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Monday, July 29, 2013
David Vitter, Mary Landrieu Want Fugate Promotion Delayed Until ...
Quote Of The Day, July 30, 2013
?When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe.?
- Frederic Bastiat, 1850
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Perrigo to buy Elan for $8.6B, seeks tax savings
DUBLIN (AP) ? U.S. drugmaker Perrigo has agreed to buy Ireland's Elan for $8.6 billion in a deal designed to expand overseas and reduce its tax bill.
Michigan-based Perrigo says it will pay Elan investors $6.25 per share in cash and $10.25 in Perrigo stock. The deal represents an 11 percent premium over Elan's closing price Friday.
Earlier this month, Elan said it was open to offers after spending months fighting a hostile, lower-priced takeover bid by Royal Pharma.
Perrigo said Monday it will become an Irish-based company and says it could cut its tax liabilities nearly in half, saving more than $150 million annually.
About 700 U.S. companies based in Ireland pay a 12.5 percent rate of tax on profits, versus the U.S. rate of 35 percent.
Elan confirmed the deal.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/perrigo-buy-elan-8-6b-seeks-tax-savings-071703548.html
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Sunday, July 28, 2013
Galaxy GeForce GTX 780 HOF, ?zelle?tirilmi? detaylar?yla iddial? geliyor
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Source: www.donanimhaber.com --- Sunday, July 28, 2013
Nvidia tabanl? ekran kart? ?reticisi Galaxy, y?ksek performans merakl?lar? ve oyun tutkunlar? i?in ?zel tasar?ml? yepyeni bir model haz?rl???nda. GeForce GTX Titan sonras?nda Nvidia'n?n g?ncel ?r?n gam?ndaki tek grafik i?lemcili en h?zl? model olan GeForce GTX 780'in temel te?kil etti?i yeni ekran kart?, Galaxy markas?n? yak?ndan takip edenlerin tahmin edebilece?i ?zere HOF (Hall of Fame) serisi alt?nda pazara sunulacak. ...
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N. Korea Celebrates Armistice with Military Parade
(Image Source: BBC)
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BY ALEX MALLIN
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South Korea and the U.S. are commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Korean War armistice Saturday by honoring veterans and fallen soldiers. North Korea, on the other hand, decided to take a more ... celebratory approach. ?
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In a huge parade designed to flaunt the military might of the North, tens of thousands of soldiers marched through the capital city Pyongyang. (Via BBC)
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Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un watched over the spectacle with China?s Vice President at his side. North Korea says it was the largest parade in the nation?s history. (Via Deutsche Welle)
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According to reporters who were allowed to attend, the displays were North Korea?s way of celebrating what it sees as a victory, even though the armistice was a truce. (Via NTDTV)
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Though, technically, the North and South are still at war. And over the past 60 years there has been an almost constant fluctuation of tensions fueled by North Korean threats.
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In the past year, though, tensions have been near an all time high. Following a series of North Korean missile launches and an underground nuclear test. (Via RT)
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Back in 2010, South Korea nearly scrapped the armistice entirely after North Korea killed 50 South Koreans in a torpedo attack against a Southern ship and during a shelling of a South Korean island.
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South Korean president Park Geun-hye spoke at a ceremony honoring veterans and said she is willing to reopen peace talks if the North agrees to quit its nuclear development program. (Via Euronews)
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It?s the same demand the U.S. has put forward for years ??always in vain. On Saturday, President Obama shifted focus away from current tensions and asked for more support for the nations? veterans. (Via Al Jazeera)
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?Here in America no war should ever be forgotten, no veteran should ever be overlooked.? (Via Sky News)
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In a ceremony following their extravagant parade, North Korea?s ceremonial head of state said: ?The U.S. imperialists sustained a heavy defeat for the first time in their more than 100-year-long history of wars and aggression.??(Via The Washington Post)
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According to the U.S. Department of Defense, more than 2.5 million people died during the three-year Korean War.
Source: http://www.newsy.com/videos/n-korea-celebrates-armistice-with-military-parade
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Mont. youths get military inspiration during master chief's visit
After graduating from Columbia Falls High School in 1992, Robert Stout entered boot camp.
Seventeen years later, he became a master chief petty officer in the Navy, a rank exclusive to about 1 percent of those enlisted.
Entering the Navy was something Stout, 39, thought would entail four years of service, yet 21 years later, Stout said he likely would sign up for another tour before possibly retiring to Montana.
During those 21 years, Stout earned a Bachelor?s in Criminal Justice and History, met the woman who would become his wife (at the time also enlisted in the Navy) and had four children.
Stout returned to the Flathead Valley this week to share his experiences with Boys and Girls Clubs and Rotary Clubs in Columbia Falls and Kalispell.
On Wednesday, Stout visited his hometown Boys and Girls Club, answering a wide range of questions from about 20 eager children ages 5 through 12. The hot topic was military vehicles and weaponry. Children were also impressed to learn that all the residents of Columbia Falls could fit on a Navy aircraft carrier, which holds a crew of 5,000.
Before talking about jobs and duties in the Navy, Stout briefly talked about growing up in Columbia Falls. Right across the street, Stout pointed to the school where he attended elementary and junior high.
?Strive for excellence,? Stout said. ?You?re our future; if you decide to enter the Navy or college, great, but whatever you do, do the best you can.?
Ten-year-old Caleb Sweder of Columbia Falls was brimming with information about Navy SEALs.
?I really want to join them,? Sweder said. ?SEALs go everywhere ? land, water and air.?
After Stout?s talk, Sweder said he learned that the Navy often works with other military forces such as the Marines and organizations such as the FBI and Coast Guard.
Joining the Navy has allowed Stout to work and travel around the world: Canada, Greece, Iceland, Italy and Japan. He?s been to every continent except Antarctica.
As a young man in high school, Stout said, he wasn?t sure what he wanted to do as a career. When Stout went to get his driver?s license, he stopped by a recruitment office where a friend knew some of the recruiters.
?I say the same thing [to youth] even in my job with the young sailors ? they are the future of the United States whether it?s politics or military service or college, and it?s our responsibility to guide them and show them the different opportunities out there,? Stout said.
Stout said it was important that he talked to youth about the Navy?s role while on leave because landlocked states such as Montana usually don?t get to see or hear much about the Navy.
?When I was growing up, I didn?t know much about the Navy besides my grandfather being prior military, prior Navy,? Stout said.
Working as a master at arms, Stout deals with military law enforcement, force protection and anti-terrorism duties onboard Naval ships or installations.
?Seventy percent of the world is covered by water; 80 percent of people live by it and 90 percent of all cargo and shipping is done over it. We?ve got to protect all that,? Stout said. ?My primary background since the attack of the USS Cole DDG-67 is teaching ships and installations how to defend against a terrorist attack,? Stout said. ?
Eighteen sailors were killed in the bombing of the USS Cole by suicide attackers in a small boat. ?
For three years, Stout was part of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.
?We would board other ships and search for terrorists or contraband or anything that could hurt or cripple the United States or our allies missions such as mines in the water [or] the smuggling of oil out of Iraq,? Stout said.
The military has certainly shaped Stout as an adult.
?It made me more dedicated and focused towards completing any challenges that come my way. One of the things I tell my sailors always: ?You must exceed the mission. If you settle for the standard and you mess up, you?re below the standard at that point.??
Between visiting community groups Stout has worked in a trip to Glacier National Park, picked huckleberries in the North Fork and plans to attend Columbia Falls Heritage Days this weekend.
?I enjoy being back to see the community. I can?t wait to see what the Columbia Falls swim team does,? Stout said noting that he has been an avid swimmer since 5 and swam competitively? through high school.
On Sunday, Stout returns to Washington where he is stationed.
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Video: San Diego mayor resists calls to resign over sexual harassment
Ariel Castro accepts plea deal, sparing his life
The Cleveland man accused of raping and torturing three women in his home for a decade will face life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 1,000 years. Appearing in court Friday, Castro tried to explain he was a victim of his own demons. Terrell Brown reports.
Source: http://feeds.cbsnews.com/~r/cbsnews/feed/~3/vpiF035v6bA/
Saturday, July 27, 2013
'Romeo & Juliet' Exclusive Trailer: Watch Now!
Hailee Steinfeld and Douglas Booth star in the Shakespearean romance, out October 11.
By Amy Wilkinson
Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1711302/romeo-and-juliet-movie-trailer.jhtml
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iFixit Cracks Open Google's $35 Chromecast Dongle
It's a good thing the teardown artists at iFixit managed to get their seam-popping tools on Google's new Chromecast dongle before the $35 media-streaming stick sold out and took a very limited-time free Netflix promotion with it.
Now we know how the search giant managed to "squeeze so many cats into one small package," as iFixit put it in its Chromecast teardown report published Friday.
The device itself is an exceedingly simple piece of hardware that still manages to do some very useful things, as PCMag's Will Greenwald noted in our full review of the Chromecast. Google's sold-out dongle lets you stream media from Netflix, YouTube, and Google Play to an HDTV screen through your smartphone, tablet, or notebook, making it "an incredibly inexpensive way to access online media and Google Play's generous movie and music libraries on your HDTV," Greenwald concluded.
The Chromecast is a little flash drive-sized stick with a 1080p HDMI output on one end that plugs into an HDTV and a power input on the other end. It provides juice via a USB charging cable provided by Google (a USB adapter also comes inside the Chromecast box). There's a little button you push to reconfigure the settings back to the factory default and an LED that lights up when it's in use.
And that's it. The iFixit crew, of course, is never content at gazing at the outside of a device, so they broke out their special plastic opening tool to prise open the Chromecast at the seam on its side.
Inside they found a tiny logic board encased in "a big hunk of aluminum heat sink." That's a relative term of course, the heat sink for this 2-inch unit is only "big" in terms of how much of the Chromecast's insides it occupies. And even so, Google warns that the Chromecast may "may get hot to the touch; this is normal," iFixit notes.
Here are the chips the teardown team found on the Chromecast's very spare motherboard assembly:
- An AzureWave AW-NH387 802.11 b/g/n WLAN, Bluetooth, and FM combo module (outlined in red in the picture below)
- A Marvell DE3005-A1 System-on-a-Chip (outlined in orange)
- 4GB of Micron MT29F16G08MAA 16 Gb NAND Flash memory (outlined in yellow)
- 512MB of low-voltage Micron D9PXV DDR3L SDRAM (outlined in green)
Unlike the site's reports on most mobile devices and PCs, the Chromecast teardown doesn't include a repairability score, which makes sense?you're not going to be replacing or upgrading any parts in this tiny dongle. And at just $35 a pop, why bother?
"There's just nothing in it to repair. The Chromecast is essentially a luxury item with a limited use," iFixit explained.
For more, check out Google's $35 Chromecast: What's Not to Love and the slideshow above.
Source: http://feeds.ziffdavis.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/breakingnews/~3/jp-d4vRuO7g/0,2817,2422366,00.asp
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Friday, July 26, 2013
IRS pursuing 'stateless income' tax enforcement: official
By Patrick Temple-West
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Internal Revenue Service is pursuing tax enforcement cases against companies over the issue of "stateless income," a senior agency official said on Wednesday in a reference to corporate profits that are not taxed by any country.
Erik Corwin, an IRS deputy chief counsel, said there were international tax disputes with companies, "most involving consequences of complex restructurings designed either to create stateless income or to affect a tax efficient repatriation."
"So those are a family of cases that are in the pipeline and being looked at," he told tax lawyers in a speech in Washington.
Asked by reporters later to elaborate on any litigation, Corwin declined to comment. But tax lawyers said the references to stateless income and profits held offshore could signal a new enforcement approach by the IRS.
"I have not heard the IRS use the term before," Edward Kleinbard, who coined the "stateless income" phrase in a 2007 research paper, said in a telephone interview.
He is a former chief of staff to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation and now a professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.
Concern over stateless income was raised in May when the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a report that found Apple Inc avoided $9 billion in U.S. taxes in 2012 using a strategy involving three offshore units with no discernible tax home or "residence."
Companies that avoid taxes say they are doing nothing illegal, but are taking advantage of breaks offered by governments to create jobs and business.
The repatriation of profits has been a top concern for U.S. companies, which collectively have more than $1.5 trillion sitting offshore. Most say they keep the money there to avoid the taxes they would face by bringing it home.
The IRS official's comments came days after the G20, a group of leading world economies made up of 19 countries plus the European Union, voiced support for a fundamental reassessment of the rules on taxing multinational corporations.
On July 19, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which advises the G20 on tax and economic policy, released an action plan that said existing national tax enforcement regimes do not work. The plan took aim at loopholes used by companies such as Apple and Google Inc
"We must address the persistent issue of 'stateless income,' which undermines confidence in our tax system at all levels," U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said in a statement on July 19 following the OECD report.
(This story is corrected to say University of Southern California Gould School of Law in the sixth paragraph.)
(Reporting by Patrick Temple-West; Editing by Howard Goller and Andre Grenon)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/irs-pursuing-stateless-income-tax-enforcement-official-012144746.html
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Cambridge Business over Breakfast (BoB Club), Arundel House ...
This successful business networking club in Cambridge meets every two weeks on a Friday. For those of you who may have tried networking before and felt under pressure to refer each week, try BoB Networking as we concentrate on quality referrals rather than quantity at our meetings. So come along and try our lively group and learn more about how Networking through BoB clubs can help both you and your business.
Event Organised By
Business over Breakfast (BoB) Clubs
www.bobclubs.comBoB Clubs creates a secure and successful networking environment for members to cooperate and exchange referrals. Members actively seek and create opportunities for each other.
You and your business will thrive during your professionally structured meetings where you feel welcome, trusted and respected, whilst building confidence and potential business and profits.
You are encouraged to focus on quality referrals, not quantity, leaving you free to network without any undue pressure.
Constant support is on hand to help you save time, earn more money.
Interested in Running your Own Business over Breakfast (BoB) Clubs Event?
Raise the profile of your own business, among other benefits, by organising business networking events in your local area.
Opportunities currently exist with Business over Breakfast (BoB) Clubs to run their events in various UK locations. Click below for further information.
Tell me more about Running My Own Events!
Attending this event or want to share it on Facebook? Comment below!
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Thursday, July 25, 2013
India raises incursion issue in Indo-China talks
At the two-day official-level talks, the two sides deliberated upon ways to maintain peace and tranquility along the Line of Actual Control
Photo ? AFP
New Delhi, 24 Jul (PTI): The recent spate of incursions by Chinese troops into India figured in the talks between the two countries here, with both sides today discussing ways to make the functioning of working mechanisms more efficient with the possibility of more confidence-building measures (CBMs).
At the two-day official-level talks, the two sides deliberated upon ways to maintain peace and tranquility along the Line of Actual Control against the backdrop of concerns in India over incursions by Chinese People Liberation Army.
?The talks were held in a constructive and forward-looking atmosphere,? External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said at the conclusion of the third round of meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs.
?The two delegations reviewed recent developments in the India-China border areas with the objective of enhancing peace and tranquility between the two countries,? he said without elaborating.
The two sides ?discussed additional confidence building measures between the two sides. They also consulted on measures to improve the functioning of the Working Mechanism and make it more efficient,? he said.
There has been a spate of incursions by Chinese troops in Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir, with five such incidents witnessed within a period of 11 days from July 12.
This was the first meeting on border mechanism since the three-week standoff in April at Depsang Valley in Ladakh.
The Indian delegation was led by Gautam Bambawale, Joint Secretary (East Asia) and comprised representatives of the Ministries of External Affairs, Defence and Home Affairs as well as members of the Indian Army and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police.
The Chinese delegation was led by Ouyang Yujing, Director General, Department of Boundary and Oceanic Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and included representatives of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and National Defence of the People?s Republic of China.
The two sides also discussed possibility of additional route to Kailash Mansarover, a pilgrimage place which falls in Chinese territory. The traditional route via Uttarakhand was affected by recent floods.
Source: http://www.tehelka.com/india-raises-incursion-issue-in-indo-china-talks/
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Denver councilman delays plan for tax to fund college scholarships
Denver Councilman Chris Herndon said Wednesday he is holding off, briefly, on asking the City Council to put an $11 million sales tax for college scholarships on the November ballot.
"I want to make sure I have the opportunity to hear from more of my council colleagues," Herndon said.
Herndon said last week he would present a bill, called the Denver Scholarship Promise, to the council's government and finance committee Wednesday. On Tuesday he pulled it from the agenda . The entire weekly meeting had been dedicated to the proposal, so the meeting was then cancelled.
Herndon said Wednesday he would talk to the committee's chairwoman, Jeanne Faatz, to get the measure back before the committee as soon as possible.
The committee meets each Wednesday, but next week's meeting is expected to focus on Mayor Michael Hancock's Good Government Committee recommendations to improve city services and operations, said a spokeswoman for Faatz's office.
Time is an issue. Herndon must get approval from the committee to get the proposal before the full City Council by the end of August to get it on the November ballot.
Councilman Charlie Brown said the tax is a "big deal" that shouldn't be rushed to the ballot. He said Herndon should have been campaigning for it a year ago.
"It was too much, too late, the groundwork was not laid and now the whole thing's sloppy," he said.
The scholarship tax could face a lot of competition for support from voters. The November ballot will ask voters statewide for $950 million for K-12 education.
Hancock also has proposed a 5 percent sales tax on retail marijuana sales in the city. That tax could be on the ballot in November, when voters statewide will be asked to approve a 15 percent excise tax plus a 10 percent statewide sales tax on pot.
Herndon was confident Wednesday that voters would decide on the taxes separately.
"I think people will look at each individual tax on its own merits," he said.
Not necessarily so, said Jon Caldera, president of the Independence Institute, a free-market think tank in Denver that has opposed scores of state and local tax proposals.
"What tends to happen when there are so many tax issues on the ballot is it has a negative impact on all of them," he said. "And passing the state tax issues just gets harder."
He said local voters are more likely to support taxes that benefit local needs than those statewide.
The tax for scholarships would raise the city sales tax by a tenth of a cent to augment private fundraising for the Denver Scholarship Foundation.
The tax would expire after 10 years, when supporters say the scholarship fund would have enough money to continue in perpetuity.
If it passes, the Denver Scholarship Promise would be the nation's first dedicated tax for college scholarships, according to supporters.
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174, jbunch@denverpost.com or twitter.com/joeybunch
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Wednesday, July 24, 2013
UCLA football: Safety Dietrich Riley forced to retire
| UCLA safety Dietrich Riley has given up on playing college football because of lingering neck and shoulder injuries. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times / April 2, 2013) |
July 23, 2013, 5:16 p.m.
UCLA safety Dietrich Riley will be unable to continue his football career because of lingering problems with neck and shoulder injuries.
Riley, who would have been a junior, was unable to get final medical clearance, and his loss thins out an area already lacking in experience. The Bruins lost all four starters from their secondary of last season.
Riley was considered one of the top safeties in the nation as a senior at La Canada St. Francis High. He was the subject of a recruiting tug-of-war between UCLA and USC.
His college career was derailed in 2011 when he collided with California running back Isi Sofele. Riley required surgery to fuse two vertebrae. He missed the 2012 season and was limited during spring practice in April.
The defensive backfield is the biggest concern for the Bruins heading into the season. Sophomore safety Randall Goforth is the only returning player in the secondary who started a game last season.
Ishmael Adams and Fabian Moreau played as freshmen in 2012, though Adams missed much of the season after shoulder surgery. Junior cornerback Anthony Jefferson and senior safety Brandon Sermons have game experience.
A promising incoming freshman class includes defensive backs Tyler Foreman, Tahaan Goodman, Johnny Johnson and Priest Willis.
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West Ham to clear debt before move to Olympic Stadium
The Hammers have debts of ?70million, half of that bank debt secured on Upton Park, and that has to be cleared when the ground is sold ahead of the move in 2016. If they failed to raise the necessary ?35m then co-owners David Gold and David Sullivan would make up the shortfall to ensure the club could take up the 99-year lease.
The club had a buyer for Upton Park but that fell through due to the delays in the deal to be tenants.Brady added she did not expect the sale would cover much more than the lump sum the club must pay to the London Legacy Development Corporation to move to the Olympic venue.
She said: ?We had a tentative deal [for Upton Park] but that fell away. We hope the money generated from the sale will be enough to fulfil our commitment and help pay off some of our bank debt.
?When we bought the club and took on more than ?100m of debt that was guaranteed on the ground. We have to pay off all our bank debt to move, we can?t take the debt with us. If there is any excess [from Upton Park sale] it will meet some of that debt but I don?t expect there will be.?
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The Day I Wore a Kilt to Work
I wore a skirt to work on Friday, okay? Laugh all you want. It was a kilt, to be precise, but I know that many of my fellow New Yorkers won?t bother with the distinction. Whatever. The kilt was breezy, even in the stale July heat. It was better than shorts. Way better than pants. So, as I said, mock me with abandon, but know that it won?t make a difference. Because I was the one who benefited from excellent air circulation, not to mention a stylish tartan.
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The kilt-wearing experiment was my own quite public response to the anxiety about men wearing shorts in the workplace, which flares up in direct proportion to Manhattan temperatures. The Awl editor Choire Sicha, who had previously lectured that ?Tom Ford says [shorts] are only for the beach or the tennis court,? admitted to wearing a pair last Monday, before the temperatures reached the upper bounds of the 90s.
Hamilton Nolan of Gawker took a more emphatic tone, urging, ?Wear shorts all you want. Especially when it is hot.? The Atlantic Wire?s own Rebecca Greenfield, meanwhile, went for a sensible middle-of-the road approach:??The next few days will be so hot that you should really get over the whole too-cool for shorts thing and embrace bare calves over suffocating in full length pants.?
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As a matter of fact, I do want my calves exposed. Ankles, too. Knees, even. But, being a rather inveterate snob, I can?t help but think of shorts as juvenile beachwear, the very name connoting a neutered garment ? trousers circumcised, if you will.?That?s why I chose the kilt, which was first worn in the Scottish Highlands in 16th century. While shorts are ahistorical and acultural, the kilt signifies an appreciation of the past. The dark blue and green pattern of the kilt I purchased belonged to the Black Watch, an elite Scottish regiment (which was the subject of an acclaimed 2006 play about British soldiers in Iraq by Gregory Burke). So, from a cultural perspective, a kilt was far easier to justify than, say, a pair of Abercrombie & Fitch cargo shorts, even if the former might look, upon first glance, like a women?s garment.
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Which brings me to an important point: people will look. Some might outright stare. Snicker, comment, mock. But these are the wages of keeping cool. Besides, as I discovered on my day of the kilt, most New Yorkers have encountered enough varieties of strangeness to not pay too much mind to a man wearing what may or may not be a skirt. Once, on the corner of Spring and Lafayette, right outside The Wire?s offices, a gentleman asked me if I was Irish. I did not bother to correct his cultural misplacement. A little later that same day, two Midwestern-seeming youths said loudly, as I passed, that the people-watching in New York was ?awesome.? If they were talking about me, then I was happy to oblige. But this was SoHo, where there were far more interesting characters than a guy in a black t-shirt tucked into a kilt, and I don?t want to be so vain as to presume I was the sole subject of their curiosity.
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A skirt, in the end, is just a skirt. Besides, as far as kilts go, my own traditional Scottish number was far less controversial than Kanye West?s leather one. Nor am I the very first person to wear a loose-hanging conical garment around his waist in New York.
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The literary man-about-town Jon-Jon Goulian chronicled his childhood and emergence on New York's cultural scene in 2011's The?Man in the Grey Flannel Skirt.?He did not, however, want to discuss kilts, telling me last week, "there's only so much brain space I can spare for any one thing in my life, and dudes in skirts has taken up far more than its share." To which I say, fair enough. The man has paid his dues.
As far as my office mates ? who did not know I would be arriving in a kilt ? most of them did not care beyond expressing some mild curiosity.
?Did people say stuff on the subway to you??
They did not. It was hot and early. Nobody cared.
?Does it have pockets??
An internal pouch in the front, which was not all that useful, though it could fit both my wallet and iPhone. It is possible, however, to outfit your kilt with additional pockets.
?Aren?t you supposed to wear one of those fur bags??
No. (And the bag is called a sporran, for what it's worth.) I was not playing dress-up-as-a-Highlander. Instead, I wanted to be comfortable at work without succumbing to the lowbrow short. Moreover, I had read that kilts are beneficial to men?s health, though the full benefits of kilts can only be obtained by not wearing underwear, which practice I abstained from for reasons of good taste.
I should caution, however, that before donning a kilt to work, men should check with their workplace about general sartorial guideline. I, for one, first confirmed that Atlantic Media ? The Wire's parent group ? had no injunction against men wearing shorts or killed.?Some workplaces, however, could be more conservative in their dress codes. Yet, as Jonathan M. Fox, an old friend who used to work at the New York City Commission on Human Rights, told me, a man who was subject to disciplinary measures for wearing a kilt could potentially have grounds to file a complaint if he were ?a person of Scottish descent and [he] routinely wore kilts as an expression of [his] Scottish heritage.? In addition, he suggested that any workplace that allowed women to wear skirts would have to allow men to wear kilts or potentially face a sex discrimination suit.
I am happy to report that I encountered no discrimination whatsoever on my day of wearing a kilt at The Wire's offices. Made by the Southern California company Sport Kilt, the kilt is woven from poly-acrylic fiber that feels like wool, but is much lighter. I certainly did not get hot walking around in viscous heat that approached triple digits; if anything, the office?s air conditioning actually chilled my legs ? a strange sensation for your average trouser-wearing male.
Nevertheless, I encountered some resistance from my male colleagues to the kilt. While they were perfectly fine with my having donned one, they did not appear ready to follow my lead.
The political reporter Philip Bump was curious but ultimately unconvinced: ??I guess the only situation that might goad me into wearing a?kilt?is if it were very hot outside,? he told me. ?But, aren't they made of wool? Isn't that warm? Yeah, no thanks.??Others expressed similar reservations ? though nothing more serious than that.
Nolan, the Gawker writer who urged people to swear shorts, also proved to be a skeptic when it came to kilts, telling me in an email, "I would say I am opposed unless the man is physically located in Scotland." That would, on the face of it, rule out both Manhattan and my beloved Brooklyn.
But others are starting to see the kilt as a potential summer option:
I realize that my kilt experiment won?t solve the shorts debate, which moved from the office cubicle to the church pew over the weekend. The kilt, rather, is a way to avoid that debate entirely ? all while keeping cool and comfortable.
Photos: AP; Wikimedia Commons; Eric Levenson
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/day-wore-kilt-174855262.html
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Tuesday, July 23, 2013
New key to 'switching off' hypertension
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Researchers have designed new compounds that mimic those naturally used by the body to regulate blood pressure. The most promising of them may literally be the key to controlling hypertension, switching off the signaling pathways that lead to the deadly condition.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/lzFKNToDZaw/130722152613.htm
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Monday, July 22, 2013
Cameron on internet porn - Professional Security Magazine Online
Family friendly content filters are proposed by Prime Minister David Cameron, to combat online pornography. By the end of this year, when someone sets up a new broadband account the settings to install family friendly filters will be automatically selected, the PM said.
Cameron called on ?Google, Bing, Yahoo and the rest? to act, as a moral duty. He spoke of the cultural challenge that ?many children are watching online pornography ? and finding other damaging material online ? at an increasingly young age?.
He praised companies like Vodafone that he said already do a good job at giving parents advice about online safety; ?they spend millions on it and today they are launching the latest edition of their digital parenting guide?.
For the speech in full visit the Number 10 website.
Comment
Andrew Ferguson, site editor of thinkbroandband.com, said: ?The new code of practice that will see some of the most wide reaching changes to the Internet experience of millions in the UK has been announced by the Prime Minister David Cameron, but it is with some concern the area of legal adult pornography is so closely linked with the child abuse material. On the area of policing child abuse, there is an easy consensus that it should be removed from the Internet as part of a wider campaign to reduce the amount of real life child abuse that occurs. Over the years the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has done instrumental work at driving this sort of material out of the UK and co-operation with overseas agencies is having an effect worldwide. The ?moral duty? on larger search engine providers like Bing and Google to operate warning messages when people use search phrases associated with child abuse material online as a measure to reduce the gateway effect where people may be drawn into the dark illegal world has a much wider potential for creating collateral damage.
?The area of default-on Internet safety filters where new broadband customers of the largest providers are presented with a filter page to block pornography is set as the default option will make the job of applying filters easier for parents, but by the same token their simplicity may also be their problem. Parents will know all too well that embarrassing time of life when your children become teenagers, and in the current economic climate continue to live at home well past their 16th birthday. With new network level filtering, it becomes very difficult to present different levels of filtering for the varying ages in a home.
?So while we can expect a cleaner more family friendly Internet there will be many questions left unanswered and it is right that people ask lots of questions. We hope that parents do not rely solely on the new filtering measures, no filtering system can be perfect, there will be cases of over blocking and under blocking and as parents it is duty to install responsibility on our children and answer all those questions which usually start with a simple ? why? Blocking pornography will not create a child safe internet connection; there will still be masses of violence, gambling, drugs, alcohol and other content you may want to block. The reality is that a true child safe Internet connection is actually pretty limited.?
Source: http://www.professionalsecurity.co.uk/news/interviews/cameron-on-internet-porn/
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[All iPads] Streaming Football (sports) on the iPad?
Streaming Football (sports) on the iPad?
Hey guys,
I saw the picture below on a facebook page earlier and was wondering how it was possible to view such streams. My immediate thought was it would only be achievable through a jailbreak, but in any case if anyone knows please let me know!
Cheers!
----------
Should also say that it looks to be a iPhone app just scaled for the iPad.
__________________
13-inch MacBook Pro, 2.5GHz, 4GB Ram, 500 GB HD ; iPhone 4 16GB ; iPad Retina 16GB
Last edited by iRyann; Today at 03:11 PM. Reason: Photo error.
Source: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1612640&goto=newpost
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China may become top wheat importer after crops ruined
China's wheat crop has suffered more severely than previously thought from frost in the growing period and rain during the harvest, and import demand to compensate for the damage could see the country eclipse Egypt as the world's top buyer.
Interviews with farmers and new estimates from analysts have revealed weather damage in China's northern grain belt could have made as much as 20 million metric tons (22.05 million tons) of the wheat crop, or 16 percent, unfit for human consumption. That would be double the volume previously reported as damaged.
Higher imports, which have already been revised upwards on initial damage reports, will further shrink global supplies and support prices, fuelling new worries over global food security.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday raised its forecast for China's imports in 2013/14 to 8.5 million metric tons from 3.2 million metric tons in the previous year, prompting U.S. wheat prices to rally to more than two-week highs.
But overseas traders and analysts estimate imports could rise above 10 million metric tons, surpassing the 9 million metric tons the world's biggest buyer Egypt is expected to buy.
Competition from China for more imports would force other buyers, such as Egypt, to pay more for grains, in a new blow for the Middle East country after two years of political turmoil has left it struggling for funds to pay for food imports.
In China's top wheat producing province of Henan, farmers visited by Reuters said kernels shrunk because of the frost early this year followed by more damage with grains germinating due to the rainstorms in May. Henan is in the northern grain belt, which accounts for about half of China's output.
"The kernels this year are half their normal sizes," said Feng Ling, a 55-year old farmer in Xuchang, central Henan, where some growers have seen their production slashed by 40 percent from year ago. "The harvest was terrible."
China has already booked around 3 million metric tons of wheat for shipment in the year to June 2014, nearing last year's purchases.
That would be the biggest volume imported since the near 10 million metric tons China booked in 2003/2004 after a sharp decrease in the domestic harvest. In a normal year, China accounts for about a fifth of global wheat production and consumption.
"We expect between 15 to 20 million metric tons of wheat will be downgraded to use for animal feed, which will reduce wheat supply for milling purpose," said Li Qiang, chief analyst at agricultural consultancy, the Shanghai JC Intelligence.
The crop damage across large swathes of China's farmland is adding to concerns over global food supplies after unfavorable weather in top wheat exporters the United States and the Black Sea region resulted in quality downgrades.
"The end users have been very relaxed about the wheat supply outlook," said Abah Ofon, a commodities analyst at Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore.
"But as the season is unfolding we are seeing bumps emerge. The market now has to readjust based on the new fundamentals which suggest the demand is going to be more than what the market was expecting."
Global output is expected to rise this year from last, but will still be below demand and leave the world with the lowest wheat stocks since 2008/09.
Chinese analysts and traders see less of a shortfall than those overseas, and have smaller estimates for total wheat imports of around five million to six million metric tons.
This is because they expect limited availability of U.S. soft red winter wheat at a price at which China is interested in buying. China is also likely to draw down its stocks to meet some of the demand.
The weather impact on China's wheat crop will make it harder for Beijing to maintain self-sufficiency in grains. As cities encroaching on arable land and rising incomes drive up demand, China is finding it harder and harder to feed the world's most populous nation with domestic supply.
China has also been snapping up corn shipments in recent weeks with imports forecast to climb to an all-time high of 7 million metric tons this year, according to the USDA.
NOT FIT FOR MILLING OR STORING
Chinese farmers have traditionally relied on Beijing's annual stockpiling program to protect their income. But the crop quality this year is so bad that even the state granaries are turning grain away.
At Xuchang city, trucks piled high with bags of wheat queued outside the state grain reserve warehouse. Several farmers looking to sell their wheat waited outside the building even though officials had rejected the stocks.
"The rains have caused the kernels to start sprouting, so the warehouse has refused to buy our wheat," said farmer Li Xiaohua, who has been waiting outside the warehouse to sell her stocks. "What can we do now."
She said her family could normally harvest about 500 kg of wheat on one mu (0.07 hectare) of land, but the volume has slumped to just 300 kg this year.
The wheat crop, hit by frost and rains in China, cannot be milled into flour and most of it will be used to feed animals.
The supply situation has been further strained, as some of the wheat in government reserves since 2009/10 is deteriorating. China does not publish data on its state reserves, but analysts said state stockpiler Sinograin still holds between 20-30 million metric tons of wheat.
SERIOUS CROP LOSSES
In addition to around 10 million metric tons of wheat being downgraded in Henan, production in Anhui, Jiangsu and Hubei provinces has also taken a hit.
The four provinces produced nearly half of the China's wheat output in 2012, with Henan accounting for 26 percent of the country's total. Analysts expect Henan's output to fall some 20 percent from last year's 32 million metric tons.
"Good-quality wheat is in a short supply," said Liu Xuepeng, a purchasing manager with a major flour mill in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan.
Millers will need to blend lower-quality wheat with high-quality domestic and imported grains to make flour, he said.
Sinograin is focusing on buying soft red winter wheat from the United States and similar varieties from France and Australia. Flour mills are keen to import high-quality Canadian and U.S. hard red winter wheat to blend for making flour for making bread and biscuits.
Higher imports of top-grade wheat by China would drive up premiums for protein-rich spring wheat traded on the Minneapolis Grain Exchange and hard red winter wheat on the Kansas City Board of Trade.
Although the global wheat market was underpinned by Chinese buying last week, U.S. wheat prices are still around 9 percent below domestic prices of similar quality cited in Jiangsu province, encouraging imports.
Chinese buyers have been locking in cargoes for shipment even in the first quarter of 2014, which shows the shortfall in domestic supplies is likely to last over the next 12 months.
"The way they are buying is something very unusual," said a Singapore-based trader. "They have been signing deals for Australian new-crop wheat and other origins for shipment in the first quarter of 2014. This shows some serious problems with the crop."
Source: http://www.sott.net/article/264162-China-may-become-top-wheat-importer-after-crops-ruined
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Sunday, July 21, 2013
Windows and BlackBerry should ask for HTML5 instagram and Netflix App
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var google_adnum = 0;
function google_ad_request_done(google_ads) {
if($('.amazon-ad').length>0) return; // Suppress ads on pages with amazon ads
for(i = 0; i Ads by Google";
var content = "";
if (ad.type == "flash") {
content += '';
} else if (ad.type == "image") {
content += '
'; } else if (ad.type == "html") { content += ad.snippet; } else { content += '' +
ad.line1 + '
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' + '' + ad.visible_url + ''; } content = ad_template.replace("{title}",title).replace("{content}",content); var pos = i*3 + (i+2); $('#posts .postcontainer:eq(' + pos + ')').after(content); } if (google_ads.length > 0 && google_ads[0].bidtype == "CPC") google_adnum = google_adnum + google_ads.length; } var google_ad_client = "ca-pub-8460099860738313"; var google_ad_channel = '1590343211'; var google_ad_output = 'js'; var google_max_num_ads = '10'; var google_ad_type = 'text'; var google_image_size = '728x90'; var google_feedback = 'on'; var google_skip = google_adnum;
var google_adnum = 0;
function google_ad_request_done(google_ads) {
if($('.amazon-ad').length>0) return; // Suppress ads on pages with amazon ads
for(i = 0; i Ads by Google";
var content = "";
if (ad.type == "flash") {
content += '';
} else if (ad.type == "image") {
content += '
'; } else if (ad.type == "html") { content += ad.snippet; } else { content += '' +
ad.line1 + '' + '' + ad.line2 + '?' + ad.line3 + '
' + '' + ad.visible_url + ''; } content = ad_template.replace("{title}",title).replace("{content}",content); var pos = i*3 + (i+2); $('#posts .postcontainer:eq(' + pos + ')').after(content); } if (google_ads.length > 0 && google_ads[0].bidtype == "CPC") google_adnum = google_adnum + google_ads.length; } var google_ad_client = "ca-pub-8460099860738313"; var google_ad_channel = '1590343211'; var google_ad_output = 'js'; var google_max_num_ads = '10'; var google_ad_type = 'text'; var google_image_size = '728x90'; var google_feedback = 'on'; var google_skip = google_adnum;
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Michael Phelps brings Golf Channel Win Mcmurry to espys as his date
Michael Phelps arrived at the ESPYS with quite a head-turning date: Golf Channel personality Win McMurry.
It isn't the first time Phelps has been spotted with McMurry. The record-setting Olympic swimmer is an avid golfer and has appeared on the Golf Channel, and given his recent comments that he's enjoying life and not looking to return to the pool, we could be seeing a lot more of him and McMurry.
McMurry previously made headlines for an embarrassing on-air slip, as she was reporting that Tiger Woods had a bulging disk and instead uttered another four-letter word for the male anatomy. For more on her, click here.
In addition to picking up awards for Best Male Olympic Athlete and Best Record-Breaking Performance at Wednesday night's show, Phelps seemed to find a dining spot he loved.
Wow!!! @craigs in la is a sick meal!!! Try it if you haven't!!!
? Michael Phelps (@MichaelPhelps) July 17, 2013
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Saturday, July 20, 2013
Important Things An Individual Have To Know About Personal Loans
You have to know your limits when it comes to being able to pay the loan, look into how much you make and when you can spare sufficient cash to pay the loan, since missing a payment equals more payments Take note that these fees are different from the interest that you must pay. Although, things like these are just small bumps, so don?t grow weary of the road ahead. Nevertheless, there are always unanticipated expenditures that must be paid, so you better prepare yourself for this. Individuals who would like to engage with payday loan or short-term loan has to assess themselves first and also consider other things just before coping with this type of loans. We can?t refute the fact that most of the people today are in the middle of financial issues. Maybe the main reason for this is the monetary instability. Together with it is the higher in costs of basic necessities and also services. For this condition, issues on how to deal with our necessities truly afflict us. However, there is another way to mend this issue. The best option for this is payday loan. As what was said previously, having a payday loan is a bit costly. The main reason of obtaining the loan is really important, because it will determine one precisely what you must find out about the stipulations of these loans. A Cash loan is even worse than personal loans, so you ought to try to search for loans of this type. In case you can?t settle your Singapore personal loan rate, you can expand the credit.? It is professional to always understand the specifics of the contract you?re appending your signature on because after you?re bound by those terms and conditions. Additionally, it is better to ask for clarifications about the agreement compared to the feasible predicaments you may endure if you won?t clarify things. This will make sure that any kind of hidden scam or alterations are uncovered and both parties are at the same pace of operation and also understanding.
This entry was posted in Financial. Bookmark the permalink.Source: http://www.nuncnow.org/important-things-an-individual-have-to-know-about-personal-loans
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How to Reduce Your Water Footprint | Going Green | Coldwell ...
There is no doubt that conserving water is a crucial element in the fight to save the environment. Organizations, corporations, and homeowners have all made this issue a priority. It is important to be mindful of your home?s usage of water as responsible global citizen, but let?s not overlook the fact that it can also save you a lot of money.
Here are some great?tips from National Geographic?(yes,that National Geographic or NatGeo as the kids call it these days) that will hopefully give you more ideas on how to integrate water-saving techniques into your home?s routine.
1. Check for Leaks
In a recent study, National Geographic found that roughly 10 gallons of water are lost per day due to leaks in faucets from sinks, showers, outdoor spouts etc. That?s a lot of water! Check to ensure your fixtures are up to the latest standards and try to repair those leaks if possible. NatGeo goes on to state, ?If you use a low-flow shower head, you can save 15 gallons of water during a 10-minute shower.?
2. Use Cold Water
When possible minimize your usage of hot water. Wash clothes in cold or cool water instead of hot water and take cool showers when possible. If your bathroom looks like there is a fog machine in use, the temperature is probably a little too high.
3. Choose a Shower Over a Bath
Did you know, the average bathtub takes about 70 gallons of water to fill? That?s a ton of water! Well, not literally a ton, but you get what I mean. Showers are clearly the better option.
4. It?s Okay to Run the Dishwasher
Running the dishwasher, especially if you fill it to maximum capacity, actually has the potential to be more energy efficient than hand-washing dishes! According to NatGeo, ?Energy Star dishwashers use about 4 gallons of water per load, and even standard machines use only about 6 gallons. Hand washing generally uses about 20 gallons of water each time.?
5. Your Diet Plays a Part in Water Conservation
Possibly the most astounding statement I came across in my research was this one from NatGeo: ?The water it takes to produce the average American diet alone?approximately 1,000 gallons per person per day?is more than the global average water footprint of 900 gallons per person per day for diet, household use, transportation, energy, and the consumption of material goods.?
Remember, water is a precious resource that everyone in the world has to share. Hopefully these tips can help you to be more conservative with your water usage and in return save a little extra cash.
For more incredible statistics and facts please visit the?full articleused for this piece.
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Friday, July 19, 2013
Insight: Aussie bank surfs U.S. energy wave as Wall St. rivals struggle
By Cezary Podkul
NEW YORK (Reuters) - An Australian bank is quietly beating Wall Street's powerhouses in a game they have long dominated: trading in the staples of the world economy.
Sydney-based Macquarie Group earned about $720 million trading commodities in the financial year to March, for the first time exceeding onetime standard-bearer Goldman Sachs Group Inc, which reported $575 million in revenue in 2012, the firms' filings show.
While direct comparisons are difficult because banks report their earnings differently, the contrast in their trajectories is stark: Macquarie's commodity earnings have more than doubled since 2007. Goldman's have slumped almost 90 percent since hitting $4.6 billion in 2009, battered by rising regulation and tougher competition. At Morgan Stanley, earnings tumbled two-thirds in four years, to around $1 billion in 2012. Citigroup and Wells Fargo earn much less than Macquarie, filings show.
Nearly 60 percent of Macquarie's trading income now comes from gas, oil, power, metals and the like - more than double that of most rivals with much bigger balance sheets, and a level some analysts say may be risky.
A lighter U.S. regulatory burden may be helping the bank leapfrog larger rivals hobbled by increasing restrictions on their business. Macquarie executives also credit their growth to a strong balance sheet and a readiness to get their hands dirty trading vast amounts of oil and gas from the U.S. energy boom.
"We are a commodity company within a bank," said Walter Pye, who heads up Macquarie's fixed-income, currency and commodities division for the Americas.
Pye said Macquarie is willing to do "unconventional things that may be more akin to a physical commodity company than a bank," like moving large shipments of commodities across pipelines, seaways and railroads.
The Australian bank, best known for financing infrastructure deals, boasts a 220-strong energy trading division that moves 50,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil across North America. It is opening new trading routes, such as shipping Texas crude to Canada, and sells nearly twice as much natural gas as No. 2 producer Chesapeake Energy. Its commodities arm owns $1 billion of loans and private equity investments in the U.S. oil and gas sector.
Envious rivals say Macquarie is unencumbered by the many new regulations being imposed on its bigger rivals, ranging from a ban on trading for their own profit to salary caps and investment restrictions. That's because Macquarie hasn't set up a traditional commercial bank subject to U.S. banking regulations.
As the impact of the 2008 financial crisis continues to reverberate - just last week, U.S. regulators proposed a plan to force the country's largest banks to hold twice as much equity capital as is required under global capital standards - banks like Macquarie may be gaining an unexpected advantage.
?FEWER RESTRICTIONS'
Thirty years ago, Goldman and Morgan Stanley built large physical trading desks for their commodity operations, allowing them to dominate the space for decades. But amid the financial crisis in 2008, both converted to bank holding companies.
The conversion gave them access to the Fed's discount lending window - at a cost.
They've been forced to strip out proprietary trading; trader bonuses have been cut sharply, prompting some notable staff departures; Morgan Stanley may be forced to sell its prize oil terminal and transport unit, TransMontaigne - all of which has cut deep into commodity earnings.
Macquarie doesn't have to worry about any of that: It has opted not to operate as a commercial bank in the United States, remaining outside the remit of the Federal Reserve and other U.S. banking regulators.
"You can be much deeper into the commodities business if you're not regulated as a bank or bank holding company," said Scott Cammarn, an expert on foreign banking law at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in Charlotte, North Carolina, whose firm has done work on behalf of Macquarie.
That doesn't mean Macquarie is entirely exempt from new rules. In December, for example, the bank voluntarily submitted its energy trading arm to greater reporting requirements under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reforms.
But it does allow the bank latitude that irks rivals.
"It's the guys with access to cheap capital and fewer restrictions" like Macquarie that are becoming a competitive threat, said one senior commodities executive at a global bank.
Some analysts warn Macquarie may be getting too comfortable with its exposure to the volatile commodities sector.
At JPMorgan Chase & Co., now the biggest commodity trader on Wall Street, the segment accounted for about 50 percent of its total trading revenue in 2012, but only because more than $5.8 billion in trading losses took a big bite out of the bank's earnings. Even at that inflated level, Macquarie's nearly 60 percent share is higher.
None of the global banks tracked by consultants Coalition had a higher share than Macquarie over the past four years.
"If it's 60 percent of your (trading) revenue, it does present quite a significant risk," said George Kuznetsov, head of research and analytics at Coalition.
AUSTRALIAN PLAYBOOK
Senior Macquarie executives cite the bank's balance sheet, rather than any regulatory advantage, as the key to its success. As of the end of March, Macquarie had $2.9 billion more than the $9 billion Australian regulators require it to keep on its books, according to an investor presentation.
They also say that while the bank's financing is an advantage, Macquarie is not reviving Wall Street's wilder side.
"We just don't have this notion of people just having the right to punt the bank's balance sheet," Pye said. Proprietary trading, he said, is not in the firm's "DNA." Position limits are small, risk management is tight and oversight is intense even for small transactions, he said.
Former employees interviewed by Reuters did not dispute Pye.
"A lot of their business is much less risky than speculative trading. It's really just connecting producers and consumers," said one former Macquarie gas trader.
Some shareholders say the bank's U.S. growth resembles its roots in Australia, a resource-rich country where Macquarie got its start in commodities by trading bullion in 1978.
Investment manager Oliver Ansted recalls competing against Macquarie for loans in the mining sector in Australia during the 1990s. He said he would often see Macquarie bankroll "bite-size" deals of A$15 million to A$20 million to small-scale miners.
"We'd scratch our heads and ask, ?How can these guys get excited about these deals?'" said Ansted, who today manages a position in Macquarie and other stocks for First State Investments in Sydney.
"To me, it sounds like a pretty similar example to what they're doing in energy in the U.S.," he said.
In North Dakota, Macquarie lent $18 million to oil prospector American Eagle Energy Corp. last year, when regional banks offered no more than $10 million.
"They're comfortable with that risk, for whatever reason," said Steve Dille, land manager for American Eagle.
ASIA CURRENCIES TO U.S. TANKERS
The push into U.S. energy markets has been led by Nicholas O'Kane, a 40-year-old Melbourne native who cut his teeth trading currencies for Macquarie amid the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
He launched Macquarie's energy trading desk in London six years later and took over managing energy markets globally in 2007. Two years later, Macquarie bought the natural gas trading operations of utility Constellation Energy, nearly trebling its small West Coast gas trading team.
O'Kane argues Macquarie is not too exposed to commodity risk because his business revolves around trading physical goods - not betting on paper profits.
"The physical businesses give us that access to the customer. ... They need to buy gas, they need to buy oil or they need to sell gas, oil or power," O'Kane said in an interview at his 160-strong trading floor in Houston.
The Everglades oil tanker is one example of how the business works.
On a muggy Friday in late April, the tanker makes a call at the Sunoco Logistics terminal on the Sabine-Neches waterway in Nederland, Texas. Macquarie chartered the Marshall Islands-flagged tanker to deliver 500,000 barrels of crude oil to Canada.
"It's our second loading at this terminal," says Anton Vorobev, captain of the vessel's 28-person Russian crew.
Hauling a mix of domestic crudes, the Everglades makes its way some 5,664 nautical miles to a Newfoundland refinery called Come-By-Chance. The shipment helps fulfill a supply contract Macquarie won for the 115,000 bpd refinery in 2011, shortly after the bank began U.S. physical oil trading.
Some three weeks later, another tanker - the Mt. Rainier - calls in Boston Harbor, dropping off 210,000 barrels of Come-By-Chance gasoline.
At least four other banks, including Goldman and Morgan Stanley, have similar arrangements in place with refineries.
None, however, are believed to be exporting U.S. crude, as Macquarie does.
"They're doing trades that date back to the heyday of commodities at a Morgan or a Goldman Sachs," said Brad Hintz, Wall Street analyst at Sanford Bernstein & Co in New York and a former treasurer of Morgan Stanley.
"It's almost a throwback to the days of a much more creative Wall Street."
(Additional reporting by Kristen Hays in Houston; Editing by Martin Howell and Douglas Royalty)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/insight-aussie-bank-surfs-u-energy-wave-wall-001512550.html
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Both milky spots and fat cells in omentum promote ovarian cancer metastases
Cancer researchers have wondered why ovarian cancer cells are so attracted to the abdominal cavity, especially the omentum, with the hope that such an understanding could lead to better disease management or even prevention. Results from a series of experiments suggest a two-step model of omental colonization in which i) cancer cells are attracted to and lodge within immune cell-containing structures known as milky spots, and ii) fat storage cells (adipocytes) fuel cancer cell growth and spread. This study is scheduled for publication in the August 2013 issue of The American Journal of Pathology.
The omentum is a large fatty structure that drapes off the stomach and blankets the peritoneal organs. Omental fat is composed of adipocytes, blood vessels, immune cells, and other connective tissue and contains unusual immune cell-containing structures known as milky spots, which play a key role in many of its protective functions. In previous research, investigators focused either on the milky spots or the adipocytes as key to attracting metastatic ovarian cancer cells. The results of the current experiments show that "although there are clear strengths to both of these models, neither address the intimate and dynamic interaction among milky spots, surrounding adipocytes, and other components of omental tissues. We propose an alternative, more fully integrated model," says Carrie Rinker-Schaeffer, PhD, a professor in the Departments of Surgery (Section of Urology) and Obstetrics and Gynecology at The University of Chicago.
In the first experiment, researchers investigated whether abdominal fat tissue that contains milky spots is a more attractive target for cancer cells than abdominal fat that does not contain milky spots. This study took advantage of the fact that mice have a second source of milky spot-containing abdominal fat (splenoportal fat) as well as fat that is devoid of milky spots (the gonadal, uterine, and mesenteric fat). They found that different ovarian cancer cell lines (mouse derived ID8, and human derived SKOV3ip.1, HeyA8, and CaOV3) specifically colonize omental and splenoportal fat, forming large lesions of cancer cells within milky spots. In contrast, ovarian cancer cells were rarely detected in abdominal fat that lacks milky spots.
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Thursday, July 18, 2013
U.S. housing starts fall to 10-month low; weather blamed
Real estate 
2 hours ago
Steve Marcus / Reuters
Carpenters work on new homes at a residential construction site in the west side of the Las Vegas Valley in Las Vegas in April. Housing starts have fallen to a 10-month low.
WASHINGTON - Housing starts and permits for future home construction unexpectedly fell in June, but the decline in activity was likely to be short-lived against the backdrop of bullish sentiment among home builders.
The Commerce Department said on Wednesday that housing starts dropped 9.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 836,000 units. That was the lowest level since August last year.
Economists, who had expected groundbreaking to rise to a 959,000-unit rate, shrugged off the decline and said wet weather in many parts of the country had dampened activity. They noted that much of the drop was in the volatile multifamily segment.
"It looks like it's weather-related," said Sam Bullard, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte, N.C. "On the surface it doesn't look good, but we are confident that starts activity is still going to climb higher in the months to come."
Permits to build homes fell 7.5 percent last month to a 911,000-unit pace. Economist had expected permits to rise to a 1-million unit pace.
Though it was the second straight month of declines in permits, they remained ahead of starts. Economists said this, together with upbeat homebuilder confidence, suggested groundbreaking activity will bounce back in July and through the remainder of this year.
Sentiment among single-family home builders hit a 7-1/2 year high in July, a report showed on Monday, amid optimism over current and future home sales.
Mortgage rates still low
There was little to suggest that a recent spike in mortgage rates was restraining home building activity, economists said, pointing to the improving builder confidence.
"New home supply and housing completions remain low, home prices are rising and, despite the recent rise, mortgage rates remain low," said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York. "To us, this all points to housing activity adding to growth in the second half of the year."
Housing's recovery is being aided by still-low mortgage rates engineered by the Federal Reserve's accommodative monetary policy and steady employment gains.
Mortgage rates increased in recent weeks after the Fed expressed its desire to start cutting back on its bond purchases later this year. The monthly $85 billion in bond purchases have been holding down interest rates.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday the central bank still expected to start scaling back its massive asset purchase program later this year, but left open the option of changing that plan in either direction if the economic outlook shifted.
The U.S. stock market rose as Bernanke's comments led markets to believe the central bank's plans to pull its monetary stimulus were not set in stone. The U.S. dollar gained ground while Treasury securities prices slipped.
Bernanke offered an upbeat assessment of the housing market's prospects.
"Housing activity and prices seem likely to continue to recover, notwithstanding the recent increases in mortgage rates, but it will be important to monitor developments in this sector carefully," Bernanke told lawmakers.
Last month, groundbreaking for single-family homes, the largest segment of the market, slipped 0.8 percent to its lowest level since last November 2012. Starts for multi-family homes declined 26.2 percent to a 245,000-unit rate.
Starts were down in all four regions in June, with big declines in the Northeast, South and the Midwest.
Weak groundbreaking suggested a smaller boost to both second and third quarter gross domestic product from residential construction. Second-quarter GDP estimates are ranging between 0.5 percent and 1 percent.
The economy grew at a 1.8 percent annual pace in the first three months of the year.
Permits for multi-family homes fell 21.4 percent last month. But permits for single-family homes rose 0.6 percent to a their highest since May 2008.
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