Friday, December 23, 2011

Greg_Wood_: @DavidHaddrell will be busy in town for sure but parade/fireworks well worth a look, main bonfire is about 8pm on beach beyond Palace Pier

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@DavidHaddrell will be busy in town for sure but parade/fireworks well worth a look, main bonfire is about 8pm on beach beyond Palace Pier Greg_Wood_

Greg Wood

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Source: http://twitter.com/Greg_Wood_/statuses/149555108521324544

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Japan: 30-40 yrs to scrap Fukushima plant

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Source: http://feeds.canada.com/~r/canwest/F77/~3/Lx2bBbRo48Y/story.html

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Sunday, December 18, 2011

Afghan official: Most Kabul Bank loans recoverable

(AP) ? Afghanistan's new central bank governor expressed confidence Sunday that the government can recover up to 80 percent of the $825 million it cost to bail out the private Kabul Bank.

The near-collapse last year of Kabul Bank, once the nation's largest private lender, created economic and political turmoil, prompted the freezing of some international aid and became a symbol of the country's deep-rooted corruption.

According to the International Monetary Fund, Kabul Bank operated like a "Ponzi scheme" that resulted in fraud on a massive scale. The case has been closely followed by international donors because it is seen as a test of government officials' pledge to root out patronage and graft and to show accountability to world financial institutions such as the IMF.

Last month, the IMF approved a three-year $133.6 million loan for Afghanistan because it found the government had taken steps to address governance and accountability issues that surfaced during the Kabul Bank crisis. The decision reassured international donors, many whom had withheld aid while waiting for the IMF decision.

Since the crisis, Kabul Bank has been split into two parts ?a healthy one being run by the Afghan Finance Ministry, and another which is has taken over hundreds of millions of dollars in bad loans. The Afghan government hopes to put the healthy bank up for sale in the middle of next year.

Central bank chief Noorullah Delawari said 80 percent of the $825 million has been identified as receivable, and the bank hopes to get 20 percent back in the near term, and 60 percent in one to five years. It was still working to identify 20 percent of the funds ? or about $152 million ? still missing.

"A total of $825 million has been paid so far by the central bank and the government to Kabul Bank. Of that, $80 million has been received from the loans which were given by the Kabul Bank to individuals, almost 20 percent is going to come back in the near future and that is from properties mostly in Dubai and in Kabul," Delawari said.

He added that a delegation would travel to Dubai in coming days for meetings with officials there to find properties owned by those who took loans. Those properties would then be seized and sold.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2011-12-18-AS-Afghanistan-Kabul-Bank/id-a497966abde5474ebd04eeb0c8751369

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The GOP's 'make-or-break' Sioux City debate: Winners and losers (The Week)

New York ? The Republican presidential candidates made their closing arguments in the final forum before Iowa's Jan. 3 caucuses. Did anyone gain a last-minute edge?

Frontrunner Newt Gingrich was on the defensive ? again ? as the Republican candidates made their closing appeals to voters in the last debate before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses officially launch primary season (and inevitably weed out a candidate or two). Gingrich fended off competitors' claims that he's an unreliable conservative, calling them "laughable," and defended his consulting work for Fannie Mae. His chief rival, Mitt Romney, tried to stay above the fray and focus his attacks on President Obama. Who came out best in Sioux City's "make-or-break" debate? Here, a consensus list of the winners and losers:

WINNERS
Mitt Romney
Among the three candidates with any chance of winning Iowa, says Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway, "the one that seemed to mostly dodge the fire this time around was Mitt Romney." He took the usual hits on the Massachusetts health care law and his history at Bain Capital, but he wasn't attacked nearly as aggressively as his chief rival Gingrich. "This may end up benefiting Romney in the long run since it seemed, once again, like he was the cool, calm guy standing above the fray while all the other candidates fought amongst themselves."

SEE MORE: The sad return of Donald Trump's freak show

?

Michele Bachmann
The Tea Party favorite has tumbled since winning the Iowa straw poll in August, says Shawna Shepherd at CNN, but Bachmann held her own this time. She "had the sharpest attack lines" against Gingrich, saying he has made money through "influence-peddling," even if he's not technically a lobbyist. And she drew applause by calling Ron Paul's anti-war Iran policy the most "dangerous answer for American security" she's ever heard. Bachmann came off as a "true-blue conservative," says William Kristol in The Weekly Standard. This performance might be what she needed to start climbing back into the first-tier.

Newt Gingrich
The man to beat "did face criticism," says Kathie Obradovich at the Des Moines Register, "but it wasn't the open season on Gingrich that the Dec. 10 debate featured." The former House speaker "parried attacks for most of the first hour," and "gained back ground he may have lost in the second half." And the debate closed with the moderators handing Gingrich "a sugarplum," by making everyone "defend negative attacks on each other and giving Gingrich a chance to proclaim his positive campaign." Not a bad final impression with which to leave voters before a crucial vote.

SEE MORE: Why Donald Trump dropped out of his own debate: 4 theories

?

LOSERS
Newt Gingrich
The "new Newt" ? the cool, unflappable frontrunner ? was on display much of the night, says Frank James at NPR. "But there were times when old Newt, the consummate Washington insider or proposer of crazy ideas, made an appearance." In those moments Gingrich did nothing to soothe the conservatives he needs to win the primaries, or the independents he would need in the general election.?

Ron Paul
Gingrich's most formidable rival in Iowa, according to polls, is Rep. Ron Paul, says Charles Babington at the Associated Press, but the libertarian-leaning Texan did himself no favors in Sioux City. He "expressed his anti-war, anti-interventionist views so vehemently that he may have turned off mainstream Republicans who otherwise might have helped him to a surprising first-place finish."

SEE MORE: Democrats should fear a third-party challenge in 2012

?

Fence-sitters
This was the last chance for GOP primary voters to examine the candidates together, says Dan Balz and Philip Rucker at The Washington Post, but "there was no clear winner Thursday night and no obvious loser." Nobody committed a campaign-sinking gaffe, "and some of the strongest performances were turned in by candidates in the lower tier of the competition." Even Romney, who needs to gain lost ground from Gingrich, refrained from "direct encounters" and aimed his sharpest criticism at Obama. If voters were hoping for a game-changer, they were disappointed.

View this article on TheWeek.com
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Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politicsopinion/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/theweek/20111216/cm_theweek/222580

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Saturday, December 17, 2011

[OOC] The Elites: Frontlines

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Why Your Business Needs a Mobile Website Right Now

The Digital Marketing Series is supported by HubSpot, an inbound marketing software company based in Cambridge, MA, that makes a full platform of marketing software, including lead generation tools.

First, the good news: If you have a website, then you have a site that can be accessed by any mobile device with a browser. Now, the bad: Chances are, that site looks pretty crappy on said mobile device.

If you?re worried about this, you?re not alone. Just as companies realized, circa 1996, that they needed to create a website to remain relevant to consumers, history is repeating itself in mobile. By 2013, more people will use mobile phones than PCs to get online, according to Gartner. In mid-2011, we also reached the point at which consumers were spending more time on their mobile devices than on their PCs.

In such an environment, a site designed to be viewed on a desktop PC comes across as woefully lacking. Say you?re accessing such a site from the Safari browser on your iPhone. The first thing you?re likely to notice is that it takes a relatively long time to load. The second thing is that the type on the page is pretty small. It might take a lot of zooming and pinching to navigate the site as well. If you have Flash on your site, it?s not going to come across at all on an iPhone.

At that point, your potential customer may start looking around. According to a recent survey from Compuware, 40% of users have turned to a competitor?s site after a bad mobile experience.

Yet currently, most businesses haven?t optimized their sites for mobile. Jesse Haines, group marketing manager for Google Mobile Ads, says the company canvassed its large advertisers early in 2011 and found only 21% have launched a mobile site.

If you?re among the other 79% or so, take heart. Optimizing your site for mobile or creating a mobile site from scratch isn?t a big deal.

In part, that?s because Google has stepped in. The company is eager to expand its online advertising empire further into mobile. With an eye towards ?growing the mobile ecosystem? as Haines puts it, Google last month launched GoMo, an initiative that aims to help businesses go mobile.

Google?s howtogomo.com is a clearinghouse of information on the topic and even includes a feature that lets you see how your site looks on a mobile device.

For those looking for a quick fix, Google provides a list of companies that will build your mobile site for you, and you can specify what you want to spend. Haines says that you can get up and running for as little as $100 a year.

Dennis Mink, VP of marketing at DudaMobile, one of the vendors Google lists on GoMo, says he thinks the average price for a decent mobile site is more like $200 to $500. If you?re comfortable with website design, though, DudaMobile offers DIY tools as well, which are just $9 a month. While the company?s web-based software is free, the fee goes toward hosting and site analytics. (Yes, if you?re running a mobile site, you have to pay two hosting fees ? one for your traditional website and one for mobile.)

One recent DudaMobile customer is TriStar Automotive, a Santa Rosa, Calif., repair shop. Jim Dadaos, the owner of the shop, says his web developer told him a few months back that he needed to get a mobile site ?because that?s where everything is going.? Dadaos?s developer contacted DudaMobile, which created the site ?within a very short time? and it?s been up and running for six months. During that time Dadaos says he?s seen a 20% spike in business. ?During these times, the auto repair business is sucking, so that?s significant,? he says.

Mink and Haines offer a few tips for building a good mobile website. One thing to consider is whether your site is what Haines calls ?thumb-friendly.? What that means in practice is lots of big, fat buttons. Another thing to keep in mind is font size and navigation. The first should be fairly large, and the second should be fairly intuitive.

Haines says one site that renders especially well on mobile is 1-800 Flowers, which, as you see below, is both thumb-friendly and intuitive.

Another site Haines singles out is from PacSun, the teen-focused clothing brand:

Incidentally, if you?re considering a mobile app rather than a mobile website, Haines says to go for the website. ?It really depends on the brand,? she says. ?We think a mobile website is a must-have.? Haines says that for some brands, like news sites for instance, a mobile app makes sense, but otherwise, most users are going to look for you via their browser.

Mink agrees: ?If you?re going to search for any type of business, you?re going to search the mobile web, not an app store,? he says. ?People don?t look for apps that will give them information.?


Series supported by HubSpot

The Digital Marketing Series is supported by HubSpot, an inbound marketing software company based in Cambridge, MA, that makes a full platform of marketing software, including lead generation tools.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, contrastaddict

Source: http://mashable.com/2011/12/16/mobile-website-tips/

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Friday, December 16, 2011

Dems may drop millionaires tax in year-end dispute (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Democrats may jettison their demand for higher taxes on millionaires as part of legislation to extend Social Security tax cuts for most Americans, officials said Wednesday as President Barack Obama and Congress struggled to clear critical year-end bills without triggering a partial government shutdown.

Republicans, too, signaled an eagerness to avoid gridlock and adjourn for the holidays. With a massive, $1 trillion funding bill blocked by Democrats, GOP lawmakers and aides floated the possibility of a backup measure to keep the government in operation for several days after the money runs out Friday night.

It all comes at the close of a year of divided government ? with a tea party-flavored majority in the House and Obama's allies in the Senate ? that has veered from near- catastrophe to last-minute compromise repeatedly since last January.

The rhetoric Wednesday was biting at times.

"We have fiddled all year long, all year," the Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, complained in a less-than-harmonious exchange on the Senate floor with Majority Leader Harry Reid. McConnell accused Democrats of "routinely setting up votes designed to divide us ... to give the president a talking point out on the campaign trail."

Reid shot back that McConnell had long ago declared Obama's defeat to be his top priority. And he warned that unless Republicans show a willingness to bend, the country faces a government shutdown "that will be just as unpopular" as the two that occurred when Newt Gingrich was House speaker more than a decade ago.

It was a reminder ? as if McConnell and current Speaker John Boehner of Ohio needed one ? of the political debacle that ensued for Republicans when Gingrich was outmaneuvered in a showdown with former President Bill Clinton.

At issue now are three year-end bills that Obama and leaders in both parties in Congress say they want. One would extend expiring Social Security payroll tax cuts and benefits for the long-term unemployed, provisions at the heart of Obama's jobs program. Another is the $1 trillion spending measure that would lock in cuts that Republicans won earlier in the year. The third measure is a $662 billion defense bill setting policy for military personnel, weapons systems and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus national security programs in the Energy Department.

After a two-day silence, the White House said Obama would sign the measure despite initial concern over a provision requiring the military to take custody of any suspect deemed to be a member of al-Qaida or its affiliates and involved in plotting or committing attacks on the United States. U.S. citizens would be exempt.

Reid and other top Democratic senators met with Obama at the White House at mid-afternoon, and congressional aides said the topic was the end-of-year legislation.

Democrats have made the proposed millionaires' tax central to their plan for the payroll tax cut extension, and officials stressed no decision had been made on whether to drop it. They spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about legislative strategy.

Any such move would represent a concession to the Republicans in both houses who are opposed to the surtax. But it could also require Democrats to agree to politically painful savings elsewhere in the budget to replace the estimated $140 billion the tax would have raised over a decade.

In its most recent form, the surtax would have slapped a 1.9 percent tax on income in excess of $1 million, with the proceeds helping pay for the extension of tax cuts for 160 million workers. Senate Democrats have twice forced votes on the proposal in what officials have described as a political maneuver designed to force GOP lawmakers to choose between protecting the wealthy on the one hand and extending tax cuts for millions on the other.

Wednesday's maneuvering occurred the day after the House passed a payroll tax extension that contained no higher taxes. That House measure drew a veto threat from Obama that cited spending cuts the White House said would harm the middle class without requiring a sacrifice from the wealthy.

The bill would extract nearly $43 billion from the year-old health care bill; extend a pay freeze on federal employees while also increasing their pension contributions and raise Medicare premiums on seniors with incomes over $80,000 beginning in 2017. It also would raise a fee that is charged to banks whose mortgages are guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Obama's veto message also alluded to a requirement for the construction of an oil pipeline from Canada to Texas that Republicans said would create 20,000 jobs. The provision is designed to force the administration's hand, since Obama announced recently that despite three years of review under two administrations, he was putting off a decision until after the election.

The measure would permit Obama to block the Keystone XL project if he deemed its construction to be not in the national interest.

The House-passed bill also includes an extension of unemployment benefits that would scale back what is currently in place. The White House said 3.3 million people would be cut off under its terms. Another part of the bill, to block proposed regulations limiting toxic emissions from industrial incinerators, drew objections from the White House.

The legislation would avert a threatened 27 percent cut in payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients, and Obama and Democrats are willing to accept that.

___

Associated Press writers Donna Cassata, Alan Fram and Andrew Taylor contributed to this story

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111214/ap_on_go_co/us_congress_rdp

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