Topless women give Kate the giggles

The Duke and the Duchess of Cambridge are given a traditional topless welcome as they arrive in the Solomon islands, as more semi-naked images of Kate Middleton are published in Italy.

Say it with flowers: The Duchess of Cambridge gets a gift from a young well-wisher. Source: Getty Images

PRINCE William and Kate spent the night at a luxury resort on Tavanipupu in the Solomon Islands where it's impolite to show your legs but locals don't mind if you show your sou-sous (breasts).

In the unlikely event that Kate feels like going topless, the Duchess of Cambridge will get no complaints from locals, said Pamela Kimberly, co-owner of the island.

"They don't like you to show your legs - people use a sarong - but they don't mind if you show your sou-sous (breasts)," she said.

"We don't care what they do. There is only one rule: no rules."

Kate gets an attack of the giggles as she greets topless tribeswomen. Picture: Splash News

When Britain's Prince William and wife Kate touch down in the tiny Polynesian island nation of Tuvalu, portable thrones will be waiting for them.

The multi-coloured thrones will carry the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge from their plane on Tuesday morning, a scene that will be reminiscent of the last royal visit by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh in 1982, when they rode ashore in multi-coloured canoes.

The young royal couple's visit will bring attention to the peril faced by the 10,500 islanders who live on just 25 square kilometres of land.

Dotted in the Pacific ocean halfway between Australia and Hawaii, Tuvalu is rapidly disappearing due to rising sea levels.

Six atolls and three islands make up Tuvalu, which is one of the few places in the world to already feel the impact of climate change.

Island children can't wait to greet the couple. Picture: Getty Images Source: Getty Images

Part of the tribe: William and Kate make their way to Tavanipupu in a traditional war canoe. Source: Getty Images

Japan: Arbejdsløshed uændret 4,3 pct. i juli

Arbejdsløsheden i Japan var i juli på 4,3 pct., hvilket var som ventet og i øvrige på niveau med samme måned sidste år. Det skriver Bloomberg News. 

Et andet nøgletal viste en stigning i husholdningernes forbrug på 1,7 pct. fra samme måned sidste år. Analytikerne havde til sammenligning ventet en stigning på 1,2 pct. 

Endvidere viste forbrugerpriserne i Tokyo sig at være faldet 0,7 pct. på årsbasis i august. Det var ligeledes som ventet af analytikerne, ifølge Bloomberg. 

Barbie and Ken Say ‘I Do’ to Wedding Photo Clichés

Facebook has made weddings a social experience. Not social like chatting with Aunt Mildred over chicken Kiev at the reception buffet — social like web social.

From the courtship to the engagement to the honeymoon, social networks ensure all your online friends witness your nuptials. If you have a Facebook page, you have likely seen a fair number of wedding photographs and chances are that many of those shots shared common poses and themes.

SEE ALSO: Memes, Pixar and the Most Adorable Wedding Ever [VIDEO]

Wedding photographer Beatrice de Guigne noticed the similarities and decided to showcase some of the most popular pictures by reenacting them with Barbie and Ken.

The relationship between the plasticly perfect pair might have hit a rough patch in recent years, but they still look great together.

Facebook’s Ambition Collides With Harsh Market

Inside Facebook’s headquarters, a red-and-white poster affixed to a wall asks bluntly: “What Could Go Wrong?”
 Below, in black ink, someone has scrawled in tiny letters: “Everything.”

The poster, one of several displayed across this sprawling campus, is part of the company’s risk-taking start-up culture, as is the fact that management has

not pulled down the defaced copy. But as the company loses its luster on Wall Street, this exchange on the wall points to the improbable turn that Facebook’

s fairy tale has taken.

Once hailed as the most valuable technology company to hit Wall Street, Facebook is now worth just over half what it was three months ago, with shares

closing at $20.01 Monday. Wall Street analysts are openly wondering whether its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has the business skills to deliver on his

promises.

Facebook’s troubles began in earnest with an exceptionally ambitious initial public offering. Even the grown-ups that Mr. Zuckerberg, 28, chose to run the

business side of the company — Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operations officer, and David Ebersman, the chief financial officer — seem not to have been

skilled enough to stave off that disaster. Nor were the bankers who handled the deal, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

“The company is suffering from a classic disease — it went public at too high a value,” said Dan Alpert, a partner with Westwood Capital, an investment

bank that did not participate in the Facebook offering.

The challenge for Facebook executives, Mr. Alpert said, is to persuade the market that it is not a fad and that its managers have a blueprint for making

money.

In what passes for good news for Facebook these days, Morningstar, the investment research firm, said shares were almost cheap enough to consider buying, but

warned that the price had not yet hit bottom.

That twist of fate, in many ways, reflects the tension between two moneymaking cultures in America: Silicon Valley and Wall Street. They are as symbiotic as

they are dismissive of each other. They are equally focused on making money, but their approaches are different.

Wall Street wants to see swift growth in revenue, given Facebook’s still high valuation of around $50 billion. Facebook executives counsel patience. They

say they are building tools that will forever change the world — but have yet to reveal any details about how they plan to quickly increase profits.

The important thing for Facebook is “to stay focused on the fact that we’re the same company now as we were before,” Mr. Ebersman said in its maiden

earnings call in late July. Immediately after, the stock plummeted.

Since then, Mr. Ebersman has met with bankers on both coasts and reiterated that message.

“They think everything is going to be fine, and that everyone needs to understand Facebook better,” said one analyst who heard him speak.

The company is trying to show investors that it is aggressively expanding the business, investing in expensive engineers and data centers. Certainly the

public offering has stuffed the coffers with plenty of cash.

Facebook also wants it to be known that not everyone is running away from the stock. Reed Hastings, a Facebook director and the chief executive of Netflix,

recently bought $1 million in shares. But that was a drop in the bucket compared with the $9 billion in shares sold by insiders at the peak public offering

price. Since then, another director and an original investor, Peter Thiel, sold more than 20 million shares, according to a filing with the Securities and

Exchange Commission.

Facebook executives are taking pains to show that they continue to dream big.

Doug Purdy, the director of developer products, painted Facebook’s future with great enthusiasm on Friday, when shares nearly touched the half-price

milestone. One day soon, he said, the Facebook newsfeed on your mobile phone would deliver to you everything you want to know: what news to digest, what

movies to watch, where to eat and honeymoon, what kind of crib to buy for your first born. It would all be based on what you and your Facebook friends liked.

Facebook’s algorithms would be refined so that it would all be sent to you — “pushed,” in Mr. Purdy’s words. You wouldn’t have to search for it.

What he didn’t have to say was that in this future world, you wouldn’t need Google. How would Facebook profit exactly?

“There is a tremendous amount of value in here because we’re providing the user experience value,” he said. “That means users come back to Facebook. They

come back again and again and again. That allows us to show advertising.”

Mr. Purdy, tall and effusive, drew his dreams on a white board. It featured rectangles, representing mobile phones, which is exactly where Facebook faces its

most urgent challenge.

“We are focused on building the right products,” he said. “At the end of the day, user experience, user desire, user engagement is the highest priority

for us. Without that there is no money.”

There’s another poster on campus: “Our mobile future,” it reads. The company says it has oriented everything it does to make Facebook more attractive —

and lucrative — on mobile devices. It promises to roll out new features in the coming weeks.

Analysts have pointed out that Facebook has been slow to figure out ways to make money from mobile devices; half of its users log in on phones and tablets.

Given its exceptionally high valuation in its initial offering, the company is under intense pressure to show that its advertising model can deliver the

lucre that Wall Street expects.

Some of the scrutiny has been on Mr. Zuckerberg’s leadership. The very qualities that created the fairy tale aura around him, including his youth and

ambition, are what even his admirers are questioning.

“I don’t think he’s doing a bad job of running the company, if that means setting the company’s direction or driving product strategy,” said one person

who invested in the company when it was still private and who declined to be named to avoid hurting his relationship with Mr. Zuckerberg. “He’s doing a

very bad job of managing Wall Street.”

It doesn’t help that Wall Street and Silicon Valley speak in somewhat different languages.

“To Wall Street, 28-year-old C.E.O. hackers are aliens,” said Sam Hamadeh, a West Coast transplant to New York who runs PrivCo, a research firm that

specializes in private companies. “Sometimes that persona can help. When things go sour, they really look at you extremely skeptically.”

In the technology business, few companies can keep the fairy tale alive forever. Facebook’s campus was previously occupied by a once-rising technology star,

Sun Microsystems. (It has since been absorbed by Oracle.)

Facebook has kept some of the original doors. They are meant to be a reminder to the staff.
Nick Wingfield contributed reporting from San Francisco.

Wade says LeBron James made Olympics seem ‘effortless’

All LeBron James has done so far this year is win the NBA’s MVP award for the third time, an NBA Finals MVP trophy to go along with that one, his elusive

first championship and a second Olympic gold medal.

Dwyane Wade thinks his Miami Heat teammate is just getting started.

With the start of Heat training camp now just six weeks away, Wade said on Friday that he expects James to be even better this coming season now that the

will-he-ever-win-a-championship question has been forever put to rest.

“That monkey is off his back and now he’s just playing basketball,” Wade said while taking a break from his annual fantasy camp, where fans pay up to

$12,500 to get a four-day luxury taste of NBA life. “I think we’ll see a better LeBron James — scary to say, three-time MVP — than we’ve seen. And it’s

because all he has to do is play basketball now. He doesn’t have to worry about what he hasn’t done. It’ll always be something, but he’s got the biggest

one off his back.”

Wade was a James fan instead of a James teammate this summer, when the U.S. men’s basketball team won its second straight Olympic gold. Wade could not play

while recovering from knee surgery but was in London for part of the Olympic tournament, and he said James made playing at a high level — such as a triple-

double against Australia in the quarterfinal round — seem “effortless.”

It’s been that way for a while, too.

Going back to Miami’s win-or-go-home Game 6 in Boston of the Eastern Conference finals, James has played in 20 games with the Heat and for USA Basketball.

In those, his teams are 19-1, with the lone loss being Game 1 of the NBA Finals against Oklahoma City.

Four straight wins to close that title series, then five straight exhibition victories with the U.S. team, then an 8-0 Olympic record — 17 straight wins in

all.

“He’s on an amazing run,” Wade said. “When you’re on these kind of runs, you enjoy it. You keep going because you don’t know when it’s going to stop.

I think he’s just enjoying it right now. He’s doing all this stuff without thinking about it. He’s breaking records. He’s in the history books. He’s not

thinking about it; he’s just doing it. He’s at a gear that I’ve seen myself at before when it just feels easy. He’s just a gear above everyone.”

Soon, Wade hopes to be back at his usual gear.

He’s starting to hit the peak of his offseason schedule. Wade hosts his annual “Wade’s World” weekend for kids in Chicago next week, then begins his book

tour in New York on Sept. 4. Wade spent much of the past year writing a book about his experience as a father and the custody fight for his two sons.

And as he said in London, Wade reiterated on Friday his recovery from knee surgery is going according to plan, and that he intends to be back on the court to

begin workouts in a couple of weeks.

That means he won’t be scrimmaging the fantasy campers this weekend — though instead of dunking on them, as he did last summer, he will take them on in a

3-point contest instead. It’s far from the strongest part of his game, but he’s not too worried.

“I’ll have some fun, be able to interact with them, make sure they’re able (to) say that they lost to me again,” Wade said. “I won’t show up and leave.

I’m here. They’ll see me here all day; they know I’m a part of it. They know I’ll run out on the court when they do something great and know I’ll say

something when they don’t.”

Campers get to stay in an upscale hotel, receive plenty of new basketball gear, and even get coached by, among others, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra and Indiana

’s Tom Crean — who coached Wade at Marquette. Miami coach Jim Larranaga and South Carolina’s Frank Martin, a Miami native, are also on the coaching

lineup.

“I wish I could play,” Wade said.

Instead, he’ll be a fan this weekend, just like he was for James in London.

“I’m one of LeBron’s biggest fans,” Wade said. “I couldn’t be teammates with him if I wasn’t a fan of his game. I’m one of his biggest supporters,

one of his best friends. It’s good to see him succeed like this, especially because I know the stuff he’s dealt with. It’s in the rear-view mirror now and

he’s going to move forward.”

Syria Violence Spills Into Lebanon: Abductions After Assad Strike on Azaz

In a video posted Tuesday on YouTube, three armed men, their faces concealed behind scarves, stand behind a captive in a white-walled room. They are identified as fighters from the Free Syrian Army, the main rebel force in the uprising against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, broadcasting from Damascus. Identity cards are held to the camera that name the captive: Hassan Salim al-Mokdad, a man from a powerful family in Lebanon. His captors accuse him of being a sniper from Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group based in Lebanon and a close ally of Assad’s minority Alawite regime.
The video has since become a flashpoint in a murky chain of events that has heightened long-standing concerns that the Syrian conflict will spill out across its borders—and that new groups from outside the country could be drawn into the mayhem.
On Wednesday, more than 20 Syrians were taken hostage inside Lebanon, where refugees, along with opposition fighters and activists, have been flocking as Syria’s conflict rages. In an interview with Lebanese television, members of the Mokdad family said they had abducted Syrians “affiliated with the Free Syrian Army” and would release them only in exchange “for our son Hassan al-Mokdad.” according to Now Lebanon.

They also said the Mokdad family had a military wing and threatened to kidnap citizens from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, three governments that have been dedicated backers of the opposition to Assad. That threat may have already been realized. Citing a diplomat in Beirut, Reuters reported Wednesday that a Turkish national was among the hostages.

The Mokdad family said they had no plans to involve themselves in Syria’s conflict and wanted only the release of their kin. The potential ramifications from the standoff, though, seem to have shaken some in the FSA who worry that an already complicated war effort could now become even more so. Louay al-Mokdad, an FSA spokesman who is not related to the Lebanese captive, said Wednesday had been a “terrible day.” The FSA, he added, was scrambling to find Hassan al-Mokdad and release him. “We don’t know who took him,” he said. “We don’t know anything.”

Syria’s Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shiite Islam and counts Hezbollah and the Shiite regime in Iran as its chief regional allies. The rebels opposing Assad, meanwhile, hail in large part from Syria’s Sunni majority. Mokdad expressed doubt that the FSA was responsible for the kidnapping in the first place, painting it instead as a plot by the regime to stir up sectarian tensions and destabilize its neighbor, which has its own Sunni-Shiite concerns. “Assad wants to bring Lebanon to civil war. He’s trying everything right now,” Mokdad said.

Conflict in Lebanon could distract international attention from the one in Syria, and it could tie up time and resources now devoted to the push against Assad, notes Imad Bazzi, an independent Lebanese activist. “Any mess in Lebanon decreases the pressure on the regime inside Syria,”  he said.

He added that Lebanese people are “worried sick” about the potential of spillover conflict from Syria. “They can’t handle a war at the moment, first because it is not their war, and second because they can’t handle it economically.”
But worrisome signs are mounting. In a surprising move on Wednesday, the Assad regime turned its artillery and fighter jets on the Aleppo suburb of Azaz, where rebels have been holding 11 Shiite Lebanese pilgrims who were kidnapped in May. Though Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, has been the focus of intense fighting in recent weeks, Azaz has not, leading to accusations that more attempts to sow discord in Lebanon are afoot. “Why is Assad sending his jets to Azaz?” Mokdad said. “The only reason he has is to pour oil on the fire in Lebanon.”

After television networks in Lebanon reported that some of the pilgrims had been killed in Wednesday’s strikes, according to The New York Times, their families began kidnapping Syrians as well. Three were shown on Lebanese television, and two said they’d been involved in helping the Syrian opposition.

Bazzi, the Lebanese activist, said some Syrian activists who have been based in the country have already fled. “They do not feel safe in Beirut anymore,” he said.

Bain Capital Crushed Pilots' Effort To Create Union At Key Airlines

The successful launch of Bain Capital, a private equity firm founded by current GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his associates in 1984, was

propelled in part by a move to squash the formation of a union at one of the first companies in which it invested, according to the Financial Times.
The episode began in 1984, long before Bain became a multi-billion dollar firm. Romney and his business partners were working to buy Key Airlines, a small

and somewhat troubled charter carrier that had a number of valuable assets, and turn it into a profitable investment. According to a report by the Financial

Times (paywall), Romney and his colleagues orchestrated a $5 million leveraged buyout of the airline. The Times reports that Key rebounded slightly under

Bain's management, but began to struggle again in 1985, a year that brought particular turmoil to the company when its pilots attempted to form a union.

Bain, which would end up selling Key for $18 million in 1986, had plans turn the company for a profit, and was presumably not eager to navigate through the

additional burden of labor agreements in making a deal. According to Roger Foley, a federal judge who would later rule on a subsequent case brought by two

pilots, what followed was an effort by Key's management “to stamp out any cockpit crew members’ union before it could come into being.”
The Financial Times runs down the particulars in a second report (paywall):

    According to the court ruling, Key held coercive meetings with pilots; said management would leave and the company lose contracts; and told pilots that

salaries, bonuses and benefits could be frozen. Federal labour law forbids an airline “to interfere in any way with the organisation of its employees”.

    Two union organisers -- Olen Rae Goodwin and Lawrence Schlang, a former naval aviator -- were instructed to sign resignation letters, according to a

separate report by the National Mediation Board, which oversees union elections in the sector. The report described the company’s excuse for this dismissal

as “little more than pretext”. When a union election was finally held only two pilots voted “yes”.

Foley's ruling, which found that Key's management violated labor laws in their effort to squash the union's creation, wasn't passed down until 1992.
When asked by the Times for comment on the matter, the Romney campaign responded with a link to its website regarding labor unions and criticism of President

Barack Obama.

“President Obama continues to put the interests of labour bosses ahead of the interests of Americans looking for work. By contrast, Governor Romney has

grown companies and created jobs, in the private sector and as governor of Massachusetts, and will get America working again,” Michele Davis, a Romney

spokeswoman, told the Times.

The details of Bain's synthesis have created controversy for the Romney campaign in the past. Earlier this month, The Huffington Post reported that the firm

was started in part with investment money from Salvadoran families who had ties to the nation's notorious death squads.

The Los Angeles Times has reported on Bain's extensive foreign funding. Romney told the National Review that Bain entities set up shop in the Cayman Islands

so that foreign investors could avoid U.S. taxes.

Did ‘Solar Storms’ Cause India’s Massive Blackout?

No, we’re not wearing tinfoil hats over here at India Ink — so-called “solar storms,” or magnetic eruptions on the sun’s surface, have been known to

take down electricity grids before, most notably in Quebec in 1989.

And, as it turns out, this year is a year of heightened solar activity.

“The ferocity and pace of the Sun’s flares and magnetic eruptions rise and fall on an 11-year cycle, and the Sun has only recently emerged from its slumber

and started generating new solar flares,” Kenneth Chang wrote in The New York Times in March.

In fact, Mike Hapgood, a space weather scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Britain, penned an article in April that warned we should “prepare

for the coming space weather storm.” These storms, more precisely called “coronal mass ejections,” send charged particles into space that could hit the

Earth, he told The Los Angeles Times in May, creating electromagnetic disturbances. “Think of it like a hurricane — is it headed toward us or not headed

toward us? If we’re lucky, it misses us,” he said.

“A big geomagnetic storm can essentially put extra electric currents into the grid,” Mr. Hapgood added. “If it gets bad enough, you can have a complete

failure of the power grid.”

And just this past weekend, “a medium-size solar flare erupted from the sun,” MSNBC reported, “hurling a cloud of plasma and charged particles toward

Earth on a cosmic path that is expected to deliver a glancing blow to our planet on Tuesday.”

So, are India’s power ministers (both previous and current) and its electricity-guzzling northern states off the hook? We thought we’d call the Indian

Institute of Astrophysics in Bangalore to get an expert opinion.

Solar storms “have been of some concern” recently, acknowledged K. E. Rangarajan, a physicist who specializes in the Sun and magnetic fields at the

institute.

But, Professor Rangarajan said, there’s no evidence to suggest Monday and Tuesday’s massive power outages were caused by such an event.

Generally, he explained, these storms affect countries in higher latitudes than India, like Canada and the Netherlands, the most. In the last few days, none

of these countries have reported grid problems, he said. “Since it has not been reported in any other part of the world,” solar activity may have no

relation to India’s power outages, he said.

Still, Professor  Rangarajan added kindly, “It’s always good to ask questions.”

Egypt's president has powers that rival Mubarak's

Egypt's Islamist president has given himself the right to legislate and control over the drafting of a new constitution. He has installed at the top of the

powerful military a defense minister likely to be beholden to him.
Under Mohammed Morsi's authority, officials have moved to silence influential critics in the media. And though a civilian, he declared himself in charge of

military operations against militants in the Sinai peninsula.

Over the weekend, Morsi ordered the retirement of the defense minister and chief of staff and reclaimed key powers the military seized from him days before

he took office on June 30. With that, Egypt's first freely elected president amassed in his own hands powers that rival those of his ousted authoritarian

predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.

If left unchecked, there are fears Morsi and his fundamentalist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, could turn the clock back on the country's tumultuous shift to

democratic rule and pursue their goal of someday turning the most populous Arab nation into an Islamic state.

The Brotherhood already won both parliamentary and presidential elections after the uprising last year that forced Mubarak out. The question now is whether

there is any institution in the country that can check the power of Morsi and the Brotherhood and stop them from taking over the nation's institutions and

consolidating their grip.

"Are we looking at a president determined to dismantle the machine of tyranny … or one who is retooling the machine of tyranny to serve his interests,

removing the military's hold on the state so he can lay the foundations for the authority of the Brotherhood?" prominent rights activist and best-selling

novelist Alaa al-Aswani wrote in an article published Tuesday in an independent daily.

"He must correct these mistakes and assure us through actions that he is a president of all Egyptians," wrote the secular al-Aswani before warning that

Egyptians will never allow Morsi to turn Egypt into a "Brotherhood state."

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, the country's top reform leader, issued a similar warning on Monday. After Morsi stripped the military of

legislative authority, and in the absence of parliament, he cautioned that the president holds "imperial powers."

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which ruled Egypt for 17 months after Mubarak's ouster, dissolved parliament after a court ruled that a

quarter of its members were illegally elected and claimed legislative authority for itself. It stripped the presidency of many of its key powers before it

handed the office to Morsi.

The defense minister ordered to retire was the head of SCAF and the outgoing chief of staff was his No. 2.

SCAF issued constitutional amendments just before Morsi took over that gave the military control over the national budget and the process of drafting a new

constitution. The generals also put themselves in charge of all defense and foreign policy, including the appointment of the defense minister.

But Morsi reclaimed those powers on Sunday, so far uncontested by the military.

During his campaign and the early days of his presidency, Morsi touted himself as "the president of the revolution" and spoke tirelessly of democracy. He

pledged inclusiveness, tolerance and promised guaranteed freedoms under his rule — promises he has done little so far to fulfill.

Supporters of the 60-year-old, U.S.-educated engineer say he simply restored his rightful powers that the military grabbed from him.

"It is too early to say whether Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are bent on dominating the state, but there are legitimate concerns given that Morsi now

holds executive and legislative authority as well as having an avenue for intervening in constitution writing," said Jeff Martini of the Rand Corporation.

Morsi's consolidation of his authority comes at a time when his likely opponents are too weak or distracted to challenge him.

The pro-democracy youth groups behind the uprising are in disarray. They lost much of the popular appeal they once had among the millions who answered their

call to come out and protest during the uprising. Squabbling and demoralized, they may do little more than denounce Morsi just as they did when the military

grabbed the president's power in June.

Morsi has counted on the support of the pro-democracy movement in his power struggle with the military. But many of the activists view the Brotherhood as

politically opportunistic and obsessed with power, suspecting Morsi is driven by those same ambitions.

"Courageous presidential decrees have foiled the counter-revolution plots," Brotherhood stalwart Essam el-Erian wrote on his Twitter account of Morsi's

latest stand against the military. "The president performed his sovereign duty and realized the demands of the revolution. Every revolutionary must support

the president to prevent any attempt against the revolution."

The military is not in a much stronger position to challenge Morsi right now.

For decades the nation's most powerful institution, the military has seen its reputation tainted by the events of the 17 months when it was running the

country. Troops clashed with protesters — sometimes shot them dead or ran them over. The military was vilified for its human rights abuses, dragged into

chaotic, post-Mubarak politics and ridiculed in the media.

Morsi's bold order to retire the top brass further hurt the military's image, shattering its aura of invincibility.

Still far from being a spent force or a paper tiger, the military is now led by a defense minister who owes his job to Morsi. He is expected to fight to keep

the military's traditional say in key security and foreign policy issues, but he is not expected to challenge Morsi's authority anytime soon.

Morsi succeeded Mubarak, whose 29-year rule saw Egypt evolve into a state where a confluence of powers — the presidency, the hated police and a coterie of

wealthy, corrupt businessmen — held the nation by a stranglehold. Mubarak ruled unchallenged, his ruling party dominated, assured of sweeping every election

even before the first ballot was cast. With the support of the police and the presidential establishment, he controlled every state institution.

Emergency laws were in force for all 29 years and dissent was tolerated, but only if it fell short of a concrete action to elicit real change.

Now Morsi is in effect both the executive and legislative branches combined. And his backers are showing some tell-tale signs of wielding power unchecked.

Last week, Brotherhood members of parliament's upper house named 50 new editors of state-owned publications, many of them known to be sympathetic to the

group. The move tightened the Brotherhood's stranglehold on the media after one of its members took over the Information Ministry in a newly appointed

Cabinet backed by the group and led by a devout Muslim.

Morsi and the Brotherhood remained silent when a mob of supporters attacked a media complex in a Cairo suburb, smashing offices and cars to punish critics of

the president. Supporters also intimidate and sometimes scuffle with protesters outside the presidential palace.

And though he is a civilian, the president declared himself to be running military operations against radical Muslims in Sinai after suspected militants

killed 16 Egyptian soldiers on the border with Israel on Aug. 5.

Morsi, according to insiders, is expected to press ahead with efforts to expand the Brotherhood's control.

He plans to soon replace many of Egypt's 27 provincial governors with Brotherhood members or sympathizers of the group and purge the judiciary of judges

known to be opposed to its policies, according to the insiders familiar with deliberations in Morsi's inner circle. They spoke on condition of anonymity

because they feared retribution.

"We are now rid of a state run by the military. What is left for us to do is to rid ourselves from the state of the Brotherhood," wrote columnist Mohammed

Amin in the independent Al-Masry Al-Youm daily.

The Brotherhood will be emboldened by Morsi's standing up to the military as it prepares for new parliamentary elections expected before the end of the year

and may press even harder to give the new constitution an Islamist tint over the opposition of liberals.

"There will be a firestorm if he interferes in the drafting of the document, but that he has the right to do that amounts to coercive influence on the

process," said Michael W. Hanna of New York's Century Foundation.

Maureen Dowd: It is difficult, if not impossible, to outsource your likability ratings

Isn't it amazing? Two introverts facing off in the brightest spotlight of all for president.

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are at their most appealing when they are with their families.

Unfortunately, we don't often get that vantage point. And beyond those circles of trust, both men can seem as if they are sealed in their own spaceships.

The big difference, the one that will probably decide this presidential race, is this: Barack Obama is able to convey an impression of likability to voters.

Given how private he is, an enigma even to some who are close to him, it's an incredible performance.

That likability slips through your hands at closer range. The president survived a "raised by wolves" upbringing, as Michelle has called it. He retained the

monastic skills that sustained him through the solitude of his years in New York. His "winning smile," as Jonathan Alter wrote in "The Promise," "obscured a

layer of self-protective ice." His staffers respect him, but he doesn't inspire the kind of adoration that the Bush presidents got. And the pillow-plumping

romance with the press is over.

Yet voters see something genuine, and that is why Obama seems to be surviving the stalled economy and his own chuckleheaded remark: "If you've got a business

-- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."
A recent USA Today/Gallup poll showed Romney with higher marks on fixing the deficit, jobs, taxes and the economy.
But Obama soared on personal traits -- maintaining a 30-point advantage in likability, and better numbers on honesty, trust and empathy.

Romney advisers attributed his free fall in the polls to brass-knuckle Obama ads and summer doldrums rather than Mitt dullness. Maybe voters think Romney is

already so sheathed in secret bubbles -- Bain, Mormonism, his stint as governor of a liberal state -- that electing him to the biggest bubble of all, the

White House, would not be a good idea.

Some say Romney waited too long to put up his biographical ads and give personal interviews, letting himself be defined and slimed by the Obama ads.

"The Obama camp can raise a 'Mission Accomplished' banner on their summer project," said Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago mayor and former Obama chief of staff.

"With Romney's help, they have defined Romney as a man with total disregard for the struggles of the middle class."

When Obama does rough ads, it allays the fear that he's the sort who can get rolled by the banks, by the generals, by the Republicans in the House. When

Romney does rough ads, it reinforces the fear that he's unfeeling and a bit of a bully marketed by political mercenaries.

With only two weeks to go before the convention, the question burns: Will Mitt's new mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, make his run more personable?

You can bolster your relatability with your No. 2 pick, at least with certain demographics, as Obama did with Joe Biden. But Americans like to like their

president. "You can't outsource likability," Emanuel says. "You can't have an offshore account for it in the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands."

Romney's all-business/all-family rigidity makes him seem inaccessible. And his tax legerdemain has made him seem shady. As Marc Wolpow, a former Romney

employee at Bain Capital, said in a Boston Globe story about Mitt's 1988 deal with Michael Milken while the junk bond king was under federal investigation:

"Mitt, I think, spent his life balanced between fear and greed. He knew that he had to make a lot of money to launch his political career. It's very hard to

make a lot of money without taking some kind of reputational risk along the way."

In The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Karl Rove urged Mitt to reveal his character in his convention speech by talking openly about "his father's modest

upbringing, his wife's illness and his wealth."

Obama lost the thread of his narrative of hope and change, and Romney never developed one, even on his supposed specialty, the economy.

After another record-setting rout at PGA, McIlroy may be ready to assume the throne

Maybe, just maybe, Rory McIlroy is finally ready for the throne.

There isn't another major championship in sight for the next eight months, so there is plenty of time to debate, but the Age of McIlroy may have finally

begun. Sorry, Tiger, but you knew this day coming.

McIlroy, 23, of Northern Ireland is the winner of the 94th PGA Championship here at the Ocean Course on Kiawah Island. He won in a rout, beating runner-up

David Lynn by a whopping eight shots in a victory reminiscent of his first major championship, an eight-shot win at the 2011 U.S. Open.

Golf has been waiting for a new king ever since Tiger Woods assumed the throne with a Masters win for the ages in 1997. The rush to judgment began last year

when McIlroy romped past the U.S. Open field at Congressional Country Club, where the course was soft and slow and not much tougher than a regular PGA Tour

stop. Still, McIlroy torched Tiger Woods's U.S. Open scoring record of 12 under par by shooting 16 under. Sixteen!

(Related Photos: Rory McIlroy's Career In Pictures)


His ascent seemed certain when he won the Honda Classic this March, holding off His Majesty Tiger Woods, who threw a Sunday 62 at Rory with no effect.

But the anointment was premature. McIlroy stumbled under the glare of the 24/7 modern media machine that followed him and his tennis star girlfriend,

Caroline Wozniacki, across the globe. He missed the cut at the BMW PGA Championship, the European tour's flagship event, where he was some 21 shots off the

lead. He missed four out of five cuts at one point, including the Players Championship and the U.S. Open.

"I've taken my eye off the ball," he admitted.

At the British Open at Royal Lytham & St. Annes, where he tied for 60th, he beaned a young spectator. When he learned the fan was camping out for the week,

McIlroy found a hotel room (an amazing feat) and put him up for the duration of the tournament.

Winning or not, the kid has heart.

But his game returned at the Ocean Course. He finished off a 67 in the storm-delayed third round on Sunday morning, then shot three under par on the first

nine of the final round. He simply outdistanced his pursuers, which didn't make for the most exciting victory, but it was a convincing one. Quite a contrast

to Adam Scott's British Open meltdown, which led to a victory for Ernie Els.

(Related Photos: Sunday at the 2012 PGA)


McIlroy is now ahead of the major pace of Woods. McIlroy turned 23 three months ago; Woods won his second major, the 1999 PGA at Medinah, when he was 23

years, 7 months old.

Ahead of Tiger's pace, behind Tiger's pace -- it doesn't really matter. Tiger's run, which led to 14 majors, was so remarkable that it's amazing to even be

on a similar trajectory. This is the dawn of a great opportunity for McIlroy, and he will fuel our golf conversations until we return to Augusta National

next April.

As for Tiger, all you really needed to know was the scene at the par-5 second hole in Sunday's final round. He reached the green in two and had a lengthy

eagle putt. His roll looked promising, but as his ball went past the hole, Woods fell to his knees as if begging it to go in.

That's what Woods was reduced to on Sunday, begging. He took himself out of the tournament with a terrible front nine in the third round, which was stopped

by storms Saturday evening, and then failed to make a move on his back nine on Sunday morning.

In the final round Sunday afternoon, Woods needed to make something happen early, especially since McIlroy broke out of the gate with two birdies in the

first three holes. But Woods couldn't get it done.

The most animated Woods got all day was on the third hole, where he missed the green long and made a less-than-stellar pitch to 12 feet. He left himself a

curvy, swinging putt and poured it in. That elicited his trademarked air punch, which was telling. Have you ever seen Tiger Woods celebrate like that for a

par on the third hole of the final round? Yes, he wanted this one.

Other than another birdie at the par-5 seventh, Woods didn't make anything happen. In fact, he had to scramble for several par saves. A great one came at the

10th, where he drove into the gallery, near some temporary fencing, and played a shot off the matted, bare ground used as a cart path. That shot reached the

greenside bunker, and he got up and down to keep his faint hopes alive. The problem was, Woods had started the final round five shots behind McIlroy. His

two-under 34 on the front was good, but not good enough to catch McIlroy, who posted 33.

The air went out of Woods when he chopped up the par-5 11th. He played his third shot out of a dune left of the fairway and popped it up, barely getting onto

the grass. From there, he made an indifferent pitch to 20 feet and missed the putt. Making bogey on a par 5 when he needed birdie was a death knell, and he

knew it.

The real challengers of the day were Ian Poulter and Carl Pettersson. Poulter, the brash Englishman who is a former World Match Play champion, birdied the

first five holes in the final round to race into second place. He added a sixth birdie at the par-5 seventh, then bogeyed the eighth from a greenside bunker,

before getting two more birdies at the 11th and 12th.

Poulter's swing isn't the most reliable, but the man can putt, and his putter was sizzling early in the day. He made four bogeys in his last six holes,

however, and finished four under, tied for third.

Pettersson, a transplanted Swede who played college golf at North Carolina State and looks like your beer-drinking buddy from the bowling league, sparked the

controversy of the day. He drove into a slope inside a hazard on the opening hole and played it out. He made an apparent par, then birdied the third hole.

Coming off the fourth tee, he was approached by rules official David Price, who informed him of a two-shot penalty because replays showed Pettersson's club

hitting a dry leaf on his backswing in the hazard. That's moving a loose impediment, a penalty. Pettersson was understandably not happy, but he did the smart

thing -- he got even. He birdied the fourth, fifth and seventh holes to join Poulter in what turned out to be a futile race to catch Rory.

All McIlroy wanted this week, he'd said earlier, was a chance to get in contention and feel the familiar buzz that comes with challenging for a major. He got

that, and more. He may be golf's new dominant player -- we'll see -- but we do know that he is halfway to the career grand slam already.

We know one other thing: he's got a long way to go. The major championship leaderboard reads Tiger 14, Rory 2.

Still, he's off to a beautiful start.

Mitt Romney makes appeal to middle class in Iowa

In October 2002, campaigning for governorship of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney said he would “preserve and protect” a woman’s right to choose. He now

describes himself as opposing abortion.

Top Romney Flip Flops: #2. Gay Rights:

In a 1994 letter to the Log Cabin Republicans, who advocate gay rights, Romney said he was in favor of “gays and lesbians being able to serve openly and

honestly” in the military. He now says it would be a mistake to interfere with the “don’t ask, don’t tell policy.”

Top Romney Flip Flops: #4. Campaign Finance:

In 1994, Romney advocated a spending limit on congressional elections and abolition of political action committees. In 2002, he supported public financing of

campaigns from a 10 percent tax on private fund-raising. In 2008, he attacked the McCain-Feingold law limiting campaign contributions as an attack on free

speech.

"Corporations are people my friend"

Top Romney Flip Flops: #3. Gun Control:

Campaigning for the Senate in 1994, Romney said he favored strong gun laws and did not “line up with the NRA.” He signed up for “lifetime membership” of

the NRA in August 2006 while pondering a presidential run, praising the group for “doing good things” and “supporting the right to bear arms.”

Top Romney Flip Flops: #5. Immigration:

In a November 2005 interview with the Boston Globe, he described immigration reform proposal advanced by McCain as “reasonable.” He now denounces it as an

“amnesty plan.” In December 2006, he signed agreement authorizing state troopers to round up illegal immigrants.

Lol...and those hardly touch the current cycle.

Four years of hope gone in an instant as injury strikes the stars of track and field

Never does the four-year Olympic cycle seem more brutal than when injury prevents an athlete from being the best he or she can be.

Chinese 110metres hurdler Liu Xiang and Britons Goldie Sayers and Andrew Pozzi will know just how cruel that is after an emotional morning in the Olympic

Stadium on Tuesday.

In 2008, Liu, then the defending Olympic champion, carried the hopes of a nation into the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing.

But he didn’t even make it to the first hurdle, limping off after a false start with acute pain in his right achilles tendon.

Four years on, the former world record-holder attacked those 42-inch barriers with a different leading leg, but the result was the same. The 29-year-old was

even wearing the same number - 1356 - as he clattered into the first hurdle.

His fellow competitors were waiting for him as he hopped to the finish line, trying to protect the tendon that had ruptured once again, and kissed the final

barrier in lane four.

‘It was horrible to see him limp off like that so I had to go to help him,’ said Britain’s Andy Turner, who won Liu’s heat in 13.42sec. ‘I regard him as

the best hurdler in history and I have so much respect for him.’

Britain’s Lawrence Clarke will join Turner in the semi-finals on Wednesday night but Pozzi, the British champion indoors and out, did not even make it to

the second hurdle of his heat, having suffered a torn hamstring last month.
‘I came out of the blocks and it went again,’ said the 20-year-old. ‘I’ve really struggled but I didn’t want to walk away. My whole season has been

based on this.’

Sayers, too, saw her attempt to qualify for the javelin final thwarted by injury. The 30-year-old tore ligaments in her right elbow, her throwing arm, after

breaking her own British record on July 14 and said she couldn’t feel her hand after suffering a further injury in the warm-up.

She registered three no-throws then broke down during a BBC interview.

‘I’m sure people are criticising me for competing, but I had to give it a go,’ she said. ‘I had to compete in a home Olympics but my body just let me

down. I’ll put this right. Hopefully I can do the country proud in Rio.’

HCA Falls Most in 8 Months on Scrutiny of Cardiac Uses

HCA Holdings Inc. (HCA) (HCA), the biggest U.S. hospital operator, declined the most in two months after saying its cardiology practices had come under

scrutiny from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami.

HCA fell 4 percent to $25.55 at the close of New York trading, for its biggest one-day drop since June 1. The U.S. Attorney in July asked HCA for information

about the “medical necessity” of interventional cardiology procedures at its hospitals, the Nashville, Tennessee-based company said today in a regulatory

filing (HCA).

Chief Executive Officer Richard M. Bracken said today on a conference call for analysts that the New York Times was preparing a story that may focus on HCA’

s medical practices and treatment of uninsured patients. The twin disclosures spurred concern about risks for a company whose biggest shareholder (HCA), Bain

Capital LLC, was once led by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

“My concern is that it gets political legs,” said Sheryl Skolnick, a CRT Capital Group LLC analyst in Stamford, Connecticut, in a telephone interview. “I

think we have to look at it seriously.”

The U.S. request to HCA is part of a heightened federal push against alleged health-care fraud. The Israel-based generic-drug maker Teva Pharmaceuticals

Industries Ltd. said Aug. 3 that it received a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with a Latin America bribery probe. London

-based GlaxoSmithKline Plc pleaded guilty July 5 to illegally promoting two drugs in a $3 billion deal with the Justice Department, the largest settlement

ever in a case involving health-care fraud.
160 Hospitals

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) (JNJ), the world’s biggest health-care company by sales, said in an Aug. 2 filing that it received two requests from the department

in the second quarter. The government asked for information on the marketing of Doribax, an antibiotic, and the Relieva Stratus MicroFlow Spacer, a medical

device used to treat sinus conditions, New Brunswick, New Jersey-based J&J said.

HCA owns 160 hospitals and 110 surgery centers. As of April 1, Boston-based Bain held 20 percent of HCA’s outstanding shares, worth about $2.2 billion. The

hospital company was taken public last year by an investment group led by Bain and New York-based KKR & Co. (KKR) (KKR) in an initial offering that raised

$3.79 billion. Through the end of last week, HCA had gained 21 percent in New York trading this year.
2006 Buyout

Romney was a co-founder of Bain and CEO starting in 1984. He has said he gave up management control in February 1999, when he took charge of preparations for

the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. The private-equity firm and fellow investors took HCA private in 2006 in a $33 billion leveraged buyout.

Alex Stanton, a Bain spokesman, didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.

While HCA declined to answer questions about the legal probe or the article, “Most people assume it’s going to be a negative view,” said Frank Morgan, an

RBC Capital Markets analyst in Brentwood, Tennessee, in a phone interview.

Interventional cardiology includes procedures such as the implantation of metal stents or balloons to open clogged arteries as well as tests for heart

disorders. Procedures to treat cardiac illness and strokes are among the biggest revenue sources for HCA, as they are at most hospitals, Skolnick said.
’Medical Necessity’

HCA’s regulatory filing said the Justice Department “requested information on reviews assessing the medical necessity of interventional cardiology services

provided at any company facility (other than peer reviews),” HCA said. An early look found information on such reviews at about 10 hospitals, mostly in

Florida, the company said in the filing (HCA).

“At this time, we cannot predict what effect, if any, the request or any resulting claims, including any potential claims under the federal False Claims

Act, other statutes, regulations or laws, could have on the company,” HCA said.

Alicia Valle, special counsel to Wilfredo Ferrer, the U.S. attorney in Miami, didn’t immediately respond to a telephone message seeking comment.

In an unsigned statement on its website, HCA said the New York Times coverage may focus on the number of cardiac procedures its hospitals conduct and how

physicians make decisions regarding them.

“These physician-driven decisions have been and are the subject of much debate within the cardiology community,” HCA said. “Accordingly, there is

variation across the country, between regions, within regions, and even within the same medical staff or medical group regarding this issue.”
Declining Rates

The rate of some of the procedures has declined at HCA hospitals over the past decade, according to the statement.

The newspaper also provided the company with examples where it asserts “individual patients may have had adverse outcomes from the care they received at

HCA-affiliated facilities,” according to the statement.

The company said there were about 20 million visits to its facilities last year and “we deeply regret any adverse occurrences to even one of our patients.

HCA-affiliated physicians and employees strive to provide the highest quality care and minimize adverse outcomes.”

The company said on the call and on its website it would decline to answer questions about the article or the subjects it addresses.

Second-quarter net income (HCA) increased 71 percent to $391 million, or 85 cents a share, from $229 million, or 43 cents, a year earlier, the company said

today. Revenue rose 12 percent to $8.11 billion, boosted by the company’s $1.45 billion buyout last year of a partner’s stake in the Denver-based HealthOne

hospital system.

Same-facility inpatient admissions rose 2.5 percent from a year earlier, the company said. Equivalent admissions, which also include outpatient visits,

gained 3.9 percent.

Mitt Romney: U.S. economy needs ‘something dramatic’

What the American economy needs to recover, says presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, is “something dramatic.” What he’s not saying is

what exactly that something is.

Mr. Romney’s remarks follow the release of the latest unemployment report Friday. The U.S. economy added 163,000 jobs in July, but the unemployment report

ticked up to 8.3 percent.

It’s not another federal stimulus package or new government programs, Mr. Romney says. Nor would it be helpful for the Federal Reserve to commit to another

“massive” program of buying government bonds and mortgage-backed securities to drive long-term interest rates even lower.
“I can absolutely make the case that now is the time for something dramatic and it is not the time to grow government,” Mr. Romney said on Sunday in an

interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It’s the time to create the incentives and the opportunities for entrepreneurs and businesses big and small to

hire more people and that’s going to happen. You’re going to see that happen in this country but not under this president.

Democrats continue to call on the former Massachusetts governor to release more years of personal tax returns. On Friday, Mr. Romney said again that he would

not release more than two years of returns. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid recently released an anonymous claim that the former Massachusetts governor

did not pay taxes for ten years.

Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus called Mr. Reid a “dirty liar,” for making the claims and Mr. Romney has told the Senate leader to “put up or

shut up.”

“Governor Romney can resolve this in 10 seconds. They can release the tax returns,” said top Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod on “Fox News Sunday.”

” They gave 23 years of tax returns to John McCain, they’ve given one year of tax returns to the American people. It was Governor Romney’s father who

pioneered the release of tax returns when he ran for president.”

“Why don’t they just put this to rest? What is it that he is hiding?” he asked.

In the interview on CNN, Mr. Romney promoted his economic agenda, which he says could create 12 million jobs in his first term.

“That’s what happens in a normal process,” he said. “When you come out of the kind of recession we’ve had you should see this kind of job creation.”

“Good things happen when you have a private sector that’s thriving,” he added.

The presumptive Republican nominee has said that he opposes Mr. Obama’s tax plan to extend only the Bush-era tax cuts for Americans who earn less than

250,000. Mr. Romney supports extending tax cuts for everyone.

“I also hope people understand when they talk about raising taxes on the wealthy – as the president does – he is also talking about the same tax rate that

applies to small business,” the Michigan native said. “The great majority of small businesses pay taxes at the individual rate so as he raises these taxes

‘on the wealthy’ he is raising taxes on small business.”

While campaigning in Indiana on Saturday, Mr. Romney attacked the president for what he called “an extraordinary series of policy failures.”

Taxes again dog Romney on his return to U.S. campaign

GOLDEN, Colo. (Reuters) - Questions about his personal taxes again dogged Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Thursday, his first day back on

the U.S. campaign trail after a rocky trip abroad.

Romney promised to create 12 million jobs and ease the economic plight of middle-class Americans on a visit to swing-state Colorado, but he had to fend off

an accusation by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that he may not have paid taxes for a decade-long period.

"The word's out that he hasn't paid any taxes for 10 years," Reid said on the floor of the Senate. "Let him prove he has paid taxes because he hasn't," the

Democrat said.

Coming after perhaps the worst week of Romney's candidacy on a foreign trip highlighted by gaffes, the allegations were firmly denied by the former private

equity executive.

"It's time for Harry to put up or shut up. Harry's going to have to describe who it is he spoke with because of course that is totally and completely wrong.

It's untrue, dishonest, and inaccurate. It's wrong," Romney said on Sean Hannity's radio show.

Romney released tax records in January that showed he paid millions of dollars in taxes in 2010 and expected to pay $6.2 million in taxes for that year and

2011 combined.

But he has refused to release any more tax documents, prompting Democrats to accuse the former Massachusetts governor of having something to hide and

possibly gaming the system.

He could not escape the tax issue at his first event back on U.S. soil after an ill-fated foreign trip to Britain, Israel and Poland.

A plane hired by the liberal group MoveOn flew overhead with a banner that read: "Welcome back, Mitt. Now release those returns" before he spoke in Golden,

Colorado.

Eager to talk again about President Barack Obama's record on jobs, Romney unveiled a "Presidential Accountability Scorecard," which highlighted the White

House's failure to solve high unemployment and cut the budget deficit.

He noted unfulfilled promises that Obama made in 2008 when he accepted the Democratic nomination for the presidency in Denver.

"All the measures he laid out are all measures that have gone the wrong direction," Romney said. On Friday, government figures will likely show the U.S.

unemployment rate remains above 8 percent.

Romney said he would create 12 million jobs in his first four years as president. "It's going be good to be middle class in America again," he said in Aspen.

'JOKE' TAX POLICY REPORT

The two men are running close in most opinion polls for the November 6 election, but a Pew Research Center survey on Thursday showed a wide gap between them,

with Obama leading by 51 percent to 41 percent.

The poll was taken mostly before Romney's foreign tour last week when he upset Britain and Arabs with separate remarks about the Olympic Games and the

Palestinian economy.

Romney's campaign criticized a report this week from the centrist Tax Policy Center that calculated his proposal to slash income taxes by 20 percent across

the board would boost income for the wealthiest taxpayers while reducing it for the middle class.

"That report you referenced is a joke," senior Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom told reporters on a conference call. He questioned the authorship and methodology

of the report, even though the Romney campaign has cited numbers from the Tax Policy Center in the past.

In Orlando, Florida, Obama told a campaign rally that Republicans' efforts to keep former President George W. Bush's tax cuts for all Americans, including

the richest, would only lead to a wider deficit.

"They have tried to sell us this trickle-down, tax-cut, fairy dust before. And guess what, it didn't work then. It will not work now," Obama said. "We do not

need more tax cuts for folks who have done very, very well. We need more tax cuts for working Americans," he said.

The Who fans disappointed by ‘79 show cancellation trade in tickets for concert 33 years later

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — It was December 1979 when Emery Lucier learned the concert he was eagerly awaiting in Rhode Island by British rock band The Who had been canceled over safety concerns. The 17-year-old was so angry he knocked over a chair in his high school classroom.
“I just remember being so upset about the whole thing,” he said.


Lucier, now 50, of Milford, Mass., held onto the ticket, for which he paid $25 ($12.50 for the ticket and $12.50 more for the scalper). On Tuesday, he and nine other people traded in tickets from that canceled show and got new ones for The Who’s final appearance on its Quadrophenia tour in February at the Dunkin Donuts Center, the same venue it was supposed to play 33 years ago.

The venue’s general manager, Lawrence Lepore, said earlier this month he would honor tickets for the 1979 show, which then-Mayor Buddy Cianci canceled after a stampede before a Who concert in Ohio killed 11 people. Any 1979 tickets the venue receives will be donated to the Special Olympics of Rhode Island, which plans an August eBay auction of the 14 tickets turned in on Tuesday.

Ed McConnell, now 50, was a high school student in Pawtucket and planned to attend the concert with about 15 friends. He said he remembers the disappointment when he heard the concert was canceled, and even now can list reasons why it was a bad decision, among them that the concert had assigned seats and not festival seating — which is what was blamed for the stampede in Cincinnati.

“I still don’t agree with it,” McConnell said after trading in his and his brother’s tickets for the show.

McConnell said he met Cianci once and took the opportunity to complain.

Sandy Ball exchanged two tickets that her brother, Stephen, now of Colonial Heights, Va., had waited in line for overnight when he was a college freshman. The tickets have moved 16 times since then with Stephen, who was in the military. Ball said her family remembers the day when he learned the show was canceled.

“We had to talk him off the cliff,” she said.

Barry Belotti, now 53, of Fitchburg, Mass., estimates he’s seen The Who 100 times but still remembers the canceled show in Providence. He had second-row tickets and had bought several other tickets for friends to come along.

“We were pretty upset about it,” he said.

He got a refund on most of the tickets after the show was canceled but kept one as a memento in a binder filled with newspaper clippings about the band and photos of singer Pete Townsend. Belotti said he is planning to see the band play on four or five stops on this tour, one he’s especially looking forward to because it’s playing the 1973 album “Quadrophenia,” which is especially meaningful for him.

“It was very instrumental in my adolescence,” Belotti said. “Townsend’s writing, he was talking about me.”

As for Lucier, he never got a chance to see The Who perform after that canceled 1979 show, until now. He’s held onto the ticket for decades.

After he heard he could exchange his old ticket for a new one, he started digging and found it in a box with about 65 other stubs.

The one for The Who was the only one that wasn’t ripped.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Xinhua Insight: China, ASEAN stress stability, cooperation amid sea disputes

NANNING, July 12 (Xinhua) -- China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) should place their strategic priority on maintaining regional stability and deepening economic cooperation despite competing claims in the South China Sea, officials and analysts said Thursday.

"Vietnam, like other ASEAN countries, hopes to continue close cooperation with related nations, especially with China," said Nguyen Thanh Bien, Vietnamese vice minister of industry and trade.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the seventh Pan-Beibu Gulf (PBG) Economic Cooperation Forum, he said China and ASEAN can enhance mutual understanding and trust through deepening cooperation so as to maintain regional stability.

His remarks come as tensions between China and Vietnam have fermented after Vietnam passed the Law of the Sea in June. The law defines the Xisha Islands and Nansha Islands in the South China Sea as being within Vietnam's sovereignty and jurisdiction.

China and another ASEAN member -- the Philippines -- have also seen relations deteriorating recently due to competing claims regarding Huangyan Island, prompting concerns that the rows will hamper progress within the China-ASEAN cooperation framework.

"The territorial disputes between China and some ASEAN countries should in no way act as a hindrance," said Dato Mahani Abidin, managing director of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) in Malaysia.

He said multi-level cooperation between China and ASEAN countries has shown substantial progress in recent years.

Bilateral trade between China and ASEAN has seen substantial growth in recent years after the launch of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area on Jan. 1, 2010. ASEAN is China's third largest trade partner following the European Union and the United States.

In 2011, trade between China and ASEAN rose 24 percent year on year to 362.9 billion U.S. dollars, higher than the 22.5-percent growth for China's total foreign trade during the period.

U Win Shein, Myanmar's vice minister of transport, said strengthened regional development and cooperation will help offset impact of the confrontations.

Initiated in 2006, the annual PBG Economic Cooperation Forum has grown into a major sub-regional cooperation platform under the China-ASEAN framework. The PBG Economic Zone covers China's Guangxi, Guangdong and Hainan, as well as Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and Brunei.

"The construction of the PBG region has promoted economic cooperation between China and ASEAN, which is in line with the region's interests," U Win Shein said.

A report on the Feasibility Study on Economic Cooperation was unveiled at the forum last year. The report identified priority areas for cooperation and was later approved at the 14th ASEAN-China Summit.

This year, the forum will lay out the PBG Economic Cooperation Action Roadmap and submit a proposal to the China-ASEAN Economic Ministers' Meeting and the 15th ASEAN-China Summit to be held later this year for deliberation.

Yang Mu, a senior researcher at the East Asian Institute of National University of Singapore, attributed booming cooperation to regional stability and continued trade.

He said that although disputes in the South China Sea have existed for a long time, related countries have agreed that a healthy and peaceful environment as well as extensive economic cooperation will benefit the whole region.

Li Fuyu, a Thai journalist who has closely followed ASEAN's development, said the South China Sea disputes represent a very sensitive topic.

"Countries in the Pan-Beibu Gulf region should deepen economic cooperation and downplay the disputes in order to focus on economic cooperation and cultural communication," Li said.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said China is willing to talk to ASEAN countries about legalizing a code of conduct in the South China Sea, adding that the issue should be discussed and solved peacefully through bilateral talks.

"Solving the problems will require deepened economic cooperation," Yang said.

It's been a blast so far

With half the NASCAR season in the books, here are a few things I bet you didn't see coming.

• A Monday night jet dryer explosion during the Daytona 500.
An on-track tweet-up.
• Matt Kenseth moving on down the road.
• A seemingly squeaky-clean guy in A.J. Allmendinger failing a drug test.
• Dale Earnhardt Jr. one spot from the top spot.

You never know. Here's a look at those things and a few others that stood out in the first half of 2012:

Craziest crash: Juan Pablo Montoya slamming into a jet dryer truck during a caution in the Daytona 500, causing a massive fireball on the backstretch and a long delay to the race while crews cleaned up the mess.
Surprising tweet-up: The drivers on the backstretch at Daytona after Montoya's fireworks display. Brad Keselowski became Twitter royalty after tweeting pictures of the fire.

Silly-season shocker: Matt Kenseth leaving Roush Fenway Racing, where he has raced his entire Sprint Cup career. And Jack Roush is taking it hard, saying Kenseth is going to "the dark side." It's Roush's dirty little term for Toyota.

Most disappointing moment: Learning last weekend that A.J. Allmendinger failed a drug test. Not this guy. How can it be? But I've seen this so many times over the years with athletes I never would have suspected, so it just doesn't shock me anymore.

Most improved driver: Dale Earnhardt Jr. He was winless and eighth in the standings a year ago. He's second now and finally has that elusive win with his victory at Michigan. Junior has 13 top-10s, tying him with Kenseth and Jimmie Johnson for the most in Cup.

Biggest backslide: Carl Edwards, from one point short of winning the championship a year ago to 11th in the 2012 standings, winless and in serious danger of missing the Chase. The runner-up jinx continues.

Most controversial idea: Speedway Motorsports Inc. chairman Bruton Smith saying he wants mandatory cautions to spice things up. NASCAR president Mike Helton politely said it's not happening.

Best idea: NASCAR chairman Brian France saying they will consider making some races shorter. It's quality over quantity. The fact is young people aren't watching for three-plus hours.
Least surprising suspension: Kurt Busch. While already on probation, Busch let his temper get the best of him in verbally abusing a reporter, saying his probation kept him from beating the reporter up. Busch said it a little more harshly. Of course, his probation also meant he couldn't say those things, so NASCAR had him sit out a week.

Worst punt: Jacques Villeneuve giving Danica Patrick the old chrome horn on the last lap at Road America when Patrick was headed to a top-5 finish. Villeneuve pleaded innocence afterward, saying his car wheel-hopped and he couldn't stop. Horse hockey. The man is a former F1 champ. He knew what he was doing. Hopefully Patrick gets to repay the favor one day.

Most attention without performance: Everyone knows this one. Whether she is getting wrecked or causing one, it's Patrick. DP is the princess of NASCAR these days, but it hasn't been a stellar year so far. She has one top-10, although she was robbed at Road America and led some laps at Daytona last weekend. She's ninth in the Nationwide standings, which sounds good until you consider only 16 drivers have competed in all events. I'll give her a C+ for performance in a season of A+ attention.

Most improved organization: Michael Waltrip Racing. It has been a long and difficult road for Waltrip to get his team to respectability, but MWR is a group challenging for top-tier status now. Both Martin Truex Jr. and Clint Bowyer are in the top 10. Bowyer won at Sonoma. Part-time driver Mark Martin is a big asset for both of them, and Scott Miller is doing an exceptional job running the show.

Still pathetic: Earnhardt Ganassi Racing. Jamie McMurray is 20th in the standings, and Montoya is 21st. Neither man has a top-5 this year. Team owner Chip Ganassi called the team's 2011 performance pathetic. Well, 2012 doesn't look much better, but McMurray and Montoya say things are slowly improving.

Start-and-park madness: Joe Nemechek. He has started 16 Cup races this season. He finished one, the Daytona 500, which also was the only time he completed more than 20 percent of the laps. I'm not blaming Nemechek. I'm blaming a system that allows this to happen.
Best turnaround: Kentucky Speedway. A stellar effort by everyone involved to make up for the traffic horrors of the track's inaugural Cup race in 2011. Granted, the 2012 race had fewer people, but speedway officials still did a nice job of correcting many of the first-year mistakes.

Best trend: Nationwide Series regulars winning more Nationwide races. Non-Cup drivers have won 50 percent of the Nationwide races this season. It has been nine years since that happened. It's good for NASCAR's future if developmental drivers win races in their own series.

Oddest stat: Keselowski has three victories, five top-5s and eight top-10s this season. He ranks ninth in the standings. Kevin Harvick has no wins, three top-5s and the same number of top-10s, but Harvick is sixth in the standings. What does that tell you? There's too big a penalty for a poor finish and not enough reward for winning.

Best chase to the Chase: The wild-card battle. Four drivers outside the top 10 have a victory, which means two (Kyle Busch and Joey Logano) are in and two (Ryan Newman and Kasey Kahne) are out, at the moment. But Newman is only a point behind Logano, and Kahne is two points behind Newman. And another win jumps any of the four to the top of the wild-card pole. Plus, non-winners such as Edwards (11th) and Jeff Gordon (17th) still might secure a spot if they win before the Chase. The wild-card rule is one of NASCAR's best decisions in years.

Best appeal: Hendrick Motorsports receiving a get out of jail free card on its final appeal of the illegal C-post penalty to the No. 48 Chevy team from Daytona. John Middlebrook, the chief appellate officer and the final word on NASCAR penalties, pulled a John Roberts-like surprise. He eliminated the six-week suspensions for crew chief Chad Knaus and car chief Ron Malec and eliminated Johnson's 25-point penalty. So stop calling NASCAR's appeals process a kangaroo court.

Back-to-back I-told-you-so moments: Denny Hamlin won in Week 2 with new crew chief Darian Grubb, showing Tony Stewart he was wrong to let Grubb leave. But Stewart won a week later in Las Vegas with new crew chief Steve Addington, showing his new guy can win, too.

Best name change: Otis to Keelan. Well, Kevin and DeLana Harvick's baby boy really never was Otis. That's what they called him before he was born on Sunday. Keelan has part of both their names -- "Ke" for Kevin and "elan" for DeLana. They went with a K name, but I assume Kyle and Kurt were not options.

Truvada pill urged for AIDS prevention after promising studies

As the U.S. Food and Drug Administrationweighs approval of a radical new method of AIDS prevention — a prescription pill taken once a day — advocates say the results of experimental trials in sub-Saharan Africa argue strongly for the drug's adoption in the United States.

The pill was developed to treat people already infected with HIV. But studies published Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine demonstrate that it can also prevent heterosexual transmission of HIV, the most common mode of contagion in Africa.

A growing number of doctors in the U.S. are already prescribing the drug to uninfected high-risk patients as an off-label use, and some insurers are covering the considerable expense.

"It's not officially monitored, but its use is on the rise," said Dr. Robert M. Grant of UC San Francisco's Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, who worked on one of the new studies. "We're already starting to see support groups for users."

The blue tablets, which are sold under the brand name Truvada, contain a combination of two antiretroviral drugs called tenofovir and emtricitabine. Researchers began studying Truvada's ability to prevent the spread of HIV to uninfected gay men and heterosexual men and women several years ago; the FDA has said it will make a determination on the drug's use for HIV prevention by Sept. 14.

Publication of the Africa drug trials comes less than two weeks before the International AIDS Conference convenes inWashington, D.C.The results, as well as the FDA's deliberations, are likely to be hot-button issues there, since both advocates and critics of using Truvada for prevention have found ammunition for their views in the studies' findings.

Most notably, the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation is vehemently opposed to the drug's approval as a prophylaxis in the U.S. because it says the pill is dangerous, overly expensive and will detract from proven methods of AIDS prevention, such as condom use.

"Our culture is always looking for a quick fix," said Michael Weinstein, the foundation's president. "We want to pop a pill.... Well, there are better methods."

In each of the three trials published Wednesday, test subjects were given Truvada or a placebo. They also received counseling on HIV risk reduction, condom use and other contraceptives. The treatment's success was closely related to whether the subjects used the drug as intended and how strongly they perceived themselves to be at risk of infection.

The study that showed the highest rate of success involved 4,747 married couples in Kenya and Uganda. In each case, one of the spouses had HIV and the other was uninfected. Truvada reduced transmission of the virus by up to 75%, according to the report; the medication was deemed so effective that the study ended early and people on the placebo switched to the drug.

However, a related study that focused exclusively on healthy women in Kenya, South Africa and Tanzania — some married, some unmarried — was discontinued early because Truvada failed to significantly reduce infection rates. Although 95% of test subjects told researchers they were taking the pills regularly, blood tests suggested that less than 40% of the women actually did so.

"We hypothesize that the women's perception that they were at low risk for HIV infection may have contributed to the poor adherence," wrote the study authors, who were from the U.S., South Africa, Kenya, Britain and Belgium. Daily pill regimens may have also posed a difficulty for some of the women, though the researchers weren't sure why.

The third study involved healthy single men and women in Botswana ages 18 to 39. Half were asked to take Truvada once a day and the other half took a placebo. Over three years, those who got the medicine were 62% less likely to become infected than those who got the dummy pill, researchers from theU.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and their collaborators reported.

But the study had important limitations. Many volunteers dropped out, which prevented the researchers from determining whether the drug was protective for men and women independently, as it was in the trial involving married couples.

The report also raised questions about Truvada's effect on bone mineral density, as the researchers observed a "small but significant decline." Other side effects, such as nausea, vomiting and dizziness, occurred more frequently in those who took the drug instead of a placebo, but those symptoms lessened after the third month, the authors wrote. The other studies also noted side effects of gastrointestinal problems and fatigue during the first month.

The pills were supplied byGilead Sciences Inc., the Bay Area firm that makes Truvada and is seeking fast-track approval from the FDA.

For study researchers and many AIDS advocacy groups, the take-away message from the three trials was that Truvada could be an effective tool in the battle against AIDS, if used correctly.

"Adherence matters," said Dr. Lynn Paxton, who coordinated the Botswana study at the CDC. "If you don't take the pill, it won't work, no matter what else you do."

Groups like the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, are citing these data as they lobby for the FDA to approve the drug and for the CDC to release guidelines on its use as soon as possible.

Last year, the CDC issued advice on using Truvada in gay men who are HIV-negative, but the agency has not yet done the same for heterosexuals. On Wednesday, CDC officials urged physicians to wait for those guidelines before prescribing the drug. However, they said that in urgent situations, doctors should follow the cautions and procedures laid out for gay men, including requirements for pre-treatment screening, dosages, periodic testing and counseling.

Truvada's chief critics contend that the drug is prohibitively expensive in the U.S., where an annual supply can cost about $10,000. They also fear it will reduce the use of condoms.

"You have to be really paranoid about your pants falling down to wear a belt and suspenders," Weinstein said.

But Grant, of UCSF, said the drug's detractors were overstating the effectiveness of condoms. Although they are more likely to be used during casual relationships, their use tapers as relationships grow more intimate.

"We need to be realistic about the limits of condom use," he said.

First Cobra

LAS VEGAS, Nev.--If you've seen one on the road, it was probably leaving you in the dust somewhere. That's because cars made by Shelby are some of America's most powerful, with some boasting more than 1,000 horsepower, and top speeds well higher than most.

This year marks 50 years since Carroll Shelby produced the first Cobra. According to the Shelby museum, located at its headquarters in Las Vegas, Shelby "took the antiquated AC 'Ace' chassis, inserted a new small block Ford engine, and re-engineered the car to handle all the additional power. Weighing only 2,020 pounds, the Cobra easily vanquished sports cars from Jaguar, Chevrolet, Porsche, Aston Martin, and others. And in 1965, Shelby's Cobra team wrested the sports car racing world championship from Ferrari."

This is the first Cobra ever produced, located in the Shelby Museum, and according to the company's vice president of operations Gary Patterson, Shelby America recently turned down a $25 million offer for the car.

Ancient Map Of “America” Found In Germany

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

In time for Fourth of July festivities, Librarians at a German university announced on

Tuesday that they have found a 500-year-old version of a world map that was the first to

have mentioned “America.”

The librarians were unaware of the map’s presence until they found it stashed away inside

an unrelated 16th century Geometry book.

The map doesn’t quite pre-date the 1507 map that Germany officially handed over to the

U.S. back in 2007, which now lies in the Library of Congress in Washington.

The newly discovered map is believed to have been drawn up by German cartographer Martin

Waldseemueller, who died back in 1522, according to the Ludwig Maximilian University of

Munich said.

The new map shows the world divided into twelve segments, which taper to a point at each

end and are printed on a single sheet. When the map is folded out, it can form a small

globe, with three rightmost segments depicting a boomerang-shaped territory named America.

The university said in a written statement that only four copies of the segmental maps were

previously known about.  One of the four was sold at an auction for one million dollars

back in 2005.

According to the university, the fifth map was found by a bibliographer, who was revising

the catalogue “in an otherwise unremarkable volume that had been rebound in the 19th

century.”

“Even in our digital age the originals have lost none of their significance and unique

fascination,” Klaus-Rainer Brintzinger, the head of the library, said in the statement. “

We intend to make the map accessible to the public in digital form in time for the Fourth

of July, Independence Day in the USA.”

Waldseemueller helped create the name “America” in honor of explorer Amerigo Vespucci,

who he mistakenly believed discovered the New World.

Sven Kuttner, head of the library’s old books department, said the map was a “sleeping

beauty” in the university’s collection until its recent unearthing.