Wisconsin's Scott Walker poised to bury recall foes in money chase

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker raised $4.5 million in a recent five-week period ? vastly more than his opponents. The sum might scare off unions from spending big money in a potential recall election.

Even though the election to recall Gov. Scott Walker (R) of Wisconsin is months away, it is already gearing up to be an expensive fight.?

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Governor Walker has raised more in campaign donations to fight the recall effort than he did to win his seat less than two years ago. In fact, his fundraising advantage over unions leading the recall effort is so massive that unions are now questioning how much they should try to compete.

With other states including Indiana, Ohio and Florida gearing up for antiunion fights, some labor leaders are wary of dumping valuable resources into Wisconsin.?

The AFL-CIO ?always expects to be outspent,? spokesman?Jeff Hauser told The Hill, Capitol Hill's newspaper. But?Wisconsin is indicative of a deeper problem, he added, because ?the margin of being outspent is greater in 2012 than it?s ever been before.?

With big business pushing Republicans nationwide to take on unions ? the primary opposition to their pro-business agenda ? antiunion measures are getting substantial financial backing.?In Wisconsin, the disparities are stark.?

In a filing with the state?s election agency Monday, Walker disclosed that he raised about $4.5 million in the five-week period running between Dec. 11 and Jan. 17. During the past year, between Jan. 1, 2011, and Jan. 17, 2012, he raised a total of $12 million.

Walker has been actively campaigning on his record and courting donors since it became apparent last year a possible recall election loomed. In the past five weeks he spent about $4.9 million, leaving about $2.7 million in his campaign coffers.

By contrast, in the same recent five-week period, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin raised $394,213. United Wisconsin, an organization affiliated with labor unions, raised $86,379.

The recall effort is a?result of public anger that developed a year ago when Walker pushed through a bill that limited collective bargaining for many public-sector unions. Wisconsin voters successfully removed two Republican state senators from office in a recall election last summer. This current recall effort also targets Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch and four Republican state senators.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/yb3YVXdX4Lc/Wisconsin-s-Scott-Walker-poised-to-bury-recall-foes-in-money-chase

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Buffett secretary to attend State of the Union

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The secretary for one of the world's wealthiest men and the wife of late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs are among those invited by the White House to attend the State of the Union address.

The State of the Union guest list has become an annual rite, with the first lady's box taking on the sort of gravitas shown at the Academy Awards' Red Carpet ceremony. The guests often have ties to a proposal or initiative the president will outline in the address.

The White House said Debbie Bosanek, the secretary for billionaire Warren Buffett, would be among those attending the speech. Obama has frequently cited Buffett's complaint that the tax code is unfair because he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.

The White House said Laurene Powell Jobs, the wife of late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, also would attend Obama's prime-time address. Adam Rapp, a cancer survivor the White House says benefitted from Obama's health care overhaul, also will join Michelle Obama in the first lady's box Tuesday night.

Mark Kelly, former astronaut and husband of outgoing Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, will attend as well. Giffords is resigning from Congress to focus on her recovery after being shot, but will be on the House floor during the State of the Union.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-01-24-State%20of%20the%20Union-Guests/id-f3237ca595f94581b1192f29c3f5ce75

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China: Overseas groups distort truth about unrest (AP)

BEIJING ? China on Tuesday accused overseas advocacy groups of twisting the truth about unrest in a politically sensitive Tibetan region in order to undermine the government.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said order has been restored in Luhuo county in southwestern China after a clash Monday between police and Tibetans that left one Tibetan dead and four others injured.

Five police were also injured in the clash, Hong said. He called the Tibetans involved in the violence in Sichuan province's Ganzi prefecture a "mob" and said authorities will act firmly to fight crime and maintain order.

"Overseas forces of 'Tibet independence' have always fabricated rumors and distorted the truth to discredit the Chinese government with issues involving Tibet," Hong said in remarks carried by the official Xinhua News Agency.

The unrest comes amid high tensions following the self-immolations of at least 16 Buddhist monks, nuns and other Tibetans in the past year. Most have chanted for Tibetan freedom and the return of their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who fled to India amid an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

Ganzi is a rugged, deeply Buddhist region filled with monasteries that has been at the center of dissent for years. It is among the traditionally Tibetan areas of Sichuan province and other parts of western China that have been closed to outsiders for months amid a massive security presence.

Tibet activist groups and witnesses said police opened fire on protesters in Monday's violence in Luhuo. The London-based International Campaign for Tibet said three Tibetans were killed and nine wounded, while another group, Free Tibet, said one died and up to 30 others were shot and wounded in Luhuo, also known as Draggo in Tibetan.

A Tibetan monk from Shouling monastery in Luhuo said in a phone interview that police fired at about 10,000 protesters, killing one Tibetan farmer and injuring 32.

"The protesters just want peace and religious freedom," said the monk who would not give his name out of fear of government retaliation. He said the demonstrators were mostly local Tibetan residents plus a few monks and Han Chinese residents.

"Today it is quiet here, but we can see police patrolling around the government offices and the monasteries," he said.

Tuesday was a holiday for the Lunar New Year and calls to the local government and Communist Party offices rang unanswered.

Xinhua said more than 100 people, including monks, gathered to attack a police station after hearing rumors that three monks would set themselves on fire.

It said some were armed with knives and hurled stones as they smashed two police vehicles and two fire engines and stormed nearby shops.

In a sign of the government's sensitivity over the unrest, state-controlled domestic media did not report it. Hong's remarks were carried only by Xinhua's English-language service and were not posted on the Foreign Ministry's website.

Many Tibetans resent Beijing's heavy-handed rule and the large-scale migration of China's ethnic Han majority to the Himalayan region. While China claims Tibet has been under its rule for centuries, many Tibetans say the region was functionally independent for most of that time.

___

Gillian Wong can be reached on http://twitter.com/gillianwong

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/china/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120124/ap_on_re_as/as_china_tibet

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Video: Is Gingrich really an ?outside? candidate?

A Second Take on Meeting the Press: From an up-close look at Rachel Maddow's sneakers to an in-depth look at Jon Krakauer's latest book ? it's all fair game in our "Meet the Press: Take Two" web extra. Log on Sundays to see David Gregory's post-show conversations with leading newsmakers, authors and roundtable guests. Videos are available on-demand by 12 p.m. ET on Sundays.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/vp/46090442#46090442

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Aid groups: With new Africa drought looming, donors must speed response

Aid groups warned that a drought was coming to the Horn of Africa in 2011, and say now that a late response by donor nations unnecessarily cost thousands of lives.?

Scientists and aid organizations gave the world plenty of time to prepare, but a late response by the world?s donor nations cost 50,000 to 100,000 lives during last year?s drought in the Horn of Africa region.

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That is the message of a joint report by Oxfam International, Save the Children and other charities, released today, during the global meetings at Davos, Switzerland, and at the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Now, with a new drought looming in the West African nations of Mauritania, Niger, Mali, and Chad, the joint report, ?The Dangerous Delay,? is calling for an overhaul of the world?s aid delivery system to avoid more preventable deaths from starvation.

?The humanitarian community needs to come together and raise its voice louder so governments and donors know the gravity?of?crises such as the one in the?Horn?of?Africa,? said Carolyn Miles, President and CEO?of?Save the Children in a statement. ?By the time the world sees starving children on TV, it?s too?late. Tens?of?thousands?of?deaths could have been prevented had aid groups and governments received funding earlier to scale up programs.??

Aid groups estimate that 50,000 to 100,000 people died of hunger between April and August 2011, more than half of them children. Even today, the UN warns that as many as 750,000 Somalis could die in the ongoing food crisis in Somalia.

What makes the deaths in the Horn of Africa so galling for many activists is the fact that the world had advance warning. Unlike the famine in the Horn of Africa in 1984, which caused an estimated 1 million deaths in Ethiopia alone, aid organizations had received alerts from a massive computerized system called the Famine Early Warning System, which is comprised of ground sensors, satellite imagery, and field observations. FEWS-Net and other systems alerted aid groups as early as August 2010 that drought conditions were worsening, but slow funding from international donors meant that aid groups could not mount a full-scale response until July 2011, when the drought was in full force.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/xclAIUnW0yc/Aid-groups-With-new-Africa-drought-looming-donors-must-speed-response

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Tracy Morgan Hospitalized At Sundance Film Festival

Comedian Tracy Morgan was rushed to the hospital yesterday while attending the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. While attending the Creative Coalition Spotlight Awards, where he was to receive honors for the Spotlight Initiative Award actor Tracy Morgan fell down. Although there are reports speculating that he was inebriated the actor was taken to the hospital. Today his rep released the below statement on his condition. From a combination of exhaustion and altitude, Tracy is seeking medical attention. He is with his fianc? and grateful to the Park City Medical Center for their care. Any reports of Tracy consuming alcohol are 100 percent false. A spokesperson for the Park City Medical Center, where Tracy was taken, has revealed that there were not any drugs or alcohol in his system when he was admitted So between the statement from his rep and the hospital spokesperson it would appear that the 30 Rock star is going to be alright. I realize that using the excuse of exhaustion and altitude might seem like kind of like a lame excuse but anyone who has dealt with altitude when they are not sued it knows it can affect people in different ways. I know this [...]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RightCelebrity/~3/4mlV3Bt4pUM/

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UFC on FX 1 picks, Vegas-style: Could Guillard?s size be the difference?

Explosiveness against technique. It's a solid way to describe the main event tonight at UFC on FX 1.

Melvin Guillard can overwhelm his opponents, while Jim Miller can slowly pick you apart with his overall game. But there may be one other factor that determines the outcomes of this one. Guillard may simply be too big for Miller, one of the smaller fighters in the lightweight division.

Guillard tweeted this morning that he'll actually be over the welterweight limit as he steps into the Octagon tonight (9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT) for this 155-pound tilt.

Kevin Iole and Frank Trigg joined myself on ESPN1100/98.9 FM in Las Vegas to make our picks using the Sin City betting odds. Iole likes Guillard and Trigg thinks the size disparity won't make a difference. He's worried about Guillard surviving if he doesn't finish the fight in the first few minutes.

UFC on FX 1 betting odds:
Best bets in bold

Melvin Guillard (+150) vs. Jim Miller (-170)
Duane Ludwig (-105) vs. Josh Neer (-115)
Mike Easton (-345) vs. Jared Papazian (+285)
Pat Barry (-155) vs. Christian Morecraft (+135)
Jorge Rivera (+130) vs. Eric Schafer (-150)
Kamal Shalorus (-140) vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov (+120)
Daniel Roberts (+265) vs. Charlie Brenneman (-325)
Daniel Pineda (-135) vs. Pat Schilling (+115)
Nick Denis (-255) vs. Joseph Sandoval (+215)

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/ufc-fx-1-picks-vegas-style-could-guillard-195512972.html

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Britney Spears? conservatorship is set to be dropped as she prepares to wed for the third time

The Toxic hitmaker’s father Jamie was handed control of her personal and financial affairs following her much-publicised breakdown in 2008. Spears has since got her life on track – she’s released her seventh studio album, Femme Fatale, and toured the world to promote the release. Her longtime boyfriend and former agent Jason Trawick marked the [...]

Source: http://www.celebritymound.com/britney-spears-conservatorship-is-set-to-be-dropped-as-she-prepares-to-wed-for-the-third-time/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=britney-spears-conservatorship-is-set-to-be-dropped-as-she-prepares-to-wed-for-the-third-time

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Obama's Singing Gets Raves From 'American Idol' Coach

'AI' associate music director Michael Orland tells MTV News in an exclusive that prez's pipes would get him to Hollywood Week.
By Jim Cantiello

President Barack Obama at the Apollo Theater on Thursday
Photo: Shahar Azran/WireImage

This week, "American Idol" kicked off its 11th season, and it appears even President Obama is getting into the spirit. On Thursday night at a fundraiser at the Apollo Theater, the commander in chief surprised a star-studded Harlem, New York, crowd by busting out a few measures of "AI" staple Al Green's "Let's Stay Together."

Obama's smooth singing voice impressed many — including the Rev. Al Green himself, who told TMZ that Obama "nailed it" — but does the leader of the free world have what it takes to make it on America's #1 singing competition?

"American Idol" associate music director and vocal coach Michael Orland certainly thinks so!

"I swear to you, if he auditioned for me in the big stadium [rounds], I would have put him through to the producers immediately," Orland exclusively told MTV News. "I think he was really charming and had a great voice, and that's all you can really tell in the a cappella rounds anyway. ... I thought his phrasing was great, how he broke it up and really worked the room while he was doing it.

But even more noteworthy was Obama's perfect pitch. "He was in the exact same key [as Al Green's recording]. To pull that out of the air, with everything perfectly in tune, I was really impressed," Orland added.

The vocal pro even believes Obama's voice was strong enough to win over ultimate deciders Randy Jackson, Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler. "I guarantee you he would have gotten a Golden Ticket."

On his hypothetical "Idol" journey, Obama's next challenge would be the dreaded Hollywood Week, where hundreds of hopefuls are forced to work around the clock, learning group numbers with little sleep and lots of drama. "I think considering the amount of stress he's normally under, he'd do really well," Orland laughed.

The "Idol" insider struggled to compare Obama's singing voice to any previous contestants but, ultimately, that's what makes the President a fantastic prospect.

"It sounded like him! He sang like he speaks. He has a unique voice which is all you ever try to find in somebody. ... He didn't try to copy anybody," Orland raved.

Still, every singer could use a little constructive criticism — even singers who have the power to start nuclear war — and if Orland were working with Obama on a full-fledged "Idol" performance, he would encourage the President to take a few risks. "When you do one of those really well-known songs, don't be afraid to change it up a little bit," Orland said, jokingly adding, "If they could send Air Force One, I would give him a free coaching!"

Alas, Obama is too old to audition for "Idol" by 22 years, but fear not, Mr. President ... there's always season two of "The X Factor."

Get your "Idol" fix on MTV News' "American Idol" page, where you'll find all the latest news, interviews and opinions.

Related Artists

• Al Green

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1677644/obama-sings-al-green.jhtml

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House members call for probe into Lap-Band safety, marketing

Members of Congress are calling for an investigation into the 1-800-GET-THIN weight-loss surgery marketing campaign and the safety and effectiveness of the Lap-Band device.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) and two other House members called for congressional hearings to examine whether the sponsors of the ad campaign, their affiliated clinics and the device's manufacturer are improperly promoting a potentially dangerous surgery.

In a letter sent Friday to the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Waxman said Congress should subpoena documents from 1-800-GET-THIN and Lap-Band manufacturer Allergan Inc.

The letter cited a series of articles in The Times about patient deaths and recent studies that have questioned the long-term effectiveness of the Lap-Band, a ring that is surgically implanted around the stomach to discourage overeating.

"We believe the Committee should hold hearings to examine whether FDA device regulation has been ineffective in protecting the public from dangerous medical devices like the Lap-Band," Waxman and Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) said in the letter.

Five patients have died in Southern California since 2009 after Lap-Band surgeries at clinics affiliated with 1-800-GET-THIN, according to lawsuits, autopsy reports and other public records.

Robert Silverman, president of 1-800-GET-THIN, did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Michael and Julian Omidi, brothers who, according to a recent lawsuit, run the Lap-Band surgery business from offices in Beverly Hills.

A spokeswoman for Lap-Band manufacturer Allergan of Irvine said the device is safe and effective, if "inserted by an experienced and qualified bariatric surgeon who offers the patient appropriate follow-up care."

Allergan spokeswoman Naziah Lasi-Tejani also questioned a study that Congress members cited in the letter as evidence that the Lap-Band often has long-term complications. That study examined the effectiveness of an earlier version of the Lap-Band and surgical techniques that are no longer used, she said.

In addition to the effectiveness of the Lap-Band, Waxman and his colleagues questioned "aggressive marketing" of the device through 1-800-GET-THIN ads on freeway billboards, radio, television, direct mail and the Internet.

Last month, the Food and Drug Administration sent warning letters to 1-800-GET-THIN and some of its affiliated surgery centers, saying the ads were misleading because they did not adequately disclose dangers of the surgery. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has asked its legal team to determine whether the county can regulate the advertising.

The company responded by adding a disclosure to its website that said Lap-Band procedures can result in death. Silverman later told supervisors that the company planned to change its ads to address the FDA's concerns.

Waxman, in a statement to The Times, said he hopes the House committee holds the hearings because "the evidence is clear that there are devices on the market today that pose dangerous risks." The issue is important, he said, because this year Congress is expected to reevaluate how medical devices such as the Lap-Band are regulated.

"The fundamental mission of the FDA is to ensure the safety and effectiveness of medical devices," he said. "That is why it's critical that we understand how unsafe devices get on the market and how to protect patients from these risks."

Kathryn Trepinski, an attorney who has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against 1-800-GET-THIN on behalf of relatives of a woman who died following Lap-Band surgery, said she welcomed congressional scrutiny.

"I'm pleased to see increased action on a federal level," Trepinski said. "I would like to see Allergan and its product, the Lap-Band, put under a microscope and examined."

The congressional concern comes three days after two former employees filed a whistle-blower lawsuit in Los Angeles that accused 1-800-GET-THIN and its affiliated surgery centers of operating in unsanitary conditions, improperly billing insurers and putting an emphasis on profits over patient safety.

The lawsuit also said workers affiliated with the companies persuaded patients to have surgeries they did not need, including hysterectomies and other organ removals, in order to drive up profits.

Company officials did not respond to The Times about the lawsuit's allegations.

stuart.pfeifer@latimes.com

Times staff writer Alejandro Lazo contributed to this report.

Source: http://feeds.latimes.com/~r/latimes/news/science/~3/t6JwEkaJVgM/la-fi-0121-get-thin-congress-20120121,0,518487.story

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'Pulverized' chromosomes linked to cancer?

ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2012) ? They are the Robinson Crusoes of the intracellular world -- lone chromosomes, whole and hardy, stranded outside the nucleus where their fellow chromosomes reside. Such castaways, each confined to its own "micronucleus," are often found in cancer cells, but scientists haven't known what role, if any, they play in the cancer process.

In a paper published online on Jan. 18 by the journal Nature, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers have mapped out a mechanism by which micronuclei could potentially disrupt the chromosomes within them and produce cancer-causing gene mutations. The findings may point to a vulnerability in cancer cells that could be attacked by new therapies.

"The most common genetic change in cancer is the presence of an incorrect number of intact chromosomes within cancer cells -- a condition known as aneuploidy," says Dana-Farber's David Pellman, MD, the study's senior author. "The significance of aneuploidy has been hard to pin down, however, because little is known about how it might trigger tumors. In contrast, the mechanism by which DNA damage and broken chromosomes cause cancer is well established -- by altering cancer genes in a way that spurs runaway cell division.

"The new study demonstrates one possible chain of events by which aneuploidy and specifically 'exiled' chromosomes could lead to cancer-causing mutations, with potential implications for cancer prevention and treatment," says Pellman, who is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and the Margaret M. Dyson Professor of Pediatric Oncology at Dana-Farber, Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School.

Whole chromosomes can end up outside the nucleus as a result of a glitch in cell division. In normal division, a cell duplicates its chromosomes and dispatches them to the newly forming daughter cells: the original set to one daughter, the twin set to the other. For a variety of reasons, the chromosomes sometimes aren't allocated evenly -- one daughter receives an extra one, the other is short one. Unlike the rest of the chromosomes, these stragglers sometimes don't make it to the nucleus. Instead, they're marooned elsewhere within the cell and become wrapped in their own membrane, forming a micronucleus.

"In some respects, micronuclei are similar to primary nuclei," Pellman remarks, "but much about their function and composition is unknown. Previous studies differ on whether micronuclei replicate or repair their chromosomes as normal nuclei do. The ultimate fate of these chromosomes is unclear as well: Are they passed on to daughter cells during cell division or are they somehow eliminated as division proceeds?"

One clue that odd-man-out chromosomes themselves may be subject to damage -- and therefore be involved in cancer -- emerged from Pellman's previous research into aneuploidy. "We found that cancer cells generated from cells with micronuclei also have a great deal of chromosome breakage," Pellman explains. But researchers didn't know if this was a sign of connection or of coincidence.

Another clue came from a recently discovered phenomenon called "chromothripsis," in which one chromosome of a cancer cell shows massive amounts of breakage and rearrangement, while the remainder of the genome is largely intact. "That finding leapt off the page of these studies -- that such extensive damage could be limited to a single chromosome or single arm of a chromosome," Pellman says. "We wondered if the physical isolation of chromosomes in micronuclei could explain this kind of highly localized chromosome damage."

To find out, Karen Crasta, PhD, of Pellman's lab and the study's lead author, used a confocal microscope to observe dividing cells with micronuclei. She found that while micronuclei do form duplicate copies of their chromosomes, the process is bungled in two respects. First, it is inefficient: part of the chromosome is replicated and part isn't, leading to chromosome damage. Second, it is out of sync: the micronucleus keeps trying to replicate its chromosomes long after replication of the other chromosomes was completed. For cell division to be successful, every step of the process must occur in the proper order, at the proper time. In fact, when study co-author Regina Dagher directly analyzed the structure of the late-replicating chromosomes, she found them to be smashed to bits -- exactly what was predicted as the first step in chromothripsis.

The final piece of the puzzle came when Pellman's colleague Neil Ganem, PhD, examined what happens to these pulverized fragments, using an imaging trick that marked the chromosome in the micronucleus with its own color.

"It has been theorized that micronuclei are garbage disposals for chromosomes that the cell doesn't need anymore," Pellman comments. "If that were true, the smashed pieces would be discarded or digested, but we found that, a third of the time, they're donated to one of the daughter cells and therefore cold be incorporated into that cell's genome.

Pellman says that the findings suggest that, unexpectedly, whole chromosome aneuploidy might promote cancer in a very similar way to other kinds of genomic alterations. The key event may be mutations in oncogenes and tumor suppressors. This mechanism may also explain how cancer cells acquire more than one such mutation at a time.

"Although chromothripsis occurs in only a few percent of human cancers, our findings suggest that it might be an extreme instance of a kind of chromosome damage that could be much more common," says Pellman, who adds that accelerating this process in cancer cells, thus generating so many mutations that the cells die, may represent a possible strategy for new therapies against certain tumors.

The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Karen Crasta, Neil J. Ganem, Regina Dagher, Alexandra B. Lantermann, Elena V. Ivanova, Yunfeng Pan, Luigi Nezi, Alexei Protopopov, Dipanjan Chowdhury, David Pellman. DNA breaks and chromosome pulverization from errors in mitosis. Nature, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nature10802

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/-S63k5X-GHo/120119163255.htm

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PSU on trial: Forget Paterno; let the trustees do their jobs

Many of the alumni calling for change in Penn State's board of trustees are doing so because they're upset over the firing of Joe Paterno.

They need a refresher course in why the legendary coach had to go, but that doesn't mean the board doesn't need its own attitude adjustment.

Let's deal first with Mr. Paterno. When his longtime assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, was charged with sexually abusing boys whom he brought to Penn State functions and university facilities, it drew attention to a football program where employees were afraid to speak up about misdeeds. Mr. Paterno was at the top of that hierarchy and had been for generations.

When young assistant coach Mike McQueary went to Mr. Paterno with details of an assault he said he'd witnessed in a university shower, he was reluctant to get into graphic sexual details out of respect for Mr. Paterno.

In a wide-ranging interview published in Saturday's Washington Post, Mr. Paterno said he didn't know what to do other than forward the report to university officials. He said he'd been reluctant to inquire further for fear of appearing to throw his weight around.

His power -- perceived or otherwise -- had grown beyond his ability to exercise and control it for good.

Penn State needed a change and the university's reputation would have suffered all the more if it had allowed its beloved, longtime coach to remain at the helm through the season or beyond. In removing him and forcing a resignation from former university president Graham Spanier, the trustees acted in Penn State's best interest.

Could the trustees have moved sooner? Perhaps. Last week, Penn State's new president, Rodney Erickson, said Mr. Spanier had briefed the board about the grand jury investigation of Mr. Sandusky months before his arrest. Still, it's not known how much detail they had at that time.

Once Mr. Sandusky and two other administrators were charged, the trustees wasted no time making changes in the offices of president and head football coach, as they should have.

Going forward, they must demand that university administrators conduct a thorough investigation into what was known or done in response to allegations against Mr. Sandusky, and they must disclose the results.

This will mean a change in the approach of a university that has been all too willing to hide behind its exemption from the state's open records law and its quasi-public status. The best that Penn State alumni can do is give the current board leaders a chance to prove they are up to the task.

First published on January 18, 2012 at 12:00 am

Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12018/1204118-192.stm?cmpid=opinion.xml

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Jamie Dupree's Washington Insider: Gingrich Aims at Romney

From West Columbia, South Carolina -?

The day after a sizzling debate performance by Newt Gingrich, his backers were excited about his chances, but the optics of one of his afternoon events left doubts about what's next for the former House Speaker.

As Gingrich's bus brought him from downtown Columbia to the southwestern reaches of West Columbia, Gingrich staffers were busy pulling dozens of chairs off the floor to prevent any embarrasing camera shots.

It wasn't clear if that was a commentary on Gingrich's campaign - in other words, no bump from the debate - or if it was just something simple like people couldn't get off work to go to a campaign event like they might do in Iowa or New Hampshire.

Up in Florence, South Carolina, the pictures weren't good from a Mitt Romney rally either, as only a small crowd turned out to hear from the GOP frontrunner on Tuesday morning.

While Romney ended up in New York on Tuesday night for a fundraiser, his team was certainly hearing the attacks from the other four Republicans still in the race.

"I'll debate Romney anywhere," said a defiant Gingrich, who alternately ripped Romney and President Obama - and also publicly called on Rick Santorum and Rick Perry to drop out of the Republican race.

"I really want to vote for you," one voter said to Gingrich.

"How can I help?" quipped Gingrich to laughter.

But that's what Gingrich faced with others in attendance as well; one man sporting his FairTax sign, still aggravated that Gingrich has downplayed the idea of major tax reform.

A few hours later, I caught up with Gingrich again, this time at a business forum in downtown Columbia - he defended his attacks on Romney and wrapped up with an appeal for support.

"If I win the primary Saturday, I will be the nominee," Gingrich flatly predicted.

"And if I don't win the primary Saturday, we will probably nominate a moderate and the odds are fairly high that he will lose to Obama," Gingrich added, referring to Romney without mentioning his name.

For reporters, Gingrich is the never-ending sound bite, the news story that won't end. ?He makes news at almost every stop. ?That much we know and enjoy.

What's not clear to the scribes on the ground is whether Gingrich can move his poll numbers up dramatically in the Palmetto State, or whether Mitt Romney is sipmly too tough.

Gingrich, Santourm, Perry and Paul have just a few more days to make their case.

For now, Romney remains the frontrunner, with Gingrich back in second; third place is a battle between Paul and Santorum, with Romney trailing the field.

Wednesday should be even more interesting.

Source: http://www.krmg.com/weblogs/jamie-dupree/2012/jan/17/gingrich-aims-romney/

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S&P downgrades eurozone bailout fund to AA+ (AP)

BRUSSELS ? Rating agency Standard & Poor's said Monday it has downgraded the creditworthiness of the eurozone's rescue fund by one notch to AA+, putting the fund's ability to raise cheap bailout money at risk.

The downgrade follows ratings cuts for AAA-rated France and Austria, whose financial guarantees were key to the creditworthiness of the European Financial Stability Facility.

If replicated by other rating agencies, S&P's move complicates the eurozone's efforts to emerge from a debt crisis that has dragged on for more than two years. It also underlines how reliant states and financial firms still are on the opinion of rating agencies, despite policymakers across Europe vowing on Monday to curtail their influence.

Although the ratings cut had been expected after S&P downgraded nine euro countries on Friday, the EFSF's top official quickly moved to reassure investors.

"The downgrade to 'AA+' by only one credit agency will not reduce (the) EFSF's lending capacity of euro440 billion," Klaus Regling, the fund's chief executive officer, said in a statement. He added that the EFSF has enough money to fund the bailouts of Ireland and Portugal, as well as a second rescue for Greece that is likely to be decided in the coming weeks.

S&P had warned in December that it would cut the rating of the euro440 billion EFSF in line with the downgrades of any AAA country.

Moody's and Fitch, the two other big rating agencies, still have the EFSF at AAA, meaning that it would count as a top-notch investment for most funds. But analysts warn that further downgrades could follow soon.

Once another big agency cuts the EFSF's rating, the eurozone faces a stark choice. Either the fund starts issuing lower-rated bonds ? and accepts higher borrowing costs ? or its remaining AAA contributors increase their guarantees.

So far, Germany, the biggest of the four AAA economies in the eurozone, has ruled out boosting its commitments to the fund, and increases also appear politically difficult in the Netherlands and Finland. Luxembourg, the fourth country that S&P still awards its highest rating, is so small that its contributions have little impact.

Another option would be to accept that the EFSF can give out fewer loans.

Because of the EFSF's strange setup the bonds it issues to raise bailout money are underpinned by some euro720 billion in guarantees from the 14 eurozone countries that haven't received bailouts. But for issuing AAA-rated bonds, only AAA-guarantees count, taking the fund's lending capacity down to euro440 billion.

With the downgrades of France and Austria, the EFSF loses some euro180 billion in AAA-guarantees, leaving it with a loan capacity of just over euro260 billion. Of that, around euro40 billion have already been committed to the bailouts of Ireland and Portugal, and a new Greek rescue will quickly take more than euro100 billion out of the till.

While that would leave the eurozone with a severely diminished firewall, the lower lending capacity may not matter that much. To rescue Italy and Spain, the EFSF would need more than euro1 trillion, according to analysts, and whether the shortfall is euro900 billion or euro600 billion won't make much of a difference.

Regling said that more support was on the way from the eurozone's new, permanent rescue fund, the euro500 billion European Stability Mechanism, which is expected take over from the EFSF later this year. In contrast to the EFSF, the ESM has paid-in capital, similar to a bank, and is thus less vulnerable to rating downgrades.

Policymakers on Monday nevertheless lashed out against S&P's downgrades and promised to curtail their influence.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in his first public comment since France lost its AAA-rating on Friday, said the move's importance should not be exaggerated.

"We have to react to this (the French downgrade) with calm, by taking a step back," he said at a news conference in Madrid. "At the core, my conviction is that it changes nothing."

Meanwhile, Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, told European lawmakers in Strasbourg, France, that banks and other financial firms should stop basing their risk assessment solely on the opinion of rating agencies.

"One needs to ask how important are these ratings for the marketplace, for the regulators and for investors," Draghi said, adding that investors should treat the agencies' judgments as just one piece of information alongside their own analyses.

The European Union is currently in the process of putting new banking rules into law that cut the reliance on risk assessments from rating agencies. It also has proposed new legislation that would force the agencies to be more transparent about how they reach their decisions and even allow investors to sue firms that misjudged ratings "intentionally or with gross negligence."

__

David McHugh in Frankfurt and Jamey Keaten in Madrid contributed to this story.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/eurobiz/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120116/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_europe_financial_crisis

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Two more bodies found on ship, three people rescued (Reuters)

GIGLIO, Italy (Reuters) ? Three survivors and two more dead bodies were pulled from the partially submerged wreck of a cruiseliner off the Italian coast, while a search continued though thousands of cabins for 15 people still missing.

In the early hours of Monday, the massive 114,500 ton Costa Concordia wallowed on its side only meters from the picturesque Tuscan port of Giglio, with rescuers continuing a painstaking search for survivors or bodies.

The 290-metre long vessel, a multistorey floating resort carrying 4,229 passengers and crew, foundered and keeled over after being holed by a rock on Friday night. A total of 64 people were injured in the accident, health authorities said.

Sunday's discovery of the bodies of a Spanish and an Italian man, both wearing life jackets, brought the known death toll to five. The bodies of two French tourists and a Peruvian crewmember were found on Saturday.

Rescuers plucked a South Korean honeymoon couple and an injured crewmember alive from the wreck on Sunday. But as time passed, the prospects of finding more passengers alive grew ever more uncertain.

The ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, was arrested on Saturday on charges of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship. The first officer was also detained.

The ship's owners, Costa Crociere said Schettino appeared to have made a serious error in coming too close to shore and had not followed standard emergency procedures.

"The route followed by the ship was too close to the coast and it seems that his decisions on the management of the emergency did not follow the procedures of Costa Crociere, which are in line with and in some cases go beyond international standards," said the company, a unit of Carnival Corp. & Plc, the world's largest cruiseliner operator.

Investigators were working through evidence from recorders - the equivalent of the "black boxes" carried on planes - to try to establish the precise sequence of events behind the accident, which occurred in calm seas and shallow waters.

Searching the vast ship for survivors was like combing through a small town - but one tilted on its side, largely in darkness, partly underwater and full of floating debris.

The discovery of the bodies on Sunday dampened earlier euphoria when a helicopter lifted off injured chief purser Manrico Gianpetroni, hours after rescuers made voice contact with him deep inside the stricken, multi-storey vessel.

Gianpetroni, who had a broken leg, was winched up from the ship on a stretcher and taken to hospital.

"I never lost hope of being saved. It was a 36-hour nightmare," he told reporters.

TITANIC

As the search for survivors and bodies continued, attention began to turn to the wreck itself, which loomed over the little port of Giglio, a picturesque island in a maritime nature reserve off the Tuscan coast.

Dutch salvage experts said the ship's oil tanks did not appear to have been holed, reducing the risk of an oil spill in the pristine waters, and dredgers were expected to begin pumping some 2,380 tons of fuel from the ship in the next few days.

However dealing with the ship itself is likely to prove a daunting task and will need extremely careful planning, coastguard official Ilarione dell'Anna told SkyTG24 television.

"This will not be simple," he said. "The alternatives are removing it, refloating it or not removing it but leaving it in place and cutting it into sections."

Paolo Tronca, a local fire department official, said the search would go on "for 24 hours a day as long as we have to" and that rescue workers were using sniffer dogs in the section of the ship above water.

As the search continued, there were demands for explanations of why the vessel had come so close to the shore and bitter complaints about how long it took to evacuate the terrified passengers.

Costa Crociere expressed "deep sorrow" for the accident. It said all the crew members had been properly trained in safety procedures and the ship was fully equipped with lifevests, medical supplies and other safety equipment.

State prosecutor Francesco Verusio said investigations might go beyond the captain, who he said had abandoned the vessel not long after midnight, before all the passengers were taken off.

"We are investigating the possible responsibility of other people for such a dangerous maneuver," he told SkyTG24 television. "Command systems did not function as they should."

He said the ship had come within 150 meters (yards) of the coast, which he called "incredibly close."

Schettino has told Italian television that the ship hit rocks that were not marked on maps and were not detected by navigation systems. He said the accident occurred some 300 meters from the shore.

Agnese Stella, a 72-year-old housewife who has lived on Giglio for 50 years Said the ship appeared to have come much closer in than it normally did.

"It came much too close, it never comes this close normally," she told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Silvia Ognibene,; Writing by Philip Pullella and James Mackenzie; Editing by Barry Moody and Peter Graff)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120115/wl_nm/us_italy_ship

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[OOC] Artificial Humans

Forum rules
This forum is for OOC discussion about existing roleplays.

Please post all "Players Wanted" threads in the Roleplayers Wanted forum!

This topic is an Out Of Character part of the roleplay, ?Artificial Humans?. Anything posted here will also show up there.

Topic Tags:

Forum for completely Out of Character (OOC) discussion, based around whatever is happening In Character (IC). Discuss plans, storylines, and events; Recruit for your roleplaying game, or find a GM for your playergroup.

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This definitely seems interesting.

Would a fire controller be possible? I just want to know before I start work on a character.

The Parish: A modern day supernatural game (NOW SEEKING PLAYERS)

Brony Otaku

Member for 0 years

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Yeah. I'm interested too! I just wanna know what powers are acceptable...

"A stupid man?s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconciously translates what he hears into something he can understand."

Akantha

Member for 2 years

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Same here, i want a Wind Controller.

Kai_Hibiki

Member for 1 years

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Post a reply

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Labs Size Up New Guidelines For Rodent Cages

Tom Gannam/AP

New advice on housing lab rodents has left research centers confused about compliance and worried about the costs.

Scientists do experiments with millions of rats and mice each year, to study everything from heart disease to cancer to diabetes. Recently, some new recommendations about how to house female lab rodents and their babies caused an uproar, with experts at major research institutions now saying they're unsure of what they'll have to do to keep their government funding.

The importance of what we're talking about is the uncertainty of what this is going to do to us.

- Bob Adams, director, laboratory animal medicine, Johns Hopkins University

The new recommendations appear in the bible of lab animal care, officially called The Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. All research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) must comply with this guide, which was just revised for the first time since 1996.

There are a lot of changes in this edition of the guide, but the one that has the research world in a tizzy appears on page 57. It's a chart that lays out new recommendations for the minimum number of square inches of floor space that should be used to house female rodents and their babies.

It says a female mouse plus her litter should get at least 51 square inches, while a female rat plus her litter gets at least 124 square inches.

Lab animal experts are worried that this means they won't be able to do certain kinds of rodent breeding in their institutions' existing cages.

Major Changes To Keep Government Funding

And that's no small matter for places like Johns Hopkins University, a research powerhouse and the largest recipient of funding from the NIH. The university's main housing facility for rats and mice is nearly the size of a football field, with many rodents genetically altered and bred for specific kinds of research.

The facility has around 40 rooms, each of which holds about 1,000 clear plastic cages that are the size of shoe boxes; they fit into special racks that line the walls.

Enlarge Courtesy of Joseph Thulin/Biomedical Resource Center, Medical College of Wisconsin

The standard rat cage used in the U.S. (right) has 140 square inches of floor space. One interpretation of the new guidelines says this cage wouldn't be big enough to hold a male rat, a female rat and their babies. Instead, labs would have to house the rat family in a larger cage, like the 210-square-inch one on the left.

Courtesy of Joseph Thulin/Biomedical Resource Center, Medical College of Wisconsin

The standard rat cage used in the U.S. (right) has 140 square inches of floor space. One interpretation of the new guidelines says this cage wouldn't be big enough to hold a male rat, a female rat and their babies. Instead, labs would have to house the rat family in a larger cage, like the 210-square-inch one on the left.

If each cage contains one to five mice, says Bob Adams, the veterinarian in charge of this facility, that means his staff cares for around 200,000 rodents.

Each cage has its own ventilation and water supply, and the scientists who keep their rodents here pay a rent of 62.5 cents per cage per day.

To explain his concerns with the new guidelines, Adams pulls out one cage. Hairless pink babies squirm in one corner. There's a tangle of adults with dark fur over by the water valve. Adams says there's probably a male in here with a harem. One male plus two or more females can produce lots of mice quickly.

But as Adams interprets the new guidelines, this would no longer be possible in this shoe box-sized cage. The guide seems to say that its 75 square inches is big enough only for one mother and her babies, plus one other adult.

Adams is worried that Johns Hopkins may have to make major changes to keep its government funding.

"The effect would be, we would have to buy more of this caging, and our estimate was somewhere around $300,000 worth of caging, at least," he says.

He'd also have to find a place to put all those cages, and then hire more staff to manage them and wash them. "Bottom line is, there is more work, there is more cost for everybody, for our whole operation," he says.

Push Back From Research Institutions

Across the country, other research institutions looked at the new guide and came to the same conclusion. The National Association for Biomedical Research estimated that nationwide, implementing the new space guidelines for breeding rodents would likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars ? money that then couldn't be used on research. Government regulators have been deluged with letters of protest.

One of them came from the Medical College of Wisconsin, which has one of the largest academic colonies of research rats in the world. Joseph Thulin, director of the college's biomedical resource center, says that animal welfare is important, but it's unclear that the new guidelines will result in any benefits.

"I would not want anyone to think that the research community doesn't want to implement new guidelines because they don't care about their animals. That is not the case at all," says Thulin. He says it's just that there's been very little research on rodent housing, and there's no evidence to support the idea that increasing the cage space in the way that's been recommended "will have any measurable positive impact on the animals."

Meanwhile, the people who actually wrote the new recommendations say all this concern is the result of a big misunderstanding.

"Certainly I personally was very surprised at the reaction or at the way some people were interpreting what was written," says Janet Garber, a consultant who chaired the committee of independent experts convened by the National Research Council to revise the animal care guidebook.

The old version had no specific guidance on how to prevent overcrowding when breeding rodents, and the panel simply thought it would be helpful to set some benchmarks. Garber says the numbers in the chart are not hard-and-fast rules, and research institutions have to look at their individual situations.

"There are very, very few requirements in the guide. There are very few 'musts' in the guide," Garber says. "And certainly within the context of these housing recommendations, they are in fact recommendations. Yes, they're minimum recommendations, but they're a starting point."

That's the position taken by the NIH. Patricia Brown, director of its lab animal welfare office, said in an email that she and her office "were surprised by the concerns," and that their experience was that labs currently house their rodents appropriately.

A statement on the NIH website indicates it still will be possible to put more breeding rodents in a cage than the guide recommends. And researchers say, that is somewhat reassuring.

Ambiguity And Uncertainty

But it won't be business as usual. Because the NIH statement goes on to say that if scientists want to do that, they'll have to justify it, and show that things like the animals' health or behavior won't suffer.

Plus, the government warns that "blanket, program-wide departures from the Guide for reasons of convenience, cost, or other non-animal welfare considerations are not acceptable."

All of that has left some experts confused. "I guess the importance of what we're talking about is the uncertainty of what this is going to do to us," says Adams, the Johns Hopkins veterinarian.

He points out that researchers have to meet the government's standards to safeguard their funding. So should the university shell out the money for more cages, when science budgets are already tight? Or try justifying their current practices to see if they're accepted? "We're going to have to thrash this out and see, how do we interpret this now?" Adams says.

All of this ambiguity has also displeased some animal welfare activists ? for a different reason. They feel that researchers shouldn't have been given an out.

Kathleen Conlee with the Humane Society of the United States says overcrowding can be a real problem. Conlee says officials need to carefully scrutinize any efforts to breed rodents in less space.

"If we are going to be using millions or tens of millions of rodents in this country, we do have an obligation to the welfare of these animals and hope that the National Institutes of Health will strictly enforce their recommendations in the guide," she says.

The National Institutes of Health is taking comments on the rodent housing issue until the end of the month. And research institutions have about a year to evaluate their program and decide whether they need to make changes to comply with the new guidelines.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2012/01/16/145172737/labs-size-up-new-guidelines-for-rodent-cages?ft=1&f=1007

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Angela Merkel: S&P Downgrade Highlights Need For Strong 'Fiscal Compact'

* Leaders see downgrades as wake-up call
* Italy seen as problem child number one
* Merkel says decision should not impede EFSF
* S&P says France could fall further, no euro break-up
By Robin Emmott and Brian Rohan
BRUSSELS/BERLIN, Jan 14 (Reuters) - European leaders promised on Saturday to speed up plans to strengthen spending rules and get a permanent bailout fund up and running as soon as possible, a day after U.S. agency S&P cut the ratings of several euro zone countries' creditworthiness.
In a conference call with reporters and analysts after downgrading nine of the euro zone's 17 countries, Standard & Poor's said it saw continued risks from the debt crisis that has overshadowed Europe for the past two years and said the single currency area was heading towards recession.
It also warned that France, which suffered a downgrade to AA+ from the top-notch AAA, was at risk of further cuts if a recession further inflates its debt and budget deficit.
"The policy response at the European level has in our view not kept up with the rising challenges in the euro zone," S&P credit analyst Moritz Kraemer said on the call, forecasting a 40 percent chance of euro zone gross domestic product contracting by up to 1.5 percent in 2012.
The downgrades were delivered hours after talks between private bond holders and the Greek government aimed at restructing Greece's vast debts broke down, pushing Athens closer to default, an event that would tarnish euro zone unity and pose a contagion threat which could engulf the bloc.
In Germany - whose top AAA rating survived unscathed - Chancellor Angela Merkel said the downgrades underlined why a so-called 'fiscal compact' must be signed by member states quickly, and the next bailout mechanism, known as the ESM, should be funded soon.
"We are now challenged to implement the fiscal compact even quicker ... and to do it resolutely, not to try to soften it," she said at a meeting of her conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) in the northern city of Kiel.
"We will also work particularly to implement the permanent stability mechanism, the ESM, so soon as possible -- this is important regarding investor trust," she added.
European Central Bank policymaker Joerg Asmussen warned that Europe's drive to tighten fiscal rules was being softened, considering the latest draft of the agreement a "substantial watering down" of budgetary discipline because it would allow extra spending in extraordinary circumstances, the Financial Times Deutschland reported.
Leaders including Merkel have urged countries to tighten their belts with higher taxes and deep spending cuts to rein in massive budget deficits. But that has heightened market concern about their ability to grow their way back to health, pushing borrowing costs even higher for heavily indebted governments.
S&P said it was not working on the assumption of a euro zone break up, although it blamed its leaders for focusing too much on cutting debts and not sufficiently on competititveness.
"We think that the diagnosis of policymakers regarding the crisis is only partially recognising the origin of the crisis," said Kraemer, mentioning the focus on budget austerity.
"The proper diagnosis would have to give more weight to the rising imbalances in the euro zone in terms of the external funding positions, current account positions, much of it is based in diverging trends of competitiveness," he said.

WAKE-UP CALL
Austria, which was downgraded one notch from AAA, called S&P's decision a wake-up call for the country to cut debt and deficits, and for Europe to move more quickly on reforms.
"The downgrade is bad news for Austria but it should wake everyone up when such a thing happens," Finance Minister Maria Fekter said. "Now everyone recognises that this ... is a matter of debt and deficits, not primarily of the economy."
The ratings decision hit some countries harder than others, with France, Austria, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia suffering single-notch downgrades, but Italy, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus falling two notches. Portugal's debt is now rated junk.
ECB policymaker Ewald Nowotny, an Austrian, said Italy in particular would now face problems given large refinancing needs this year in that country and its banks.
Asked in an interview broadcast by Austrian radio if Italy - now rated at the same BBB+ level as Kazakhstan - was "problem child number one", Nowotny agreed.
"In a certain sense, yes, because we know this year Italy has a very significant refinancing need. Italian banks also need refinancing," he said.
"In normal times this is all possible, in very nervous and difficult times it can be a problem and in my view this sharp downgrade of Italy is probably one of the most difficult and problematic aspects of this sweeping blow from the ratings agency."
NO TORPEDO
Long-standing frustration with ratings agencies echoed across Europe after the S&P decision. While Germany and France downplayed the decision and called it expected, Spain's finance minister was more alarmed.
"The downgrade is far too broad, it effects too many countries, it effects the very credibility of the euro," Treasury Minister Cristobal Montoro said on the radio.
"It's important that the European institutions understand that it's time to do everything possible to build and reinforce the euro," said Montoro, whose highly indebted country has the highest unemployment level in the euro zone.
Meanwhile, in a move to circumvent their influence, Germany's Merkel backed a proposal to reduce the reliance of institutional investors on ratings agencies, which some of her allies say are politically driven.
The idea would be to introduce legislation to allow institutional investors to evaluate risk themselves and make decisions independent from the U.S.-based agencies.
"I think it is very useful to look at this and see where if necessary we can make changes to legislation," Merkel said at her party meeting.
European leaders are set to meet at a summit on Jan. 30 to discuss how to boost growth and jobs, and Merkel's words on Saturday suggest she will also be looking for faster progress on tighter common fiscal rules.
But now, policymakers at the meeting may have bigger fish to fry. The downgrades threaten the top rating of Europe's current bailout fund -- the European Financial Stability Facility -- as contributors France and Austria are no longer rated AAA.
A downgrade of the EFSF could increase its borrowing costs, reducing its ability to protect the currency bloc's weaker members. S&P said it would deliver its view on the impact to the EFSF from the sovereign downgrades "shortly".

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/15/angela-merkel-sp-downgrade_n_1206283.html

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New Year, Powerline Still Stupid (OliverWillisLikeKryptoniteToStupid)

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