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Pope: I 'will not be intimidated' by sex abuse accusations (Top stories from Times Online)

Mass, referred to "the young and for those charged with educating them and protecting Submitted at 3/28/2010 5:34:50 AM them". Pope Benedict XVI has opened Palm Sunday commemorates Holy Week indicating that he Jesus Christ's triumphant entry will "not be intimidated" by into Jerusalem, and is the start accusations against the Vatican of the Church's Holy Week, over the clerical sex abuse which includes Good Friday, the crisis. sombre day of Christ's In his Palm Sunday address the Crucifixion, and Easter Sunday, Pope said that Jesus Christ which marks the resurrection of "leads us towards courage Jesus. which does not allow us to be The event has been intimidated by the chatter of overshadowed by the clerical dominant opinions, towards abuse scandal that has spread patience which supports and across Europe to the Pope's sustains others". native Germany. On Good The pontiff did not refer to Friday 2005, shortly before the accusations over his handling of death of John Paul II and Pope cases of the paedophile priests, Benedict's election as his both as Archbishop of Munich successor, the future Pope, then f r o m 1 9 7 7 t o 1 9 8 2 a n d Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, subsequently as head of doctrine condemned the "filth" in the at the Vatican. However, C h u r c h , a r e f e r e n c e t o Vatican watchers said that his p a e d o p h i l i a s c a n d a l s . meaning today was clear "in the Vatican officials maintain that current context". he has since been active in One Palm Sunday prayer, combating clerical sex abuse, recited in Portuguese during the especially during his visit to the

Vick's Plant (Little Green Footballs)

United States in 2008, when he met a number of victims. In his recent pastoral letter to Irish bishops he called sex abuse a "grave sin" and a "heinous crime". However the Vatican is on the defensive and preparing for further revelations. It has already emerged that as Cardinal Ratzinger, the Pope allowed Father Peter Hullermann, a known paedophile priest, to receive "therapy" in his Munich diocese in 1980. Father Hullermann was later allowed to resume pastoral work with children, and in 1986 was convicted of abusing minors. In addition a case has come to light in which the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith told bishops in Wisconsin to halt a church trial for Father Lawrence Murphy, a priest alleged to have abused up to 200 deaf boys, at a time when Cardinal Ratzinger was head of the Congregation.

The Vatican insists that Cardinal Ratzinger was unaware of Father Hullermann's return to pastoral work and has also defended his handling of the Wisconsin case, saying Father Murphy was in ill health and the accusations against him dated back decades. He died not long after the Church trial against him was dropped. In his homily today the Pope addressed himself to young people, reminding them that "Christian life is a path, or pilgrimage with Christ, a walk in the direction that he has chosen and shows us". On Saturday, the Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, acknowledged that the way the Church responded to the abuse scandal would be "crucial for its moral credibility". He noted that most of the cases that have come to light recently occurred decades ago. He added: "But recognising them, and making amends to the victims, is the price of re-

establishing justice and purifying memories that will let us look ahead with renewed commitment together, with humility and trust in the future." Monsignor Robert Zollitsch, head of the German bishops' conference, has said that the Vatican was compiling information from around the world with the aim of setting out new guidelines on abuse. Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, former archbishop of Milan and at one time a contender for the papacy, told an Austrian paper that priestly celibacy should be "reviewed" as a possible cause of abuse by clergy. The Vatican has rejected suggestions that celibacy causes abuse, and Pope Benedict this month reaffirmed it as "a gift to God". Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Florida Republican debate: Crist versus Rubio | Richard Adams Richard Adams (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk)

elections. On top of all that, the primary is getting nasty. These two don't like each other. In other words: Submitted at 3/28/2010 8:24:20 AM It's Republican civil war as debate-fight! Florida governor Charlie Crist {pagebreak} debates Marco Rubio in a fight The immense interest in the for the soul of the party debate is shown by the fact that It's come to this: a nationally Fox is carrying the whole thing televised debate between the live â&#x20AC;&#x201C; not on Fox News but on two wings of the Republican its national network, which is a party. In the red corner is b i g g e r d e a l . H e r e ' s w h a t Florida's incumbant governor h a p p e n e d : Charlie Crist, a moderate. In the 9.0am: Here we go... Fox's even redder corner is handsome Chris Wallace is moderating. Marco Rubio, a Florida state Rubio is way ahead in the polls politician and the darling of the and the tussle is getting nasty: Tea Party movement. Fox shows some attack ads, The immediate prize is the with one by Crist calling Rubio Republican party nomination for "the Republican Obama," which a US senate seat â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but what's is a bit of knock in a Republican really at stake is the face of the primary, let's face it. modern Republican party. Crist, 9.03am: And Charlie Crist a moderate, was on the shortlist comes out swinging from the get as vice presidential candidate -go: "There is a clear, stark f o r J o h n M c C a i n ' s 2 0 0 8 distinction between myself and campaign (and we all know how Speaker Rubio ... Speaker Rubio that turned out). Rubio, 39-years views public service as a way to -young and handsome with e n h a n c e h i s p e r s o n a l Latino roots, is spoken off as the e n r i c h m e n t . " O u c h ! Republican party's Barack Crist goes on to call Rubio's Obama. fundraising committees a "slush Rubio is the rising star of the fund" that gave payments to conservative movement. Crist in m e m b e r s o f h i s f a m i l y , February 2009 committed the describing it as "Rubio Inc". cardinal sin of embracing Here's some of the background B a r a c k O b a m a ' s s t i m u l u s to Crist's attacks: package. But he is also an Marco Rubio was barely established politician in the state solvent as a young lawmaker who has twice won state-wide climbing his way to the top post

in the Florida House, but special interest donations and political perks allowed him to spend big money with little scrutiny. 9.04am: What Crist is talking about is a big story that broke recently about Rubio misusing party credit cards: US Senate candidate Marco Rubio charged grocery bills, repairs to the family minivan and purchases from a wine store less than a mile from his West Miami home to the Republican Party of Florida while he was speaker of the Florida House, according to records obtained by the St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald. "You just don't get it governor," says Rubio, quickly trying to change the subject. "Everyone knows you won't stand up to the Obama agenda." And: "In 2006, governor, I voted for you. Because I trusted you when you said you'd be a Jeb Bush Republican. You're record was something very different." Crist is back on the attack, picking out some details of Rubio's credit card bills. Nasty. 9.07am: Man I wish I had three hands so I could keep taking down the mud these two are throwing at each other. Now we're onto the"hug" that Crist gave Obama when the president visited Florida campaigning for the stimulus

programme. This brings us back onto the economy, and the Florida economy is in deep trouble because of the collapse of the housing market which is worse in Florida than most parts of the US. Talking about this helps Rubio because as the sitting governor, Crist gets the rap. Fox plays a clip of former Florida governor Jeb Bush slagging off Crist over the stimulus. (Only in the Republican Florida primaries would a Bush be taken seriously but no matter.) "As governor I had to take tough decisions," responds Crist. "If we had taken [Rubio's] approach, we would have had 87,000 more people unemployed on top of those that we have today." 9.13am: Aren't you just a partisan hack, asks Chris Wallace of Rubio. Oh I'm against gridlock, says Rubio, so long as the Obama administration does everything I want them to do. Ah ha. 9.16am: Charlie Crist, you love John McCain and he's a loser, asks Wallace. Better than being an ideological weirdo like ... let's see ... my opponent, says Crist. And did you know he misused credit cards to pay for his haircuts? "Those are outrageous accusations," says Rubio and starts talking about

the US borrowing money from China. 9.20am: Healthcare! Is it evil, hmm, what say you Charlie Crist? Would you repeal it Marco Rubio? Fox then shows a clip of Rubio saying that health insurance should be like car insurance - yes, that's what America needs. Vibrancy and competition is what individual insurance would bring, says Rubio. Oh yes, that's worked so well up till now. 9.23am: Immigration, a totally uncontroversial subject in Florida. "Is Rubio tougher on immigration," wonders moderator. No, says Charlie Crist, in a moderate responsible way. Why didn't you do something about it, Marco Rubio? Nice sidestep again by Rubio there, who swiftly moves on to the national level. "As far as amnesty, the governor and I disagree," says Rubio. And AMNESTY is a Republican redmeat buzzword, so win there for Rubio. 9.28am: Why is no-one being asked about " back wax-gate", the allegation that Rubio spent $134 on getting his back manwaxed in a salon? Crist aired that one a couple of weeks ago: "He's trying to pawn himself off as a fiscal conservative", Crist FLORIDA page 4

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Obama's other difficult partners | Petra Marquardt-Bigman Petra Marquardt-Bigman (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk)

Nevertheless, there was plenty of advice on how to energise the meeting, and predictably, Israel was an important issue in this Submitted at 3/28/2010 8:30:26 AM I s r a e l i P M B i n y a m i n context. One suggestion was Netanyahu is presently seen as that the Arab League should the chief obstacle to Middle East threaten to revoke its support for peace, but what of the Arab a two-state solution to the Israeli League? -Palestinian conflict, and It is hardly surprising that instead, endorse the so-called Binyamin Netanyahu's speech at "one-state solution" that would this week's Aipac policy dissolve Israel to create conference didn't please official "Isratine", as the Libyan leader circles in Riyadh, but it is rather Muammar Gaddafi – who is unusual that Saudi misgivings hosting the summit – proposed were made public in "a strongly- in a New York Times op-ed last worded statement carried by the year. Another suggestion for the official news agency". The summit was that the Arab Saudi call for international l e a d e r s s h o u l d b a s e t h e i r pressure on Israel highlighted a regional policies on the view much-overlooked dimension of that Israel was "the chief the two-week old tensions instigator" of the tensions with between the US and Israel. Iran. Conservative critics of the Since the summit was supposed Obama administration's to bring about "Arab handling of this crisis suspected reconciliation", rallying calls to early on that pressure from the unite against Israel were all but Arab League was a decisive inevitable. The Arab Peace factor in the "blow-up"; yet, I n i t i a t i v e o f 2 0 0 2 w a s , much of the commentary on the reportedly, once again endorsed crisis failed to take into account by the Arab foreign ministers, that the Arab League's annual but the agenda still includes a summit was coming up at the debate about "whether or not to end of March. extend a 120-day timeframe Admittedly, Arab League g i v e n t o t h e P a l e s t i n i a n summits rarely inspire great Authority on 3 March to start expectations, and a dismissive indirect talks with Israel," and headline predicting "Another another agenda item calls for the lame summit" in a recent issue endorsement of "an action plan of al-Ahram reflected the to rescue Jerusalem". scornful views that characterise It seems obvious that the much Arab commentary on such current crisis in US-Israeli occasions. relations must be seen in this

context. There are news reports that indicate that the Obama administration demanded from Netanyahu a series of written commitments "by Saturday, so it can take them to the Arab League meeting in Libya and receive that organisation's backing for starting proximity talks"; though a conflicting report claims that Obama "did not set a deadline". The question of whether Arab League backing for three months of "proximity talks" should be considered an achievement is debatable. Reviewing Obama's efforts to push for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an Israeli expert on USIsrael relations rightly pointed out in a recent article: "Obama presented demands for concessions from the leaders of Israel, the Palestinians, and the pro-American Arab states. The only leader who acceded to the demands, albeit in partial and qualified fashion, was Netanyahu […] [T]he leaders of the Arab states rejected all of Obama's requests for gestures toward Israel, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) refused to resume the negotiations. Nevertheless, Netanyahu was the only one to draw harsh criticism from the Obama administration." Indeed, the lack of support from Arab leaders for Obama's attempts to create a new dynamic that would build

momentum for peace through a series of reciprocal confidencebuilding measures was seen by some as "one of the administration's biggest disappointments", and particularly Obama's visit in Saudi Arabia last May was reportedly very discouraging. This disappointment should perhaps have been anticipated, since Obama was greeted in office with the dramatic threat – delivered in the form of an oped by Prince Turki al-Faisal in the Financial Times– that "Saudi patience is running out". The prince told America's new president in no uncertain terms that the US would have to "drastically revise" its policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if it wanted to keep its "special relationship" with Saudi Arabia, and there were even ominous hints that if the US didn't live up to Saudi expectations, the kingdom might find it difficult to resist calls to lead a "jihad" against Israel. These dramatic threats may well provide a glimpse of what the Obama administration had to put up with in the wake of Israel's diplomatic faux pas during Vice-President Biden's visit. The Saudis are likely to insist that, by now, they have even less patience with America's apparent inability or unwillingness to deliver concessions from Israel even before negotiations resume.

For their part, the Saudis and other Arab leaders seem content to look at the Arab Peace initiative as a "take-it-or-leaveit" proposition. As Prince Saud al-Faisal argued in an interview last year: "What can we do more than that? The land that is occupied is in the hands of Israel. We don't have anything to offer Israel except normalization, and if we put that before the return of Arab land we are giving away the only chip in the hands of Arab countries." The obvious problem with this argument is that, from Israel's vantage point, it means that Israel is expected to give up land, and then hope that it will indeed get peace in return. It sure didn't work out this way when Israel withdrew from Lebanon 10 years ago, or from Gaza five years ago. President Obama's initial approach, which envisaged reciprocal confidence -building measures, was exactly what was needed; it is deplorable that there was no Arab support for his initiative. • Comments on this article will remain open for 24 hours from the time of publication but may be closed overnight • Middle East • Israel • Saudi Arabia • Jordan • Libya OBAMA'S page 7

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told FNC anchor Greta Van Susteren." And yet just in recent weeks, two weeks ago it has come out in news accounts he had a Republican Party of Florida credit card that he charged $130 haircut, or maybe it was a back wax - we are not sure what all he got at that place." Charlie Crist pays $11 for his haircut and he certainly would never go into a "men's salon". (I hesitate to mention the longrunning rumours that Crist is gay, which seems to be based solely on the evidence that he has a tan - as if that's unusual in Florida.) 9.32am: Tax and social security: being the Republican party it's time for the traditional fight about which candidate is utterly opposed to taxes the most. And guess what? They both hate taxes so much that even saying the word requires a grimace. But it seems Crist raised taxes on cigarettes! And Rubio had some sales tax raising plan. "In all due respect to the Speaker, you've got to tell the truth to people," says Crist, getting in a nice jab in some complex semantics about taxesschmaxes, "If trust and confidence aren't relevant I don't know what is." The West Miami City Commission gets a mention! Apparently, when Rubio was like 12 years old he voted to raise tax something when he

was on the hugely significant West Miami City Commission, which for some reason has never been mentioned on national US television before. Anyway, it is hugely important because of Rubio's claim that he's never, ever voted to raise taxes, ever. 9.37am: Some emails are read out from Tea Party people, and it seems not all of the Tea Party spectrum likes Rubio that much, because he won't sacrifice an annointed calf or something. 9.38am: Crist is asked: "There are persistent rumours..." oh now what's this question? ".... that you will run as an independent". Oh that's not the persistent rumour some people were thinking of. Crist says he's a Republican and he's running as a Republican and blah blah blah, exactly what you'd expect him to say. (Unless you really expected him to say, "Oh hey, yeah maybe I will split the party and run as an independent if I get sunk in this primary.") This is important because of the Republican fear of a Joe Lieberman-style indy run by Crist. Lieberman was knocked out of the Democratic primary by an anti-war liberal, but then turned round and ran as an independent and won. Somehow Rubio manages to mention Reagan in a very strange way: "I don't recall Ronald Reagan ever being asked if he would run as an independent." As if Marco

Rubio is even old enough to remember Reagan, let alone remember anything anyone asked him. (Seriously: Rubio would have been nine years old when Reagan was elected president.) Crist shoots back: "Ronald Reagan was a Democrat before he was a Republican if you want to talk about Ronald Reagan." But that doesn't stop Rubio blathering on Reagan's line about being better off than you were four years ago, etc etc. 9.44am: Final statements, and Crist returns to the attack with all guns blazing. What about the $300,000 Rubio earned as a lobbyist? Hmm? Why hasn't he published his tax returns like Crist has? "Is it because you are doctoring the books?" asks Crist. Ka-pow. Rubio for the first time briefly splutters in response and repeats exactly the same formulation of words from Crist's first attacks: "These are outrageous allegations," he repeats, and then reprises exactly the same wording along the lines of "You don't get it" and "we haven't heard a single significant public proposal from Governor Crist". Which was kind of robotic, to repeat word for word a response. It's like that scene in Terminator 1 where Arnie's character scrolls through the responses in his computer-brain. Wrap-up: As predicted it was fireworks from the beginning,

with both candidates going after each other. Crist stuck to being the moderate candidate, especially when he said he would have voted for the stimulus bill and defended his taking stimulus funds, for the good of Florida. Rubio was on the attack on taxes, the economy and that voters couldn't trust Crist to "stand up to the Obama agenda" in Washington. Crist also barred no holds, hitting Rubio hard over various fundraising and expenses transgressions. He's been doing this for a couple of weeks now and it doesn't seem to be making much impression on the polls. If he can make "trust" a bigger issue then it might work but it's not looking good for Crist. On the other hand he's a canny politician who has been through some tough fights before, so Crist may yet come back – although he's got a long way to go and Rubio didn't give him anything much to work with today. Overall though, since Rubio is the front-runner (with caveats about how hard it is to poll single-party primaries in nonpresidential election years) he probably managed the debate better. He's cool and calm, can debate pretty well and comes across as reasonable on television. This isn't some Tea Party ranter like JD Hayworth in Arizona. Only at the end when he repeated his response to

Crist's attacks almost word for word did Rubio look vulnerable, but even then he stuttered rather than damaged himself. Crist on the other hand – given the high profile of this debate – may have helped himself by airing the Rubio credit card expenses in a wider forum. Crist, when asked if he would run as an independent, gave the standard response, but nothing in these contexts ever rules out changing ones mind. He did position himself to run as an centre-right independent, and that may yet happen. Had he tacked to the right then going back to the centre would have been harder: he didn't so he's leaving a door open, perhaps. For those who have never seen Rubio in action before, he confirmed that he's a smooth, media-savvy operator who makes a strong candidate. And yes, you can see why the "Republican Obama" tag sits lightly on his shoulders, as opposed to poor old Bobby Jindal, the previous holder of that double-edged title. • Republicans • Florida • Tea Party movement • US politics • United States Richard Adams guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | FLORIDA page 6

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How the US can help Haiti | Holly Cooper Holly Cooper (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk) Submitted at 3/28/2010 7:00:00 AM

Thousands of Haitians lost everything in the earthquake. The US should open its borders and start granting humanitarian parole Arriving back home in the US after spending a week in Haiti, my five-year-old son came up to me and squealed, "Mommy is back from Hades!" "Haiti, not Hades," I corrected him. The last thing I wanted was for Haiti to be equated with the underworld in my child's mind, even though it was an innocent phonetic error. For to me Haiti was Persephone, an irrepressible spirit, abducted by unexplained forces into a dark world. On 11 March 2010, I arrived in Port Au Prince, Haiti with a human rights delegation intent on finding individuals for whom we could request humanitarian parole into the US. Under immigration laws, the secretary of homeland security can exercise her discretion to parole individuals into the US for urgent humanitarian reasons. This can include cases where the individual has a serious medical condition; is pregnant; is a juvenile; or parole is in the public interest. The executives have invoked humanitarian parole throughout US history to persons fleeing persecution and

tragedy. In 1956, Eisenhower paroled in thousands of Hungarians fleeing communism; the US employed it again in the 1960s and 1970s for Cuban, Vietnamese and Haitian refugees. A policy for Haitian orphans was announced after the earthquake, but it is very limited in scope. Immigration lawyers and advocates in the US are campaigning for a more expansive use of humanitarian parole. Our delegation comprised four doctors from Stanford University, myself from UC Davis, a lawyer from Reed Smith, a Haitian medical student from UCSF, and a photographer, operating with support from the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and Bureau des Avocats Internationaux. We set out, naively perhaps, to find the most egregious cases, those which could compel our government to magnanimously open its borders, to offer sanctuary, medical care, food, and perhaps dignity to the Haitian people. We then met with more than 100 individuals, listening to each person's personal tragedy. One that haunts me was that of Mr P, a carpenter, who was dug out of his home and remained unconscious for three days. He awoke to learn his leg had to be amputated, that he would have to use a catheter for the rest of

his life and could never know intimacy with his wife again. He also learned his home was completely destroyed. The earthquake took all this from him in a single moment. He, his wife and children, like hundreds of thousands of Haitians, were homeless, living without a tent in the streets of Port Au Prince. He had no hope of finding a prosthetic leg to salvage his career or his mobility. He had to teach himself how to get around on crutches, and how to recover from the tragedy, all while hungry, thirsty, and homeless. I told him about our mission and about the possibility of coming to the US. Would parole into the United States be something that would interest him? He smiled radiantly at the thought of it. His wife laughed and clapped her hands together. This was the first time they had smiled since the earthquake. The opium of hope had momentarily taken him and his wife out of Haiti and into an imaginary world in the United States. Out of the sweltering heat, the stifling sauna-like humidity, out of the tent camp, the mosquitoes, away from the long lines for food and water, away from his amputated leg and into a world of hope. He laughed: "Schools again for our children! Food in abundance, a home, maybe a new leg – I hear in the

USA they have plastic legs, I could work again." His wife joined in: "And I could have a kitchen. I would cook you a big Creole meal, Ms Holly." We all laughed and smiled at each other. Then the fantasy stopped as Mr P began to cry. Then the Creole interpreter, who had until then tried to remain invisible, began to cry. We were all quiet for several minutes – respectfully waiting for Mr P to look up from his hands again. The quiet tears were undefined, unexplained. Perhaps Mr P and the interpreter knew this was all a fairytale – the prosthetic leg, the kitchen, being lifted out of this misery. We then took Mr P's photograph for his parole application. Being photographed in misery is humiliating. He stood there proud as the photographer took the shot; I looked away so as not to aggravate the knock to his pride. He then turned on his crutches to walk away. He turned and said: "Thank you. For the first time since 12 January, I feel alive. This hope you give me of coming to the USA is the only thing giving me the will to live. Thank you for giving hope." I walked off, not able to look him in the face. I wept. I wept because I had no guarantees. Just the guarantee that I would try to make our government

show compassion, that I would carry his story to you. Like Persephone, the people of Haiti simply request an exit from their land, to have a spring again, to pick flowers again in Nysa, for a reprieve from their eternal winter. We as a nation should be humbled that the Haitian people, a people who rose above slavery, a people of great resilience and survival, wish to become part of our community. They want only the basics: education, food and shelter. In return they offer their cultural riches – their resilience, their art, their music, their beloved food and their beautiful laughter. The United States government should grant humanitarian parole to the Haitians in need and we should not forsake Mr P nor his people whose lives are irreversibly impacted by the earthquake of 12 January 2010. • Haiti • US immigration • United States • Natural disasters and extreme weather Holly Cooper guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

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Why UK diplomats dislike the 'special relationship' label Mark Tran (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk)

Sir David Manning, who was ambassador to Washington between 2003 and 2007, spoke in a similar vein. Submitted at 3/28/2010 8:37:26 AM According to two former "One of the difficulties about diplomatic heavyweights the the term 'special relationship'," Foreign Office never saw he said, was that it can be anything special in UK-US overused. "It can give a sense relations that we can deliver more than is Britain's professional diplomats actually going to emerge from dislike the term " special this relationship." relationship" as it carries the Manning may have had Tony b u r d e n o f h e i g h t e n e d Blair in mind. The then prime expectations. When two former minister decided that it was in Foreign Office mandarins spoke Britain's interest to stand by the before the Commons foreign US when George Bush decided affairs committee, they struck an to invade Iraq with the notion – unsentimental attitude. misguided as it turned out – that Sir Jeremy Greenstock, a t h e U K c o u l d i n f l u e n c e former British ambassador to American policy not only in Iraq the UN, went so far as to say but in the wider Middle East. that the Foreign Office did not Blair was not the first British regard the relationship as politician to be disabused of the special. belief that London enjoys a "We regard it as an asset that special influence in Washington. has to be nurtured and worked Highs and lows of the special at, and the access to the United relationship States in terms of politicians, Suez crisis In 1956 Britain, o f f i c i a l s a n d m e m b e r s o f France and Israel launched an Congress has to be earned attack on Egypt after Nasser's b e c a u s e w e ' r e b r i n g i n g decision to nationalise the Suez something to the table. That is canal. The US reacted angrily as the way we think and work. We the assault undercut its capacity do not think it is special unless to criticise the Soviet Union, we are introducing substance to w h i c h w a s a t t h a t t i m e make it special," Greenstock attempting to put down the told MPs. Hungarian uprising. Eisenhower

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ordered the US treasury to prepare to sell part of the American government's holdings of sterling bonds, a move that would have triggered a run on the pound. Harold Macmillan, then chancellor, warned the prime minister, Anthony Eden, that the UK would face economic chaos. Eden buckled and ordered a ceasefire without telling the French and Israelis. Skybolt crisis In 1962 Macmillan endured his own humiliation at the hands of the Americans. Despite his supposedly good personal chemistry with John Kennedy, the US decided to cancel the Skybolt air-launched ballistic missile, on which the UK had based its entire deterrent force. A former US secretary of state under Harry Truman rubbed salt into the wound with a speech at West Point. "Of course a unique relation existed between Britain and America – our common language and history ensured that," said Dean Acheson. "But unique did not mean affectionate. We had fought England as an enemy as often as we had fought by her side as an ally." Vietnam war Harold Wilson

famously resisted pressure from President Lyndon Johnson and the then US defence secretary, Robert McNamara, to send British troops to Vietnam. The wily Wilson argued that such a move would have been incompatible with Britain's role as co-chair of the Geneva accords that ended the French Indochina war. More pertinently, the prime minister also argued that Britain had its hands full with the insurgency in Malaysia, where it had deployed 50,000 troops. Falklands war Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were ideological soulmates, but she was annoyed by his tardy support in Britain's conflict with Argentina in 1982. But the US then sided unequivocally with Britain, helping out with communications intercepts and sending the latest weapons to the British taskforce. Thatcher later returned the favour by letting US F-111 warplanes take off from RAF bases for the bombing of Libya. In 1990, during the first gulf war, she told George Bush Sr: "Remember, George, this is no time to go wobbly." Iraq war Tony Blair threw his support behind George Bush Jr

for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but got precious little in return. The US took little notice of warnings about the lack of postwar planning and Bush made little effort – except towards the end of his second term – to push for an IsraeliPalestinian peace deal. The Commons foreign affairs committee report said of the invasion: "The perception that the British government was a subservient 'poodle' to the US administration leading up to the period of the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath is widespread both among the British public and overseas. This perception, whatever its relation to reality, is deeply damaging to the reputation and interests of the UK." • Foreign policy • United States • Iraq Mark Tran guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

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MP denies wrongdoing as 'cab for hire' scandal widens (Top stories from Times Online)

the interests of the constituents.” Mr Ingram said that he Submitted at 3/28/2010 6:34:59 AM regretted being caught out by Gordon Brown said today that u n d e r c o v e r r e p o r t e r s w h o there was a "very strong case" recorded him offering to exploit for banning MPs from taking Government contacts in return second jobs after another two for lobbying fees. former ministers were secretly He said: "I very much regret filmed offering to exploit that I was one of the MPs who Government contacts in return was conned into attending what for lobbying fees. I believed was a confidential Adam Ingram, the former interview with a US public armed forces minister, and affairs company, which I was Richard Caborn, the former told was proposing to set up an sports minister, denied that any Advisory Board, for which I rules were broken and said their was being considered." comments had been taken “out Mr Ingram made the statement of context”. Last week, three after a joint investigation by other former ministers were Channel 4 and The Sunday suspended from the Labour Times secretly recorded the Party over similar allegations. former minister boasting that he In an interview today, the Prime could draw on a pool of out-ofMinister said: "I think there’s a work ministers who could be very strong case for MPs not used to harness contacts in having second jobs. I think it’s return for a fee from the important to recognise when lobbying firm. people select or elect Members He denied any wrongdoing. "I of Parliament their first priority, was interested in exploring their first job, their first loyalty o p p o r t u n i t i e s f o r f u t u r e has got to be to the needs of employment which, no doubt, is their constituents. I’ve always why the decision was made to acted in a way, and would like set me up. I have always been other MPs to act in a way, that open and upfront about my is clear that the first priority is outside interests since leaving

Ministerial office in 2007. I have at all times complied with the rules and regulations of the House of Commons. I have never sold or offered to sell my experience or contacts to help businesses to influence legislation and regulations nor have I ever lobbied Government departments on their behalf.” Mr Ingram declined to speak to The Times today, leaving his wife to answer calls. Mr Caborn was also taped claiming that he may be in line for a peerage that would boost his chances of extracting valuable information from the corridors of Westminster. The Sheffield Central MP denied any wrongdoing and said his comments had been taken “out of context”, giving the “impression of something improper going on”. He said that he made it clear that he had not agreed to work for the fake comapany, and said: “It would be wrong for me to commit to something that I couldn’t do.” Mr Caborn, who is standing down as the MP for Sheffield Central, expressed interest in working for the reporter’s fake

OBAMA'S continued from page 3

• • • • •

Palestinian territories Gaza Obama administration Barack Obama Joe Biden

• Binyamin Netanyahu • United States Petra Marquardt-Bigman guardian.co.uk© Guardian

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company but said he would not decide until after the election. He talked about a number of services he could offer, quoting a daily rate of £2,500 “plus expenses”. He said he would be willing to build relations with ministers who were “good friends”. He was also happy to approach senior Conservatives if they came to power. The cash-for-access scandal has already claimed three former cabinet ministers, suspended last week by Labour after they were exposed for offering to help clients lobby for fees of up to £5,000 a day. On Friday, John Lyon, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, said that an inquiry would be held. Downing Street is preparing to look into the new allegations of cash for access for Mr Caborn and Mr Ingram. Mr Ingram said that he was paid £1,500 a day or £1,000 a meeting by companies. He could already make up to £173,000 a year from outside earnings on top of his £65,000 salary as an MP. The former defence minister revealed that he was employed

by two British businesses that are helping to establish a new defence academy in Tripoli for Colonel Gadaffi, the Libyan leader. “Gadaffi wanted a defence academy built, and people I’m with have got very good points of contact with the Libyan regime,” he said. On Friday, his solicitors said that he had not offered to sell his experience and contacts during the meeting. He said he regarded it as wrong for former ministers to sell contacts and influence to give businesses privileged access to Government. On Friday, a letter from Mr Caborn’s solicitor said that he had not committed to work for the fake company and denied that he had acted “unethically”. Mr Caborn said that his £2,500 day rate reflected three days of work. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Jenson Button storms to victory in a dramatic Australian Grand Prix (Top stories from Times Online)

since being caught by police smoking his tyres on a public road as he left the circuit late on Submitted at 3/28/2010 1:39:53 AM Friday night and seemed to have It was the agony and ecstasy of descended into a gloom that Formula One, a high-octane would severely hamper his race outpouring of passion as two after he qualified only eleventh. world champions and team- But he emerged from his own mates experienced the highs and personal episode of “Police, the lows of life in the fast lane. Camera, Action” to put on one For Jenson Button, there was of the truly great displays of the ecstasy of winning the driving and single-handedly Australian Grand Prix for the transformed a motor sport that second consecutive year. It was l o o k e d c o n d e m n e d t o t h e n o t j u s t a v i c t o r y b u t a scrapheap into a shiny, new vindication. When he won here model of sporting drama. last year on the twisting road In the end, he was robbed of an course around Melbourne’s extraordinary second place only Albert Park, there were many by a well-meaning blunder by who said it was his super-fast his McLaren team and stupid car that was the champion, not blunder by a hapless Mark t h e m a n f r o m F r o m e i n Webber, who managed to punt Somerset. Hamilton off the circuit with But this time, the critics had to only two laps to go to the eat their words as the super- chequered flag. smooth driver won with a new Hamilton, who had to settle for team and in a car that was not a f r u s t r a t i n g s i x t h , w a s the class of the field. understandably furious. He The agony was reserved for a could see his team-mate driving fuming Lewis Hamilton, who into the distance on a single set produced one of the most of tyres when he had been made exhilarating drives of his career. to pit for a second time. He had been pilloried for days “Who’s call was it to bring me

in?” he barked down the radio to his pit crew. “Freaking terrible idea.” The answer was one of McLaren’s super-computers. Just when Hamilton needed the computer to say no, it crunched the numbers and decided he could not make it through the dense traffic of the Albert Park circuit without a change of rubber. Yet Hamilton proved lap after lap that he could overtake seemingly at will in a swashbuckling display that took the breath away. “I probably had one of the drives of my life but, unfortunately, due to the strategy I got put back,” Hamilton said. “I drove my heart out and I think I deserved better. The strategy was not right. Everyone else in front of me did one stop and I did two.” If Hamilton was the stylish and disappointed brawn of the McLaren team, Button provided the brains with his split-second decision against all the evidence to ditch his wet-weather tyres after just six laps and switch to slicks while the rest of the field ploughed on. It was a

combination of instinct, intelligence and sheer bloodyminded bravery - and it was worth the victory. “I was really struggling and I lost a couple of places so I thought let’s get in, stick the slicks on,” he said. “I thought I had made a catastrophic decision as it was soaking wet in the pit-lane. But once I got up to speed and had a little off at turn three, the pace was pretty good. So it was the right call and I am very happy that I made it now.” Button and Hamilton came into the season billed as the Dream Team, but they are more than that, a combination of opposites whose different temperaments and skills complement each other. They are not in the best car by any means, yet they now have a victory on the board and lie third and fourth respectively in the world championship. It should have been Sebastian Vettel who dominated, as he took a second consecutive pole position. But this is a young man who appears to have broken several mirrors at once, such is his bad luck. A spark

5 easy ways to get more Facebook traffic (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 3/28/2010 7:27:17 AM

Would you like to increase the number of page views of your

Facebook page? Lisa Barone has compiled a list of five quick ways to improve the SEO qualities of your page. Here are three:

• Add a custom landing page • Utilize the About box and Info tab • Build external links to your page

All the tips at Small Business Trends. More Facebook tips and tricks. Permalink| Leave a comment »

plug worth £2.50 cost him victory in Bahrain a week ago; this time, it was a broken wheel rim that failed after just 26 laps in which he had led with ease. He refused to remove his helmet as he stalked back to the Red Bull garage, no doubt happy to hide his turbulent emotions, but his summary was succinct enough afterwards: “Shit happens. It breaks my balls not to get the win.” The rain on the German’s parade was as great as the spots that fell before the start of the race. Holding a grand prix in Melbourne as autumn beckons is to invite some capricious weather but that simply adds to the excitement. The race in the dustbowl of Bahrain a fortnight ago was as dry and dull as the feast in Melbourne was thrilling. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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UK special relationship with US is over, say MPs Mark Tran (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk)

deliver to the UK." Three Labour MPs and two Conservatives voted unsuccessfully for the Submitted at 3/28/2010 4:58:27 AM Phrase coined by Churchill out recommendation to be dropped of step with reality, notes but were overruled. committee as it recommends In words that will be interpreted more hard-headed approach to as criticism of Tony Blair's US decision to stand "shoulder to M P s t o d a y u r g e d t h e shoulder" with George Bush on government to adopt a more t h e i n v a s i o n o f I r a q , t h e hard-headed approach towards committee said: "The perception the US and avoid the phrase "the that the British government was special relationship" as Britain's a subservient 'poodle' to the US influence over America was administration leading up to the likely to diminish. period of the invasion of Iraq The 14-member cross-party and its aftermath is widespread foreign affairs committee said both among the British public that the phrase coined by and overseas. This perception, Winston Churchill more than 60 whatever its relation to reality, years ago no longer reflects is deeply damaging to the political reality and should be reputation and interests of the dropped. UK." "The use of the phrase 'the Mike Gapes, the chair of the special relationship' in its committee, said that Britain historical sense, to describe the needed to have a realistic sense totality of the ever-evolving UK of its own limits and national -US relationship, is potentially interests. misleading, and we recommend "It is likely that the extent of that its use should be avoided," political influence which the UK t h e c o m m i t t e e s a i d . " T h e has exercised on US decisionoveruse of the phrase by some making as a consequence of its politicians and many in the military commitments is likely media serves simultaneously to to diminish," he said. "Over the devalue its meaning and to raise longer term the UK is unlikely unrealistic expectations about to be able to influence the US to the benefits the relationship can the extent it has in the past."

Gapes added that the UK foreign policy approach advocated by the committee reflected the more pragmatic tone that the US president, Barack Obama, has taken towards Britain. A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokeswoman said: "As the report notes, 'the British media's preoccupation with the state of the special relationship is frequently at the expense of coverage of the more substantive aspects of the relationship.' It doesn't really matter whether someone calls it the 'special relationship' or not. What matters is that the UK's relationship with the US is unique, and uniquely important to protecting our national security and promoting our national interest." In testimony to the committee, British diplomats took a hardheaded view of that relationship. Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the former British ambassador to the UN, said that British officials themselves do not use the term "special relationship". "We might have to respond to it in public if it is thrown at us by Americans, but we don't regard it as special," he told MPs. "We regard it as an asset that has to

be nurtured and worked at, and the access to the United States in terms of politicians, officials and members of Congress has to be earned because we're bringing something to the table. That is the way we think and work. We do not think it is special unless we are introducing substance to make it special." David Manning, who was Britain's ambassador in Washington between 2003 and 2007, also said that there was "sometimes a tendency to overhype the emotional relationship". One of the difficulties about the term "special relationship", he told MPs, is that it can be overused. "It can give a sense that we can deliver more than is actually going to emerge from this relationship." â&#x20AC;˘ United States Mark Tran guardian.co.ukÂŠ Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds

Tops & Flops: A Week in Fashion! (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/27/2010 3:20:00 PM

From star-studded charity their most daring duds this events to red-carpet bashes, week. Who's outfit was super Hollywood's hottest donned lame and who's got game? You

Rate!

Vulcan Materials: On the Mend Joseph Lazzaro (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 3/28/2010 10:40:00 AM

Filed under: Stocks to Buy The shares of Vulcan Materials ( VMC) have accelerated out of a low near $42, hence I'm removing my"stand aside" recommendation and I'm now confident that Vulcan can retake higher ground from here. I first wrote about Vulcan on June 3, 2009, at a price of $46.28. Institutional investors have been cautious with Vulcan, a major producer of construction aggregates, asphalt and concrete, given the uneven start to the U.S. recovery. Continue reading Vulcan Materials: On the Mend Vulcan Materials: On the Mend originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 28 Mar 2010 10:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

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Belle de Jour: I received death threats after being unmasked as Brooke Magnanti

How to master the new era of news consumption

(Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

(Holy Kaw!)

Submitted at 3/28/2010 8:03:13 AM

By Caroline Gammell Published: 4:03PM BST 28 Mar 2010 The research scientist, who spent 14 months charging £300 an hour for sex, had become something of a celebrity by writing anonymously about her exploits. When the 34-year-old unmasked herself as the woman behind Diary of a London Call Girl, there was shock at her reputable ordinary life. Miss Magnanti said although friends and family were supportive, she had received several hostile messages after her unveiling last year. “Letters arrived at work, some pleasant but also three anonymous death threats that I immediately reported to the police,” she said. “I don’t like thinking about the death threats, but the other hate mail was sometimes funny – one postmarked ‘World Aids Day’ hoped I ‘get Aids and

die’.” Miss Magnanti, who worked as a prostitute while finishing her PhD in 2003, said she also received unwanted attention from a former partner who had tried to expose her. Known as “The Boy” in her writing, it was his attempts to reveal her identity that spurred her into taking action herself. “He started posting on his blog, threatening to attack me and my boyfriend,” she wrote in The Sunday Times. “I went to the police, taking printouts from his blog and two years’ worth of unwanted and unanswered letters. “Finally alerted to the extent of his harassment, they did everything right and will now intervene immediately if he comes anywhere near me.” Miss Magnanti was born in Florida and came to England to study for a doctorate in forensic science at Sheffield University. She said she turned to prostitution after moving to London, where she found she could not afford to pay her rent. Her online blog about her life

as a call girl was turned into a best-selling book and then a film featuring Billie Piper. Miss Magnanti, who now works at Bristol University as a specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology, said she was nervous about identifying herself. “I was frightened; of course I was,” she said. “I was convinced that if people knew, no one would support me, that I could kiss goodbye to my career as a scientist and my UK visa.” She said she had no idea the world would be so interested in her. The mother of her current boyfriend, who has stood by her throughout the publicity, said she thought Miss Magnanti was “brave”. “She said she was thinking of buying the books. Fortunately she added that she wouldn’t read my Twitter posts, which is good because I tweet about the relationship. “Some things a mother really need not know about her son.” Miss Magnanti also rang her

mother in New York, who airily dismissed her daughter’s antics. “’A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do,’ she said. ‘In my day we were giving it away for free’.” After Belle de Jour’s real name became known, her estranged father was tracked down in Florida and it emerged that he had slept with around 150 prostitutes. Paul Magnanti said he feared his practise of paying for sex after he got divorced may have influenced his daughter, a claim she strongly denied. “His behaviour had no part in my choice to become a prostitute myself; that happened a decade after I left home,” she said. “No one else needs to answer for my decisions.” Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Submitted at 3/28/2010 7:48:44 AM

The Internet in all its permutations (websites, blogs, social networks, location-aware apps) has turned the consumption of news upside down. Heidi Cohen has compiled an analysis of what it takes to reach the new news consumer. She starts with the three Cs of digital news: • Customized • Curated • Contributory She then goes on to discuss the new set of routines that people use to consume news and what this means for marketers. Full story at ClickZ. Create your customized news rack. Permalink| Leave a comment »

The Month's Best Android Apps [Android Apps] matt buchanan (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/28/2010 9:00:00 AM

Android apps keep getting better, and—well let's just cut to it. You need this month's apps:

better Twitter, neato new ways to search your phone, and a super awesome platform game

for diehard Android fans. More »

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Over The Rainbow: first Saturday night show attracts seven million viewers

Workers trapped after vast China mine floods

(Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

Submitted at 3/28/2010 6:43:17 AM

successful formats, with I'd Do Anything(2008) and Any Dream Will Do(2007) following up on the success of 2006's How Do You Solve a Submitted at 3/28/2010 8:31:54 AM By Matthew Moore Problem like Maria? Published: 4:31PM BST 28 The shows have been criticised Mar 2010 for promoting experienced The show's opening weekend entertainers at the expense of v i e w i n g f i g u r e s w e r e t h e genuine amateurs, but have s t r o n g e s t f o r a n y o f t h e proved popular family viewing musical casting series fronted by and won praise for appealing the West End impresario, t o v i e w e r s o f d i f f e r e n t according to the corporation's g e n e r a t i o n s . own statistics. The opening episode of Maria Nearly 30 per cent of the total attracted just over five million t e l e v i s i o n a u d i e n c e w e r e viewers, but audiences rose to w a t c h i n g B B C O n e o n a peak of eight million in the Saturday evening as 20 young final when unknown Connie hopefuls auditioned for the part Fisher won a leading role in The of Dorothy in a n e w Sound of Music. production of The Wizard Of Any Dream Will Do, which Oz. followed Lloyd Webber's search A peak of 4.5 million people for a new lead for his revival also watched Graham Norton of Joseph and the Amazing present the series curtain- Technicolor Dreamcoat, was raiser on Friday night, when watched by 5.6 million people t e l e v i s i o n a u d i e n c e s a r e on its first night. traditionally well down on The format was suspended last Saturdays. year as Lloyd Webber took The musical casting show has c h a r g e o f t h e U n i t e d become one of the BBC's most Kingdom's Eurovision entry,

and the BBC expressed satisfaction that its popularity did not seem to have waned. A corporation spokeswoman said: " Over The Rainbow did really well in a competitive slot and it's a great start for the series." The opening weekend of Over The Rainbow saw 20 would-be Dorothys whittled down to a shortlist of 10 by the judging panel of Sheila Hancock, Charlotte Church and John Partridge. Viewers are able to vote to save one of the rejected contestants ahead of the first of the live finals, which begin this Saturday. The contestants with a guaranteed place include the model Amy Diamond, who had a small role in the BBC One drama Hustle, and Sophie Evans, who competed on ITV1's X Factor in 2008. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

George Carlin: The Ten Commandments Barry Ritholtz (The Big Picture)

Five Filters featured article: Term Extraction. Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS,

(Top stories from Times Online)

Rescuers were today trying frantically to reach 123 miners trapped underground when water flooded a coalmine in northern China. Officials said 261 miners were working on construction of the Wangjialing coalmine in Shanxi province, when underground water suddenly gushed through the tunnels at about 2.30pm on Sunday afternoon. They said 138 of the men managed to escape. So serious was the accident that the heads of China’s coalmine and work safety administrations rushed to the scene from Beijing - leading teams of workers to help with rescue operations. The accident, at a new stateowned mine, will be a severe embarrassment to the Government, which has forced private entrepreneurs out of the coal business and merged many mines to try to increase output along with safety standards. China’s coalmines remain the world’s deadliest, despite an improvement in safety in recent years. The Wangjialing complex

belongs to the state-owned Huajin Coking Coal company, and is an enormous enterprise in one of China’s richest coal province, covering an area of 180 square kilometres (70 square miles). The mine sits on more than 2.3 billion tones of reserves, and is a key project approved by the provincial government. It is undergoing construction, and is expected to produce six million tonnes a year once in operation. China’s work safety administration said 2,631 people died in coal accidents in 2009, down by 584 from the previous year. Many accidents are blamed on poor safety methods and limited training as mining companies scramble to feed the voracious demand for coal from the country’s industrial juggernaut. One of China’s deadliest mine disasters in recent years occurred when a flood through coal shafts in eastern Shandong province killed 181 miners in September 2007. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Iran 'building two new nuclear enrichment plants' (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

up at Iran's main uranium enrichment plant, leading inspectors to believe that it is being stored in secret until it can be installed in an as yet Submitted at 3/28/2010 8:36:23 AM By Adrian Blomfield, Middle u n i d e n t i f i e d f a c i l i t y . East Correspondent Iran recently piqued Published: 4:36PM BST 28 international interest after the Mar 2010 country's atomic energy chief, Western intelligence agencies Ali Akbar Salehi, announced a r e u n d e r s t o o d t o h a v e that work was to begin on two concluded that Tehran has new plants to be "built inside escalated the covert elements of mountains". But a European its nuclear programme, giving official was quoted as saying renewed impetus for a US-led that there was "some evidence" push to tighten sanctions on to suggest that building was Iran. already under way. The findings are partly based US intelligence agencies are o n a n o m a l i e s i n T e h r a n ' s studying satellite evidence of a nuclear inventory that were number of suspect sites, while recently identified by inspectors Israel is said to have uncovered from the United Nations' nuclear evidence of "two Qom lookwatchdog, the International alikes". Atomic Energy Agency. Six months ago, President The inspectors have expressed Barack Obama exposed the s e r i o u s c o n c e r n t h a t n e w existence of a secret Iranian uranium enriching equipment nuclear facility near the city of developed by Iranian scientists Qom. The revelation shocked has mysteriously disappeared, even Iran's traditional allies and the New York Times reported. served to introduce a measure of The equipment has not turned consensus in the debate on how

to respond to Tehran's nuclear programme as Russia dropped long-standing objections to tougher sanctions against the Islamic regime. Since then, however, there have been signs that the international community's united stand has begun to fray. Veto-wielding Russia has hinted that it would limit the scope of any sanctions resolution introduced to the UN's Security Council, while China's attitudes remain uncertain. The United States and its European allies will seek to convince both states to back tough sanctions when foreign ministers from the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations meet in Quebec this week. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Armed gang steals hundreds of thousands in Swiss casino raid (Latest news, breaking news, current news, UK news, world news, celebrity news, politics news)

It said some guests and one security guard were lightly injured from being hit or stepped on, and that Swiss and French police were trying to Submitted at 3/28/2010 8:22:03 AM Published: 4:22PM BST 28 track down the men. Mar 2010 Swiss police said the men fled The prosecutor's office in the the casino quickly, driving away Swiss city said that the group, in two silver Audis with dressed in black, arrived in French license plates. two cars at the Grand Casino A woman who accidentally near Basel, shortly after 4am. drove between the two getaway One smashed the front door cars and blocked the casino's with a sledgehammer, and the exit was pulled from her vehicle others ran inside with machine and beaten, police said. They guns and pistols, according to said it was possible that the the statement. The group, who men fired a shot at another car were speaking French, then during their high-speed o r d e r e d t h e g u e s t s a n d escape. employees to the floor, while The Grand Casino is located they emptied registers in the little more than 200 metres from basement and upper floor. Switzerland's border with Prosecutors said the group were France. unable to get into the strong Five Filters featured article: room, despite shooting at the Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: locked door. PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, "The criminals fired a number Term Extraction. of shots, but luckily no one was hit," said the statement.

How 6 startups raised cash without venture capitalists (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 3/28/2010 7:33:00 AM

If you’re an entrepreneur, one over-arching principle that you should embody is “where

there’s a will, there’s a way.” CNN has compiled six profiles of startups that raised seed capital through non-venturecapital routes including incubators, friends and family,

and peer lending. If you’re trying to raise money right now, you’ll find these profiles interesting and maybe even inspiring. Full story at CNN Money.

More startup tips and tricks. Permalink| Leave a comment »

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Earnings Highlights: Adobe, Best Chatroulette Piano Buy, General Mills, Oracle, Tiffany, Improv #2: Merton Walgreen ... Returns [VIDEO] Trey Thoelcke (BloggingStocks) Submitted at 3/27/2010 12:50:00 PM

Filed under: Earnings Reports, Walgreen Co (WAG), Adobe Systems (ADBE), Best Buy (BBY), Tiffany and Co (TIF), General Mills (GIS), KB HOME (KBH), Oracle Corp (ORCL), Red Hat Inc (RHT), QUALCOMM Inc (QCOM) Here are some highlights from this past week's earnings coverage on BloggingStocks: • Adobe Systems Inc.( ADBE) reported that Q1 revenue was up but earnings declined sharply,

and it offered guidance. • Best Buy Inc.( BBY) shares rallied after it topped Q4 earnings expectations and offered encouraging guidance. • Brinker International Inc.( EAT) raised its outlook for fiscal 2010 and also increased its quarterly dividend. • China Automotive Systems Inc.( CAAS) reported that its revenue had doubled and it beat earnings expectations. • ConAgra Foods Inc.( CAG) Q3 earnings matched estimates and revenue was flat, and it reaffirmed its outlook. • Finish Line Inc.( FINL) shares

rallied after it reported that Q4 earnings came in better than analysts' expected. Continue reading Earnings Highlights: Adobe, Best Buy, General Mills, Oracle, Tiffany, Walgreen ... Earnings Highlights: Adobe, Best Buy, General Mills, Oracle, Tiffany, Walgreen ... originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 27 Mar 2010 12:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

Pete Cashmore (Mashable!) Submitted at 3/27/2010 7:22:55 PM

The Chatroulette piano improv guy is back — and his lyrics are as good as ever. Merton, the pianist who wrote on-the-fly songs about people he saw on Chatroulette, has posted a second video today with even more great improv pieces. Will the Chatroulette fad never fade? See also: Exclusive: Merton the

Private Start-Up Market Heats Up Tom Johansmeyer (BloggingStocks)

source of information on the likely IPO implications of these companies, has been among the Submitted at 3/28/2010 9:40:00 AM beneficiaries: membership has Filed under: Deals, Private doubled ... since November. Equity According to a statement by Speculation about the future SharesPost, "over 15,000 buyers valuations of companies like and sellers of private equity" LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter belong to the site. has undoubtedly driven interest Well, we learned a decade ago in private markets where early t h a t p e o p l e d o n ' t a l w a y s shareholders can turn for a taste translate to cash -- remember all of liquidity before the big day. the "eyeballs" bragging in 1999? SharesPost, which has been a -- so let's look to the numbers

company continued, "members have directly connected in negotiations for the sale of over $276 million worth of stock." Continue reading Private StartUp Market Heats Up Private Start-Up Market Heats Up originally appeared on preceded by the dollar sign. BloggingStocks on Sun, 28 Mar SharesPost also revealed that 2010 09:40:00 EST. Please see transaction activity "is also our terms for use of feeds. ramping up significantly." Since P e r m a l i n k | E m a i l t h i s | the beginning of this year, the C o m m e n t s

Chatroulette Piano Guy Speaks [VIDEO] Tags: chatroulette, merton, piano improv, video, viral video

Best Buy Selling iPads on Launch Day [BestBuy] Kyle VanHemert (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/27/2010 8:19:55 PM

We-hell-hell, what have we here? It seems as though those placeholder SKUs that popped up in Best Buy's database a few weeks ago were for iPads after all. Both TUAW and Engadget have some shots of Best Buy's confidential "Apple iPad Launch Playbook"—their term, not ours—and the documents suggest that some 675 Best Buy locations will have the iPad available in limited quantities on April 3. More »

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Reinsurers Returning Capital Despite Catastrophes

The Lions Gate Situation Is Getting Interesting

Tom Johansmeyer (BloggingStocks)

Steven Mallas (BloggingStocks)

Submitted at 3/28/2010 11:40:00 AM

Submitted at 3/27/2010 2:00:00 PM

Filed under: Deals, Industry With borrowing costs at their lowest levels since 2004, reinsurers are loading up on corporate debt in part to fund stock buybacks. The latest tally, according to Bloomberg News, is$1.34 billion in additional borrowing, with Endurance Specialty Holdings ( ENH), a Bermuda-based company, recently selling $85 million in bonds. Other recent transactions include Axis Capital Holdings ( AXS) and PartnerRe ( PRE) each issuing $500 million in bonds and RenaissanceRe ( RNR) adding $250 million to the count. Paul Newsome, an analyst at Sandler O'Neill & Partners, told Bloomberg News, "If you're a company who can raise debt at

Filed under: Deals, Press Releases, Walt Disney (DIS), Media World, Film, Lions Gate Entertainment (LGF) Well, it's finally happened. 5, 6 percent, and your stock is Someone wants to buy Lions trading below book value, Gate Entertainment ( LGF). there's an arbitrage there." He However, it's not the head of a a d d e d , " T h e m a r k e t i s big media conglomerate who essentially saying, 'We want you has an eye on the movie studio. to put on debt, and we want you Instead, it's famed activist to get rid of your equity.'" investor Carl Icahn. Continue reading Reinsurers Of course, I'm sure you know Returning Capital Despite all that by now. How can Catastrophes anyone have missed the drama Reinsurers Returning Capital surrounding the situation? There Despite Catastrophes originally are a ton of news reports out appeared on BloggingStocks on there covering the topic, so let Sun, 28 Mar 2010 11:40:00 me simply bring you up to date EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

How to reheat a bagel (Holy Kaw!) Submitted at 3/28/2010 12:39:57 AM

The great thing about frozen bagels: yummy, inexpensive breakfast whenever you want it! The down side: the race to eat the microwaved, hot thing

how to heat up a bagel to perfection. Tip: It includes a spray bottle. Full story at Fussy Eater. More on food. Photo credit: Fotolia before it gets rock hard. Well, Permalink| Leave a comment » Fussy Eater gives a few tips on

Apple Store Is Down Pete Cashmore (Mashable!) Submitted at 3/27/2010 10:57:25 PM

with a link to an open letter from Icahn to Lions Gate, and a link to management's response. It makes for wonderful reading. Continue reading The Lions Gate Situation Is Getting Interesting The Lions Gate Situation Is Getting Interesting originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 27 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

Big Ben's checkered college years and other... [Update] Maureen O'Connor (Gawker) Submitted at 3/27/2010 7:57:47 PM

Big Ben's checkered college years and other details have been added to his field guide. More »

The Apple Store has been down for an extended period tonight, according to Twitter reports. While such downtime sometimes precedes a new product release or price changes, that seems somewhat unlikely here: Apple would never release a big new product on a Saturday night, one week before its big iPad release. So, we’re not banking on any major revelations when the store comes back up … except maybe an iPhone 4G with lasers. UPDATE: After a few hours of downtime, the store is back online. For more Apple coverage, follow Mashable Apple on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook Reviews: Apple Store, Facebook, Twitter Tags: apple

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British Times papers to charge for Web content (CNET News.com) Submitted at 3/27/2010 11:14:30 AM

Free shipping is not free most of the time your just paying a bit more, its a marketing ploy go to college and take some marketing its really easy how people don't know how their own world works. I like it free, just as the next guy, but business should not have to compete against free internet stuff From what your saying a company should not have to compete at all lets just create a Communist Utopia of pure Monopoly and all will be well. One company for each thing we need and never any competition. Just look at all the companies that die in the Internet Boom, What a bunch of useless junk, look at all the companies that did not and are doing really well. Competition is like that. Sorry your business sacked you or you just did not have the ability to keep your company afloat or may your just a low skilled worker dreaming of a Utopian Business world where

CyR00k is should be nice to work in Disney Land. The owner could be making millions , the problem is that in general if the owners dont make enough millions, people get a pink slip. That is their problem, we can all get the pink slip, news is no different. If your getting the pink slip move on and get better. If I take your analogy then you think there should be a tax of some kind to pay for old news outlets to stay in business, you know I think your right lets also have a tax for typesetters or how about Readers at Tabaco (Holy Kaw!) more visits by lost coyotes in companies, look it up on a the fall. “I think you’re going to FREE internet after all we Submitted at 3/28/2010 12:00:10 AM see more in the city because should never let old garbage For NYC, coyotes are a there are a lot of coyotes around disappear. problem. Due to fewer hunters, the city who can make their way Unfortunately that the way it growth in wooded habitat, and in and get lost,” said Ward works. We all know that people more sources of food, the Stone, of the state Department associate free with the intenet, nearby county of Westchester is of Environmental Conservation, free shipping ,free news, free teeming with coyotes—and in a New York Post article. “I articles. free apps. more and more, the animals would expect maybe in the fall There is no FREE anything. finding their ways into New to see some around the city.” York City. In recent months, the Full story at the New York coyotes have made appearances Post. s u c h p l a c e s a s C o l u m b i a More on NYC. University, Central Park, and Photo credit: Fotolia Chelsea. Now, New York City Permalink| Leave a comment » (ETonline - Breaking News) birthday the week of March 28 officials are looking forward to April 3? See all the pictures to Submitted at 3/27/2010 3:25:00 PM find out! Which celebs are celebrating a

NYC anticipates a coyote invasion in Fall

Star Birthdays This Week

you can keep your job a little longer because your boss is not very good. The problem with and ad supported economy is that it does not depend on your users. The problem is that if you want my money, you have to give me more than what normal news offers. Its not like the news is that good its not, do I really care that the Tea-baggers are at it again, no I don't. And if I did there are so many ways to see it, so lets see I think that ABC, NBC, CBS should also start charging everyone in the USA 1 dollar a day for turning on their TV and viewing them. The problem with news is that it wants it all, and does not know how to make deals that work, or at least the ones who have nothing new to offer don't. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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10 Must-See Google Street View Sightings Amy-Mae Elliott (Mashable!)

View Larger Map 2. Paddington Bear Waving endearingly at the While we brought you 15 camera, British children’s amusing Google Street View favorite Paddington Bear makes sightings when the service a n a p p e a r a n c e i n L o n d o n launched back in 2007, in the outside the British Museum. He last few years Google has looks pretty happy, greeting expanded its coverage around passersby curbside, and he is the globe, which also means most decidedly not giving expanding the chances of anyone one of his trademark humorous photo captures. “hard stares.” Here we bring you ten more View Larger Map funnies from around the world 3. Shark Attack — from the amazing (a threeAnyone browsing around legged man!), to the cute Headington, Oxford, UK in (Paddington Bear!), to the Street View will get a surprise downright odd (scuba-suited when they turn onto New High sunbathers!). Street (as would anyone doing Have a browse below of the the same in real life) thanks to small selection of strange the 25-foot long fiberglass shark imagery that can be viewed via sticking out of the roof of G o o g l e ’ s a m b i t i o u s number two. Locals will note it photographic project to snap the i s i n f a c t a w e l l - k n o w n world, and do let us know which landmark originally created as a ones are your favorites in the s t a t e m e n t a b o u t n u c l e a r comments. 1. Three-Legged w e a p o n s . Man View Larger Map A three-legged dog walks into a 4. Marching Band bar and says, “I’m lookin’ for This too-good-to-be-true scene the man who shot my paw…” is in fact just that. Part of a While you’re groaning at that, project from artists Robin check out this tripedal Sicilian Hewlett and Ben Kinsley in taking an extra-limbed stroll conjunction with the Street down the street. View team and residents of Submitted at 3/27/2010 1:39:11 PM

vehicle, complete with pitch fork. Maybe that’s just how they roll in Bergen. View Larger Map 7. Doc Emmet Brown From the same folks who brought us the marching band, here we see what looks like Doctor Emmet Brown (of Back Pittsburgh’s North Side, this to the Future fame) tinkering marching band is one of a few away in his garage with — tableaus set up to introduce c o u l d i t b e — t h e f l u x some fun fiction into the capacitor? Of course it’s not, but service. you could certainly use this to View Larger Map win a bet with a gullible friend. 5. Thieving Sea Gull View Larger Map Although there are plenty of 8. Sherlock Holmes birds captured on Street View, How did fictional detective this image of a sea gull in Sherlock Holmes end up waving Brighton, UK has amused plenty to the Google Street View car in of browsers, as it looks like it’s Cambridge, UK? Elementary, just managed to steal a tasty m y d e a r W a t s o n , h e w a s m o r s e l f r o m s o m e p o o r apparently one of Google’s unsuspecting passerby. secret Easter eggs planted for View Larger Map the occasion. 6. Scuba Dudes View Larger Map Why these two fellows sat 9. Trip Wire bathing in the Norwegian sun in These mischievous kids were full scuba gear is anyone’s caught red-handed by the guess, but they didn’t stay Google Street View voiture as it seated for long after the Google cruised through France. While Street View car passed — if you we suppose there could be an head East on Rugdeveien and innocent explanation, it seems turn the camera around, you can more likely some unwary see the two take chase after the monsieur is about to land face-

first in the street. View Larger Map 10. Google Photocall A suitable image to end on, Google staffers hit the streets to celebrate as the Street View vehicle came rolling past their offices. You can pan down the road to see crazy costumes, banners and props all dragged out street-side for the special occasion. View Larger Map For more technology coverage, follow Mashable Tech on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook More Google Resources from Mashable: - 5 Must-See Google Easter Eggs - 4 Ways Non-Profits Can Use Google Buzz - The Small Business Guide to Google Apps - 4 Surprising Google Wave Uses - 6 Free Android Apps That Will Make You Drop Your iPhone Reviews: Facebook, Google, Twitter Tags: Google, Google Maps, google street view, List, Lists, tech

It's Slime Time at the Kids' Choice Awards (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/27/2010 7:19:00 PM

Nickelodeon's 23rd Annual

Kids' Choice Awards happened Saturday night and ET has a look at some of your favorite stars covered in green goo!

The evening got off to a slimefilled start as host Kevin James along with Adam Sandler opened the show with their own

r e n d i t i o n o f " G e t S l i m e d Steve Carell and Tina Fey also Tonight," while soaking the w e r e t r e a t e d t o s u r p r i s e audience with the green goo. s l i m i n g s . Later in the show, Katy Perry,

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Top 10 Twitter Trends This Week [CHART] Matt Silverman (Mashable!)

things in any category. And “March Madness” (at number five) rolls on this week as a Justin Bieber’s imperial reign number of upsets have been over the Twitterverse remains rocking basketball fans’ NCAA uncontested for the fourth brackets. straight week, thanks to the It was Twitter’s birthday last release of his new album, My week, and the name of the social World 2.0, and the recent arrest network itself came in at of his manager. number six, with people Our friends at What The Trend tweeting their love for the have crunched the numbers for service. Our own hashtag, us, and provided a week-long #thankstwitter4, made the measure of what’s been hot on rounds, as we asked users how Twitter. Because this is a the micro-blogging site changed topical list, hashtag memes and their lives. You can read 140 of games have been omitted from the best responses here. the chart below. Michael Jackson jumped back “Follow Friday” (at number into the week’s trends at number two) and “Music Monday” (at seven, as fans tweeted about number eight) make their their memories of his music and regular appearances as staple, performances. News about the user-created Twitter memes. ongoing investigation into his Third on the chart this week is death also spurred some Twitter “Health Care Reform,” as the buzz. U.S. House of Representatives Two entertainment items round voted in favor of a bill to out the week. The Korean boyoverhaul the U.S. health care band Super Junior saw another system and provide coverage to surge in fan tweets after the m i l l i o n s o f u n i n s u r e d group performed in Malaysia. Americans. The controversial And coming in at number 10 is a bill was signed into law by strange discussion about the President Obama on March 23, Oxygen network’s show Bad t h o u g h t h e C o n g r e s s i o n a l Girl’s Club. Natalie, one of the process was not without its show’s stars, apparently has a drama. chin so unusual, it warranted a A new meme, “I [heart],” made week’s worth of chatter on its way up the charts, as people Twitter. tweeted about their favorite You can check past Twitter Submitted at 3/27/2010 3:10:32 PM

Madness 1 1 Every March the NCAA invites 65 collegiate basketball teams to play in an elimination tournament until there is only one team standing.#6 Twitter 1 NEW People are tweeting why they are thankful for Twitter…on Twitter’s 4th Anniversary.#7 trends in our Top Twitter Topics Michael Jackson 2 NEW People section as well as read more are tweeting what Michael about this past week’s trends on Jackson meant to them, and What The Trend. Top Twitter discussing charges relating to Trends This Week 3/20 – 3/26 his death.#8 Music Monday 3-1 Rank Topic Top Index This Music Monday is a tradition Week Change Description#1 where users recommend music Justin Bieber 1 The young they appreciate every Canadian R&B/pop singer Monday.#9 Super Junior 2 released his new NEW Super Junior, the Korean album, "My World 2.0," on Boyband, recently held a "Super March 23rd. He will support the Show 2" in Malaysia. Their album with his first headlining fans, knowns as ELFs, continue tour. Scooter Braun, Justin to plead for a "Super Show 3" in B i e b e r ’ s m a n a g e r , t u r n e d Jakarta.#10 Bad Girl’s Club 1 himself in for an incident at The NEW Natalie From Oxygen’s R o o s e v e l t F i e l d m a l l l a s t Bad Girls Club has an unusual November.#2 Follow Friday looking/shaped chin…and a lot 1#FF is a tag for Follow Friday, of people discussed this…a lot the meme where users of people. list other Twitterers to For more social media follow.#3 Health Care Reform 2 coverage, follow Mashable 2 Tweets about US Health Care Social Media on Twitter or Reform (HCR.) A congressman become a fan on Facebook yelled "Baby Killer" at Rep. Reviews: Facebook, Twitter, Stupak during the lead-up to the michael jackson, news vote. The final tally was 219- Tags: justin bieber, michael 212.#4 I [heart] 1 NEW People jackson, Top Twitter Topics, are tweeting random stuff about trends, twitter, twitter trends, things they love…#5 March What The Trend

Power Down and Save Money Tonight for 2010 Earth Hour [Green] Erica Ho (Lifehacker) Submitted at 3/27/2010 2:30:00 PM

Whether or not you choose to participate in Earth Hour tonight, you can still consider it a good excuse to plug up house drafts, lower your energy maintenance costs, and tackle a few other environmentally friendly tasks. More »

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Rumor: 'iAd' mobile ad platform is Apple's next big thing

New iPad orders won't ship until April 12

(CNET News.com)

enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user's location." Because that's MediaPost reports that Apple's exactly what they want to do next next big thing, after iPads themselves, of course. invade the world next weekend, MP's sources say that Steve w i l l b e i A d , a m o b i l e Jobs has described iAd as "our advertising platform to be n e x t b i g t h i n g " a n d debuted April 7. Coffee dates "revolutionary," naturally. and patent suits aside, this could MediaPost's version of how this be the true Apple-Google will unfold seems a little odd. battleground. It's reporting that iAd will make Of course, if you've been its debut April 7, which is only reading the tea leaves, Apple's four days after iPads start move into mobile advertising is making their way into the anything but surprising. In g r u b b y h a n d s o f f a n b o y s January, they bought mobile everywhere. Apple, a company advertising company Quattro for that has hype down to a science, a reported $275 million, after i s s u r e l y c o g n i z a n t t h a t Google snatched AdMob out launching an iAd revolution on from under them months before. April 7 runs the risk of eclipsing More recently, we saw the iPad revolution that glimpses of Apple's mobile potentially just got its legs days advertising future in an " App before. Such are your troubles Store Tip" they published that when you deal in revolutions. discouraged developers from Also, uh, iAd? Then again, we creating apps that "use location- thought the name iPad was based information primarily to pretty dumb in December, too, Submitted at 3/27/2010 11:58:49 AM

so... Regardless, it's been clear for a while now that Apple seeks to take control of the mobile advertising the same way it did digital music. Google got search ads down pat, and now it's sitting on a boatload of cash. Its acquisition of AdMob got them a good foothold in the mobile advertising game, but that sizable slice of the pie is still very much up for grabs. And you can be sure that Apple's going to be grabbing for it, whether it's with something called iAd or not. [ MediaPost via Boy Genius Report] This story originally appeared on Gizmodo. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

has been a lot of speculation on how many iPads the company has ordered, nobody really Pre-orders of Apple's iPad seem knows for sure. to be going very well. The Some sources say Apple sold company updated its Web site hundreds of thousands iPads on Saturday indicating that any since it began taking pre-orders new iPad orders will ship by on March 12. The source also April 12, as pointed out by speculates that the iPad's first AppleInsider and other blogs. three months of sales could top Apple is due to ship the iPad those of the original iPhone's Wi-Fi model next Saturday--for first three months. those that have already placed Apple also added a new iPad their orders, the delivery date accessory, which is available for remains April 3. Pre-order pre-order. The iPad Camera customers had a choice of in- Connection Kit gives you a way store pickup or delivery, an to connect your camera directly option that also appears to have to the iPad. Delivery for the $29 been removed from the Apple accessory is listed as "late Store. April" on the Apple Store. The iPad Wi-Fi + 3G is still Delivery dates of the previously scheduled to ship in late April, delayed iPad accessories remain according to Apple's Web site. unchanged. By pushing the delivery date of Five Filters featured article: new orders, it would appear that Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: p r e - o r d e r s h a v e a l r e a d y PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, accounted for all of Apple's Term Extraction. available stock. Though there Submitted at 3/27/2010 3:49:53 PM

Video: What does Modern Warfare 2 look like when played on six monitors? Nicholas Deleon (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/27/2010 5:30:48 PM

Man alive, how great would it be to be rich? You could afford

crazy things like, I don’t know, new shoes, healthy food, and six 20-inch monitors to play Modern Warfare 2 with. That’s the dream. So as you can see, the game

scales quite well across all six screens—the only “glitch” occurs when text gets cut off at the bezel of the TV. ATI’s Eyefinity technology makes this magic possible. The

5800 series of cards (and up, people were freaking out while presumably) allow you to span they passed by. compatible games across several Pretty neat, I thought. screens. It’s not something you’re going to find at a Best Buy demo area or whatever, so

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Google's Nexus One vs. brick and mortar (CNET News.com) Submitted at 3/27/2010 12:31:00 PM

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--Of all the reasons put forth asserting why Google's Nexus One is not selling, I subscribe to the most simple one: no brickand-mortar stores. Google Nexus One When the estimates came out showing the initial 74-day sales tallies of the Google Nexus One were a fraction of the iPhone and Droid, it was fodder for a lot of opinion about why Google's phone had already failed-- or not. (The Apple iPhone hit 1 million on day 74, according to Flurry). Allow me to ignore a lot of well -reasoned arguments about how Google is trying to break the typical cell phone business model mold and say simply that I still like to walk into a store and hold the phone in my hand, then test-drive the interface and browser. All of this hit home on Friday, when I made a vain attempt to

actually touch and feel a Nexus One--with the intention, if I was favorably impressed, of buying one. While I knew that the phone had to be purchased through Google, I didn't know that TMobile carries no phones in its stores for prospective buyers to try out. Not a single sample phone on display--not even in Silicon Valley, Google's home turf, where I was traveling. The best offer I got was from a T-Mobile store in the Redwood

City area (near my hotel). A sales representative said that one of the sales associates--who wasn't at the store at that time-owned a Nexus One and that he would possibly let me try his. Maybe Google isn't interested in moving millions of phones per quarter the way Apple and Motorola do. Fine. But that doesn't mean the company should make it virtually impossible for a prospective buyer to experience the physical phone. The brick-and-mortar store still plays a huge role. Just stand outside an AT&T or Verizon store for about 15 minutes at almost any given time and watch the amount traffic that goes through those retail outlets. Ditto on the Apple Store. The online-only thing can go just so far. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

First look: Ambrosia's Mondo Solitaire and Aki Mahjong for iPad Erica Sadun (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

games, namely size. Game play is going to be so much better than on the cramped iPhone Submitted at 3/28/2010 10:30:00 AM screen. Although there are Filed under: iPad several excellent Mahjong Ambrosia Software CEO offerings currently on App Andrew Welch kindly sent over Store, I never felt comfortable these sneak peaks at two of their using those games with so few upcoming iPad titles, namely pixels. M o n d o S o l i t a i r e a n d A k i Both card games and tile games Mahjong. As you can see, both will really benefit from the t i t l e s h a v e b e e n w r i t t e n iPad's better geometry and it's exclusively for the iPad to take ability to approximate realadvantage of the larger screen world sizes of these tangible size. objects. How will these to play I haven't personally played in real life? These videos give a either game on the iPhone but taste of what's to come. after watching these videos, I'm TUAW First look: Ambrosia's definitely looking forward to M o n d o S o l i t a i r e a n d A k i trying them out -- especially the Mahjong for iPad originally solitaire app. I think the table- appeared on The Unofficial based pick-the-game interaction Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, is a little inelegant but the actual 28 Mar 2010 10:30:00 EST. card play looks appealing. Please see our terms for use of As for the Mahjong game, feeds. which follow in the Read More Read| Permalink| Email this| section, it addresses my biggest Comments issue with iPhone-based tile

PSA: DSiWare games don’t transfer to the DSi XL Dave Freeman (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/27/2010 6:30:28 PM

Remember that DSi XL that’s coming out next week? Well, I hope you didn’t spend a bunch

of money in the DSiWare store with your regular size DSi. Yep, turns out that you can’t transfer games to your new hand-held. That really sucks. is a known issue, and they are Nintendo did confirm that this

looking into the problem. At this time though, they don’t have an ETA on when exactly you’ll be able to transfer games. The issue lies in the way the store is set up, and the fact that purchases

are tied to a hand-held device, instead of an account. [via 1Up]

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Slim majority of users would rather have a netbook or laptop over an iPad Mel Martin (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 3/27/2010 7:00:00 PM

Filed under: iPad At least that's the word from an NPD survey that says among 18-34 year olds, a key iPad demograhpic, 51% would rather have a more conventional portable than the Apple iPad. Even among current Apple product owners 44% would prefer a more functional computer like a MacBook over an iPad. "The most interested potential iPad customers see it primarily as a music device, or for its internet access capabilities," said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD. "Considering what people are planning to use the iPad for, it's not hard to understand why people who have these capabilities on other devices, such as the iPod Touch or a notebook/netbook, may not

want to spend $500 or more on a similar device. This points to the need for Apple to close the content deals that focus the iPad on what is likely to be its best long-range value proposition around high quality media consumption." Surveys like this, before a product even shows up in the market, don't mean a hell of a lot, but I do think many Apple

users would like to see something more powerful in a smaller package. We had a pretty good discussion of this the other day when many of our users told about the good and the bad of using a Dell or other netbooks and converting them to OS X based devices. It's clear that Apple is going to sell an awful lot of iPads over the next few weeks. As our readers are Apple-centric, what are your views? Ready to pull the trigger on an iPad? View Poll [via Electronista] TUAW Slim majority of users would rather have a netbook or laptop over an iPad originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Mar 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

The store was DOWN...and now it's not Erica Sadun (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)) Submitted at 3/28/2010 12:00:00 AM

Filed under: Apple And a one.. And a two... The Store is DOWN The Store is DOWN Oh yes the Store, the Store is DOWN Oh lord, I hope that there will be goodies When the Store come back around... Trust me, it sounds a lot more musical after you've had a few drinks. Anyway, keep an eye on it and let us know in the comments when it comes back and if you

see anything new. I'm betting on routine maintenance (always a good bet, mind you) but it's always fun nonetheless... Thanks, everyone who tipped us! We know! We posted! We love you! Update: It's baaaaack. Any changes? Let us know in the comments. TUAW The store was DOWN...and now it's not originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 28 Mar 2010 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Yahoo! iPad App Looks Better Than the Web Site, but Is it "Magical?" [Ipad] Jack Loftus (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/28/2010 10:00:00 AM

As iPad launch day draws ever closer, we'll inevitably start to see more and more dedicated

apps for the thing that explain the "magic" and "revolution" ( Apple's words, not mine), it will

supposedly deliver. Yahoo! here is a good start. More Âť

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BuzzVoice comes to the iPad

Stupid Politician Tricks

David Winograd (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

(Little Green Footballs)

Submitted at 3/27/2010 8:00:00 PM

Filed under: iPad Back in October we wrote a very positive review of the impressive BuzzVoice app for the iPhone and iPod touch. BuzzVoice reads you stories from over 1500 blogs and plays them back in various ways. The playback sound amazingly natural allowing you to choose a male or female voice, or both. You can create a personalized Playlist or BuzzCast. A Playlist is built by choosing the sources that you are most interested in, and they appear in the app along with a general category. So if you wanted to hear the latest stories from TUAW, you'd put it in your Playlist and tap the TUAW topic. A BuzzCast is a bit different. It's an app generated podcast. You decide on the content and each day it will appear in your iTunes library allowing you to hear it on any iPod, iPhone (within the app), or even on your computer. BuzzCasts can

“civility” statement, POLITICO has learned. Various members of the DNC A lot of people seem to believe — including Chairman Tim that because I parted ways with Kaine, Executive Director Jen the GOP and the right wing, that O ’ M a l l e y D i l l o n a n d automatically makes me a left Communications Director Brad winger or a Democrat now. Woodhouse — contacted their So here’s an article that shows respective RNC counterparts why I concluded long ago that this week in hopes of getting b o t h p a r t i e s a r e f u l l o f RNC Chairman Michael Steele opportunistic weasels: RNC to co-sign a document with rejects joint ‘civility’ statement. Kaine that, in part, called for It’s an unquestionable fact that “elected officials of both parties t h e l e v e l o f v i o l e n t a n d to set an example of the civility extremist rhetoric is out of we want to see in our citizenry.” control on the right wing, and “We also call on all Americans be as long as 30 minutes long. will be built into the new app.. that key members of the GOP t o r e s p e c t d i f f e r e n c e s o f Here's the problem: creating a Correction. The BuzzCast are pandering to the extremists o p i n i o n , t o r e f r a i n f r o m BuzzCast or Playlist required feature is still only available and refusing to unequivocally i n a p p r o p r i a t e f o r m s o f you to log onto the BuzzVoice through the web site. reject them. intimidation, to reject violence site to choose your favorite TUAW BuzzVoice comes to But the DNC’s proposal for the and vandalism, and to scale content. To get the full function the iPad originally appeared on GOP to sign a “civility back rhetoric that might of the app, you needed a The Unofficial Apple Weblog s t a t e m e n t ” i s a p o i n t l e s s reasonably be misinterpreted by computer nearby, and were (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Mar 2010 exercise with the sole purpose of those prone to such behavior,” required to jump back and forth 20:00:00 EST. Please see our getting a political edge on the r e a d t h e p r o p o s e d j o i n t between the computer and the terms for use of feeds. GOP. The political calculus is statement, which came at the app. Read| Permalink| Email this| simple: whether or not the GOP end of a week which saw acts of Here's the solution: this Comments signs the statement, it will be v a n d a l i s m a n d t h r e a t s o f complexity is going away used against them. If they sign, violence directed at members of courtesy of the BuzzVoice iPad it’s an acknowledgement that Congress from both parties, but app currently under testing. The they’ve been uncivil. (Which mostly aimed at Democrats who full functionality of the web site they have.) If they don’t sign, voted “yes” on the health care the Dems will say they refuse to bill. denounce extremism. So, since Republicans see the statement there’s no political benefit either as an attempt to force them to West Virginia: J. Mazzulla 17 Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: way, it makes no sense to sign either reject the statement — Pts, 1 Reb, 3 Ast, 2 Stl PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, it. allowing Democrats to say the Kentucky: J. Wall 19 Pts, 9 Term Extraction. Bleh. RNC finds the incidents Reb, 5 Ast, 4 Stl, 1 Blk The Republican National acceptable — or to sign on to Five Filters featured article: Committee has rejected a something that the DNC would proposal from its Democratic later wield against them. counterpart to sign a joint

West Virginia trips Kentucky for Final Four berth Associated Press (ESPN.com) Submitted at 3/28/2010 5:47:16 AM

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Submitted at 3/27/2010 11:12:15 AM

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No more reservations available for iPad launch day Steven Sande (The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW))

getting an iPad in the near future may be to show up at an Apple Store just before 3 PM on April Submitted at 3/27/2010 7:30:00 PM 3rd. At that point in time, the Filed under: iPad If you were stores will release any iPads that planning on reserving an iPad were reserved, but not picked for pickup at an Apple Store on up. Your other alternative is to April 3rd, you're out of luck. make an online order for an iPad Reservations, both in-store and for delivery by April 12th. online, ended on Friday. [Thanks for the tip, Travis!] According to TUAW reader TUAW No more reservations Travis, who sent us the tip early available for iPad launch day Saturday, an Apple sales originally appeared on The associate mentioned told him Unofficial Apple Weblog Apple had to shut down (TUAW) on Sat, 27 Mar 2010 reservations since they have no a 10% bump in extra product at 19:30:00 EST. Please see our product left between pre-orders the stores for launch day, but terms for use of feeds. and reservations that have that may be wishful thinking. Permalink| Email this| already been made. Apparently For those of you who were C o m m e n t s Apple believes that they may get procrastinating, your best bet at

Windows Phone 7 Series ROM Spied Running On HTC HD2? [Windows Phone] Jack Loftus (Gizmodo) Submitted at 3/28/2010 10:30:00 AM

That luscious HTC HD2, the near-perfect mobile that had it going on in all the right places, Running a Windows Phone 7 save the WinMo 6.5 OS, is seen Series ROM. More Âť here doing the impossible:

Ill. Democrats Choose Nominee After Scandal (Newsmax - Politics)

governor's running mate in Illinois, but this year's winner, pawn shop owner Scott Lee Illinois Democrats chose the C o h e n , w i t h d r e w a f t e r daughter of the late U.S. Sen. allegations surfaced of domestic Paul Simon as their nominee for abuse, steroid use and failure to lieutenant governor Saturday pay child support. Cohen denied following a scandal that forced the allegations but stepped down the primary election winner to amid political pressure, leaving step down. Democratic leaders to pick a The Democratic State Central candidate. Committee chose Sheila Simon Simon had the backing of Gov. to fill the vacancy, passing over Pat Quinn, who praised her a longtime legislator who was public service and said it was the runner-up in last month's important to have a downstate primary. resident on the Democratic Voters generally choose the ticket. Simon, 49, teaches law at Submitted at 3/27/2010 10:24:33 AM

Southern Illinois University and served four years on the city council in Carbondale. Quinn is from Chicago, while both Republicans candidates are from downstate. Committee members picked Simon over state Rep. Art Turner, who finished second in the primary. Some Democratic leaders said rejecting Turner, a black lawmaker from Chicago, would sour black voters on the Democratic ticket. But Quinn brushed aside that suggestion after Saturday's vote, predicting that he and Simon

would appeal to all voters. Simon also could help Quinn's image as a reformer. She was a member of his Illinois Reform Commission, which recommended government changes after Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested on federal charges of trying to sell President Barack Obama's former U.S. Senate seat. Quinn, as then-lieutenant governor, took over after Blagojevich was removed from office. Turner said Saturday he was a little hurt by how things turned out but understands the decision.

He encouraged his supporters, hundreds of whom traveled to Springfield for the committee's vote, to support the Democratic ticket in the November general election. ÂŠ Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Queen Tea Michelle Cottle (The New Republic - All Feed)

to denounce and distance themselves from the movement’s more noxious Submitted at 3/28/2010 5:00:00 PM antics. Note to Sarah Palin: Screw the But even before this, the Tea reality show. Taking Americans Party had been plagued by on televisual tours of Alaska’s infighting—there were internal natural wonders would I’m sure l a m e n t a t i o n s a b o u t t h e be fun and lucrative, but the gig movement becoming a tool of cannot possibly take maximum the GOP, and there was even a advantage of your special lawsuit filed against an extalents. (As a general rule, leader of the Tea Party Patriots nature shows don’t traffic in who had dared to take up with high-octane demagoguery.) the Tea Party Express. More Instead, allow me to suggest a b r o a d l y , t h e m o v e m e n t ’ s better, more meaningful way to anarchic, bottom-up structure serve your country: Step up and may give its gatherings tons of save the Tea Party from itself. snap, crackle, and pop, but it is After an electrifying start and lousy for formulating and some tantalizing victories delivering a coherent message. (remember when Scott Brown This becomes ever trickier as was the new conservative the Tea Party struggles to cope Superman poised to derail with some of the wackier Obamacare?), the Tea Partiers elements that have glommed have suffered serious p.r. onto its energy (e.g., birthers, 9setbacks of late. The ugliness of 1 1 t r u t h e r s , a n d w h i t e the health-care protests at the supremacists). Pretty much Capitol and the subsequent everyone gets that Tea Partiers threats and vandalism against are mad as hell, it’s just congressional Dems who voted increasingly hard to tell about for the bill (whether perpetrated what. by actual Tea Partiers or simply With the health care meltdown, by their spiritual brethren) the situation threatens to come s p u r r e d s o m e R e p u b l i c a n to a head. Sooner rather than leaders and Tea Party organizers later, Tea Partiers will need to

decide whether to continue as a pure protest movement or evolve into a serious political party. And while Option A may seem more exhilarating—I mean, who doesn’t enjoy flouncing around in tricorner hats and brandishing teabags?—I’m rooting for Option B, in the (admittedly faint) hope that the movement could wind up having a constructive rather than destructive impact on our political system. As the economy recovers, the level of public anger and panic will fall. That’s just the way things work. But even in fat economic times, there remain plenty of angry, scared, even paranoid people around, and these people need a place to come together and be heard. For a while now, the Republican Party has tended to be that place. While the Democratic Party has been shifting to the middle in recent years, the GOP has been drawn steadily toward the angry fringe. If the Tea Party remains just some mouthy, disruptive, vaguely threatening force with no real structure or accountability, this trend is

Submitted at 3/28/2010 2:33:52 AM

Rescuers on Sunday continued

Spoilers Anonymous: 'Fringe,' 'Glee,' 'Lost' and More! Isabelle Carreau (TV Squad) Submitted at 3/28/2010 9:47:00 AM

This is Spoilers Anonymous, a weekly column here at TV Squad where we supply you with the dirt on some of the more popular shows on the air. We'll never put spoilers up here on the main page in order to help the reformed stay unspoiled. If you have anything to add to the group, feel free to step up and let yourself be heard, either with our tips form or by emailing us at tvsquad at gmail dot com, or call and leave a message at(775) 640-8479. Your anonymity is guaranteed, if you wish to remain as such. This week we have spoilers for:'24,' '90210,' 'Bones,' 'Fringe,' 'Glee,' 'Grey's Anatomy,' 'Lost,' 'NCIS,' and 'The Big Bang Theory.' Continue reading Spoilers Anonymous: 'Fringe,' 'Glee,' 'Lost' and More! Filed under: Spoilers Anonymous, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | the search for Sheikh Ahmed glider accident in Morocco. Five Filters featured article: C o m m e n t s bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the The glider crashed into a Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: managing director of Abu Dhabi reservoir near Rabat on Friday. PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Investment Authority (Adia), The pilot had been rescued and Term Extraction. still missing two days after a was in good condition.

Search continues for Abu Dhabi fund chief (Financial Times - US homepage)

likely to continue, steadily poisoning the GOP. As an actual third party, however, the Tea Party could play a different role in American politics: providing a haven and platform for the disgruntled and disillusioned, while freeing the GOP to try and regain some broad-based appeal. Yes, in the short term, Republicans would likely suffer even greater losses as TP candidates siphoned off some of the GOP’s far-right supporters. (A new Quinnipiac poll found that 74 percent of Tea Partiers consider themselves Republicans or Republicanleaning Independents.) But, faced with possible extinction, Republicans would have strong incentive to retool into a party that could once again speak to independents and conservative Dems. This development would benefit the entire republic. A vibrant two-party (or multiparty) system is a good thing. What we have right now is scary. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Fantastic Four #48, Debut of the Silver Surfer (Little Green Footballs) Submitted at 3/27/2010 7:20:04 PM

Fantastic Four #48, released in March 1966, marked the debut of one of Marvel Comics’ most popular characters, the Silver Surfer. Following the photo is an interesting story about this issue from the Silver Surfer’s Wikipedia page. The Lizard Collection’s copy of this book has some minor flaws on the cover, but the interior is nearly perfect; the inks are still bright, and the paper still has that Marvel Comics off-white color, with only very slight yellowing.

The Silver Surfer debuted as an unplanned addition to the superhero-team comic Fantastic Four #48 (March 1966). The comic’s writer-editor, Stan Lee, and its penciller and co-plotter, Jack Kirby, had by the mid1960s developed using a threecollaborative technique known as the “Marvel Method”: the two would discuss story ideas, Kirby would work from a brief synopsis to draw the individual scenes and plot details, and Lee would finally add the dialog and captions. When Kirby turned in his pencil art for the story, he included a new character he and Lee had not discussed. As Lee

recalled in 1995, “There, in the middle of the story we had so carefully worked out, was a nut on some sort of flying

surfboard”. He later expanded on this, recalling, “I thought, ‘Jack, this time you’ve gone too far’”. Kirby explained that the story’s agreed-upon antagonist, a god-like cosmic predator of planets named Galactus should have some sort of herald, and that he created the surfboard “because I’m tired of drawing spaceships!” Taken by the noble features of the new character, who turned on his master to help defend Earth, Lee overcame his initial skepticism and began adding characterization. The Silver Surfer soon became a key part of the unfolding story.

Nokia N8-00 gets first official mention with Symbian^3 and nHD display Thomas Ricker (Engadget)

"Symbian/3" string listed in the agent header that seemingly Submitted at 3/28/2010 10:37:00 AM confirm that the N8-00 will run Simmer down, we don't have Symbian^3. Next is a "360 x official pics yet (just the 640 pixel" screen size. Note that supposed leaks) but we do have the N8-00 display is rumored to the first official mention of what be 3.5-inches making this a very l o o k s t o b e N o k i a ' s f i r s t similar nHD display to the one Symbian^3 handset. The culprit found on Nokia's current Nis the "NN8-00r100-3G" XML series flagship: the N97. The file sitting pretty on nokia.com difference this time is that we're right now. The first notables are e x p e c t i n g N o k i a ' s n e w e s t a " N8-00" model and the flagship to opt for a capacitive

touchscreen display to match Symbian^3's more finger

friendly UI. Unfortunately, we're not seeing any mention of the rumored 12 megapixel camera and the only keyboard mentioned is a "PhoneKeyPad" -- in other words, no QWERTY not that we were expecting one. We do see Bluetooth 2.0 and radios for WiFi and GPRS/EGPRS/EDGE/WCDMA /HSDPA among the other details. Feel free to sleuth the file for yourselves in the source

link below while we wait for the mid-April announcement. [Thanks, Glenn] Nokia N8-00 gets first official mention with Symbian^3 and nHD display originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Mar 2010 10:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Nokia| Email this| Comments

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ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 27 March 2010 Admin (ReadWriteWeb) Submitted at 3/27/2010 11:00:00 AM

There are six different events on the calendar this week that are offering you, yes you dear ReadWriteWeb reader, a discount. Social media, music, cloud - six different conferences giving you another enticing reason to get up from behind your desk and do some realworld learning and networking. How do you like your events calendar? As a world map? As an iCal (and Google Calendarimportable) file? You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. Know of something cool taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us. Sponsor March 29, 2010: Portland, Oregon Social Fresh Portland The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day, you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Intel, Ford, Comcast, Nike and many more, as well as keynote Peter Shankman. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off. April 2010 Positioning Roundtable

During this weekly 60-minute online session, entrepreneurs are invited to pitch Sramana Mitraentrepreneur, strategy consultant, Forbes columnist and author of Entrepreneur Journeys - their business ideas in a three-minute presentation. She will review the material in real time and provide feedback on each pitch, as well as address specific positioning questions from the entrepreneur. Afterwards, she will take questions about positioning from other participants. Sessions is open to 1,000 people to attend, but only the first five who sign up to pitch Sramana will have the opportunity to discuss their businesses. Register for roundtables on April 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29. 4 April 2010: Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania ConnectNow TEDx CMU is an independently organized TEDx event that will be held on April 4th, 2010 at Carnegie Mellon University and will feature a full day of talks by prominent speakers as well as recorded videos from past TEDTalks. Confirmed speakers include Jonathan Fields (author, blogger and entrepreneur), Stacey Monk (founder of Epic Change, a startup nonprofit), Chase Jarvis (photographer, director and social artist) and Nathan Martin (CEO of Deeplocal, an

innovation studio in Pittsburgh). The theme of the event is "Fearless", and we are inviting speakers from cross-disciplinary backgrounds to talk about their experiences, and tell us a little about what inspires them to be fearless in the pursuit of goals. We hope to spark discussions and foster connections between participants, encouraging aspiring individuals to follow their dreams and make a difference. The event is free to attend, and the application deadline is March 21, 2010. For more information about the event, visit tedxcmu.com or email info@tedxcmu.com. You can also find TEDx CMU on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. 7 – 9 April 2010: Sydney, Australia ConnectNow ConnectNow brings together international specialists and thought leaders in social media, emerging technologies and their intersection with business. Learn how the realtime web,

location based services, augmented reality, ubiquitous computing and personalised services are changing marketing and communications. Understand the importance of trust in relationship marketing and what is "social currency". For more info email info@connectnow.net.au. 13 – 15 April 2010: Dallas, Texas PubCon South PubCon, the premier search and social media conference, features the industry's biggest names and key players shaping the future of the Web. PubCon South will include cutting-edge panel sessions exploring tracks dedicated to search, social media and affiliate marketing, an intensive professional search and social media training program, and some of the world's top keynote speakers. PubCon South at Dallas will also hold a one-day, two-track slate of intensive educational training programs led by some of the industry's most respected search professionals. The event takes place at the Richardson Conference and Civic Center. Register here. 16 April 2010: Mountain View, California Under the Radar: Cloud Under the Radar: Cloud is must -attend event for dealmakers and heads of IT from large enterprises, SMBs, service providers, carriers and media

companies who are responsible for helping their companies leverage new technology and innovation in the fast-evolving IT ecosystem. Join us for the 15th Under the Radar conference, featuring a handpicked selection of the world's most innovative cloud startups among 350 top tech, media, telcom and finance executives. For ticket and more information, v i s i t http://undertheradarblog.com. 16 – 17 April 2010: Royal Oak, Michigan FutureMidwest FutureMidwest is the region's largest technology and knowledge conference. Founded by Adrian Pittman, Jordan Wolfe and Zach Lipson, FutureMidwest is the fusion of two successful conferences held in Michigan in 2009 - the Module Midwest Digital Conference and TechNow. Both conferences highlighted how technology and digital tools have dramatically changed the way we do business and the effect this transition has had on companies. FutureMidwest kicks things up a notch with presentations, group breakout sessions, relationship-building opportunities and influencers who are taking action to redefine business in the digital age. Register here. 17 April 2010: New York City READWRITEWEB page 34

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Seven on Seven Seven on Seven will pair seven leading artists with seven gamechanging technologists in teams of two, and challenge them to develop something new - be it an application, social media, artwork, product, or whatever they imagine - over the course of a single day. The seven teams will unveil their ideas at a oneday event at the New Museum on April 17. Seven on Seven Participants include, on the technology side, Ayah Bdeir (artist and programmer), Jeff Hammerbacher (Accel Ventures/ Facebook), David Karp (founder of Tumblr), Andrew Kortina (of Bitly/ Venmo), Hilary Mason (of betaworks), Matt Mullenweg (founder of Wordpress), and Joshua Schachter (currently at Google, formerly at Yahoo, and founder of delicious), and on the art side, Tauba Auerbach, Cao Fei, Aaron Koblin, Monica Narula, Marc Andre Robinson, Evan Roth and Ryan Trecartin. Conference attendance includes a half-day session where the seven teams will unveil their ideas, followed by a cocktail reception in the New Museum Skyroom. Find registration information here. April 19, 2010: St. Louis Missouri Social Fresh St. Louis The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not

about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Ford, Best Buy, Scottrade, Hardees, CMT and many more. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off. 19 – 21 April 2010: San Francisco, California DrupalCon DrupalCon is the premier conference focused on Drupal, the award-winning open source content management framework that is galvanizing social publishing and web development today. For a registration fee of $195, attendees get three full days of sessions led by the best and brightest Drupal experts. Drupal has been downloaded over 2 million times since its inception, and project growth has doubled annually for several years. Drupal is used to deliver a wide variety of application types including blogs, wikis, community networks, digital media portals, and web content publishing and management. 26 April 2010: San Francisco, California Future of Money and Technology Summit The Future of Money & Technology Summit will bring together the best and brightest thinkers around money,

including visionaries, entrepreneurial business people, developers, press, investors, authors, solution/service providers, and organizations who work where cash and commerce collide. We meet to discuss the evolving ecosystem around money in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment. Featured speakers include Jolie O'Dell, formerly of ReadWriteWeb, as well as representatives from Wells Fargo Bank, Kiva, SharesPost, Jambool, Founders Fund, Outright.com, SoftTech VC, and many more. Use discount code "rww" to get 10% off registration. 7 May 2010: Mountain View, California ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 Hurry, register now and save $100. Early bird pricing ends March 31! The ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 will be an exploration of the latest Mobile development trends - both the technology and the emerging business applications. Get ready to explore, think and create the future of Mobile with the brightest in the industry, your peers! As in our last Summit, The Real-Time Web, the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit is an unconference. An unconference is a participant driven conference where the agenda is created on the day, in real-time and

discussions are lead by conference participants. Read about the history of unconferences. We will have two main tracks at this Summit - Development and Business - so the Summit will be of interest to managers, marketers, developers, innovators, entrepreneurs and thought leaders alike. Here's a sample of some of the topics we'll explore in both of these tracks.

California FinovateSpring FinovateSpring 2010 will again showcase the most cutting-edge financial and banking technology innovations to Silicon Valley and the world. With Finovate's signature mix of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) from handpicked companies and intimate networking time with their executives, this conference packs a ton of unique value into a single day. • Geo-location services- what Come see the cutting edge of can you do using location as a b a n k i n g a n d f i n a n c i a l platform? technology and network with • Commerce & Marketing- as h u n d r e d s o f t h e l e a d i n g more and more consumers use financial executives, venture s m a r t p h o n e s , h o w c a n capitalists, press, industry businesses utilize this channel? analysts, bloggers and fintech • Content, Publishing & entrepreneurs. Early bird R e c o m m e n d a t i o n s - t h e registration rates are available. technologies and best practices. May 17 2010: San Francisco, • Mobile Social Networking- California how to tap into communities on SF MusicTech Summit mobile devices. The SF MusicTech Summit will • Internet of Things- the b r i n g t o g e t h e r 7 0 0 - p l u s emerging opportunities from v i s i o n a r i e s in the sensor and RFID data. music/technology space - the • Augmented Reality- the best and brightest entrepreneurs, t e c h n o l o g y a n d b u s i n e s s developers, investors, service applications of AR. providers, journalists, musicians • Native App vs. Browser and organizations who work B a s e d - I n c l u d i n g i P h o n e , with them at the convergence of Android, RIM, Palm, Windows culture and commerce. We meet Mobile and Symbian. to discuss the evolving music, business and technology Click here to register now, or to ecosystem in a proactive, become a sponsor, or to help c o n d u c i v e - t o - d e a l m a k i n g shape the conference. READWRITEWEB page 35 11 May 2010: San Francisco,

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environment. Enter the discount code "rww" to get 10% off. 25 – 27 May 2010: Denver, Colorado Glue Glue is the only conference devoted solely to exploring the problem-sets facing architects, developers and IT professionals in a "post-cloud" world. Glue focuses on the APIs and protocols (Twitter, Facebook, Websockets, PubSubHubBub, XMPP), formats and standards (RDF/Linked Data, JSON, Microformats, HTML5), platforms and providers (Amazon, Rackspace, Google App Engine, Salesforce.com, Eucalyptus), Identity Protocols (OAuth/WRAP, SAML, OpenID, SPML) emerging NoSQL data models (Cassandra, CouchDB, MongoDB, Riak, HBase), and other mechanisms that are building the post-cloud world. ReadWriteCloud will be blogging live from Gluecon and C l o u d C a m p , a n d ReadWriteWeb's Alex Williams will be moderating the "Managing Complexity in the Cloud" session. Please join us May 25-27 in Denver, Colorado. ReadWriteWeb readers can receive 10% off of registration

by using the code "RWW12". 27 – 28 May 2010: Beijing, China Global Mobile Internet Conference The Global Mobile Internet Conference is designed specifically for entrepreneurs, executives and influencers to understand and capitalize on the growing opportunities in mobile internet. Though focused on opportunities in Asia, much of the conference dialogue is intended to compare and trade best practices across borders, especially between the East and West. Around 1000 industry leaders from Asia, Europe and North America are expected to attend. The conference will be in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. 28 May 2010: Beijing, China Global Mobile Internet Conference - Innovation Show & Startup Competition The Global Mobile Internet Conference Innovation Show intends to be a launch pad for innovative mobile internet startups from around the world. Innovation Show finalists will have the opportunity to present their company to an expected 1,000 investors, industry leaders, and press. Finalists will

be judged by and receive feedback from a team of respected venture capitalists and angel investors. The judges will choose one company as the GMIC Innovation Show Winner. Startups must apply by April 4. 15 – 16 June 2010: New York City Corporate Social Media Summit The Corporate Social Media Summit is a two day conference focused exclusively on how big businesses can take advantage of social media to enhance their marketing/comms strategy. Featuring: • Practical and relevant insights from peers who have already used social media successfully • 20-plus corporate speakers(including PepsiCo, Whole Foods, Dell, McDonald's, General Motors, Citi, Johnson & Johnson),• Best practice, benchmarks and practical next steps you can use to take advantage of social media in your business • A tightly-focused agenda with 14 in-depth, practical workshops giving you knowledge on only the most critical business issues surrounding corporate use of social media

all attendees Save $400 if you quote RWW400 when booking. Book here. 29 – 30 June 2010: London Cloud Computing World Forum The 2nd annual Cloud Computing World Forum is the perfect event to learn and discuss the development, integration, adoption and future of cloud computing and SaaS. Building on the success of the 2009 show, this two day conference and free-to-attend exhibition will provide a focused platform for the global cloud and SaaS industry. Show highlights include: • Co-located with CloudCamp London • Co-located with Green IT conference • Free-to-attend exhibition with seminar and scenario theatre • Free-to-attend evening awards presentation • Hear from leading case studies on how they have integrated cloud computing and SaaS into their working practices • Learn from the key players offering cloud and SaaS services • Evening networking party for

5 October 2010: New York City FinovateFall FinovateFall will return to Manhattan on Tuesday, October 5 to showcase dozens of the biggest and most innovative new ideas in financial and banking technology from established leaders and hot young companies. The Fall event is the original and largest Finovate and features a single day packed with our special blend of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) and intimate networking time with top executives from the innovative demoing companies. FinovateFall is a unique chance to see the future of finance and banking before your competition and find the edge you need in today's market. Early bird registration rates are available. Download this entire events calendar in iCal format. Discuss

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'Real Housewives of New York''s Bethenny Frankel Is Getting Married (ETonline - Breaking News) Submitted at 3/27/2010 6:35:00 PM

This Week's Top Downloads [Download Roundup] (Lifehacker)

your favorite bookmarks, closed tabs, customizable color schemes, and a place to quickly add notes and send them to • First Look at Ubuntu 10.04 Gmail. Lucid Lynx Beta(All Platforms) • MakeMKV Rips DVDs and You want change? Ubuntu B l u - R a y s w i t h J u s t T w o 10.04, the next long-term Clicks(Windows/Mac/Linux) release of the free operating It's still slim pickings when it system, is full of change. c o m e s t o f i n d i n g a g o o d Window buttons are on the left, freeware application for ripping default apps are replaced, the Blu-Ray discs, but ripping and theme is new, and many more converting tool MakeMKV is upgrades are worth exploring. free for as long as it's in beta• ZeuApp Downloads 82 and it's undoubtedly the simplest A w e s o m e O p e n S o u r c e ripper around. A p p s ( W i n d o w s ) I f y o u ' r e • Stalled Printer Repair Cancels setting up a new system or Print Jobs Without Waiting helping a friend to see how Y e a r s , N o B a t c h F i l e much great free and open source Required(Windows) Last week software exists, ZeuAPP is a we highlighted a batch script portable installation tool for capable of canceling a stalled nearly a hundred applications. print job without waiting years. • I n c r e d i b l e S t a r t P a g e Free, lightweight utility Stalled Customizes Google Chrome's Printer Repair covers the same New Tab Page(Chrome) Google territory, only better. Chrome extension Incredible • AVG Rescue CD Cleans Your StartPage changes the start page I n f e c t e d Windows to a three-panel view of your PC(Windows) There's any Submitted at 3/27/2010 5:00:00 PM

number of great antivirus tools that help protect your PC from viruses, but what about when you encounter an alreadyinfected PC? Your best bet is a boot CD, and the free AVG Rescue CD cleans viruses easily. • DVDStyler Burns Virtually A n y V i d e o t o DVD(Windows/Linux) Burning any old video file to a playable DVD is a bit of a hassle. We've always liked using DVD Flick for tackling the task, but DVDStyler is another great option with a bit more focus on nice menus. • Scott's Gmail Alert 4.0 Only Notifies You When You Want It To, Is Great(Windows) Scott's Gmail Alert 4.0 is a featurepacked Google Calendar and Gmail notification tool, offering great looks and a wide array of customizable options, including the ability to only schedule notifications only during predefined times. Distractions

"The Real Housewives of New York City"'s Bethenny Frankel will tie the knot with her fiancé Jason Hoppy on Sunday at an intimate wedding in New York begone! • ThickButtons Predicts and City, People magazine reports. Enlarges Letters for Better The 39-year-old author of The Android Typing(Android) One Skinnygirl Dish is pregnant with o f A n d r o i d ' s b i g g e s t her first child. Earlier this week, weaknesses, at least compared she tweeted: "The bright side: to the iPhone, is its on-screen I'm getting married in 2 days keyboard. ThickButtons tries to and housing a pint of ice cream. i m p r o v e A n d r o i d ' s t y p i n g No need for flat belly at this experience by guessing what wedding!" According to People, the words you might be typing and enlarging the next letter you'll wedding will be filmed for type, and it (mostly) succeeds. Bethenny's upcoming "Real • Google Voice Updates with H o u s e w i v e s " s p i n - o f f , Near-Instant SMS Notification "Bethenny's Getting Married," on Android(Android) Google which will air on Bravo. The Voice users get free SMS, and magazine also cites a source that dictated voicemails, but they s a y s o n l y t w o o f h e r haven't always been a selling "Housewives" co-stars will point because they could arrive attend: Alex McCord and up to 15 minutes late. The latest Ramona Singer. Google Voice for Android update delivers SMS and voicemail notifications within seconds. More »

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Utherverse Takes Adult Video Games to the Next Level Lydia Leavitt (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/27/2010 6:57:03 PM

For most geeks, the only thing that can trump video games is, well, porn. Which is exactly why so many companies are exploring the world of sex based video games. For those old schoolers, you may remember games like Sierra’s Leisure Suit Larry Series, which was a computer adventure game about a guy trying to get lucky in any way possible. Of course we are talking about pixelated cartoonish sexual imagery but hey, back in the day this stuff was awesome! Certain game development companies continue to make straight out porn focused games, but there are also some ‘mainstream’ games including sex as part of a storyline like Heavy Rain, Mass Effect 2 (again), and the always controversial Grand Theft Auto series. With the advent of the video game rating system, it seems like mainstream games that really push the envelope are becoming less and less prevalent. Partly because any game slapped with an “AO” rating practically means suicide for the developer because no brick and mortar store will stock the game. With this move towards keeping our games clean, it seems almost counter intuitive to bring back sex video games a la Lesiure Suit Larry and Benny Hill. It’s a surprise to

see new sex-based games hitting the market like Bonetown, Project X, and Digital Playground’s new 3D world, that bring players into a world where they can pretty much do whatever they want without judgement. All of these games feature well known porn stars (helllllooo, Ron Jeremy is in Bonetown), which is cool for fans because they can interact with them virtually like never

before. Unlike Bonetown and Project X, Digital Playground’s Utherverse focuses more on leisure and social networking rather than gaming. Users aren’t expected to complete missions or earn points, rather, they’re expected to roam around the world, have fun, and do all the things they can’t really do in real life (because unless you’re Tommy Lee, it’s doubtful

you’re hooking up with porn stars). The Utherverse creates a place for fans to interact and play, making this new genre of sex games a rule free social networking experience. “We don’t refer to the virtual world as a game, but rather as the 3D Web, or the Virtual World Web. It’s really is less of a game and more of the Internet in 3D. It’s a place where users come to have social networking in real time,

to watch movies together, to shop for real-world goods and services, as well as virtual goods and services – but there is no objective,” said Brian Shuster of Utherverse. Basically the goal is to have sex, hook up, and do all the naughty things you can’t do in real life without getting yourself in trouble. While Bonetown and Project X UTHERVERSE page 38

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UTHERVERSE continued from page 37

both feature well-known porn stars, Digital Playground’s Utherverse is the first game to feature all Digital Playground branded pictures, videos, and characters, possibly marking a new frontier for porn. Aside from screenings of their DP porns, the game features the contract star, Raven Alexis, a self-professed geek and WoW gamer. For Raven, this new avenue is an obvious choice, “It’s been so cool and exciting so far, getting to know the ins and outs of the game took a little while, and I’ve already met some amazing people. I don’t think that Digital Playground could be teamed up with a better company to begin putting virtual characters of their contract girls into a game.” The technology behind this emerging trend is what’s really interesting. Utherverse, the company that created Digital Playground’s 3D world explained that the creation of virtual worlds can take upwards of four years and cost up to 10 million dollars. Utherverse took the technology that goes into making these games and created

a tool set and prop editor that allows companies to completely customized and create their own world without much coding or time. The way it works is that a company will choose from basic landscape and surroundings and then can further customize with a prop editor, cutting down on time and making the world of 3D games available to many companies. “The prop-editor also allows the user to pull images from the web, web pages, flash object, flash streams or any of the scripts that need to go onto objects. Scripts can include a wide range of tools, including the ability to inter-link objects, so that when a user clicks, they are transported from one are of the virtual world to another, or from one world to another.” For Digital Playground, this meant that they would import lots of fun things like videos, pictures, and toys. Raven was also able to create her own character in the game, “I did make my own character, which took about a week in total – and she has all kinds of customized outfits that she can wear. For a gamer, it was

completely fun for me, and I’m totally addicted to this game! I’ve already been told by many people in game that my character looks just like me!” The world of online sex games marks a new chapter for the adult industry. Where previously adult stars were only able to interact with their friends through video and a hand full of in-person appearances, companies are now exploring different ways like online games. Are the family collations like MAVAV, Mothers Against Videogame Addiction and Violence that complain about games like Grand Theft Auto going to come after these truly hardcore sex focused video games? Only time will tell. Guest columnist Lydia Leavitt writes about sex and, oddly enough, social media. For more information on the latest intimate technology, check out 69adget.com and Digital P l a y g r o u n d ’ s Utherverse(NSFW)

Microsoft sued over Zune HD’s buy from radio function Devin Coldewey (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/27/2010 3:34:40 PM

Patents, patents, everywhere! It seems you can’t swing a cat these days without infringing on someone’s patent. The latest victim/perp is Microsoft; an Illinois doctor is suing them because of a patent he was granted in 2002 which allegedly covers the Zune’s ability to tag a song directly from the radio and then download that song once an internet connection is established. Obviously it’s for the lawyers to work out the details, but it seems to me what he must have been granted was more a method of identifying and later purchasing a song, not the plain act of tagging and downloading later. But all the Zune device does is copy the artist and song directly from the digital FM stream, and then search for it in the Zune store if an internet connection is available, right? This is an ability several devices have, including the iPod Nano, though certainly all their methods differ slightly. But who knows? Maybe this guy has a point and his patent

does include this stuff. If that’s the case, then may justice be done. I’m more skeptical of his claim that he pitched Microsoft with the idea in 2006; he claims to have emailed them, and includes some of the text — half of it is in ALL CAPS. I have a feeling Microsoft tends to ignore ALL CAPS emails. What’s the likely outcome? Man, I don’t know! I’m not a lawyer!

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Oregon Scientific debuts solarpowered weather station and projection clock

Julia Allison Will Return to the Internet on Monday [She's Back]

Darren Murph (Engadget)

Maureen O'Connor (Gawker)

Submitted at 3/28/2010 5:32:00 AM

Submitted at 3/27/2010 9:53:16 PM

three locations around your abode. We're told that the former will be available for an Oregon Scientific only undisclosed amount next month, introduces a few new products while the latter can be snapped each year, so when we heard up now for $54.99 that a new pair were making Continue reading Oregon their debut, we couldn't help but Scientific debuts solar-powered take notice. Unfortunately for weather station and projection those in favor of fantastic projector that beams the time clock overhauls, you won't find a out onto a nearby wall. Second, Oregon Scientific debuts solarwhole lot here to cheer about; we've got the Helios Weather powered weather station and for those that can appreciate Station, also outfitted with a projection clock originally subtle but satisfying updates, built-in solar panel; it's designed appeared on Engadget on Sun, you might just be in heaven. Up to forecast the weather in your 28 Mar 2010 05:32:00 EST. first is the new+ECO Solar location for the next dozen Please see our terms for use of Projection Clock, which is hours, and it'll also spit out f e e d s . P e r m a l i n k | O r e g o n equipped with a detachable solar indoor / outdoor temperature S c i e n t i f i c | E m a i l t h i s | p a n e l a n d a n i n t e g r a t e d and humidity readings in up to C o m m e n t s

She announced it during a live web chat (irony) with Reblogging NonSociety, after a surprise appearance on her obsessive detractors' website turned into a chat with hundreds about plastic surgery, web

criticism, and ex-sex with Jakob Lodwick. More Âť

HTC HD2 gets early Windows Phone 7 OS port, could be released before official devices Thomas Ricker (Engadget)

what looks to be the first screenies of the WP7S OS Submitted at 3/28/2010 10:57:00 AM running on an HD2. Better yet, Don't look surprised. With the htcpedia claims that almost Windows Phone 7 Series dev everything is working including tools now out in the open the WiFi, GPS, and Bluetooth. pent up demand for that elusive However, the graphics driver is HD2 upgrade was bound to be a still showing problems and there priority for some well-meaning i s n o t i c e a b l e d e v i c e l a g . d e v e l o p e r s , s o m e w h e r e . . . Nevertheless, the team is Imagine it, an HD2 WP7S ROM namely, Russia. Now we've got planning a beta release soon. available before Microsoft and

its partners can even launch an official device, with its 5 buttons or not -- now that would be something. One more grab after the break, the rest at the source below. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] Continue reading HTC HD2 gets early Windows Phone 7 OS port, could be released before

official devices HTC HD2 gets early Windows Phone 7 OS port, could be released before official devices originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Mar 2010 10:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| htcpedia| Email this| Comments

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Hercules supports diminutive scratchers with twodeck DJ Console Mk4 controller Darren Murph (Engadget)

audio for PC and Mac," checking in at 10.4- x 7.3-inches and weighing just 3.3 pounds. We've certainly heard this " Making its musical debut at world's smallest" claim before in M u s i k m e s s e 2 0 1 0 , t h i s the world of DJ controllers, but controller boasts a pair of stereo as components shrink and outputs (one for mixing, one for plastics get thinner, we aren't previewing tracks), a duo of shocked to see one company analog inputs, the ability to hum l e a p - f r o g g i n g a n o t h e r . along on USB power alone and According to Hercules, its new a bevy of knobs / faders for DJ Console Mk4 is "the most those who actually know what them. It's slated to ship this June portable and most compact 2- they're doing with a pair of in the UK for £179.99 ($268), deck DJ controller with built-in platters spinning in front of though no US availability seems

planned at the moment. Gallery: Hercules DJ Console Mk4 Hercules supports diminutive scratchers with two-deck DJ Console Mk4 controller originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Mar 2010 07:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Hercules| Email this| Comments

Ask CG: New lens or new camera?

New Hampshire Pol: Anime Proves We Should Have Nuked Japan Harder [Facebook Follies]

Submitted at 3/28/2010 7:40:00 AM

Matt Burns (CrunchGear) Submitted at 3/27/2010 1:19:27 PM

Reader Nate writes, So here’s my problem. The kit lens for my Nikon D40 is busted –something’s rattling around inside — and I don’t know what to do. My options are either buy a new lens for about $200 or spend $600 on either a Nikon D5000 or the Olympus E-PL1. On one hand, I would like to save some cake and $200 isn’t that bad for a camera that I don’t mind. I already have a 50mm f1.8 Nikon lens and Nikon SB-

600 Speedlight anyway. But a new camera would be nice so I was thinking another entry level Nikon because it will work with my gear anyway.

Then there’s the Olympus EPL1 that’s calling my name. It’s a lot more portable (read: wifefriendly) and Biggs says in his review that the picture quality is fine. It’s not like I even consider myself an armature photographer. I’m more like a weekend shutterbug so the I don’t need all the fancy manual controls found on DSLRs that I honestly don’t know how to use anyway. So what do I do, CrunchGear? Have a question you want to submit to the masses? Send it in to us at Tips@CrunchGear.com.

Maureen O'Connor (Gawker) Submitted at 3/27/2010 7:01:23 PM

"Anime is a prime example that two nukes just wasn't enough," NH State Rep. Nick Levasseur said on Facebook. Now he is according to the local news. apologizing for the statement, More » which "could be deemed as insensitive to Japanese culture,"

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A preview of what I'm working on (Scripting News) Submitted at 3/27/2010 10:01:58 AM

1. An easy-to-install version of River2 for EC2. In 2001 we worked on ease-ofuse so end-users could run servers on their desktops. Most of them didn't even realize they were doing it, they just used software that appeared to "live" in the browser. In fact they were installing and managing a dynamic web server. Now I'm sure we can do the same thing for server software that runs in the cloud. Last year I wrote a Howto called EC2 for Poets that walked people through the process of setting up an OPML server on EC2. It worked for end-users, people Sean Hollister (Engadget) basic browsing -- but Universe who never in a million years Today reports that they will also would think of themselves as a Submitted at 3/28/2010 9:50:00 AM have a robotic servant, the server admin. In the narrow confines of the Robonaut 2, to play with. The idea I'm working on now is International Space Station, Imagine a cramped world that you can set up your own every cubic inch counts, but that without fresh water or YouTube, River of News to share with won't necessarily keep NASA but where you can program a from building a rec room. When state-of-the-art robot to perform t h e L e o n a r d o P r e s s u r i z e d monotonous tasks... We think Multipurpose Module (PMM) that's a fair tradeoff, don't you? launches in September 2010, [Thanks, Robert P.] NASA is considering turning it International Space Station gets into a internet-connected "man ' M a n C a v e , ' R o b o n a u t 2 cave" isolated and quiet enough originally appeared on Engadget for astronauts to tweet in on Sun, 28 Mar 2010 09:50:00 Maureen O'Connor (Gawker) privacy. The connection's EST. Please see our terms for Submitted at 3/27/2010 8:01:37 PM nothing special -- science officer u s e o f f e e d s . P e r m a l i n k | T.J. Creamer compared it to that Universe Today| Email this| After a Twitter-driven teenage flash mob that scared grown-up of a 14.4K modem capable of Comments Philadelphians shitless last only tweets, text articles and

International Space Station gets 'Man Cave,' Robonaut 2

others, without ceding control of your life to a company who may be trying to get you to join a social network. RSS is valuable enough for some people to make it worth the $90 a month that EC2 costs. And once there's an installed base of people doing this, we can start evolving it to places you can only go when everyone is running a net-

accessible server. 2. Thursday is April 1, and that's the 13th birthday of this, the longest-running weblog on the Internet. To celebrate I'm going to release all of 2009's text in a single outline. If I have the time, I want to implement some notetaking features as well, so you can bookmark individual paragraphs, and maybe share those with other people who are reading the text. A new level of collaborative filtering perhaps. 3. Finally, my friend Doc Searls is having trouble with wordpress.root in Radio UserLand, and other people are reporting problems with it in the OPML Editor. This old trusty tool apparently is suffering some growth pains (maybe something changed in WordPress). So I want to take a look at this in the next few days and perhaps release an update.

Is Another Flash Mob About to Tear Philadelphia Limb from Limb? [Like Its 2003] forming now, tweets CNN's Don Lemon. Wait a minute, is Don Lemon starting a flash mob? More Âť week, local police are cracking downâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but another mob may be

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Was Scripting News really born on April 1?

Just sittin by the river... (Scripting News) Submitted at 3/28/2010 7:56:31 AM

(Scripting News)

Fred Wilson says you should vigorously defend your reputation on the Internet. Rudolf Ammann went to the This is something I gave up on trouble to figure out that April 1, long ago. 1997 is not actually the day a There are too many people with blog first appeared on the home axes to grind. page of scripting.com. When competitors make public As he says, the real beginning and personal accusations, how of Scripting News is on are you going to respond, when February 19 of that year. And if customers are watching? It's a you want to really have fun with very low-road way to compete. it, Scripting News began a year Not much you can but weather before that with Frontier News the storm, keep offering the best (which I restarted earlier this service you can, figuring the year, 2010). smart customers will ignore the If you really want to mess with personal stuff. your mind, you'd have to go Anyway, there's an ancient back to October 7, 1994 -- the Chinese proverb that goes what we do on Twitter today. day I started writing on the net something like this. - when DaveNet started because DaveNet was more like what we If you sit by the river long think of as a blog. that's also the beginning of I c h o o s e A p r i l 1 a s t h e enough, you will see the body of Scripting News. The archive of beginning of Scripting News your enemy float by. that site was reverse because that's the day the It works! As your competitors chronologic, and in every way rise, eventually they have done archive begins. that matters, was a blog. When to them what they did to you, Scripting News got started, Anyway... 13 years! That's a lot of DaveNet were the long form pieces, otherwise my idea of a bloggin. blog was a collection of short snips with a link, very much like Submitted at 3/28/2010 5:48:44 AM

Dana White Defends GSP's Performance, Confirms Lesnar vs. Carwin on July 3 Ariel Helwani (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/27/2010 9:48:00 PM

and if you sit there a while, you don't have to do a thing -- nature takes care of it. BTW, for some reason I love metaphors that involve watching the river. I have a river a few blocks from my house, with lots of benches, but this far south it isn't really a river, it's more of a bay.

Filed under: Strikeforce, FanHouse Exclusive, News, Videos NEWARK, N.J. -MMA Fighting spoke to Dana White at the UFC 111 post-fight press conference about some of the early criticism Georges StPierre received following his win over Dan Hardy, who's next in line for the welterweight champion, Brock Lesnar vs. Shane Carwin on July and what he will do with Jon Fitch. Check out the video interview below.

Source: Iowa Hawkeyes hire Siena Saints' Fran McCaffery as coach ESPN.com news services (ESPN.com) Submitted at 3/28/2010 8:48:10 AM

Iowa has hired Siena coach Fran McCaffery to the same position, a source close to the situation confirmed to ESPN's

Doug Gottlieb on Sunday. Five Filters featured article: Iowa was expected to announce Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: the move Monday in Iowa City, PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Iowa. Term Extraction.

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Sheldon Cooper May Get a 'Big Bang' Brad Trechak (TV Squad) Submitted at 3/27/2010 1:00:00 PM

It seems that the producers of'The Big Bang Theory' have decided it's time for Jim Parson's character of Sheldon Cooper to have a girlfriend. Mayim Bialik will appear on the season finale of the sitcom as Sheldon's date, a potentially recurring role. This has serious shark-jumping disaster potential. Sheldon has been repeatedly shown in the past as having zero interest in a romantic relationship. It's one of the hallmarks of the character. He's even rejected Danica McKellar. On the other hand, the major event could be him simply feeling his age and wishing to procreate his genius. He'll probably run out of other options such as cloning. Also, Bialik's character is described as a female version of Sheldon, perhaps she's seeking a "brainonly" relationship, too.

Melissa McCarthy Lands in New Lorre Comedy Pilot Allison Waldman (TV Squad) Submitted at 3/28/2010 11:15:00 AM

Looking into future for CBS comedy, it seems likely that Chuck Lorre will be a part of it. He's already the key component in the success of'The Big Bang Theory' and 'Two and a Half Men,' so chances are the Tiffany Still, it does seem a bit like network would like to see what selling out. R o m a n t i c he has in store next. That will relationships are in every probably be'Mike and Molly,' a sitcom, but I was hoping 'The p i l o t t h a t i s c u r r e n t l y i n Big Bang Theory' wouldn't production starring Billy Gardell succumb to sitcom peer pressure as a fat, charming cop who and keep some of the elements meets the girl of his dreams at that made it unique. We'll see an Overeaters Anonymous how this change of character is meeting. executed before any final The girl, Molly, is going to be played by Melissa McCarthy. judgments are made. Filed under: OpEd, Celebrities, The fact that Melissa McCarthy Casting, Reality-Free, The Big will be in 'Mike and Molly' has made me want to watch it. How Bang Theory P e r m a l i n k | E m a i l t h i s | | great is it that Sookie from 'Gilmore Girls' is getting the star Comments turn! For fans of'Gilmore Girls,' Sookie was always an adorable sidekick to Lorelai, and Melissa McCarthy was wonderful in the role. She was equally kooky and lovable on'Samantha Who?' as

Hoosier story: Butler advances to 1st Final Four Associated Press (ESPN.com) Submitted at 3/28/2010 5:47:22 AM

Fast Facts • Butler advances to its first Final Four in school history, becoming the first No. 5 seed to reach that stage since Michigan State in 2005. • The Bulldogs will play the Final Four five miles from their campus. • Kansas State's Jacob Pullen and Denis Clemente struggled. The star guards combined for 53 points in Thursday's regional semi, but combined for 32 on 11 of 30 shooting. Dena. I have no doubt that she's • Teams coming off an OT win going be be terrific on 'Mike and in the tournament have now lost 10 straight games. Molly.' Continue reading Melissa • Gordon Hayward had 22 McCarthy Lands in New Lorre points for Butler, his first 20point game since February 11th. Comedy Pilot Filed under: Other Comedy -- ESPN Stats & Information Shows, Programming, OpEd, Five Filters featured article: Celebrities, Casting, Reality- Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Free, The Big Bang Theory P e r m a l i n k | E m a i l t h i s | | Term Extraction. Comments

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Martin Short Joins 'Tax Man' Sitcom Brad Trechak (TV Squad)

Chiptune rock band Anamanaguchi providing soundtrack for Scott Pilgrim game

Submitted at 3/27/2010 2:02:00 PM

Martin Short will be joining David Krumholtz in the new Fox comedy series'Tax Man.' Short will be playing an obnoxious, overbearing boss in the vein of Alec Baldwin's Jack Donaghy on'30 Rock.' That description might be a bit of an exaggeration. While Martin Short did give an impressive dramatic turn on'Damages,' he's no Alec Baldwin. He plays the little neurotic guy much better than he could play a confident businessman with ethical issues like Jack Donaghy. He'd be better off playing characters like Leo Bloom in 'The Producers'. The combination of David Krumholtz and Martin Short is an interesting one. It would be worth tuning in just for that. Hey, both have even appeared in 'The Santa Clause' movie franchise. Can Short pull this role off? It's

Griffin McElroy (Joystiq) Submitted at 3/27/2010 11:59:00 PM

television and anything is possible. Short could create a character that is a combination of Jack Donaghy and Leo Bloom, maybe with a little Ed Grimley thrown in for good measure. Filed under: Programming, OpEd, Celebrities, Pickups and Renewals, Casting, Reality-Free Permalink| Email this| | Comments

Jane After Dark: 'Supernatural' - Doesn't Anyone Stay Dead on This Show? Jane Boursaw (TV Squad) Submitted at 3/27/2010 4:25:00 PM

Seriously, doesn't anyone stay dead on'Supernatural'? Not that I'm complaining. I was devastated at the end of season three when Dean was attacked by the hell hound and dragged off to hell, and pretty excited when he was yanked back to life. I kept waiting for some big reveal that his resurrection was all a dream or alternate universe or something, but after meeting the angel Castiel, I'm convinced that Dean is back for real. It's interesting. I kept wondering why Dean had gone

to hell rather than heaven, because he's a good person doing good things in the world, so why wouldn't he go to heaven? On the other hand, Dean didn't believe in heaven or God or angels up to this point, so maybe that would automatically send him to hell? Nah, I'm not buying that. Continue reading Jane After Dark: 'Supernatural' - Doesn't Anyone Stay Dead on This Show? Filed under: TV on DVD, Supernatural, Reality-Free, Jane After Dark Permalink| Email this| | Comments

If you're a fan of both the highenergy electro-rock stylings of Anamanaguchi and the illustrated adventures of Scott Pilgrim, you're in for a serendipitous treat -- the 'Guch announced during their PAX East concert last night that they would be providing the musical accompaniment for Ubisoft's recently announced video game adaptation of the Scott Pilgrim comic series. Given the comic's penchant for 8-bit gaming references, and the band's penchant for 8-bit gaming synthesizers, we think this partnership is a match made in heaven. Chiptune rock band Anamanaguchi providing soundtrack for Scott Pilgrim game originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 27 Mar 2010 23:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

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NCAA Tournament Diary: Day Seven (WSJ.com: The Daily Fix) Submitted at 3/27/2010 11:33:02 AM

Reuters Butler’s Gordon Hayward celebrates the Bulldogs’ victory that propelled them to their first Final Four. Guest blogger Pete McEntegart offers commentary of Butler’s and West Virginia’s regionalfinal wins on the NCAA tournament’s seventh day and the CBS telecast. Get all the latest NCAA news and scores here. Follow the Twitter feeds of coaches, players and observers of NCAA tournament teams before, during and after the games. 3:08 pm | by Pete McEntegart The best NCAA Tournament in years will shed two more teams today while filling the first two spots in the Final Four. First up (at 4:30 p.m. ET) is Kansas State-Butler, two teams that are emblematic of the dominant storylines so far -upsets and dramatic finishes. The fifth-seeded Bulldogs of the Horizon League are the last traditional Cinderella remaining in the field, but their glass slippers have proved unusually durable. Butler (31-4) has won 23 games in a row including Thursdayâs 63-59 upset of the West Regionâs top seed, Syracuse. Meanwhile, No. 2 Kansas State (29-7) outlasted Xavier 101-96 in double-OT last round in an instant classic that featured big shot after big shot,

the biggest by Wildcat guard Jacob Pullen. The Kentucky-West Virginia nightcap (7:05 p.m. ET tipoff) to crown the champ of the East Region, on the other hand, represents a modest return to order for a topsy-turvy tourney. Both the top-seeded Wildcats

and No. 2 Mountaineers turned back double-digit underdogs in the Sweet 16 (Cornell and Washington, respectively). In fact, this is the only No. 1-vs.-2 showdown in this yearâs Elite Eight. Of course Kentuckyâs â1â could also stand for one-and -done, as its star freshman duo

of John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins are universally assumed to have just this one chance at collegiate glory before âgraduatingâ to the NBA. Hope youâll join us right here for all the action. 4:34 pm | by Pete McEntegart Fortunately for Butler, today's

game won't be decided by a brawl between the head coaches. K-State's Frank Martin could play a Mafia movie enforcer, while the Bulldogs' babyfaced Brad Stevens looks like a sophomore accounting major. NCAA page 46

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Tipoff just minutes away. 4:35 pm | Butler 0, Kansas State 0; 18:42 left, 1st half | by Pete McEntegart KSU point guard Denis Clemente just tweaked his ankle while stepping on an opponent's foot. He's trying to shake it off and will stay in the game. That bears watching, though, because he's a speed guy. 4:38 pm | Butler 5, KSU 2; 16:28 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart Gordon Hayward slams one down on fast break for Butler. 4:41 pm | Butler 5, KSU 4; 15:21 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart Bulldogs will have ball after TV timeout after Wildcats G Chris Merriewether grabbed offensive rebound but fell to the floor and was called for traveling. Bit of a slow start thus far. On the plus side, more time for Masters promos. Isn't some big-name golfer making a comeback or something? 4:48 pm | Butler 10, KSU 4; 13:15 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart Shawn Vanzant hits a 3 for Butler to push lead to 6. But KState cuts it to 10-6 the other end on a putback. Wildcats really dominating the offensive boards, but have struggled turning them into points thus far. Will their size wear Butler down, especially with Bulldogs big man Matt Howard on bench with two fouls?

4:53 pm | Butler 13, KSU 8; 10:45 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart Shelvin Mack hits a 3 and then, after a Wildcats miss, is fouled on a drive to the hoop. Butler ball out of bounds when we return. KSU just not making any shots thus far, and not for a lack of second chances. (KSU is 4for-15, Butler 5-for-14). 4:58 pm | Butler 18, KSU 10; 8:58 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart KSU calls time as Hayward putback gives Bulldogs their largest lead. Butler chased down several long rebounds on that possession as KSU appears to have "tired legs," as Gus Johnson just put it. Playing a double-OT classic two days earlier can do that to fellas. 5:04 pm | Butler 18, KSU 10; 7:38 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart Bulldogs will have three seconds left on the shot clock when we return from TV timeout. Game getting ragged. Reserve big man Andrew Smith just blew a wide-open layup for Butler on the previous trip, while KSU is throwing the ball away like a worthless bracket pool. 5:13 pm | Butler 20, KSU 14; 4:28 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart Curtis Kelly scores inside for KSU on a great drop-step and spin, plus draws the foul. The Bronx product (a UConn

transfer) misses the FT but already has 10 points; he's basically single-handedly keeping the Wildcats in the game right now. Now we're up to another TV timeout with 3:23 left; same score. 5:17 pm | Butler 25, KSU 14; 1:48 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart Nored hits pull-up J for Butler on break after Pullen has it stripped for Wildcats. Biggest lead so far. 5:24 pm | Butler 27, KSU 20; Halftime | by Pete McEntegart Wildcats salvage a little something before the break when Pullen makes a steal and feeds Clemente for a fastbreak layup with 12 seconds left. Clemente looked like he was fouled as well but no call. Hayward got a shot off before the buzzer but no good. It was an exceedingly ugly half for KSU, but they're only down seven points. 5:46 pm | Butler 27, KSU 21; 19:24 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Clemente drives and draws they key third foul on Butler's Matt Howard, who only managed to play four minutes in the first half due to foul trouble. Clemente makes one of two. 5:48 pm | Butler 27, KSU 24; 18:27 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Bulldogs call time after Clemente's 3-pointer makes it a one-possession game. Wildcats

had three chances that trip thanks to crashing the offensive glass, mostly in the person of Kelly, who's been a beast. Butler also turned the ball over on its first two possessions so Stevens wanted to talk things over, like where the kegger is tonight. 5:50 pm | Butler 27, KSU 26; 17:30 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Pullen hits two FTs for his first points of the night. K-State on a 10-0 run going back to the end of the first half. 5:52 pm | Butler 29, KSU 26; 17:11 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Howard answers with two FTs of his own after a nice move inside before heading to the bench with those three fouls. 5:55 pm | Butler 34, KSU 26; 16:09 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Hayward scores five quick points on a pair of FTs and a 3pointer and Martin wants timeout; he won't wait for the under-16 TV break. 5:57 pm | Butler 34, KSU 26; 15:42 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Wildcats go into the TV timeout on a downer. KSU grabbed several offensive boards that possession, the second two by Dominique Sutton. But just when Sutton had finally seemed to cash in with a short hook shot, he was whistled (properly, it says here)

for a travel that waved off the bucket. Wildcats have missed a ton of bunnies. Butler ball when we come back. 6:01 pm | Butler 37, KSU 28; 14:31 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Mack hits a nasty step-back 3pointer along the baseline. Bigtime shot. 6:06 pm | Butler 42, KSU 32; 12:35 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Howard beats the Wildcats downcourt on break but Luis Colon body-slams him into next week to prevent the easy bucket. The move pays off as Howard misses the second FT. 6:10 pm | Butler 42, KSU 34; 11:27 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Wildcats will have ball when we return from the second TV timeout as Clemente is helping them make a stand. The speedy guard has shrugged off his tweaked ankle to score K-State's last two buckets on blistering drives to the hoop. He has 10 points total, eight this half. 6:17 pm | Butler 44, KSU 36; 8:45 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Len Elmore and Gus Johnson are rightfully apoplectic that the Wildcats seem unwilling to feed the ball to the red-hot Kelly down low. But when Pullen finally hits Kelly on the break, Kelly is apparently so NCAA page 47

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overexcited to finally see the ball again that he travels to wave off the layup. 6:19 pm | Butler 49, KSU 39; 7:25 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Mack hits another 3, this time from the opposite baseline, to push the lead back to doubledigits. 6:23 pm | Butler 49, KSU 42; 6:29 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Howard misses the front end of a one-and-one for the second time this half. Bulldogs leaving crucial points on the floor. Well, not literally, but you get the point. 6:24 pm | Butler 51, KSU 47; 5:20 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Pullen hits a 3-pointer and Wildcats are suddenly within four points. Gus started to feel it behind the mic. 6:26 pm | Butler 51, KSU 49; 5:06 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart After a Mack miss, Pullen hits two FTs and it's a two-point game. 6:29 pm | KSU 52, Butler 51; 4:31 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Wildcats take lead! After Clemente grabbed a loose ball he was fouled, but missed the front end of a one-and-one. Then Sutton grabbed the Orebound and kicked it out to Clemente again to hit a huge 3pointer. "Ice water in his veins"

yells Gus. Butler calls time. 6:32 pm | Butler 53, KSU 52; 3:35 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Bulldogs will be shooting FTs when we come back from TV timeout. They re-took the lead on two freebies from Hayward, who had grabbed a clutch offensive rebound. After a deep 3 attempt from Pullen went inand-out, KSU fouled away from the ball. They've been doing a lot of that, actually, but Butler hasn't made them pay enough from the line. 6:34 pm | Butler 54, KSU 52; 3:35 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Howard makes one of two, He's only 4-of-8 from the line. Ouch. 6:36 pm | Butler 56, KSU 54; 2:41 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Hayward makes a leaping, twisting catch on backdoor lob and lays it in to answer a delicious teardrop scoop shot from Clemente. This game has heated up nicely. KSU calls TO. 6:37 pm | Butler 58, KSU 54; 1:56 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Ronald Nored picks a great time to make his first basket of the day on a clutch drive for Butler. 6:40 pm | Butler 58, KSU 54; 1:33 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Clemente misses the front end of a one-and-one. That hurts for Cats.

6:42 pm | Butler 60, KSU 54; 53.4 seconds left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Onions! Hayward scores on driving layup after Bulldogs somehow tracked down a loose ball that Wildcats, and most everyone else, thought was going out of bounds. Think it was Mack who tossed it back into play to Hayward, who did the rest. KSU calls timeout. Lots of work to do. 6:44 pm | Butler 61, KSU 54; 18.4 seconds left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Mack hits one FT after Butler forces turnover. Actually two turnovers, though Wildcats chased first one down. KSU needs a miracle now. What great team defense by Bulldogs. 6:49 pm | Butler 63, KSU 56; Final | by Pete McEntegart Bulldogs are going back home to Indianapolis just as most would have predicted, but they'll be doing it as Final Four participants, not merely cohosts. Awesome defense down the stretch. Pullen scored a final bucket just as the buzzer sounded, but that came after yet another possession ended in a Bulldogs steal that led to a clinching layup by Nored. Actually, Nored's shot seemed to be rolling out but was touched while in the cylinder by a frazzled Wildcat. And no wonder -- Butler really frustrated KSU in the final two

minutes. So pencil in the No. 5 seed from out West. 7:09 pm | by Pete McEntegart I'm hurriedly shoving down a chicken-salad sandwich to clear the decks for Kentucky-West Virginia. Alas for the Mountaineers, I'm going to be playing as many minutes today as point guard Truck Bryant, who's out with an injury. That could be a major factor against a long, athletic Wildcat team that likes to play uptempo. The opening tip is moments away. 7:12 pm | Kentucky 6, West Virginia 6; 16:45 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart Wall slices inside and dishes to Cousins, who finishes nicely. Are these the first two picks of the 2010 NBA Draft? 7:15 pm | UK 8, WVU 6; 15:53 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart Wall finds Cousins inside again, this time on a slick wraparound feed. That'll take us into the first TV timeout. All the Mountaineers' points are on 3pointers, one each by Wellington Smith and Kevin Jones. 7:20 pm | UK 13, WVU 6; 13:50 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart Eric Bledsoe scores for Cats, who are on an 11-0 run. Previous three came from Wall after he finished fast break started by a Patrick Patterson block with a drive-and-one.

7:26 pm | UK 13, WVU 9; 10:47 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart Joe Mazzulla hits a key 3pointer for the 'Eers to snap an 0 -for-10 skid from the floor. That was not just Mazzulla's first trifecta of the game but of the season; he's the one who's filling in for the injured Truck Bryant. WV will have the ball thanks to the possession arrow when we return from the TV timeout. 7:33 pm | UK 14, WVU 9; 8:51 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart Wall blows by the WV defense to draw the foul. He makes one of two to stem a mini-slump by the Cat offense. 7:37 pm | UK 16, WVU 9; 8:03 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart WV coach Bob Huggins wanted a backcourt violation when Wall tried to take a handoff on an inbounds play and knocked the ball into the backcourt. But the refs ruled that Wall didn't have possession, so it was all good. (Looked like a bad call because Patteron did indeed have possession before handing the ball off to Wall.) Then Wall hits a 19-footer to add insult to injury. 7:39 pm | UK 16, WVU 9; 7:16 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart It'll be Mountaineers' ball when we come back for the break. NCAA page 48

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They hope for better luck than last trip, when Wall skied for a nasty block of a Mazzulla floater. 7:42 pm | UK 16, WVU 12; 6:52 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart 'Eer star Da'Sean Butler scores his first points of the game -- on a 3-pointer, of course. All of West Virginia's points have come from beyond the arc. That's right, no two-pointer or free throws. 7:43 pm | UK 18, WVU 18; 4:52 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart It's a tie game as Jones and then Butler (again) nail trifectas. Didn't see this coming. 7:46 pm | WVU 21, UK 18; 4:11 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart It's raining threes! Butler drains yet another from downtown to give WV the lead. KY calls time to stall the 12-2 run, all the points coming on trifectas. 7:53 pm | WVU 25, UK 20; 2:50 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart Butler hits another one -- from downtown, natch -- and is fouled by Wall. Butler hits the freebie for the rare four-point play. Mountaineers are now 8-of -13 from downtown and 0-for12 from inside the arc. How is that even possible? 7:57 pm | WVU 27, UK 22; 1:37 left, 1st Half | by Pete McEntegart Refs call a technical on KY's

DeAndre Liggins for jawing about a call. Butler makes the two FTs to push the lead to five. Jay Bilas just said, "There's no reason for any player to ever say anything to an official." Wow, he evidently hasn't seen any rec league game I've ever played in. 8:03 pm | WVU 28, UK 26; Halftime | by Pete McEntegart Wall tries to push the ball coast -to-coast just before the buzzer but can't convert. Mountaineers will take a two-point lead into intermission thanks to some hot shooting from beyond the arc. Actually, it's thanks almost entirely to 3-pointers as WV still has no two-point baskets. (That's eight trifectas and four free throws, one as a result of a 3-pointer, for those scoring at home.) The Wildcats, on the other hand, have made bupkis from deep; they're 0-for-8 at last count. If the long-range shooting percentages starts to even out in the second half, that would be a great trade for the Wildcats. We shall see. 8:18 pm | by Pete McEntegart Second half starting after a few more car commercials. Question: Does someone really decide on a $30K purchase because of a kooky ad? 8:22 pm | WVU 28, UK 26; 19:42 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Bledsoe draws a foul but misses two FTs for KY. WV still playing its 1-3-1 zone that has

given the Wildcats problems. 8:24 pm | WVU 31, UK 26; 19:06 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Guess what -- Mountaineers hit another 3! This one by Jones. Nuts. 8:27 pm | WVU 31, UK 26; 18:32 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart After a KY miss, Cousins swings his hand in jostling for the rebound and hits Butler in, well, a bad place. (As Bill Raftery might say, in the "onions.") That's Cousins' third foul and he has to take a seat. Big play. 8:28 pm | WVU 36, UK 26; 17:35 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Can it be?! Mountaineers drill yet another trifecta, this time by reserve John Flowers, to push the lead to double-digits. Calipari calls TO. 'Eers are 10for-17 from deep. 8:33 pm | WVU 36, UK 31; 15:17 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Cousins drops one in down low and Cats are within five. 8:35 pm | WVU 40, UK 31; 14:37 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Well, the Streak is over, but WV likely won't mind. The Mountaineers hit not one but two straight two-pointers, layups by Devin Ebanks (off a sweet cut) and then Mazzulla (on the break) to push the lead back to nine points into the TV

timeout. 8:43 pm | WVU 47, UK 36; 12:11 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Mazzulla makes 2 FTs and the lead is nine. Then Wall misses from deep -- the Cats are 0-for13 from beyond the arc -- and Mazzulla drops in a layup on the break to push the edge to double digits. All that long-range gunning from the 'Eers has loosened up the lane for WV's drives and cuts. 8:45 pm | WVU 47, UK 36; 11:53 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart TV timeout. Cousins drew a foul before the break as the Cats did what they need to do -pound the rock down low. KY will have the ball out of bounds. At some point, though, the Cats will need to hit a few jump shots to win this game. 8:50 pm | WVU 47, UK 38; 11:10 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Wall drives, pops and is fouled, but can't make the FT. He's missed a bunch of those today. KY then had three more chances after chasing down rebounds but couldn't convert any, including two more 3-pointers. 8:51 pm | WVU 49, UK 42; 9:40 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Wall pushes the pace again and lays one in on the break. Man, he can really cover some ground. 8:56 pm | WVU 51, UK 43;

8:25 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Cousins makes one of two FTs after Mazzulla hit both ends of a one-and-one for WV. Mountaineers dominating KY on the FT line. 8:58 pm | WVU 53, UK 43; 7:30 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart 'Eers take 10-point lead into the TV timeout but it could have been more as Ebanks fumbles the ball out of bounds on a breakaway, right after WV squandered another KY turnover by tossing the ball right back to the Cats. On the bright side, Mazzulla now has a career-high 16 points. 9:02 pm | WVU 55, UK 45; 6:17 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Jones calls timeout for WV after he's trapped in the frontcourt. Mazzulla has had to sit down with four fouls so the Mountaineers don't have a true ballhandler on the floor. Bilas keeps calling for KY to turn up the defensive pressure, and he's right. 9:06 pm | WVU 57, UK 45; 5:28 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Bledsoe misses two FTs. Cats are just 11-of-22 from line while WV is 9-of-11. Ouch. 9:07 pm | WVU 61, UK 45; 4:25 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart NCAA page 49

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Ebanks makes two FTs one trip after draining a floater in the lane. WV is pulling away. Do the Cats have one more run left in them? 9:09 pm | WVU 61, UK 49; 4:06 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Wall hits a driving layup and Calipari calls a quick TO. Cats have a lot of ground to cover. 9:13 pm | WVU 63, UK 49; 3:42 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Butler on line for 'Eers; he makes two. WV has been money from the line. 9:16 pm | WVU 63, UK 52; 3:00 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Liggins hits KY's first trifecta -finally. Is it too little, too late? 9:19 pm | WVU 64, UK 55; 2:21 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Mazzulla fouls out during a scramble for a loose ball with Liggins, who hits two FTs to cut the deficit to single-digits. But WV has no natural ballhandler left; can KY force turnovers? They must to have a chance. 9:22 pm | WVU 67, UK 58; 1:40 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart

Darnell Dodson hits a 3 for KY, but Wellington Smith answers with two FTs. 9:24 pm | WVU 68, UK 61; 1:14 left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Wall banks (yes, banks) in a 3pointer from the top of the key and Cats call their final timeout, trailing by seven. 9:29 pm | WVU 69, UK 61; 51.3 seconds left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Wall misses a leaner and then goes over the back on the rebound to draw his fifth foul. He must sit down, for what almost certainly will be the last time as a collegian player. Flowers, however, misses both FTs for WV. Mountaineers now looking shaky from the line. 9:30 pm | WVU 69, UK 63; 33.1 seconds left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart After Patterson hits two freebies for UK, Mountaineers call time rather than face a 10second violation. 9:33 pm | WVU 71, UK 66; 23.0 seconds left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Ramon Harris hits a 3 for UK, then the Cats send Jones to the line. He hits just one. Still a

game. 9:35 pm | WVU 73, UK 66; 13.8 seconds left, 2nd Half | by Pete McEntegart Dodson misses a 3 and Ebanks is fouled after the rebound. Ebanks makes both FTs and that should do it. 9:37 pm | West Virginia 73, Kentucky 66; Final | by Pete McEntegart Huggy Bear is going back to the Final Four. In the end, West Virginia just made a lot more shots than Kentucky did. No matter how much lottery-bound talent is on your roster, most basketball games are going to turn on that simple equation. 9:43 pm | by Pete McEntegart So we've now filled two of the four slots in the Final Four with Butler (from the West Regional) and West Virginia (East). The other two spots will be determined tomorrow between Michigan State-Tennessee and Duke-Butler. Hope you'll join us back here for tomorrow's games. Out here in L.A., the dogs need to take a walk.

Florida Gators coach Urban Meyer apologizes to Orlando Sentinel writer Jeremy Fowler in 'constructive' talk Associated Press (ESPN.com) Submitted at 3/27/2010 1:43:38 PM

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Florida coach Urban Meyer apologized Saturday to the reporter he berated earlier this week for publishing a quote by one of his players. Meyer spent more than 20 minutes with the Orlando Sentinel's Jeremy Fowler following spring practice. Fowler declined to divulge details of the discussion, but called it a "constructive" conversation and said he accepted Meyer's apology. Meyer did not speak with reporters. SEC blog ESPN.com's Chris Low writes about all things SEC in his conference blog. â&#x20AC;˘ Blog network: College Football Nation Meyer lashed out at Fowler on Wednesday, calling him a "bad guy" and threatening to ban the newspaper for publishing a quote in which receiver Deonte Thompson called John Brantley a "real quarterback." Thompson meant to say that Brantley was a more

conventional or prototypical passer than Tim Tebow. Thompson's quote quickly spread across the country thanks to Twitter and the Internet, and the receiver was crushed when friends and teammates asked him why he ripped Tebow. Thompson expressed his frustration to Meyer, who unleashed on Fowler during an exchange caught on camera and witnessed by colleagues and fans. "If that was my son, we'd be going at it right now," Meyer said. Meyer requested a meeting with Fowler on Saturday and they spoke in private on the practice field. Fowler said Meyer's primary concern was defending his player. "If he feels like one of his players gets wounded emotionally or physically or in any way, he wants to support that," Fowler said. Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Pearl Keeps His Promise for Tennessee Basketball Jim Henry (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/28/2010 4:05:00 AM

Filed under: Michigan State, Tennessee, Big Ten, SEC, March Madness, NCAA Tournament, NCAA Tournament - Midwest Region ST. LOUIS -- It was four years ago when Bruce Pearl made a promise to himself. Pearl and his Tennessee Volunteers were in Madison Square Garden, a semifinalist in the National Invitational Tournament against Butler. The Vols were there in body but not in spirit. There was barely a handful of UT fans in the building. No UT cheerleaders. No UT Pep Band. "We looked like an SEC football school trying to play basketball and it was embarrassing," Pearl said of his team's two defeats in the Big Apple -- 56-44 to Butler in the semifinals and 101-87 to North Carolina in the consolation game. "And we talked about trying to

(make sure) it didn't happen again." Pearl and the sixth-seeded Vols (28-8) have delivered in a big way. They play fifth-seeded Michigan State(27-8) in Sunday's Midwest Regional Final for the opportunity to advance to the Final Four. The winner meets Butler on Saturday. Blackistone: Wayne Chism a 'Great Volunteer' Pain Doesn't Stop MSU's Roe| FanHouse's Complete Tourney Coverage

Kentucky's Final Four Drought Stretches Into Unknown Future Brett McMurphy (FanHouse Main) Submitted at 3/27/2010 8:25:00 PM

Filed under: Kentucky, NCAA Tournament, NCAA Tournament - East Region SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- As Kentucky jumped out to an early lead against West Virginia in the East Region final Saturday night, the Wildcats' Big Blue Nation roared its approval inside the Carrier Dome. Amongst the sea of blue and white emerged a sign that

summed up the feelings of every Kentucky fan: "College Is More Fun Than The NBA Stay At UK." The sign was directed toward Kentucky's talented group of freshmen, who were hoping to end their career with a national title - a won and done, if you will. Instead, it's likely a one and done - one year at Kentucky before jumping to the NBAfollowing the Wildcats' 73-66 loss to West Virginia. All season long, it's been

speculated that freshmen John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, Eric Bledsoe and Daniel Orton along with junior Patrick Patterson would be gone from Kentucky after this season. They were hoping, of course, to leave with a national title. "I didn't want it to stop," Wall said. "I wanted us to make it all the way." Wall didn't disclose if this was his final college game.

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Duke Dominant, Not Demonstrative on D Thomas George (FanHouse Main)

Georges St. Pierre Dominates Fight, Apologizes to Fans for Performance Mike Chiappetta (FanHouse Main)

Submitted at 3/27/2010 8:00:00 PM

Filed under: Duke, March Madness, NCAA Tournament, NCAA Tournament - South Region HOUSTON -- The NCAA men's basketball tournament South Regional final on Sunday afternoon will provide stiff shot blocking, rugged body-banging, occasional floor-long and floorwide contesting of dribbles and shots and an array of other defensive gems. You want to see a defensive dance short of a mauling and gorgeous in its potential ugliness? Check out Duke(32-5) vs. Baylor(28-7). A man-to-man Duke defense that is devilish. A 2-3 Baylor zone defense that's a bear. Duke has allowed 40.1 percent

Submitted at 3/27/2010 8:17:00 PM

Filed under: UFC, News, Bantamweights NEWARK, N.J. -- Georges St. Pierre isn't just fighting opponents; he's fighting history, too. His quest to become the greatest MMA fighter of all time has taken him through Matt Hughes and B.J. Penn and shooting this season. Baylor Thiago Alves, and few expected 38.3 percent. Different styles. Dan Hardy to be more than just Similar impact. a simple pothole on his road to Defense is all sweat and hustle glory. The brash Brit may have a n d e f f o r t m i x e d w i t h surpassed the expectations of intelligence. Duke and Baylor most, but he was still little give you that. I expect both match for St. Pierre, as the offenses to live in frustration. French-Canadian superstar Sort of like being at a picnic and earned a lopsided unanimous that one fly keeps pestering you decision in the UFC 111 main silly, no matter how much you event at the Prudential Center. swat. Hardy did well just to make it

Poor weather hampers Korean ship rescue (Financial Times - US homepage) Submitted at 3/28/2010 5:02:11 AM

Cold seas, buffeting winds and strong currents on Sunday frustrated South Korean divers trying to reach a sunken

warship, which is feared to have taken 46 crew down with it when it exploded on Friday night. Officials initially feared the 104 -man corvette, the Cheonan, could have been torpedoed by North Korea but are now

playing down that theory, saying there were no unusual manoeuvres in the nucleararmed North. Other hypotheses are that the Cheonanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own munitions exploded, that it snagged a rock or struck a mine that broke loose, even one

Seen@PAX: The Uncharted 2 chapter title that should have been Griffin McElroy (Joystiq) Submitted at 3/28/2010 11:45:00 AM

25 minutes and simply endure a beating rather than suffer a serious injury. St. Pierre had him in two seemingly fightending submissions, but Hardy refused to tap to both an arm bar and a kimura. Both moves looked deep and well applied, but Hardy snaked his way out twice. But even after the win, St. Pierre apologized for the method, saying it wasn't the resounding type of victory that will long be remembered.

Naughty Dog's panel at PAX East 2010 offered attendees a fairly in-depth look at how the studio created each level in Uncharted and Uncharted 2. One important aspect of the series' level design is, of course, coming up with a clever name for each chapter -- a task assigned to lead designer Richard Lemarchand. Unfortunately, "the Man" occasionally prevents Lemarchand from putting certain chapter titles in the game, keeping Uncharted 2's original train segment title card (pictured above) out of the final version. Curse you, unseen dating from the 1950-53 Korean managerial powers-that-be! war. Seen@PAX: The Uncharted 2 Five Filters featured article: chapter title that should have Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: been originally appeared on PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Joystiq on Sun, 28 Mar 2010 Term Extraction. 11:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

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Best Buy Canada trading DSi XL for five used games on March 28 Griffin McElroy (Joystiq) Submitted at 3/27/2010 11:00:00 PM

Farsighted Canadians who are jonesing to get their hands on Nintendo's embiggened handheld, the DSi XL, will have a pretty sweet offer waiting for them at Best Buy on March 28. Participating stores will be Griffin McElroy (Joystiq) yesterday afternoon. handing out DSi XLs in Check out a NSFW video of the exchange for five game tradeSubmitted at 3/27/2010 10:00:00 PM demo after the jump. We missed i n s - - p r o v i d e d t h e We ask for your patience as you the first part of the presentation, aforementioned games aren't too attempt to wrap your mind but here's the prompt which worthless. around the concept behind kicked things off: "You are in a Check out Best Buy Canada's A c t i o n C a s t l e : I t ' s a t e x t cottage. There is a fishing pole site to get a full list of the titles adventure akin to Zork, only the here. Exits are out." Hilarity e l i g i b l e f o r t h e o n e - d a y d i a l o g u e a n d c h o i c e s a r e ensues. promotion. No, you can't hand conducted by speaking -- no Continue reading Impressions: in five copies of Madden '97. pen, paper or arduous typing is Action Castle Thought you had the system involved in the process. Can you Impressions: Action Castle beat, didn't you? comprehend that? If so, you're originally appeared on Joystiq [Via Go Nintendo] o n e s t e p a h e a d o f P e n n y on Sat, 27 Mar 2010 22:00:00 Best Buy Canada trading DSi Arcade's Mike Krahulik (a.k.a. EST. Please see our terms for XL for five used games on Gabe), who was flummoxed use of feeds. March 28 originally appeared on when presented with a live Read| Permalink| Email this| Joystiq on Sat, 27 Mar 2010 demonstration of the "game" Comments 23:00:00 EST. Please see our during the PA Q&A panel terms for use of feeds. Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments

Rock Band 3 to have vocal Impressions: Action Castle harmonies, Harmonix (accidentally) confirms Griffin McElroy (Joystiq) Submitted at 3/28/2010 10:32:00 AM

At Harmonix's PAX East 2010 panel, five Rock Band designers answered questions from the audience for "An Awkward Hour" with one major stipulation: No questions about Rock Band 3. However, when an audience member inquired whether Green Day: Rock Band songs would still have harmonies when imported into RB2, Harmonix Project Lead Chris Foster began listing off the games with harmony support. "We've said Rock Band 3 would have harmonies already, right?" Foster asked his fellow panelists, who responded

with a booming, "No!" Foster clammed up without revealing more details about Rock Band 3's harmonies (or even answering the attendee's original question), only mentioning, "It's been nice working at Harmonix." (We think he was joking about that last part.) Rock Band 3 to have vocal harmonies, Harmonix (accidentally) confirms originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 28 Mar 2010 10:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink| Email this| Comments

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What Does Greece Mean to You? John Mauldin (The Big Picture) Submitted at 3/28/2010 3:40:38 AM

What Does Greece Mean to You? March 26, 2010 By John Mauldin What Does Greece Mean to Me, Dad? Dear Kids, Ubiquity, Complexity Theory, and Sandpiles Fingers of Instability Washington DC, Albuquerque, and Guy Forsythe “To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing, gratifying and gives moreover a feeling of power. Danger, disquiet, anxiety attend the unknown – the first instinct is to eliminate these distressing states. First principle: any explanation is better than none… The causecreating drive is thus conditioned and excited by the feeling of fear…” Friedrich Nietzsche “Any explanation is better than none.” And the simpler, it seems in the investment game, the better. “The markets went up because oil went down,” we are told, except when it went up there was another reason for the movement of the markets. We all intuitively know that things are far more complicated than that. But as Nietzsche noted, dealing with the unknown can be disturbing, so we look for the simple explanation.

“Ah,” we tell ourselves, “I know why that happened.” With an explanation firmly in hand, we now feel we know something. And the behavioral psychologists note that this state actually releases chemicals in our brains that make us feel good. We become literally addicted to the simple explanation. The fact that what we “know” (the explanation for

the unknowable) is irrelevant or even wrong is not important to the chemical release. And thus we look for reasons. How does an event like a problem in Greece (or elsewhere) affect you, gentle reader? And I mean, affect you down where the rubber hits your road. Not some formula or theory about the velocity of money or the effect of taxes on

GDP. That is the question I was posed this week. “I want to understand why you think this is so important,” said a friend of Tiffani. So that is what I will attempt to answer in this week’s missive, as I write a letter to my kids trying to explain the nearly inexplicable. But first, let me note to Conversations subscribers that we have posted a Conversation I

recently did with Professors Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart, authors of This Time It’s Different, which has my vote for most important book of the last few years. Last week we also posted a Conversation with two noted hedge-fund managers, Kyle Bass of Hayman Advisors (and WHAT page 54

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his staff) here in Dallas and Hugh Hendry of the Eclectica Fund in London. Our discussion centered on what we all think has the potential to be the next Greece, but on a far more serious level. That got a lot of positive response. Herb wrote, “Wow. What a great discussion. What smart guests, how little BS. Congratulations. It’s the best of your Conversations that I’ve listened to.” And ACK wrote: “Wow!! Just the most important discussion I have been treated to as an investor and fund manager this year or last. Your product is dreadfully underpriced, as it delivers more value and education than almost any other subscription that I have… Thanks so much… This particular conversation was just mind-blowing!” Actually, we get that last comment almost every issue, as we somehow seem to connect the dots for different listeners. When we started, I promised to do 6-8 a year, and we have already posted 5 timely Conversations in the first 3 months of this year, including my special Biotech Series as well as the Geopolitical Series with George Friedman. For new readers, Conversations with John Mauldin is my one subscription service. While this letter will always be free, we have created a way for you to

“listen in” on my conversations (or read the transcripts) with some of my friends, many of whom you will recognize and some whom you will want to know after you hear our conversations. Basically, I call one or two friends each month and, just as we do at dinner or at meetings, we talk about the issues of the day, back and forth, with give and take and friendly debate. I think you will find it enlightening and thoughtprovoking and a real contribution to your education as an investor. And as you can see, I can get some rather interesting people to come to the table. Current subscribers can renew for a deeply discounted $129, and we will extend that price to new subscribers as well. To learn m o r e , g o t o http://www.johnmauldin.com/ne wsletters2.html. Click on the Subscribe button, and join me and my friends for some very interesting Conversations. (I know the price says $199 on the site, but for now you will only be charged for $129 – I promise.) And we are starting a renewal cycle with the subscriptions and have found a small bug in the software we purchased to handle them. Renewals are therefore not instantaneous. It may take a day, and for that we apologize. We are fixing it. Oh, and by the way, since the

Conversation on Japan was so well-received, the next one will be on China. Two brilliant managers (maybe three) with VERY divergent views. I may just toss in a few grenade-type questions and stand back and watch the show. And now on to this week’s letter. What Does Greece Mean to Me, Dad? Tiffani had been talking with her friends. A lot of them read this letter, and they were asking, “Ok, I get that Greece is a problem. But what does that mean for me here?” The same day, a friend told me about a conversation she had with her 17-year-old Cal Tech daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend, who is also headed to Cal Tech. These are really smart kids, and they were asking her about some of my recent letters. “We understand what’s he saying, but we just don’t see what it means.” (For what it’s worth, the boyfriend wants to grow up to be Mohammed ElErian of PIMCO. Go figure; I just wanted to be Mickey Mantle.) Twice in one day is a sign, I am sure, so I will try and see if I can explain. And since all my kids must be wondering the same thing, this is kind of letter from Dad to see if I can help them understand why things are not going as well as they would like. (A little background. I have seven kids, five of whom are

adopted. A fairly colorful family, so to speak. Pictures at the end of the letter. Ages almost 16 through 33. Daughter Tiffani runs my business and, except for the youngest boy, they are all out on their own. Four are married or attached. It is not easy to watch them struggle to make ends meet, but Dad is proud. But listening to their stories, and the stories of their friends, help keep me in the real world.) Dear Kids, I know what a struggle it has been for most of you, and now three of you have a kid of your own. Expensive little hobbies, aren’t they? I know that you read my letter (well, except for Trey) and wonder what it means to you trying to pay your bills. Let me see if I can make a connection from the world of economics to the world of paying your bills. Sadly, what I am going to say is not going to make you feel any better, but reality is what it is. We’ll get through it together. While life looks pretty good for Dad now, when I graduated from seminary in December of 1974 unemployment was at 8%, on its way to 9% a few months later. We lived in a small mobile home, which seemed wonderful at the time. I was proud of it. We scrimped and got by. My first job was a dead end, so I left after a few months. I guess I was lucky that no one would

hire me, because I had to figure out how to make it on my own. All I really knew was the printing business I had grown up in, so I started brokering printing. Pretty soon I was doing just direct mail, and then designing direct mail. But there was never enough money. We were still in that mobile home six years later. And prices were going up like crazy. We had inflation. I remember going to a bank in the late ’70s and borrowing money for my business at 18%, so I could buy paper for a job I had sold. Forget about borrowing for a new home or car. All I knew was that I was struggling to make ends meet (with a new kid!). There were a lot of nights where I would wake up at two in the morning with panic attacks about whether I could make payroll or pay bills until someone paid me. I didn’t understand that what the Fed and the government were doing was causing high inflation and unemployment. I had a bank line I used to buy paper with. One day the bank abruptly cancelled that line and demanded their money, which I didn’t have – all I had was a warehouse full of paper and a contract that said I had a year to pay for it. The bank didn’t care. I told them they would just have to wait. I swear, they actually WHAT page 55

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called my mother and told her they would ruin me if she didn’t pay that $10,000 line. She was scared for me (after all, you had to be able to trust your banker) and paid it without asking me. Turned out the bank finally went bankrupt later in the year. They were just desperate and trying anything they could do to get money, so they wouldn’t lose everything. They did anyway. In short, times were not all that good, but we got through it. And now, 35 years later, it seems like deja vu all over again. Every time we talk it seems like someone we know has lost a job. And so how do the problems in a small country like Greece make a difference to you? There is a connection, but it’s different than the old “hip bone is connected to the thigh bone to the knee bone” thing. It is a lot more complicated. Let’s go back to a letter I wrote four years ago, talking about fingers of instability. One of the best analogies your Dad has ever written, according to many of his 1 million friends. So read with me a few pages, and then we’ll get back to Greece. Ubiquity, Complexity Theory, and Sandpiles We are going to start our explorations with excerpts from a very important book by Mark Buchanan called Ubiquity, Why Catastrophes Happen. I HIGHLY recommend it to those

of you who, like me, are trying to understand the complexity of the markets. Not directly about investing, although he touches on it, it is about chaos theory, complexity theory, and critical states. It is written in a manner any layman can understand. There are no equations, just easy -to-grasp, well-written stories a n d a n a l o g i e s . w w w . A m a z o n . c o m We all had the fun as kids of going to the beach and playing in the sand. Remember taking your plastic buckets and making sandpiles? Slowly pouring the sand into ever-bigger piles, until one side of the pile started an avalanche? Imagine, Buchanan says, dropping just one grain of sand after another onto a table. A pile soon develops. Eventually, just one grain starts an avalanche. Most of the time it is a small one, but sometimes it gains momentum and it seems like one whole side of the pile slides down to the bottom. Well, in 1987 three physicists, named Per Bak, Chao Tang, and Kurt Weisenfeld, began to play the sandpile game in their lab at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. Now, actually piling up one grain of sand at a time is a slow process, so they wrote a computer program to do it. Not as much fun, but a whole lot faster. Not that they really cared about sandpiles. They were more

interested in what are called nonequilibrium systems. They learned some interesting things. What is the typical size of an avalanche? After a huge number of tests with millions of grains of sand, they found out that there is no typical number. “Some involved a single grain; others, ten, a hundred or a thousand. Still others were pilewide cataclysms involving millions that brought nearly the whole mountain down. At any time, literally anything, it seemed, might be just about to occur.” It was indeed completely chaotic in its unpredictability. Now, let’s read these next paragraphs slowly. They are important, as they create a mental image that helps me understand the organization of the financial markets and the world economy. “To find out why [such unpredictability] should show up in their sandpile game, Bak and colleagues next played a trick with their computer. Imagine peering down on the pile from above, and coloring it in according to its steepness. Where it is relatively flat and stable, color it green; where steep and, in avalanche terms, ‘ready to go,’ color it red. “What do you see? They found that at the outset the pile looked mostly green, but that, as the pile grew, the green became infiltrated with ever more red.

With more grains, the scattering of red danger spots grew until a dense skeleton of instability ran through the pile. Here then was a clue to its peculiar behavior: a grain falling on a red spot can, by domino-like action, cause sliding at other nearby red spots. If the red network was sparse, and all trouble spots were well isolated one from the other, then a single grain could have only limited repercussions. “But when the red spots come to riddle the pile, the consequences of the next grain become fiendishly unpredictable. It might trigger only a few tumblings, or it might instead set off a cataclysmic chain reaction involving millions. The sandpile seemed to have configured itself into a hypersensitive and peculiarly unstable condition in which the next falling grain could trigger a response of any size whatsoever.” Something only a math nerd could love? Scientists refer to this as a critical state. The term critical state can mean the point at which water would go to ice or steam, or the moment that critical mass induces a nuclear reaction, etc. It is the point at which something triggers a change in the basic nature or character of the object or group. Thus, (and very casually for all you physicists) we refer to something being in a critical state (or use the term critical

mass) when there is the opportunity for significant change. “But to physicists, [the critical state] has always been seen as a kind of theoretical freak and sideshow, a devilishly unstable and unusual condition that arises only under the most exceptional circumstances [in highly controlled experiments]… In the sandpile game, however, a critical state seemed to arise naturally through the mindless sprinkling of grains.” Then they asked themselves, could this phenomenon show up elsewhere? In the earth’s crust, triggering earthquakes; in wholesale changes in an ecosystem or a stock market crash? “Could the special organization of the critical state explain why the world at large seems so susceptible to unpredictable upheavals?” Could it help us understand not just earthquakes, but why cartoons in a third-rate paper in Denmark could cause worldwide riots? Buchanan concludes in his opening chapter, “There are many subtleties and twists in the story … but the basic message, roughly speaking, is simple: The peculiar and exceptionally unstable organization of the critical state does indeed seem to be ubiquitous in our world. Researchers in the past few WHAT page 56

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years have found its mathematical fingerprints in the workings of all the upheavals I’ve mentioned so far [earthquakes, eco-disasters, market crashes], as well as in the spreading of epidemics, the flaring of traffic jams, the patterns by which instructions trickle down from managers to workers in the office, and in many other things. “At the heart of our story, then, lies the discovery that networks of things of all kinds – atoms, molecules, species, people, and even ideas – have a marked tendency to organize themselves along similar lines. On the basis of this insight, scientists are finally beginning to fathom what lies behind tumultuous events of all sorts, and to see patterns at work where they have never seen them before.” Now, let’s think about this for a moment. Going back to the sandpile game, you find that as you double the number of grains of sand involved in an avalanche, the likelihood of an avalanche is 2.14 times as unlikely. We find something similar in earthquakes. In terms of energy, the data indicate that earthquakes simply become four times less likely each time you double the energy they release. Mathematicians refer to this as a “power law,” or a special mathematical pattern that stands out in contrast to the overall complexity of the earthquake

process. Fingers of Instability So what happens in our game? “… after the pile evolves into a critical state, many grains rest just on the verge of tumbling, and these grains link up into ‘fingers of instability’ of all possible lengths. While many are short, others slice through the pile from one end to the other. So the chain reaction triggered by a single grain might lead to an avalanche of any size whatsoever, depending on whether that grain fell on a short, intermediate or long finger of instability.” Now, we come to a critical point in our discussion of the critical state. Again, read this with the markets in mind: “In this simplified setting of the sandpile, the power law also points to something else: the surprising conclusion that even the greatest of events have no special or exceptional causes. After all, every avalanche large or small starts out the same way, when a single grain falls and makes the pile just slightly too steep at one point. What makes one avalanche much larger than another has nothing to do with its original cause, and nothing to do with some special situation in the pile just before it starts. Rather, it has to do with the perpetually unstable organization of the critical state, which makes it always possible for the next grain to trigger an

avalanche of any size.” Now let’s couple this idea with a few other concepts. First, one of the world’s greatest economists (who sadly was never honored with a Nobel), Hyman Minsky, points out that stability leads to instability. The longer a given condition or trend persists (and the more comfortable we get with it), the more dramatic the correction will be when the trend fails. The problem with long-term macroeconomic stability is that it tends to produce highly unstable financial arrangements. If we believe that tomorrow and next year will be the same as last week and last year, we are more willing to add debt or postpone savings for current consumption. Thus, says Minsky, the longer the period of stability, the higher the potential risk for even greater instability when market participants must change their behavior. Relating this to our sandpile, the longer that a critical state builds up in an economy or, in other words, the more fingers of instability that are allowed to develop connections to other fingers of instability, the greater the potential for a serious “avalanche.” And that’s exactly what happened in the recent credit crisis. Consumers all through the world’s largest economies borrowed money for all sorts of things, because times were

good. Home prices would always go up and the stock market was back to its old trick of making 15% a year. And borrowing money was relatively cheap. You could get 2% shortterm loans on homes, which seemingly rose in value 15% a year, so why not buy now and sell a few years down the road? Greed took over. Those risky loans were sold to investors by the tens and hundreds of billions all over the world. And as with all debt sandpiles, the fault lines started to show up. Maybe it was that one loan in Las Vegas that was the critical piece of sand; we don’t know, but the avalanche was triggered. You probably don’t remember this, but Dad was writing about the problems with subprime debt way back in 2005 and 2006. But as the problem actually emerged, respected people like Ben Bernanke (the chairman of the Fed) said that the problem was not all that big, and that the fallout would be “contained.” (I bet he wishes he could have that statement back!) But it wasn’t contained. It caused banks to realize that what they thought was AAA credit was actually a total loss. And as banks looked at what was on their books, they wondered about their fellow banks. How bad were they? Who knew? Since no one did, they stopped lending to each other. Credit simply froze. They

stopped taking each other’s letters of credit, and that hurt world trade. Because banks were losing money, they stopped lending to smaller businesses. Commercial paper dried up. All those “safe” offbalance-sheet funds that banks created were now folding. Everyone sold what they could, not what they wanted to, to cover their debts. It was a true panic. Businesses started laying off people, who in turn stopped spending as much. As you saw from my earlier story about my bank experience, banks may do what unreasonable things when they get into trouble. (Speaking of which, my smallish Texas bank, where I have been for almost 20 years, just cancelled my very modest, unused credit line last month, and told me that letters of credit will not be rewritten without 100% cash against them. Not to worry, Dad is actually in the best shape of his life, business-wise, knock on wood. I hadn’t talked personally to a banker in years. When I asked the young clerk on the phone, “What’s going on?” he said it was just an order from his director. I switched banks last week, as I can smell a bank in trouble. And I again have a credit line – which I hope not to use.) But the fact is, we need banks. WHAT page 57

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They are like the arteries in our bodies; they keep the blood (money) flowing. And when our arteries get hard, we can be in danger of heart attacks. And it’s going to get worse, as banks are going to lose more money on their commercial real estate loans. Commercial real estate is down some 40% around the country. There are a lot of books that try to pinpoint the cause of our current crisis. And some make for fun reading, like a good mystery novel. You can blame it on the Fed or the bankers or hedge funds or the government or ratings agencies or any number of culprits. Let me be a little controversial here. The blame game that is now going on is in many ways way too simplistic. The world system survived all sorts of crises over the recent decades and bounced back. Why is now so different? Because we are coming to the end of a 60-year debt supercycle. We borrowed (and not just in the US) like there was no tomorrow. And because we were so convinced that all this debt was safe, we leveraged up, borrowing at first 3 and then 5 and then 10 and then as much as 30 times the actual money we had. And we convinced the regulators that it was a good thing. The longer things remained stable, the more convinced we became they

would remain that way. The following chart shows how our sandpile ended up. It’s not pretty. I know Dad always say it is never “different,” but in a sense this time is really different from all the other crises we have gone through since the Great Depression that your Less-ThanSainted Granddad used to talk about. What the very important book by professors Reinhart and Rogoff shows is that every debt crisis always ends this way, with the debt having to be paid down or written off or defaulted upon. That part is never different. One way or another, we reduce the debt. And that is a painful process. It means that the economy grows much slower, if at all, during the process. And while the government is trying to make up the difference for consumers who are trying to (or being forced to) reduce their debt, even governments have limits, as the Greeks are finding out. If it were not for the fact that we are coming to the closing innings of the debt supercycle, we would already be in a robust recovery. But we are not. And sadly, we have a long way to go with this deleveraging process. It will take years. You can’t borrow your way out of a debt crisis, whether you are a family or a nation. And as too many families are finding out today, if you lose your job you

can lose your home. What were once very creditworthy people are now filing for bankruptcy and walking away from homes, as all those subprime loans going bad put homes back onto the market, which caused prices to fall, which caused an entire home-construction industry to collapse, which hurt all sorts of ancillary businesses, which caused more people to lose their jobs and give up their homes, and on and on. It’s all connected. We built a very unstable sandpile and it came crashing down and now we have to dig out from the problem. And the problem was too much debt. It will take years, as banks write off home loans and commercial real estate and more, and we get down to a more reasonable level of debt as a country and as a world. And here’s where I have to deliver the bad news. It seems we did not learn the lessons of this crisis very well. First, we have not fixed the problems that made the crisis so severe. We have not regulated credit default swaps, for instance. And European banks are still highly leveraged. Why is Greece important? Because so much of their debt is on the books of European banks. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth. And just a few years ago this seemed like a good thing. The rating agencies made Greek debt AAA, and banks could use

massive leverage (almost 40 times in some European banks) and buy these bonds and make good money in the process. (Don’t ask Dad why people still trust rating agencies. Some things just can’t be explained.) Except, now that Greek debt is risky. Today, it appears there will be some kind of bailout for Greece. But that is just a bandaid on a very serious wound. The crisis will not go away. It will come back, unless the Greeks willingly go into their own Great Depression by slashing their spending and raising taxes to a level that no one in the US could even contemplate. What is being demanded of them is really bad for them, but they did it to themselves. But those European banks? When that debt goes bad, and it will, they will react to each other just like they did in 2008. Trust will evaporate. Will taxpayers shoulder the burden? Maybe, maybe not. It will be a huge crisis. There are other countries in Europe, like Spain and Portugal, that are almost as bad as Greece. Great Britain is not too far behind. The European economy is as large as that of the US. We feel it when they go into recessions, for many of our largest companies make a lot of money in Europe. A crisis will also make the euro go down, which reduces corporate profits and

makes it harder for us to sell our products into Europe, not to mention compete with European companies for global trade. And that means we all buy less from China, which means they will buy less of our bonds, and on and on go the connections. And it will all make it much harder to start new companies, which are the source of real growth in jobs. And then in January of 2011 we are going to have the largest tax increase in US history. The research shows that tax increases have a negative 3times effect on GDP, or the growth of the economy. As I will show in a letter in a few weeks, I think it is likely that the level of tax increases, when combined with the increase in state and local taxes (or the reductions in spending), will be enough to throw us back into recession, even without problems coming from Europe. (And no, Melissa, that is not some Republican research conspiracy. The research was done by Christina Romer, who is Obama’s chairperson of the Joint Council of Economic Advisors.) And sadly, that means even higher unemployment. It means sales at the bar where you work, Melissa, will fall farther as more of your friends lose jobs. And commissions at the electronics WHAT page 58

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store where you work, Chad, will be even lower than the miserable level they’re at now. And Henry, it means the hours you work at UPS will be even more difficult to come by. You are smart to be looking for more part-time work. Abbi and Amanda? People may eat out a little less, and your fellow workers will all want more hours. And Trey? Greece has little to do with the fact that you do not do your homework on time. And this next time, we won’t be able to fight the recession with even greater debt and lower interest rates, as we did this last time. Rates are as low as they can go, and this week the bond market is showing that it does not like the massive borrowing the US is engaged in. It is worried about the possibility of “Greece R Us.” Bond markets require confidence above all else. If Greece defaults, then how far away is Spain or Japan? What makes the US so different, if we do not control our debt? As Reinhart and Rogoff show, when confidence goes, the end is very near. And it always

comes faster than anyone expects. The good news? We will get through this. We pulled through some rough times as a nation in the ’70s. No one, in 2020, is going to want to go back to the good old days of 2010, as the amazing innovations in medicine and other technologies will have made life so much better. You guys are going to live a very long time (and I hope I get a few extra years to enjoy those grandkids as well!). In 1975 we did not know where the new jobs would come from. It was fairly bleak. But the jobs did come, as they will once again. The even better news? You guys are young, still babies, really. Hell, I didn’t have a good year income-wise until I was in my mid-30s, and that was an accident (I literally won a cellular telephone lottery). And it has not always been smooth since then, as you know. But we get through bad stuff. That is what we do as a family and as the larger family of our nation and world. So, what’s the final message? Do what you are doing. Work

hard, save, watch your spending, and think about whether your job is the right one if we have another recession. Pay attention to how profitable the company you work for is, and make yourself their most important worker. And know that things will get better. The 2020s are going to be one very cool time, as we shrug off the ending of the debt supercycle and hit the reset button. And remember, Dad is proud of you and loves you very much. Washington DC, Albuquerque, and Guy Forsythe It is time to hit the send button. One of the greatest blues acts in the country is in Dallas tonight, and I have good seats waiting for me. If you ever get a chance to hear Guy Forsythe, change your plans and go. He is one of the greatest acts I have ever seen. Sunday, in a last-minute, mustgo trip, I leave for Washington, DC for one night, coming back Monday. And as a special bonus, I get to spend time with Neil Howe(The Fourth Turning, etc.) for dinner, after we watch a little DC hockey. Then morning meetings and back on a plane.

Wednesday I leave for Albuquerque and some dental work with Dr. Gary Sanchez (more on that next week). And a couple pictures of my kids. The first one is last year, when Tiffani decided to dye her hair and it turned out orange. Maybe that is why my granddaughter Lively is a redhead. (There are three babies -in-waiting in that picture!) And one a few years back of just the kids, when I still had an office in the Ballpark. Melissa is the redhead in this one. Good times. I can feel the band warming up, so I am going to depart. Have a great week. Your trust me, we will get through this analyst, John Mauldin John@frontlinethoughts.com Copyright 2010 John Mauldin. All Rights Reserved Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Earth Hour 2010 continues… Cris Stoddard (Flickr Blog) Submitted at 3/27/2010 5:52:45 PM

March 27, 2010 at 8:30pm local time is Earth Hour. Across the world, as the Earth Hour approaches, people, cities, and famous landmarks are joining in by turning off the lights. As Earth Hour makes its way across the planet, we’ll be updating the blog with more images. Celebrate by turning out the lights and posting photos of your Earth Hour in the Earth Hour 2010 group. Photos by marlesghillie, Chu, res2000, hitkaiser, 2Tales, Sternfreunde Münster, Håkan B ä c k v a l l a n d thomas:bach:nielsen. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Exonerating the Shorts Barry Ritholtz (The Big Picture) Submitted at 3/28/2010 4:51:40 AM

Interesting discussion by the always worth reading Mark Hulbert about a recent research paper on Short Selling. While I agree with the paper’s conclusion, it overlooks two major related issues regarding short selling. Let’s look at a few excerpts first: “Short-selling became particularly controversial during the recent bear market, when many of its practitioners turned a profit while almost all other investors were suffering. This fueled long-held concerns that short-sellers might be inducing the very price declines from which they profit. A series of regulations have been imposed in the last few years to restrict short-sellers’ behavior.” This reflects the classic Keynes aphorisim that “ It is better to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.” Short selling has always been controversial for that exact reason. The small minority who

makes a profit when everyone else is panicking into giant losses are always looked at askance. On a related note, it also has given cover to dishonest management. I have never forgotten advice given me early in my career by a very successful fund manager: “ Anytime management complains about short sellers, run-don’t-walk in the opposite direction. Its prima facie evidence of bad leadership — and a guilty conscious about something untoward at the firm.” That’s been good, money saving — and in the case of Shorts, money making — advice. So how do short-sellers find their trades? “According to the new study, titled “How Are Shorts Informed? Short Sellers, News and Information Processing” — Its authors are Joseph E. Engelberg and Adam V. Reed, both finance professors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Matthew C. Ringgenberg, a Ph.D. student

there. The study has been circulating since January as an academic working paper. Their work suggests that the average short-seller has done well through astute research and analysis, not market manipulation.” So far, so good. Where I disagree with the paper’s results is in the statement “ for the most part, at least, ’short-sellers do not uncover and trade on information before it becomes publicly available,’ the researchers wrote.” We know that is untrue in several high profile short situations. Jim Chanos discovered the fraud at Enron through forensic accounting. David Einhorn figured out that Lehman was playing games with their capital levels and cash ratios. Tyco, World Com, Bear Stearns, AIG, Fannie Mae were all high profile shorts that a small handful of people figured out were not what they claimed to be. Perhaps the difference is psycholgical in nature. Wall Street research tends to

cheerlead ore than it analyzes. Approaching analysis without that natural bias allows the discovery of errors and frauds The Street misses. This might be true even using the same publicly available information . . . > Sources: The Wisdom of the ShortSellers MARK HULBERT NYT, March 26, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/0 3/28/business/28stra.html How are Shorts Informed? Short Sellers, News, and Information Processing Joseph Engelberg,Adam V. Reed, Matthew Ringgenberg University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, February 22, 2010

Earth Hour 2010 Cris Stoddard (Flickr Blog) Submitted at 3/27/2010 9:28:15 AM

March 27, 2010 at 8:30pm local time is Earth Hour. Across the world, as the Earth Hour approaches, people, cities, and famous landmarks are joining in by turning off the lights. Many parts of the world have already passed through Earth Hour, as http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pape shown in the photos above. rs.cfm?abstract_id=1535337 Celebrate by turning out the Five Filters featured article: lights and posting photos of Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: your Earth Hour in the Earth PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Hour 2010 group. Term Extraction. Photos by aeson_b, olvwu | , toni•pino, Myfanwy Young, oeyvind, Gooji, bokhbokh bokhboucci and macdomeng. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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NYT: John Dugan is a Bank Tool Barry Ritholtz (The Big Picture)

being unable tor esist the very dumbest of ideas, did put into effect much of what Dugan Submitted at 3/28/2010 8:00:26 AM proposed into law. They The Sunday NYT catches up a l l o w e d : with what many others who • Banks to expand into multiple watch banks have known for a s t a t e s w i t h o u t i n c u r r i n g long time: John C. Dugan, the additional regulatory oversight; former banking lobbyist and • Relatively safe commercial Bush appointee to the job of banks to merge with riskier Comptroller of the Currency, is investment banks and insurance a tool. companies (Repeal of Glass Dugan’s contribution to the Steagall); collapse of the United States • The purchase of banks by b e g a n w a y b a c k i n 1 9 8 9 . commercial firms (i.e., General Congress had ordered the Electric, Sears). Treasury to conduct a study on Regarding the Dugan changes FDIC deposit insurance. Dugan to bank regulation, Kansas City ballooned the project into a 750- Federal Reserve president p a g e m a n i f e s t o , t i t l e d Thomas Hoenig, in an August 6 Modernizing the Financial 2 0 0 9 s p e e c h , m a d e t h e System: Recommendations for f o l l o w i n g o b s e r v a t i o n s : S a f e r , M o r e C o m p e t i t i v e “There were two pieces of Banks(1991). legislation that facilitated our The title is misleading, for the migration toward too big to paper was a recipe for making fail… Interstate Banking and banking more leveraged, riskier, Branching Efficiency Act of and less-capitalized. Congress, 1994, which permitted banks to

grow across state lines, and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which eliminated the separation of commercial and investment banking. Since 1990, the largest twenty institutions grew from controlling about 35% of industry assets to controlling 70% of assets today.” Note that both of these legislations enacted into law changes proposed by Dugan. George Washington University Law School banking scholar Arthur Wilmarth Jr., professor put it succinctly when he said:“It was the first real recipe for too big to fail.” Zach Carter was even more blunt: Dugan, Carter declared, is a Master of Disaster. > Previously: John Dugan: Architect of “Too Big to Fail” Banks(December 28th, 2009)

09/12/john-dugan-architect-oftoo-big-to-fail-banks/ Sheila Bair vs. John Dugan(June 14th, 2009)

The coming days: The week ahead

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/20 (The Economist: News 0 9 / 0 6 / s h e i l a - b a i r - v s - j o h n - analysis) dugan/ Submitted at 3/27/2010 10:10:43 PM Office of Thrift Supervision: Asshat Central(December 24th, The coming days A moment of truth for Apple's latest gadget as 2008) customers get hold of the first http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/20 Ipads Mar 28th 2010 | From The 08/12/ots-asshat-central/ Economist online Source: Does This Bank Watchdog • GEEKS are salivating with anticipation. On Saturday April Have a Bite? 3rd customers, in America get ANDREW MARTIN their hands on Apple’s Ipad, a NYT, March 26, 2010 touch-screen device (rather like http://www.nytimes.com/2010/0 a large Iphone) that lets users search online, read electronic 3/28/business/28dugan.html Five Filters featured article: v e r s i o n s o f b o o k s , p l a y Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: computer games and more. At PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, least 190,000 units have been ordered in America. The Ipad Term Extraction. becomes available in other countries later. The fate of the http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/20 device is likely to matter to more companies than just Apple: a variety of book, famous landmarks turned off the i a n d o u b l e y o u , magazine and newspaper lights and lit up the candles. See redgedeparlemonde and jliebs5. p u b l i s h e r s a r e w a t c h i n g more Earth Hour photos from all Five Filters featured article: anxiously to see if enough over the world in the Earth Hour Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: customers are willing to pay for 2010 group. PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, digital access to their products. The success of other Photos by BAPS UK, Caryn B e a r m e i s t e r , s h h f l i g h t s , Term Extraction. technologies, such as digitalHughes, Flipped Out, music players, was built in part on the popularity of Apple products, such as the Ipod.

Earth Hour 2010 finale Cris Stoddard (Flickr Blog) Submitted at 3/28/2010 8:36:08 AM

March 27, 2010 at 8:30pm local time was Earth Hour. Across the world, as the Earth Hour approached, people, cities, and

COMING page 61

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COMING continued from page 60

• A COURT in Shanghai, China, is expected to deliver a verdict, on Monday March 29th, in the trial of four employees of Rio Tinto, a huge Anglo-Australian mining company, who were accused of corruption and stealing commercial secrets. The accused, three Chinese and one Australian, were arrested last year shortly after Rio had spurned a big investment from Chinalco, a Chinese statebacked metals firm, infuriating the Chinese authorities. • A M N E S T Y INTERNATIONAL, a humanrights group, publishes its annual report on the use of the death penalty around the world on Tuesday March 30th. It is likely to show that in 2009 the usual suspects—China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the

United States—carried out the most executions. • SILVIO BERLUSCONI, the Italian prime minister, faces a test of his popularity as some 40m voters elect governors in 13 regions of the country. Voting takes place over two days, ending on Monday March 29th. Anxiety about the economy, as well as a variety of scandals involving the Italian leader, may boost opposition parties. Mr Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PDL) party is bound to do badly in at least one province: in Rome it failed to register in time and has been left off the ballot. • IN AMERICA the market for mortgage securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, America’s housing-finance giants, will be tested. The Federal Reserve’s purchases of

almost $1.25 trillion-worth of such securities since last year have helped keep interest rates near record lows, but this programme is due to expire on Wednesday March 31st. Most think the effect of the Fed’s withdrawal will be muted, because the move has been telegraphed and because there is money on the sidelines waiting to take the Fed’s place. See article. Readers' comments The Economist welcomes your views. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Buy Load Funds Without the Load (Kiplinger Personal Finance)

membership in its platform. Once you join, you can buy the Score one for investors. “adviser” or “institutional” share If you ever thought about classes of funds on its platform investing in a terrific fund but for free. This is possible because didn’t to avoid paying a fat sales InvestForLess, despite looking charge, you will rejoice at the and smelling like a broker, is arrival of a new service that structured as a registered takes the “load” out of load i n v e s t m e n t a d v i s e r , w i t h f u n d . A W e b s i t e c a l l e d Scottrade as its custodian. So InvestForLess allows investors InvestForLess members have to buy load funds without access to the same share classes paying a commission and, in that are available to other some cases, to invest modest advisers on the Scottrade amounts in low-cost fund share network. Among the load funds c l a s s e s t h a t o f t e n w o u l d available without commission o t h e r w i s e r e q u i r e i n i t i a l are all 12 featured in Our minimums of $100,000 or more. Favorite Broker-Sold Funds. InvestForLess is sort of like the If this seeming loophole is so Costco of mutual funds. It BUY page 62 charges $250 per year for

Prepping Your Home for a Sale (Kiplinger Personal Finance)

fixtures, cabinetry hardware, and maybe those harvest-gold Buyers are on a blind date with appliances. The new stuff your home, and they want love needn't be top-of-the-line, just at first sight. So make it pretty. clean and current. Agent Janis Steve Vieux got rid of heaps of Morgan advises her clients in s t u f f - - i n c l u d i n g t h i n g s San Antonio to add granite belonging to his brother, who countertops to make their had once been a roommate -- kitchens "pop". and spent $2,500 to have his Agent Bob Bower of house cleaned, the interior California's Silicon Valley urges repainted, the exterior power- sellers to pay for home and washed, and his tiny yard termite inspections (about $650 spruced up. to $750 for both) and fix as If time and money allow, much of the little stuff as they replace lighting and plumbing can before putting a house on

the market. Then he presents the reports and a "work completed" worksheet to buyers, a strategy that he says inspires higher offers. With the basics taken care of, it's time for staging -- window dressing your home to increase its appeal. Staged homes sell more quickly and at the top of their price range compared with similar homes that aren't staged. Stagers declutter if you haven't, rearrange furniture to improve traffic flow and create a sense of spaciousness, and make your

decor less reflective of your personal tastes. If your home is vacant, they bring in furniture so buyers can imagine themselves living there. Home sellers spend an average of $1,800 to stage a home, but the cost can be $5,000 or more. Agents may provide staging as part of their fee. (For more information on home staging, read 6 Ways to Stage Your Home for Less Than $1,000) One bit of good news for sellers: Agents say contractors, including stagers, are anxious

for the work. Bower suggests asking for two or three bids and playing them one against the other. When you're ready to show, "pretend you're giving a party," says Morgan. Hide the cat box, don't leave the bed unmade or laundry on the floor, and open the curtains and leave all the lights on. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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easy to exploit, why hasn’t anyone come up with this model before? “Any registered adviser could have done this in the past,” says Kevin Knull, chief executive of InvestForLess, which is based in White Stone, Va. That no one has done so is presumably because loads, which typically run up to 5.75% for stock funds, are so lucrative for the people who sell the funds. Granted, $250 may seem like a mighty sum if you currently use a discount-brokerage platform and buy only no-load, notransaction-fee funds. But the figure is dwarfed by the size of the typical sales charge. For example, someone investing $10,000 in the Class A shares of Growth Fund of America (symbol AGTHX) would save the initial $575 sales fee, quickly offsetting the first year’s membership cost. By getting Growth Fund of America’s lowcost F-1 share class ( GFAFX) through the InvestForLess service, the customer would also save $7 a year in annual fees. Should you decide you don’t want to purchase any more funds through the site, you could transfer your fund shares to your ordinary brokerage account and avoid the $250-peryear fee. The site’s other plus is that it gives clients access to share classes with prohibitively high minimums. Under

InvestForLess’s arrangement with Scottrade, the service can drop its initial minimum investment for many funds to $100 once its members’ total assets in a given share class meet the minimum initial investment for that class (not all fund families permit this kind of aggregation, but InvestForLess will make use of the option for all fund families that do). For example, the listed minimum on the site for the institutional share class of Pimco Total Return ( PTTRX) is currently $100,000. But once InvestForLess reaches that threshold, it can drop the minimum for its members to $100. You’ll pay a $17 transaction fee to Scottrade to buy that share class. But considering that the expense ratio is just 0.46% for the institutional class, compared with 0.75% for the Class D shares ( PTTDX), which are sold without a sales charge by many discount brokers, it may make more sense to pay the transaction fee. For investors, this new service is an obvious win. “The more opportunities investors have to purchase quality investments at a low cost, the better off we all are,” says Diahann Lassus, an adviser and former chairwoman of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors. But for brokers and advisers who earn their livelihoods from sales commissions, and for the

fund companies that rely on these sales channels, InvestForLess poses an undeniable threat. “It could carve out a niche from their business,” Lassus says. In fact, InvestForLess originally launched with Charles Schwab & Co. as its custodian, and it had been operating for several weeks on Schwab’s platform until Schwab unexpectedly terminated the relationship in early March. “Schwab’s Advisor Services platform is designed for independent investment advisers who provide personalized investment advice,” says Schwab spokeswoman Alison Wertheim, implying that Schwab took issue with the do-it-yourself format of InvestForLess. But considering that Schwab acts as the custodian for some 6,000 advisers, who entrust approximately $590 billion in fee-generating assets with the firm, it doesn’t seem like a stretch to imagine that protecting other advisers’ interests could have come into play. Knull stresses that he isn’t trying to make war on the advisory profession. “Most investors need some advice,” he says, “but advisers should be able to justify their fees.” To this end, he’s building a network of fee-only advisers (who don’t accept commissions) to be affiliated with the site.

Conflicts with fund companies that rely heavily on advisers and brokers could pose further hurdles for the fledgling firm. “To establish an account with American Funds, we require than an investor use an adviser,” says American Funds spokesman Chuck Freadhoff. “InvestForLess appears to be a registered investment adviser and as such would meet that requirement, but we are reviewing its business model.” However, American Funds may be swimming against the tide of the industry, which is moving ever closer to eliminating the divide between load and no-load fund families. Longtime load shop Pimco started offering noload Class D shares 12 years ago to supplement its roster of load-bearing alphabet-soup fund shares. More recently, Eaton Vance, Putnam and several other load shops have started offering no-load or load-waived shares of some of their funds on certain discount-brokerage platforms. That InvestForLess is furthering this trend “doesn’t surprise me,” says David Speck, managing director of Speck Caudron Investment Group. “Think about what’s happened in this industry over the years. First there were negotiated commissions. Then there were discount brokers. Then there was the increased presence of no -load funds.” The common

thread? Expanding access and falling costs. If this sounds too good to be true or if you get the willies thinking about entrusting your money to a new advisory firm, you can take comfort in InvestForLess’s relationship with Scottrade. As custodian, Scottrade has actual possession of client assets and sends out members’ monthly account statements. (By contrast, convicted swindler Bernard Madoff had no custodian and sent investors’ statements directly from his office.) Members can even use Scottrade’s brick-and-mortar offices for dropping off paperwork. InvestForLess is also currently working to bring Fidelity on board as a second custodian, in which case new members would choose which of the two firms they want to take possession of their assets. For penny pinchers, the site opens up a universe of funds that was previously unavailable. And for investors who work with advisers paid on commission or through assetbased fees, the site gives you an alternate way of accessing the same funds you’re already invested in, for a fraction of the cost. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, BUY page 63

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Make the Most of Health Care Reform (Kiplinger Personal Finance)

the policy. If they’re healthy, they may get a better deal on Who will benefit from the new their own. In most states, people health-care-reform law over the in their early twenties can buy next few months, and how can health insurance for $150 per those people make the most of month. It will be easy to shop it? for a policy starting in 2014, Two key groups will benefit w h e n t h e l a w e s t a b l i s h e s from the new law within the insurance exchanges to help next six months. Here’s what people buy coverage. But until they need to know. then, a good place to shop is at Recent grads and young adults. eHealthInsurance.com, or find a The law requires insurers to let local agent at www.nahu.org. dependent children stay on their And even after the law starts parents’ policies until age 26, requiring insurers to cover w h i c h w i l l h e l p c o l l e g e dependents until age 26, it may graduates who don’t have a job n o t h e l p e v e r y o n e . “ T h e with benefits. However, the new legislation did not specify rule won’t take effect until exactly who will be eligible for September 23. coverage through the extension About half the states currently through age 26,” says Tanya have laws permitting grown kids Schwartz, policy analyst at the to stay on their parents’ policies Kaiser Family Foundation. Most until at least age 25 or 26 (see states that let grown kids stay on the National Conference of State parents’ policies do not require Legislatures table for a list of the kids to be claimed as each state’s rules). But new dependents on their parents’ tax grads in other states may still returns. But the new law could need to find coverage for a few impose that requirement. The months before the law kicks in. Secretary of Health and Human Until then, they could remain Services will be creating the on their parents’ policies under regulations over the next few COBRA, but the price can be months to spell out those details. steep -- often $200 to $300 per Some states may continue to month or more, depending on offer more-generous rules.

BUY continued from page 62

Term Extraction.

It will also be important to see how the extended coverage will be priced. Under many state laws now, you do not have to pay extra to keep an adult child on your policy if you would have kept a family policy to insure younger siblings. But if the insurer bases premiums on the number of children, or if you’re insuring only one child and could otherwise switch from family coverage to coverage for a single person or couple, compare that extra cost with the price of buying an individual policy for your young adult. Use the same strategy to determine whether it's a better deal to keep your kids on your policy under the new law or to have them get their own policy. If your child does buy his or her own coverage, a great way to lower the cost is to raise the deductible -- especially if he or she rarely visits the doctor and needs insurance primarily for catastrophic coverage. If the deductible is at least $1,200 for self-only coverage, the child can qualify for a health savings account and make taxdeductible contributions that can be used tax-free for medical

expenses in any year. People with self-only coverage can contribute up to $3,050 to an HSA in 2010. HSAs still exist under the new law but with a higher penalty (rising from a 10% tax to 20%) on any amount withdrawn for nonmedical expenses before age 65. People with health issues. The new law appropriates $5 billion to establish a temporary highrisk pool to provide coverage for people with health issues, starting 90 days after the law was signed (June 23) and remaining in effect until 2014, when insurers will be prohibited from rejecting anyone because of preexisting conditions. The new national high-risk pool will be particularly helpful for people who have trouble finding coverage in states that don’t have open high-risk pools now, including Arizona, Florida and Nevada. But there is a big catch: You need to be uninsured for at least six months to qualify for the new national high-risk pool. Many state high-risk pools, on the other hand, currently let you in if you’ve been rejected by an

insurer and don’t require you to be uninsured. It’s dangerous to be uninsured, especially if you have medical issues, so exploring your options now is a good idea. See the National Association of State Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans for a list of states with high-risk pools and contact information to see whether you can qualify for coverage as soon as possible. Some of the states with highrisk pools that work well may be able to continue running their own pools, but new plans (or one national plan) will still need to be set up to cover the states that don't have a working highrisk plan now. The new plans must follow the provisions of the law, which includes consumer protections such as limiting the maximum out-ofpocket spending to $5,950 for individual coverage or $11,900 for families. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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Why the Health Care Bill May Eventually Curb Medical Costs (Kiplinger Personal Finance)

private plans but not eliminate it. Private payers currently pay Make no mistake: The health higher costs because hospitals care bill’s biggest change will and doctors charge them more to be to extend care to about 32 compensate for care that is million Americans who have no provided to those without insurance now. It will also stop insurance as well as those in insurers from canceling Medicare and Medicaid. coverage for many people who F a m i l i e s U S A r e c e n t l y get sick or who have exceeded estimated that families pay coverage caps. But on the long about $1,000 more on average road to winning passage, the each year because of this cost original goal -- slowing the shifting. g r o w t h o f m e d i c a l c o s t s Obviously, with more of the (bending the cost curve, in uninsured covered, this cost Washington parlance) was shifting should be affected, but moved to the backseat. given the fact that half of the Still, there are many provisions newly covered will be in in the bill that can save in the Medicaid, cost shifting will still long term. Most are pilot g o o n , s i n c e M e d i c a i d programs that need to be tested reimbursements are below to see if they work -- a process market. A 2008 actuarial study that will take about five years. by Milliman, a consulting and O t h e r c o s t c u t t i n g m o v e s actuarial firm, found that depend on details that regulators Medicaid reimburses hospitals will have to fill in. And some at an average of 67% of private big ones depend on Congress plan rates and pays doctors at an having the political will to average of 53%. follow through. “Most of the Several Medicare pilot projects steps represent a down payment could bring systemwide reforms on delivery system reform. to the health care delivery More will need to be done,” system and yield significant cost says Ken Sperling with Hewitt savings. The law orders pilot Associates, a benefits consulting p r o g r a m s i n v a l u e b a s e d firm. hospital purchasing, payment Covering most of the uninsured bundling, preventable hospital should reduce cost shifting to readmissions and accountable

care organizations. If successful, these changes would be expanded to the entire Medicare program and would become mainstream as private payers followed suit. “Medicare is a great laboratory for delivery system innovation,” says Sperling. The hospital value-based purchasing pilot will launch in fiscal year 2013 and will base Medicare payments to hospitals on quality and outcomes. accountable care organizations focuses on coordinating the overall care delivered to Medicare patients. (Hewitt estimates that these organizations can be 10% to 15% more efficient and deliver better quality.) "Payment bundling" involves paying for services based on an episode of care rather than on fee-forservice. Bundled payments could create more incentives for efficient treatments and could be adjusted based on outcomes, say health care policy experts. "Preventable readmissions" would penalize hospitals if a patient comes back when that could have been avoided. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) expects this to save about $2.1 billion over 10 years.

An independent commission with the job of reining in Medicare cost increases also has promise. The 15-member Independent Medicare Payment Advisory Board will be created in 2014 and will make recommendations to Congress to reduce costs and improve quality for Medicare beneficiaries. When the program’s cost projections exceed certain targets, the board’s proposals will take effect unless Congress passes an alternative that would achieve the same savings. The CBO estimates that this could yield substantial savings of $22 billion over 10 years and $7 billion a year beginning in 2019. But if history is any guide, getting the board’s recommendations passed could be a tough sell. Earlier efforts by Congress to rein in Medicare reimbursements to physicians, for example, have been deferred year after year. “Politics often trumps policy,” says Sperling. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.