Romney talks housing, ends up defending banks

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, is licked by Napoleon the dog as he campaigns in Lehigh Acres, Fla., Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, is licked by Napoleon the dog as he campaigns in Lehigh Acres, Fla., Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney greets residents as he campaigns in front of a foreclosed home in Lehigh Acres, Fla., Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, greets residents as he campaigns in Lehigh Acres, Fla., Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

LEHIGH ACRES, Fla. (AP) ? Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney came to ground zero of the housing crisis Tuesday to assail rival Newt Gingrich over his ties to the government-backed mortgage companies that helped make it worse, a message Romney has been pushing since he landed in the state. But that meant he also had to talk about banks ? and he continued what's become a habit of comparing companies to people.

Romney was standing outside a Fannie Mae-foreclosed home in a struggling neighborhood telling a small crowd why they're having so much trouble. "In this case, it's because of the banks," he explained. "Well, the banks aren't bad people. They're just overwhelmed right now."

During a Monday roundtable with business owners struggling in Florida's hobbled housing market, the former Massachusetts governor told the group that their troubles with banks came because the lenders were worried about staying in business.

"The banks are scared to death, of course," he said. "They're feeling the same thing that you're feeling. And so they just want to pretend that all this is just going to get paid some day."

Both comments echoed the now-famous line Romney delivered from a hay bale at the Iowa state fair: "Corporations are people, my friend!"

They're also part of a string of comments Romney has made that his opponents have used to pummel him as wealthy and out of touch with average Americans. Ahead of the New Hampshire primary, he said he once feared being "pink-slipped" and later said "I like to fire people." He was referring to insurance companies, but both Democrats and his Republican rivals attacked him for it.

In calling corporations people, Romney was referring to laws that give companies some rights under the law that are also given to people. And in Florida, he's been trying to explain that banks are scared they'll go out of business because so many people have stopped paying their mortgages. He's also argued that regulations passed during the Obama administration give banks less flexibility if they're trying to help consumers renegotiate the terms of their mortgages.

He's focusing on the housing market because it's a critical issue in Florida, where the GOP primary will be held on Jan. 31. Gingrich, his chief rival, earned more than $1.6 million working as a consultant to Freddie Mac. The mortgage giant was heavily involved in the subprime lending business that helped drive the housing bubble.

"Housing has become a mess in large measure because the government got in the middle of it," Romney said. "I'm running against a guy, as you know, in this primary, who was out there working for one of those guys in the case of Freddie Mac."

Freddie Mac, a government-sponsored enterprise, was originally designed to help more people get access to mortgages to buy homes.

Romney himself hasn't outlined any specific proposals to help fix the housing market. He says improving the economy will allow Americans to regain their footing and keep their homes.

Since coming to Florida, though, he's softened his rhetoric. Last year, he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the government should let the foreclosure crisis "run its course and hit the bottom." Now, he's saying the housing market needs to be "reset" so that the American economy can "rebuild."

"The distress they're feeling here was heartbreaking," Romney told reporters after the Monday roundtable. "I want to do my very best to help people like that."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2012-01-24-Romney/id-a9568191022642fda5599081e6462cb5

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Hideous G-Shock Phone Is Too Durable to Be Destroyed [Smartphones]

Try to drown it, crush it with up to a ton of weight, or give it a ten-foot toss—this prototype G-Shock phone will just laugh its heinous mug at you. Why can't super-rugged things not look like this? More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/fVz-kIp3FJs/hideous-g+shock-phone-is-too-durable-to-be-destroyed

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New Zealand court refuses bail for Megaupload founder (Reuters)

AUCKLAND (Reuters) ? The founder of online file-sharing website Megaupload, accused of masterminding a scheme that allegedly made more than $175 million through Internet piracy and illegal file sharing, was ordered held in custody by a New Zealand court on Wednesday.

Kim Dotcom, a German national, also known as Kim Schmitz, was remanded in custody until Feb 22 ahead of a hearing of the extradition application by the United States government, which also alleges racketeering and money laundering.

Dotcom, 38, and three others, were arrested on Friday after New Zealand police raided his country estate at the request of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Police cut Dotcom out of a safe room he had barricaded himself in within the mansion, reputedly New Zealand's most expensive home.

The judge said there was a significant risk Dotcom, who had passports in three names, could make an attempt to flee the country.

"With sufficient determination and financial resources flight risk remains a real and significant possibility which I cannot discount and bail is declined," Judge David McNaughton said in a written decision.

Dotcom, dressed in the same black trousers and track suit top he was arrested in on Friday, showed no emotion when the decision was read out, but his lawyer said he was "very disappointed" and would appeal immediately.

"The judge has agreed with much of what we have submitted but he has taken a different view on the issue of flight risk," Paul Davison told reporters.

The judge said the finding of unlicensed and illegal guns in the luxury mansion raided by police on Friday pointed to possible criminal connections, which could make it easier to escape to Germany, where Dotcom would be safe from extradition.

U.S. authorities want to extradite Dotcom on the charges, although his lawyer has said the company simply offered online storage, and that his client is innocent.

He had argued for bail saying that he posed no threat of absconding or restarting his businesses. But the prosecutor said he was a "flight risk at the extreme end of the scale" because it was believed he had access to funds, had multiple identities, and had a history of fleeing criminal charges.

The judge said he could not assess whether the U.S. had a strong enough case against Dotcom or whether he had a good defense.

"All I can says is that there appears to be an arguable defense at least in respect of the breach of copyright charges," McNaughton wrote.

An extradition application must be lodged within 45 days of Dotcom's arrest, and the U.S. government will have to show that the alleged offences would be crimes in New Zealand punishable by a jail term of at least 12 months.

The prosecution has said an extradition hearing might take only a day because the evidence will be given in summary form, but McNaughton said he did not know how long a hearing would take, nor could it be heard "for some months."

A group of Dotcom's supporters left the court dejected and refused to talk to media.

Three other men charged with Dotcom were also remanded, but their lawyers immediately applied to the judge for separate hearings to make individual bail applications.

(Reporting by Michael Perry; Writing by Gyles Beckford; Editing by Ed Davies and Lincoln Feast)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/internet/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120125/tc_nm/us_internet_piracy_megaupload_bail

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O2 UK network security blunder exposes customers' phone numbers to websites

If you're browsing the web on your phone or tablet on O2 UK, then the network could be exposing your phone number to every website you visit. O2 customer Lewis Peckover recently discovered that when you're browsing over 3G on O2, your handset's phone number is often included in the HTTP headers sent to each website you visit, in plain text.

HTTP headers are information exchanged between your browser and the web server before a page is loaded. In theory, the way O2 includes your phone number -- alongside more mundane information like your IP address, browser and OS -- means that any website you visit could easily find out your number. It's worth pointing out that the header used by O2 to send phone numbers -- "x-up-calling-line-id" -- isn't one that's routinely logged by web servers. However, just a couple of lines of code would allow a malicious site to find your phone number just by having you visit a website on 3G.

Lewis Peckover has set up a site to allow O2 customers to see whether they're affected. We've tried this with an O2 SIM in our Galaxy Nexus, and sure enough, there our phone number was in the list of "headers received". If you're on O2, make sure you've got Wifi disabled on your device, then click here and see if you spot your phone number among the HTTP headers.

This isn't an Android-specific problem, however due to the fact that it's a network-level issue, it'll affect Android phones just the same as any other device that's browsing over O2's data network. For this reason, just about anything that connects via HTTP over O2's network could potentially access this information. For its part, O2 says it's "investigating" the issue, and while this is a big deal for O2 customers, the fact that this is a network-level problem should mean that a fix will be relatively quick and easy to deploy.

More: Lew.io; via: ThinkBroadband

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/W0LTWSsLFNU/story01.htm

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Patterns of chromosome abnormality: The key to cancer?

Monday, January 23, 2012

A healthy genome is characterized by 23 pairs of chromosomes, and even a small change in this structure ? such as an extra copy of a single chromosome ? can lead to severe physical impairment. So it's no surprise that when it comes to cancer, chromosomal structure is frequently a contributing factor, says Prof. Ron Shamir of the Blavatnik School of Computer Science at Tel Aviv University.

Now Prof. Shamir and his former doctoral students Michal Ozery-Flato and Chaim Linhart, along with fellow researchers Prof. Shai Izraeli and Dr. Luba Trakhtenbrot from the Sheba Medical Center, have combined techniques from computer science and statistics to discover that many chromosomal pairs are lost or gained together across various cancer types. Moreover, the researchers discovered a new commonality of chromosomal aberrations among embryonic cancer types, such as kidney, skeleton, and liver cancers.

These findings, recently published in Genome Biology, could reveal more about the nature of cancer. As cancer develops, the genome becomes increasingly mutated ? and identifying the pattern of mutation can help us to understand the nature and the progression of many different kinds of cancer, says Prof. Shamir.

Looking at the big picture

As cancer progresses, the structure of chromosomes is rearranged, individual chromosomes are duplicated or lost, and the genome becomes abnormal. Some forms of cancer can even be diagnosed by identifying individual chromosomal aberrations, notes Prof. Shamir, pointing to the example of a specific type of leukemia that is caused by small piece of chromosome 9 being moved to chromosome 22.

When analyzing many different kinds of cancer, however, the researchers discovered that chromosomal aberrations among different cancers happen together in a noticeable and significant way. The researchers studied a collection of more than fifty thousand cancer karyotypes ? representations of chromosomal layouts in a single cell ? and charted them according to commonalities. The researchers were not only able to confirm different chromosomal aberrations that appeared in specific cancer types, but also for the first time identified a broader effect of pairs of chromosomes being lost or gained together across different cancer types.

It was also the first time that researchers saw a connection among solid kidney, skeleton, and liver cancers. While it was known that these cancers all develop in the embryo, they were previously analyzed independently. The TAU researchers have now confirmed that they share chromosomal characteristics and aberrations, much like various forms of leukemia or lymphomas.

Aberrations a driving force for cancer

Under normal circumstances, even a small change to a person's chromosomal structure can be devastating. For example, Down's syndrome is caused by a single extra copy of Chromosome 21. "But in cancer, there are many cases of extra or missing chromosomes. Yet cancer cells thrive more effectively than other cells," Prof. Shamir says.

Prof. Shamir hopes that future investigation into these chromosomal aberrations will give researchers more clues into why something that is so detrimental to our healthy development is so beneficial to this disease. Cancer is the result of sequences of events, he says, each causing the genome to become more mutated, mixed, and duplicated. Tracking these changes could aid our understanding of the driving forces of cancer's progress.

###

American Friends of Tel Aviv University: http://www.aftau.org

Thanks to American Friends of Tel Aviv University for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116946/Patterns_of_chromosome_abnormality__The_key_to_cancer_

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Arianna Addresses U.S. Mayors: Country's Solutions To 'Come At Local Level'

Arianna and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi addressed the U.S. Conference of Mayors on Jan 18, challenging the nation's local leaders to become a voice for the people they represent.

In her speech, Arianna called on American mayors to become active members of their communities and address the growing gaps between the nation's rich and poor. She hit at the heart of what many consider to be an astounding trend in the US: the increasing downward-mobility of the American middle-class.

With an emphasis on Aol's Patch network of hyper-local sites, Arianna also told the conference of the growing need to address and cover the nation's often neglected poorest citizens.

In her blog post prior to the conference, Arianna explained why she feels the recovery of America's economy begins at the local level.

That's why I believe the solutions the country is so desperately looking for are going to come at the local level -- from our mayors and engaged citizens working with their communities. It's our cities, not the nation's capital, that are the real idea factory of our country. It's the Mayor's Mansion not the White House from which bold decision-making is likely to originate. It's from any house on your street not the House of Representatives where projects that will make your community a better place to live in are more likely to surface.

You can read her post in full, here.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/21/arianna-huffington-nancy-pelosi-mayors_n_1221594.html

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Celeb photos from 2012 Sundance Film Festival

True Blood?s?Carrie Preston, Actresses?Andie Macdowell, and?Nia Vardolis, and Modern Family?s?Nolan Gouldall came out to the?TR Suites at Park City?s Gateway Center.

Source: http://www.celebritymound.com/celeb-photos-from-2012-sundance-film-festival/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=celeb-photos-from-2012-sundance-film-festival

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