Xinhua website planning $158 million IPO: sources (Reuters)

BEIJING (Reuters) ? China's state news agency Xinhua plans to list its online portal in a 1 billion yuan ($157.8 million) stock market offering in Shanghai with China International Capital Corp underwriting the deal, two sources with knowledge of the matter said on Friday.

The exact timing of the initial public offering of Xinhuanet.com has not been fixed, the sources told Reuters.

"It's around 1 billion yuan," one of the sources said.

Xinhua was not immediately available for comment.

Other state news outlets are also looking to list their online operations. People.com.cn, the online news portal run by the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party -- the People's Daily -- is looking to list in Shanghai, sources have told Reuters.

(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Nick Edwards)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111223/wr_nm/us_xinhua_ipo

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Stocks get boost from US economy hopes (AP)

LONDON ? Global stocks advanced Friday on further signs the U.S. economy is improving, but trading activity was muted as the traditional holiday slowdown began in earnest.

Investors have taken heart from figures Thursday showing that the number of initial jobless claims in the U.S. unexpectedly fell 4,000 last week to 364,000, the lowest level since April 2008. A fairly upbeat U.S. consumer confidence survey from the University of Michigan helped sustain the positive sentiment before the European close.

The figures provided further evidence that the U.S. economy, the world's largest, has got through its soft patch earlier this year and may be poised for stronger-than-anticipated growth in the fourth quarter.

"The interesting point in these claims data is that they continue to signal that the financial market ructions that kicked-off in late July this year have not made a meaningful impact on the U.S. real economy," said Adrian Foster, an analyst at Rabobank International.

The news that Italian Premier Mario Monti easily won a vote of confidence in the Senate on Thursday has also cheered investors, as it signaled parliamentary approval of the government's euro30 billion ($39 billion) package of tax hikes and pension changes.

The austerity package is intended to save the country from financial disaster and follows rising concerns in the markets that Italy will find it difficult to pay off its massive debts, which stand at around euro1.9 trillion ($2.5 trillion).

"A combination of Italian PM Monti's success in gaining approval for his austerity package and continuing economic progress in the U.S. is the catalyst for the markets drive at present," said Jordan Lambert, a trader at Spreadex.

In Europe, Germany's DAX rose 0.4 percent to 5,873 while the CAC-40 in France was 1.1 percent higher at 3,105. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares, which only traded for a half day, closed up 1 percent at 5,512.70.

Trading volumes were low as many investors take vacations over Christmas and New Year. Many markets close early on Friday and most are closed Monday for Christmas.

The euro was also fairly solid, trading 0.1 percent higher at $1.3073.

Wall Street was poised for a fairly solid opening ? Dow futures were up 0.5 percent at 12,158 while the broader Standard & Poor's 500 futures rose by the same rate to 1,256.

The last batch of major U.S. economic data will be released before the bell, the highlight likely to be November durable goods orders figures. They are expected to show orders rising 2.2 percent during the month, following two straight monthly falls.

Earlier in Asia, China's benchmark in Shanghai gained 0.9 percent to 2,204.78 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 1.4 percent to 18,629.17. Japan's financial markets were closed for a public holiday.

Oil prices tracked equities higher ? benchmark crude for February delivery was up 35 cents to $99.88 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

____

Alex Kennedy in Singapore contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/energy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111223/ap_on_bi_ge/world_markets

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LeapFrog LeapPad Explorer

My 7-year-old son has spent the last few months eyeballing the Apple iPad some family members have been sporting. It's not something I was actually considering getting him anytime soon. The good news is, I found something that he found just as entertaining: the LeapFrog LeapPad Explorer ($99.99 list). Aimed at the 4- to 9-year-old set, this device is meant to be not just a gaming and media consumption platform but also one for learning.

Design and Features
The LeapPad measures approximately 5.1 by 7 by 1 inches (HWD). The chassis is made of plastic in the LeapFrog signature colors of white and bright green (there is also a pink and white version). The 5-inch TFT touch screen has a resolution of 480 by 272, which is higher resolution than the 320-by-240 of the LeapFrog Leapster Explorer ($69.99 list). The whole device is rugged enough for typical wear and tear, and just the right size for children's hands.

The stylus can be stowed magnetically in a slot in the top right side of the LeapPad. While the magnet slot is a cool feature, I strongly recommend using the bundled second stylus with a string and attaching it to a small thin bar in a hollow right above the magnetic slot (we managed to lose the stylus without a string in a day). The location of the stylus slot is a vast improvement over its location on the Leapster Explorer, as both left- and right-handed users will not have a problem wielding the stylus even attached to the string.

The tiny power button lies on the left side of the screen. There's also a headphone jack at the top of the device, to the left of the game cartridge slot, and a mini-USB port next to the cartridge slot (a USB cable is bundled with the system). There is a small home button at the bottom right of the screen, which gets you back to the main menu, and the volume control is located to the right of the screen. In the middle of the area underneath the screen is a toggle button.

On the back of the LeapPad is a built-in camera and video recorder, and the device comes with 10 photo edit tools, as well as a countdown timer so users can take self-portraits. The LeapPad has an accelerometer, which allows users to move the device in various directions when playing games.

Leaplet Apps
Since it launched its Leaplet apps store, LeapFrog has added much to its inventory. Granted, it's not anywhere near as many apps as, say, the iTunes store, but at over 100, there's a lot to choose from. Among the highlights are what LeapFrog is calling Ultra ebooks (not to be confused with the new laptop category), a souped-up version of the ebooks that LeapFrog already had in its library. Where the ebooks had sound effects and a read-aloud feature, the ultra ebooks add games in the middle. For instance, the Cars 2 ultra ebook features a couple of cool racing games that take advantage of the built-in accelerometer.

In addition to games and e-books, there are also LeapFrog videos for purchasing and downloading to the Leapster. (I hope to see more videos available either in the store or on cartridges, if possible.) You have two options for purchasing an app from the Leaplet store. You can do so directly from LeapFrog's site, or you can buy a Leaplet app card, wait until you get it, then enter the download code. Once purchased, you can add the app, book, or movie to up to four Leapster Explorer and LeapPad devices, a boon to those who own several devices.

Performance
Setup was relatively easy. The system takes four double-A batteries, and installing them doesn't necessarily require a screwdriver. I used a quarter to slip open the two slots in the back of the unit, and voila, batteries installed. After inserting the batteries, I turned the unit on. I also created a player account for Jake (though this part was easy enough for Jake to have done himself). Then I inserted the bundled CD-ROM into my PC, and it brought me to LeapFrog's site (you'll need an Internet connection for this) where I downloaded the LeapFrog Connect app. Then I simply followed the instructions that came up on my computer screen.

After I connected, I added the device to my existing LeapFrog account (creating a new account is just as easy). It's important to note that if you have a previous LeapFrog account and set up a new account, you won't have access to apps you downloaded using your original account. (I found that out the hard way.) After the setup, I handed the LeapPad to Jake and sat back. Given that he already has the Leapster Explorer, it wasn't too hard for him to figure out the controls. The difference is that the physical controls?two control buttons (A and B), main menu, Hint button with a question-mark icon, and a Pause button?are now touch controls on the screen, but they're located more or less in the same place they were in the Leapster Explorer.

Jake had a lot of fun using his Leapster Explorer game cartridges ($24.99 list) on the LeapPad, such as Wolverine and the X-Men, a game that lets you customize over 12,000 words that the user can spell while reuniting the X-Men and saving mutant-kind, and Ben 10 Alien Force, which teaches concepts about animals, geography, and DNA.

Being an emerging comics fiend, Jake played the Wolverine game first. I thought the game creators did a clever job of weaving spelling exercises in with the gaming action. I actually thought he was oblivious to the learning that was going on with the gaming, until he said to me, "Mom, it's like the iPad, but with learning." That's my boy.

Jake was relatively intrigued with the racing games in the Cars 2 ultra ebook. Getting accustomed to using the accelerometer to race took time, but once he mastered it, he loved playing the games over and over again. He didn't have as much interest in the actual book, but that maybe because his reading skills are more advanced. That wasn't the case with his 3-year-old brother Matt. Matt was very taken with the read-aloud function, and spent a lot of time just listening to the book being read aloud to him. He was also very taken with the Pet Pad app that came with the device. He thought it was very funny that blowing into the microphone could help dry his pet. Both Jake and Matt had fun with the built-in camera and video recorder, and they loved playing their videos back on the device.

It's important to keep in mind that the LeapPad is toy, and not an actual tablet. In contrast, the Vinci Tab ($389 list, 2.5 stars) is an actual Android-based tablet that's targeted toward children. The Tab is certainly more expensive than the LeapPad, but it also has higher-end components, and the android-based game apps are cheaper than the $24.99 gaming cartridges or the $5 and up gaming, movie, and book apps you would shell out for the LeapPad. But the LeapPad offers a bulletproof kids' experience right out of the box, with minimal setup and no support necessary.

The LeapPad's design and interface are appropriate for Jake's age, and it's colorful and advanced enough to hold his interest. It was also something that his younger brother enjoyed playing with. So, I consider it a two-for-one win. I wish LeapFrog had put in some sort of media card slot. That way, we could maybe keep more apps and games than the system's of onboard memory allows. But then again, 2GB of memory is pretty big. I also hope LeapFrog comes out with a recharger, because, seriously, I'm keeping Duracell in business. Overall, the LeapFrog LeapPad Explorer is my?and more important, Jake's?favorite LeapFrog product yet. It takes the concept of a tablet and makes it an attractive learning toy for the kid crowd.

More Toy Reviews:
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/jKXsPMwvhzs/0,2817,2396653,00.asp

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Toyota aims to sell 8.48 million vehicles in 2012

TOKYO (AP) ? Toyota is aiming for a comeback, targeting global sales of 8.48 million vehicles in 2012 and an even bigger number in 2013, after being battered this year by the March disaster in Japan and flooding in Thailand.

Toyota Motor Corp., Japan's top automaker, relinquished its title as the world's biggest in global vehicle sales for the first half of this year, sinking to No. 3 trailing U.S. rival General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG of Germany.

Toyota's global vehicle sales for this year total 7.9 million vehicles, including group companies, down 6 percent from the previous year, it said in a statement Thursday.

General Motors Co. has not yet released its global sales numbers for this year. The Detroit-based automaker had been at the top for more than seven decades until Toyota took the crown in 2008.

Toyota's targets for 2012 and 2013 do not include group companies such as Daihatsu Motor Co. and Hino Motors, and so aren't directly comparable with any forecasts from GM and Volkswagen.

Toyota said the sales target for calendar 2012 would represent 20 percent growth from its global sales this year.

Toyota has been making up for sales declines in North America and Japan with momentum in relatively new but booming markets such as China and India.

The manufacturer behind the Prius hybrid and Lexus luxury models said it plans to sell 8.95 million vehicles around the world in 2013, not including group companies.

Toyota said it had not yet figured out forecasts for group companies. It is possible the target may exceed 9 million vehicles, had they been included.

Toyota acknowledged many uncertainties, which could push the numbers in either direction. One possible plus is the extension of Japanese government incentives for green vehicles, according to Toyota.

Toyota, with its strong hybrid lineup, has been a major beneficiary of such incentives.

Still, Toyota has gone through some hard times lately.

The global financial crisis in 2008 was behind a serious sales plunge in the key North American market.

Then came the massive recalls, mostly in the U.S., that tarnished Toyota's once pristine reputation for quality amid speculation it had not been as forthright as it should have been about defects.

Toyota was on a gradual recovery track when the March 11 earthquake and tsunami struck in northeastern Japan, damaging suppliers and disrupting production because of a severe parts shortage.

Production got slammed again later in the year, although on a smaller scale, from flooding in Thailand.

Toyota also said it expects to produce 8.65 million vehicles next year, up 24 percent from 6.97 million this year. It expects to produce 8.98 million vehicles in 2013, it said. Those numbers do not include group companies.

Michael Robinet, managing director of IHS Automotive Consultants in Northville, Michigan, said a global sales lead doesn't matter as much as how much money the company makes per vehicle, its model portfolio and overall profit.

A difference of several tens of thousands of vehicles is not significant for automakers that sell millions of vehicles like Toyota and GM, he said.

"It doesn't matter all that much when you're already in the 9 million to 10 million unit range," Robinet said.

___

AP Auto Writer Tom Krisher contributed from Detroit.

___

Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at http://twitter.com/yurikageyama

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2011-12-21-AS-Japan-Toyota/id-b4b3cdeb888449c3ae7434855bb92812

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Chained children in Pakistan: Not an uncommon treatment for addicts

Police rescued dozens of students at an Islamic seminary in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Chaining is not unheard of for drug or mental health treatment in the region.

Police rescued dozens of students at an Islamic seminary Monday in the Pakistani city of Karachi, saying that some of them were drug addicts kept in chains. While the case has gained global notoriety, this form of ?rehabilitation? is not unheard of in the region.

Skip to next paragraph

The Associated Press reported that parents of some 60 youths paid the seminary to ?treat their children through a regime of Islamic instruction and worship, or simply to take them off their hands.?

Chaining as a form of rehabilitation goes on in other religious institutions in the region, most notably Sufi shrines. I reported for the Monitor in 2009 on a shrine outside Jalalabad, Afghanistan, where families would leave relatives who were mentally ill or addicted to drugs.

A standard treatment at the shrine was to chain a patient for 40 days, either in a small cell or to a tree in the courtyard, and administer a strict diet of bread and black pepper:

"Mia Sahib, one of the shrine-keepers, explains that his patients are possessed by demons known as?djinns. For some, he offers a?taweez?- a Koranic verse written on a slip of paper. Others require 40 days of confinement.

"A mental patient doesn't know himself," explains Mia Sahib. "In 40 days, he is going to know himself fast. He will know he has some?djinn?inside. Once he knows he has a?djinn?inside, he will clean himself. And once he cleans himself, he will know Allah."

Mia Sahib claimed to have some success with this method, but he admitted he could do little for patients addicted to opium. Yet, during my visit, he was still confining in chains a drug addict named Waseem from Pakistan. Waseem explained that a relative had tricked him into making the journey that resulted in his imprisonment.

Reports out of Karachi talk of grubby conditions in the basement of the seminary where the students were chained.

The men were not allowed to use the bathrooms at night either. ?It?s embarrassing to tell but we were given a water bottle to pee in. If we urinated in bed, we were lashed,? said Babar, a teenager.?

I observed similar conditions at the shrine. Each of the patients lived alone in a tiny cell with no door. Each had only a couple feet at most of slack in the chain that linked his ankle to the nearby wall. Some would use uncollected trash in their sell to fling their own waste out the doorway.

Afghanistan has made some strides in modernizing its mental health system, including upgrades to psychiatric wards and the replacement of chains with medication. But mental health doctors still expressed frustration that people sometimes still preferred to send their relatives to shrines like the one outside Jalalabad.

The mental health community in Afghanistan is hoping education campaigns will eventually put the shrines out of work. Meanwhile, the Karachi case is focusing renewed attention on madrassah reform,?with critics arguing the seminaries need more oversight to prevent cases of physical and sexual abuse. One of the most gripping pleas for reform came days before the Karachi raid, when a former madrassah student penned a first-person essay about the abuse he experienced.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/BLrLfP9qOa4/Chained-children-in-Pakistan-Not-an-uncommon-treatment-for-addicts

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Factbox: What is the Big Bang?

Tue Dec 13, 2011 10:44am EST

(Reuters) - Scientists at the CERN physics research centre said on Tuesday they had found signs of the Higgs boson, an elementary particle believed to have played a vital role in the creation of the universe after the Big Bang.

Leaders of two experiments, ALTAS and CMS, revealed their answer in which finding the Higgs was a key goal for the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC), designed to re-create the conditions just after the Big Bang in an attempt to answer fundamental questions of science and the universe itself.

Following are some facts about the Big Bang and CERN's particle-smashing experiments:

* RECREATING THE BIG BANG:

- Tests have involved pumping a single bunch of energy particles from the project's accelerator into the 27-km (17-mile) beam pipe of the collider and steering them counter- clockwise around it for about 3 km (2 miles).

- The collider aims to simulate conditions milliseconds after the "Big Bang" which created the universe around 13.7 billion years ago.

- The collisions, in which both particle clusters travel around the speed of light, are monitored on computers at CERN and laboratories around the world by scientists looking for, among other things, a particle that made life possible.

* HIGGS BOSON:

- The elusive particle, which has been called the "Higgs boson" after British physicist Peter Higgs, 82, a particle-physics theorist who first showed in 1964 that it must exist, is thought to be the mysterious factor that gives everything mass.

* WHAT IS THE BIG BANG?

- Recreating a "Big Bang," which most scientists believe is the only explanation of an expanding universe, ought to show how stars and planets came together out of the primeval chaos that followed, the CERN team believes.

- Its essential feature is the emergence of the universe from a tiny speck about the size of a coin but in a state of extremely high temperature and density.

- The name "Big Bang" was coined in 1949 by British scientist Fred Hoyle to disparage a then emerging theory about origins that countered his own "steady state" view: that the universe had always existed and was evolving but not expanding.

- According to the Big Bang model, the universe expanded rapidly from a highly compressed primordial state, which resulted in a significant decrease in density and temperature. Soon afterward, the dominance of matter over antimatter (as observed today) may have been established by processes that also predict proton decay. During this stage many types of elementary particles may have been present. After a few seconds, the universe cooled enough to allow the formation of certain nuclei.

- The theory predicts that definite amounts of hydrogen, helium and lithium were produced. Their abundances agree with what is observed today. About a million years later the universe was sufficiently cool for atoms to form.

* WHAT IS CERN:

- CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, is one of the world's largest centers for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the universe is made of and how it works.

- Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe's first joint ventures and now has 20 member states, plus six actively participant observers including the United States and Russia.

Sources: Reuters/Britannica.com/CERN/www2.ph.ed.ac.uk/peter-higgs/ (Reporting by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit; editing by David Stamp)

Source: http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/scienceNews/~3/Fph-r-bwOpU/us-science-higgs-bigbang-idUSTRE7BC1B820111213

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Yahoo shuts down The Projector and The Set blogs (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) ? Yahoo is letting The Projector and The Set flicker out and die, the movie and television blogs acknowledged on Twitter Friday.

"As was just announced, Yahoo has decided to let @YahooProjector shuffle off this mortal coil. It's a damn shame: We were having such fun," Will Leitch, the site's co-editor, tweeted.

The Set tweeted similar news. Both sites said that a number of blogs will be closing as well.

It was not immediately clear what other blogs will join the two fansites in the blogosphere in the sky.

The Projector is a co-production between Leitch and Tim Grierson. The Set is run by Lindsay Robertson and Tara Ariano.

Both sites features reviews, news items and film clips, written with a fun and semi-autobiographical flare. The two sets of editors are friends, according to the sites.

"We're obviously quite sad about this: We were having so much fun, something we sometimes fear is lacking in movie writing," The Projector editors tweeted on the site's Twitter feed.

They said they would be busy screen-grabbing old reviews, so they don't disappear along with the site.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/enindustry/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111202/media_nm/us_yahoo

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Emissions show rate at which Milky Way makes stars

NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft have given astronomers their first direct look at emissions important for estimating the rate at which the Milky Way is making stars,?opening a new avenue for studying star-forming regions in the galaxy.

NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft have given astronomers their first direct look at emissions important for estimating the rate at which the Milky Way is making stars.

Skip to next paragraph

The emissions are known as Lyman-alpha emissions. Their direct detection opens a new avenue for studying star-forming regions in the galaxy, according to a study published in the Dec. 2 issue of the journal Science.

Until now, astronomers have had to rely on another type of emission as a stand-in for gauging star-forming rates in the Milky Way and in other galaxies.

But the theoretical underpinnings that gave researchers the OK to use this surrogate haven't been tested against the real cosmos.

With future measurements from new spacecraft, researchers finally will be able to subject the surrogate to reality check.

"This is a pioneering observation," says Jeffrey Linsky, a researcher at the University of Colorado's Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in Boulder, Colo., who was not part of the research project.

IN PICTURES: Where stars form

Star-formation rates represent a critical element in the story of how galaxies form and evolve. Of particular interest, Dr. Linsky says, is the formation of so-called first-generation stars and how that leads to the birth of second-generation stars like the sun.

As the name implies, first-generation stars are the first to form as regions within vast, cold clouds of dust and hydrogen collapse under their own gravity and heat up. At a critical point, pressures and temperatures at the center of each ball of gas become so great that the hydrogen atoms fuse together to form heavier elements. This process releases enormous amounts of energy, igniting the stars.

As these stars burn, they heat and compress the gas around them, triggering the formation of "Star Birth: Next Generation."

As the stars burn, their spectra show the characteristic fingerprint of hydrogen. In ultraviolet light, where the first-generation stars shine brightest, the standout in this spectral fingerprint is dubbed the Lyman-alpha line. In visible light, the fingerprint shows up as so-called Balmer lines.

Being a star, the sun is a strong source of the Lyman-alpha signature ? so strong that it forms a kind of diffuse glow within the solar system that swamps the weaker signatures astronomers want to see coming from outside the solar system.

This has led astronomers to use Balmer lines as surrogates for Lyman-alpha lines in gauging star-formation rates in the Milky Way and beyond.

Enter a team led by Rosine Lallement, with the Paris Observatory. The team was using ultraviolet spectrometers aboard the two Voyager craft ? launched in 1977 and now at the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space ? to study hydrogen features at the boundary.

The researchers noticed that the sun's Lyman-alpha glow was accompanied by a broader, more diffuse signature. When the team checked to see where the diffuse signature was strongest, they found that it came from the galactic plane, defined by the edge-on view of the galaxy's spiral arms. The arms contain numerous star-forming regions.

The Voyager observations represent a proof-of-concept that Lyman-alpha signatures from outside the solar system can be detected, Linsky says.

Additional observations, plus a test of the theory underpinning the use of Balmer lines as a surrogate for Lyman-alpha lines, potentially could come from the ultraviolet spectrometer aboard NASA's New Horizons flyby mission, which is bound for Pluto and beyond, he says.?

The Monitor's Weekly News Quiz for Nov. 27-Dec. 2, 2011

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/d783lIpjAeo/Emissions-show-rate-at-which-Milky-Way-makes-stars

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Daihatsu Pico concept commuter EV hands-on

Using LEDs to display messages on the back of a car? Looks like we have yet another contender with the same idea, except this time all four sides get an LED panel each. The idea behind Daihatsu's Pico concept EV is that it can interact with surrounding pedestrians and drivers using messages with matching colors. For instance, the LED belt can issue a red warning on the back if a car is following too closely; or when driving past pedestrians in close proximity (think rascal scooters but with front and back seats), the belt can turn green and indicate that the car's limited to a safe top speed of 3.7mph.

Other than that, the Pico's very much just a cute little EV with a driving range of up to 31 miles (with a full two-hour charge), plus a top speed of 31mph. We also dig the touchscreen console inside the car, but with just the two LED bars acting as doors, we sure hope it'll withstand a bit of rain. Video after the break.

Gallery: Daihatsu Pico hands-on

Continue reading Daihatsu Pico concept commuter EV hands-on

Daihatsu Pico concept commuter EV hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Small business latest focus of House Republicans (AP)

WASHINGTON ? The House on Thursday passed legislation that would give more weight to the impact of federal regulations on small businesses, whose owners can be a powerful political force and are being courted by both parties.

The bill, which went to the Senate on a 263-159 vote, was the first of three Republican measures that attempt to curb what GOP lawmakers say are aggressive and sometimes costly regulations by the Obama administration.

Earlier this week, the White House budget office announced that if the bill passed Congress, senior administration advisers would recommend a veto.

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said, "Job creation is the key to economic recovery, and small businesses are America's job creators. In the current economic climate ... we simply cannot overburden small business with costly and wasteful regulations."

The committee's top Democrat, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, said the latest Republican attempt to stop the administration from issuing new rules was part of "an anti-regulation tidal wave."

He said Americans would suffer if the administration was prevented from protecting Americans' health and safety. "This is a very dangerous process," he said.

While the Republican-run House has passed numerous bills this year to overturn or delay proposed rules, most were aimed at specific proposals. The latest bills would not be limited to any particular rule or agency.

A 1980 law requires federal agencies to assess the economic impact of regulations on small businesses. If the impact is significant, less burdensome alternatives must be considered.

Republicans believe, however, that federal agencies are ignoring their obligation to do a thorough analysis. The House-passed bill would empower a small business advocacy office, part of the Small Business Administration, to make sure that requirement is being fulfilled.

The assessment would have to include indirect impacts of proposed rules that are not specifically designed to regulate small business.

Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., chairman of the House Small Business Committee, said the bill would force agencies to consider how their actions affect small businesses.

"Some may argue that agencies already do this when they draft regulations. However, nearly 30 years of experience ... shows that agencies are not considering the consequences of their actions. And it is about time that they do so," he said.

OMB Watch, a nonprofit advocacy organization that monitors federal regulations, objected to the legislation and said it was too broad.

"Virtually any action an agency proposes ? even a guidance document designed to help a business comply with a rule ? could be subject to a lengthy review process," the group said.

"By requiring additional and wasteful analyses, this bill would make it impossible for federal agencies to protect the public and respond to emerging hazards."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111201/ap_on_go_co/us_republicans_regulations

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Fukushima residents tour German renewable village (AP)

FELDHEIM, Germany ? Residents of Fukushima, the radiation-stricken area around Japan's tsunami-hit nuclear reactors, are touring Germany to learn how renewable energy could work in their homeland.

Months after a March 11 earthquake and tsunami caused radiation leaks in Japan, the German government caved into popular protests to shutter its own nuclear reactors by 2020 and focus on expanding its network of wind, solar and other renewable energy sources.

Actor Taro Yamamoto, from Tokyo, accompanied the group of residents Wednesday. He said he hopes to motivate people in Japan to realize energy is not dependent on nuclear reactors.

The Japanese group toured a self-sustaining, energy-positive German village that relies entirely on renewables.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/weather/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111130/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_japan_nuclear

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Video: Coke pulls white holiday cans

Coke is cancelling its white holiday cans because they were confusing and unpopular with consumers. NBC?s Brian Williams reports.

>>> coca-cola learned a lesson. they like it the way they like it. that means taste and the container it comes in. coke is canceling the white holiday cans because they were too confusing and unpopular with customers who thought they might contain diet coke and they swore regular coke tasted different in the white cans. the polar bear cans are to benefit wildlife. you just can't mess around with coke.

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/45516778/

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Review: iTunes Match wins cloud music war by wisp (AP)

LOS ANGELES ? In recent weeks, Apple, Google and Amazon.com have each launched the missing puzzle piece in their wireless mobile music systems.

Apple enabled storage and delivery of your songs over the Internet through iTunes Match. Google started selling music digitally. Amazon shipped an electronic-books device, called the Kindle Fire, that does much more than books.

With those additions, each system now lets you buy songs, store them on faraway computers called the cloud and retrieve them wirelessly on devices connected to the Internet.

But which system do you want to live with? It's a choice you can't make lightly because these companies don't play nice with each other. Once you've adopted one, it's hard to switch.

If this were the Music Cloud Wars, then Apple's iTunes Match would be winning ? but not by much.

Here's a quick primer, along with a few ways to get in and around their digital barriers.

___

iTunes Match.

There's a good chance you are familiar with iTunes. The software is on millions of computers, and many of you have iPods, iPhones or iPads that let you consume content bought through the iTunes online store.

ITunes Match is a $25-a-year service on top of that. It sees everything you have in iTunes and matches it to copies Apple already has stored in the cloud. Songs not already there will be uploaded from your computer to a personal locker in the cloud.

It's alone among the three to let you download songs to iPhones and iPads wirelessly. That means a full copy of the song is stored for listening anytime, rather than streamed on demand over wireless networks, which can be spotty. There's nothing more annoying than having your songs stop and start as your connection flutters.

You can have up to 25,000 songs on the service, plus an unlimited number bought through iTunes ? great for those with large music collections. Of course, most of you won't fit 25,000 songs on your device, so streaming is an option for songs you haven't downloaded yet.

If there's a tune you want to listen to offline, just tap an icon. It takes only a few seconds, and you can start listening before it's done.

One major caveat: You need an Apple device to use this, and specifically a newer one with Apple's iOS 5 mobile software. You're out of luck if you have a phone running Google's Android system, for instance.

___

Google Music.

Using Google's free Music Manager program, you upload music you own into Google's cloud. Unlike Apple, Google doesn't have songs preloaded, so this can take hours or days.

Google Music works best with an Android phone or tablet computer. You simply download the Google Music app to your device. Voila, your songs will be available for streaming. You can save songs for offline playback by "pinning" them with a digital push pin icon.

The service stores up to 20,000 songs, not including those bought through a companion music store run by Google. That's not as many as iTunes Match, but it's free.

I like Google's music store because it offers plenty of bargains. I found Coldplay's latest album, Mylo Xyloto, for $5 ? half the price on iTunes. Google plans to release lots of free music, too.

I also like that if you buy from Google's music store, you can share the songs with friends on its Google Plus social network. They get one full listen for free ? that's something not available anywhere else.

One downside: Google's store isn't as extensive as Apple's or Amazon's. For instance, it's missing songs from Warner Music Group, which accounts for about 20 percent of music sold in the U.S.

Google Music also isn't a great option for users of Apple devices.

Google found a way to make the system work on iPhones and iPads through Apple's Safari Web browser. It has a surprising app-like feel because of the way menus respond to touch. But Apple device users won't be able to store songs for offline use.

There's also a trick for Apple users to take advantage of music deals: Download the songs onto a computer, put the music in iTunes and upload the songs into Apple's cloud through iTunes Match. It's not pretty, but it works.

___

Amazon Cloud Drive.

The new Kindle Fire completed Amazon's music system, though it's not required. It works fine on Android devices through the Amazon MP3 app.

Released in March, Amazon's cloud storage system is free for up to 5 gigabytes of storage ? roughly 1,250 songs. If you bought Lady Gaga's latest album, "Born This Way," in a 99-cent promotion in May, you'll have 20 GB of space ? good for about 5,000 songs.

Amazon's uploader works about the same as Google's. It could take hours or days to get your songs into the cloud. But once there, you can stream or download songs to the Kindle Fire or to Android devices.

Like Google, Amazon sells songs and albums at a discount to iTunes, and its long-running music store has a selection comparable to iTunes.

Amazon has also found a way to make its system work on Apple devices, using Safari as well, but that workaround is clunkier than Google's and doesn't support downloads either.

One other downside to Amazon's service is that you'll likely have to pay for cloud storage, as you do with iTunes Match.

Having 5 GB of storage for free is kind of meaningless because most mobile devices have that already. The Kindle Fire comes with 8 GB on board. For a limited time, you can get 20 GB of storage for $20 a year ? and most music files won't count against the total.

___

Although there are things to like about Google's and Amazon's systems, they both favor streaming, which isn't how I want to listen to music when I'm not at a computer.

Apple's iTunes Match is fundamentally more oriented to work with downloading in mind, and it meshes well with your existing song library, either on your device or on your computer.

The iTunes store is also set up better ? showing what's new and popular, and acting as a barometer of popular culture. Google promotes what's free and Amazon emphasizes its bargains, but those picks aren't always what I'm looking for.

Ultimately it's great to have cloud services out there. It has helped me organize my music collection and reconnected me with songs stuck in the recesses of my computer.

In the end, though, these services ought to be as free and easy to access over multiple devices as email is. Instead, they come across as tools to get you to buy this or that device. And we shouldn't be made to pay for a song once and then again when we store it.

Music in the cloud has promise, but it hasn't fully delivered just yet.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/digitalmusic/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111129/ap_on_hi_te/us_digital_life_tech_test_online_music

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U.S. to world: Dude, where's my vacation?

Sean Gallup / Getty Images file

Bathers relax on inflatable water mattresses near the beach at Porto Katsiki, on the island of Lefkada, Greece, in 2010.

By Rob Lovitt, msnbc.com contributor

There?s good news and bad news on the American vacation front courtesy of a survey from Expedia.com.

Released on Wednesday, the Vacation Deprivation Study revealed that U.S. workers let two days of vacation go unused this year, down from three days last year.

Unfortunately, the drop wasn?t realized because people took more vacation days ? the average American worker took 12 days in both years ? but because they received, on average, 14 days of vacation this year vs. 15 in 2010.

Live Poll

Do you take all of your allotted vacation time?

• 169594

  Yes -- and I'd take more vacation days if I had them.

  54%

• 169595

  No -- it's too tough to get away from work.

  16%

• 169596

  Almost -- I take time off work, but I give up some time each year.

  11%

• 169597

  Are you nuts? -- I wish I had the time and money for vacations.

  18%

VoteTotal Votes: 6202

?In terms of days they left on the table, as in ?It?s yours and you gave it away,? it went down,? said Joe Megibow, vice president and general manager. ?But we?d like to see the gap get closed by people using more of their vacation days rather than having employers give them less.?

Less, of course, is a relative term as the annual study once again showed Americans getting far fewer vacation days than their peers in most other developed countries. Surveying 7,800 employed adults in 20 countries, the study (as usual) showed that workers in Europe get far more time off ? 25 to 30 days per year ? and tend to use almost all of it.

?In Europe, vacations are considered a way of life not a luxury,? said Megibow. ?Even in countries where respondents reported less financial strength, they still go on vacation.?

Conversely, almost half of U.S. respondents reported their financial situation as ?solid? or ?good,? which according to Megibow, suggests a very different point of view: ?In the U.S., people view vacations as a luxury,? he told msnbc.com. ?Even though Americans report slightly stronger financial health, vacations are still one of the things that gets cut.?

Part of the problem may be that such feelings are being tempered by past events. ?People are still focusing on the bad news and not taking in good news like retailers doing well,? said Alden Cass, a performance coach and CEO of Competitive Streak Consulting Inc. ?They?re almost having a PTSD-like reaction to things that are out of their control.?

Far better, suggests Cass, is to just let go. ?People need to get away to reduce the amount of anxiety in their lives, to disengage from their BlackBerrys and iPhones and to not worry about the things they do on a daily basis,? he told msnbc.com. ?Sometimes lying on a Caribbean beach where there?s no Internet access is the best recipe for coming back with a clear head, an objective mindset and a better attitude.?

On the subject of disengaging, at least, Americans seem to be getting the message. When survey participants were asked how often they checked e-mail or voicemail while on vacation, 41 percent said never, 34 percent said sometimes, 20 percent said regularly and just 4 percent said constantly.

?Americans don?t get a lot of vacation,? said Megibow, ?but on the few days they take, most are checking out [from work], which is great.?

More stories you might like:

Rob Lovitt is a longtime travel writer who still believes the journey is as important as the destination. Follow him at Twitter.?

Source: http://overheadbin.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/29/9097884-us-to-world-dude-wheres-my-vacation

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Greece gets $10.7 billion but rescue plan stalls (AP)

BRUSSELS ? Eurozone ministers sent Greece an euro8 billion ($10.7 billion) Christmas rescue package Tuesday to stem an immediate cash crisis yet failed to resolve fears that the common euro currency might be doomed.

Stock markets around the world rose earlier in the day, hoping that intense pressure from the bond markets would finally force the 17-nation eurozone into quicker and more robust action.

But even as Italy's borrowing costs skyrocketed to a euro-era record, the 17 finance ministers only found a veneer of credibility to coat the euro's rescue fund with more leverage. They failed to increase the bailout fund to match earlier predictions and kicked other major financial issues ? like a closer fiscal union ? over to their bosses, the EU leaders meeting next week in Brussels.

The ministers did agree to use the fund to offer financial protection of 20 to 30 percent to investors who bought new bonds of troubled eurozone nations, an effort to help those countries get back to borrowing on global markets again.

"We made important progress on a number of fronts," Jean-Claude Juncker, the eurozone chief, insisted late Tuesday. "This shows our complete determination to do whatever it takes to safeguard the financial stability of the euro."

The EU's monetary chief Olli Rehn said eurozone nations needed to work on many financial issues at once to ease global pressure on their currency.

"There is no one single silver bullet that will get us out of this crisis," Rehn told reporters.

But the question of how to beef up the leverage capacity of European Financial Stability Facility from its current euro440 billion ($587 billion) to a hoped-for euro1 trillion ($1.3 trillion) was not resolved. The fund is supposed to be a firewall that protects European nations from the financial chaos of their neighbors.

Fund chief Klaus Regling remained vague on how beefed up it was after Tuesday's meeting in Brussels, but assured reporters it was more than big enough to deal with Europe's immediate financial debt problems.

"To be clear, we do not expect investors to commit large amounts of money during the next few days or weeks," Regling said. "Leverage is a process over time."

Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager said investors had appeared less eager than originally anticipated.

"It will be very difficult to reach something in the region of a trillion. Maybe half of that," he said.

Italy remained an enormous concern. Carrying five times as much debt as Greece, Italy was battered for the third straight day in the bond markets, seeing its borrowing rates soar to unsustainable levels of 7.56 percent. Investors appear increasingly wary of the country's chances of avoiding default ? and making matters worse, the eurozone's third largest economy is deemed too big for Europe to bail out.

The ministers still insisted Italy's new prime minister would come through, saying he has promised to balance Italy's budget by 2013.

"We have full confidence that Mario Monti will be able to deliver this program," Juncker said.

The eurozone ministers also called on the International Monetary Fund for more resources to help further protect Europe's embattled currency. The IMF has only about $390 billion available to lend, which wouldn't be anywhere near enough to rescue Italy.

The eurozone ministers agreed to seek new ways to increase the resources of the IMF through bilateral loans that could be used to protect EU nations facing financial trouble.

Many economists say the 17 nations that use the euro have little choice but to have closer coordination of their spending and budget policies.

"If the eurozone is to survive, there needs to be more fiscal union," said Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University.

But he suggested the IMF could work with institutions like the European Central Bank. Funneling money through the IMF would be more politically palatable for the ECB than directly aiding individual countries.

French Finance Minister Francois Baroin said it was "evident" that the eurozone was moving towards greater fiscal convergence and better coordination of budgets. He said, far from indicating a loss of national sovereignty, these moves would guarantee countries' sovereignty by helping them bring down their debt burdens.

"Reducing our debts is the best way to guarantee our sovereignty," he told reporters.

Eurozone countries have enormous debts that must be refinanced ? with euro638 billion ($852 billion) coming due in 2012 alone, 40 percent of which needs to be refinanced before May, according to Barclays Capital.

A failure of the euro would lead to drastic consequences around the world. Bank lending would freeze, stock markets would likely crash, European economies would go into a freefall and the U.S. and Asia would take big hits to their economies as their exports to Europe collapsed.

Belgian's finance minister saw the prospects of a two-speed Europe, where if no common progress can be made among the 27 EU nations "you cannot block those that share the same currency" from making decisions on their own.

The head of Germany's exporters association, meanwhile, urged an even more radical solution: having Greece and Portugal leave the eurozone. BGA President Anton Boerner called it the only way those two nations can spur the growth needed to overcome their crippling debts.

Analysts were doubtful that new cash for Greece would bring the financial relief that Europe craves.

"The marginal impact of these bits of 'good news' should be limited at best and investors will still cast a nervous eye towards this week's bond auctions," said Geoffrey Yu, an analyst at UBS.

___

Angela Charlton in Paris, Melissa Eddy and Juergen Baetz in Berlin, Pan Pylas in London, and Don Melvin and Greg Keller in Brussels and Christopher S. Rugaber in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111130/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_europe_financial_crisis

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Charlotte Church: Press destroyed my career

LONDON?? She was just 13 when Rupert Murdoch asked her to sing at his wedding.

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Charlotte Church was given a choice: a 100,000 pound fee, or a chance to generate good will with the media magnate by performing for free. She wanted the cash, but her record company and manager said no, it was better to make friends with Murdoch, head of a global news and entertainment empire.

"Despite my teenage business head screaming 'Think how many tamagotchies you could buy!' I was pressured into taking the latter option," she told Britain's press ethics committee. "This strategy failed ... for me."

Church, 25, told Britain's media ethics inquiry Monday that the Murdoch press, and other British tabloids, had ruthlessly tormented her since she was a child singing sensation, blowing her credibility "to bits" and badly damaging her career.

Story: Hugh Grant confronts British press at phone hacking hearing

She said press intrusion had a devastating impact on her family life and particularly on her mother. Church said her mother had tried to kill herself in part because she knew a newspaper was planning to expose her husband's extramarital affair.

The former teenage singing sensation told the inquiry in calm, measured tones how cameramen tried to take photos up her skirt and down her blouse and published "intimate" details about her sex life when she was just 17.

"I couldn't get my head around that," said Church, 25, who blamed tabloid phone hacking for much of her lost privacy.

"I've been made a caricature for so long, and this person portrayed in the tabloids really isn't me," she said. "It's not the person I am, and it's had a massive impact on my career. As an artist, I find it hard to be taken seriously because my credibility has been blown to bits."

Church also described how one newspaper had a countdown before her 16th birthday to mark the moment when she would reach the age of consent and be old enough to legally have sex.

"It just felt horrible," she said.

Church, a pop and opera singer with a spectacular voice, was the latest prominent person to tell the committee how Britain's unscrupulous press has invaded their privacy and damaged their lives. She said she suspected her closest family members of leaking secrets when in fact the media were getting details about her life from illegal phone hacking.

Prime Minister David Cameron set up the inquiry in response to the scandal that began with illegal eavesdropping by the News of the World tabloid.

Murdoch closed the newspaper in July after evidence emerged that it had illegally accessed the mobile phone voice mails of celebrities, politicians and even crime victims in its search for scoops.

More than a dozen News of the World journalists and editors have been arrested, and two top London police officers, along with Cameron's media adviser and several senior Murdoch executives, have resigned.

The inquiry, led by Judge Brian Leveson, plans to issue a report next year and could recommend major changes to Britain's system of media self regulation. In its first two weeks, the committee has heard a stunning litany of press abuse.

Story: JK Rowling tells UK phone-hacking hearing: Children 'deserve privacy'

Church told the inquiry how impressed she had been with Murdoch's power when she went to sing at his wedding in the United States ? and how her effort to gain his favor was a dismal failure.

"He flew us on his private jet to New York, which was amazing, then we went onto his boat, which had a grand piano on it, which I was amazed by, and I sang at the ceremony," she said.

Before Church testified, a man who had been arrested on murder charges and then cleared told the committee that tabloids had destroyed his reputation with false front-page stories.

Christopher Jefferies said the negative coverage of him was so widespread that some people still assume he is a "weird character" who should be avoided, even though he was cleared of wrongdoing.

He was arrested last year by police investigating the murder of his tenant, Joanna Yeates. Another man has since been convicted of the crime.

Jefferies said he felt he could not go out in public because of the smears.

Broadcast journalist Anne Diamond told the committee that the Murdoch press had waged a vendetta against her ? even sending a reporter impersonating a doctor to the hospital when she was giving birth.

Last week, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, Hugh Grant and Sienna Miller all testified about the devastating impact that unscrupulous British media have had on their lives, along with the parents of murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler and missing 3-year-old Madeleine McCann.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45466181/ns/today-entertainment/

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Sales tracker says 'Cyber Monday' sales up 33 pct

NEW YORK (AP) ? Online sales rose 33 percent on the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, a report by a sales tracking agency said Tuesday.

The average order rose 2.6 percent to $193.24 on the day known as "Cyber Monday," when retailers amp up online promotions, according to IBM Benchmark. It didn't give comparative total dollar sales numbers, however.

The agency said about 80 percent of retailers offered online deals. Shopping peaked at 2:05 p.m. Eastern.

The Cyber Monday numbers point to Americans' growing comfort with using their personal computers, tablets and smartphones to shop.

Over the past few years, big chains like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, have been offering more and better incentives like hourly deals and free shipping, to capitalize on that trend. It's important for retailers to make a good showing during the holiday shopping season, a time when they can make up to 40 percent of their annual revenue.

"Retailers that adopted a smarter approach to commerce, one that allowed them to swiftly adjust to the shifting shopping habits of their customers, whether in-store, online or via their mobile device, were able to fully benefit from this day and the entire holiday weekend, said John Squire, chief strategy officer, IBM Smarter Commerce.

About 6.6 percent of online shoppers used a mobile device to shop, up from 2.3 percent in 2010. Apple Inc.'s iPhone and iPad were the top mobile devices for retail traffic, with Android devices coming in third.

Web traffic rose 28 percent on Monday, according to another firm, online content-delivery firm Akamai. The peak was at 9 p.m. Eastern when shoppers on both the East and West coasts were online.

The numbers echo a strong shopper showing in brick-and-mortar stores over the holiday weekend. A record 226 million shoppers visited stores and websites during the four-day holiday weekend starting on Thanksgiving Day, up from 212 million last year, according to the NRF. And sales on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, rose 7 percent to $11.4 billion, the largest amount ever spent, according to ShopperTrak, which gathers stores' data.

A clearer picture of how holiday sales are shaping up will come on Thursday, when major retailers report November sales.

The term Cyber Monday was coined in 2005 by The National Retail Federation, a retail trade group, to encourage Americans to shop online on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2011-11-29-Cyber%20Monday-Sales/id-41fc6c2afbf64c91be1081666b8f2b18

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