Twitter follower sends Team Canada goalie new laptop

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Source: http://www.nationalpost.com/Twitter+follower+sends+Team+Canada+goalie+laptop/5929803/story.html

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Thinking of Golf with this warm and mild weather plus the view is awesome

Donation Total for GMG Tree Project
$461

Tree and Consultation Work By Doug Cook Landesign.biz

Labor help from Aaron Burke

Labor and Equipment From Grimes Landscaping

Labor and Equipment from Jay Ramsey and Farm Creek Landscaping

Plant Materials From Corliss Wholesale

Thanks for Everyone's Contributions. We Did It Together!

Source: http://goodmorninggloucester.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/thinking-of-golf-with-this-warm-and-mild-weather-plus-the-view-is-awesome/

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Wanted: Amazing Business Intern ? UIE Brain Sparks

We?re looking for an amazing Business Intern for a paid, 4-month internship.

Fast Forward Four Months?

We?d like to thank you for doing a fantastic job as our 2012 Winter Business Intern. You started with a thorough analysis of the purchasing patterns in our UIE Virtual Seminar series. This led to some amazing insights on how we could restructure the program, which helped us with key initiatives we launched this spring.

At the same time, you put together a marvelous weekly social media outreach strategy. Once you started executing it, we saw a real lift in the conversations we?ve had with our customers, which has had a direct affect on our bottom line.

When you turned your keen attention to compiling the history of our revenue sources for the last few years, you uncovered some interesting patterns about who our customers are and how they like doing business with us. We?ll use those insights to drive new products for years to come.

You also created a database of our marketing partnerships, to help us know who to contact and what they?re interested in. This makes it easy for us to make our partners aware of our latest offerings.

To top it off, you?ve even helped us document our business development process to make life easier for future interns.

Thanks for your energy and enthusiasm during your internship. We know you?ll succeed at your future ventures.

Now Back To Today?

If you?d like this to be your story, send us your resume with a half-page write up of your most significant business accomplishment. While we?re less concerned with your skills and qualifications, we won?t compromise on your ability to deliver team results. We?ll be back to you in 24 hours if you have what it takes to achieve something special.

You might even want to check out our web site for some insight into what we?re doing. We think you?ll be excited by where we are today and the challenge to get us where we?re going.

You will work in our North Andover offices. (Sorry, we don?t hire remote employees.) We?ll provide all the equipment you need, including Apple hardware and Mac software to bring out the best in your talents and skills.

Send your resume and write-up to: BusinessInternJob@uie.com

or

Jared M. Spool, CEO
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike Street, Suite 102
North Andover, MA 01845

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 29th, 2011 at 4:35 pm and is filed under Careers, Hiring, UIE, UIE Hiring . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Source: https://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/12/29/wanted-amazing-business-intern/

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10,000 murders in 4 years in Ciudad Juarez; Mexico's war on drugs sullied by federal forces, corruption

(Reuters) - In March, municipal police officers detained the two brothers of Armida Vazquez and whisked them away in patrol cars.

Vazquez and her mother searched for Dante and Juan Carlos, cellphone shop workers in their mid-20s, and checked with the local and federal police here, to no avail. Nineteen days later, the strangled bodies of the brothers were found on the outskirts of this notoriously violent city. Witness testimony and other evidence led to three policemen, now in jail awaiting trial.

But the police pushed back. Policemen in civilian clothes, Vazquez says, approached her mother outside church and told her to stop making trouble. When Vazquez made a statement against the suspects last month, she says other policemen and relatives of the officers threatened her outside the courthouse.

Terrified, 20 members of the Vazquez family packed their bags and fled across the U.S. border to El Paso, Texas, a short trip into a world of gleaming shopping malls, well-kept highways and safe neighborhoods.

"We left all we had in Juarez, our house, everything," said a pregnant Vazquez, in the tiny apartment she and her three children now share with a sister in El Paso.

Tens of thousands more people like her have abandoned Ciudad Juarez, a city wrecked by Mexico's drug violence. Although official figures vary, the city this month likely surpassed 10,000 homicides in the past four years. That's more than Afghanistan's civilian casualties in the same period and more than double the number of U.S. troops killed in the entire Iraq war.

The violence here, as across the nation, fundamentally stems from a turf war among drug cartels. U.S. and Mexican officials say the battle in Ciudad Juarez pits the Sinaloa cartel, run by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, against the Juarez cartel, with deep ties along Mexico's northern border.

But the Vazquez family's nightmare underscores another challenge in Mexico's war on drugs: the government's own warriors.

Business owners, security experts and ordinary residents told Reuters that official corruption at all levels of the security forces has fanned violence in the city, with local and federal police and soldiers complicit in, or actually committing, many of the murders.

The human rights commission of the local state of Chihuahua registered 1,250 complaints of torture, forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions by the army during its two-year deployment in Ciudad Juarez. It counts 400 similar grievances against the federal police who moved in when the soldiers were pulled out. These numbers document only 20 percent of the violations taking place, it estimates.

When President Felipe Calderon launched his war on drug cartels in late 2006, he meant it quite literally. He sent security forces to many parts of the country to try to put powerful drug gangs on the defensive. The nation's armed forces, in particular, were seen as a relatively clean player that would change the game.

The drug warriors have failed at every level of government in places like Ciudad Juarez. Before the army and federal police rolled into the city, many of the municipal and state police were paid operators for the Juarez cartel, government officials have conceded, directly involved in drug trafficking, kidnappings and murder. It has now come full circle: The army left Juarez in the face of a popular backlash, and the local police force is back in charge of the city's security, struggling to clean up its reputation.

While the problem is extreme in Ciudad Juarez, deep corruption inside the security forces is a problem across Mexico, a major weak spot in Calderon's campaign. It hinders efforts to end the violence that has killed more than 45,000 people around the country in the past five years.

Public outrage over the deaths is bleeding into debates ahead of next year's presidential election, with Calderon's strategy widely criticized and his conservative ruling party trailing in opinion polls.

In a speech this month, Calderon explained what he believes has happened. He said the crisis began in the 1990s when Mexican traffickers transporting Colombian cocaine north to consumers in the United States began receiving payment in kind. They found a ripe market among Mexicans and began selling drugs at home, which swelled the army of criminals and forced them to fight one another for territorial control.

"They no longer employ tens or hundreds of people, but thousands of people, thousands, extending their networks into areas that did not exist before," Calderon said. He said they get into other criminal activities, bribe authorities to look the other way and, if unchecked, ultimately create a "symbiosis where crime and security institutions are one and the same."

In Ciudad Juarez, many people believe Calderon's campaign was poorly designed and caused unnecessary suffering.

There were only 300 murders here in 2007, but when the violence arrived in early 2008 it rolled across the city with a vengeance. The government sent in 10,000 troops and federal police to try to quell the mayhem, but the deaths kept rising.

State officials counted 3,622 homicides in 2010, making Ciudad Juarez the city with the highest murder rate in the world at 272 per 100,000 residents. Authorities cite a drop in killings this year as a sign of success, but the murder rate is still more than six times higher than it was in 2007.

"As president, you should know what you are, and are not, capable of and not steer the country into the tragic situation we are in now," said Hugo Almada, an academic and psychotherapist who treats victims of violence in the city. "He calculated very badly."

THE LIST

Ciudad Juarez was once a kind of Las Vegas during the U.S. Prohibition era of the 1920s and early 1930s, hosting American film stars and singers at its bars.

Named after Benito Juarez, a 19th-century president who in 1865 briefly took refuge here with his forces during the French invasion of Mexico, it is still scattered with dilapidated monuments that recall the fighting during the Mexican Revolution between 1910 and 1920. It later became famous for modern manufacturing industries that attracted workers from across the country and billions of dollars in foreign investment.

But it is now a shadow of its former self. The Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez estimates 239,000 of the city's 1.3 million people have gone in the past four years. Nearly one in three of the businesses along the main boulevard is shuttered, often gutted by bands of looters who rip out copper wiring and the insulation in the walls.

Some say the descent into chaos began on New Year's Day 2008 when a local cop turned up dead, riddled with bullets in his black Volkswagen Jetta. The killings continued, and later that month, an ominous hit list appeared on a monument honoring fallen policemen. Under a heading "for those who didn't believe," it named five recently murdered officers. Under "for those who continue not believing" were 17 more.

Most of the 17 were killed within the year, along with many others. Around 50 policemen had been killed by mid-year, and the murder rate in the city quintupled.

Experts believe many of the murdered policemen were working for "La Linea," or "The Line," the armed wing of the Juarez cartel, and were targeted by a rival gang, most likely the Sinaloa cartel.

The Juarez cartel is run by Vicente Carrillo, 49, a keen horseman who took charge in 1997 after his brother Amado died during plastic surgery in an attempt to change his appearance. Amado, the more flamboyant of the two, was known as "Lord of the Skies" for his prowess using a fleet of airplanes to ferry Colombian cocaine into Mexico.

The younger Carrillo now handles about a fifth of Mexico's $40 billion-a-year narcotics business, drug experts say, and has avoided capture for the past 13 years, in part by adeptly corrupting local officials.

"All our police forces are infiltrated. All of them, it's as simple as that," Chihuahua state's then-governor, Jose Reyes Baeza, said in 2008.

JUNKYARD MURDERS

Along the bustling border, cars and mechanics are cheaper in Mexico than in the United States. Ciudad Juarez built up a busy autoparts business with around 600 junkyards, some legitimate and some chop shops for stolen cars.

Like others, the business has been ravaged by the cartels. Junkyard owners say the trouble started at the end of 2007, when a group of men contacted a leader of their business association demanding a collective protection fee. Fifteen days after he refused to pay, the first junkyard owner was kidnapped.

The group raised a complaint with the state police, said one leader of the junkyard industry. He says he found their reply menacing.

"Instead of getting a consoling response from them, the first commander said, 'I am not interested, I don't want to hear anything about it,'" he said. "And the second commander said, 'Well, when people start showing up wrapped in sheets and stuffed in boxes, you'll probably start paying attention'."

He interpreted it as a warning to just pay the gangs. "I left there really scared."

Since 2008, at least 30 junkyard owners have been kidnapped and some of them killed. More than three-quarters of the city's junkyard businessmen simply decided to shut down their shops, and most who stayed open have to pay regular protection money to the gangs, the leader saod.

SEND IN THE CAVALRY

Calderon sent 2,500 soldiers to Ciudad Juarez in March 2008, and more the following year. At first the crackdown was welcomed. People hoped the army would be less corrupt and less abusive than local authorities.

The army's first target was the police. Just one month after their arrival, soldiers arrested 21 police officers, stripping off their clothes, interrogating them and holding them for a day without charges. Some 400 police officers were fired after they failed federal background checks. Many others quit.

By mid-2008 there were fewer than 200 local police patrolling the streets per shift. Transit police were banned from carrying weapons, leaving them unprotected. Soldiers in charge of day-to-day security operations used the demoralized officers as chauffeurs, said Gustavo de la Rosa from the state human rights commission.

Accusations of torture and illegal detention against soldiers began to surface, and not even the harsh tactics had any impact on the surging homicide rate.

General Jorge Juarez, in charge of the mission in Ciudad Juarez and the rest of Chihuahua State at the time, told reporters they should stop writing about "one more death" and instead print that there was "one less criminal."

In a recent report, Human Rights Watch says army abuses are not unique to Ciudad Juarez but endemic across Mexico and that the government has failed to properly address most complaints.

Gerardo Baca filed one of them. He says his son Victor was just 21 when he was picked up by soldiers three years ago at a hot dog stand with a couple of friends. Victor has not been heard from since.

Even after his friends were released claiming they were in custody with Victor, the army denies ever having held him. Baca goes every week to the morgue to scan records of unidentified bodies, hoping to find some characteristics matching his son. He has reported the case to every authority he can think of with no success.

"This is hell, we are living in a nightmare," Baca said in the small living room of his publicly subsidized home, pointing to pictures of Victor, one in a white cowboy hat, another in a plaid shirt. "I wouldn't wish this on anybody, not even the soldiers who detained my son."

The army did not respond to requests for information about specific cases for this article.

In his recent speech, President Calderon conceded the army has gone too far in some cases. "There have been excesses, that's true, unfortunately," he said. And we are very concerned and it's very serious. But believe me, my friends, that these cases, given the magnitude of the operations carried out, the arrests that are made daily, are the exception rather than the rule."

One former professional hitman says the abuses may have gone much deeper.

Interviewed by Reuters late last year, the hitman said he had worked with a group of 20 other paid assassins doing jobs for bosses he never met. He claimed his main contact was a former military officer, that he received training on a military base, and that he and other hitmen collaborated with soldiers.

"There are groups, paramilitary groups, that are the big ones in the army," said the man, who admitted to beheading and torturing his victims. Many times, he says, he did not know why he had been ordered to target the person he was killing.

"One time I saw the army wave through a checkpoint three vans filled with hitmen from Sinaloa with automatic weapons," he said. "They didn't wait in line, just gave a code, showed a paper and they let them through to do their work."

The army did not respond to questions about the claims,

which couldn't be independently confirmed.

A spokesman for Calderon's government said in September that "there is no evidence that phenomenon of paramilitary groups exist."

Human Rights Watch found there were 921 investigations opened in the military justice system for abuses in Chihuahua between December 2006 and May 2011 - more than any other state. Charges were brought in only two cases and no sentences were handed were down.

Rising disenchantment with the military siege sparked a series of public protests in Ciudad Juarez in late 2009. The army handed over control to the federal police in mid-2010, just as the violence was peaking.

A FIGHTBACK

Once the federal police took charge, they went after the criminal gangs, arresting more than 400 suspected members of the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels along with over 5,000 other alleged criminals, breaking up kidnapping and extortion gangs.

Crime decreased, although the flow of narcotics was barely interrupted and the state human rights commission said complaints of corruption continued.

In what was dubbed "green zone," federal police set up checkpoints to patrol the main commercial strip of bars and discos near the border even after most businesses, squeezed by extortionists, had shut down or were set on fire. The intensive patrols were meant to encourage patrons to return to the area. They didn't work, in part because police were looking for bribes and potential customers were worried the police would be targets for criminals, making the area more dangerous.

"People were not only afraid of the criminals but also of the police," said Federico Ziga, the head of the restaurant association.

The area is still largely abandoned. Places like the Sphinx, a once-popular nightclub shaped like a pyramid with a golden pharaoh's head on the roof, are up for rent.

In October, the federal police followed the army and left, handing command of the city's security back to the local authorities. Mayor Hector Murguia says he has beefed up the municipal police force to 2,600 officers, spending 47 percent of the city's budget on security.

He brought in a tough new police chief, a retired military man named Julian Leyzaola, last March. Praised by the socialite magazine "Quien" as one of Mexico's most influential people, Leyzaola is credited with bringing down crime rates in the violent border city of Tijuana, across from San Diego, Calif.

Leyzaola has said he helped purge the Tijuana force of corrupt and inefficient officers. Four local policemen in Tijuana say they were detained and tortured by Leyzaola, a charge he vehemently rejects. Leyzaola's office did not respond to requests for an interview for this article.

Mayor Murguia stands by the police chief. "I am not interested in these complaints, let them be pursued legally," the mayor said. "As far as I'm concerned he is showing results in Juarez and I think he is one of the best police commanders in this country."

Murguia, a member of the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is in his second term as mayor.

During his latest election campaign, rival politicians, rights groups and drug trade experts accused Murguia of being in the pay of the Juarez cartel. He has never been charged and denies any wrongdoing.

SIGNS OF LIFE?

The government points to a drop in homicides, car thefts and armed robberies of businesses this year as a sign of success in Ciudad Juarez even as violent car-jackings rose.

Special agent Joseph Arabit at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in El Paso said improved intelligence sharing between the U.S. and Mexico has helped the two governments make more arrests.

Factory jobs in the city's more than 300 assembly plants for export, or "maquilas," are slowly picking up again after a steep drop in 2008 and 2009 during the U.S. recession. Ziga of the restaurant association said customers are venturing out again, encouraged by relatively calmer streets. And the mayor said there was a good turnout for Mexico's independence day celebrations, a sharp contrast to last year when most were canceled due to fear of attacks.

"We are much more effective at capturing criminals," said Murguia. "We have been able to reduce the kidnapping rate to basically zero."

Moments after the interview with Murguia, 15 minutes from his office, reporters crowded around a red Nissan with the windows shot out that had been abandoned in the middle of the street, the keys still in the ignition. It was another "levanton," or "pick up," where the fate of the driver is unknown. It didn't merit a mention in the next day's local newspaper.

Minutes later, on the same street, police cars chased armed men who had tried to rob a carwash. After a shootout, three men were arrested. Panicked witnesses crashed their cars trying to escape the scene.

Another day this month, a day like many others, 13 people were killed. Among the dead were four dialysis patients and a paramedic gunned down in an ambulance.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Giovine in El Paso; Editing by Kieran Murray)

? Copyright (c) Reuters

Source: http://feeds.canada.com/~r/canwest/F229/~3/cz3AvnKkAfE/story.html

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Microsoft to ban virtual guns on Xbox Live

The right to bear arms does not extend into the world of virtual game console avatars.

Even though the Xbox 360 is the place to go for bloody shoot-em-ups and FPS games that push the M-rated boundaries, Microsoft is apparently against the idea of cartoony guns for your Xbox Live avatar.

The software giant hasn't officially announced this seemingly hypocritical decision yet, but third-party publisher Epic Games has.

The publisher's community manager, who goes by the name Raczilla, wrote in an official blog post that all gun items will be removed from Xbox Live's Avatar Marketplace in January.

The post was written to inform users that Epic's Lancer and Hammerburst items will be removed as of the new year. "A new policy goes into effect for all gun-like avatar items on the Marketplace, so get them while they?re hot," Raczilla wrote.

There are already some draconian restrictions on what player avatars are allowed to do. They can't smoke or inflict any kind of violence, although of course that kind of content is commonplace in most of the Xbox 360's hottest selling games.

The policies for Xbox Live are so strict because avatars, usernames, etc, are universal. They need to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Someone playing Call of Duty would expect to see guns and blood, but someone playing an innocent game like Kinect Sports would not.

So if you want to give your Xbox Live avatar a weapon so you can terrorize your friends, you better head to the marketplace and buy it stat.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/tgdaily_all_sections/~3/OWu-zmDIB5E/60433-microsoft-to-ban-virtual-guns-on-xbox-live

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Bank Shuts Down Local Online Advertising Company WebVisible For Not Paying Debts

Local interactive advertising firm WebVisible has shut its doors. According to a note sent from the company's CEO to employees, WebVisible ran out of cash, and Silicon Valley Bank is shutting the company down. WebVisible's software allowed advertisers to manage local online campaigns on Google, Yahoo, Bing and others. The company's services were offered directly affiliate partners to local businesses, franchisors, and national advertisers Previous WebVisible partners include AT&T, British Telecom, Yellow Pages Group of Canada, EarthLink, and The McClatchy Company, among others.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/cL69IFF3Beg/

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Brees sets passing mark, Saints top Falcons 45-16 (AP)

NEW ORLEANS ? Quite a night for Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints ? a record and a rout.

Brees set the NFL mark for yards passing in a season, breaking a record that Dan Marino had held for nearly three decades, and New Orleans clinched the NFC South title with a 45-16 victory over the Falcons on Monday night.

Brees threw for 307 yards and four touchdowns, the last a 9-yard strike to Darren Sproles that set the record with 2:51 to go.

"Honestly, I was really trying not to think about the record or anything," Brees said. "I knew we were close. A couple guys mentioned stuff to me on the sideline. I didn't want to hear it. It's like a pitcher with a no-hitter, I guess."

It was Brees' final pass of the game and it gave him 5,087 yards passing ? with one game still to play. Marino finished with 5,084 yards for the Miami Dolphins in 1984.

Minutes after Brees broke the record, Marino offered congratulations on his Twitter account.

"Great job by such a special player," Marino wrote.

As Sproles spiked the ball, Brees thrust his fist triumphantly in the air and started walking toward midfield while the Superdome crowd went wild and his teammates chased him down. Offensive guard Carl Nicks was the first one to get there and tried to lift Brees onto his shoulder, but couldn't do it as teammates swarmed around.

"If I could have put him on my shoulders and paraded him around the whole stadium I would have done that. He deserves it," Nicks said. "It's like a movie, man. Just a movie ending. It's beautiful. ... You could tell by everyone's reaction after he did it how much people care about that guy. We all love him."

Brees' four touchdown passes gave him 276 for his career, moving him ahead of Joe Montana (273) and Vinny Testaverde (275) for ninth all-time. He is the first quarterback in NFL history to pass for more than 5,000 yards twice ? he had 5,069 in 2008.

Brees' first scoring pass went for 8 yards to Marques Colston and the second for 9 yards to Jimmy Graham. Graham's TD catch was his 10th of the season, a new franchise high for a tight end. In the third quarter, Brees hit Robert Meachem for a score from 24 yards, which made it 28-10.

"I love the fact that everybody could be part of this on Monday Night Football," Brees said. "There's so many people that are a part of this. It's not about me. It's about this team, it's about this city, it's about these fans. So many people contributed to this, and I'm happy for them."

The Saints (12-3) also had 463 total yards, giving them more than 6,857 offensive yards for the season, breaking the 2008 club record of 6,571. New Orleans continues to close in on the NFL record of 7,075 offensive yards in a season set by the 2000 St. Louis Rams.

Brees might have broken the record in the third quarter if not for Sproles' 92-yard kickoff return, which set up John Kasay's 29-yard field goal. Brees also was intercepted twice, once in the Falcons end zone, but New Orleans was still dominant enough to take a three-score lead.

The game became a romp when Julio Jones was stripped by Scott Shanle and Malcolm Jenkins returned it 30 yards for a score to make it 38-16 in the fourth quarter. The Superdome crowd was in full celebration by then, but the play also meant fans would have to wait until later in the fourth quarter before Brees finally got his chance to break the passing record.

"Obviously, it's a special moment for the players, especially Drew," Saints coach Sean Payton said. "I couldn't be more proud of him."

The Saints can earn the No. 2 seed and a first-round playoff bye with a win Sunday over Carolina and a San Francisco loss at St. Louis, which is 2-13.

Atlanta, which won the NFC South last season, is headed to the playoffs as a wild card.

Uncharacteristically, Brees had only a yard passing during a span of a little more than 18 minutes. Knowing he was closing in the record, the crowd howled, "Drehttp://wwww" each time he took the field. He finally gave the fans what they wanted after Atlanta failed on a fourth-down try at its own 33. That gave Brees, who needed only 30 yards for the record at that point, just enough space to work with.

"I knew after the touchdown to Meachem that we were really close," Brees said. "I didn't know how close, but really close, and then we had a couple of those drives that stalled out and I thought, `You've got to be kidding me' ? especially since the whole game we had been converting first downs, doing all the right things offensively, both the run and the pass, yet we couldn't put a drive together in the fourth quarter and I thought, we've got to get this ball back, we've got to go down and score and put one together."

Matt Ryan had 373 yards passing and one TD, including a 21-yard scoring strike to Jones that gave the Falcons (9-6) a 10-7 lead late in the first quarter.

"We didn't really play well enough in any phase of the game to give ourselves a chance to win," said Falcons coach Mike Smith, whose team came in with a chance to stay in the hunt for the division title. "There were some opportunities early on, and then it kind of got out of hand there at the end. ... It's not the type of effort that you want to have with so much on the line with what the outcome could have meant to our team."

New Orleans responded to Atlanta's first TD with a 10-play, 81-yard scoring drive that put the Saints in the lead for good. Brees completed four of six passes for 48 yards, the last three to Colston, who finished with seven catches for 81 yards.

The result might have been even more lopsided if Brees' pass intended for Graham in the end zone had not been broken up by linebacker Curtis Lofton, and then batted in the air by safety William Moore before coming to rest in the arms of Dominique Franks for an interception.

New Orleans bounced back on its final drive of the second quarter, covering 80 yards in 10 plays and only 1:55, capped by Graham's TD catch.

Both teams scored on all their possessions in the opening quarter, with the Saints briefly pulling in front 7-3 on Pierre Thomas' 4-yard touchdown run, after which he pulled a bow from his uniform pants, put it on the football and offered it as a gift to a woman with a parasol in the front row behind the end zone.

The referees weren't cutting Thomas any slack on his Christmas-themed celebration, flagging him for a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.

The score capped an eight-play, 84-yard scoring drive on which Brees completed two passes for 49 yards.

Notes: Brees has passed for 300 yards or more an NFL-record 12 times this season. ... New England quarterback Tom Brady could also pass Marino next week ? and maybe even Brees, too. Brady has thrown for 4,897 yards this season. ... The Saints are 7-0 at home and never have gone undefeated at home in a full season. ... The Falcons were 0-3 on attempted fourth-down conversions.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111227/ap_on_sp_fo_ga_su/fbn_falcons_saints

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Texas Instruments TI-36X Solar Scientific Calculator

Home ?>? Best Prices ?>? Texas Instruments TI-36X Solar Scientific Calculator

• Manufacturer: Texas Instruments Inc.

Product Rating: Rated / 5 Stars

$18.91 - $26.98 at 3 online stores

Last Updated: December 26, 2011

Source: http://computershopper.com/best-prices/product/6151085/Office-equipment/Texas-Instruments-TI-36X-Solar-Scientific-Calculator

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Apple iPhone 4S to launch before January 23rd in mainland China

Earlier this month, we told you that regulators in China had finally issued the last remaining paperwork needed for the Apple iPhone 4S to be launched in the country. Now, we have word from China's People's Daily that the absolutely last step before a launch occurred when the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology granted China Compulsory Certification for the iPhone 4S on Dec. 22. The word now is that Apple will introduce the phone at the beginning of next month and will launch it before the Chinese New Year on January 23rd. The Apple iPhone 4S is expected to cost 4,999 Yuan ($786 USD) off-contract for the 16GB variant.

Filings with the Chinese regulators show that approval was granted for Apple to sell a WCDMA phone with the model number A1431. While the paper doesn't mention the Apple iPhone 4S by name, the model number is the same as the one used by the Cupertino based firm for a network entry permit for the Apple iPhone 4S. Since China hopped over the U.S. to become the world's largest smartphone market, there is a lot at stake here for Apple.

In the region, the Apple iPhone 4S has been a hot commodity, selling out in Hong Kong within minutes of being put on sale. Some regional branches of China Unicom have been taking pre-orders for weeks in advance of the regulatory approval. China Unicom is the only carrier in the country that is officially allowed to sell the iPhone although Apple has been working with the world's largest carrier, China Mobile, on offering a variant of the phone that would work on the carrier's unique TD-SCDMA network. With 600 million customers (although only 80 million currently are 3G customers), getting approval for the iPhone for China Telecom could have a positive impact on Apple's earnings.

As far as the Apple iPhone 4S is concerned, there is talk that a Mandarin speaking version of Siri will be available in March of next year. Mandarin is the most popular form of the Chinese language.

source: People's Daily via AppleInsider

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/phonearena/ySoL/~3/lAh1KoQvkzI/Apple-iPhone-4S-to-launch-before-January-23rd-in-mainland-China_id25137

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Packers lead Bears 14-3 at halftime

Green Bay Packers' Jermichael Finley (88) catches a touchdown pass in front of Chicago Bears' Nick Roach (53) during the first half of an NFL football game Sunday, Dec. 25, 2011, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Mike Roemer)

Green Bay Packers' Jermichael Finley (88) catches a touchdown pass in front of Chicago Bears' Nick Roach (53) during the first half of an NFL football game Sunday, Dec. 25, 2011, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Mike Roemer)

Green Bay Packers' Jermichael Finley (88) is hit by Chicago Bears' Nick Roach (53) and Major Wright (27) after catching a pass during the first half of an NFL football game Sunday, Dec. 25, 2011, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

Ryan Schaffer, left, and Dan Freese have some fun outside Lambeau Field before an NFL football game between the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears Sunday, Dec. 25, 2011, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) ? Aaron Rodgers threw touchdown passes to Jermichael Finley and James Jones, Clay Matthews made a critical interception to stop a drive, and the Green Bay Packers led the rival Chicago Bears 14-3 at halftime on Sunday night.

Chicago was able to stay in the game for most of the first half with solid defense and tough running by third-string running back Kahlil Bell, who had 89 yards on 14 carries. But Rodgers finished off a late drive with a 2-yard touchdown toss to Jones with 16 seconds left in the half.

Rodgers needed nine plays to drive the Packers 80 yards on their first possession, including a 32-yard gain on a screen pass to Ryan Grant.

Finley had three touchdown catches in the Packers' 27-17 victory at Chicago on Sept. 25, but was coming off a rough outing in Green Bay's loss at Kansas City a week ago.

Playing with a patchwork offensive line because of injuries, the Packers used their no-huddle offense and bootlegs by Rodgers to keep the Bears' pass rush off balance early.

The Bears responded with a run-heavy drive featuring Bell, who started with Matt Forte and Marion Barber out injured. Chicago drove into Green Bay territory, but then committed back-to-back penalties. Robbie Gould missed a 49-yard field goal wide right.

The Packers' offense slowed down from there, and some more hard runs by Bell had the Bears threatening to score again early in the second quarter. Matthews picked Josh McCown's pass out of the air for an interception on a second-and-5 play at the Green Bay 22, ending the drive.

Chicago then put together another drive behind the running of Bell and Armando Allen, and Gould hit a 35-yard field goal to cut the lead to 7-3 with 1:56 left in the half.

The Packers then shook off their offensive struggles in the two-minute drill as Rodgers threw a 32-yard pass to Jones, a 17-yard pass to Jordy Nelson and an 11-yard pass to set up the short touchdown to Jones.

Green Bay came into Sunday night's game playing for the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs. The Packers can clinch home-field advantage by beating Chicago on Sunday night or by beating Detroit in next Sunday's regular season finale at Lambeau Field, or if San Francisco loses at St. Louis next week.

The Packers were without three of their top four tackles on the offensive line.

Chad Clifton returned to practice this week after sitting out since October because of hamstring and back injuries, but isn't ready to play. Bryan Bulaga was inactive Sunday because of a left knee sprain, and backup Derek Sherrod is out for the season with a broken right leg.

Green Bay also was missing wide receiver Greg Jennings, because of a sprained left knee, and defensive lineman Ryan Pickett because of a concussion.

The Bears have lost four straight games since losing quarterback Jay Cutler to a broken right thumb in a Nov. 20 victory over San Diego. Chicago was 7-3 after that win, but came into Sunday's game barely hanging onto a chance to make the playoffs.

Chicago would be eliminated with a loss Sunday night.

The Bears started McCown on Sunday after backup Caleb Hanie struggled to fill in for Cutler. McCown's most recent start came with the Oakland Raiders on Dec. 23, 2007. He was completely out of the NFL last season.

To make matters worse for the Bears' offense, Barber was inactive because of a calf injury and was listed as doubtful going into the game. Chicago already was without Forte, who missed his third straight game because of a sprained medial collateral ligament in his right knee.

Chicago did have Devin Hester, who was active despite an ankle injury.

The Packers were trying for their fourth win over the Bears in 2011. Green Bay beat Chicago in the 2010 regular-season finale, the NFC Championship game, and at Soldier Field on Sept. 25.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2011-12-25-FBN-Bears-Packers/id-057bef61ac4f4dd1a17b4e3ae4fc0217

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Pacers Top Pistons In NBA Opener

INDIANAPOLIS -- Danny Granger couldn't shoot straight for most of the night, yet the smile across his face as he iced his knees in the locker room after the game spoke volumes.In the past, as Granger's shot went, so went Indiana. He shot poorly on Monday night, but the Pacers still defeated the Detroit Pistons 91-79 in the season opener for both teams at the renamed Bankers Life Fieldhouse. Granger finished with 16 points on 6-for-18 shooting, but three Pacers had double-doubles, giving him a level of support that has been absent over the years. Roy Hibbert had 16 points and 14 rebounds, Tyler Hansbrough had 15 points and 13 rebounds and David West had 11 points and 12 rebounds. Add a defense that held Detroit to 36 percent shooting, and Granger could finally be at peace on an off night. "We definitely could not have done that last year," he said. "We have the ability to crash the boards. I think our big guys did an excellent job of dominating the glass, on the offensive end also. We didn't give up too many offensive rebounds. When they can dominate the glass like that, it's going to be hard to beat us." It was ironic that this season of high hopes started with a win against the Pistons. After all, it was an altercation with the Pistons and their fans in 2004 that ultimately forced the Pacers to rebuild. Indiana's fans haven't forgotten. As players were introduced, Ben Wallace, a central figure in that brawl, was booed loudly. The fans who saw a championship-caliber team dismantled after a flurry of off-the-court problems finally have returned, and a packed house saw the fruits of team president Larry Bird's rebuilding effort on display. West, the team's big-name free-agent pickup, was active and affected the game, even though he struggled to finish down low. Guard George Hill, the hometown hero acquired in a draft-night trade with San Antonio, provided a spark off the bench and created a buzz whenever his name was announced. Pacers coach Frank Vogel won his first game without an interim tag, and the team did it his way -- with smashmouth basketball. Indiana outrebounded the Pistons 53-40. "We still took a few too many bad shots, which I'm not too happy with," he said. "But we were attacking the basket, we were getting to the free throw line and we're making the extra pass, and that's the style of play that we're going to have. and it's going to win for us." The Pacers shot just 37 percent from the field, but got away with it in part because they had 18 offensive rebounds and 14 second-chance points. Detroit couldn't get its offense going to take advantage of Indiana's poor shooting. "We just have to play a whole lot more together game," Detroit coach Lawrence Frank said after his debut as Pistons coach. "More ball movement, more working to get rhythm shots. It just shows you where we're at right now. We've got a lot of work to do." Jonas Jerebko and Rodney Stuckey each scored 17 points for the Pistons, who never led. "Now we know what we've got to do," Stuckey said. "We've got to stop complaining, we've got to rebound the basketball, we've got to play harder. That's it." Indiana led big early, but Detroit made a push in the second quarter before back-to-back 3s by George and Darren Collison increased Indiana's lead to 47-34. The Pacers led 52-38 at halftime and kept rolling at the start of the second half. Collison hit a baseline jumper off an offensive board by West, then followed it with a 3-pointer to push Indiana's lead to 59-42. Hibbert dunked and was fouled after a nifty inside feed from Granger. His free throw pushed Indiana's lead to 62-42 four minutes into the second half and forced a timeout by the Pistons. Detroit played a bit better right out of the timeout, but a bucket by Hansbrough and a fast break layup by Dahntay Jones pushed the lead back to 20 and forced another Detroit timeout with 4:42 left in the third. This timeout didn't work so well for the Pistons. Jones hit a long baseline jumper, then George Hill's steal and dunk pushed Indiana's lead to 74-50. The Pacers led 76-58 at the end of the third quarter. A 3-pointer by Granger pushed the lead to 85-61 with 7 minutes left in the game. Pacers fans gave the team a standing ovation in the final minute. Frank was impressed with the Pacers, but he didn't get carried away. "It's one game," he said. "What's the big boulevard down here? I don't know if there's going to be a parade this year. They're a good team, it's one game, they outplayed us tonight." Notes: Pacers C Jeff Foster sat out with a back injury he tweaked during the preseason. ... Pistons C Ben Wallace was loudly booed during pregame introductions. Wallace played a key role in the brawl in 2004 that eventually forced the Pacers to rebuild. ... Indiana F Jeff Pendergraph missed the game with a sprained right knee. ... Indiana outscored Detroit 16-4 from the free-throw line in the first half. ... Hill had four points and four assists in his regular-season debut for Indiana.

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

Source: http://www.theindychannel.com/sports/30079284/detail.html

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NASA finds Earth-size planets outside solar system

WASHINGTON | Tue Dec 20, 2011 5:37pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system, a milestone in the search for planets like the earth, the space agency said on Tuesday.

The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are the smallest planets outside the solar system confirmed around a star like the Sun, NASA said in a statement.

The planets are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface.

"This discovery demonstrates for the first time that Earth-size planets exist around other stars, and that we are able to detect them," Francois Fressin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said in the statement.

The new planets are thought to be rocky. Kepler-20e is slightly smaller than Venus, measuring 0.87 times the radius of Earth.

Kepler-20f is slightly larger than Earth, measuring 1.03 times its radius. Both planets are in a five-planet system called Kepler-20, about 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra.

Kepler-20e orbits its parent star every 6.1 days and Kepler-20f every 19.6 days.

Kepler-20f, at 800 degrees Fahrenheit, is similar to an average day on the planet Mercury. The surface temperature of Kepler-20e, at more than 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit, would melt glass.

The Kepler space telescope detects planets and planet candidates by measuring dips in the brightness of more than 150,000 stars as planets cross in front their stars.

NASA is an acronym for National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Jerry Norton)

Source: http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/scienceNews/~3/B0JiKyw9EAs/us-nasa-planets-idUSTRE7BJ22E20111220

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Strong quake hits PNG, no reports of damage (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? A strong earthquake struck the Pacific state of Papua New Guinea Wednesday, but no tsunami warning was issued as the quake occurred inland, and there were no immediate reports of damage.

The 7.3 magnitude tremor was centered near Lae, the country's second-largest city, at a depth of around 115 km (71 miles) the U.S. Geological Survey said.

"It was very, very big," said Dolly Kinibo, a receptionist at the Lae International Hotel.

"It lasted for two to three minutes. The whole building moved. The Christmas tree moved, we all moved, people are very shaken. There are no reports of injuries or damage, but our managers are checking."

The quake sent goods flying from the shelves of Lae's Foodmart store but caused only minor damage and no injuries. "It wrecked some displays and caused some damage to the ceiling, but touch wood nothing serious," said store manager Albert Martinez.

Residents in the capital Port Moresby, 223 km (138 miles) from the epicenter, also reported feeling the quake.

PNG, a country where the majority of people live subsistence lives despite its abundant mineral wealth, sits on the geographically active Pacific Ring of Fire.

(Reporting by Michael Perry in Sydney; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/weather/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111214/wl_nm/us_papua_quake

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Islamic finance paves way for future and solves economic problems ...

He added that Islamic banking is not operating at full swing yet, either as a result of lack of legislations or opportunities.

He stressed that having a highly ethical Islamic financing system and the efficient collaboration among local and international institutions will contribute to the prosperity and development of the society and economy.

He went on to say that Islamic banking services have paved the way for the future, and have become one of the most important alternatives that many economies worldwide seek.

He noted that Islamic financing is based on real long-term guarantees, since it relies on assets.

Moreover, he mentioned that governments need to issue more sukuk, in order to provide short-term liquidity instruments. However, since legislations that organize the issuance of sukuk in some countries are lacking, this significant instrument has been rendered obsolete, which erodes the efforts of Islamic banks to help markets overcome their crises.

Furthermore, he explained that Islamic banks can play an efficient role in solving the housing problem through its role in construction projects and real estate development, not to mention several instruments that finance that sector, such as murabaha, ijarah, and others.

He remarked that KFH-Bahrain shoulders several major real estate projects, such as Durrat Al-Bahrain residential and entertainment project that costs $3bn. The project occupies 20 square kilometers, and is expected to be as big as Manama City once it is complete.

In addition, there is Al-Waha industrial project that establishes industrial compounds; thus increasing national income through attracting foreign investments.

Diyar Al-Muharraq is another giant project that consists of residential and commercial units for people middle class and rich people.

Source: http://www.ameinfo.com/283246.html

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