California Supreme Court set to rule on redevelopment money

The California Supreme Court will issue a long-awaited ruling Thursday on the legality of the state's move to grab $1.7 billion in redevelopment money to help close California's budget shortfall -- a move that rocked cities around the Bay Area and across the state.

The ruling, expected at 10 a.m., should give critical guidance on two state laws: one that dissolves redevelopment agencies and redirects their property tax revenues to the state, and a second that allows agencies to stay afloat if they agree to relinquish a large portion of their funding, which will be used to pay for schools.

San Jose's agency, until recently the state's second largest and the architect of the city's downtown renewal, said it could not afford the payment for schools and would close shop. But most others in the state -- including Oakland, San Francisco, Walnut Creek and Concord -- are hoping to pay the money and survive. Oakland, for instance, would like to use redevelopment money in its bid to retain the A's baseball team, which San Jose is trying to land.

The state's high court promised a 10 a.m. ruling on its website Wednesday. The Supreme Court previously had agreed to rule on the crucial issue by Jan. 15, when half of the redevelopment money is slated to be turned over to the state for the 2011-12 fiscal year.

Redevelopment agencies, joined by the cities of San Jose and Union City, challenged the budget move earlier this year in a lawsuit, arguing that

it violates the terms of voter-approved Proposition 22, a measure designed to bar the state from seizing local funding, including redevelopment money, to pay its bills. Redevelopment advocates maintain the budget gambit is unconstitutional, while state lawmakers and the governor insist the Legislature has ultimate authority over redevelopment funding.

During arguments in November, the seven-member Supreme Court sent mixed signals on how it may rule in the case.

But the stakes are high for California's already shaky budget outlook and the fate of the state's nearly 400 redevelopment agencies.

Contact Howard Mintz at 408-286-0236.

Source: http://www.sgvtribune.com/news/ci_19632057?source=rss

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Did Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson Just Play Scrooge to the Democrats' Christmas? (ContributorNetwork)

ANALYSIS | The word "Nebraska" loosely translates as "broad river" according to Netstate.com. And that's just what the Democrats are going to have to cross if they want to hold onto the Senate, now that Nebraska Senate Democrat Ben Nelson called it quits for after a career in statewide and national politics spanning more than two decades. Will such a retirement spell doom for Senate Democrats and their bid to hold onto the upper house of Congress?

Republicans probably perceived Nelson as "Dead Man Walking" after his health care vote, but Nelson made a career of defying expectations. He ousted a Republican Governor in a stand-pat election year in 1990. He was overwhelmingly reelected in a bad Democratic year (1994). He won an open seat in 2000, the same year Bush won and took Nebraska handily. And he coasted to a senatorial re-election in 2006. His only stumble came in 1996 when he lost an open seat Senate race (to independent-minded Republican Chuck Hagel), but only after breaking a campaign promise not to run for another office while governor, according to the Associated Press.

What's more is that this upsets Democratic Party plans. They had already purchased a number of ad buys, according to Schulte and Margasak. Nelson had a decent war chest, according to The Blaze. Plus, there was the prospect of a messy Republican primary between the state's Attorney General, State Treasurer, a legislator and business executive, which would have made things easier for Nelson.

There are no easy Democratic candidates to trot out as replacements. The entire congressional delegation is Republican, as are all statewide offices. Politics1.com lists Larry Marvin as a potential candidate (an Air Force veteran and prior candidate for office). There's also Scott Kleeb (former Congressional candidate) and Bill Hoppner (who ran twice for Governor, losing once to Nelson after a lengthy recount by 40 votes, and got 46 percent of the vote in a 1998 contest to succeed Nelson according to OurCampaigns.com), but only the younger Kleeb is likely to consider the election.

A more likely option could come from the state's second district, where Obama narrowly won in 2008. According to Politics1.com, three Democrats were attempting to unseat Republican Congressman Lee Terry: Douglas County Treasurer John Ewing, State Senator Gwen Howard, and Howard Buffett (listed as a former US Defense Dept. Official, Farmer, Philanthropist and Democratic Activist by Politics1.com). One of them could step out the race (where Terry faces his own primary) and switch to the Senate race.

Some on Yahoo Answers want Bob Kerrey to come back into politics. That may be wishful thinking on the respondents' part, but one cannot completely rule it out.

Whoever the Democrats run, it will be an uphill battle. For all their bad-mouthing of Ben Nelson, he was rated as a "toss-up" by the Charlie Cook Political Report, for race ratings in December 1 and 22 in the big red state of Nebraska. Already, there are 10 toss-up races; eight of them involved seats Democrats needed to defend. Only a Kerrey comeback might make this a toss-up.

Nelson's departure is likely to move the race into the Republican column, unless three things happen. First, the expected divisive GOP primary needs blood on the walls. Even this is not a guarantee, as Hagel was able to overcome a bitter intra-party feud against Don Stenberg (then-Attorney General, now State Treasurer, who wants Nelson's job). Second, Democrats need little or no in-fighting in their own primary. Third, Obama's fortunes need to rebound in a big way. He needs better economic numbers, or at least some sort of positive trend. And, as Cook wrote in the National Journal "If Republicans nominate someone whom swing voters find unpalatable, or if the GOP nominee self-destructs, Obama will benefit." And I have yet to meet a Republican in my conservative bastion of West Georgia (which resembles Nebraska for political ideology) who is enthusiastic about any of the choices, save Ron Paul supporters.

Democrats (and Democrat-leaning allies) must defend 23 of the 33 seats up for grabs in 2012, so the math was already against them. Without a big name entering the race, the Senate is even more likely to shift Republican next year.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/democrats/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20111228/pl_ac/10756711_did_nebraska_sen_ben_nelson_just_play_scrooge_to_the_democrats_christmas

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GOP Walked Into Payroll Trap

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UFCs Chael Sonnen ranked among top 10 sports villains for 2011

Outspoken and outrageous Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) middleweight, Chael Sonnen, finds himself right smack in the middle of a not-so prestigious list that includes sports figures such as pro-tennis star Serena Williams and NBA Commissioner David Stern.

According to Yahoo! Sports, Sonnen is number five on its top 10 list of sports villains for 2011. Here is the description:

5. Chael Sonnen -- A one-man MMA goon squad who has ripped on Octagon girls, stormed out of interviews and makes WWE declarations to beaten opponents. The highly-ranked American middleweight had off-octagon problems as well. In January, he pleaded guilty to mortgage fraud and received two years' probation.

With his knack for getting a rise out of anybody on the promotion's roster with his verbal attacks and quick wit, the former NCAA All-American wrestler has never been one to shy away to speaking his mind.

So much so, in fact, that UFC President Dana White says he hasn't seen (or in this case heard) anyone have a way with words since the great Muhammad Ali. UFC Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva, as well as most fighters who hail from Brazil, have been the primary target of Sonnen's one-man good squad.

However, no one is seemingly safe from his sharp tongue, including other sports figures such as seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and even UFC Octagon girl Arianny Celeste, among others.

To see the rest of Yahoo's "Top 10 Sports Villains for 2011" click here.

Source: http://www.mmamania.com/2011/12/28/2667173/ufc-middleweight-chael-sonnen-among-top-10-sports-villains-for-2011

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Occupy the Caucuses Meets to Plan A Week of Protests (ABC News)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/179959823?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Team Canada Table Hockey scores on iOS

In partnership with Hockey Canada, Stinger Games today introduces Team Canada Table Hockey 1.0 to the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch this Christmas. Challenge a friend to a game of table hockey over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth in this face paced Red vs. White game. Showcasing realistic 3D physics using the Bullet Physics, with great graphics and challenging CPU opponents. Compete against other players worldwide to see who has the best skills using OpenFeint and Game Center Leaderboards and more.

Read more

Source: http://www.appnewsbureau.com/1629/team-canada-table-hockey-scores-on-ios/

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Atomic refrigerator could make coldest things possible even colder

The level of control over matter that scientists are now developing to create ultra-cold objects could also be used to create entirely new states of matter and super-powerful quantum computers, researchers added. ?

The coolest things of the future might be created using what are essentially refrigerators that work on the atomic level, researchers say.

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The level of control over matter that scientists are now developing to create ultra-cold objects could also be used to create entirely?new states of matter?and super-powerful quantum computers, researchers added.

Scientists routinely cool matter to a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero,?the coldest temperature?theoretically possible, which corresponds to?minus 459.67 degrees?Fahrenheit (minus-273.15 Celsius). Still, they would like to chill matter to even-colder temperatures to better understand other extreme phenomena, such as superconductivity, where electrons zip without resistance through objects.

Now physicists reveal a new way to create ultra-cold matter, with an idea similar to how fridges work. Refrigerators pump a fluid known as a refrigerant around the area they are cooling. This fluid sucks up heat. The refrigerant is then pumped someplace where it dumps this heat.

Chill atoms

First the researchers cooled?atoms of rubidium?with lasers. When set up properly, these beams can force atoms to glow in a way that makes them emit more energy than they absorb, thus making them colder.

When the atoms gave off light as a result of being hit with the laser, this exerted a slight pressure on them. The scientists took advantage of that pressure to control the atoms, either keeping them in place or moving them around, sometimes creating collisions. [Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles]

The researchers then made the atoms even colder with evaporative cooling, in which matter gets cooled in much the same way as a cup of coffee loses its warmth ? the hottest atoms are allowed to evaporate, leaving behind the colder ones.

Finally, the researchers used webs of lasers known as "optical lattices." When two atoms are made to collide within the optical lattice, the excitations of one suppress the excitations of the other, a phenomenon called "orbital excitation blockade." The excited atoms are then removed from the system -- taking away entropy, the amount of energy available for work -- thus causing the remaining atoms to chill down.

In experiments with rubidium atoms in optical lattices, the physicists successfully demonstrated they could remove entropy from atoms via orbital excitation blockade. In principle, they can reach temperatures 10-to-100-times colder than currently achieved, to temperatures of tenths-to-hundredths-of-a-billionth of a degree above absolute zero. However, they likely need lasers of longer wavelengths to do so in real life, said researcher Markus Greiner, a physicist at Harvard University.

Exotic matter

Their research could help "create exotic new states of matter, ones never seen before," Greiner told LiveScience. "Who knows what the properties of these materials might be?"

The ability to create perfect arrays of atoms could also be "a great starting point for a general-purpose quantum computer," Greiner said. Quantum computers exploit the?bizarre nature of quantum physics?? such as how subatomic particles can effectively spin in two opposite directions at the same time ? to run calculations exponentially faster than normal computers for certain problems.

Research into?quantum computers?has mostly been on devices designed to each crunch one specific kind of problem, but optical lattices could lead to general-purpose quantum computers that, like modern personal computers, can tackle many different kinds of problems.

The scientists detailed their findings in the Dec. 22 issue of the journal Nature.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/xfBDGXb_WRM/Atomic-refrigerator-could-make-coldest-things-possible-even-colder

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Afghanistan sets ground rules for Taliban

KABUL?? Afghanistan will accept a Taliban liaison office in Qatar to start peace talks but no foreign power can get involved in the process without its consent, the government's peace council said, as efforts gather pace to find a solution to the decade-long war.

Afghanistan's High Peace Council, in a note to foreign missions, has set out ground rules for engaging the Taliban after Kabul grew concerned that the United States and Qatar, helped by Germany, had secretly agreed with the Taliban to open an office in the Qatari capital, Doha.

U.S. officials have held about half a dozen meetings with their insurgent contacts, mostly in Germany and Doha with representatives of Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban's Quetta Shura, this year to prepare the way for face-to-face talks between the group and the Afghan government.

A representative office for the group is considered the starting point for such talks and Doha has in the past served as a meeting ground for initial contacts.

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But the Afghan peace commission which has suffered a series of setbacks including the assassination of its head in September said that negotiations with the Taliban could only begin after they stopped violence against civilians, cut ties to al Qaeda, and accepted the Afghan constitution which guarantees civil rights and liberties, including rights for women.

The council, according to a copy of the 11-point note made available to Reuters, also said any peace process with the Taliban would have to have the support of Pakistan since members of the insurgent group were based there.

"The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is in agreement regarding the opening of an office for the armed opposition, but only to move forward the peace process and conduct negotiations," the council said.

Story: Suicide bomb kills at least 20 in Afghanistan

The government would prefer such an office in either Saudi Arabia or Turkey, both of which it is close to, but was not averse to Doha as long as the authority of the Afghan state was not eroded and the office was only established for talks, officials said.

"We are saying Saudi or Turkey are preferable, we are not saying it has to be there only. The only condition is it should be in an Islamic country," said a government official.

President Hamid Karzai's administration recalled its ambassador from Doha last week, apparently angry that it had been kept in the dark about the latest round of contacts with the insurgent group.

Officials said Kabul was also deeply concerned about reports that the United States was considering the transfer of a small number of Afghan prisoners from Guantanamo Bay military prison to Doha as a prelude to the talks.

"We are a sovereign country, we have laws. How can you transfer our prisoners from one country to another. Already it's a violation to have them in Guantanamo Bay," the official said.

The Afghan government wanted the prisoners to be returned to its custody, the official said.

Reuters reported this month that the United States was considering the transfer of an unspecified number of Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo Bay into Afghan government custody as part of accelerating, high-stakes diplomacy.

"We have no problem with this. In fact we have been demanding this for a while. These are Afghan prisoners," said the official, who declined to be identified.

The tension between the Karzai administration and the United States over engaging the Taliban underscores the challenges of seeking a political settlement as the West prepares to withdraw most combat troops from the country by 2014.

Efforts to engage the insurgent group have faced a string of setbacks, the most recent being the assassination of the head of the peace council and former president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, in September at the hands of a suicide bomber who pretended to be a Taliban emissary.

Hardening of positions
It led to a hardening of positions with Karzai saying the government could not talk to suicide bombers and that there should be an address for the Taliban so that negotiators know they are talking to the right representatives.

"We are committed to the reconciliation process, the experience of the last 10 years shows no military solution is possible. Talking to the armed opposition is the key in this regard," said presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi.

White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said the United States backed steps toward reconciliation that bring Afghans together and allow insurgents eschewing violence and abiding by the Afghan constitution to come off the battlefield.

"We will join initiatives that support Afghan-led reconciliation. Pakistan also has an important role to play in supporting the Afghan-led process," she said.

A State Department official added Washington will continue to work very closely with Kabul authorities to draw in Taliban fighters who break from al Qaeda terrorists and agree to respect the rights of Afghans, including women and ethnic minorities.

"We believe it is in the interests of both of our countries, as well as the region as whole, to work together to support a stable, secure, and prosperous Afghanistan inside a stable, secure, and prosperous region," the State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Afghan peace council, laying down the markers for engagement with the Taliban, said well known figures from both the Taliban and the government had to be involved in talks.

It said that "before any negotiations can take place, violence against Afghan people must stop and that the armed opposition must cut ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups".

It also said that the Taliban must accept the constitution and honor the gains made in the last 10 years since they were ousted from power, conditions that the Taliban have shown no sign of accepting.

The Taliban do not accept the constitution and have vowed to carry on fighting until all foreign troops have left the country.

The peace council said Pakistani support was necessary for talks to take place, another condition that makes the task harder because of fraught ties between the United States and Pakistan which fears it is being shut out of the process.

Opening a Taliban office in a third country is seen as a way to create distance from Pakistan which has longstanding ties to the insurgent group.

But the government official said he did not think the peace council had laid down such tough conditions that the talks would fail even before they started.

"We don't think it's a deal breaker. We are quite optimistic," he said.

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45791868/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/

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The Top 30 Android Apps And Games Of 2011

Android apps come in all shapes and sizes - literally. Unlike iOS applications, which are basically created for two form factors, Android apps need to be developed with dozens (if not hundreds) of device-types in mind. This is on top of the inconsistent operating system releases still mucking things up. While all of this fragmentation is a headache for developers, ignoring a platform with 50 percent market share would ultimately lead to their peril. The best Android apps are thus the ones that can both push the technological envelope while also remaining accessible to the vast majority of users. This is no easy feat. We divided our list of the best 30 Android apps into four distinct categories. The top ten apps come from third-party developers, and, if not exclusive to Android, were created primarily for the platform. Additional sections include the best new or significantly updated apps from Google, as well as the best apps and games that appeared first on iOS but later arrived to Android in 2011.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/qyOy3Wpfq_M/

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VeloBusDriver: Microsoft was a ghost town this AM. I'm driving the last 242 through campus to Northgate - any bets on how many passengers I pick up?

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Demi Lovato Lashes Out at Disney Channel for Eating Disorder Jokes (omg!)

Demi Lovato took to her Twitter account Friday to scold the Disney Channel for including an eating disorder joke in one of its shows.

The former star of Disney's Sonny With a Chance tweeted about the joke made on the network's comedy Shake It Up ? one of the female characters says, "I could just eat you up -- well, if I ate" ? and blasted Disney for making light of the very medical condition that forced her to exit her series after two seasons. Lovato, 19, underwent treatment last year for an eating disorder and self-injury and has been open about her struggle with bulimia since she completed treatment in January.

The former star of Sonny With a Chance tweeted about the Shake It Up joke ? "I could just eat you up, well, if I ate" ? and proceeded to blast Disney for making a joke about the very medical condition that forced her to exit her series after two seasons. Lovato, 19, underwent treatment last year for an eating disorder and self-injury and has been open about her struggle with bulimia since she completed treatment in January.

Demi Lovato defends weight: I'm healthy and happy

"I find it really funny how a company can lose one of their actresses from the pressures of an eating disorder and yet still make joke about that very disease," she tweeted Friday. "Dear Disney Channel, EATING DISORDERS ARE NOT SOMETHING TO JOKE ABOUT."

Lovato also took Disney to task for its use of increasingly petite actresses. "Is it just me or are the actresses getting thinner and thinner," she wrote. "I miss the days of Raven, and Lizzie McGuire."

Demi Lovato: I will deal with my eating disorder for the rest of my life

Less than three hours after Lovato's complaints, Disney Channel's official Twitter account said it would review the episodes. "We hear you and are pulling both episodes as quickly as possible and reevaluating them," Disney Channel's public relations team tweeted late Friday. "It's never our intention to make light of eating disorders!"

In addition to the Shake It Up episode in question, Disney Channel also pulled an episode of Sonny With a Chance's spin-off series, So Random!, after a fan tweeted to Lovato that it also featured an eating disorder joke.

Related Articles on TVGuide.com

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/entertainment/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/omg_rss/rss_omg_en/news_demi_lovato_lashes_disney_channel_eating_disorder_jokes224700303/44000653/*http%3A//omg.yahoo.com/news/demi-lovato-lashes-disney-channel-eating-disorder-jokes-224700303.html

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Trottier leads Oldtimers Hockey Challenge in Cops for Cancer fundraiser

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Bryan Trottier was a modern-day player with old-fashioned attributes. At a time when specialists were beginning to take over from the all-round player, Trottier was a throwback. He was a defensively sound centreman with the vision and instincts of a pure scorer.

Over an 18-year National Hockey League career, he led his teams to the Stanley Cup six times, including four consecutive titles with the New York Islanders in the early 1980s. And his achievements went beyond team success. He won the Calder Trophy as the league?s top rookie, the Art Ross Trophy as top scorer and the Hart Trophy as the most valuable player. Trottier, at his retirement, was the league?s sixth-highest all-time scorer.

In 1974, however, the NHL was reacting to the threat of the World Hockey Association. The elder league held a semi-secret draft with an emphasis on underaged players ? teenagers who were 17 and 18 years old. Trottier was chosen 22nd overall in the second round, and he was the ninth underaged player taken that year.

He was a promising forward, but hardly anyone pegged him as a dominating player. The Islanders, the team that selected him, even suggested he spend another year in junior, making him the only secret underaged player to wait to turn pro following that draft.

The Islanders offered to pay Trottier all the salary and bonuses he would have earned in the pro league ? a strange arrangement for a young team in a rebuilding stage, but surely a vote of confidence that he appreciated and remembered.

Still, that strategy would pay dividends for Trottier and the Islanders, not to mention Lethbridge, the WCIHL team he starred for in 1974-75. Trottier led that league with 98 assists and 144 points, earning most valuable player honours and confirming the wisdom of the decision to keep him in junior that extra year.

When the 1975-76 season began, Trottier was in the NHL, centering a line between Clark Gillies and Billy Harris. In his second game, he had a hat trick and five points. After 11 games, he had 20 points and word began to spread, especially after his rugged defensive work shut down opposing stars. Trottier finished the year with league records for a rookie in assists and points, breaking Marcel Dionne?s totals, and was an easy choice for the Calder Trophy as the top newcomer.

The rebuilding years for the Islanders were over in 1977-78, when Trottier and the team began to dominate the league. Trottier played most of the time with Mike Bossy on the right wing, a pure shooter who converted many of Trottier?s pinpoint passes, and Gillies on the left wing, a grinder who provided the brawn and much of the corner work necessary for success.

The line was the most dominant in the league since Phil Esposito had teamed with Ken Hodge and Wayne Cashman for the Bruins earlier in the decade ? a troika that was successful for many of the same reasons as the Islanders? top guns.

Trottier was second to Guy Lafleur in the scoring race in 1978 and led the NHL with 77 assists. The next year he was unstoppable, using his playmaking skills to collect 87 assists and his tenaciousness around the net to record 47 goals. He was the league?s top scorer and took home the Hart Trophy as the most valuable player.

In 1980 the Islanders won the Stanley Cup and Trottier was the star of the show, leading all playoff scorers with 29 points and earning the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most outstanding post-season performer. With Wayne Gretzky?s era still on the horizon, Trottier, the quiet guy from the Prairies, was considered the best center in pro hockey.

Trottier played for Team Canada in the 1981 Canada Cup and led his Islanders to three more Stanley Cup wins to begin the new decade. He scored 50 goals in 1981-82 and was again the top playoff scorer that season.

In 1984, with another Canada Cup on the schedule, Trottier stunned the hockey world by declaring that he would play for the United States instead of Canada. Trottier was booed relentlessly, yet Canadian fans cheered another recent citizen, Peter Stastny, the Czechoslovakian-born star who had quickly been made a Canadian prior to the tournament.

Trottier spent six more seasons in New York following the Canada Cup and saw his numbers steadily fall. He was still a dedicated and effective defensive player, however, and in 1990 the Pittsburgh Penguins signed the veteran to bolster their playoff chances.

Trottier was an important part of the Penguin team that won two straight titles after he joined the squad. Stars such as Mario Lemieux and Jaromir Jagr attributed much of the team?s success to the aging star?s leadership, his drive and desire.

Trottier retired following the Penguins? second Cup victory and spent one year in the Islanders? front office. But he was soon bored with his desk job and returned to the league as a player in 1993-94 at the age of 37. He played 41 games with the Penguins while acting as an assistant coach, a job he continued after finally hanging up his skates at the end of that season.

Trottier remained with the Pens until 1997, at which time he took the coaching reigns of the AHL Portland Pirates. He returned to the NHL within a year, this time as an assistant coach with the Colorado Avalanche. Trottier helped the Avs claim their second Stanley Cup championship in 2001, adding yet another ring to his already impressive haul.

Bryan Trottier was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1997.

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Source: http://www.comoxvalleyrecord.com/sports/136108628.html

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Video: Payroll Tax Deal: Defeat for GOP?

CNBC's Eamon Javers has the details on a two month tax agreement reached in Congress, reaction from the House, with Rep. Rob Andrew, (D-NJ), and Rep. Michael Burgess, (R-TX), and the winners and losers in the standoff, with Jared Bernstein, fmr. chief ...

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/45771164/

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Michael Buble's Christmas Retains #1 Billboard Spot

Adele's 21 and Justin Bieber's Under the Mistletoe snag #2 and #3 spots.
By Rob Markman

Michael Buble's <i>Christmas</i>
Photo: Reprise

Wondering what gifts will await you on Christmas morning? Don't be surprised if Ol' St. Nick stuffs your stocking with a copy of Michael Bublé's Yuletide LP. The throwback singer sold almost 448,000 copies of his Christmas album this past week while shoppers rushed stores to snag gifts for their loved ones. The sales number was more than enough to once again perch Bublé atop the Billboard albums chart like a partridge in a pear tree and bring him that much closer to a double-platinum plaque, according to SoundScan.

Adele put in work as well, securing the #2 spot on the charts, as another 277,000 music lovers realized they should run out and buy her masterpiece 21, 43 weeks after its release. Justin Bieber's Under the Mistletoe (#3, 171,000), Lady Antebellum's Own the Night (#5, 81,000) and Drake's Take Care (#7, 77,000) all pushed past platinum this week, while the Black Keys' El Camino and Amy Winehouse's posthumous Lioness: Hidden Treasures remained in the top 10 in their second week of release. Nickelback's Here and Now (#6, 80,000), Andrea Bocelli's Concerto: One Night in Central Park (#8, 76,000) and "American Idol" winner Scotty McCreery's Clear as Day (#9, 66,000) rounded out the rest of the top 10.

Soul vocalist Anthony Hamilton saw his fifth studio album, Back to Love, miss the top 10 in its debut week, landing in the #12 position by selling almost 63,000 copies. Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa's Mac & Devin Go to High School movie soundtrack was the week's second notable debut, but one would have to imagine that the duo expected to land higher than #29. Still, once the accompanying film is actually released in 2012, the album could potentially move up.

It'll be interesting to see where veteran rappers Common and Young Jeezy will land next week with their respective albums, which were both released Tuesday.

Related Videos

• MTV First: Justin Bieber

Related Artists

• Michael Bublé
• Adele
• Justin Bieber

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1676374/michael-buble-christmas-sounscan-chart.jhtml

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Fandango Teams Up With PayPal To Help You Skip Lines At The Movie Theatre And Leave Your Wallet At Home

In case you are heading to the movie theatre this holiday season, you might want to pay for your ticket via Fandango. Using the Fandango mobile app, you can now purchase movie tickets using your PayPal account and, in some cases, get your movie ticket straight to your mobile phone, avoiding lines at the ticket counter. While Fandango has offered PayPal as a payments option on the web, this is the first time the company is using the payments platform in its iPhone and Android apps. The company, which began rolling out mobile tickets in 2010, says that more than 20 percent of Fandango?s ticket sales come from mobile devices, seeing a 73 percent year over year increase in mobile ticket sales in 2011.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/XNG5gszXSkU/

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Salesforce Moves into Human Capital Management with Rypple (NewsFactor)

Not content to shake up the CRM market alone, Salesforce.com is moving into a new social-software sector with its latest acquisition. Salesforce has acquired Rypple, a cloud-based social-performance management company, for an undisclosed amount.

With the Rypple assets and talent, Salesforce is entering the human capital management market for the social enterprise. Salesforce will relaunch Rypple as Successforce and create a new HCM division run by John Wookey, executive vice president of advanced applications at Salesforce. The company expects Rypple's tech to also bolster the value of its core products.

"As we developed Chatter, we started thinking more about how we could deploy the concept of social-networking platforms to different business processes and how it could have a huge potential impact on outcomes of those business processes," Wookey said. "The opportunity with Rypple was serendipitous."

A Social-Goals Revolution

The rumblings of a HCM software shakeup have been getting louder over the past couple of years as companies like WorkSimple and Rypple emerged on the scene with social-goals platforms. Traditional HCM software was designed for a generation of workers 30 years ago when the goal was reducing the cost and risk of employing people.

Salesforce believes the modern workforce demands new performance and leadership tools that are completely transparent and allow employees to be connected to their company's mission and each other. Apps from Rypple and WorkSimple, among others, allow for goal setting, feedback, recognition and continuous dialog to help employees align more effectively around the company mission.

"We took the science of team performance and applied the collaborative, transparent, and real-time power of social networks to create a completely new model for managing people and the work they deliver," said David Stein, co-CEO and co-founder of Rypple. "Salesforce.com gives us the opportunity to apply our expertise and extend our vision for Rypple with Successforce."

Mission-Critical Human Capital

Wookey expects the Rypple acquisition to drive Salesforce.com's suite of social products. The company plans to embed some of Rypple's next-generation features into its existing products. For example, people will be able to thank colleagues, win badges and provide recognition -- all from within Salesforce Chatter. And customers of core Salesforce products -- the Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Force.com platform -- will be able to connect with new employee feedback tools to help drive business goals and power the future of their employee social networks.

"We had always planned to begin with the business processes that are most critical, which are you onboard and manage employees in a way that aligns what they do every day with the objectives of your company and the mission of the enterprise," Wookey said. "Rypple has credibility with enough customers, and a proven model that works, as well as a team of people who understand the HCM space."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/enterprise/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20111219/tc_nf/81440

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Comprehensive euro zone deal "beyond reach": Fitch (Reuters)

ROME/BERLIN (Reuters) ? A comprehensive solution to the euro zone debt crisis is beyond the region's reach, rating agency Fitch said, warning that six of its economies including Italy and Spain could be hit with credit downgrades in the near future.

The warning late Friday, the second time in two weeks that the bloc has been threatened with multiple ratings markdowns, heightened pressure on leaders to get to grips with the turmoil.

Fitch also said it might also cut AAA-rated France within two years and urged the European Central Bank to take a more active firefighting role.

One ECB policymaker said Saturday that time was running out to come up with solutions to a crisis that could spark a global slump. Another said the bank would not expand the bond buying program it launched to keep a lid on vulnerable states' debt costs.

Underscoring tensions within the bloc, a week after a key EU summit failed to reassure financial markets the crisis was being tackled, Italy's Prime Minister Mario Monti urged EU policymakers Friday to beware of dividing the continent.

ECB ratesetter Erkki Liikanen said that, to prevent a flurry of ratings downgrades and a credit freeze, the continent's leaders needed to act fast to beef up the rescue funds designed to provide a safety net for debt-laden member countries.

"The worse scenario is that the negative cycle continues, uncertainty grows, which would lead to a global recession," Liikanen - a member of the bank's governing council -told Finnish public broadcaster YLE in an interview Saturday.

International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde had said no country was immune from the crisis and each needed to act to head off the risk of a global depression.

In a swipe against Germany, Italy's Monti said Europe's response "should be wrapped in a long-term sustainable approach, not just to feed short-term hunger for rigor in some countries."

Pushing for governments to eliminate their bloated budget deficits, Germany has led resistance to allowing the ECB to ramp up its bond purchases to a big enough scale to douse the crisis.

But Fitch added to the pressure for just such a move.

The agency said that, following the EU summit, it had concluded that "a 'comprehensive solution' to the eurozone crisis is technically and politically beyond reach."

"Of particular concern is the absence of a credible financial backstop," it said. "In Fitch's opinion this requires more active and explicit commitment from the ECB to mitigate the risk of self-fulfilling liquidity crises."

A second ECB policymaker, Juergen Stark, said expanding bond buys would not end the crisis, while swift implementation of the plan on closer fiscal union agreed at the summit was crucial.

"Don't ask too much of the central bank," Stark - who steps down from the executive board at year-end - was quoted as saying Saturday in pre-released extracts from a German magazine interview.

Graphics on euro zone crisis http://r.reuters.com/hyb65p

Interactive timeline http://link.reuters.com/rev89r

MULTIPLE DOWNGRADE THREAT

Fitch put Belgium, Spain, Slovenia, Italy, Ireland, and Cyprus on negative watch, which could mean a downgrade within three months.

"The systemic nature of the euro zone crisis is having a profoundly adverse effect on economic and financial stability across the region," it said.

Less than two weeks earlier, citing continuing disagreements among policymakers over how to tackle the crisis, rival agency Standard & Poor's put the ratings of 15 euro zone states, including Germany and France, on review for one- to two-notch downgrades.

The third main agency, Moody's, Friday cut Belgium's credit rating by two notches, saying the crisis raised funding risks for countries with high public debt burdens, and said a further downgrade was possible within two years.

Belgium's Finance Minister Steven Vanackere told Reuters on Saturday the cut was not a big surprise but had added pressure on the country to hit next year's budget deficit target of 2.

A first draft of a planned new 'fiscal compact' among euro zone countries and aspiring members, published Friday, showed that countries could be taken to the European Court of Justice if they did not meet agreed budget goals.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel - under pressure from the Bundesbank to force debt-saddled euro zone countries to reform and save their way out of crisis with austerity measures - has led a push for automatic sanctions for deficit "sinners."

This has fed concerns that excessive belt-tightening in southern countries could send their economies into a negative spiral with no prospect of growing out of crisis, while feeding resentment in the prosperous north.

In France, officials have sought to prepare the public for the likelihood that Paris will lose its top-notch rating for the first time since 1975, playing down the potential setback and focusing attention instead on questioning neighboring Britain's AAA rating. President Nicolas Sarkozy had vowed to keep the top rating, and it could become an issue in next year's election campaign.

EFSF FIREPOWER

Euro zone officials said potential downgrades, particularly from S&P, could raise the cost of borrowing for the region's existing EFSF bailout fund, but would not make a big difference to its operations.

EFSF chief Klaus Regling said Friday about 600 billion euros was available to fight the crisis.

"If Italy and Spain were to ask for support, their gross financing needs for 2012 are less than that and I don't think they would need to be taken off the market," he said.

Euro zone countries will hold talks next Monday on the draft text of the euro zone fiscal compact and on bilateral loans to the International Monetary Fund, officials in Brussels said. Slovak Finance Minister Ivan Miklos told Reuters they would commit 150 billion euros to boost the IMF's lending capacity.

The United States has refused to offer additional funding and it remains to be seen how much countries such as China, Russia, Brazil and India are willing to commit.

Commercial banks appear to be resisting pressure from governments to help debt-choked euro zone countries by using cheap money lent by the ECB to buy more sovereign bonds.

The chief executive of UniCredit, one of Italy's two biggest banks, said this week that using ECB money to buy government debt "wouldn't be logical."

Euro zone governments need to sell almost 80 billion euros of fresh debt in January alone, and the stand-off between policymakers and banks could turn the slow-burning debt crisis into a conflagration in the New Year.

(Additional reporting by Steve Scherer in Rome, Annika Breidthardt in Berlin, Gareth Gore, Natsuko Waki, Kirsten Donovan and Ana Nicolaci da Costa in London, Martin Santa in Bratislava, Ingrid Melander in Athens; Writing by John Stonestreet, Paul Carrel and Paul Taylor; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111217/bs_nm/us_eurozone

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PFT: Atlanta closing in on a magic number

Getty Images

We handle the big injury stories Friday in the rumor mill.

The rest goes right here, in America?s most enticing weekly segment about the injury report.

1. Here are the players were updated during the day on the rumor mill: Kevin Smith, Andre Johnson, Colt McCoy, Justin Tuck, and?Kyle Orton.

2. The Eagles are ready to go, except for defensive end Darryl Tapp who is doubtful with a broken rib.

3. The Jets get running back Joe McKnight and defensive lineman Mike Devito back in the lineup for their game against Philly.

4. The Packers are short a number of key players once again: Linebacker Desmond?Bishop (calf), Chad Clifton (hamstring), wideout Greg Jennings (knee), and defensive tackle Ryan Pickett (concussion) are all out. Running back Brandon Saine (concussion), James Starks (ankle), and guard Josh Sitton (knee) are questionable. Starks says he?ll play.

5. The Dolphins list quarterback?Matt Moore (head/neck), tackle Jake Long (back), and tight end Anthony Fasano (ribs) as questionable. They all practiced on a limited basis and look likely to face the Bills. ?Linebacker Koa Misi (shoulder) is out.

6. Mark Ingram is out again for the Saints because of his toe injury.

7. The Bills will be without Peter King?s favorite tight end Scott Chandler, who is out with an ankle injury.

8. The Bucs will be without receiver?Arrelious Benn on Saturday night against the Cowboys.?Defensive end Michael Bennett (toe), defensive tackle Brian Price (ankle) and wideout Sammie Stroughter (knee) are all questionable. Bennett is the longest shot of the questionables.

9. Dallas has a number of questionable starters: cornerback?Michael Jenkins (shoulder), center Phil Costa (concussion), and linebacker DeMarcus Ware (neck). Costa has been cleared, but still may sit.?Ware is a safe bet to play.

10. Three Broncos secondary members are questionable: David Bruton (achilles), Brian Dawkins (neck), and cornerback Andre? Goodman (concussion). Only Bruton missed practice all week.

11. ?The Patriots listed safety Patrick Chung and tackle Sebastian Vollmer as doubtful. That way they can downgrade them to out on Saturday and then I can get a cheap post out of it while trying to cram my ?family time? in for the week.

12. Devin Hester (ankle) is questionable for the Bears. Jay Cutler (thumb), Matt Forte (knee), and Sam Hurd (5-10 kilos) are all out.

13. The Panthers list tackle Jordan Gross (ankle) as questionable for Sunday?s game. They really missed him last week, but he returned for a limited practice Friday.

14. Kyle Orton is officially probable (thumb) for the Chiefs. He?ll start on Sunday against the Packers.

15. The Bengals will likely be without running back Brian Leonard, who is doubtful with a knee injury. The Bengals get Carlos Dunlap back. Tackle Andre Smith (ankle) is questionable after not practicing Friday.

16. The Raiders will be without wideout?Jacoby Ford (foot) and running back Darren McFadden (foot) yet again. Cornerback Chris Johnson is away from the team following the death of his sister. He?s out.

The team could get Denarius Moore (foot) back. He?s questionable. Also questionable:?safety Michael Huff (hamstring) and running back Taiwan Jones (hamstring). They didn?t practice all week. Oakland is very banged up.

17. Half of the Ravens team is questionable: Linebacker Ray?Lewis (toe), cornerback Lardarius Webb (toe), kicker Billy Cundiff (calf), ?guard Ben Grubbs (toe), defensive tackle Haloti Ngata (back), defensive tackle Cory Redding (ankle) and cornerback Chris Carr (back). Lewis is expected to return to the lineup Sunday night.

18. Cardinals quarterback Kevin Kolb (head) is officially questionable. He was limited in practice during the week, but the Cardinals? beat writers think John Skelton will get the start.

19. The Titans list quarterback?Matt Hasselbeck (calf) as questionable. He?s expected to start. Look for wideout Nate Washington (ankle) to play despite being questionable. He?s been playing in pain for weeks.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/12/15/falcons-cruising-towards-playoff-spot/related/

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Distro Issue 18 explores the life of Ron Wayne, Apple's lost founder

Some have pegged Ron Wayne as unlucky; not only did he lose big by backing out of one of the most successful companies in consumer electronics, but a set of documents he once sold for a reported $500 recently demanded $1.6 million at auction. Earlier this month, Brian Heater spent two days in the Nevada desert following Apple's third founder, a man known best for his proximity to two guys named Steve and notoriously unfortunate timing. In this issue of Distro, we'll get a glimpse inside Ron's world -- a place occupied by slot machines, antique firearms and collectible coins -- and discover what he really thinks about his onetime business partners. Also in this issue, we'll double your pleasure with a pair of LG smartphone reviews: the Nitro HD and DoublePlay. Dana Wollman will rip through Jawbone's troubled fitness device, the Up, and take Lenovo's IdeaPad U400 for a spin. Ross Rubin will serve up his opinion on "WebOS' Open Sores" and we'll explore the gadgets we can't let go of in IRL. So get to downloading!

Continue reading Distro Issue 18 explores the life of Ron Wayne, Apple's lost founder

Distro Issue 18 explores the life of Ron Wayne, Apple's lost founder originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/5gVYKTo_zpc/

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Video: Which candidate will win Iowa?

10 chilling super-nerdy snow sculptures

By Sean FallonNerd Approved? If there's one thing that I miss about living in an area that sees snowy, wintry weather, it's making snowmen. I mean, it just doesn't feel right to make a snowman out of dirt while wearing shorts.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/45689388#45689388

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Facebook Timeline Review: This Is the Greatest Thing Facebook's Ever Done [Facebook]

In The Social Network, Movie Mark Zuckerberg describes his project as the entire college social scene, put online. In a sense, he completely pulled it off. Now Real Zuck's lept beyond beer pong: your entire existence, Facebook-ified. It's terrifyingly amazing. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/pjgavIo7Tc8/facebook-timeline-review-this-is-the-greatest-thing-facebooks-ever-done

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Society may get stuck with the bill for expensive higher education

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

The rising cost of a college education and limited access to financial aid may create a less productive workforce and steeper wealth inequity, according to a study by North American economists.

Students with low-income parents are discovering that it is more difficult to find funds to pay for a college education now compared to students of similar economic backgrounds in the 1980s, said Alexander Monge-Naranjo, assistant professor of economics, Penn State.

"The consensus was that in the 1980s, credit constraints didn't seem to matter for those who went to college," said Monge-Naranjo. "But according to the latest data, we see family income and parental wealth are making a big difference in who is attending college."

Monge-Naranjo said there were several reasons for the move away from affordability. Over the last two decades, more higher-paying jobs required a college degree. The higher demand for a college education led universities to increase tuition, according to Monge-Narajo.

At the same time, money available through government loan programs remained flat or, when adjusting for in inflation, declined. During the 1990s, the percentage of undergraduates who borrowed from government lending programs increased significantly. Of those students, the ones at the top limit of their borrowing capacity tripled to 52 percent. Many more students are relying on private lenders for loans, Monge-Narajo said.

In the 1980s, credit constraints -- factors that limit financial access to college funding, such as caps on financial assistance and family income -- did not significantly stop students from attending college, once the researchers controlled for other factors, such as SAT score, age and race. Even poor students who had little financial resources to pay for college, but who were smart, could access credit to pursue an education, Monge-Naranjo said.

The researchers, who reported their findings in the current issue of the American Economic Review, said a shift occurred in the 1990s as more low-income students began to struggle to access credit to pay for a college. During the 1990s, youths from high-income families were 16 percent more likely to attend college than youths from low-income families.

Monge-Naranjo, who worked with Lance Lochner, associate professor, Western economics and director, CIBC Centre for Human Capital and Productivity, University of Western Ontario, used the most recent data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth and the Armed Forces Qualifying Test to examine the relationships between intelligence, family income and college attendance.

According to Monge-Naranjo, constraints on financial aid could have far-reaching economic impacts. When poor but intelligent workers are unable to earn a college degree, their career choices are restricted, Monge-Naranjo said. That could mean less qualified and less productive workers will attain those positions.

"It's a matter of economic efficiency," said Monge-Naranjo. "Are we choosing the best individuals for the job, or just the individual whose parents are wealthy? In the long-term that may have an effect on the economy, although it may take a couple of generations to find out and, even then, perhaps be hard to quantify."

###

Penn State: http://live.psu.edu

Thanks to Penn State for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116007/Society_may_get_stuck_with_the_bill_for_expensive_higher_education

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Teen girls send, receive 4K texts a month

Nielsen

By Athima Chansanchai

A recent report shows teens who text and surf the Web using their smartphones have tripled their data usage in the past year, with young women the most likely to let their fingers do the talking, sending and receiving nearly 4,000 messages a month on average.

Nielsen's latest analysis?reveals the ascendancy of teens into what the tracking firm labels the "mobile Data Tsunami,"??or the rapid growth of data consumption by U.S. smartphone users with the emergence of unlimited plans amid a social media-addicted society. Teens hold a formidable place as "the leading message senders," in these polls of more than 65,000 mobile subscribers who volunteered for the studies and ponied up their monthly cellphone bills.

The latest information about teens in particular give weight to anecdotal evidence of heavy texting. (For example, my friends have told me more than a few times about how rampant text messaging is among their early teen children, from dawn to well after dusk.) In the third quarter of 2011, teens ages 13-17 used an average of 320 MB of data per month, which is an increase of 256 percent from the same point last year ? growing at a rate faster than any other age group.?

Nielsen

While Nielsen finds much of this comes at the hands of teen boys, who took in 382 MB per month (vs. their female counterparts' 266 MB), teen girls are on top when it comes to messaging, with 3,952 messages per month vs. boys' 2,815. (The average per teen is 3,417.)

A year ago, Pew came out with a report showing a similar preoccupation with texting, finding that the average teen sends and receives 3,339 texts a month.

Besides messaging, teens are also consuming data on their phones for Internet browsing, social networking, email, app downloads, and app use.

What they aren't using their phones for: making voice calls. "Voice usage has declined the most among this group, from an average of 685 minutes to 572 minutes. When surveyed, the top three reasons teens said that they prefer messaging to calling was because it is faster (22 percent), easier (21 percent), and more fun (18 percent)."

Given the distraction phones ? especially smartphones???are to this particular age group, safety advocates have laid on the pressure to curb teens from texting while driving, and there are plenty of apps out there that can help parents prevent the two from mixing. But in the past, teens have pegged drinking and driving as much more dangerous than texting and driving.

More stories:

Check out Technolog on?Facebook, and on Twitter, follow?Athima Chansanchai, who is also trying to keep her head above water in the?Google+?stream.

Source: http://digitallife.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/15/9471773-average-teen-girl-send-receive-4k-texts-a-month

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Agreement near on $1 trillion spending bill (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Bipartisan agreement is near on a massive $1 trillion-plus year-end spending package and should be reached in time avert a possible government shutdown this weekend, Senate leaders said Thursday.

The optimism came hours after Republicans said they planned to push the legislation through the House with only GOP votes. Overnight, they unveiled details of the bill, which curbs agency budgets but drops many policy provisions sought by GOP conservatives.

Democrats had been holding up the huge bill, seeking leverage in talks on extending payroll tax cuts and unemployment insurance, two pillars of Obama's jobs agenda.

But Thursday morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he had talked to top Senate Democrats who helped write the spending bill and that remaining issues "should be resolvable." He and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., expressed optimism that disputes over that bill and a separate measure extending a payroll tax cut were near an end.

The spending bill contains language to roll back President Barack Obama's loosening of restrictions on the rights of Cuban immigrants to send money to relatives in Cuba or travel to the island to visit them. Earlier this year, the White House promised a veto over the restrictions on travel and gifts, which are supported by many in the GOP-leaning Cuban-American community, a powerful political force in the swing state of Florida.

Release of the legislation came just a couple of hours after the White House issued a statement saying that Obama "continues to have significant concerns about a number of provisions" in the legislation.

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer called for another stopgap funding bill to buy time for talks on both the spending bill and the payroll tax measure. Funding runs out Friday at midnight.

The underlying bill has bipartisan backing but could encounter turbulence with conservative tea party lawmakers seeking far more significant cuts to government agencies. The measure pays for day-to-day operating budgets of 10 Cabinet departments and programs ranging from border security to flood control to combating AIDS and famine in Africa.

Changes are still possible in the bill before a vote.

On spending, the measure implements this summer's hard-fought budget pact between President Barack Obama and Republican leaders. That deal essentially freezes agency budgets, on average, at levels that were approved back in April for the recently completed budget year.

The bill chips away at the Pentagon budget, foreign aid and environmental spending but boosts funding for veterans programs. The Securities and Exchange Commission, responsible for enforcing new regulations under last year's financial overhaul, won a 10 percent budget increase, even as the tax-collecting IRS absorbs a more than 3 percent cut to its budget.

Popular education initiatives for special-needs children and disadvantaged schools were basically frozen and Obama's cherished "Race to the Top" initiative, which provides grants to better-performing schools, would absorb a more than 20 percent cut.

Environmentalists scored clear wins in stopping virtually every significant GOP initiative to roll back Environmental Protection Agency rules. Most importantly, industry forces seeking to block new greenhouse gas and clean air rules, as well as a new clean water regulation opposed by mountaintop removal mining interests, were denied. But Republicans succeeded in blocking new energy efficiency standards for light bulbs and won delays to a new Labor Department rule requiring a reduction of coal dust responsible for black lung disease.

Drafted behind closed doors, the proposed bill would provide $115 billion for overseas security operations in Afghanistan and Iraq but give the Pentagon just a 1 percent boost in annual spending not directly related to the wars. The Environmental Protection Agency's budget would be cut by 3.5 percent. Foreign aid spending would drop and House lawmakers would absorb a 6 percent cut to their office budgets.

The measure generally consists of relatively small adjustments to thousands of individual programs. Agencies like the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement will get a boost within the Homeland Security Department, while GOP defense hawks won additional funding to modernize the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. The troubled, over-budget, next-generation F-35 fighter plane program would be largely protected.

Social conservatives won a ban on government-funded abortions in Washington, D.C., and restored a longstanding ban on funding for needle exchange programs used to prevent the spread of HIV. But efforts to take away federal funding for Planned Parenthood failed, as expected.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111215/ap_on_go_co/us_congress_spending

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