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Continue reading Must See HDTV (January 30th - February 5th)
Must See HDTV (January 30th - February 5th) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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INDIANAPOLIS ? Patriots coach Bill Belichick could leave his familiar hoodies in the hotel drawer. There was no need to bundle up for the start of only the fourth Super Bowl week in a northern city.
Ice and snow? Notable no-shows.
Fans threw open their jackets as they walked around downtown streets near Lucas Oil Stadium on Monday, hoping to get a glimpse of a celebrity in town for the game between New England and the New York Giants. Temperatures in the mid-to-upper 50s were forecast for the start of the week, well above normal.
The sunshine felt so good that it made for a joke or two.
"I know the way we're preparing and the way we've controlled the weather, which is hard to do," Colts owner Jim Irsay said, smiling. "But we've had certain techniques that were going to keep hidden, and I hope they hold."
Already, it's way better than Dallas.
Weather is a major concern when the title game goes north, but some of the biggest problems came down south last year. Snow and 100 hours of sub-freezing temperatures snarled traffic and led to injuries when an icy patch fell off the stadium roof and hit six workers.
Indianapolis watched and prepared.
"You can have anything in Indiana," Super Bowl Host Committee spokeswoman Mel Raines said. "Our plan is intended for everything."
In its first three times at a northern exposure, the NFL's title game has experienced a little of everything.
The ground-breaking game came after the 1981 season in Detroit, a test of whether it would work outside the sunny climes of Florida, New Orleans, Texas and California. The week leading up to the game between the Bengals and 49ers included bursts of snow culminating in nasty conditions for game day.
Bored players passed the time that week by spinning their tires on the ice-covered hotel parking lot for fun.
"I think the biggest challenge was for guys not to get bored to tears," former Bengals offensive lineman Dave Lapham said. "We kind of felt cooped up, really. Guys talked about: What are we going to do? Ski? Ice skate? You could strap on skates and skate on the streets. There was nothing do to."
Traffic heading to the Silverdome in Pontiac, Mich., on game day got clogged by another burst of snow. Fans braved temperatures of 13 degrees and a wind chill of 21 below.
After that experience, there was talk that the league would never venture north again for a Super Bowl.
"I thought they'd stick to it, honestly," said Lapham, now a broadcaster for the Bengals. "But with the dynamic of people putting up more money for stadiums, they're going to reward communities."
Ten years later, the Bills and Redskins played for the title in Minneapolis, where the ground was covered with snow but the region handled it much more smoothly.
Then, the cold became a selling point for some Redskins players. Earnest Byner, Art Monk, Monte Coleman and Chip Lohmiller went ice fishing on Cedar Lake in 30-below wind chills. Byner caught a 4-inch perch using a wax worm.
The game returned to Detroit after the 2005 season and things went much more smoothly despite a little snow on game day, when the Steelers beat the Seahawks.
Last year's game in Dallas became an unexpected reminder of what can go wrong in winter, no matter where the location.
A snowstorm and 100 consecutive hours of subfreezing temperatures turned the Dallas area into an ice rink. Snow and ice fell from the roof of Cowboys Stadium, injuring six workers on the plaza below. Organizers had spread events around a 30-mile area to emphasize the regional support for the game, creating major travel problems when the weather went bad.
Indianapolis has done it differently.
Most of the Super Bowl events are clustered downtown, minimizing travel. Temporary structures for the Super Bowl festivities were fitted with wind gauges for safety. On Sunday, two tents at an NFL fan exhibit were closed for about an hour because of high winds.
The city removed parking meters from high-traffic streets downtown so snow could be easily pushed away. Twenty-four snow removal trucks were on call for the game, four times the normal amount. The host committee recruited "Super Shoveler" volunteers to help clear sidewalks if it snowed.
In some ways, it's a warm-up act for the first true cold-weather title game. The 2014 Super Bowl will be co-hosted by New York and New Jersey, played outdoors instead of in a dome during the middle of winter.
The logo for that game? A blue-and-white snowflake.
___
Associated Press sports writer Michael Marot and AP writer Carrie Schedler in Indianapolis contributed to this report.
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The French Senate today approved a controversial bill making it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide in what many see as a political ploy ahead of elections this spring.
France poked Turkey in the eye last night by approving a new "genocide denial" bill, then this morning urged Turkey to ?remain calm.?
Skip to next paragraphBut Turkish reaction was not especially calm.
After the French Senate voted in the late hours Monday to criminalize a denial of the 1915 Armenian genocide ? punishable with a year in jail and a $58,000 fine ? Turkey?s ambassador to France said he will leave.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan today called the new law ?discriminatory? and ?racist? and a ?massacre of free expression,? and pointed out that French President Nicolas Sarkozy?s ancestors had once sought refuge in Turkey.
Something?s definitely out of whack in this diplomatic fallout. But it isn?t entirely Turkey?s inability to face its Ottoman past, which includes the killing or deporting of some 750,000 to 1.5 million Armenians during World War I.
Even French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, a member of the ruling party, thinks the new French law is a bad idea and ?ill-timed.?
?I?m sure we?ll find again a constructive relationship,? Mr. Juppe told French TV. ?I put out my hand and I hope it will be shaken one day.?
In fact, there are actual reasons why Turkey might see fit to remain calm, as Juppe urges. This law really isn?t about Turkey. It?s French politics.
Turkish leaders take the genocide law as a matter of national dishonor and high principles, and point to French slaughters in Algeria, and speak of rights, including of independent thought, that France champions. It is highly emotional.
Yet in France the new genocide law is seen with considerable cynicism, and with little emotion or much regard. It comes just ahead of national elections this spring. Along with its slightly craven appeal to the hundreds of thousands of French-Armenian voters, for whom the issue has always been a defining one, the law also gives President Sarkozy a way to remind conservatives that he?s against a Muslim country joining Europe.
Mr. Sarkozy has a problem with a poll-surging Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front, who accuses him of overseeing an ?Islamization? of France.
The bill is "not entirely free of ulterior electoral motives considering that there is a 500,000-strong French Armenian community in France," as the French daily Liberation put it.
French politicos have portrayed their new legal concoction as part of a long, historic fight against a ?poisonous denial? by the human race of various mass murders.
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NEWARK, N.J. ? The state's largest city must produce a list of documents related to a $100 million pledge to its public schools from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, a judge ruled Friday.
The ruling stemmed from of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a group representing Newark schoolchildren that is seeking more transparency about the donation. The Associated Press and other news outlets also have made such requests.
State Superior Court Judge Rachel Davidson's ruling requires the city to produce the list, believed to enumerate about 50 pages of emails pertaining to the donation, by Feb. 10. The city could seek to block the publishing of some of the emails on the list, according to ACLU New Jersey attorney Ed Barocas.
The city, in a response letter to an AP request for the documents in 2010, said that any conversations between Democratic Mayor Cory Booker and Zuckerberg were "not made in the course of the Mayor's official duties" and therefore were exempt from open-records laws.
Were Booker found to have been acting in his capacity as mayor, the letter continued, the city didn't have the records requested. But it added that if the records were found, their release was barred under executive privilege.
The ACLU, in its lawsuit, argued that privilege can be claimed only by the governor, not by a sitting mayor. It argued that the public has a right to know how the grant funds are to be used and who is making the decisions on their allocation.
"We don't want to make it seem that there was necessarily something nefarious going on," Barocas said Friday. "All we ask is for this to be transparent. The public should be aware what, if any, agreements were made prior to or as part of the grant of the money."
City attorney Anna Pereira declined to comment Friday, citing the ongoing litigation.
In court filings, the city has said that the Facebook grant is being administered not by the city but by two not-for-profits that it doesn't fund, operate or exercise any control over. The city's schools were placed under state control in 1995 after instances of waste and mismanagement, including the spending of taxpayer money by school board members on cars and restaurant meals.
Newark's public school system is the state's largest, with 75 schools and a student population of about 40,000, according to its website. The schools have been plagued for years by low test scores, poor graduation rates and crumbling buildings.
The $100 million pledge to the schools was announced in the fall of 2010 by Booker, Zuckerberg and Republican Gov. Chris Christie as they appeared together on Oprah Winfrey's syndicated talk show.
Zuckerberg described the gift as a "challenge grant" to Booker, who has sought to raise $100 million more to match what Zuckerberg promised to contribute over five years. Zuckerberg's social networking website, based in Palo Alto, Calif., is estimated to be worth more than $50 billion.
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ATHENS, Greece ? Greece and its private investors are close to a deal that will significantly reduce the country's debt and pave the way for it to receive a much-needed euro130 billion bailout.
Negotiators for the investors emerged from two weeks of talks Saturday to announce the tentative agreement, which they said could become final next week.
The investors, who hold euro206 billion worth of Greek debt, will receive new bonds whose face value is 50 percent of the existing bonds. The new bonds will have a longer maturity and also pay a lower interest rate than the existing bonds ? a further hit to investors. But without the deal, which will reduce Greece's debt load by more than euro100 billion, the bonds would likely become worthless.
The agreement taking shape is seen as a prerequisite for Greece to get a second, euro130 billion bailout from its European Union partners and the International Monetary Fund, although there are other issues involved before Greece can get that aid. This would be Greece's second bailout. The EU and the IMF signed off on a euro110 billion aid package for Greece in May 2010, most of which has already been disbursed.
Greece faces a euro14.5 billion bond repayment on March 20, which it cannot afford without additional help.
Private investors hold roughly two-thirds of Greece's debt, which has reached an unsustainable level ? nearly 200 percent of the country's economic output. By restructuring the debt held by private investors, Greece and its EU partners are hoping to bring its debt to economic output ratio closer to 120 percent over the next decade.
If no deal is reached and Greece is forced to default, it would very likely spook Europe's ? and possibly the world's ? financial markets. It could even lead Greece to withdraw from the euro.
The banks, insurance companies and other private holders of Greek bonds are being represented by Charles Dallara, managing director of the Washington-based Institute of International Finance, and Jean Lemierre, senior adviser to the chairman of the French bank BNP Paribas.
The main creditor negotiators will leave Greece on Sunday and will remain in close consultation with Greek and other authorities.
___
Elena Becatoros in Athens and Gabriele Steinhauser in Brussels contributed.
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BUCKLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. ? President Barack Obama is courting Hispanics in politically important states, setting himself up as a champion of the crucial Latino voting bloc and as a foil to Republican candidates fighting for a share of support from the same groups.
With Latino voters voting overwhelmingly Democratic, Obama is not in danger of losing the support of a majority of Hispanics. But he does need their intensity, and a Gallup tracking poll shows that while a majority of Hispanics approve of Obama, that approval is not as high as it is among black voters.
Pitching his economic agenda during a three-day, five-state trip this week, Obama has not ignored the fact that three of the states ? Nevada, Arizona and Colorado ? all have Hispanic populations of 20 percent or more. A majority of them are Democratic, but they also could be a factor in upcoming nominating contests in those states. Nevada and Colorado hold caucuses within two weeks and Arizona has a primary Feb. 28.
In Arizona Wednesday, where he was drawing attention to his efforts to increase manufacturing, Obama playfully interacted with a supporter who shouted out: "Barack es mi hermano! (Barack is my brother!)"
"Mi hermano ? mucho gusto (My brother, a real pleasure)," Obama shouted back.
And it was no accident that he scheduled an interview with Univision, the Spanish language network that reaches a broad swath of the U.S. Latino population, while he was in Arizona and with local Telemundo affiliates Thursday in Las Vegas and in Denver. All that while former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the rest of the Republican presidential field were battling in Florida, another state with a key Latino voting bloc.
"It's an important community in this country and he will continue to have those interactions," White House spokesman Jay Carney said of Obama's efforts to reach out to Spanish language media.
No issue reverberates more in the appeal to Latinos than immigration.
For Obama, it reared up suddenly for him Wednesday when Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican who signed one of the toughest laws to curtail illegal immigration, greeted him at the airport tarmac in Mesa, Ariz., with a handwritten invitation for the president to join her in a visit to the Mexican border.
Obama replied coolly, noting that he did not appreciate the way she had depicted him in a book she published last year, "Scorpions for Breakfast." In the book, Brewer writes that Obama was condescending and lectured her during a meeting at the White House to discuss immigration. "He was a little disturbed about my book," Brewer told two reporters shortly after the encounter.
Obama continued to promote his economic plan Thursday in Nevada and Colorado, focusing on energy policy and his attempts to expand oil and gas exploration while also emphasizing clean energy.
"Doubling down on a clean energy industry will create lots of jobs in the process," the president said at Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado, where the Air Force has installed solar panels and tested jets that run on biofuels.
As such, he was indirectly pitching to Hispanics as well. A new Pew Research Center poll found that 54 percent of Latinos believe that the economic downturn has been harder on them than on other groups in the U.S.
"There is no question that Latinos were hard hit, especially by the bursting of the housing bubble and the resulting steep decline in construction work," Carney said Thursday. "Latinos are overrepresented in the construction industry. It's one of the reasons why, certainly, Latinos would greatly benefit from infrastructure investments that put construction workers back to work."
In 2008, Obama beat Republican John McCain by a 2-1 margin among Hispanics.
To win again, he will need that level of enthusiasm to make up for weaknesses elsewhere in his voter support. In a bright spot for Obama, the Pew poll found that even though Hispanics believe their economic condition is poor, two-thirds of those polled said they expect their financial situation to improve over the next year, whereas 58 percent of the overall population expect the same.
In his interview with Univision, Obama made a point of noting that both Romney and Gingrich have said they would veto legislation, known as the DREAM Act, that would give a pathway to citizenship to children who came to the United States illegally but who attend college or enlist in the military.
"They believe that we should not provide a pathway to citizenship for young people who were brought here when they were very young children and are basically American kids but right now are still in a shadow," Obama said. "They've said that they would veto the DREAM Act. Both of them."
At a debate Monday on NBC, however, both Gingrich and Romney said they would support modified legislation that only applied to young people who joined the military. "I would not support the part that simply says everybody who goes to college is automatically waived for having broken the law," Gingrich said.
Obama, in the interview, explicitly connected the Republican presidential field to congressional Republicans, who suffer from bottom-dwelling approval ratings right now. Asked why he had been unable to deliver on his promise for overhauling the immigration system, Obama replied:
"Well, it's very simple. We couldn't get any Republican votes. Zero. None," he said. "So this is the kind of barrier that we're meeting in Congress. We're just going to keep on pushing and pushing until hopefully we finally get a break."
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120126/ap_on_bi_ge/us_obama
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(Reuters) ? Reliever Brad Lidge signed a one-year deal with the Washington Nationals, the Major League Baseball team said on Thursday, hoping the right-hander can return to his All-Star form after a season disrupted by shoulder problems.
Lidge, who did not have a single blown save in 48 chances in 2008 helping Philadelphia to a World Series, appeared in just 25 games with the Phillies last season.
In 10 seasons with the Phillies and Houston Astros, Lidge had a 26-31 record with 67 holds, 223 saves and a 3.44 earned run average.
A two-time National League All-Star and 2008 National League Comeback Player of the Year, Lidge has registered 30 or more saves in a season four times and in 2004 established a new NL single-season mark for strikeouts in relief with 157.
(Reporting by Steve Keating in Toronto; Editing by Frank Pingue)
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Here's a nice one from the wallpapers included with the Pantech Burst. You've got red fabric in a vertical fashion, with waves giving a sense of motion. Check it and the other Pantech Burst wallpapers below.
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ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2012) ? Scientists with the new Children's Research Institute at UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified the environment in which blood-forming stem cells survive and thrive within the body, an important step toward increasing the safety and effectiveness of bone-marrow transplantation.
Institute investigators led by Dr. Sean Morrison asked which cells are responsible for the microenvironment that nurtures haematopoietic stem cells, which produce billions of new blood cells every day. The answer: endothelial and perivascular cells, which line blood vessels.
"Although scientists have searched for decades to identify the stem cell home, this is the first study to reveal the cells that are functionally responsible for the maintenance of blood-forming stem cells in the body," said Dr. Morrison, director of the new institute and senior author of the study available Jan. 26 in Nature. "This discovery will lead to the identification of the mechanisms by which cells promote stem cell maintenance and expansion."
Scientists already have determined how to make large quantities of stem cells and how to change these cells into those of the nervous system, skin and other tissues. But they have been stymied by similar efforts to make blood-forming stem cells. A key obstacle has been the lack of understanding about the microenvironment, or niche, in which blood-forming stem cells reside in the body.
In the first breakthrough from the Children's Research Institute, Dr. Morrison's laboratory addressed this issue by systematically determining which cells are the sources of stem cell factor, a protein required for the maintenance of blood-forming stem cells. His team swapped out the mouse gene responsible for stem cell factor with a gene from jellyfish that encodes green fluorescent protein. The cells that glowed green were endothelial and perivascular cells, revealing them as the creators of the niche that nurtures healthy blood-forming stem cells.
Additional lab work showed that blood-forming stem cells become depleted if stem cell factor is eliminated from either endothelial or perivascular cells. Loss of stem cell factor from both of these sources caused stem cells to virtually disappear.
The research has implications for bone marrow and umbilical cord blood transplants, Dr. Morrison said. If scientists can identify the remaining signals by which perivascular cells promote the expansion of blood-forming stem cells, then they may be able to replicate these signals in the laboratory. Doing so will make it possible to expand blood-forming stem cells prior to transplantation into patients, thereby increasing the safety and effectiveness of this widely used clinical procedure.
Dr. Morrison's paper is the first to emerge from the Children's Research Institute at UT Southwestern, a pioneering venture that combines the medical center's research prowess with the world-class clinical expertise of Children's Medical Center Dallas. Under Dr. Morrison's leadership, the institute is focusing on research at the interface of stem cell biology, cancer, and metabolism that has the potential to reveal new strategies for treating disease.
The institute currently has more than 30 scientists and will eventually include 150 scientists in 15 laboratories led by UT Southwestern faculty members. Dr. Morrison's lab focuses on adult stem cell biology and cancers of the blood, nervous system and skin.
The Nature paper's first author is Dr. Lei Ding, postdoctoral research fellow at the Children's Research Institute and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Scientists from the University of Michigan and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory also contributed to the study, which was supported by the HHMI and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
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Apple TV is still a hobby. The word comes from Apple's Chief, Tim Cook who nether-the-less championed the company's current offering. He stated that Apple sold more than 2.8 million Apple TV units last fiscal year with 1.4 million moved within Q1 2012 (a new record for the device). ?Our Apple TV product is doing quite well? but in the scheme of things, we still classify Apple TV as a hobby. We continue to add things to it. If you?re using the latest one ? I don?t know about you, but I can?t live without it. Other than that, no comment.? said Cook.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/A-j5CpDOi2c/
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By msnbc.com staff and news services
A Washington state senator on Monday joined those lawmakers who support gay marriage, ensuring enough votes to pass a bill out of the state Senate.
"I have very strong Christian beliefs, and personally I have always said when I accepted the Lord, I became more tolerant of others," Democratic Sen. Margaret Haugen said in a statement posted on her website. "I stopped judging people and try to live by the Golden Rule. This is part of my decision. I do not believe it is my role to judge others, regardless of my personal beliefs."
The state House already has enough support, and Gov. Chris Gregoire has endorsed the plan.
Still, it's?expected that opponents of gay marriage will oppose the measure on a statewide ballot.
Haugen's announcement came moments before the?state Legislature held its first public hearing on the issue.
STORY: King5.com's coverage of the legislation
If ultimately approved, Washington would join New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and the District of Columbia in approving gay marriage.
?
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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TEHRAN/BRUSSELS (Reuters) ? Iran accused Europeans on Monday of waging "psychological warfare" after the EU banned imports of Iranian oil, and President Barack Obama said Washington would impose more sanctions to address the "serious threat presented by Iran's nuclear program."
The Islamic Republic, which denies trying to build a nuclear bomb, scoffed at efforts to choke its oil exports, as Asia lines up to buy what Europe scorns.
Some Iranians also renewed threats to stop Arab oil from leaving the Gulf and warned they might strike U.S. targets worldwide if Washington used force to break any Iranian blockade of a strategically vital shipping route.
Yet in three decades of confrontation between Tehran and the West, bellicose rhetoric and the undependable armory of sanctions have become so familiar that the benchmark Brent crude oil price edged only 0.8 percent higher, and some of that was due to unrelated currency factors.
"If any disruption happens regarding the sale of Iranian oil, the Strait of Hormuz will definitely be closed," Mohammad Kossari, deputy head of parliament's foreign affairs and national security committee, told Fars news agency a day after U.S., French and British warships sailed back into the Gulf.
"If America seeks adventures after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran will make the world unsafe for Americans in the shortest possible time," Kossari added, referring to an earlier U.S. pledge to use its fleet to keep the passage open.
In Washington, Obama said in a statement that the EU sanctions underlined the strength of the international community's commitment to "addressing the serious threat presented by Iran's nuclear program."
"The United States will continue to impose new sanctions to increase the pressure on Iran," Obama said.
The United States imposed its own sanctions against Iran's oil trade and central bank on December 31. On Monday it imposed sanctions on the country's third-largest bank, state-owned Bank Tejarat and a Belarus-based affiliate, for allegedly helping Tehran develop its nuclear program.
The EU sanctions were also welcomed by Israel, which has warned it might attack Iran if sanctions do not deflect Tehran from a course that some analysts say could potentially give Iran a nuclear bomb next year.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner: "This new, concerted pressure will sharpen the choice for Iran's leaders and increase their cost of defiance of basic international obligations."
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, reiterated Washington's commitment to freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. "I think that Iran has undoubtedly heard that message and would be well advised to heed it," she said at a meeting of the board of governors of the American Jewish Committee in New York.
CALLS FOR TALKS
Germany, France and Britain used the EU sanctions as a cue for a joint call to Tehran to renew long-suspended negotiations on its nuclear program. Russia, like China a powerful critic of the Western approach, said talks might soon be on the cards.
Iran, however, said new sanctions made that less likely. It is a view shared by some in the West who caution that such tactics risk hardening Iranian support for a nuclear program that also seems to be subject to a covert "war" of sabotage and assassinations widely blamed on Israeli and Western agents.
The European Union embargo will not take full effect until July 1 because the foreign ministers who agreed the anticipated ban on imports of Iranian crude at a meeting in Brussels were anxious not to penalize the ailing economies of Greece, Italy and others to whom Iran is a major oil supplier. The strategy will be reviewed in May to see if it should go ahead.
Curbing Iran's oil exports is a double-edged sword, as Tehran's own response to the embargo clearly showed.
Loss of revenue is painful for a clerical establishment that faces an awkward electoral test at a time of galloping inflation which is hurting ordinary people. But since Iran's Western-allied Arab neighbors are struggling to raise their own output to compensate, the curbs on Tehran's exports have driven up oil prices and raised costs for recession-hit Western industries.
A member of Iran's influential Assembly of Experts, former Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian, said Tehran should respond to the delayed-action EU sanctions by stopping sales to the bloc immediately, denying the Europeans time to arrange alternative supplies and damaging their economies with higher oil prices.
"The best way is to stop exporting oil ourselves before the end of this six months and before the implementation of the plan," the semi-official Fars news agency quoted him as saying.
'PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE'
"European Union sanctions on Iranian oil is psychological warfare," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said. "Imposing economic sanctions is illogical and unfair but will not stop our nation from obtaining its rights."
Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told the official IRNA news agency that the more sanctions were imposed on Tehran "the more obstacles there will be to solve the issue".
Iran's Oil Ministry issued a statement saying the sanctions did not come as a shock. "The oil ministry has from long ago thought about it and has come up with measures to deal with any challenges," it said, according to IRNA.
Mehmanparast said: "The European countries and those who are under American pressure, should think about their own interests. Any country that deprives itself from Iran's energy market, will soon see that it has been replaced by others."
China, Iran's biggest customer, has resisted U.S. pressure to cut back its oil imports, as have other Asian economies to varying degrees. India's oil minister said on Monday sanctions were forcing Iran to sell more cheaply and that India planned to take full advantage of that to buy as much as it could.
The EU measures include an immediate ban on all new contracts to import, purchase or transport Iranian crude and petroleum products. However, EU countries with existing contracts can honor them up to July 1.
EU officials said they also agreed to freeze the assets of Iran's central bank and ban trade in gold and other precious metals with the bank and state bodies.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said: "I want the pressure of these sanctions to result in negotiations."
"I want to see Iran come back to the table and either pick up all the ideas that we left on the table ... last year ... or to come forward with its own ideas."
Iran has said it is willing to hold talks with Western powers, though there have been mixed signals on whether conditions imposed by both sides make new negotiations likely.
IAEA INSPECTORS VISIT
The Islamic Republic says it is enriching uranium only for producing electricity and other civilian uses. The start this month of a potentially bomb-proof - and once secret - enrichment plant has deepened skepticism abroad, however.
The United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed plans for a visit next week by senior inspectors to try to clear up questions raised about the purpose of Iran's nuclear activities. Tehran is banned by international treaty from developing nuclear weaponry.
"The Agency team is going to Iran in a constructive spirit, and we trust that Iran will work with us in that same spirit," IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said in a statement announcing the January 29-31 visit.
Iran, whose regional policies face a setback from the difficulties of its Arab ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has powerful defenders in the form of Russia, which has built Iran a reactor, and China. Both permanent U.N. Security Council members argue that Western sanctions are counter-productive.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, classifying the EU embargo among "aggravating factors", said Moscow believed there was a good chance that talks between six global powers and Iran could resume soon and that Russia would try to steer both Iran and the West away from further confrontation.
His ministry issued an official statement expressing "regret and alarm": "What is happening here is open pressure and diktat, an attempt to 'punish' Iran for its intractable behavior.
"This is a deeply mistaken approach, as we have told our European partners more than once. Under such pressure Iran will not agree to any concessions or any changes in its policy."
But that argument cuts no ice with the U.S. administration, for which Iran - and Israel's stated willingness to consider unilateral military action against it - is a major challenge as Obama campaigns for re-election against Republican opponents who say he has been too soft on Tehran.
(Additional reporting by Robin Pomeroy and Mitra Amiri in Tehran, David Brunnstrom in Brussels, Adrian Croft in London, John Irish in Paris, Alexei Anishchuk in Sochi, Ari Rabinovitch and Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, Nidhi Verma in New Delhi, Steve Gutterman in Moscow, Rachelle Younglai and Andrew Quinn in Washington, Fredrik Dahl in Vienna and Patrick Worsnip at the United Nations; writing by Alastair Macdonald; editing by Robert Woodward and Mohammad Zargham)
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Italian Navy scuba divers work next to the cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. Unregistered passengers might have been aboard the stricken cruise liner that capsized off this Tuscan island, a top rescue official said Sunday, raising the possibility that the number of missing might be higher than previously announced. Divers, meanwhile, pulled out a woman's body from the capsized Costa Concordia on Sunday, raising to 13 the number of people dead in the Jan. 13 accident. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
Italian Navy scuba divers work next to the cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. Unregistered passengers might have been aboard the stricken cruise liner that capsized off this Tuscan island, a top rescue official said Sunday, raising the possibility that the number of missing might be higher than previously announced. Divers, meanwhile, pulled out a woman's body from the capsized Costa Concordia on Sunday, raising to 13 the number of people dead in the Jan. 13 accident. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
The cruise ship Costa Concordia lies on its side off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. Rescuers on Sunday resumed searching the above-water section of the capsized Costa Concordia cruise liner, but choppy seas kept divers from exploring the submerged part, where officials have said there could be bodies. Civil protection officials said that until the waves slack off, divers would not swim into the submerged part of the vessel just off the port of Giglio, a tiny Island off the Tuscan coast. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
The cruise ship Costa Concordia lies on its side off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. Rescuers on Sunday resumed searching the above-water section of the capsized Costa Concordia cruise liner, but choppy seas kept divers from exploring the submerged part, where officials have said there could be bodies. Civil protection officials said that until the waves slack off, divers would not swim into the submerged part of the vessel just off the port of Giglio, a tiny Island off the Tuscan coast. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
Workers of the Costa Crociere company place messages outside the company headquarters, during a march in downtown Genoa, Italy, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. Rescuers on Sunday resumed searching the above-water section of the capsized Costa Concordia cruise liner, but choppy seas kept divers from exploring the submerged part, where officials have said there could be bodies. Civil protection officials said that until the waves slacken off, divers will not swim into the submerged part of the vessel near the port of Giglio, a tiny island off the Tuscan coast. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Two Italian firefighters work on the deck of the cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. Unregistered passengers might have been aboard the stricken cruise liner that capsized off this Tuscan island, a top rescue official said Sunday, raising the possibility that the number of missing might be higher than previously announced. Divers, meanwhile, pulled out a woman's body from the capsized Costa Concordia on Sunday, raising to 13 the number of people dead in the Jan. 13 accident. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
GIGLIO, Italy (AP) ? Italian officials say two more bodies have been pulled from the wreckage of a cruise liner capsized off the Tuscan coast, bringing the number of confirmed dead to 15.
The national civil protection agency official in charge of the search said Monday that divers recovered the bodies of two women from the ship's internet cafe.
The recovery of the two brings to 17 the number of known missing. However, officials over the weekend said it appeared unregistered guests were on board at the time of the accident, meaning the number of officially missing could increase.
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Remember waaay back in June, when Tracy Morgan offended the gay and lesbian community with some ugly, homophobic remarks during a comedy club stand-up routine? Well, the incident is back in the headlines again, thanks his show's boundary-pushing writers. Thurday night's episode of 30 Rock (Thursdays, at 8 p.m. ET on NBC) turned the real-life incident into a storyline for Morgan's character, Tracy Jordan. Watch the clip here:
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By Mike Brunker, msnbc.com
Eight?poker players who say they were victims of a cheating scheme?on the popular Ultimate Bet website are suing a Canadian company and unnamed individuals, alleging they violated U.S. laws aimed at combatting organized crime, defrauded players and?negligently offered?crooked card games.
The lawsuit, filed last Friday in U.S. District Court in California, alleges that the defendants?? 6356095 Canada Inc., formerly known as Excapsa Software Inc., and up to 10 Jane or John Does?? violated the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations?(RICO) Act, committed fraud and exhibited negligence by enabling the theft of at least $20 million from high-stakes poker players who gambled on the Ultimate Bet website.
It seeks compensation of at least $1.73 million and far more in punitive damages on behalf of the plaintiffs: Daniel Ashman, Brad Booth, Thomas Koral, Greg Lavery, Dave Lizmi, Daniel Smith, Joseph Sanders and Dustin Woolf.
Possibly more important in unraveling the longstanding mystery of the largest known case of online poker cheating, the lawsuit seeks documentation?that Ultimate Bet's shadowy parent companies and regulators with the Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC) have never made public.
The KGC, the regulatory agency of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake in southern Ontario, announced in September 2008 that its investigation found that a single individual ? former World Series of Poker champ Russ Hamilton??? was behind the cheating case.?But many players believe that it was the result of a broader conspiracy.
Among them is Haley Hintze, a former writer and editor of PokerNews and now a poker blogger who is working on a book on the cheating scheme due out by summer. In it, she told msnbc.com on Thursday, she will identify at least three others who directly participated in the theft and attempts to cover it up.
Representatives of Excapsa Software could not be reached for comment on the lawsuit. A spokesman for the GC had no comment on the lawsuit or whether it would respond?to any subpoenas.
Ultimate Bet acknowledged that?$20 million was stolen from players at the site between 2003 and 2008, and that the operators of Ultimate Bet refunded most or all of that money. But the suit alleges that the company ?substantially underestimated? the losses by failing to consider money that wasn?t wagered when the cheaters realized their opponent had them beat.
Read 2008 story?about the case: Poker site cheating plot a high-stakes whodunit
?The key to the massive success of the cheating players is not simply that they were able to profit by bluffing when their opponent was weak or betting when they had the best hand, but that they were able to fold and not play ? whenever their hand was strong (but) not the best,? it argues. ?Thus every time a player had a flush, the cheater would fold a lower flush or straight; every time a player had a full house, the cheaters would fold a flush.?
?There are significant doubts about the methodology of the refunds given to players,? said Alan Engle, a partner in the Meador & Engle law firm in Anaheim Hills, Calif., who filed the suit. ?That?s always been a closed process and there are inherent difficulties in calculating the amount of the theft.?
Engle said the early part of the case will probably?focus on jurisdictional issues, but he said he is confident that he can prevail on any challenges because Ultimate Bet focused its marketing on U.S. bettors.
?Anyone victimized by someone in a foreign nation over the Internet is in no way required to bring a case in a foreign nation,? he said.
Excapsa Software, now known as 6356095 Canada Inc., is currently in the midst of liquidation proceedings in Canada.
Sheldon Krakower, who is handling the corporate dismemberment for XMT Liquidations of Montreal, said he would soon seek guidance from the Ontario court overseeing the case before responding to the lawsuit.
?We will be filing our seventh report to the Ontario court specifically addressing this matter imminently,? he told msnbc.com on Thursday. ?? We need direction from the court on that.?
In a report to Excapsa shareholders in May 2011, Krakower indicated that $7 million U.S. had recently been released to shareholders, and that $4.2 million was being held in escrow until the end of the year.?It is not clear whether that money remains in escrow.
Ultimate Bet, which merged with another online gaming site, Absolute Poker, in 2008 to form the Cereus Poker network, was among a handful of online Poker sites that had their U.S. operations shut down in April of last year when the U.S. Justice Department indicted them on charges of violating the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act?of 2006, money laundering and other charges. The feds also froze bank accounts holding the bankrolls of U.S. players, many of whom have yet to be repaid.
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LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) ? The Port of Long Beach, the nation's second-largest cargo container facility, reached a tentative $4.6 billion, 40-year lease with a major Hong Kong-based shipping container line.
Work began earlier on the California harbor's $1.2 billion Middle Harbor Redevelopment, its largest-ever terminal upgrade and expansion project. Improvements announced Thursday include a new terminal, upgraded wharfs, a storage area and expanded on-dock rail yard.
When completed, it is expected to add 15,000 jobs to the local economy.
The deal with Orient Overseas Container Line, commonly known as OOCL, is expected to be announced Thursday afternoon by Port of Long Beach executive director J. Christopher Lytle.
OOCL will take over the entire 300-acre-plus Middle Harbor site, which will have the capacity to handle three million cargo containers.
"This agreement represents a major endorsement of our vision for the port by one of the leading maritime companies in the world," Lytle said in a statement.
OOCL has a fleet of 84 owned and chartered ships and is the world's 12th largest ocean shipping line.
Long Beach, which handles cargo valued at more than $140 billion annually, ranks second to the neighboring Port of Los Angeles in the number of cargo containers handled.
The OOCL announcement comes after a down year for cargo at the port, which lost the Hyundai shipping line and its California United Terminals to Los Angeles rather than wait for completion of the Middle Harbor project.
OOCL chief executive Philip Chow told the Times that the agreement "demonstrates our long-term commitment to the Port of Long Beach as the gateway of choice for North America and solidifies our economic partnership with the region."
The agreement is slated to go before a committee of the Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners for review on Monday.
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Oh, the twisted web that continues to weave itself around LightSquared. After incurring a seemingly endless parade of regulatory and industry obstacles, the Philip Falcone-backed network is now facing yet another potential hurdle. Except this time, it's taken the shape of investor Carl Icahn: a business magnate notorious for swooping in on downtrodden companies (see: Time Warner) and seizing control. And it appears the old man's pulled out his tried-and-true bag of tricks, securing a sizeable chunk of the fledgling 4G operation's debt following a value drop last year. What does this spell for Falcone? Well, the move could wind up positioning Icahn as a controlling force, steering the LTE operation away from its hedge fund founder's vision and into more profitable waters -- a welcome turn of events for the cash-strapped company. With FCC approval still pending, Sprint quietly retreating from its partnership deal and a looming fight for executive control, it's safe to say LightSquared's troubles have only just begun.Carl Icahn smells blood in LightSquared's spectrum, descends to feed on its carrion originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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PARIS ? The first giant pandas France has seen in more than a decade are happily munching bamboo in their new home.
Yuan Zi, a boy, and Huan Huan, a girl, arrived on a 10-year loan from China this week. On Tuesday the endangered animals were brought to the Zoo Parc de Beauval, amid the chateaux of the Loire Valley.
More than 1,000 local residents waited outside to try to get a glimpse of their arrival.
Zoo co-owner Delphine Delord said they will "live here the life of stars."
Their main mission, though, is to reproduce. "What we want is children," she said.
The visit is the latest example of China's "panda diplomacy," aimed at building friends and influence in other countries. Last month, two pandas from China debuted at Scotland's Edinburgh Zoo.
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After a positive steroid test, it's probably best to slink off into the shadows for a while.
Apparently, Cristiane "Cyborg" Santos doesn't realize the damage her positive test did to her reputation. The last thing fans want to hear from an alleged "cheater" is her dumping on someone who's currently in the mix, licensed and clean.
Cyborg went down that path and did so in the oddest fashion. Santos decided to lash out at Ronda Rousey. Rousey, a former Olympian and current 135 and 145 pound contender, has buried Cyborg over her positive test. You feel bad for Cyborg? Some will say, tough luck it comes with the territory.
Along with a postfight photo of Gina Carano, Cyborg responded today by tweeting "next victim ... Ronda" in Portuguese.
One problem, the Carano photo taken after Cyborg beat her up appears to be severely photoshopped.
Some sharp fans and Rousey noticed the photo had been altered, and called her some nasty names on Twitter.
Maybe this is an innocent mistake and Cyborg thought she really beat up Carano that badly. Either way, the fact the she's talking trash less than a month after shaming the sport and female fighter inexcusable.
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Continue reading CES 2012: interview roundup (video)
CES 2012: interview roundup (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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[WARNING: The following story contains major spoilers from the midseason premiere of Gossip Girl, "The End of the Affair." Read at your own risk.]
Monday's episode of Gossip Girl was fittingly titled "The End of the Affair" ? so if you're familiar with the Graham Greene novel or the Julianne Moore-Ralph Fiennes film adaptation, you might have guessed what was going to happen to Chuck and Blair post-car accident.
Faced with the possibility of losing Chuck, Blair made a deal with God: Save Chuck and she'll stay away. Immediately after, she's told he's emerged from his coma. "When we start a season, we talk about what works have inspired us as writers. This year, there was The Talented Mr. Ripley and The End of the Affair," Gossip Girl executive producer Josh Safran told TVGuide.com. "We knew were going to tell this story."
Gossip Girl's Leighton Meester: I want the Blair and Dan relationship to play out
Now, it's doubtful Blair will meet her maker (a la Affair), but Monday's episode has left us with several burning questions as to what's to befall our hapless Upper East Siders. Safran, as always, did his best to answer tease:
OK, Blair's found God ? now what? "It's a surprising revelation, but it makes sense that she has faith," Safran says of Blair's, ahem, Hail Mary play for Chuck's life. He noted that of all the characters on Gossip Girl, she's the one who has been exposed to religion, via her mother's marriage to Cyrus if nothing else. And God won't just be making a cameo, either. "When her faith is tested, it takes her to a new place. She's gone through this terrible thing, losing this child, feeling in that moment she had to make a deal with God ... We felt this was a new place to go to for her, one that will take her somewhere we've never been with the character."
Reasoning aside, Blair's made her choice. Does that mean Chuck is doomed to fall back into his playboy ways? "All the growth he's made is definitely going to be tested," Safran says. "Will he slide back? He'll be struggling."
Michelle Trachtenberg returning to Gossip Girl
We've seen jealousy bring out a dark side to Louis. Should we expect it back anytime soon? If the royal wedding doesn't happen, it won't be because Louis has another freak-out session. The paranoid prince is gone. "He and Blair maybe lost their way, but he feels like they have it back," Safran says. "He's going into the wedding believing that. He's definitely not the jealous, suspicious Louis he was."
Who's out to get Nate? Here's one suspect you can rule out: Nate's former boss and lover Diana Payne. Safran says that while Elizabeth Hurley will be back in this second half of the season, "Diana played no part in causing the accident meant for Nate." So who could be after The Spectator's new editor-in-chief, and why? "Nate's got enemies, but he doesn't quite know who they are yet," Safran says. "The answer hits closer to home than Nate would like."
Gossip Girl has seemingly aligned herself with Nate ? are we going to see her? Well ... Safran doesn't say no. "I can't answer if we'll ever see her, but she's a big part of the story now," he says. "Diana wanted to take her down, and now Serena is after her."
Gossip Girl Josh Safran: Blair has chosen her guy
Speaking of ... Serena's back to making googly eyes at Dan ? is there hope for them to rekindle that relationship, even while he's pining for Blair? Safran says the series' 100th episode (revolving around Blair's wedding day and airing on Monday, Jan. 30) contains some answers. "Just as the writers looked back at what's happened over the last 99 episodes, we thought, maybe so should our characters. Serena will be going back and revisiting her history, and you know, you see things a little more clearly with hindsight being 20/20," Safran says. "Their story is about to return, but maybe in a new way because while Serena is looking back, Dan might be looking forward."
Dan mentioned that he's already following up Inside with a second book. Are we going to hear anymore about it? You better believe it. "His second book is going to be very integral to the second half of the season," Safran says. "If his first book ruffled a few feathers, this one will ruffle a lot more."
You mentioned The Talented Mr. Ripley is part of the framework for the season. Should we then assume we haven't seen the last of Ivy, who we last saw high-tailing it out of the hospital believing she had caused the car wreck? Ivy will be back ? especially now that Lily and Rufus have unknowingly stumbled upon the real Charlie Rhodes. "That was the introduction of the real Charlie ? and it's not the last you'll see of her," Safran says. "She's going to be surprised to find herself pulled into the drama."
What do you think will happen on Blair's big wedding day? Who should Dan be with? Leave your theories in the comments below and let's discuss!
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