Santa wasn't nice to Melbourne, Australia Xmas day as it was battered with a mini-tornado & tennis ball-sized hail: Source: http://twitter.com/citizentube/statuses/151359058006392833
WASHINGTON (AP) ? U.S. home prices fell in most major cities for the second straight month, further evidence that the housing recovery will be bumpy.
The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index shows prices dropped in October from September in 19 of the 20 cities tracked. Prices in a majority of cities declined for the second straight month. Prior to that, they had risen for five consecutive months in at least half of the cities tracked.
Atlanta, Detroit and Minneapolis posted the biggest monthly declines. Prices in Atlanta and Las Vegas fell to their lowest points since the housing crisis began. Prices rose in Phoenix after three straight monthly declines.
The Case Shiller index covers half of all U.S. homes. It measures prices compared with those in January 2000 and creates a three-month moving average.
Associated PressNo Deal: AT&T on Monday ended its effort to buy T-Mobile USA, acknowledging that it could not overcome stiff opposition by the Obama administration to form the nation's biggest cellphone service provider, The New York Times reports.
Lobby Pay: The sluggish economy hasn?t stemmed the flow of cash into Washington?s influence industry, where the heads of many special interest groups still take home hefty pay packages ? even some who were at the helm when their group suffered a major political loss, Politico reports
Fading: Former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich's status as the front runner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination is fading after weeks of attacks by rivals and intense media scrutiny of his political record and personality, Reuters reports.
Undercover: Police officers in Washington posing as gangsters, crooked businessmen and bodyguards helped snag $7.2 million in cocaine, PCP and other drugs, buy and capture 161 weapons, and make 70 arrests in what authorities said was one of their most important weapons investigations in recent history, The Washington Post reports.
Amnesia?: R. Allen Stanford, accused of defrauding investors of more than $7 billion, has claimed he can?t recall family vacations, his business dealings or romantic encounters with women because ?59 years were stolen? by a jailhouse beating and anxiety drugs. Prosecutors will argue that his memory loss is faked, Bloomberg reports.
Source: http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2011/12/the-4.html
ROME/BERLIN (Reuters) ? A comprehensive solution to the euro zone debt crisis is beyond the region's reach, rating agency Fitch said, warning that six of its economies including Italy and Spain could be hit with credit downgrades in the near future.
The warning late Friday, the second time in two weeks that the bloc has been threatened with multiple ratings markdowns, heightened pressure on leaders to get to grips with the turmoil.
Fitch also said it might also cut AAA-rated France within two years and urged the European Central Bank to take a more active firefighting role.
One ECB policymaker said Saturday that time was running out to come up with solutions to a crisis that could spark a global slump. Another said the bank would not expand the bond buying program it launched to keep a lid on vulnerable states' debt costs.
Underscoring tensions within the bloc, a week after a key EU summit failed to reassure financial markets the crisis was being tackled, Italy's Prime Minister Mario Monti urged EU policymakers Friday to beware of dividing the continent.
ECB ratesetter Erkki Liikanen said that, to prevent a flurry of ratings downgrades and a credit freeze, the continent's leaders needed to act fast to beef up the rescue funds designed to provide a safety net for debt-laden member countries.
"The worse scenario is that the negative cycle continues, uncertainty grows, which would lead to a global recession," Liikanen - a member of the bank's governing council -told Finnish public broadcaster YLE in an interview Saturday.
International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde had said no country was immune from the crisis and each needed to act to head off the risk of a global depression.
In a swipe against Germany, Italy's Monti said Europe's response "should be wrapped in a long-term sustainable approach, not just to feed short-term hunger for rigor in some countries."
Pushing for governments to eliminate their bloated budget deficits, Germany has led resistance to allowing the ECB to ramp up its bond purchases to a big enough scale to douse the crisis.
But Fitch added to the pressure for just such a move.
The agency said that, following the EU summit, it had concluded that "a 'comprehensive solution' to the eurozone crisis is technically and politically beyond reach."
"Of particular concern is the absence of a credible financial backstop," it said. "In Fitch's opinion this requires more active and explicit commitment from the ECB to mitigate the risk of self-fulfilling liquidity crises."
A second ECB policymaker, Juergen Stark, said expanding bond buys would not end the crisis, while swift implementation of the plan on closer fiscal union agreed at the summit was crucial.
"Don't ask too much of the central bank," Stark - who steps down from the executive board at year-end - was quoted as saying Saturday in pre-released extracts from a German magazine interview.
Graphics on euro zone crisis http://r.reuters.com/hyb65p
Interactive timeline http://link.reuters.com/rev89r
MULTIPLE DOWNGRADE THREAT
Fitch put Belgium, Spain, Slovenia, Italy, Ireland, and Cyprus on negative watch, which could mean a downgrade within three months.
"The systemic nature of the euro zone crisis is having a profoundly adverse effect on economic and financial stability across the region," it said.
Less than two weeks earlier, citing continuing disagreements among policymakers over how to tackle the crisis, rival agency Standard & Poor's put the ratings of 15 euro zone states, including Germany and France, on review for one- to two-notch downgrades.
The third main agency, Moody's, Friday cut Belgium's credit rating by two notches, saying the crisis raised funding risks for countries with high public debt burdens, and said a further downgrade was possible within two years.
Belgium's Finance Minister Steven Vanackere told Reuters on Saturday the cut was not a big surprise but had added pressure on the country to hit next year's budget deficit target of 2.
A first draft of a planned new 'fiscal compact' among euro zone countries and aspiring members, published Friday, showed that countries could be taken to the European Court of Justice if they did not meet agreed budget goals.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel - under pressure from the Bundesbank to force debt-saddled euro zone countries to reform and save their way out of crisis with austerity measures - has led a push for automatic sanctions for deficit "sinners."
This has fed concerns that excessive belt-tightening in southern countries could send their economies into a negative spiral with no prospect of growing out of crisis, while feeding resentment in the prosperous north.
In France, officials have sought to prepare the public for the likelihood that Paris will lose its top-notch rating for the first time since 1975, playing down the potential setback and focusing attention instead on questioning neighboring Britain's AAA rating. President Nicolas Sarkozy had vowed to keep the top rating, and it could become an issue in next year's election campaign.
EFSF FIREPOWER
Euro zone officials said potential downgrades, particularly from S&P, could raise the cost of borrowing for the region's existing EFSF bailout fund, but would not make a big difference to its operations.
EFSF chief Klaus Regling said Friday about 600 billion euros was available to fight the crisis.
"If Italy and Spain were to ask for support, their gross financing needs for 2012 are less than that and I don't think they would need to be taken off the market," he said.
Euro zone countries will hold talks next Monday on the draft text of the euro zone fiscal compact and on bilateral loans to the International Monetary Fund, officials in Brussels said. Slovak Finance Minister Ivan Miklos told Reuters they would commit 150 billion euros to boost the IMF's lending capacity.
The United States has refused to offer additional funding and it remains to be seen how much countries such as China, Russia, Brazil and India are willing to commit.
Commercial banks appear to be resisting pressure from governments to help debt-choked euro zone countries by using cheap money lent by the ECB to buy more sovereign bonds.
The chief executive of UniCredit, one of Italy's two biggest banks, said this week that using ECB money to buy government debt "wouldn't be logical."
Euro zone governments need to sell almost 80 billion euros of fresh debt in January alone, and the stand-off between policymakers and banks could turn the slow-burning debt crisis into a conflagration in the New Year.
(Additional reporting by Steve Scherer in Rome, Annika Breidthardt in Berlin, Gareth Gore, Natsuko Waki, Kirsten Donovan and Ana Nicolaci da Costa in London, Martin Santa in Bratislava, Ingrid Melander in Athens; Writing by John Stonestreet, Paul Carrel and Paul Taylor; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. ? Rodney Atkins has filed for divorce and his attorney denied Thursday the country singer assaulted his wife last month.
Atkins was arrested Nov. 21 and charged with domestic assault. His wife, Tammy Jo Atkins, told police that after a night of heavy drinking he assaulted her and tried to suffocate her with a pillow. Attorney Rose Palermo said in a statement the allegations of violence are "completely untrue" and that the argument between the couple did not become physical.
Palermo writes of "an unfortunate verbal dispute" that was within hearing range of the couple's young son. When Atkins realized this, "his first priority became getting out of the earshot of the child, and that is when Mrs. Atkins called the police and gave them her version of the argument, which is completely untrue."
The platinum-selling singer, known for No. 1 hits including "If You're Going Through Hell (Before the Devil Even Knows)," "Take a Back Road" and "Watching You," decided to file for divorce as a result of the false statement to police, the statement says.
Both allege inappropriate marital conduct in divorce filings in Williamson County. Tammy Jo Atkins is seeking full custody, an equal distribution of their assets, alimony and child support. Rodney Atkins is seeking joint custody. In one filing, his attorney says Tammy Jo Atkins' "ill conduct" was a justifiable cause for his own conduct in the early morning hours of Nov. 21.
Tammy Jo Atkins told police the couple had been arguing all night and that her husband was intoxicated. She claimed he tried to smother her with a pillow during the night and then in the morning grabbed her by the face and shoved her down a hallway. She said she feared for her safety and that the assault occurred in front of their 10-year-old son, Elijah. A hearing in the divorce case is scheduled for Dec. 20.
Palermo's statement says the police witnessed no violent acts and that this is a case of her word against his.
"Mr. Atkins plans to spend significant time with his child over the Christmas holidays and respectfully requests privacy at this time," the statement reads. "Mr. Atkins wants to thank his fans for standing by him and he is confident the truth will prevail."
Robert Jackson, the attorney for Tammy Jo Atkins, did not immediately respond to a message left by the Associated Press.
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The five-year plan is the first drafted since the 2008 ouster of president Thabo Mbeki and his health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, known as Dr Beetroot for advocating vegetables rather medication to treat AIDS.
Despite his own gaffes ? he once said he had showered to prevent HIV infection ? Zuma has dramatically expanded South A?
Source: http://blogs.medindia.net/health-news/plan-to-halve-hiv-infections-unveiled-in-south-africa/
TEHRAN, Iran ? Iran on Thursday banned foreign media from covering any rallies in front of British diplomatic missions in the capital, in the latest fallout from the storming of Britain's embassy in Tehran by pro-government demonstrators.
The attack on the compounds on Tuesday was preceded by an apparently state-approved rally outside the British Embassy to denounce Britain's support for the latest round of Western sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear program.
"We inform all representatives of the foreign media that their presence at rallies in the city, especially in front of the British Embassy and Gholhak garden, or residential compound, is not permitted unless authorized in advance," Iran's foreign media office said in a statement.
After mass anti-government demonstrations in 2009, Iran banned against foreign media from covering opposition protests, but this is the first time Tehran has barred foreign media from covering pro-government rallies.
Tuesday's rampage at the British compound went on for hours, with the mob hauling down Union Jack flags, torching a vehicle and tossing looted documents through windows. Protesters replaced the British flags with Iran's flag and a banner in the name of a 7th-century Shiite saint, Imam Hussein, and one looter showed off a picture of Queen Elizabeth II apparently taken off a wall.
The incident has deepened Iran's isolation and significantly escalated tensions with the West. It prompted Britain to pull its diplomats out of Iran, shutter the ransacked embassy and order all Iranian diplomats out of the U.K. within 48 hours. Germany, France and the Netherlands have recalled their ambassadors in solidarity.
Italy and Spain both summoned Iranian envoys to condemn the storming of the British embassy.
On Thursday, Iran allowed diplomats from 16 EU nations and eight other countries, including Russia, Brazil and Turkey, to visit the ransacked British diplomatic buildings. A Western diplomat who took part in the trip told The Associated Press the visit aimed to make a quick assessment of the damage to the site. He did not elaborate.
Also, Norway reopened its embassy in Tehran after a 24-hour closure due to security concerns following the attack.
Late Wednesday, Iranian authorities released 11 hardline protesters detained for the attack on the British diplomatic buildings, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported Thursday. There was no immediate explanation for the release.
Under Iranian law, damaging property carries a prison term of up to three years. It could, however, indicate the 11 have high-level protection from circles within the Iranian establishment.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has remained silent on the attack on the British diplomatic mission, but Iran's foreign ministry expressed regret and called the embassy assault "unacceptable."
However, hard-liners have spoken out in support of the protesters. Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said the "wrath of (the protesters) resulted from several decades of domination-seeking behavior of Britain."
The storming of the embassy came two days after Iran's parliament voted to reduce ties with Britain following London's support for the recently upgraded U.S. sanctions on Tehran.
Tehran's relations with Britain have become increasingly strained over the past few months, largely driven by increasing tensions over Tehran's refusal to halt uranium enrichment ? a process that can lead to nuclear arms. The West says Iran is developing atomic weapons; Tehran denies the claims.
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All Critics (41) | Top Critics (11) | Fresh (37) | Rotten (4)
Broken into nine chapters -- one for each year -- the documentary isn't a rigorous work but a felt piece of vital, if flawed, art.
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 is not your standard documentary dealing with racism in America.
A film that suffers from a surfeit of credulity.
You watch the material here and wonder whether most of the movies made about black people are meant to pacify general audiences, to distract them from demanding more of the movies.
It is mostly impressionistic - but, wow, some of those impressions really pack a punch.
This chronicle of pride and social upheaval is filled with vintage images and important voices.
What is most impressive about the film is that it manages to put human faces -- not just caricatures -- on the key figures of the movement.
It's thrilling to hear from unrepentant revolutionaries such as Angela Davis and amusing to hear from their bell-bottomed white lawyers.
It may not add up to a narrative, but it's a fascinating compilation -- a mixtape you may want to hear more than once.
"Mixtape" is about a foreign country. And the foreign country is ours.
Impressively made documentary that paints a fascinating portrait of an important period in American history, not least because the perspective stands in stark contrast to the American media's coverage of the same events at the time.
This fascinating documentary brings together material shot by Swedish documentarists and TV journalists dealing with the African American civil rights movement...
The timing of this release is more than perfect. And the story behind the film is nearly as interesting as the stories it tells.
It is not a comprehensive history but the footage is an extraordinarily potent reminder that the stand taken by black people eventually bore fruit.
Interesting stuff, though it sometimes looks like a block of unedited raw material.
Blazing interviews with Angela Davis and Stokely Carmichael supply stinging and unforgettable rhetoric: it simply can't fail with footage this wild.
Like the era it represents, there are highs and lows.
Like most mix-tapes, offers crackling content even when its contexts aren't clear.
The film is testament to the power of archival legwork in documentary-filmmaking.
While it assumes a fair bit of knowledge of the social changes exploding in sixties America, there's a wealth of fascinating material and punchy insights into an earth shaking movement.
It's a dizzying mess of perspectives and lacks a firm head on its shoulders, but history buffs will find this assembly of footage - largely unseen outside of Sweden - to be riveting and important.
From the fly-on-the-wall, cin?ma-v?rit? style of the '60s to a more aggressive, advocacy approach in the mid-'70s, "Mixtape" is a wide slice of nonfiction film history.
These are the men and women Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, and the networks didn't want us to know about.
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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_black_power_mix_tape_1967_1975/
