporting the American economy," he said.
For most foreigners, taking a last-minute business or leisure trip to New York, Los Angeles, Miami or other U.S. travel hubs would be nearly impossible. The average wait time for a visa interview in Rio de Janeiro, for example, was 87 days, according to the State Department.
The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan agency that audits federal programs, concluded that wait times are likely much longer than reported because some department employees artificially reduce the wait times by not scheduling interviews during high-demand periods.
The vast majority of visitors enter through the country's visa waiver program, which allows travelers from 36 nations with good relationships with the U.S. to temporarily visit without a visa. Travel proponents want to add nations whose residents are unlikely to illegally move to the U.S., including Argentina, Brazil, Poland and Taiwan.
Tourists from the rest of the world, including India, China, Mexico and other nations with affluent travelers looking to use their passports, must obtain a nonimmigrant visa. The process can be expensive and time-consuming.
People living far from a visa processing center must arrange travel to the interview location, not knowing whether they will be approved. Roughly 78 percent of all tourist visas were approved so far in 2011.
Tourism proponents want the department to embrace videoconferencing as a way to interview more people quickly. The department has no plans to implement videoconferencing interviews because of safety and technological concerns, Ramotowski said.
In-person interviews weren't the norm before 9/11, when consular officials had the authority to approve travelers based on an application alone. Since then, however, screenings have become more strenuous, with fingerprint checks and facial recognition screening of photographs.
The State Department has made moves to boost its tourist services in recent years, transferring employees from underworked offices to bustling embassies and consular posts. Many visa processing centers are also operating under extended hours.
Other proposed changes include granting more multi-entry visas and charging premium fees to tourists who want a visa right away, similar to the premium passport fee charged to Americans with last-minute passport requests. The tourism industry also wants more visa processing officers and to allow travelers to submit applications in their native language.
"We can't afford to treat them in a way that gives them an impression that maybe they aren't welcome," said Rolf Lundberg, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's top lobbyist.
To help make the U.S. appear more welcoming, Congress approved last year a $200 million annual marketing campaign.
In Las Vegas, where travelers to the Strip have traditionally kept Nevada's economy afloat, tourism and government leaders are desperate to keep businesses open and create jobs in a state with the nation's highest unemployment rate.
"The industries affected by tourism are all behind it," said Republican Rep. Joe Heck of southern Nevada, who has sponsored a bill in the House that would require shorter visa interview delays, among other measures. "We need the jobs."
Ocampo, who spent her vacation shopping at upscale boutiques and visiting family in California, said she would be more eager to come back if she knew her business was wanted.
"Everyone wants to visit the Statue of Liberty and Disneyland," she said.
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 28, 2011) ? Today's ubiquitous MP3 players permit users to listen to crystal-clear tunes at high volume for hours on end -- a marked improvement on the days of the Walkman. But according to Tel Aviv University research, these advances have also turned personal listening devices into a serious health hazard, with teenagers as the most at-risk group.
One in four teens is in danger of early hearing loss as a direct result of these listening habits, says Prof. Chava Muchnik of TAU's Department of Communication Disorders in the Stanley Steyer School of Health Professions at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Sheba Medical Center. With her colleagues Dr. Ricky Kaplan-Neeman, Dr. Noam Amir, and Ester Shabtai, Prof. Muchnik studied teens' music listening habits and took acoustic measurements of preferred listening levels.
The results, published in the International Journal of Audiology, demonstrate clearly that teens have harmful music-listening habits when it comes to iPods and other MP3 devices. "In 10 or 20 years it will be too late to realize that an entire generation of young people is suffering from hearing problems much earlier than expected from natural aging," says Prof. Muchnik.
Hearing loss before middle age
Hearing loss caused by continuous exposure to loud noise is a slow and progressive process. People may not notice the harm they are causing until years of accumulated damage begin to take hold, warns Prof. Muchnik. Those who are misusing MP3 players today might find that their hearing begins to deteriorate as early as their 30's and 40's -- much earlier than past generations.
The first stage of the study included 289 participants aged 13 to 17. They were asked to answer questions about their habits on personal listening devices (PLDs) -- specifically, their preferred listening levels and the duration of their listening. In the second stage, measurements of these listening levels were performed on 74 teens in both quiet and noisy environments. The measured volume levels were used to calculate the potential risk to hearing according to damage risk criteria laid out by industrial health and safety regulations.
The study's findings are worrisome, says Prof. Muchnik. Eighty percent of teens use their PLDs regularly, with 21 percent listening from one to four hours daily, and eight percent listening more than four hours consecutively. Taken together with the acoustic measurement results, the data indicate that a quarter of the participants are at severe risk for hearing loss.
Dangerous decibels
Currently, industry-related health and safety regulations are the only benchmark for measuring the harm caused by continuous exposure to high volume noise. But there is a real need for additional music risk criteria in order to prevent music-induced hearing loss, Prof. Muchnik says. In the meantime, she recommends that manufacturers adopt the European standards that limit the output of PLDs to 100 decibels. Currently, maximum decibel levels can differ from model to model, but some can go up to 129 decibels.
Steps can also be taken by schools and parents, she says. Some school boards are developing programs to increase awareness of hearing health, such as the "Dangerous Decibels" program in Oregon schools, which provides early education on the subject. Teens could also choose over-the-ear headphones instead of the ear buds that commonly come with an iPod.
In the near future, the researchers will focus on the music listening habits of younger children, including pre-teens, and the development of advanced technological solutions to enable the safe use of PLDs.
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While 2011 is almost over, the year has only really just begun in terms of determining its historical significance. 2011 wasn't, of course, just another year. Like 1989, 1968, 1917 and 1848, 2011 was a revolutionary year, one that - from Cairo to Athens to Tunis to Wall Street to Moscow - may have changed the world forever. And to mark the historic nature of 2011, Time magazine just made The Protestor its person of the year. According to Kurt Andersen, who wrote Time's cover story for its Protestor edition, rebellion was the "defining political trope of 2011" - thereby making it a "great year in world history". And, as Andersen told me over Skype, this "contagion" wouldn't have happened without social networks like Facebook and Twitter which, he insists, were "key" to the 2011 revolutions. The Internet, Andersen thus explained, has emerged as the alternative to the free press in countries like Egypt, Russia and Tunisia; without it, he insists, there would have been no revolutions anywhere in 2011. Video ahead.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/2lFpM6-a3Tw/
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California pesticide use rises after years of decline\n\n: FRESNO, Calif. (AP) -- State official... tinyurl.com/cwpdnm9 #agnews #agchat 
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Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WV, left, and Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., comment as the Senate approves legislation that extends Social Security payroll tax cuts for two months, at the Capitol in Washington. The action also extends long-term unemployment benefits for another two months and forces President Barack Obama to approve construction of a controversial oil pipeline. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WV, left, and Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., comment as the Senate approves legislation that extends Social Security payroll tax cuts for two months, at the Capitol in Washington. The action also extends long-term unemployment benefits for another two months and forces President Barack Obama to approve construction of a controversial oil pipeline. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., arrives as the Senate votes to approve legislation that extends Social Security payroll tax cuts for two months, at the Capitol in Washington. The action also extends long-term unemployment benefits for another two months and forces President Barack Obama to approve construction of a controversial oil pipeline. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WV, left, and Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., comment as the Senate approves legislation that extends Social Security payroll tax cuts for two months, at the Capitol in Washington. The action also extends long-term unemployment benefits for another two months and forces President Barack Obama to approve construction of a controversial oil pipeline. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., talks on his cell phone just off the floor of the Senate as the body votes to approve legislation that extends Social Security payroll tax cuts for two months, at the Capitol in Washington. The action also extends long-term unemployment benefits for another two months and forces President Barack Obama to approve construction of a controversial oil pipeline. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Senate passed legislation Saturday extending a Social Security payroll tax cut and jobless benefits for just two months, handing President Barack Obama a partial victory while setting the stage for another fight in February.
It also brought a peaceful end to a year-long battle over spending by passing a $1 trillion-plus catchall budget bill that wraps together the day-to-day budgets for 10 Cabinet departments and military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The House passed the measure Friday, and the White House has signaled that Obama will sign it.
The renewal of the 2-percentage-point cut in the Social Security payroll tax for 160 million workers and unemployment benefits averaging about $300 a week for the additional millions of people who have been out of work for six months or more is a modest step forward for Obama's year-end jobs agenda.
As a condition for GOP support of the payroll tax measure, Obama has to accept a provision that forces him to decide within 60 days whether to approve or reject a proposed a Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline that promises thousands of jobs.
Obama didn't reference the pipeline issue in a brief appearance at the White House after the vote. He welcomed the Senate's passage of the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance extension and said it would be "inexcusable" for Congress not to extend them for the rest of 2012 when lawmakers return from their holiday break.
The budget bill, passed 67-32, heads to the White House for Obama's signature; the payroll tax measure won a 89-10 tally that send it back to the House ? where many Republicans only reluctantly support it ? for a vote early next week.
A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, would not predict whether the House would accept the Senate payroll tax measure, saying GOP leaders would have to discuss it with the rank and file. But Democrats assume Senate Republicans would not have allowed the short-term measure to advance without a signal from Boehner that the House would go along.
Democratic and GOP leaders opted for the short-term extension of the payroll tax and jobless benefits measure after failing to agree on big enough spending cuts to pay for a full-year renewal. The measure also provides a 60-day reprieve from a scheduled 27 percent cut in the fees paid to doctors who treat Medicare patients.
The $33 billion cost of the measure would be covered by raising fees on new mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The fees, drawn from a Treasury Department housing finance market reform plan, would effectively raise the interest rate on home loans guaranteed by the mortgage giants and the Federal Housing Administration by one-tenth of a percentage point.
The idea is to open up the market to private companies currently priced out by the implicit subsidies of Fannie and Freddie.
The White House says the fee would increase the monthly cost of a typical $220,000 mortgage by almost $15 a month. Over 30 years, the fees would increase the total cost of such a mortgage by more than $5,000.
In contrast, a worker making a $100,000 salary would reap a tax cut of about $330 through the two-month extension of the payroll tax cut. A worker with a typical $50,000 salary would get just a $165 tax cut.
Officials said that in private talks, the two sides had hoped to reach agreement on the full one-year extension of the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits that Obama had made the centerpiece of the jobs program he submitted to Congress last fall.
Those efforts failed when the two sides could not agree on enough offsetting cuts to blunt the measure's impact on the debt.
The failure tees up the issue again for early next year, but it won't get any easier to agree on spending cuts.
Neither House Speaker Boehner nor his aides participated in the negotiations, although McConnell said he was optimistic about the measure's chances for final approval. The payroll tax cut is unpopular in GOP ranks and another vote in two months could present a headache for GOP leaders.
On the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, the legislation requires the president to grant a permit unless he makes a determination that it is "not in the national interest." One senior administration official said the president would almost certainly refuse to grant a permit. The official was not authorized to speak publicly.
The White House on Friday backed away from Obama's earlier threat to veto any bill that linked the payroll tax cut extension with a Republican demand for a speedy decision on the proposed 1,700-mile pipeline. Obama said on Dec. 7 that "any effort to try to tie Keystone to the payroll tax cut I will reject. So everybody should be on notice."
The president recently announced he was postponing a decision on the much-studied pipeline until after the 2012 election. Environmentalists oppose the project, but several unions support it. The legislation puts the president in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between customary political allies.
The State Department, in an analysis released this summer, said the pipeline project would create up to 6,000 jobs during construction, while developer TransCanada put the total at 20,000 in direct employment.
The pipeline would carry oil from western Canada to Texas Gulf Coast refineries, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.
The spending bill locks in spending cuts that conservative Republicans won from the White House and Democrats earlier in the year.
Republicans also won their fight to block new federal regulations for light bulb energy efficiency, coal dust in mines and clean water permits for construction of timber roads.
The White House turned back GOP attempts to block limits on greenhouse gases, mountaintop removal mining and hazardous emissions from utility plants, industrial boilers and cement kilns.
___
Associated Press writers David Espo, Alan Fram, Donna Cassata and Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.
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For anglers and boaters who regularly travel the coasts of Florida the great barracuda (Sphyraena barracuda) is a common sight. Surprisingly, however, very little is known about the early life stage of this ecologically and socio-economically important coastal fish.
In the journal Marine Biology, lead author Dr. Evan D'Alessandro and University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science colleagues Drs. Su Sponaugle, Joel Llopiz and Robert Cowen shed light on the larval stage of this ocean predator, as well as several other closely related species.
"Due in large part to the expense and difficulty of collecting fish larvae from the open ocean, the larval ecology of barracuda were a mystery until now," said D'Alessandro. "A research study led by Dr. Robert Cowen, which sampled the Straits of Florida regularly for two years, provided a unique opportunity to catch a glimpse of the larval life of many fishes."
The study samples included great barracuda (92.8%) and their relatives Sphyraena borealis and Sphyraena picudilla (6.6%), commonly known as sennets.
In their larval stage, which generally lasts several weeks, barracuda and sennets remain in the upper 25 m of the ocean and live on a similar diet. They start out consuming copepods, or small crustaceans, but make an early switch to a diet of fish larvae, much like several larval billfishes and tunas.
"Barracuda are an important element in the marine food chain; they are voracious predators of other fishes as juveniles and adults on reefs and other nearshore habitats. Now we know this holds true for their larval stage before they reach an inch in length, as well," said D'Alessandro. "This novel study unlocks important aspects of the barracuda's life cycle. It also identifies an important size advantage within the larval stage (bigger larvae are more likely to survive) and provides insight that resource managers can use to better manage this species."
###
University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science: http://www.rsmas.miami.edu
Thanks to University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science for this article.
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Cancer weakened but did not soften Christopher Hitchens. He did not repent or forgive or ask for pity. As if granted diplomatic immunity, his mind's eye looked plainly upon the attack and counterattack of disease and treatments that robbed him of his hair, his stamina, his speaking voice and eventually his life.
"I love the imagery of struggle," he wrote about his illness in an August 2010 essay in Vanity Fair. "I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient."
Hitchens, a Washington, D.C.-based author, essayist and polemicist who waged verbal and occasional physical battle on behalf of causes left and right, died Thursday night at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston of pneumonia, a complication of his esophageal cancer, according to a statement from Vanity Fair magazine. He was 62.
"There will never be another like Christopher. A man of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar," said Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. "Those who read him felt they knew him, and those who knew him were profoundly fortunate souls."
He had enjoyed his drink (enough to "to kill or stun the average mule") and cigarettes, until he announced in June 2010 that he was being treated for cancer of the esophagus.
He was a most engaged, prolific and public intellectual who wrote numerous books, was a frequent television commentator and a contributor to Vanity Fair, Slate and other publications. He became a popular author in 2007 thanks to "God Is Not Great," a manifesto for atheists.
"Christopher Hitchens was everything a great essayist should be: infuriating, brilliant, highly provocative and yet intensely serious," said Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. "I worked as an intern for him years ago. My job was to fact check his articles. Since he had a photographic memory and an encyclopedic mind, it was the easiest job I've ever done."
Long after his diagnosis, his columns and essays appeared regularly, savaging the royal family, reveling in the death of Osama bin Laden or pondering the letters of poet Philip Larkin. He was intolerant of nonsense, including about his own health. In a piece that appeared in the January 2012 issue of Vanity Fair, he dismissed the old saying that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
"So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion," he wrote. "It is our common fate. In either case, though, one can dispense with facile maxims that don't live up to their apparent billing."
Eloquent and intemperate, bawdy and urbane, Hitchens was an acknowledged contrarian and contradiction ? half-Christian, half-Jewish and fully nonbelieving; a native of England who settled in America; a former Trotskyite who backed the Iraq war and supported George W. Bush. But his passions remained constant and targets of his youth, from Henry Kissinger to Mother Teresa, remained hated.
He was a militant humanist who believed in pluralism and racial justice and freedom of speech, big cities and fine art, and the willingness to stand the consequences. He was smacked in the rear by then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and beaten up in Beirut. He once submitted to waterboarding to prove that it was indeed torture.
Hitchens was a committed sensualist who abstained from clean living as if it were just another kind of church. In 2005, he recalled a trip to Aspen, Colo., and a brief encounter after stepping off a ski lift.
"I was met by immaculate specimens of young American womanhood, holding silver trays and flashing perfect dentition," he wrote. "What would I like? I thought a gin and tonic would meet the case. `Sir, that would be inappropriate.' In what respect? `At this altitude gin would be very much more toxic than at ground level.' In that case, I said, make it a double."
An emphatic ally and inspired foe, he stood by friends in trouble ("Satanic Verses" novelist Salman Rushdie) and against enemies in power (Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini). His heroes included George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Gore Vidal (pre-Sept. 11). Among those on the Hitchens list of shame: Michael Moore; Saddam Hussein; Kim Jong Il; Sarah Palin; Gore Vidal (post Sept. 11); and Prince Charles.
"We have known for a long time that Prince Charles' empty sails are so rigged as to be swelled by any passing waft or breeze of crankiness and cant," Hitchens wrote in Slate in 2010 after the heir to the British throne gave a speech criticizing Galileo for the scientist's focus on "the material aspect of reality."
"He fell for the fake anthropologist Laurens van der Post. He was bowled over by the charms of homeopathic medicine. He has been believably reported as saying that plants do better if you talk to them in a soothing and encouraging way. But this latest departure promotes him from an advocate of harmless nonsense to positively sinister nonsense."
Hitchens was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1949. His father, Eric, was a "purse-lipped" Navy veteran known as "The Commander"; his mother, Yvonne, a romantic who later killed herself during an extramarital rendezvous in Greece. Young Christopher would have rather read a book. He was "a mere weed and weakling and kick-bag" who discovered that "words could function as weapons" and so stockpiled them.
In college, Oxford, he made such longtime friends as authors Martin Amis and Ian McEwan, and claimed to be nearby when visiting Rhodes scholar Bill Clinton did or did not inhale marijuana. Radicalized by the 1960s, Hitchens was often arrested at political rallies, was kicked out of Britain's Labour Party over his opposition to the Vietnam War and became a correspondent for the radical magazine International Socialism. His reputation broadened in the 1970s through his writings for the New Statesman.
Wavy-haired and brooding and aflame with wit and righteous anger, he was a star of the left on paper and on camera, a popular television guest and a columnist for one of the world's oldest liberal publications, The Nation. In friendlier times, Vidal was quoted as citing Hitchens as a worthy heir to his satirical throne.
But Hitchens never could simply nod his head. He feuded with fellow Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn, broke with Vidal and angered freedom of choice supporters by stating that the child's life begins at conception. An essay for Vanity Fair was titled "Why Women Aren't Funny," and Hitchens wasn't kidding.
He had long been unhappy with the left's reluctance to confront enemies or friends. He would note his strong disappointment that Arthur Miller and other leading liberals shied from making public appearances on behalf of Rushdie after the Ayatollah Khomeini called for his death. He advocated intervention in Bosnia and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Rushdie posted on his Twitter page early Friday: "Goodbye, my beloved friend. A great voice falls silent. A great heart stops."
No Democrat angered him more than Clinton, whose presidency led to the bitter end of Hitchens' friendship with White House aide Sidney Blumenthal and other Clinton backers. As Hitchens wrote in his memoir, he found Clinton "hateful in his behavior to women, pathological as a liar, and deeply suspect when it came to money in politics."
He wrote the anti-Clinton book, "No One Left to Lie To," at a time when most liberals were supporting the president as he faced impeachment over his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Hitchens also loathed Hillary Rodham Clinton and switched his affiliation from independent to Democrat in 2008 just so he could vote against her in the presidential primary.
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, completed his exit. He fought with Vidal, Noam Chomsky and others who either suggested that U.S. foreign policy had helped cause the tragedy or that the Bush administration had advanced knowledge. He supported the Iraq war, quit The Nation, backed Bush for re-election in 2004 and repeatedly chastised those whom he believed worried unduly about the feelings of Muslims.
"It's not enough that faith claims to be the solution to all problems," he wrote in Slate in 2009 after a Danish newspaper apologized for publishing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that led Muslim organizations to threaten legal action. "It is now demanded that such a preposterous claim be made immune from any inquiry, any critique, and any ridicule."
His essays were compiled in such books as "For the Sake of Argument" and "Prepared for the Worst." He also wrote short biographies/appreciations of Paine and Thomas Jefferson, a tribute to Orwell and "Letters to a Young Contrarian (Art of Mentoring)," in which he advised that "only an open conflict of ideas and principles can produce any clarity." A collection of essays, "Arguably," came out in September 2011 and he was planning a "book-length meditation on malady and mortality." He appeared in a 2010 documentary about the topical singer Phil Ochs.
Survived by his second wife, author Carol Blue, and by his three children (Alexander, Sophia and Antonia), Hitchens had quotable ideas about posterity, clarified years ago when he saw himself referred to as "the late" Christopher Hitchens in print. For the May 2010 issue of Vanity Fair, before his illness, Hitchens submitted answers for the Proust Questionnaire, a probing and personal survey for which the famous have revealed everything from their favorite color to their greatest fear.
His vision of earthly bliss: "To be vindicated in my own lifetime."
His ideal way to die: "Fully conscious, and either fighting or reciting (or fooling around)."
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First Lady Michelle Obama brings gifts to a Toys for Tots collection and talks about the importance of giving back.
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FRANKFURT, Germany ? Investors have soured on the latest attempt to resolve the European debt crisis.
Stocks tumbled around the world Wednesday, the euro slid to an 11-month low and borrowing costs spiked for heavily indebted Italy. The markets' jitters reflect rising doubts about the deal European Union leaders reached at a summit last Friday in Brussels.
The agreement requires the 17 countries that use the euro and nine other EU countries to balance their budgets and gives the International Monetary Fund up to euro200 ($264 billion) to help countries with high debt loads.
But there's growing disappointment that the new EU treaty:
? Doesn't reduce existing government debt levels;
? Doesn't do much to promote the long-term growth that would shrink those burdens;
? Doesn't provide enough money to reassure financial markets that Italy and Spain can keep paying their bills.
"Fiscal discipline is needed in the long term, but it doesn't address today's crisis," says Athanasios Vamvakidis, head European currency strategist at Merrill Lynch-Bank of America. "There isn't enough money to stop the run on sovereign bonds of Italy and Spain. Investors don't want to buy their debt."
It was also unclear how the agreement, which is being written into a treaty, would be enforced and whether some of the countries that signed on might end up dropping out because of resistance to budget cuts back home. Britain has rejected the deal.
"Markets like quick fixes and have no patience with the length of the political processes," says Gianni Toniolo, a professor of economics and history at Duke University.
European Central Bank President Mario Draghi praised the agreement made in Brussels. But so far he has rejected calls for the bank to make large-scale purchases of European bonds, something financial markets are hoping for and that would help put downward pressure on government borrowing costs.
The Dow Jones industrials fell 131 points, or 1.1 percent, to 11,823. The euro traded below $1.30 for the first time since January 12, hitting a low of $1.2973. Some of that is loss of confidence in the assets of the 17 euro nations, but it's also the result of two quarter-point interest rate cuts from the European Central Bank. The cuts lower the return on euro-denominated holdings and can induce investors to move money elsewhere.
European stock markets fell broadly. Germany's DAX dropped 1.7 percent; France's main stock index lost 3.3 percent.
Italy held its last bond auction of the year on Wednesday and it didn't go well. Investors demanded even more money to lend to the eurozone's third-largest economy. Italy paid 6.47 percent interest to borrow euro3 billion ($3.95 billion) for five years, up from 6.30 percent just a month ago.
The higher rates reflected investors' fears over the inadequacy of last week's agreement to keep eurozone governments from piling up more debt in the future. Italy has a staggering euro1.9 trillion ($2.5 trillion) in outstanding debt, and its economy is too large for Europe to bail out. Greece, Ireland and Portugal have been bailed out.
European officials are scheduled to meet Thursday to work out the details of the treaty negotiated in Brussels, according to one European official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are confidential.
The new treaty aims to impose tighter rules on how much money eurozone governments can spend. EU leaders agreed to limit deficits to 0.5 percent of economic output in regular economic times and to better enforce penalties against countries whose deficits rise too high.
The treaty will not be signed until March, at the earliest.
Several knotty issues must be resolved, including how budget rules contained in the new treaty will be reconciled with those in the basic treaty of the European Union, which remains unchanged. Another detail to be sorted out is whether countries signing on to the new treaty can legally rely on EU institutions, such as the European Commission and the European Court of Justice, to enforce its rules.
Governments and national parliaments are also leery of transferring too much sovereignty to Brussels or their fellow euro members.
"The process of negotiating the final deal to suit all will only add to doubts about its relevance in the long run ? meanwhile the immediate crisis continues," said Elisabeth Afseth, an analyst at Evolution Securities.
Meanwhile, European banks are under mounting pressure. The German government announced Wednesday it was reactivating its financial sector rescue fund. And the European Banking Authority said last week that the continent's banks need to raise about euro115 billion ($149 billion) to protect lenders against market turmoil, including bad government debt.
German banks need to raise euro13.1 billion ($17 billion); the country's second-biggest bank, Commerzbank AG, has been told it needs to raise euro5.3 billion ($6.89 billion).
Last week's summit did come up with a commitment from EU governments to loan up to euro200 ($264 billion) to the International Monetary Fund, which could help out the eurozone. Yet not all countries have made firm commitments to do this, and some poorer countries in Eastern Europe that do not use the euro are not happy about being asked to help pay for richer countries' mistakes.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas said he is personally against contributing the roughly 90 billion koruna (euro3.5 billion; $4.6 billion) that is sought, although his country has not made a final decision. In Slovakia, which uses the euro, the leader of a center-right party in the government said he has an "overall negative" view of the plan.
Leaders did agree to start a new euro500 billion ($659 billion) euro backstop fund, the European Stability Mechanism, a year ahead of time in July. But there are doubts about whether it is enough to soothe markets.
Many economists say the European Central Bank will eventually have to step up its so-far limited purchases of government debt ? because only that will keep borrowing costs down.
ECB President Mario Draghi has said governments shouldn't count on central bank bailouts; instead he said they should cut deficits and take steps to improve growth to win back bond market confidence.
Until recently, the euro had been surprisingly resilient against the dollar, despite the pressures heaped upon it by the debt crisis. That is partly because interest rates in Europe have been so much higher than those in the U.S., where the Federal Reserve has kept its main interest rate near zero percent.
That interest rate differential has helped offset the concerns investors naturally felt as the European debt crisis raged and threatened to undermine Europe's banking system and the currency itself.
But the ECB has cut rates twice since early November, giving investors one less motive to buy euros. That is one reason the euro lost ground Wednesday.
Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, says the market's impatience likely will pay off ? by putting pressure on European leaders to find a lasting solution to the crisis. "You need a certain amount of market volatility because otherwise these decisions will never be made," he says.
__
AP Business Writers Paul Wiseman in Washington and Bernard Condon in New York contributed. Steinhauser contributed from Brussels
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It's been a pretty good ride so far for digital couponing startup SavingStar. The company launched its beta last August behind $2.3 million in financing from Flybridge Capital Partners, First Round Capital, and Founder Collective, with participation from angel investors like Ron Conway.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Mt5vlIrG9-0/
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Public release date: 16-Dec-2011
Share ] Contact: Dr. Thilo Gross
thilo2gross@gmail.com
44-117-331-5151
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
This press release is available in German.
From shoals of fish to human society: social organisms need to make collective decisions. And it is not always the majority that prevails. In some cases, a small, resolute group may succeed in bending the whole community to their will. Using computer models and behavioural studies of fish, a team of scientists, including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, has discovered that uninformed individuals support the decision of the majority and may prevent a particularly determined minority from prevailing over the rest. For a democratic society, this means that individuals who are undecided need not necessarily present a risk to the democratic decision-making process; on the contrary, they can offer protection against the dominance of a small but strong-willed group.
History holds many examples of how a handful or even a single determined individual has succeeded in gathering whole societies behind them and directing their fate. The commonly held view is that such groups will always prevail when they are faced with large numbers of poorly informed and undecided individuals. The latter tend to follow the decisions of others and adopt the resolute determination of the group even if the group is itself in the minority.
A group of researchers, including colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, has now arrived at a different result. Using a variety of computer models, the scientists have demonstrated that uninformed individuals can also bring about a majority decision, even if the minority is more determined than the majority.
"Our simulations initially confirmed what we expected: A small group that resolutely pursues a specific objective can dominate a larger group. What surprised us was that a group of uninformed or undecided individuals can prevent this from happening," says Thilo Gross, who has meanwhile moved from the Max Planck Institute in Dresden to the University of Bristol.
Evidently the size of a group has a greater attraction than the determination of a smaller party. The urge to go along with a relatively even-tempered majority frequently prevails over the attraction of an extremely determined minority. For this to happen, however, there must be sufficient undecided individuals to join in with the majority.
The scientists used their computer models to simulate a decision-making situation offering two choices, with the facility to vary the number of individuals preferring one option or the other. They also varied the strength of feeling with which individuals preferred either option. The models were based on just a few generalised assumptions. "Our results are therefore applicable to all systems in which individuals would rather follow one another than enter into conflict and make decisions in the interests of their neighbours. This is true of various social organisms such as, for example, shoals of fish, flocks of birds or herds of mammals. And of course our findings are also transferable to human societies," Ian Couzin from Princeton University explains.
As a reality check for the model, the researchers also studied the behaviour of shoaling fish. By introducing food, they trained two groups of golden shiners, Notemigonus crysoleucas, to swim towards either a yellow or a blue disc. Under the conditions of the experiment, the fish began with a predilection for the colour yellow, so that those trained to swim to the yellow disc acquired a much stronger preference than those trained to swim to the blue disc.
An analysis of their behaviour confirmed the results of the computer model: five fish trained to prefer yellow creatures with a stronger predilection for this colour prevailed over six fish trained to prefer blue, but with a weaker focus on this colour: The whole shoal swam towards the yellow target.
However, when, in a second series of tests, the researchers introduced five or ten untrained fish, these altered the outcome of the collective decision. Despite their strong predilection, the fish trained to prefer yellow were unable to prevail. The untrained and therefore uninformed fish sided with the majority, and all of them then headed for the blue disc.
When transferred to humans, this means that uninformed and therefore undecided individuals play an important role in collective decisions. They can facilitate a democratic outcome and prevent a minority from taking control. However, the calculations also show that the number of uninformed individuals must not be excessive. In such cases, decisions are no longer predictable and follow a random pattern.
###
Original publication:
Iain D. Couzin, Christos C. Ioannou, Gven Demirel, Thilo Gross, Colin J. Torney, Andrew Hartnett, Larissa Conradt, Simon A. Levin, Naomi E. Leonard. Uninformed Individuals Promote Democratic Consensus in Animal Groups Science 16 December 2011: Vol. 334 no. 6062 pp. 1578-1580 DOI: 10.1126/science.1210280
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 16-Dec-2011 Share ] Contact: Dr. Thilo Gross
thilo2gross@gmail.com
44-117-331-5151
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
This press release is available in German.
From shoals of fish to human society: social organisms need to make collective decisions. And it is not always the majority that prevails. In some cases, a small, resolute group may succeed in bending the whole community to their will. Using computer models and behavioural studies of fish, a team of scientists, including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, has discovered that uninformed individuals support the decision of the majority and may prevent a particularly determined minority from prevailing over the rest. For a democratic society, this means that individuals who are undecided need not necessarily present a risk to the democratic decision-making process; on the contrary, they can offer protection against the dominance of a small but strong-willed group.
History holds many examples of how a handful or even a single determined individual has succeeded in gathering whole societies behind them and directing their fate. The commonly held view is that such groups will always prevail when they are faced with large numbers of poorly informed and undecided individuals. The latter tend to follow the decisions of others and adopt the resolute determination of the group even if the group is itself in the minority.
A group of researchers, including colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, has now arrived at a different result. Using a variety of computer models, the scientists have demonstrated that uninformed individuals can also bring about a majority decision, even if the minority is more determined than the majority.
"Our simulations initially confirmed what we expected: A small group that resolutely pursues a specific objective can dominate a larger group. What surprised us was that a group of uninformed or undecided individuals can prevent this from happening," says Thilo Gross, who has meanwhile moved from the Max Planck Institute in Dresden to the University of Bristol.
Evidently the size of a group has a greater attraction than the determination of a smaller party. The urge to go along with a relatively even-tempered majority frequently prevails over the attraction of an extremely determined minority. For this to happen, however, there must be sufficient undecided individuals to join in with the majority.
The scientists used their computer models to simulate a decision-making situation offering two choices, with the facility to vary the number of individuals preferring one option or the other. They also varied the strength of feeling with which individuals preferred either option. The models were based on just a few generalised assumptions. "Our results are therefore applicable to all systems in which individuals would rather follow one another than enter into conflict and make decisions in the interests of their neighbours. This is true of various social organisms such as, for example, shoals of fish, flocks of birds or herds of mammals. And of course our findings are also transferable to human societies," Ian Couzin from Princeton University explains.
As a reality check for the model, the researchers also studied the behaviour of shoaling fish. By introducing food, they trained two groups of golden shiners, Notemigonus crysoleucas, to swim towards either a yellow or a blue disc. Under the conditions of the experiment, the fish began with a predilection for the colour yellow, so that those trained to swim to the yellow disc acquired a much stronger preference than those trained to swim to the blue disc.
An analysis of their behaviour confirmed the results of the computer model: five fish trained to prefer yellow creatures with a stronger predilection for this colour prevailed over six fish trained to prefer blue, but with a weaker focus on this colour: The whole shoal swam towards the yellow target.
However, when, in a second series of tests, the researchers introduced five or ten untrained fish, these altered the outcome of the collective decision. Despite their strong predilection, the fish trained to prefer yellow were unable to prevail. The untrained and therefore uninformed fish sided with the majority, and all of them then headed for the blue disc.
When transferred to humans, this means that uninformed and therefore undecided individuals play an important role in collective decisions. They can facilitate a democratic outcome and prevent a minority from taking control. However, the calculations also show that the number of uninformed individuals must not be excessive. In such cases, decisions are no longer predictable and follow a random pattern.
###
Original publication:
Iain D. Couzin, Christos C. Ioannou, Gven Demirel, Thilo Gross, Colin J. Torney, Andrew Hartnett, Larissa Conradt, Simon A. Levin, Naomi E. Leonard. Uninformed Individuals Promote Democratic Consensus in Animal Groups Science 16 December 2011: Vol. 334 no. 6062 pp. 1578-1580 DOI: 10.1126/science.1210280
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-12/m-ftc121611.php
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Anna Benson's reasoning for wanting another baby on "Baseball Wives" (Wed., 9PM ET on VH1) makes perfect sense. She wants a playmate for her youngest because there's a big age gap between the baby and the other kids. It's how she's going about it that's questionable.
She confided in Erika Williams that she'd stopped taking her birth control pills and was planning a romantic night together with her husband.
"Do not say you're tricking him into having another baby," Erika said.
"Of course I am," Anna said. Apparently, she'd talked to her husband about having another baby and he was adamant that he didn't want to, so she decided to take matters into her own hand.
Erika was a lot more uncomfortable with this scheme than Anna seemed to expect. "Now I feel like a responsibility to tell him," she said, while Anna seemed sure that she wouldn't.
TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.
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I really wanted to like this film more than I did (a black and white silent film being released in today's climate? How great is that?), but I found it to be oddly derivative. To me, The Artist felt like nothing more than a never-ending onslaught of references and homages -- a neat pastiche of familiarity. Sure, it's charming, and Jean Dujardin is outstanding as fictitious silent film star George Valentin, but it was tough to get immersed in the film thanks to poor character development, a stale narrative, and a little too much over-sentimentality. Also, for such an intriguing premise, there was a surprising lack of creativity (did Dujardin really need to be a stand-in for Fairbanks in The Mask of Zorro? Directed Michael Hazanavicus couldn't have made up his own silent "film within a film?" Not to mention the painfully obvious Citizen Kane, Modern Times, Thin Man, and A Star is Born references).It's not all bad: the cinematography was stunning, I loved how they shot it in the old 4:3 aspect ratio, it stayed very true to the 20s/30s versions of lighting and production design, and Hazanavicus played with sound in clever ways. Sadly, that's about it. No doubt this film will garner plenty of critical acclaim and will be a sure fire Oscar contender, but from my perspective, I was let down by a film that could have been a great love letter to a bygone era if it hadn't gotten lost in its tribute.
December 4, 2011Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_artist/
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After strong Q3 showing, HTC sees nearly 20 percent drop in November revenue originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Dec 2011 05:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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RICHMOND, Va. ? Doctors expect two formerly conjoined toddlers from the Dominican Republic to return home by Christmas after recovering from separation surgery in Virginia.
Maria and Teresa Tapia underwent complicated, nearly daylong surgery on Nov. 8 at the Children's Hospital of Richmond at Virginia Commonwealth University. In a series of procedures, the surgical team divided the twins' liver, pancreas and other shared organ systems and reconstructed their abdominal walls.
"They are enjoying life now that they're separated," said their mother, Lisandra Sanatis. "They enjoy seeing themselves as individuals."
While they're getting accustomed to exploring their surroundings separately, they still stay near each other and hold hands when they walk.
After being in Richmond for several months now, Sanatis says she and her daughters are more than ready to leave the confines of the hospital and are anxious to return to their family in their native country.
"We're missing our family, and the girls miss their little brother, Lisander," Sanatis said.
They also haven't acquired a taste for American fare ? including hospital meals ? preferring instead to get takeout Dominican food, including the traditional beans and rice and other dishes.
Well-wishers have extended their support, including Rocio Castanos, a friend of the Dominican first lady who popped in Thursday for a visit on the twins' last full day in the hospital. Castanos, who lives in Richmond, brought each girl a stuffed animal and offered to cook them some sancocho, a traditional Dominican soup.
Dr. David Lanning, a surgeon and head of the medical team that is caring for the 20-month-old girls, says both children have been recovering well.
Maria, the smaller of the two, weighs about 19 pounds, and Teresa weighs about 26 pounds. Lanning expects the disparity in their weight, caused by the configuration of their small intestines and blood flow from the liver, to gradually even out.
Maria's pancreas is slow to produce digestive enzymes, but she is taking replacement enzymes. Teresa is undergoing treatment on the incision where the girls were separated.
The toddlers were scheduled to leave the hospital Friday. They will remain in Richmond while they undergo outpatient therapy to relearn walking and otherwise reorient their movements now that they're no longer attached.
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