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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