McAfee wants to return to US, ‘normal life’

BACALAR, Mexico (AP) — Software company founder John McAfee said Sunday he wants to return to the United States and “settle down to whatever normal life” he can.

In a live-stream Internet broadcast from the Guatemalan detention center where he is fighting a government order that he be returned to Belize, the 67-year-old said “I simply would like to live comfortably day by day, fish, swim, enjoy my declining years.”

Police in neighboring Belize want to question McAfee in the fatal shooting of a U.S. expatriate who lived near his home on a Belizean island in November.

The creator of the McAfee antivirus program again denied involvement in the killing during the Sunday Internet video hook-up, during which he answered what he said were reporters’ questions.

His comments were sometimes contradictory. McAfee is an acknowledged practical joker who has dabbled in yoga, ultra-light aircraft and the production of herbal medications.

The British-born McAfee first said that returning to the United States “is my only hope now.” But he later added, “I would be happy to go to England, I have dual citizenship.”

He was emphatic that “I cannot ever return to Belize …. there is no hope for my life if I am ever returned to Belize.”

“If I am returned,” he said, “bad things will clearly happen to me.”

He descibed the health problems that had him briefly hospitalized earlier this week after Guatemalan authorities detained him for entering the country illegally. He apparently snuck in across a rural, unguarded spot along the border.

“I did not eat for two days, I drank very little liquids, and for the first time in many years I’ve been smoking almost non-stop,” he said. “I stood up, passed out hit my head on the wall, came to,” though he now said he was feeling better.

McAfee praised the role his 20-year-old Belizean girlfriend, Samantha Vanegas, played in his escape from Belize, where he claims he is being persecuted by corrupt politicians. Authorities in Belize deny that they are persecuting him and have questioned his mental state.

“Sam saved the day many times” during their escape, he said, and suggested he would take her with him to the United States if he is allowed to go there.

He confirmed that journalists from Vice magazine who accompanied him on his escape after weeks of hiding in Belize had unwittingly posted photos with embedded data that revealed his exact location.

“It was an error anyone could make,” he said, noting they were under a lot of pressure at the time.

McAfee has led an eccentric life since he sold his stake in the anti-virus software company named after him in the early 1990s and moved to Belize about three years ago to lower his taxes.

He told The New York Times in 2009 that he had lost all but $ 4 million of his $ 100 million fortune in the U.S. financial crisis. However, a story on the Gizmodo website quoted him as describing that claim as “not very accurate at all.”

McAfee’s Guatemalan attorney, Telesforo Guerra, says that he has filed three separate legal appeals in the hope that his client can stay in Guatemala, where his political asylum request was rejected.

Guerra said he filed an appeal for a judge to make sure McAfee’s physical integrity is protected, an appeal against the asylum denial and a petition with immigration officials to allow his client to stay in this Central American country indefinitely.

The appeals could take several days to resolve, Guerra said. He added that he could still use several other legal resources but wouldn’t give any other details.

Fredy Viana, a spokesman for the Immigration Department, said that before the agency looks into the request to allow McAfee to stay in Guatemala, a judge must first deal with the appeal asking that authorities make sure McAfee’s physical integrity is protected.

“We won’t look into (allowing him to stay) until the other appeal is resolved,” Viana said. “The law gives me 30 days to resolve the issue.”

McAfee went on the run last month after Belizean officials tried to question him about the killing of Gregory Viant Faull, who was shot to death in early November.

McAfee acknowledges that his dogs were bothersome and that Faull had complained about them, but denies killing Faull. Faull’s home was a couple of houses down from McAfee’s compound in Ambergris Caye, off Belize’s Caribbean coast.

Latin America News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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#OccupyCheerios: A Facebook Revolt

It wasn’t an obvious forum for an anti-GMO protest.

A YouTube video posted on Cheerio’s Facebook page depicts an elderly woman leaning over the highchair of her infant grandchild, cooing about family and the holidays, drawing a map with pieces of cereal representing relative’s far-flung houses. “But don’t you worry,” the grandmother says, pushing two Cheerios together, “we’ll always be together for Christmas.”

More than 1,200 users have commented on the vintage Cheerios commercial since it was posted last week, expressing outrage over the General Mills-owned brand’s use of genetically modified ingredients. Commenters have also been critical—like heavy-exclamation-points-use critical—of General Mills’ significant financial support of Prop. 37, California’s defeated GMO-labeling ballot initiative

Comments like “Can you please inform the public exactly why it is that General Mills spent $ 1.2 million to keep consumers in the dark about GMOs????” and “Nostalgic old commercials are no substitute for healthy ingredients. I won’t buy Cheerios until they are GMO-free” are a far cry from the stories of spending holidays with family—and perhaps a bit of Cheerios nostalgia—the post was surely intended to elicit.

The protest campaign was stoked by GMO Inside, an organization born of the failed Yes on 37 campaign. The group also called on people to comment-bomb a Cheerios app, which has since been removed from the company’s Facebook page. But beyond that, Cheerios’ response to the criticism has been . . . nothing. Anti-GMO comments are still piling up on the post, and no new material has been added to page in order to bury the video in the timeline.

Do 1,256 comments (and counting) cancel out $ 1.2 million of anti-Prop. 37 funding? Of course not. But just as the Occupy-style tactics being employed by protesters at Cooper Union and the Michigan State Capitol exhibit, showing up and voicing an opinion can be a powerful gesture, even if it’s not overpowering. 

Similar stories on TakePart

• Will GMOs Spell the End of Mexican Maize?

• Kellogg Recalls 2.8 Million Boxes of Cereal Due to Hazardous Metallic ‘Surprise’

• Anna Breslaw’s 600-Word Sprint: Nude Protests, Stripped Down

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Willy Blackmore is the food editor at TakePart. He has also written about food, art, and agriculture for such publications as Los Angeles Magazine, The Awl, GOOD, LA Weekly, The New Inquiry, and BlackBook. Email Willy | TakePart.com

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Rick Ross cancels shows after gang threats

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Rick Ross has canceled two shows in North Carolina after a gang named Gangster Disciples published a series of YouTube videos threatening the Southern rapper.

Ross, a solo artist, is the founder of Maybach Music Group, a record label that release albums through Warner Bros Records. He was set to perform with fellow Maybach artists Wale, Meek Mill and Machine Gun Kelly in Greensboro on Friday and Charlotte on Saturday. A quick look at the Ticketmaster page evinces that Live Nation has canceled the shows, but a Live Nation spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Various sects of the Gangster Disciples (GDs), a gang founded on the South Side of Chicago, appear in videos on YouTube threatening Ross and asking him for money. A nearly 10-minute video published recently featuring members of the North Carolina crew is titled “Rick Ross In Trouble with the GD’s North Carolina.”

They claim to have already given Ross a pass “for using our honorable chairman’s name in a disorderly fashion – a dishonest fashion.” That courtesy is over, and they know where Ross will be, mentioning Greensboro and Charlotte. They then say when they catch him in his Maybach his “time is through” and that Ross should know his penalty.

Some of the conflict seems to arise out of a reference to Gangster Disciples’ leader Larry Hoover in Ross’ song “B.M.F (Blowin Money Fast)” – hence the comment about “our honorable chairman.”

Others have said it is not about Hoover and the GDs also appear to be upset that Ross has been acting like more of a gangster than he really is. Affiliated groups, such as ones in Florida and Georgia, have made their displeasure known on YouTube and demanded money.

“We need that cash now, we need that cash – now. We need that cash right now,” one man says in a video from a Florida sect.

“We coming to you as a man William, he adds. “As a man, you supposed to honor your obligations. Therefore you going to do so. Until you do, you going to deal with the mob.”

While both those shows have been canceled, a Sunday show in Nashville, Tenn. remains on schedule.

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Alexander: No triple dip slump

9 December 2012 Last updated at 07:36 ET

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander: “It is a longer and harder road… but we are making progress”

Britain is not heading for a triple dip recession, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander has said.

Last week, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast that the economy was set to shrink in the final three months of 2012.

Mr Alexander said he accepted this, but added “steady growth” in 2013 meant the UK would avoid another recession.

He said the road to economic recovery was being “longer and harder” than expected, but progress had been made.

The OBR growth forecasts show that despite the UK economy’s return to growth in the three months from July to September, in the final quarter the economy will shrink again by 0.1%, before growth returns in 2013.

The UK would experience a triple dip recession if it had two quarters or more of negative growth before the economy had fully recovered from the 2008 recession.

It experienced a double dip recession earlier this year, with three quarters of negative growth between the end of 2011 and the middle of 2012.

‘Uncertain world’

Asked on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show whether he thought the UK would face a triple dip recession, Mr Alexander said: “The OBR forecast that the final quarter of this year would be negative, but that we would see positive growth slowly returning in every quarter of next year.

“That would suggest that we’re not going to have that happening. But it is an uncertain world out there.

“We’re seeing continuing problems in the eurozone, but I’m happy to rest on the OBR’s forecast, which is a bounce-back from the Olympic boost we saw in the third quarter causing a small negative in the final quarter of this year, but then steady growth slowly starting to return next year and the year after that.”

However, Mr Alexander’s Liberal Democrat colleague Business Secretary Vince Cable was more cautious.

He told the Observer there was “certainly a risk” of the UK going back into its third recession since 2008, although it is more likely the economy will “continue bumping along the bottom”.

Mr Alexander said slow growth in the eurozone and the “weight of the broken banking system in the United Kingdom” were weighing down the economy.

This meant the economic recovery was “a longer and harder road” than expected, but he said: “We are making progress and I think we are going to get there”.

Spending review

He said he would continue to protect the NHS budget and schools spending, as he looks to save an additional £10bn before the next election.

It follows a warning from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) that unprotected government departments could face could cuts of more than 30% following the Autumn Statement.

It said further welfare cuts and tax rises “must be on the cards” to make the government’s numbers add up if the NHS and welfare continue to be protected.

Mr Alexander said additional savings to be made in 2015-16 will be “at the same pace” as departments have had in recent years.

“I think we’re right not to chase our debt target, but instead to continue to do this in a steady way,” he added.

Decisions on spending for after the next election, and whether to continue to protect the NHS budget, would be set out in party manifestos, he said.

The next spending review, which will set out future departmental spending, is expected to be announced in the first half of next year.

BBC News – Business

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Peru’s capital highly vulnerable to major quake

LIMA, Peru (AP) — The earthquake all but flattened colonial Lima, the shaking so violent that people tossed to the ground couldn’t get back up. Minutes later, a 50-foot (15-meter) wall of Pacific Ocean crashed into the adjacent port of Callao, killing all but 200 of its 5,000 inhabitants. Bodies washed ashore for weeks.

Plenty of earthquakes have shaken Peru‘s capital in the 266 years since that fateful night of Oct. 28, 1746, though none with anything near the violence.

The relatively long “seismic silence” means that Lima, set astride one of the most volatile ruptures in the Earth’s crust, is increasingly at risk of being hammered by a one-two, quake-tsunami punch as calamitous as what devastated Japan last year and traumatized Santiago, Chile, and its nearby coast a year earlier, seismologists say.

Yet this city of 9 million people is sorely unprepared. Its acute vulnerability, from densely clustered, unstable housing to a dearth of first-responders, is unmatched regionally. Peru’s National Civil Defense Institute forecasts up to 50,000 dead, 686,000 injured and 200,000 homes destroyed if Lima is hit by a magnitude-8.0 quake.

“In South America, it is the most at risk,” said architect Jose Sato, director of the Center for Disaster Study and Prevention, or PREDES, a non-governmental group financed by the charity Oxfam that is working on reducing Lima’s quake vulnerability.

Lima is home to a third of Peru’s population, 70 percent of its industry, 85 percent of its financial sector, its entire central government and the bulk of international commerce.

“A quake similar to what happened in Santiago would break the country economically,” said Gabriel Prado, Lima’s top official for quake preparedness. That quake had a magnitude of 8.8.

Quakes are frequent in Peru, with about 170 felt by people annually, said Hernando Tavera, director of seismology at the country’s Geophysical Institute. A big one is due, and the chances of it striking increase daily, he said. The same collision of tectonic plates responsible for the most powerful quake ever recorded, a magnitude-9.5 quake that hit Chile in 1960, occurs just off Lima’s coast, where about 3 inches of oceanic crust slides annually beneath the continent.

A 7.5-magnitude quake in 1974 a day’s drive from Lima in the Cordillera Blanca range killed about 70,000 people as landslides buried villages. Seventy-eight people died in the capital. In 2007, a 7.9-magnitude quake struck even closer, killing 596 people in the south-central coastal city of Pisco.

A shallow, direct hit is the big danger.

More than two in five Lima residents live either in rickety structures on unstable, sandy soil and wetlands that amplify a quake’s destructive power or in hillside settlements that sprang up over a generation as people fled conflict and poverty in Peru’s interior. Thousands are built of colonial-era adobe.

Most quake-prone countries have rigorous building codes to resist seismic events. In Chile, if engineers and builders don’t adhere to them they can face prison. Not so in Peru.

“People are building with adobe just as they did in the 17th century,” said Carlos Zavala, director of Lima’s Japanese-Peruvian Center for Seismic Investigation and Disaster Mitigation.

Environmental and human-made perils compound the danger.

Situated in a coastal desert, Lima gets its water from a single river, the Rimac, which a landslide could easily block. That risk is compounded by a containment pond full of toxic heavy metals from an old mine that could rupture and contaminate the Rimac, said Agustin Gonzalez, a PREDES official advising Lima’s government.

Most of Lima’s food supply arrives via a two-lane highway that parallels the river, another potential chokepoint.

Lima’s airport and seaport, the key entry points for international aid, are also vulnerable. Both are in Callao, which seismologists expect to be scoured by a 20-foot (6-meter) tsunami if a big quake is centered offshore, the most likely scenario.

Mayor Susana Villaran’s administration is Lima’s first to organize a quake-response and disaster mitigation plan. A February 2011 law obliged Peru’s municipalities to do so. Yet Lima’s remains incipient.

“How are the injured going to be attended to? What is the ability of hospitals to respond? Of basic services? Water, energy, food reserves? I don’t think this is being addressed with enough responsibility,” said Tavera of the Geophysical Institute.

By necessity, most injured will be treated where they fall, but Peru’s police have no comprehensive first-aid training. Only Lima’s 4,000 firefighters, all volunteers, have such training, as does a 1,000-officer police emergency squadron.

But because the firefighters are volunteers, a quake’s timing could influence rescue efforts.

“If you go to a fire station at 10 in the morning there’s hardly anyone there,” said Gonzalez, who advocates a full-time professional force.

In the next two months, Lima will spend nearly $ 2 million on the three fire companies that cover downtown Lima, its first direct investment in firefighters in 25 years, Prado said. The national government is spending $ 18 million citywide for 50 new fire trucks and ambulances.

But where would the ambulances go?

A 1997 study by the Pan American Health Organization found that three of Lima’s principal public hospitals would likely collapse in a major quake, but nothing has been done to reinforce them.

And there are no free beds. One public hospital, Maria Auxiliadora, serves more than 1.2 million people in Lima’s south but has just 400 beds, and they are always full.

Contingency plans call for setting up mobile hospitals in tents in city parks. But Gonzalez said only about 10,000 injured could be treated.

Water is also a worry. The fire threat to Lima is severe — from refineries to densely-backed neighborhoods honeycombed with colonial-era wood and adobe. Lima’s firefighters often can’t get enough water pressure to douse a blaze.

“We should have places where we can store water not just to put out fires but also to distribute water to the population,” said Sato, former head of the disaster mitigation department at Peru’s National Engineering University.

The city’s lone water-and-sewer utility can barely provide water to one-tenth of Lima in the best of times.

Another big concern: Lima has no emergency operations center and the radio networks of the police, firefighters and the Health Ministry, which runs city hospitals, use different frequencies, hindering effective communication.

Nearly half of the city’s schools require a detailed evaluation to determine how to reinforce them against collapse, Sato said.

A recent media blitz, along with three nationwide quake-tsunami drills this year, helped raise consciousness. The city has spent more than $ 77 million for retention walls and concrete stairs to aid evacuation in hillside neighborhoods, Prado said, but much more is needed.

At the biggest risk, apart from tsunami-vulnerable Callao, are places like Nueva Rinconada.

A treeless moonscape in the southern hills, it is a haven for economic refugees who arrive daily from Peru’s countryside and cobble together precarious homes on lots they scored into steep hillsides with pickaxes.

Engineers who have surveyed Nueva Rinconada call its upper reaches a death trap. Most residents understand this but say they have nowhere else to go.

Water arrives in tanker trucks at $ 1 per 200 liters (52 gallons) but is unsafe to drink unless boiled. There is no sanitation; people dig their own latrines. There are no streetlamps, and visibility is erased at night as Lima’s bone-chilling fog settles into the hills.

Homes of wood, adobe and straw matting rest on piled-rock foundations that engineers say will crumble and rain down on people below in a major quake.

A recently built concrete retaining wall at the valley’s head lies a block beneath the thin-walled wood home of Hilarion Lopez, a 55-year-old janitor and community leader. It might keep his house from sliding downhill, but boulders resting on uphill slopes could shake loose and crush him and his neighbors.

“We’ve made holes and poured concrete around some of the more unstable boulders,” he says, squinting uphill in a strong late morning sun.

He’s not so worried if a quake strikes during daylight.

“But if I get caught at night? How do I see a rock?”

___

Associated Press writer Franklin Briceno contributed to this report.

___

Frank Bajak on Twitter: http://twitter.com/fbajak

Latin America News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Barnes and Noble Nook HD+ is a Big Screen, Good Value Tablet

Barnes and Noble Nook-HD+

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[More from Mashable: 7 Stylish iPad Cases With Notepads]

The other night I handed the new Barnes and Noble HD+ to my son to see his reaction to one of the latest 9-inch tablets. He held it, played with the screen and said, “Which one is this?” I told him and he answered, “I can’t tell the difference anymore.” It’s true, with the sudden explosion of 7-, near-8-, 9- and 10-inch-plus tablets, it’s getting a little hard to tell which one is which — especially when many larger tablets look like their tinier siblings.

Barnes and Noble’s large-format (9-inch) HD-screen entry, the HD+, is a quite similar to the 7-inch Nook HD. However, with its somewhat sharper corners and far-reduced black-screen border, it’s also more similar in appearance to larger tablets such as the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9. What sets the Nook apart visually is the trademark nook hole in the lower left-hand corner. It appears to serve no visible purpose, though you could hold the roughly 18-ounce tablet by that corner without too much stress on your hand. It is one of the lightest tablets on the market, although it’s thicker than the Google Nexus 10, Kindle Fire 8.9 and fourth-generation Apple iPad.

[More from Mashable: The 7 Best Tablets for Kids]

Nook HD+’s other distinctive feature is the physical “N” home button on the face of the device. It’s an attribute the Nook HD+ (and 7-inch Nook HD) share with the iPad. As I’ve said before, having that obvious “take me home” button on the front of the device is something I wish every tablet manufacturer would replicate.

Interface

Speaking of replicate, much of what is important and what you need to know about Barnes and Noble’s biggest tablet can be found in my review of the 7-inch Nook HD. The interfaces are exactly the same, so I won’t waste too much space recounting every bit of the Nook HD+ interface, which obscures any trace of Android 4.0, and is exquisitely usable.

The biggest difference between the Nook HD and the HD+ is screen resolution. The HD gets you 1440×900 pixels, while the HD+ offers 1920×1280, which is slightly more than the Kindle Fire HD 8.9’s 1920×1200. The latter two devices are almost the exact same size. By contrast, the competitors’ 7-inch devices are quite different because Amazon includes a front-facing camera, while Barnes and Noble does not include cameras on any of its tablets (if you plan on taking photos or video with your tablet, you can stop reading now). In the case of the Nook HD+, Barnes and Noble uses the space it saves on a camera for, it appears, 80 extra pixels of space. For the record, neither device beats the iPad’s 2048×1536 resolution.

Connectvity

Barnes and Noble also chose to leave out a cellular option from all of its tablets. Amazon, on the other hand, adds it in for the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 LTE. This is not as big of a deal as it seems since the world is filled with high-speed Wi-Fi. Still, if you plan to surf the web on your tablet while sitting on a train without another device to which to tether your HD+, look for products with the mobile broadband option, instead.

When it comes to connectivity, Amazon adds dual-band Wi-Fi to its HD Kindle Fires, while Barnes and Noble’s tablet remains single band. I’ve tested both devices in the most stressful situation -– streaming HD video -– and the difference is negligible.

Using It

Barnes and Noble Nook HD+’s profile-centric interface remains one of the best on the market. There is no learning curve; you simply drag your profile image to the unlock icon, and you have access to the large and uncluttered interface that features a carousel (which like the Kindle is a hodge-podge of disparate icons), your library and some recently used apps. Persistent menu items include the Library, Apps, Web, email and Shop. The screen also includes “your Nook Today,” which, along with the weather, is a place for Barnes and Noble to push shopping options based on your interests.

As you would expect, reading books and magazines is a pleasurable experience, especially on this larger screen. Magazines such as Esquire look great and, yes, Barnes and Noble still employs the animated page turn (though I don’t know for how much longer). Email and Web browsing are solid, and I prefer Barnes and Noble’s web solution to Amazon’s home-grown Silk browser, which crashed too often for my taste.

Social integration is fairly good on the Nook HD+. When I installed the Twitter client, it became one of my options for social sharing. That said, the app looks like it would be more at home on a small-screen smartphone than on the HD+’s 9-inch display. For Facebook, I opted for the web interface, which looks too tiny in portrait mode, but just right in landscape.

Movies and Music

I had no trouble buying, renting and streaming HD-quality movies such Arthur Christmas, and Netflix worked smoothly. Barnes and Noble, however, lacks its own streaming option. If you pay $ 75 a year for Amazon Prime, you get access to a vast library of streaming content. Both devices will let you play HD content on your big-screen TV, though they do it in slightly different ways.

Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD 8.9 comes complete with a mini-HDI-out port, and can accommodate a mini-to-standard HDMI cable (not included), so I could watch the HD content on my big-screen TV. The Nook HD+ lacks an HDMI port, but you can buy a $ 39 adapter (with an HDMI cable), which plugs into the tablet’s 30-pin port, to do the same thing.

I still prefer the Kindle HD platform for music since Amazon’s music services are more deeply integrated into the device and its cloud-based storage offering. On the Nook HD+ you have to start by finding the music service under Apps. If Barnes and Noble is serious about music, it should be on the main menu. Worse yet, if you open the Music app, it offers no instruction on how to fill your music library. You have to add tunes via your computer, by connecting to your PC with the proprietary cable or through the Micro SD slot where you can add more storage or place, say, an entire library of songs.

If you have a Rhapsody Account, you can use it to manage your music needs on the Nook HD+.

I almost never use my large tablet for music (that’s a job for my iPhone or iPod), so I don’t miss the rich music capabilities as much as some others likely would.

Apps and Performance

Like Amazon, Barnes and Noble curates its app library, which generally makes it safe and usable. The key apps, such as Netflix, Twitter, Dropbox, MobiSystems’ OfficeSuite, FlipBoard and Evernote, are all there.

I found some games on there, too, such as the Angry Birds Series and Cut the Rope. On the other hand, Barnes and Noble has very few action games. This may be because, while it’s running the same Texas Instruments Dual core 4470 CPU as the Kindle Fire HD 8.9, it doesn’t offer the same quadcore graphics processing power as Apple’s fourth-generation iPad.

Amazon actually includes the GPU-hungry Asphalt 7 in its app library, but the game does not look particularly good on the Kindle Fire HD 8.9. Obviously, Barnes and Noble chose not to take that risk.

Price

At $ 269 for the 16 GB model (I tested the $ 299 32 GB option), Barnes and Noble’s Nook HD+ is one of the most affordable large-screen tablets on the market — that price even includes the AC adapter. Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD 8.9 costs $ 299, but does not include the charger, and adds subsidizing sleep-screen ads. A 16 GB Wi-Fi-only fourth-generation iPad starts at $ 499.

Obviously, the iPad is more powerful, has a higher resolution and two cameras, while the Kindle, which also includes a camera, offers powerful Dolby stereo speakers (Nook HD+ has ones with decent volume) and unlimited cloud-based storage for your Amazon content. But if those features don’t matter to you, and you’re looking for an attractive, large-screen, light-weight, fun, effective and very affordable tablet from a company that knows a thing or two about good content, you can’t do better than the Nook HD+.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Singer James Taylor suggested for lead role in “Lincoln”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Singer-songwriter James Taylor says he doesn’t see the resemblance, but he was pitched – without success – to play the role of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in the new film.

Taylor told a packed audience at the National Press Club on Friday that Oscar-winning musician John Williams – who composed the soundtrack for “Lincoln” – had pushed for Taylor to play the lead role in Steven Spielberg‘s new film.

The role of Lincoln in the historical drama ultimately went to Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis.

“John wanted me to play that part. He actually stood up for me there and suggested me at one point,” said Taylor, 64, adding, “It was never going to happen.”

The “Fire and Rain” singer, who has no professional acting experience, said he was flattered that some people thought Day-Lewis’ portrayal of Lincoln reminded them of him. But he did not see much resemblance aside from the fact that they were “tall and somewhat skinny.”

“He doesn’t look like me to me, but I live in here, so I’m apt to notice the difference,” Taylor said.

British-born actor Day-Lewis, who already has two Oscars, is seen as a front runner to take home another golden statuette at the Academy Awards in February.

Taylor said he had no ambitions to go into acting after what he called “an interesting ride” of a performance career in which he essentially played himself.

“This is fine. I’ve spent my life being myself for a living,” said Taylor, a five-time Grammy Award winner.

“There are performers who develop and assume a character that they then play for the public. But I don’t know anyone who is as much themselves publicly for a living as I am,” he said.

Taylor and his third wife, Kim Taylor, campaigned actively for then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008 and again in 2012. The singer performed in Washington on Thursday evening at the 90th annual lighting of the National Christmas Tree, presided over this year by President Obama and his family.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Lisa Shumaker)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Relationship Ranch: Couples’ Therapy with Horses

It’s fascinating to watch a man trying to win back the love of his life by talking to a horse.

Horse therapy has been used for decades to help treat people with physical disabilities or learning disorders, but now they are also being used in an unconventional form of couples counseling.

Watch the full story on “Nightline” tonight at 11:35 p.m. ET

Nancy Hamilton and Lottie Grimes are marriage therapists who run Relationship Ranch in Louisville, Colo. They are convinced that horses can help feuding couples make peace.

“You wouldn’t think they would have any role in marriage therapy,” Hamilton said. “But because horses are so exquisitely sensitive, they can help us determine what a couple is actually, really feeling.”

For three weekends, “Nightline” followed one couple’s last-ditch effort to save their crumbling relationship and attended their equine therapy sessions.

Justin and Lyz, both 30 and never married, have been together for nine years and have two sons. But lately, they said, the bickering and fighting at home got so bad that Justin reluctantly agreed to move out.

“We have piled problem on top of problem on top of problem for years,” Lyz said. “Who knows what’s at the bottom of that?”

Although he was skeptical about the healing powers of horses, he said he was willing to try just about anything to make his family whole again.

On their first day of therapy, the couple was introduced to the ranch’s herd of horses. Justin was magnetically drawn to the newest and most aggressive horse, Danny, who came to the ranch after surviving a grizzly bear attack. Danny wasn’t fitting in with the other horses, which hit home for Justin, who felt exiled from his own herd. Hamilton said horses can sense and read people’s emotions.

“They’re almost like a Rorschach projective test with a mane and a tail, where people can project onto them their feelings, their thoughts and their fears,” she said.

Hamilton said she believes those fears can stem from what she called unresolved childhood wounds, which plague adult relationships. That was the case with Justin. When he was 9 years old, his sister was brutally murdered by an ex-boyfriend and young Justin saw the murder scene.

“He chased her down and cut her throat,” he said. “We went back several days later and they hadn’t cleaned anything up.”

After working with Justin and Lyz, Hamilton said Lyz saw Justin as controlling, but those tendencies are rooted in his childhood trauma.

“Trauma survivors are very concerned with being able to control their present environment because they were not able to control their environment when they were traumatized,” she said.

Hamilton had Justin go through a blind trust exercise with Danny to force Justin to surrender control to his partner. The goal was to expose Justin’s old wounds. Hamilton instructed him to talk to Danny about what had happened when his sister was killed. Danny, the trauma-surviving horse, set the stage for a major breakthrough.

“It seemed so stupid at first, and then it was actually helpful,” Justin said. “Therapeutic.”

Watching Justin talk to the horse, Lyz said she never saw him so vulnerable. After the session, the two apologized for hurting each other.

Two weeks later, Justin went through a final exercise to fully cope with his past. In a pen, surrounded by the herd, Justin became 9 years old again. He was instructed to confront his absent father through a role-playing exercise, while Lyz acted as a stand-in for his dad.

“You abandoned all of us,” he said aloud. “I had to be the man of the family and I think that you’re a coward.”

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Starbucks tax protest ‘under way’

8 December 2012 Last updated at 08:07 ET

Danni Wright, UK Uncut: “Starbucks should be paying the appropriate amount”

Tax avoidance campaigners say they are protesting at Starbucks cafes across the UK, despite the firm’s pledge to pay millions of pounds of extra corporation tax for the next two years.

The organisers, UK Uncut, say the coffee company’s promise to pay £20m is “a desperate attempt to deflect public pressure” from itself.

Starbucks said it had offered to meet protesters to “discuss their concerns”.

Starbucks’ “flagship” store in central London was said to be virtually empty.

UK Uncut said it was also highlighting the impact of government cuts on women, and planned to transform at least 40 Starbucks stores into “refuges, crèches and homeless shelters”.

BBC political correspondent Ben Geoghegan said the Starbucks “flagship” store in Conduit Street, central London, had been “virtually empty” following protests.

He said about 60 or so protesters were now thought to be heading to another Starbucks branch nearby.

UK Uncut said it had already heard from demonstrators gathering at ten outlets in London, Birmingham, Oxford and Nottingham.

Staff at the coffee chains were not being targeted, they added.

‘Tip of the iceberg’

UK Uncut spokeswoman Anna Walker said: “What Starbucks has done is offer a £20m PR stunt that’s coming straight out of their marketing budget.

“They haven’t offered or committed in any way to change the way they deal with their tax affairs in the UK or globally.”

“Starbucks is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to multinational companies tax avoidance – what we want to do is see the government clamping down on tax avoidance in a very real way.”

She added the government’s failure to recoup tax from such companies was leading to harmful austerity.

In a statement, a Starbucks spokesperson said: “Our highest priority is and remains the safety of our customers and employees. We trust that UK Uncut will respect it.

“We offered to meet with UK Uncut to discuss their concerns and make the protest a safe event for all involved. This invitation remains open.”

It added the company had “listened to our customers” and was “making a number of changes in our business to ensure we pay corporation tax in the UK” – something it urged UK Uncut and other concerned parties to “carefully consider”.

‘Unprecedented’

On Thursday, Starbucks revealed it would pay “a significant amount of tax during 2013 and 2014 regardless of whether the company is profitable during these years”.

The company has faced increasing public anger over its tax affairs, with some calling for a boycott of its outlets.

The company paid just £8.6m in corporation tax in its 14 years of trading in the UK, and nothing in the last three years – despite UK sales of nearly £400m in 2011.

Starbucks now says it expects to pay around £10m in corporation tax for each of the next two years, a move described by tax experts as unprecedented.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4′s Today programme, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury David Gauke said HM Revenue and Customs must deal with all tax payers even-handedly.

He said: “If a taxpayer wants to pay more than is required under the law then that is really a matter for them. It’s a voluntary donation really rather than tax.”

BBC News – Business

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Red Hat divulgará los resultados del tercer trimestre del año fiscal 2013 a través de un webcast

Red Hat Inc. (NYSE: RHT), proveedor líder mundial de soluciones de código abierto, analizará los resultados del tercer trimestre del año fiscal 2013 el jueves, 20 de diciembre de 2012, a partir de las 5:00 p. m., hora del Este.

Se puede acceder a un webcast en vivo en la página de Relaciones con los Inversores de Red Hat en http://investors.redhat.com y la reproducción se encontrará disponible a partir de aproximadamente dos horas luego de finalizados los eventos en vivo.

Acerca de Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat es el proveedor líder mundial de soluciones de software de código abierto; utiliza un enfoque basado en la comunidad para tecnologías confiables y de alto rendimiento en la nube, Linux, middleware, almacenamiento y virtualización. Red Hat también ofrece servicios galardonados de consultoría asistencia y capacitación. Como centro de conectividad de una red global de empresas, socios y comunidades de código abierto, Red Hat ayuda a crear tecnologías relevantes e innovadoras que liberan recursos para el crecimiento y preparan a los clientes para el futuro de la tecnología de la información. Obtenga más información en: http://www.redhat.com.

Declaraciones a futuro

Ciertas declaraciones del presente comunicado de prensa pueden constituir “declaraciones a futuro” dentro del significado de la Ley de Reforma de Litigios Sobre Valores Privados (Private Securities Litigation Reform Act) de los EE. UU. de 1995. Las declaraciones a futuro ofrecen expectativas actuales de eventos futuros en base a determinados supuestos e incluyen cualquier declaración que no se relaciona directamente con cualquier hecho actual o histórico. Los resultados reales pueden diferir sustancialmente de los indicados por dichas declaraciones a futuro, como resultado de varios factores importantes, incluso: riesgos relacionados con retrasos o reducciones en el gasto en tecnología de la información; los efectos de la consolidación del sector; la capacidad de la Compañía de competir en forma eficaz; la incertidumbre y los resultados adversos en litigios y acuerdos relacionados; la integración de adquisiciones y la capacidad de comercializar en forma exitosa las tecnologías y productos adquiridos; la incapacidad de proteger adecuadamente la propiedad intelectual de la Compañía y el posible incumplimiento o violación de reclamaciones de licencia o relacionadas con la propiedad intelectual de terceros; la capacidad de entregar y estimular la demanda de nuevos productos e innovaciones tecnológicas en forma oportuna; los riesgos relacionados con la vulnerabilidad de la seguridad de datos y de información; la gestión ineficaz de, y control sobre las operaciones internacionales y el crecimiento de la Compañía; las fluctuaciones en las tasas de cambio; y cambios en el personal clave y una dependencia del mismo, así como otros factores presentes en nuestro más reciente Informe Trimestral en el formulario 10-Q (copias del cual se encuentran disponibles en el sitio Web de la Comisión de Bolsa y Valores en http://www.sec.gov), incluidos los que se encuentran en el título “Factores de riesgo” y “Análisis y Discusiones de la Gerencia sobre Condiciones Financieras y Resultados de Operaciones”. Además de estos factores, el desempeño futuro real, y los resultados pueden diferir sustancialmente debido a más factores generales que incluyen (entre otros) las condiciones generales del mercado y de la industria y las tasas de crecimiento, las condiciones económicas y políticas, los cambios en las políticas públicas y gubernamentales y el impacto de los desastres naturales como terremotos e inundaciones. Las declaraciones a futuro incluidas en este comunicado de prensa representan las opiniones de la Compañía a la fecha de este comunicado de prensa y estas ideas podrían cambiar. Sin embargo, si bien la Compañía puede elegir actualizar estas declaraciones a futuro en algún momento, la Compañía en forma específica renuncia a cualquier obligación de hacerlo. No debe confiar en estas declaraciones a futuro como si representaran las opiniones de la empresa a partir de cualquier fecha posterior de la fecha de este comunicado de prensa.

Red Hat y JBoss son marcas comerciales de Red Hat, Inc. registradas en los EE. UU. y en otros países. Linux® es la marca comercial registrada de Linus Torvalds en los EE. UU. y en otros países.

El texto original en el idioma fuente de este comunicado es la versión oficial autorizada. Las traducciones solo se suministran como adaptación y deben cotejarse con el texto en el idioma fuente, que es la única versión del texto que tendrá un efecto legal.

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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