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Mar. 13, 2012 (Reuters) — Ahead of a presidential election widely considered a referendum on President Barack Obama’s job creation efforts Replica tissot watches, all but two states reported improving jobless rates in January from a year ago, with some swing states hitting the lowest rates in three years. A job seekers holds his binder filled with resumes as he waits in line before speaking with a recruiter during a health care job fair at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix Replica tag heuer watches, Arizona November 4, 2009. REUTERS/Joshua Lott

The Labor Department also said on Tuesday that 45 out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia had drops in their jobless rates in January from December.

The improvements encompassed all swing states where neither President Barack Obama nor his future Republican opponent have a clear overwhelming majority.

Because of the unique U.S. electoral system where states cast votes for President, the employment situations of some areas could influence the presidential election more than others. Ten states in particular are considered toss-ups representing 130 electoral votes. A candidate must collect 270 electoral votes to win.

Coming into office at the height of the financial crisis, Obama quickly bailed out banks and automobile companies and enacted a package of spending and tax measures intended to create thousands of jobs.

Only recently has the national unemployment rate edged down, however, reaching a three-year low of 8.3 percent in February and January. In January, 35 states fell to that rate or lower.

Of the 10 swing states, only three had rates higher than the national one. The rate in Nevada was 12.7 percent. In North Carolina it was 10.2 percent and in Florida 9.6 percent.

The fight over job creation could be particularly tough in Nevada, which flourished during the housing boom, leaving it vulnerable to the real estate collapse. The recession also kept many Americans away from entertainment cities Las Vegas and Reno. Nevada has had the highest unemployment rate in the nation for at least a year and a half.

Still, its January rate was the lowest since September 2008 and well below the state’s record high of 14 percent reached in October 2010, nearly two years after Obama won the election.

Over the three years Obama has been in office, North Carolina and Florida also hit record high jobless rates, both reaching 11.4 percent two years ago. But in January 2012, North Carolina’s rate was the lowest since April 2009 and Florida’s the lowest since March 2009.

In Colorado, another swing state, the jobless rate climbed to a record 9 percent at the end of 2010. By January, it had fallen to 7.8 percent, the lowest since March 2009.

Swing state Iowa’s rate of 5.4 percent in January was the lowest since December 2008, as was Missouri’s 7.5 percent. New Hampshire’s January rate of 5.2 percent and Virginia’s 5.8 percent were the lowest since January 2009.

Ohio, a swing state that proved crucial to President George W. Bush’s win in 2004, registered its lowest rate since November 2008, 7.7 percent. After Texas and New York, the manufacturing-heavy state also added the most jobs in the month, 32,800.

Even though its unemployment rate fell in January, Florida lost the most jobs of all the states that month, 38,600. Pennsylvania, another swing state, followed, shedding 9,000 jobs.

After the fight over which candidate won Florida in the 2000 presidential election went all the way to the Supreme Court, the country has closely watched the state’s politics.

Its governor, Rick Scott, is a Republican who came to power as part of a wave of conservative anger that pushed Democrats out of office across the nation in 2010, but the state’s 29 electoral votes, the most of any swing state’s, are still considered up for grabs in 2012.

Four years ago, the story of how politics and economics connect was centered in one state: Michigan.

Throughout the 2008 primaries and general election, it had the highest jobless rate in the nation, as massive financial struggles at the three leading U.S. automobile companies took a heavy toll on factory jobs.

For the last year, the state has experienced a radical turnaround. According to its labor department, its January jobless rate of 8.9 percent was the lowest since September 2008 and marked the fourth straight month of an unemployment rate under 10 percent. The state gained 16,000 jobs in January.

“With the rate decline in January, Michigan’s unemployment rate has fallen by around five full percentage points since the end of the national recession in mid-2009,” said Rick Waclawek, director of the Bureau of Labor Market Information and Strategic Initiatives.

The state and its 16 electoral votes are in play in the 2012 election, but currently are counted as leaning toward Obama.

In January, North Dakota again had the lowest jobless rate, 3.2 percent. Texas gained the most jobs, 67,200.

Among the 50 states, only New York’s unemployment rate rose in January, to 8.3 percent from 8.2 percent in January 2011, while the rate in Illinois was the same as last year, 9.4 percent.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Birthdays are always weird. It’s the one day a year when the focus is on you (unless you write about your personal life…ahem) but it happens every year. Birthdays, again to use my sneeze analogy, are just bound to happen. I love to throw big parties and celebrations, but the actual day of celebration is just…weird.

There’s all this pressure to have THE BEST DAY EVER OMG IT WAS JUST LIKE JUSTIN BIEBER BARFED A RAINBOW happy. I personally enjoy the text messages and lovely flowers and cupcakes that I eat with aplomb, but something about birthdays has always made me uneasy.

Maybe I’ll chock it up to being nervous that my locker wouldn’t get the ribbon and wrapping paper mark of friendship in the fifth grade hall, or that the boy I was hooking up with would acknowledge that yes, I am in fact one day older, today.

You always sort of secretly wish that your birthday will basically be an epic montage of every pinnacle moment in a teen movie: Jake Ryan, holding Yogiberry, with his iphone (have to make some adjustments here), or that Freddie Prinze Jr. will ask you to dance Replica Omega Watches, or that Heath Ledger will buy you a guitar (and by guitar I mean…necklace?) In writing that list I realized those all revolve around men. Analyze that, Jezebel.

I love to see who posts on my Facebook wall. Each and every post is treasured, but extremely and utterly random. A good friend will write something soppy and/or unintelligible to anyone other than you (UGH I HOPE YOU’RE “DANCING” WITH “DOUG” RIGHT NOW!!! I don’t remember who Doug is the code name for anyway). This post will then be followed by someone that you a) haven’t seen in five years and b) aren’t even sure you know. Either way, it’s very nice and sweet.

Birthdays and dating are also hard – do you throw him a party? Do you let him plan one for you? Do you get him anything even though you’ve only been dating for two months but you’ve thought of something cute already but you don’t want to come across as a Stage 5 Clinger? Sigh.

This year, since FFJD is now like, rly important and stuff Replica Tag heuer watches, I decided to do what other starlets do – have a sponsored birthday party. The pictures haven’t run yet, (I sold them exclusively to Star right next to the MISCHA BARTON CELLULITE SECTION) but I’m confident that I looked pretty good in the middle of that staged water gun fight hosted by Jon Gosselin and Kristin Cavallari at Wet Republic.

The night was then followed by a blowout at Tao, where my cake was actually in the shape of “FFJD” and was presented to me as I ceremoniously blew out the candles, with my skinny arm out. I begged Scott to not pick a fight with Kourtney in the club and punch someone. It was my night.

At the end of the evening, just as I thought that my night couldn’t get any better, James Franco asked me to be his Oscar date. I agreed, but if and only if Rodarte designs. He sighed and said, “you’re just not allowed to write about me.” How FFJD.

This year was an overwhelming and wonderful display of affection. So thank you to everyone, and I’m happy it’s February 17.

___
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Anyone who has kids — or who has been around them for any length of time — knows they are attracted to video games like moths to light. You might be tempted to think these young-uns are using their time idly.

In reality, they’re pioneering the future of business training and education.

This is part of a trend I call gameification, which I first identified in the early ’80s and is today reaching its tipping point.

Gameification represents part of a predictable sequence. Many of the greatest technological advances in business have come originally from the world of kids and their games. Here’s how the sequence flows:

First, an innovative concept or new technology often starts out in the world of games for children. Sometimes it’s the military (or in times past Replica Tag heuer Watches, the space program) that serves as the launch point. But it’s amazing how often it’s kids’ games.
From there it sooner or later gains the attention of the adults in the business community as they learn how to adapt and apply it to their needs.
Finally, it creeps into the education sector.

Just look at the evolution of social media.

When new social-media sites such as FaceBook and Twitter first launched, who were the first to get on board? Young people. Adults didn’t see the value. (Who really cares what you had for lunch or what outfit someone wore to the dance?) Eventually adults in the business world started seeing how social media could be used for tasks like brand management, marketing, and collaboration, and began embracing the tools their teenage kids had long mastered.

New Thresholds of Interactivity

Social media and video games are very different technologies, but the migration pattern is the same. And with game-controller systems like the Wii and Xbox Kinect giving us radical new ways of interacting with technology, the business world is finally on the threshold of becoming gameified.

In the past, gaming meant sitting passively in front of a computer or television screen and using a game pad, joystick, or keyboard to play against the computer or online opponent. No more. With Nintendo’s interactive Wii, players began standing up and getting physically involved in their games. Microsoft’s Kinect eliminated the need for a hand-held controller entirely, with players using movements of their hands and bodies to manipulate the game.

Thanks to Microsoft’s software development kit for the Kinect, university students are writing software that lets users control business software using hand motions alone — no keyboard or mouse. You want to go to the next page? Just sweep your hand in the air, past your screen. Sweep left, sweep right Replica Cartier watches, scroll up, scroll down… Remember in Minority Report how Tom Cruise could maneuver data in the air without touching anything? Science fiction to science fact. Interactive gaming like this will transform the nature of training and education.

Five Core Elements

Based on 25 years of research, I’ve identified five core elements that can dramatically accelerate learning when applied together.

1) Self-Diagnostic. In the world of gaming, the more feats you accomplish, the greater challenges the game gives you. Power down and the game remembers where you left off, so when you return to the game, you don’t have to start over from scratch.

How much time have you wasted sitting through business trainings that mostly covered things you already knew, just to learn those few key items you didn’t? Why not give your business training a self-diagnostic component, like advanced video games?

2) Interactivity. For centuries education and training have been mostly passive experiences: someone stands in front of the group and talks, and the trainees sit and listen. You might get some hands-on practice in a lab, but that’s comparatively rare.

In advanced video games you move things around and manipulate items. You interact with the information. You are engaged and immersed — and learning is far more effective when you interact with the material. Why not create an interactive module for your business training?

3) Immersion . With early 3D technology (including today’s 3D movies and 3D televisions) you have to wear special glasses to make the images pop out at you. With newer technology the 3D is interspatial: instead of images popping out at you, you enter them. You become immersed in the information.

When you’re training salespeople on, say, a particular manufacturing tool they’re going to sell, why not have them see the tool in 3D and get to manipulate the tool (virtually) rather than have them read spec sheets about it?

4) Competition. Humans are naturally competitive. We want to sell more, be more productive, and innovate faster and better than the next person. When you sit in class learning, there’s little competitive value. Whether you learn the materials in one hour or three, no one advances until the class is over.

When you compete in a game, there’s an adrenaline rush that keeps you engaged and focused on the task at hand. In an effort to win, people master concepts faster so they can be first.

5) Focus. When you play a game, you’re forced to focus. You have to do A before B can occur. If you don’t focus on doing A, you don’t get very far. Focus is enhanced by interactivity, competition, immersion, and self-diagnosis. And when you can focus, you can learn virtually anything — fast.

Accelerate Learning

When you model your company’s training to include these five elements, your employees will learn more in less time and have better results.

Using all five core elements is the key to accelerating learning. With more and more to learn, it will be increasingly important to gamily both business and education to create better results faster. Since businesses spend large sums of money on training and education, any tool that can accelerate or enhance learning will save both time and dollars. Those companies and school districts that adopt early will be the long-term winners.

So here’s your homework assignment: Get together with a kid and play one of their games. While you’re playing, think about and how you could reinvent learning with tools like these.

Daniel Burrus (www.burrus.com) and John David Mann (www.johndavidmann.com) are coauthors of Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible.

A revised computer analysis incorporates suggestions from the embattled climate denier

On Valentine’s day, an unknown whistleblower leaked several secret internal documents to the press belonging to the climate denial outfit The Heartland Institute, including a controversial plan to teach antiscience climate denial in a national K12 science curriculum.

Heartland remained surprisingly quiet about the leak for about twenty four hours. Then the next day, the organization issued a statement acknowledging the leak but claiming that one of the leaked documents was a “fake.”

This was surprising, since the document, titled “Confidential Memo: 2012 Heartland Climate Strategy Replica Omega Watches,” (PDF) simply recapitulates the information contained in much more incriminating detail in Heartland’s undisputed Fundraising Plan (PDF). Why all the fuss over the strategy memo? Did Heartland have something to hide?

A clairvoyant claim

In the days that followed, Heartland-aligned blogger Steven Mosher quickly identified the most likely whistleblower as renown climate scientist Peter Gleick. This was a stunningly specific claim and potentially libelous, particularly on the basis of the limited evidence Mosher offered: that the strategy memo, unlike the other documents, had been scanned in; that its metadata indicated a pacific coast time zone; and that it had some stylistic similarities to the way Peter Gleick writes, especially in the use of parentheses and commas – similarities that others noted were also common in the undisputed leaked documents, seemingly invalidating this as criteria for such a bold and public conclusion.

It seemed to me that to make such a certain and specific public claim, which even commenters on Heartland-aligned blogger Anthony Watts’ blog later called “near-clearvoyant” [sic], Mosher must have had more solid evidence than he was publicly indicating.

Then Gleick stepped forward and admitted that Mosher was right: he had, in fact, been the person who duped the Heartland Institute into sending him their documents, by posing as a board member.

Wow! Mosher must be a genius! How did he do that!!?

Something rotten in Denmark

In his post indentifying himself as the whistleblower Gleick offered a possible clue. He said someone had mailed the climate strategy memo to him anonymously, and in trying to authenticate its details, he had gone on a fishing expedition in Lake Heartland and landed a lunker – the large cache of far more detailed, incriminating, and undisputed documents.

Could it be that someone aligned with Heartland had sent Gleick the climate strategy memo but didn’t expect him to turn the tables on them? Could that be why Mosher and others so confidently fingered Gleick so quickly – because they already knew beyond any doubt? After all, there are probably millions of scanners owned by tree huggers in the pacific time zone. Why immediately, publicly, clairvoyantly, even recklessly pick Gleick, at the risk of a lawsuit? Mosher’s explanations didn’t add up.

A stylometric computer analysis

Several days ago, Heartland Institute-aligned climate denial blogger Anthony Watts made an interesting suggestion. To prove whether or not the document was authored by Gleick, people could use stylometry and textometry. Watts even helpfully suggested a well-regarded open source java app called JGAAP that purports to do this, and directed people to give it a try.

I decided to take him up on it.

I reported on this experiment some days ago. I used the program to perform analyses of documents written by Peter Gleick, Heartland Staff, and Heartland Institute president Joe Bast, and to compare their writing styles to the allegedly fake climate strategy memo. Surprisingly, the program indicated that of those three options, by far the most likely author of the allegedly forged Heartland climate strategy memo was not Peter Gleick, not Heartland staff, but Heartland Institute president Joe Bast.

Now, before anyone gets too excited, I want to say I am not pulling a Steven Mosher here. The program and my methodology may be subject to flaws. I may have typographical errors in my documents that could influence the results. I may not have chosen the best methods of analysis. The documents I selected may not be a large enough representative sample of the respective writings of the various authors. I may not have chosen a broad enough selection of authors. The program may contain logical or mathematical errors. I would encourage others to attempt to replicate Replica Tag heuer Watches, critique, and perform other analyses.

A surprising response

Because of the uncertainties, I supplied links to the program and the documents I used so others could replicate my work, and I invited readers to criticize my methodology.

Then I got a surprise. One of the most compelling criticisms came from none other than Heartland Institute president Joe Bast, who posted a very lengthy explanation on the Heartland Institute website, accompanied by a statement (PDF) explaining why we should agree that the memo is a fake despite its recapitulating the other documents in lesser detail. Further, Bast argued, he was not the author, and offered this critique:

Computerized Text Analysis

Efforts apparently are underway to use authorship analysis software to find the true author or authors of the memo. Since the memo contains so much material copied and pasted from, or paraphrases of, my own writing, such a comparison of the content and writing style of the forged memo and the stolen documents wouldn’t rule me out as a possible author of the memo. I hope persons conducting such analyses will use the text highlighted in the forged memo attached to this current essay, rather than the entire memo, so that their investigation is limited to the actual words of the forger rather than my own.

Bast’s high level of concern that he be “ruled out” as an author of the memo again seems striking, but his critique contains what seems like a reasonable suggestion. It’s possible that the analyses identified Bast as the most likely author because so much of the strategy memo appears to be cut and pasted from other Heartland documents that he apparently wrote himself.

Bast provided a new version of the strategy memo in which he highlighted the areas that he said had not been cut and pasted from his other writings (PDF) but were rather the work of “the forger” and suggested that only those areas should be used in any stylometric analysis.

To be as fair and objective as possible, I decided to rerun my stylometric analyses only on those sections of writing Bast himself identified.

Methodology

I began by copying only the text in the disputed climate strategy memo that Bast highlighted as not being cut and pasted from the other Heartland documents. I pasted them into a word document, which you can download to replicate my work (DOCX). You can compare the word document to Bast’s PDF to confirm that I only copied the text he identified.

I then ran the analysis precisely as before, using the exact same parameters. From the JGAAP documentation:

Among the simplest to understand conceptually is the so-called “nearest neighbor” algorithms; in this method, we “embed” each document into a high level abstract space of events. Each test document will be examined to see which of the training documents it is “closest” to; for example, if a document is 0.05 units away from a poem by Shakespeare, but 1.75 units away from Spencer, it’s more likely to be by Shakespeare.

Results

Of the six known author choices of: The Original Climate Strategy Memo (as a control), Peter Gleick 1 & 2, Joe Bast 1 & 2, and Heartland Staff, here are the scores JGAAP assigned for the most likely authorship of the climate strategy memo “forger’s” language Bast identified, ranked from most likely author to least likely author under the same three analyses as before:

Forger’s strategy memo language per Bast.docx

Canonicizers: none
Analyzed by Nearest Neighbor Driver with metric Camberra Distance using Character 2Grams as events
1. Original Climate Strategy Memo 2.383187766675455
2. Joe Bast 2 2.9475177474704637
3. Peter Gleick 2 5.897504106656031
4. Heartland Staff 6.248560726914315
5. Joe Bast 10.685914472504823
6. Peter Gleick 11.393316484623435

Analyzed by Nearest Neighbor Driver with metric Camberra Distance using Word 2Grams as events
1. Joe Bast 2 3.6909680918553427
2. Heartland Staff 4.538336544898377
3. Original Climate Strategy Memo 5.194939408160381
4. Peter Gleick 2 10.459679587471603
5. Joe Bast 12.951829867316958
6. Peter Gleick 16.192515938693514

Analyzed by Nearest Neighbor Driver with metric Camberra Distance using Word stems as events
1. Joe Bast 2 7.000819201427195
2. Heartland Staff 7.637334302162223
3. Original Climate Strategy Memo 8.045029041744858
4. Peter Gleick 2 11.391513804534949
5. Peter Gleick 17.094372831175303
6. Joe Bast 17.512155036801435

Conclusion

According to the above analyses by the JGAAP software, which as I caution above may contain unknown errors, and considering only the “forger’s” language not cut and pasted from other Heartland documents as identified by Heartland Institute president Joe Bast, the most likely author of the climate strategy memo is – still – Heartland Institute president Joe Bast.

Which leads me back to my earlier questions: how did Mosher and other Heartland-aligned climate denial bloggers know immediately and with such a high confidence that the whistleblower was Peter Gleick when as we see this is tricky stuff, and why is Joe Bast going to such great lengths to disavow the memo?

Get Shawn Lawrence Otto’s new book: Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America, Starred Kirkus Review; Starred Publishers Weekly review. Visit him at Like him on Facebook. Join ScienceDebate.org to get the presidential candidates to debate science.

“What’s this weeks petty irrelevant moral panic we’ll all sit around discussing in pubs and on the BBC’s Daily Politics show?”, I often wake up asking myself.

Oh yes, right on cue, Dianne Abbott is now a reverse racist, because of one of those cheap easy stories the press are dining out on at the moment, that requires no journalistic effort at all, a Twitter quote has come to light. Now of course, let’s all turn this twitter gem in to a major crisis where we can all play out the seasonal Panto charade of:

“Look! We live in a REAL democracy, to exemplify this look at this trivial, menial, political debate…it is in fact far more than this Replica Cartier Watches, don’t be fooled…it is in fact a crucial issue defining our democratic future…honest guv…we care on principle about this issue…not just the media frenzy it creates for us “

And yet, simultaneously, despite the uproar, our national discourse remains utterly ignorant of the real meaning of racism today in Britain and the world. In this instance the truth is too offensive. When people allude to that truth (racism) it makes too many people uncomfortable, so they jump up and down on it like a conflagrating bush fire.

The staples of any moral panic stories today consist of the following components:

Firstly, the Chernobyl catastrophe of a quote – ”White people love playing ‘divide & rule’” – must be viewed in complete isolation in Guantanamo style quarantine, unable to associate with its brother and sister quotes that provide that special little word, context. Context is a slutty noun, and if it opens it’s legs to a more holistic accurate truth, then the moral panic might be exposed as the pointless hyperbole it is…god forbid.

Secondly, whilst the offending quote is held in isolation deprived of the dignity of an historical or social justification and context; the journalistic charlatans squawk around like seagulls (the difference being seagulls perform their role to society admirably) and disseminate the significance of Abotts remarks. “will you resign?” “should she resign?” “when will she resign?” “this is unacceptable” “do you agree it’s unacceptable?”. Notice how during these crisis media commentators always define for us what is and isn’t acceptable, without explaining why and assuming everybody instinctively agrees.

The third component of course is a man of leadership that substitutes his titanium spine for one made of Daily Mail paper mashie. A man who embodies the post Tony Blair model of a male politician, that violently swings like a weather vein to the right whenever a manufactured storm blows his way and threatens his electoral potential. To hell with political convictions Ed, make sure the prowls say the right thing at those poles and keep the condemnations coming. Which means curiously in England at present when someone’s convicted of racism people wear T-shirts in solidarity and Kenny ‘it’s still 1980′ Dalgish publicly defends you like a martyr. However if you’re a black minority shadow Health minister, for a party supposedly founded on socially progressive values, who happens to speak out against real racism, then you grovel and beg for forgiveness whilst your boss joins in the kicking.

The fourth component in this particular instance, are the smug anti PC freedom fighters that all pat themselves on the back and say “ohhhh, typical, so they can say that about us but we can’t say anything about them”. As though it’s a race battle. Or as though racism doesn’t disproportionately affect those with skin of a more noir variety, and as though white people in the UK, in all honesty, feel truly threatened by racism against themselves.

How incredible, that in the week of the Steven Lawrence trials verdict (that once again indicates institutional racism in the UK) that reactionary political opportunists can show so little humility and restraint when a black politician has the audacity to speak the unspeakable reality; that many white people are racist, and our country has been historically racist. God forbid she go further and tell us that conservative and Labour politicians alike (as the farcical reactionary public PR diatribes after the London riots showed all too clearly) evidently could care less about the plights of under privileged discriminated minorities, that are driven to such desperate actions partly as a consequence of such nationwide racism (according to a Guardian investigation). In reality she should and could say far more…but the establishment doesn’t want to hear it.

The fundamental truth is this. Most people are ignorant of racial issues, which is why they get so hot under the collar when a black woman such as Abbott calls white peoples bluffs. They may know it’s wrong to call someone a nigger, or deny them equal treatment on racial grounds, but they do not truly understand racism because they do not, and probably will not, ever truly experience it. Racism for me is not just a verbal put down; it is systemic economic and social deprivation affecting disproportionately those of an ethnic minority. Those who so often brandish the name of Martin Luther King with admiration would do well to remember what he actually frequently preached until death, and what today is more frequently forgotten: That racism is the language of the oppressor, the language of the colonial imperialist and economic dominator. The subtleties of this exploitation today may be greater than decades since, but the basic realities remain true. Blacks disproportionately suffer, whilst whites relatively prosper, fact.

Perhaps to combat this ignorance as a nation and atone for our appalling colonial past of pillage and genocide (which, shock horror, consisted of the very real, very deliberately instigated policy of ‘divide and rule’ over those black folk we ruled and exploited) we should be reeducated. Perhaps if people read books like The blood never dried: a history of the British empire and were less inclined to view shows like Caroline Quentins series of jolly apologetics for the British Empire throughout India, or ingest Gordon Browns outrageous claim we should be “proud” of our past, then perhaps Abbotts quote would seem less unacceptable.

How funny that the political establishment (seemingly in collusion with he BBC) staged such a Valliant fight against the BNP on Question Time Replica Tag heuer Watches, who peddle such insultingly racist ideas. Yet smelt no sense of irony when they universally condemned a black female MP for the outrageous crime of speaking about equally as unacceptable past and present racism.

Racism obviously is wrong in all its forms, against whites as much as blacks, I would not dare say otherwise for it would be to abandon intellectual integrity. But until the white population and political leaders generally take a good hard look at themselves and say we have acknowledged our racist past and are doing our upmost to alleviate our racist present, they have no right to falsely claim to be the victims of inverted racism. You are not. You never have been. And all this exaggerated trivial palaver for what is in reality cheap political point scoring between the two pantomime parties of today, smelling blood and votes in the water, is a sham. Such misplaced hysteria does a great disservice to what is a very serious pressing issue now, as much as it was 50 to 200 years ago. So let us gain a sense of proportional perspective and righteousness before we cry victims against one of the few politicians left in our country people can bare to stomach.

AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine’s highest court has declined to find GMAC Mortgage in contempt for signing off on a home foreclosure without first verifying documents — a practice often referred to as “robo-signing.”

In a 5-1 decision on Tuesday, the Supreme Judicial Court upheld a decision by a lower court last year. Judge Keith Powers stopped short in that ruling of finding GMAC in contempt Replica tag heuer watches, though he did find the company submitted the foreclosure affidavit on behalf of Fannie Mae in bad faith.

The case involved a Maine woman who was unable to make her monthly mortgage payments after losing her job.

GMAC’s parent company issued a statement saying it was pleased with Tuesday’s ruling.

The company remains the target of a separate class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of Maine homeowners.

By Jim Brunsden

(Updates with Danish plans for Basel liquidity rule starting in second paragraph.)

Feb. 29 (Bloomberg) — Bank regulators in European Union nations may retain powers to set capital levels on lenders they deem too big to fail, in a possible compromise to implement Basel rules in the region.

Under the plans, regulators would be free to force some or all lenders in their jurisdiction to hold a “systemic risk buffer” of as high as 3 percentage points, according to a document obtained by Bloomberg News. The measures drawn up by Denmark, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency Replica tag heuer watches, may also relax a planned liquidity rule forcing banks to hold enough easy-to-sell assets to survive a 30-day credit squeeze.

The compromise plan follows a clash over proposals by Michel Barnier, the bloc’s financial services chief, to fix banks’ core capital requirements at 7 percent of their risk- weighted assets Replica vacheron constantin watches, with limited exceptions for national regulators to set higher thresholds during credit booms. The U.K. and Sweden have said that Barnier’s plans would be an unacceptable limit on national powers.

The European Commission, the 27-nation EU’s executive arm, would have veto power over decisions to raise the buffer higher than three percentage points of core capital, according to the Danish document, dated Feb. 28.

‘Viable Approach’

The Danish proposals would give extra “flexibility” to national regulators to go beyond the 7 percent threshold and may “constitute a viable approach for reaching a compromise,” according to the document.

The national measures would go beyond a decision by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision last year to impose capital surcharges on banks whose failure would roil the global economy.

Under the Danish plan, national regulators would be able to set tougher capital rules on lenders not identified by the Basel committee as requiring a surcharge.

“There’s not much justification,” for Barnier’s proposal to cap capital requirements said Karel Lannoo, chief executive officer of the Centre for European Policy Studies, a Brussels- based research institute.

“You have to make a distinction between harmonization of the definition of capital and maximum harmonization of the capital level,” Lannoo said in a telephone interview. “Like any market, there should be competition.”

EU nations and lawmakers in the European Parliament must agree on Barnier’s draft law before it can enter into force. Chantal Hughes, Barnier’s spokeswoman, declined to immediately comment.

In a possible relaxation of a minimum liquidity rule, banks may be allowed under the Danish plan to use a wider range of assets than envisaged by the Basel committee.

Easy-to-Sell

The European Banking Authority should assess by mid-2013 whether some residential-mortgage backed securities, equities listed on a recognized exchange and gold should count toward meeting the so-called liquidity coverage ratio.

The London-based EBA drafts technical rules and coordinates the work of national regulators in the EU.

The version of the liquidity rule published by the Basel committee has been criticized by some EU governments and banks as overly restrictive as it recognizes few assets other than sovereign debt as highly liquid.

The Association for Financial Markets in Europe, which represents international lenders including Deutsche Bank AG, BNP Paribas SA and UBS AG, has said that the measure may make it harder for lenders to spread their risks. Denmark has warned that the rule would threaten its mortgage market.

The EU may also delay the implementation of the ratio. The Basel committee has said the standard should be binding on lenders from Jan. 1 2015. The Danish proposals say that the measure should apply from end 2015 “at the latest.”

The Basel committee brings together regulators from 27 nations including the U.S., U.K. and China to coordinate bank capital rules.

–Editors: Peter Chapman, Jones Hayden

To contact the reporter on this story: Jim Brunsden in Brussels at jbrunsden@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net

Business Exchange E-mail Print READER DISCUSSION

By Brian K. Sullivan

(Updates with warm weather so far this winter, starting in third paragraph.)

Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) — A storm developing off the East Coast will probably bring 2 to 4 inches (5 to 10 centimeters) of snow to New York and Boston over the weekend, the National Weather Service said.

Heavy snowfall began in Chicago at midday. The Eastern storm will move south and east of Long Island and mix with colder air from the north, spreading snow across the New York area starting late tonight, said John Murray, a weather service meteorologist in Upton, New York.

Ice and snow have been rare in much of the U.S. this winter. The two-month start of the season, December and January, was the fourth-warmest on record with an average temperature 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit (2.1 Celsius) above normal, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“There have been glancing blows of the cold but it won’t stay for the couple of periods where it is brutally cold like we have had in other winters,” said Paul Walker, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania.

Most of New York’s snowfall will come into the afternoon tomorrow, Murray said by telephone.

“An arctic front will be moving through Saturday night and we still could see some snow showers Saturday night without much additional accumulation,” he said.

Boston Snowfall

Snow will begin falling in Boston during the day tomorrow, said Charlie Foley, an agency meteorologist in Taunton, Massachusetts. The suburbs south of the city may receive 4 to 6 inches Replica tag heuer watches, while rain is more likely for Cape Cod and the Massachusetts islands, he said.

In Chicago, a winter weather advisory was issued for lake- effect snow that is expected to leave about 3 inches on the ground before ending tonight, according to the weather service.

Snow covers 28.4 percent of the lower 48 states as of today Replica vacheron constantin watches, the second-lowest amount for Feb. 10 since records starting being kept in 2004, said Carrie Olheiser of the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center in Chanhassen, Minnesota. The lowest was 25.1 percent in 2006.

Winter Totals

Since Oct. 1, 7.2 inches of snow has fallen in New York’s Central Park, about 7.7 inches below normal, according to the weather service. Last year, 57.7 inches of snow had fallen by Feb. 10, the agency said.

In Boston, 6.8 inches has fallen since Dec. 1, 18.6 fewer than normal. Last year, 71.2 inches of snow had fallen by Feb. 10, according to the weather service.

Twenty-two states from Montana to Maine had temperatures for the period ranking in their 10 warmest, according to NOAA.

New York has averaged 5.5 degrees above normal since Dec. 1 and Boston 5.4 degrees above normal, Walker said by telephone.

After the snow moves through New York, high temperatures will be in the 20s north of the city and in the 30s for Central Park the day after tomorrow. Temperatures are expected to near 50 later in the week in New York and to be in the lower 40s in Boston, according to the weather service.

The storm may also bring less than an inch of snow to Philadelphia overnight, the agency said. Snow may fall in Baltimore and Washington, although it isn’t expected to accumulate.

–Editors: Charlotte Porter, David Marino

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at dstets@bloomberg.net

Business Exchange E-mail Print READER DISCUSSION

Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa on Saturday said the power shortage in the state would start easing from June this year.

Replying to the debate on the motion of thanks to the governor for his address, Jayalalithaa said: “By June this year, 1,950 MW capacity and another 600 MW generation capacity would be added in October. The power shortage would ease from June onwards and by 2013 middle, the power shortage would be ended.”

She said that had only the previous DMK government followed up the projects initiated by her government during 2001-06, Tamil Nadu would have added 3 Replica tag heuer watches,000 MW power capacity.

Jayalalithaa said her government has taken various steps soon after coming to power, following which the Vallur 500 MW unit would be started by March this year, from which the state’s share would be 375 MW.

The second and third units at Vallur would be commissioned this June and next February and the 600 MW units at Mettur and North Chennai Thermal Power Station and would also be commissioned this March and October respectively.

According to her, the increase in the plant load factor of the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board’s (TNEB) power plants and purchase of power at cheaper rates has resulted in an outgo of Rs.1,662 crore.

Citing the huge debt burden of TNEB – Rs.50 Replica cartier watches,000 crore – and the Rs.11,500 crore outstandings to the power generators, Jayalalithaa said TNEB is paying the old debt out of new loans.

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