Bieber stages concert at low-income Vegas school

In this May 10, 2011 photo, Canadian pop star Justin Bieber performs during his "My World Tour" concert in Manila, Philippines. Bieber is performing a private concert for an east Las Vegas elementary school that's gained publicity for services it provides for low-income families. Bieber's concert is set for Friday morning, Dec. 16, 2011, at Whitney Elementary School and comes after the singer pledged to donate $100,000 to the school. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

In this May 10, 2011 photo, Canadian pop star Justin Bieber performs during his "My World Tour" concert in Manila, Philippines. Bieber is performing a private concert for an east Las Vegas elementary school that's gained publicity for services it provides for low-income families. Bieber's concert is set for Friday morning, Dec. 16, 2011, at Whitney Elementary School and comes after the singer pledged to donate $100,000 to the school. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

LAS VEGAS (AP) ? Fifth-grader Jolie Leach says she "was gonna explode" with excitement when Justin Bieber performed a concert at her Las Vegas school, and vowed she'd never wash her hand after he gave her a high-five.

Leach was one of hundreds who showed clear symptoms of Bieber fever after the 17-year-old teen pop sensation staged a private show Friday at low-income Whitney Elementary School. The concert was filmed for an episode of "The Ellen Degeneres Show" and came two months after Bieber promised the school's 650 students a $100,000 donation.

"He really came for us. I'm so glad that he really came for us," said fourth-grader Kynedi Harris, holding a fluffy white stuffed dog picked from a truckload of toys Bieber distributed at his show.

Tucked in a downtrodden neighborhood on the east side of Las Vegas, Whitney Elementary has garnered publicity, including a September segment on Degeneres' show, for providing needy students' families with food, clothes, money for utility bills ? and just about everything in between.

Principal Sherrie Gahn said more than 85 percent of the school's 600-plus students receive free or reduced-price lunch. The school also has one of the highest homeless student populations in the Clark County School District.

Gahn, who said she used to see students pocketing ketchup packets from the cafeteria in hopes of having dinner at night, told "The Ellen Degeneres Show" she made a pact with families after she arrived about eight years ago.

"I'll pay your electrical bill, your utilities, I'll give you food or clothes, whatever you need, as long as you give me your child and then help raise that child as a person of character," she said.

Families at the school told the show Gahn has stayed true to her promise. One girl said Gahn provided her with a bed. A mother said the principal bought her son glasses. Another mother said the school provided her children with Christmas presents when she planned to skip the gift-giving.

Gahn said most of the donations come from individuals or businesses, and she said the show has brought hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations and an outpouring of support from across the country. The school also posts a "wish list" on its website, asking for granola bars, pop-top cans of soup and other non-perishable foods that homeless students can eat for dinner or over the weekend.

Bieber's gift matches a $100,000 donation from Target that was announced on the September TV special about the school. Most of the money will be used to continue basic support ? such as rent assistance ? to keep families off the street and children coming to class.

"My biggest motivator for the kids and the thought and the hope that they don't have to live in this existence when they grow up ? that they break the cycle," Gahn said.

Inside the closed event, Gahn said Bieber toured the campus and told students the story of his family's own financial struggles, including visits to a food bank when he was young. He performed songs from his Christmas album, "Under the Mistletoe," and invited the crowd to dance along to his hit "Baby."

Outside, dozens of squealing high school girls with camera phones jockeyed for a glimpse of the star as he was rushed into the building. Brittany Ellis, 14, had pulled out a scrap of paper just in time for a mobbed Bieber to autograph, and was showing her friends an indecipherable pencil scrawl.

Another girl, 17-year-old Kiersten Umberger, said she nearly cried when she saw Bieber.

"It was the best moment of my life," she said.

Teens from the neighborhood say the worn area is quiet, and certainly not the typical Vegas haunt for celebrities.

But parents and school officials said they were as grateful for the gifts from Bieber and Degeneres as the children were starstruck.

"In a world where these kids live in that things are not always their own or they're taken away," Gahn said, "they gave them memories that no one can ever take."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2011-12-16-People-Justin%20Bieber/id-0a28b6d6caab466fafa7d93c6f8df736

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Fed has no plans to help Europe, Dudley says (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? Europe's financial crisis poses a threat to U.S. banks and the economy but it is up to the continent's leaders -- not the Federal Reserve -- to find a resolution, a top official at the central bank said on Friday.

New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley defended the Fed's decision to lower the cost of dollar funds for overseas banks stressed by Europe's debt crisis as an important step to safeguard the U.S. economy, but he told lawmakers no further intervention was planned.

"I don't anticipate, even if the crisis in Europe were to worsen, further steps on the part of the Federal Reserve at this time," Dudley, a former Goldman Sachs partner, told a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee.

Both Dudley and senior U.S. Treasury official Mark Sobel told the panel the euro zone's festering debt crisis posed a big risk to the U.S. economy, and that the United States had an interest in seeing it put to rest.

Financial markets remain on edge about Europe's ability to put a floor under a bond market selloff that is pushing borrowing costs for countries such as Italy and Spain toward unsustainable levels.

Dudley said U.S. financial institutions were in good shape to withstand any blows from Europe and had little direct exposure to the European countries hardest-hit by the crisis.

However, he warned that their vulnerability was greater when countries such as France and Germany, as well as the European banking system, were taken into account.

"This means that if the crisis were to broaden further and intensify, this could put greater pressure on U.S. banks' capital and liquidity buffers," potentially choking off credit for U.S. households and businesses, Dudley said.

When pressed, Dudley said he could not rule out the possibility that the U.S. central bank might be willing to accept European debt as collateral for emergency loans to U.S. banks.

"I wouldn't necessarily rule it out, if the collateral is good collateral and is appropriately haircutted," he said, referring to the discount that borrowers must accept on collateral for emergency loans.

NO MORE MONEY FOR IMF

Sobel, the U.S. Treasury's deputy assistant secretary for international affairs, said Europe's debt crisis had deepened as he made a pitch for continued U.S. involvement through the International Monetary Fund.

Some Republican lawmakers have pushed to rescind a $100 billion U.S. credit line for the IMF approved in 2009, warning that U.S. taxpayer money could be put at risk. Democrats, however, have been successful in beating back that proposal.

While the IMF can play a role in easing the crisis, it "cannot substitute for a strong and credible European firewall and response," Sobel said.

He told lawmakers that President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner were "actively engaged" with European counterparts to help them deal with the crisis, but made clear Washington had no intention of pumping more money into the IMF.

In late November, the Fed collaborated with other central banks to prevent a global credit crunch stemming from the turmoil in Europe by lowering the cost of existing dollar swap lines. The arrangements permit the Fed to provide dollars to the European Central Bank and four other central banks in exchange for local currencies.

Like the funds for the IMF, the swap facilities have drawn criticism from U.S. lawmakers who say they could hand U.S. taxpayers the bill for a European financial bailout.

Steven Kamin, the head of the Fed's international finance division, tried to address those concerns in his testimony to the panel, arguing the swaps were safe for the Fed and U.S. taxpayers, and had already had a beneficial effect on dollar funding markets.

(Additional reporting by David Lawder, Glenn Somerville, David Clarke and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Tim Ahmann and James Dalgleish)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111216/bs_nm/us_eurozone_usa

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Putin hints at government return by ex-FinMin Kudrin (Reuters)

MOSCOW (Reuters) ? Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, bidding to return to the Kremlin, said on Thursday that ex-Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin could have a future role in government despite their differences over this month's parliamentary election.

"Such people were needed and will be needed in past and future governments," Putin told an annual televised call-in show in response to a question on Kudrin's political future.

Kudrin quit in September after 11 years in the job, directly after Putin announced his plan to seek a third term as president. At the time, he criticized a major increase in defense spending as a threat to the stability of state finances.

Investors would welcome a return to government by Kudrin, a fiscal hawk who restored state finances to health after Russia's domestic debt default of 1998, running fiscal surpluses and building the world's third-largest foreign exchange reserves.

"Kudrin bridges a gap in that he is a proven technocrat and very close to Putin -- he is respected in government and by investors," said Roland Nash, chief investment strategist at Moscow hedge fund Verno Capital.

"It would be surprising if he did not come back to government."

CRITICAL STANCE

Kudrin has, however, emerged as a critic of the conduct of the December 4 election and distanced himself from both Putin and the policy agenda of the ruling United Russia party that saw its parliamentary majority cut in the vote.

Speaking on Thursday, Kudrin strengthened his criticism of the election in which, the opposition alleges, United Russia's vote was inflated by ballot stuffing, multiple voting and doctoring of election lists.

"I myself support honest elections," Kudrin said. "The elections just held took place with major violations and we have not yet heard an adequate answer from those responsible, and in general from the powers that be."

He also took aim at disparaging comments by Putin during the call-in in which the premier said he had mistaken the white ribbons worn by protesters for condoms and said students had been paid to turn out.

"I don't agree with this attitude towards the protesters ... there is no need to provoke them," Kudrin told reporters.

LIBERAL PROJECT

Rather than publicly setting his sights on a return to government, Kudrin has said he could envisage taking a leading role in a future liberal party that could fill a political void left by the parliamentary election.

No liberal party won representation in Russia's lower house, with the liberal Right Cause party flopping after its billionaire leader, Mikhail Prokhorov, was ousted after a clash with the Kremlin. Prokhorov has declared his candidacy for the March 4 presidential vote but remains a rank outsider.

Putin, who said he had meet Kudrin this week, acknowledged that the two did not agree on everything but said their differences were not "cardinal."

"Alexei Leonidovich Kudrin has not left my team. We are old comrades, he's my friend," Putin said. "He did a lot for the country. I'm proud that this man worked in my government."

There has been speculation that Kudrin could become prime minister should Putin, as appears likely, be elected and should outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev not be appointed to the role.

"Kudrin is very close to Putin and the strength of his expression -- that Kudrin had never left his team -- was notable," said Tom Mundy, chief strategist at Otkritie, a Moscow brokerage.

"There is clearly space for Kudrin in the next cabinet. This will be welcomed by the market as he is a very respected politician."

(Writing by Douglas Busvine, editing by Gleb Bryanski and Rosalind Russell)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111215/wl_nm/us_russia_putin_kudrin

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A galaxy blooming with new stars

Thursday, December 15, 2011

The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) has captured the beauty of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 253. The new portrait is probably the most detailed wide-field view of this object and its surroundings ever taken. It demonstrates that the VST, the newest telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory, provides broad views of the sky while also offering impressive image sharpness.

NGC 253 gleams about eleven and a half million light-years away in the southern constellation of Sculptor. It is often just called the Sculptor Galaxy, although other descriptive names include the Silver Coin or Silver Dollar Galaxy. It is easy to get a good look at NGC 253 through binoculars as it is one of the brightest galaxies in the sky after the Milky Way's closest, big galactic neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy.

Astronomers have noted the widespread active star formation in NGC 253 and labelled it a "starburst" galaxy [1]. The many bright clumps dotting the galaxy are stellar nurseries where hot young stars have just ignited. The radiation streaming from these giant blue-white babies makes the surrounding hydrogen gas clouds glow brightly (green in this image).

This nearby spiral galaxy was discovered by the German?British astronomer Caroline Herschel, the sister of the famed astronomer William Herschel, as she searched for comets in 1783. The Herschels would have been delighted by the crisp, richly detailed view of NGC 253 that the VST can provide.

This latest image of NGC 253 was taken during VST's science verification phase ? when the telescope's scientific performance is assessed before it enters operations. The VST data are being combined with infrared images from VISTA to identify the younger generations of stars in NGC 253. This picture is more than 12 000 pixels across and the superb sky conditions at ESO's Paranal Observatory, combined with the fine telescope optics, result in sharp star images over the entire image.

The VST is a 2.6-metre wide-field survey telescope with a one-degree field of view ? twice as broad as the full Moon [2]. The VST programme is a joint venture between the INAF?Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte, Naples, Italy and ESO. The 268-megapixel camera OmegaCAM at its heart is designed to map the sky both quickly and with very fine image quality. VST is the largest telescope in the world designed to exclusively survey the sky in visible light, complementing ESO's VISTA infrared survey telescope, also located at Paranal.

Zooming into this new picture not only allows a very detailed inspection of the star-forming spiral arms of the galaxy to be made, but also reveals a very rich tapestry of much more distant galaxies far beyond NGC 253.

###

[1] Further details about NGC 253 have been revealed by ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) along with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. These instruments showed in 2009 that, at its centre, NGC 253 harbours a supermassive black hole with very similar properties to those of the black hole lurking in the Milky Way's core (see ESO Press Release eso0902 http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso0902/).

[2] The image presented here has been cropped and is slightly smaller than the full VST field of view.

ESO: http://www.eso.org

Thanks to ESO for this article.

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

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116051/A_galaxy_blooming_with_new_stars

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Deal of the Day: Seidio CONVERT Combo for Motorola Droid Bionic

The Dec. 16 Deal of the Day is the Seidio CONVERT Combo case for the Motorola Droid Bionic. It eliminates the need for two cases by combining a layer of rugged skin and skeleton and mating it to the Seidio Locking Holster. Don't need the extra protection one day? Just remove the rugged skin and skeleton and use the holster. The entire combo is available today only for just $26.95 -- that's 46 percent off! Get yours while supplies last.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/9JBAtyDOtfA/story01.htm

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Glam Media moves closer to IPO, filing seen in Q2 (Reuters)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) ? Glam Media, the women's lifestyle online publishing and advertising company, is close to selecting bankers to lead an initial stock offering slated for 2012, according to people familiar with the matter.

Investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are in the running to lead Glam Media's IPO, the people said, following a selection process that involved presentations from roughly a dozen firms.

While no final decision has been made on the exact timing of Glam's IPO, people close to the situation say the company is aiming to file a prospectus in the second quarter of 2012, with a potential offering slated for the third or fourth quarter of the year.

Glam Media declined to comment.

Glam's plans to float shares to the public come as several of its online peer companies have made similar moves.

On Tuesday, Jive Software made its Wall Street debut with shares jumping 25 percent on their first day of trading. Social game company Zynga is expected to price its IPO on Thursday.

Facebook, the world's No.1 Internet social networking company, is preparing for an IPO in 2012, a source familiar with the matter previously told Reuters.

Glam, which was launched in 2005, was the 10th most visited online property in the U.S. in October, according to comScore, with roughly 85 million unique visitors.

Glam was valued at $950 million when it acquired social networking service Ning for $150 million earlier this year, sources said.

The company, which works with more than 1,000 brand advertisers including Nike and Lexus, competes with Yahoo Inc and Google Inc in the online advertising market.

Glam is moving towards an IPO as it nears the 500 shareholder threshold, a rule which would require the company to file public reports of its financial performance by 2013, according to the sources.

Glam's moves to select IPO underwriters were first reported by Bloomberg on Wednesday.

The "bake-off" process in which banks pitch their services to handle Glam's IPO wrapped up a few weeks ago and Glam is currently deciding which firms will lead the offering. Bank of America, Citi and Credit Suisse are also in the running to have a role in the offering, according to the sources.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic, editing by Bernard Orr)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/enindustry/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111215/media_nm/us_glam

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"Dream ( after Lermontov)"

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