Twitter and Nielsen pair up to publish new "social TV" ratings

Nielsen Holdings NV, the television viewership measurement company, said on Monday it will partner with Twitter to publish a new set of ratings that measure chatter on Twitter about TV programming.
The new measurement, dubbed the "Nielsen Twitter TV Rating," seeks to tap into the stream of viewer commentary and armchair musings generated on "second screens" - the smartphones and tablets perched on Twitter users' laps while they watch, say, Monday Night Football or the latest episode of "Homeland" on their TVs.
The new ratings, to be launched next fall, arrive at a moment when media and advertising industry executives say they are observing a shift in TV viewing habits that include the rise of "second screen" use.
But significant questions remain for advertisers over how best to interpret the data and whether a Twitter ratings system is meaningful at all.
In September, Nielsen ratings showed that TV viewership for Viacom Inc's MTV Video Music Awards, which coincided with the Democratic National Convention, plummeted by more than 50 percent from a year ago. Yet social media chatter tripled, according to the research firm Trendrr.
Brad Adgate, an analyst at Horizon Media, said advertisers will view the Twitter ratings as a useful layer of information about a show's popularity, but it is "not going to be close to the currency" of existing ratings metrics.
"It lets producers and creative directors know if the storyline is working, like a huge focus group," Adgate said. "But I don't think you can translate comments to ratings for a show. Right now I think the bark right now is bigger than its bite."
The new ratings will measure the number of people discussing a show on Twitter, as well as those who are exposed to the chatter, to provide the "precise size of the audience and effect of social TV to TV programming," Nielsen said.
"As the experience of TV viewing continues to evolve, our TV partners have consistently asked for one common benchmark from which to measure the engagement of their programming," Chloe Sladden, Twitter's vice president of media, said in a post on the company blog on Monday. "This new metric is intended to answer that request, and to act as a complement and companion to the Nielsen TV rating."
Mark Burnett, executive producer of NBC's hit "The Voice," argued that advertisers should value programs that can attract a high level of social media engagement from viewers. Deeply embedded social media elements, such as live Twitter polls, were critical in driving "The Voice" to the top of the Tuesday night ratings among viewers between 18 to 49, Burnett said.
"If you're an advertiser, wouldn't you want to know whether people are watching this show passively or if they're actively engaged in the viewing experience?" Burnett said. "Five years from now this will make traditional television ratings seem archaic."
For Twitter, the partnership with a recognized measurement company like Nielsen emphatically punctuates a year-long effort by its media division to bring second-screen usage into the mainstream.
Twitter's convergence with television has been on display during sporting and major news events, which have provided some of the biggest viewership moments for both broadcasters and the social media company.
During the Summer Olympics in London, Twitter set up a page for the event that displayed photos from inside an event venue or athletes' tweets to complement what was being broadcast on NBC. Advertisers like Procter & Gamble Co, for instance, which advertised heavily during the Games, tried to bridge the two mediums by airing an ad on TV, then sending out a tweet soliciting viewer feedback about the ad.
As news organizations tallied votes on election night in the United States on November 6, worldwide Twitter chatter hit a peak of more than 327,000 per minute, the company said this month.

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Florida man sentenced to 10 years in "hackerazzi" case

A Florida man who pleaded guilty to hacking into the email accounts of celebrities to gain access to nude photos and private information was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a federal judge in Los Angeles on Monday.
Former office clerk Christopher Chaney, 36, said before the trial that he hacked into the accounts of film star Scarlett Johansson and other celebrities because he was addicted to spying on their personal lives.
Prosecutors said Chaney illegally gained access to email accounts of more than 50 people in the entertainment industry, including Johansson, actress Mila Kunis, and singers Christina Aguilera and Renee Olstead from November 2010 to October 2011.
Chaney, who was initially charged with 28 counts related to hacking, struck a plea deal with prosecutors in March to nine felony counts, including wiretapping and unauthorized access to protected computers.
"I don't know what else to say except I'm sorry," Chaney said during his sentencing. "This will never happen again."
Chaney was ordered to pay $66,179 in restitution to victims.
Prosecutors recommended a 71-month prison for Chaney, who faced a maximum sentence of 60 years.
TEARFUL JOHANSSON
Prosecutors said Chaney leaked some of the private photos to two celebrity gossip websites and a hacker.
Johansson said the photos, which show her topless, were taken for her then-husband, actor Ryan Reynolds.
In a video statement shown in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, a tearful Johansson said she was "truly humiliated and embarrassed" when the photos appeared online, asking Judge S. James Otero to come down hard on Chaney.
Prosecutors said Chaney also stalked two unnamed Florida women online, one since 1999 when she was 13 years old.
Chaney, a native of Jacksonville, Florida, was arrested in October 2011 after an 11-month FBI investigation dubbed "Operation Hackerazzi" and he continued hacking after investigators initially seized his personal computers.
Shortly after his arrest, Chaney told a Florida television station that his hacking of celebrity email accounts started as curiosity and later he became "addicted."
"I was almost relieved months ago when they came in and took my computer ... because I didn't know how to stop," he said.

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Massachusetts fines Morgan Stanley over Facebook IPO

 Morgan Stanley , the lead underwriter for Facebook Inc's initial public offering, will pay a $5 million fine to Massachusetts for violating securities laws governing how investment research can be distributed.
Massachusetts' top securities regulator, William Galvin, charged on Monday that a top Morgan Stanley banker had improperly coached Facebook on how to disclose sensitive financial information selectively, perpetuating what he calls "an unlevel playing field" between Wall Street and Main Street.
Morgan Stanley has faced criticism since Facebook went public in May for revealing revised earnings and revenue forecasts to select clients before the media company's $16 billion initial public offering.
This is the first time a case stemming from Morgan Stanley's handling of the Facebook offering has been settled.
Facebook had privately told Wall Street research analysts about softer forecasts because of less robust mobile revenues. A top Morgan Stanley banker coached Facebook executives on how to get the message out, Galvin said.
A Morgan Stanley spokeswoman said on Monday the company is "pleased to have reached a settlement" and that it is "committed to robust compliance with both the letter and the spirit of all applicable regulations and laws." The company neither admitted nor denied any wrongdoing.
Galvin, who has been aggressive in policing how research is distributed on Wall Street ever since investment banks reached a global settlement in 2003, said the bank violated that settlement. He fined Citigroup $2 million over similar charges in late October.
"The conduct at Morgan Stanley was more egregious," he said in an interview explaining the amount of the fine. "With it we will get their attention and begin to take steps in restoring some confidence for retail investors to invest."
Galvin also said that his months-long investigation into the Facebook IPO is far from over and that he continues to review the other banks involved. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan also acted as underwriters. The underwriting fee for all underwriters was reported to be $176 million at the time, or 1.1 percent of the proceeds.
As lead underwriter, Morgan Stanley took in $68 million in fees from the IPO, according to a Thomson Reuters estimate.
Massachusetts did not name the Morgan Stanley banker in its documents but personal information detailed in the matter suggest it is Michael Grimes, a top technology banker who was instrumental in the Facebook IPO.
The report says the unnamed banker joined Morgan Stanley in 1995 and became a managing director in 1998, dates that correlate with Grimes' career at the firm. It also says the banker works in Morgan Stanley's Menlo Park, California, office, where Grimes also works.
Grimes did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and was not accused of any wrongdoing by name.
The state said the banker helped a Facebook executive release new information and then guided the executive on how to speak with Wall Street analysts about it. The banker, Galvin said, rehearsed with Facebook's Treasurer and wrote the bulk of the script Facebook's Treasurer used when calling the research analysts.
A number of Wall Street analysts cut their growth estimates for Facebook in the days before the IPO after the company filed an amended prospectus.
Facebook's treasurer then quickly called a number for Wall Street analysts providing even more information.
The banker "was not allowed to call research analysts himself, so he did everything he could to ensure research analysts received new revenue numbers which they then provided to institutional investors," Galvin said.
Galvin's consent order also says that the banker spoke with company lawyers and then to Facebook's chief financial officer about how to prove an update "without creating the appearance of not providing the underlying trend information to all investors."
The banker and all others involved with the matter at Morgan Stanley are still employed by the company, a person familiar with the matter said.
Retail investors were not given any similar information, Galvin said, saying this case illustrates how institutional investors often have an edge over retail investors.

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ARM security improvement to speed mobile e-commerce

British chip designer ARM Holdings and its partners Gemalto and Giesecke & Devrient have launched a new security standard for smartphones that can speed up e-commerce transactions.
Trustonic, a joint venture between the companies formed in April, said the security standard could be built into every level of a device, from the chip through the operating system to applications.
Ben Cade, Trustonic's chief executive, said it would eliminate the need for third-party devices, like bank card readers and secure ID tags, and enable content to be shared easily between devices.
He said the technology could reduce the time needed for an e-commerce transaction on a smartphone to seven seconds from the two and a half minutes typical today.
"It will enable us to trust our smart connected devices to protect us as they deliver essential services and innovative user experiences," he said.
Security is becoming increasingly important for smartphone users as more operations move from PCs to mobile devices.
Trustonic has signed up partners ranging from chipmakers NVIDIA and Samsung Electronics to payments company Mastercard and content provider 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Cade said.

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Online shopping to breathe new life into run-down sheds

Owners of run-down warehouses on the edge of European cities could be sitting on goldmines because online shopping will force firms to seek distribution sites closer to customers who think speedy delivery is the norm.
In an increasingly fierce market where the likes of Amazon and Tesco pledge next-day or same-day delivery in specific time slots, warehouse rents could rise 40 percent over the next decade, property consultant CBRE said.
"Your industrial estate (near heavily populated areas) is the high street of the future," said Jonathan Holland, senior manager of Legal & General Property's industrial fund, which has 770 million pounds ($1.25 billion) under management.
"We are very much looking at owning warehouses around major conurbations."
Some 43 percent of European Union citizens shop online, the European Commission said in February, up from 26 percent six years ago. They were expected to fuel a 12-15 percent growth in online sales across the region over the next five years, Forrester Research predicted.
Meanwhile, falling sales in austerity-hit Britain have forced retail property values down 28 percent since end-2007, data from Investment Property Databank showed. Values in euro zone countries fell 5 percent over the same period, CBRE said.
The yield, or annual rent as a percentage of the property value, on an industrial warehouse in a good location in Europe was 7.8 percent at the end of September compared with 5.8 percent for offices and 5.2 percent for shops, CBRE said.
Industrial yields depend more on lease length and the financial strength of the tenant than location, compared with offices or shops, and would "edge downwards" where demand from retailers was strong, CBRE said.
Retailers currently favor large sites in locations away from big population centers but with good transport links.
Amazon's huge warehouses include sites in Dunfermline, Scotland and Rheinberg, Germany while Marks & Spencer will open a warehouse the size of 11 soccer fields in Castle Donington, Leicestershire, next year.
That is changing, said Amaury Gariel, managing director of CBRE's European industrial logistics team.
Places such as Croydon, 16 kilometers south of central London, strewn with empty office blocks and suffering high unemployment, and Créteil, a scruffy suburb 19 km southeast of Paris, are examples of areas that could be targeted as they are close to major highways and large local workforces, Gariel said.
Warehouse rents at such sites could rise 20-40 percent over the next decade, he said, citing the greatest demand in areas near the biggest European cities such as Amsterdam, London and Paris for sites that have typically been used by mail delivery firms and food distributors.
A tendency by governments to prioritize such areas for homes would squeeze supply and push prices higher, he said.
Retailers and property investors are at "a tipping point" in waking up to the changing real estate map for distribution points in Europe, Holland said.
Amazon is on the hunt for about 20 sheds close to British cities while Asda and Tesco are opening so-called 'dark stores' - distribution centers which look like supermarkets on the inside but are closed to customers - across Britain.
Industrial developer Prologis has bought a significant number of such sites near large towns and cities, such as Milton Keynes in Britain and Hannover in Germany, to meet future demand, European president Philip Dunne told Reuters.
Retailers face obsolescence unless they recognize how the type of property they rent needs to change, Gariel said.
"We are on the first page of the story regarding new ways to distribute goods. What happens if retailers do not recognize it? Just look at what happened to the fax and the telegram.

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Long-lived bats offer clues on diseases, aging

The bat, a reservoir for viruses like Ebola, SARS and Nipah, has for decades stumped scientists trying to figure out how it is immune to many deadly bugs but a recent study into its genes may finally shed some light, scientists said on Friday.
Studying the DNA of two distant bat species, the scientists discovered how genes dealing with the bats' immune system had undergone the most rapid change.
This may explain why they are relatively free of disease and live exceptionally long lives compared with other mammals of similar size, such as the rat, said Professor Lin-Fa Wang, an infectious disease expert at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore who led the multi-centre study.
"We are not saying bats never get sick or never get infections. What we are saying is they handle infections a lot better," Wang said in a telephone interview.
What was missing from both species of bats was a gene segment known to trigger extreme, and potentially fatal, immune reactions to infections, called the cytokine storm.
Cytokine storms end up killing not only offending viruses in the body, but the host's own cells and tissues too.
"Viruses rarely kill the host. The killing comes from the host's immune response. So it looks like what bats are doing is depress the inflammation (cytokine storm). If we can learn that, we can design drugs to minimize the inflammation damage and control viral infection," Wang said.
The study, which saw the participation of researchers from China, Denmark, Australia and the United States, was published on Friday in the journal Science.
Compared with other mammals of similar size, bats live a long time, with lifespans of between 20 and 40 years. Rats live between 2 and 3 years, on average.
IMMUNE GENES LINKED TO FLIGHT
Interestingly, Wang and his colleagues found that the highly evolved genes that give bats their superior immune system also enable them to fly.
Out of more than 5,000 types of mammals on the planet, bats are the only one capable of sustained flight and some species can fly more than 1,000 km in a single night.
Such intense physical exertion is known to produce toxic "free radicals" that cause tissue damage and it is these same genes that give the bat the ability to repair itself, Wang said.
"What we found was the genes that evolved fastest were genes involved in repairing DNA damage. That makes sense ... because when you fly, metabolism goes up and it generates free radicals that are toxic to cells," Wang said.
"Because bats fly, they (would have had) to evolve and adapt ... to get genes that can repair DNA damage."
Wang said we have much to learn from the bat, which has evolved to avoid disease and live exceptionally long lives.
"Cancer, ageing and infectious disease, these are the three major areas of concern for people," he said.
"We have studied rats for 150 years to understand how to do better in these three areas. Now we have a system, the bat, that has done very well in evolution. We can learn from the bat. With modern techniques, we can design new drugs to slow down the ageing process, treat cancer, fight infections.

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Spectrum Pharma's blood cancer drug meets goal in mid-stage trial

 Spectrum Pharmaceuticals Inc said a mid-stage trial of its experimental blood cancer drug met the main goal of shrinking tumors.
The drug, belinostat, was tested in patients with relapsed/refractory peripheral T-Cell (PTCL) lymphoma, who have failed at least one therapy.
The biotechnology company said it expects to file a marketing application with U.S. health regulators by mid-2013, and expects a review date in 2014.
Belinostat was granted orphan-drug status and fast-track status by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for PTCL.
Spectrum's shares, which have fallen about 22 percent in the last year, closed at $11.30 on the Nasdaq on Thursday.

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Perennial Flu Vaccine Gets Closer

Every fall, you need a new flu shot. That's because today's vaccines train your immune system to recognize specific strains of flu—identified by two proteins on the virus's coat: hemagglutinin and neuraminidase. That's where the 'H' and 'N' come from in H1N1.
Problem is, those proteins are a moving target—they mutate quickly. Once they do, your immune system can't recognize them. And you've got something like the 2009 swine flu, a strain the flu shot never primed us to fight.
To make a more universal vaccine that would work year after year, researchers focused on a smaller, more stable protein called M2. In human strains, the protein has hardly changed since the 1930s.
Researchers engineered an M2 vaccine, and gave it to mice. Then they exposed the mice to lethal doses of human, swine and bird flus. All the vaccinated mice survived—their unlucky counterparts did not. The research appears in the journal Molecular Therapy. [Min-Chul Kim et al., Viruslike particles containing multiple M2 extracellular domains confer improved cross protection against various subtypes of influenza virus]
A good seasonal flu vaccine will still beat the M2 vaccine. But if the M2 gives us insurance against a surprise strain, well, it might be worth a shot.

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Spectrum Pharma's blood cancer drug meets trial goal

 Spectrum Pharmaceuticals Inc said a mid-stage trial of its experimental blood cancer drug met the main goal of reducing the size of tumors.
The biotechnology company's shares, which have fallen about 22 percent over the past 12 months, were up about 3 percent at $11.60 in morning trade on the Nasdaq and touched a high of $11.75 .
The drug, belinostat, was tested in patients with relapsed or refractory peripheral T-Cell lymphoma (PTCL), and who had failed to respond to at least one therapy.
The company said it expects to file a marketing application with U.S. health regulators by mid-2013, and expects a review date in 2014.
The trial was conducted under a special protocol assessment that provides a company with a written agreement that the design of the study and analysis of the data are adequate to support a marketing application with the U.S. health regulator.
Spectrum markets another drug to treat PTCL, named Folotyn, which it obtained as part of its acquisition of cancer drugmaker Allos Therapeutics earlier this year.
MLV & Co analyst George Zavoico said Folotyn and belinostat have different mechanisms of action, and having two drugs for the same indication could be useful in cases of relapsed patients who develop resistance to one of them.
PTCL consists of a group of aggressive blood cancers that develop from T-cells, a class of white blood cells.

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Mother loses UK legal fight to stop son's cancer radiotherapy

LONDON (Reuters) - A mother in Britain, who was so desperate to stop her cancer-stricken son having to undergo conventional medical treatment that she went into hiding with him, lost a court battle on Friday to prevent him receiving radiotherapy.
The case of Sally Roberts, 37, a New Zealander living in Brighton, southern England, and the plight of her seven-year-old son has made headlines in Britain.
Roberts wants to try alternative treatments first, including immunotherapy and photodynamic therapy for her son Neon. She has been told the boy needs treatment fast but fears the side-effects of conventional medicine.
Doctors treating the boy had warned that without radiotherapy he could die within three months
Judge David Bodey told the High Court in London the life-saving radiotherapy treatment could start against the mother's wishes, the Press Association reported.
"The mother has been through a terrible time. This sort of thing is every parent's nightmare," the judge said.
"But I am worried that her judgment has gone awry on the question of the seriousness of the threat which Neon faces."
The story of the sick blue-eyed blonde boy came to public attention earlier this month when Roberts prompted a nationwide police hunt by going into hiding with Neon for four days to stop him from undergoing the treatment.
The mother's relentless battle in court also cast a light on the dilemmas parents can face when dealing with the illness of a loved one, considering the short-term and long-term risks of a treatment and handling conflicting medical information available at the click of a mouse.
Roberts said in court she had researched on the Internet her son's condition - a fast-growing, high-grade brain tumor called medulloblastoma - and sought advice from specialists around the world because she did not trust British experts.
She feared radiotherapy would stunt the boy's growth, reduce his IQ, damage his thyroid and potentially leave him infertile.
Earlier this week, a judge ruled that Neon could undergo emergency surgery to remove a tumor which had resisted an initial operation in October, despite opposition from his mother, who found he appeared to be recovering after what she said was a "heartbreaking" stay in hospital.
"EXPERIMENTAL AND UNPROVEN"
Surgeons said Neon's operation on Wednesday had been successful but that radiotherapy was needed to ensure no residual tumor was left behind.
Neon's father Ben, who lives in London and is separated from Roberts, has sided with his son's doctors.
But his wife suggested exploring several alternative treatments, including immunotherapy, which mainly consists of stimulating the body's immune system to fight cancerous cells, and photodynamic therapy, which uses a photosensitizing agent and a source of light to kill malignant cells.
The hospital treating Neon slammed "experimental and unproven" methods which entered "unchartered territory". The hospital, which cannot be named, also questioned the credentials of some of the private specialists contacted by Roberts's team.
The court heard that at least one of these could not even correctly spell medulloblastoma.
Radiotherapy is used to prevent cancer from spreading or striking back after surgery but it can damage nerve tissue and healthy brain cells.
Long-term side effects tend to be more common in children, whose nervous systems are still developing.

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Politis & Matovina, P.A. Earns BBB Accreditation

Politis & Matovina, P.A. announced its recent accreditation by BBB Serving Central Florida. As a BBB Accredited Business, Politis & Matovina, P.A. is dedicated to promoting trust in the marketplace.

Daytona Beach, FL (PRWEB) December 21, 2012
Politis & Matovina, P.A. is committed to BBB's Standards of Trust. This week, Politis & Matovina, P.A. announced its recent accreditation by BBB Serving Central Florida. As a BBB Accredited Business, Politis & Matovina, P.A. is dedicated to promoting trust in the marketplace. According to BBB reports by Princeton Research, seven in ten consumers say they are more likely to buy from a company designated as a BBB Accredited Business. BBB is a resource for the public, providing objective, unbiased information about businesses.
"We are pleased to be a BBB Accredited Business because we value building trust with our clients," said Michael Politis, Senior Partner/Owner. "Our BBB Accreditation gives our clients confidence in our commitment to maintaining high ethical standards of conduct."
BBB Accredited Businesses must adhere to BBB's "Standards of Trust," a comprehensive set of policies, procedures and best practices representing trustworthiness in the marketplace. The standards call for building trust, embodying integrity, advertising honestly and telling the truth, being transparent, honoring promises, being responsive and safeguarding privacy.
About Politis & Matovina, P.A.

Politis & Matovina, P.A. is a personal injury law firm known for providing aggressive and high quality representation to injured victims, not insurance companies. With offices located in Port Orange, Ormond Beach, Palm Coast and Orange City, our firm focuses on ALL injury cases involving wrongful death, auto/motorcycle accidents, slips and falls, boating accidents, pedestrian accidents and bicycle/moped accidents. We also have departments dedicated to criminal defense and immigration law. We can be reached 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for your legal emergencies. Driven to achieve justice for our clients, we know that Results Matter. Let us put our experience to work for you. Visit http://www.TheJusticeAttorneys.com for more information.
About BBB

BBB's mission is to be the leader in advancing marketplace trust. BBB accomplishes this mission by creating a community of trustworthy businesses, setting standards for marketplace trust, encouraging and supporting best practices, celebrating marketplace role models and denouncing substandard marketplace behavior. Businesses that earn BBB Accreditation contractually agree and adhere to the organization's high standards of ethical business behavior. BBB is the preeminent resource to turn to for objective, unbiased information on businesses and charities. Contact BBB serving Central Florida at (407) 789-9008.

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Car-Specials.com Set to Give Customers a Fresh Car-Shopping Experience

Car-Specials.com is a new car search service that is bringing fun and excitement back to the car shopping game. With an ultra-fast, intuitive interface and a superior selection of new and used cars from local dealerships, Car Specials offers consumer-friendly search options and low-cost, dealer-centric service.

Carmel, Indiana (PRWEB) December 21, 2012
Car-Specials.com is a new kind of online automotive marketplace, offering efficient, customizable search options that cater to every different kind of car shopper. Whether a customer is looking for a new or used vehicle, or wants to search by color, make or body style, Car-Specials.com provides incomparable search functionality and a large selection of vehicles.
Veering away from the kind of automotive website that focuses on the sale and not the customer relationship, Car Specials.com focuses on giving consumers the connection to a particular vehicle that they would expect from walking into a dealership, all from the comfort of their own home. Car-Specials.com is currently in its pilot phase, adding new and used car deals from new dealerships every week.
By enabling visitors the option of selecting make, model, year, price range, body style, geographic location, and more, Car-Specials.com allows customers to take total control over their search. Unlike some of the larger car search engines, visitors can even search new and used vehicles at the same time. From sedans and coupes to SUVs, wagons, and sports cars, a wide variety of vehicles and brands assures that each customer can find their ideal vehicle, matching their lifestyle and budget, all in one place.
“Online car shoppers don’t want just any vehicle, they want the perfect one,” said Roger Laurendeau, President of Car-Specials.com. “We strive to provide the best vehicle choices and a streamlined system that makes the process of finding and purchasing a new car fast, convenient, and fun.”
Online car shopping is packed with large companies that charge dealers huge sums of money to list their vehicles. By contrast, Car-Specials.com is a small company with lower costs for dealerships, affording dealers the option of passing those savings on to the customer.
Customers interested in taking Car Specials for a test drive may visit http://www.car-specials.com. Dealers interested in working with Car-Specials.com to market their vehicles should contact Roger Laurendeau at 317-805-4933.
About Car-Specials.com
Car-Specials.com is an online automotive marketplace, dedicated to providing dealers with a wide-reaching, low cost option for marketing their vehicles online. Car Specials offers its customers lightning-fast search with a variety of customizable search options for finding their next new or used vehicle.

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Brand id│Strategic Partners Launches Revolutionary Personal Branding Success Program for Women

The Breakfast Club is a 12-month strategic mastermind program for Baltimore women who are ready to expand their “circle of influence, strategically map out their personal and professional path to success, and uplevel their visibility in the marketplace through personal branding.

Baltimore, Maryland (PRWEB) December 21, 2012
Two Maryland business women have partnered to unveil a program specifically designed to help 25 local entrepreneurs and executives dramatically elevate their personal and professional lives in 2013 and redefine the "goold old boy network.". The program is called The Breakfast Club, a 12-month strategic mastermind that will expand their “circle of influence” and strategically map out the personal and professional path to success of each participant through networking, personal branding, life coaching and strategic planning.
Founded by Jennifer Ransaw Smith, CEO of Brand id Strategic Partners, a full-service personal branding agency and Susan Stern, CEO of Live Now a Personal Success Coaching firm, The Breakfast Club is revolutionizing “business as usual.” This program leaves no stone unturned when it comes to mapping out a plan for success.
Although named The Breakfast Club, the program is so much more. In fact, a monthly breakfast is just a small component of what is being offered (held at Miss Shirley’s Inner Harbor). Twice a year, participants will meet at the Mt. Washington Conference Center for an all day “working session” to design personal and professional blueprints. In addition, each participant will have access to both Brand id Strategic Partners and Live Now group coaching programs, meaning they will spend six months working on their “personal brand” and four months working on their “life’s vision.”
“As far as the level of comprehensiveness, Susan and I wanted to put something uniquely special together that truly supported local women. So many women are not use to investing in themselves, so we wanted to use an affordable price point. “You are your greatest asset to your company, spouse, children and/or community. Our personal and professional lives are more connected than most people imagine, and investing in both aspects will dramatically uplevel your life this year, “says Susan.
Our members are going to get opportunities to elevate at every level. From networking monthly to yearly strategic planning and online support, we wanted women to be able to walk away knowing they had taken their lives to an entirely new level and felt supported every step of the way,” said Jennifer Ransaw Smith. “We wanted something for all of those women who know they want more, but just don’t know how to get it.”
The program is ideal for mid-to-senior-level executives and entrepreneurs who want to:

    Be surrounded by a group of women who are committed to helping you succeed
    Receive support, encouragement and inspiration as you skyrocket toward your goals
    Become more focused on where you are going and what you need to do to get there
    Expand their person “circle of influence”
    Be able to test ideas, connect with amazing resources and feedback
    Maximize what they are able to accomplish in a 12-month period
The Breakfast Club (http://www.breakfastclubonline.com) runs from January 24rd until December 31, 2013 and is limited to only 25 participants. First come, first served. The investment is $3,000 and payment options are available. For more information about the program, please visit http:///http://www.breakfastclubonline.com
Brand id│Strategic Partners is a full-service integrated personal branding agency that helps entrepreneurs, senior level executives, and subject matter experts transform from unknown to known. We offer a multi-disciplinary approach to brand elevation both on and offline by providing both business-to-consumer (personal branding) and business-to-business (leadership branding) communication strategy.

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Fleetwood Mac Tickets Take Off Online at BuyAnySeat.com

Tickets to Fleetwood Mac’s upcoming 34-city North American Tour are creating traffic spikes in search traffic online for seats, said Felina Martinez at ticket marketplace BuyAnySeat.com. The tour kicks off April 4, 2013 in Columbus, Ohio and is the band’s first trek since 2009.

Denver, CO (PRWEB) December 22, 2012
It’s hard to believe that it has been 45 years since Fleetwood Mac’s first album, and 35 years since they band released their best-selling Rumours album, which has sold over 20 million copies in the U.S. to date.
But like other iconic 60’s bands lately, Fleetwood Mac is heading back out on the road again. The group’s 34-city North American tour kicks off April 4, 2013 in Columbus, Ohio. The tour stops in numerous cities including New York, Chicago, Boston, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. The trek’s final concert is slated for June 12, 2013 in Detroit.
“Internet traffic for Fleetwood Mac tickets has been spiking,” said Felina Martinez at online ticket marketplace BuyAnySeat.com. “Part of this surge of new traffic may be related to the Holiday season and gift giving, but we believe it’s also due to the band’s legions of loyal followers of all ages around the globe.”
“Since Fleetwood Mac fans span all nationalities and age groups from pre-teens to those in their 70’s and 80’s, we’re proud to be able to offer buyers a complete selection of Fleetwood Mac tickets, with a worry-free guarantee to protect their purchase,” said Martinez.
“To access the continuously updated selection of tickets we have available, fans can go to BuyAnySeat.com and search for Fleetwood Mac – then select their tickets,” said Martinez.
Fleetwood Mac is a British-American rock band formed in London in 1967 by Peter Green, who had been playing in the blues band John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. He named the band in an attempt to entice Mick Fleetwood and John McVie to join him. While Fleetwood joined right away, McVie did not join for several weeks.
After years of member additions and departures, and tumultuous times within the band, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined the group – and the band finally found mainstream success with the 1975 release of a second self-titled album. The album became the band's first number one album in any country and their first multiplatinum album. This newfound success was repeated two years later with Rumours, which has become their best selling album thus far.
The next two albums, Tusk and Mirage, were not as successful as Rumours, despite an 18-month worldwide promotional tour. The albums still reached number four and number one respectively, and both reached double-platinum status.
The album Tango in the Night was released in 1987 and became the band’s best-selling album since Rumours, and ranked 3x platinum in the U.S. and 8x platinum in the U.K. The 90’s decade was one of limited success for the band, with the two albums released failing to chart very high in the U.S. The band's fortunes improved again with the release of the 1997 live album The Dance, which reached number one in the U.S. and 5x platinum status. The band also saw a modest success with 2003's Say You Will. (Sources: Official Website, fleetwoodmac.com and Wikipedia.com)
Both Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham released solo albums and toured last year. The band itself hasn’t released an album since 2003, but did tour together in 2009. Insiders say Christine McVie unfortunately will not be joining the tour this time. But for fans, there’s always hope.
To shop for cheap Fleetwood Mac tickets, visit BuyAnySeat.com.

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iPhone and iPad Affiliates Program Launched by iGearUnlimited

Leading online iPhone and iPad case maker iGearUnlimited is generating buzz with an affiliate program through Share-A-Sale. With two-tier commissions of 15% and 30%, it’s believed to be one of the most generous in the marketplace.

Chicago, USA (PRWEB) December 22, 2012
Internet companies often use independent sales people known as affiliates to help spread the word and generate sales. The best affiliate programs are those offering a popular product line along with a generous commission structure. With iGear’s very popular iPhone and iPad cases and with two-tier commission rates, its program is shaping up to be one of the most promising around.
iGear’s signature products include custom printed and laser engraved iPhone and iPad cases. Recognized as a leader in the industry, iGear uses only the best and the most advanced UV flatbed printing technology. iGear phone cases feature high resolution printing, vibrant colors, no peeling, and no fading. iGear is a G7-certified Master Printer, ensuring extremely accurate and consistent color. The company’s custom iPad cases have won accolades from various review sites, and is touted to be the world’s most perfect case for Apple’s iPad 2, iPad 3, iPad 4, and iPad Mini.
Other products include the company’s Racer bamboo case. Made of 100% solid bamboo, the Racer protects all sides and all corners of the iPhone 5, offering super-lightweight protection with an extremely thin profile. A new laser engraving option on the bamboo case allows customers to personalize the phone case with their own artwork. iGear also offers probably the only 3D laser etching technology available on the market, allowing customers to engrave 3-dimensional artwork using grayscale images.
The iPhone Tough Case is considered to be the most rugged case for iPhone 4, 4S, and 5 — it has even protected an iPhone 5 from a 32-foot free fall to a concrete driveway, while the phone keeps recording video the whole time. The company’s iPad Mini Portfolio Case is among the first cases available on the market, and offers simple, elegant protection at an economical price.
iGear’s new affiliate program is provided by Share-A-Sale.com, one of the most recognized names in Internet affiliate management, ensuring accurate sales tracking and timely commission payments. The two-tier structure allows affiliates to make direct sales to earn a generous 15% commission, and at the same time recruit additional affiliates to greatly increase their reach with a 30% commission on the down-line’s earnings.
“We’d like to richly reward the affiliates who bring us sales...” says Jimmy Sun, president of iGearUnlimited. “Our affiliates are always proud to showcase some of the best and most popular products in the industry while earning a generous commission.”
Interested affiliates are encouraged to visit iGear’s affiliates details page at iGearUnlimited.com. With just a few steps, affiliates can sign up with Share-a-sale.com and start earning commissions.
About iGearUnlimited.com

iGearUnlimited.com is powered by Sunrise Digital, an Inc. 5000 company established in 1988 and employs the most advanced equipment and technology, such as G7-certified HP Indigo and UV flatbed presses, laser engraving, and digital die-cutting, to create best-in-class color printing, P.O.P. retail displays, and signage products. A privately-owned enterprise, the company is based in Chicago and sells products worldwide.

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Microsoft #DroidRage Tweet Shows How Malware Has Moved Past Windows

"Do you have an Android malware horror story?" Microsoft asks through its @windowsphone Twitter account, in what may be one of the most ironic tweets of the year.
After all, it wasn't that long ago that "virus" and "worm" stories made headlines on a regular basis, all of them about "computer viruses" which were really Windows viruses. Just a few years ago, Apple advertised the fact that a Mac "Doesn't get PC viruses" as a reason to buy one.
But this year, 600,000 Macs were infected by the Flashback trojan, an epidemic which exceeded the scale of history's single largest Windows infection. And now ​Microsoft​ is implying that its phones don't get malware, as a way to advertise them. How did things get to be this way, and what will malware and virus authors do next?
​When virii attack
For years, Microsoft's DOS and Windows operating systems were the biggest targets for virus and malware authors simply because they were the least secure. Today's PC security best practices had yet to be built into them, and trying to bolt features on to ancient programming code was a half-baked solution at best. HugeWindows malware epidemics spread as the malware programs were able to install themselves without explicit permission and operate without user intervention.
​Network effects
One reason Microsoft Windows dominated the computing world for years and years was simply because it was dominant. More people using Windows meant more profits for Windows app developers, which meant more games and apps for Windows, which meant more people buying Windows PCs so they could use Windows games and apps.
Like with apps, malware is a business that makes money for the people who write it. And while it was theoretically possible to infect a computer running a more secure operating system, like OS X (used on Macs) or Ubuntu (powered by Linux), it was considered impossible to get it to spread far enough to be profitable. Whereas on Windows it was (and still is) possible to infect vast numbers of PCs, even chaining them into zombified "botnets" which act as supercomputers-for-hire.
​How the mighty have fallen?
OS X's more secure design makes it extremely hard to infect with malware -- normally. The Flashback trojan sneaked in this year using the Java web browser plugin, which is bundled with the Mac's Safari web browser and was poorly maintained.
Plugins like Java and Flash open up new ways to infect a computer, which was one reason why Apple stopped including the Flash plugin (already absent on its iPhone and iPad) by default. Apple created a fix for the problem, but not before over half a million Macs were infected.
​What about on smartphones?
Unlike Apple and Microsoft's app stores, the Google Play store allows anyone to submit anything with no review. It's up to Android smartphone and tablet users to look at the "permissions" each game or app requests, as well as the reputation of their developers, and decide whether or not to install them.
While some consider this approach more "trustworthy" and respectful of users, it's also helped lead to a comparatively enormous number of malware infections on Android, including "The Mother of All Android Malware," which completely took over tens of thousands of phones last year.
​Are you #DroidRage-ing yet?
Microsoft's tweet says "we may have a get-well present" for people who send it their best or worst stories of Android malware. Even if all the apps in the Windows Store are virus-free, however, there are still far fewer of them than there are for Android.
Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

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The Samsung Galaxy Camera Has Three Big Problems

It's a point-and-shoot digital camera, with the back side replaced by a smartphone-sized tablet. It's a smartphone that can't make voice calls, and has a big camera lens sticking out of the back. It's the Samsung Galaxy Camera, and it combines the equivalent of a $199 digital camera with the Android OS and hardware performance of Samsung's Galaxy S III smartphone.
Tech gadget reviewers like The Verge's Aaron Souppouris like the concept, and agree that the Galaxy Camera has many advantages over a normal point-and-shoot. But they also point out some huge disadvantages, for holiday buyers to consider.
​The price tag
"Image quality is no better than a $200 camera," Souppouris' review lists as one of the Galaxy Camera's cons. But it doesn't cost $200; its $499 price tag puts the Samsung Galaxy Camera in the same pricing tier as Apple's full-size iPad.
On top of that, expect to pay a lot for AT&T's HSPA+ data plan, because the Galaxy Camera uses a ton of bandwidth to upload its 16 megapixel photos. Reviewer Liam Spradlin of the Android Police blog "used close to 2GB in data simply syncing photos and videos" while reviewing the camera, an amount which you would need at least a $30 AT&T plan to cover. It's possible to take photos at lower resolutions, he says, "but that kind of defeats the purpose of such a dense sensor."
$499 plus $30 a month is still cheaper than buying an unlocked Galaxy S III and a normal AT&T plan. However, besides the fact that it can't make voice calls there's also ...
​The size and shape
The Samsung Galaxy Camera is not a smartphone with an exceptional digital camera, the way the Nokia Lumia 920 is. It's more like a point-and-shoot digital camera, complete with protruding handgrip and lens, which can run Android apps like Instagram. Unfortunately, some of them don't work that well on a gadget that's shaped like a camera. Souppouris reports having to "cradle the inch-thick camera in one hand" while being careful not to smudge the lens, because Instagram would only run in portrait mode.
​The battery life
Cramming an Android device with an Exynos quad-core processor into a digital camera's chassis severely reduces its battery life. Mashable's Pete Pachal found that his Galaxy Camera review unit was down to less than half of its battery life after "a few hours of taking pics, on and off." It's roughly on par with Android smartphones, but can't go for as long without recharging as a typical camera can. The battery door is about as easy to open as a camera's is, but you can probably expect to pay as much as you would for an extra smartphone battery if you're thinking of buying a spare.
One way Samsung tried to save battery life is by putting the Galaxy Camera into "a sort of hibernation," according to Spradlin, where it takes a few seconds to start up and start taking pictures if you've left it alone for too long. This feature is optional, however.
Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

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James Cameron Relives Voyage to Ocean's Deepest Spot

SAN FRANCISCO — The first thing James Cameron saw 7 miles below the sea was man-made: tracks from a remotely operated vehicle.
"When I got to the bottom, I saw skid marks from the ROV," Cameron said yesterday (Dec. 4) here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, referring to a 2009 survey by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Scientific results of the film director's expedition to the Mariana Trench were presented at the meeting this week, and Cameron and the researchers described the highlights to a packed crowd.
Cameron reported a new, corrected depth for his landing — 35,803 feet (10,912 meters) — which beats by five feet (1.5 m) the record set by U.S. Navy Lt. Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard in 1960 at the same spot. However, "because the error [calculating the depth] on Don's dive is much greater, we're just going to have to call it a tie," Cameron said.
Deepsea Challenger
Cameron's Deepsea Challenger expedition made dives to the New Britain Trench and the Mariana Trench in the southwestern Pacific Ocean between Jan. 31 and April 3, with one manned dive by Cameron to the Mariana's Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in any ocean.
Unusual, never-before-seen species were snared and brought back to the surface. A bizarre microbial mat community was discovered living on altered rocks in the Sirena Deep, another deep pool 6.77 miles (10.9 kilometers) below the surface.
Changes in temperature and salinity starting at 26,200 feet (8 km) deep hint at an unknown current coming into the Challenger Deep, said Doug Bartlett, a microbiology professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.
The filmmaker journeyed inside a high-tech lime-green machine — a steel sphere encased in foam — dubbed the Deepsea Challenger. The expedition traveled with two unmanned seafloor "landers" — large contraptions hoisted over the side of a ship and dropped to the seafloor. Once on the bottom, bait attached to the lander lured seafloor creatures to the craft, and a suite of instruments took samples, photographs and data. [Images: James Cameron's Historic Deep-Sea Dive]
The two contraptions working together proved to be a very good system, Cameron said. "We could rendezvous on the bottom and see the results of that bait running for six to eight hours, and that's how Doug could find a new species of giant arthropod," Cameron said.
Challenging journey
The March 26 dive proved to be a physical and mental challenge for Cameron. "I did yoga for six months so I could contort myself into the sphere," he said.
As he sank through the water, Cameron said he "burned though my whole checklist," designed to distract him during the long hours of the dive. "I still had 3,000 meters left to go with pretty much nothing left to do but sit quietly and think about the pressure building up around the hull," he said.
The sub touched down gently, and Cameron immediately took a sample of the seafloor, as planned. This was a good contingency, because the sub's hydraulic fluid line then burst, leaving him unable to collect more samples.
To his surprise, the sub's voice communications worked perfectly. "We actually expected they wouldn't, and I would have to default to texting," he said. "Texting while driving is not a good thing, especially if you're using two hands to operate seven joysticks and you're 7 miles down."
Cameron first drove the sub about 200 meters, finding the seafloor elevation stayed the same. In fact, Challenger Deep turned out to be remarkably flat, and the sub was easy to drive. "The vehicle was quite nimble, the sub's yaw rate was very good," he said. (Yaw describes the left-to-right rotation of a craft.)
A quick return
After about three hours, some of the submersible's batteries had low charge readings, the steering was problematic, and it was time to return to the surface. The mission should have lasted five to six hours. "I hate this. I hated having to go back," Cameron recalled thinking.
The trip to the top was mercifully short at 73 minutes. The submersible covered nearly 7 miles in a little over an hour — slow in a car, but like riding a missile for a human in a metal ball. Cameron said the surface trip is when he noticed the aches and pains from the cramped sub. "That's when your butt is really sore, and when you notice how much it hurts." [Infographic: James Cameron's Mariana Trench Dive]
The sub now sits in a barn in Santa Barbara, waiting for Cameron or another group with enough money to send it back to the deep ocean. He declined to say how much it cost to build and mount the expedition.
"I would love for the sub to dive again," he said. "I personally feel that we just barely got started before we had to turn back and there's just so much out there."
"And if not, at the very least, the technical innovations can be incorporated into other vehicle platforms," Cameron added. "As far as I'm concerned, it's an open source situation."
Reach Becky Oskin at boskin@techmedianetwork.com. Follow her on Twitter @beckyoskin. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook and Google+.
Video: James Cameron's Dive to Earths' Deepest Spot
Infographic: Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench
WATCH LIVE: Latest News from the 2012 AGU Meeting
Copyright 2012 OurAmazingPlanet, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Are Online Degrees as Valuable as Traditional College Diplomas?

Millennials are the first generation to grow up with constant technology and personal computers. That might explain why they see such a value in online education.
A recent poll by Northeastern University showed that 18 to 29 year olds had a more negative view about attending college because of the high cost, and a more positive opinion about online classes than their older counterparts. The survey also showed more than half of the millennials had taken an online course.
Online education is attracting hundreds of thousands of students a year. Perhaps this is why more brick-and-mortar universities are searching for an online identity.
This week Wellesley College announced that it will offer free online classes to anyone with an Internet connection as part of the nonprofit project edX. Earlier this year, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology teamed up to fund and launch the online platform.
More: Harvard and MIT Want to Educate You for Free
Online education was even the talk in Washington this week when a group of panelists convened to discuss Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), which is an open source network like edX. These courses are very much like correspondence classes in the early 20th century.
But there are still those universities that only exist in a virtual world and students pay to attend. Are they as beneficial to students as attending a two- or four-year college?
“It depends at what level and what subject,” says Isabelle Frank, dean of Fordham College of Liberal Studies. “In general, fully online degrees are not valued as highly as degrees from brick-and-mortar institutions. This is because online-only universities do not have the faculty quality and interaction that occurs with full-time faculty and secure positions.”
She says that Fordham has online master programs and some online courses, but the model is “that of a small seminar style class with a lot of faculty feedback and involvement.”
Just like a physical college, a quality online education depends on the institution.
For example, students at Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business take online classes and communicate with other students around the world—something students 25 years ago couldn’t have dreamed of doing.
“This affords the opportunity to learn leadership, team-building and managerial skills by solving problems and coordinating efforts for projects through the process of establishing real-time meetings, coordinating time zones and dealing with potential language issues,” Sher Downing, executive director of online academic services at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, said. “This value cannot be mirrored as easily in a traditional classroom, and for many companies with offices located around the world, this is a valuable skill, when the workforce is required to handle these types of situations.”
Downing said that students can save money by taking online classes because they no longer have to commute, live on or near a campus or relocate.
The millennials surveyed by Northeastern University are keen to take online courses. In fact, nine in 10 said online classes should be used as a tool and mixed with other teaching methods. The poll also found that students want flex i bility, which is exactly what online colleges offer.
Employers may not yet see an online degree in the same light as a traditional university but that is likely to change in the near future. It may just be that millennials, who don’t want to go in debt for an education like some of their parents did, are just a bit ahead of educators and employers.

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

Red Hat Inc. (NYSE: RHT), proveedor líder mundial de soluciones de código abierto, analizará los resultados del tercer trimestre del año fiscal 2013 el jueves, 20 de diciembre de 2012, a partir de las 5:00 p. m., hora del Este.
Se puede acceder a un webcast en vivo en la página de Relaciones con los Inversores de Red Hat en http://investors.redhat.com y la reproducción se encontrará disponible a partir de aproximadamente dos horas luego de finalizados los eventos en vivo.
Acerca de Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat es el proveedor líder mundial de soluciones de software de código abierto; utiliza un enfoque basado en la comunidad para tecnologías confiables y de alto rendimiento en la nube, Linux, middleware, almacenamiento y virtualización. Red Hat también ofrece servicios galardonados de consultoría asistencia y capacitación. Como centro de conectividad de una red global de empresas, socios y comunidades de código abierto, Red Hat ayuda a crear tecnologías relevantes e innovadoras que liberan recursos para el crecimiento y preparan a los clientes para el futuro de la tecnología de la información. Obtenga más información en: http://www.redhat.com.
Declaraciones a futuro
Ciertas declaraciones del presente comunicado de prensa pueden constituir “declaraciones a futuro” dentro del significado de la Ley de Reforma de Litigios Sobre Valores Privados (Private Securities Litigation Reform Act) de los EE. UU. de 1995. Las declaraciones a futuro ofrecen expectativas actuales de eventos futuros en base a determinados supuestos e incluyen cualquier declaración que no se relaciona directamente con cualquier hecho actual o histórico. Los resultados reales pueden diferir sustancialmente de los indicados por dichas declaraciones a futuro, como resultado de varios factores importantes, incluso: riesgos relacionados con retrasos o reducciones en el gasto en tecnología de la información; los efectos de la consolidación del sector; la capacidad de la Compañía de competir en forma eficaz; la incertidumbre y los resultados adversos en litigios y acuerdos relacionados; la integración de adquisiciones y la capacidad de comercializar en forma exitosa las tecnologías y productos adquiridos; la incapacidad de proteger adecuadamente la propiedad intelectual de la Compañía y el posible incumplimiento o violación de reclamaciones de licencia o relacionadas con la propiedad intelectual de terceros; la capacidad de entregar y estimular la demanda de nuevos productos e innovaciones tecnológicas en forma oportuna; los riesgos relacionados con la vulnerabilidad de la seguridad de datos y de información; la gestión ineficaz de, y control sobre las operaciones internacionales y el crecimiento de la Compañía; las fluctuaciones en las tasas de cambio; y cambios en el personal clave y una dependencia del mismo, así como otros factores presentes en nuestro más reciente Informe Trimestral en el formulario 10-Q (copias del cual se encuentran disponibles en el sitio Web de la Comisión de Bolsa y Valores en http://www.sec.gov), incluidos los que se encuentran en el título "Factores de riesgo" y "Análisis y Discusiones de la Gerencia sobre Condiciones Financieras y Resultados de Operaciones". Además de estos factores, el desempeño futuro real, y los resultados pueden diferir sustancialmente debido a más factores generales que incluyen (entre otros) las condiciones generales del mercado y de la industria y las tasas de crecimiento, las condiciones económicas y políticas, los cambios en las políticas públicas y gubernamentales y el impacto de los desastres naturales como terremotos e inundaciones. Las declaraciones a futuro incluidas en este comunicado de prensa representan las opiniones de la Compañía a la fecha de este comunicado de prensa y estas ideas podrían cambiar. Sin embargo, si bien la Compañía puede elegir actualizar estas declaraciones a futuro en algún momento, la Compañía en forma específica renuncia a cualquier obligación de hacerlo. No debe confiar en estas declaraciones a futuro como si representaran las opiniones de la empresa a partir de cualquier fecha posterior de la fecha de este comunicado de prensa.
Red Hat y JBoss son marcas comerciales de Red Hat, Inc. registradas en los EE. UU. y en otros países. Linux® es la marca comercial registrada de Linus Torvalds en los EE. UU. y en otros países.
El texto original en el idioma fuente de este comunicado es la versión oficial autorizada. Las traducciones solo se suministran como adaptación y deben cotejarse con el texto en el idioma fuente, que es la única versión del texto que tendrá un efecto legal.

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Roadside bomb kills 7 Afghans

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Officials say a powerful roadside bomb has killed five civilians and two police officers near a police checkpoint in western Afghanistan.

The governor of Nimroz province, Mohammad Sarwar Subat, says the blast occurred Thursday as a vehicle carrying the civilians was heading for a court hearing in the provincial capital, Zaranj.

The governor says the bomb was planted by "enemies of the state" — a term used by officials to describe the Taliban or allied groups.

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Pakistan reports 9th death in polio team attacks

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Another victim from attacks on U.N.-backed anti-polio teams in Pakistan died on Thursday, bringing the three-day death toll in the wave of assaults on volunteers vaccinating children across the country to nine, officials said.
Hilal Khan, 20, died a day after he was shot in the head in the northwestern city of Peshawar, said health official Janbaz Afridi
Since Monday, gunmen had launched attacks across Pakistan on teams vaccinating children against polio. Six women were among the nine anti-polio workers killed in the campaign, jointly conducted with the Pakistani government.
The U.N. World Health Organization suspended the drive until a government investigation was completed.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the killings "cruel, senseless and inexcusable." Speaking at his year-end news conference Wednesday, Ban said the victims were among thousands across Pakistan "working selflessly to achieve the historic goal of polio eradication."
The suspension of the vaccinations was a grave blow to efforts to bring an end to the scourge of polio in Pakistan, one of only three countries where the crippling disease is endemic.
Azmat Abbas, with UNICEF in Pakistan said the field staff would resume the work when they have a secure working environment.
"This is undoubtedly a tragic setback, but the campaign to eradicate polio will and must continue," Sarah Crowe, spokeswoman for UNICEF, said Wednesday.
However, local officials in the eastern city of Lahore continued the vaccination on Thursday under police escort, and extended the campaign with a two-day follow-up.
Deputy Commissioner Noorul Amin Mengal said about 6,000 Pakistani government health workers were escorted by 3,000 police as they fanned out across the city.
"It would have been an easy thing for us to do to stop the campaign," he said. "That would have been devastating."
No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks but some Islamic militants accuse health workers of acting as spies for the United States and claim that the vaccine makes children sterile.
Taliban commanders in the country's troubled northwest tribal region have also said the vaccinations can't go forward until the U.S. stops drone strikes in Pakistan.
The insurgent opposition to the campaign grew last year, after it was revealed that a Pakistani doctor ran a fake vaccination program to help the CIA track down and kill al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden, who was hiding in the town of Abbottabad in the country's northwest.
Prevention efforts against polio have managed to reduce the number of cases in Pakistan by around 70 percent this year, compared to 2011, but the recent violence threatens to reverse that progress.

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Afghan president welcomes British pullout timeline

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Afghan president on Thursday welcomed the withdrawal of nearly half of the British troops stationed in Afghanistan next year, saying his forces were ready to take up the country's defense.
A statement from Hamid Karzai's office said the partial pull-out was an "appropriate" move as NATO forces transfer responsibility for the war against the Taliban to the Afghan military.
British Prime Minister David Cameron announced Wednesday that about 3,800 British troops would be withdrawn by the end of 2013, with some 5,000 staying into 2014. The majority of NATO forces, including those of the United States, are set to leave by the end of 2014.
"The Afghan security forces are ready to implement the defense and security of the country. It is an appropriate act in the transition of security to Afghan forces," Karzai's statement said.
Cameron told lawmakers in London that the decision reflects confidence in the Afghan military. It also reflects mounting political pressure and periodic public protests in Britain for the end of its military role in Afghanistan, where it sent the second largest NATO force after the United States and sustained the second highest number of casualties.
Afghanistan's army and police have grown substantially with the help of international allies and now number 350,000. But desertion rates, illiteracy and tensions among ethnic groups within the ranks remain high and analysts say the Afghan military still lacks the know-how to mount major, multi-unit operations. Attacks by insurgents still occur daily.
In the latest incidence of violence, a powerful roadside bomb killed five civilians and two police officers Thursday in the western province of Nimroz, governor Mohammad Sarwar Subat told The Associated Press. The blast, he said, occurred near a police checkpoint as a vehicle carrying the civilians headed for a session in the provincial capital, Zaranuj. The governor said the bomb was set by "enemies of the state," used by officials to describe the Taliban or groups allied to it.
NATO officials regularly praise operations as "Afghan-led," even when Afghan forces play a minimal role, making it difficult to determine their full capability to take over. Also, a surge in insider attacks by Afghan soldiers and police against their own colleagues and international allies has raised further questions about their readiness.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who visited the country last week, said U.S. commanders in Afghanistan believe NATO has "turned the tide" after 11 years of war. But skepticism remains over whether the Afghan military can hold back a still powerful and resilient insurgency after 2014.
The U.S. has some 66,000 troops in the country with the number to be pulled out next year and the size of a residual force past 2014 currently under review in Washington.
Cameron said some British troops would stay on after 2014 to return equipment and deal with logistics.
"We've said very clearly: no one in a combat role, nothing like the number of troops there are now," Cameron said. "We've promised the Afghans that we will provide this officer training academy that they've specifically asked for. We are prepared to look at other issues above and beyond that, but that is the starting baseline."
The withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan will start next April, according to Defense Secretary Philip Hammond.
Cameron said Britain would continue to support Afghanistan by contributing about 70 million pounds (US $114,000) a year to help pay for Afghan security forces. Another 70 million pounds a year are spread through other aid programs.
Since 2001, 438 British personnel have died in Afghanistan.
Last month, France ended its combat operations in the country, pulling hundreds of troops from a base in a volatile region northeast of Kabul and fulfilling promises to end its combat role ahead of other NATO allies. France has lost 88 troops in Afghanistan since late 2001.

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Indian women live in fear of violence

NEW DELHI (AP) — It is almost every Indian woman's nightmare, lived daily when in public — a stream of obscene comments, unwanted hands being placed on them and then being blamed for causing the sexual violence.

The gang-rape and beating of a 23-year-old student by six men on a bus in New Delhi may have sparked days of protests and demands for authorities to take tougher action, but for women in India it is just an extreme example of what they have to live with.

Many in India's capital and across the country say they are constantly on guard, fearing everything from the routine gropings they suffer on public buses to far more violent assaults. Some say they have structured their entire lives around protecting themselves and their children.

Here are the stories of three women:

Gita Ganeshan, a 52-year-old bank worker, moved to New Delhi with her husband four years ago from the central city of Bhopal to protect their oldest daughter after she was attacked in the Indian capital, where she was studying.

The young woman had been out for a morning walk in a park near her house when four men surrounded her and began tormenting her, Ganeshan said.

"One of the men squeezed her breast. She screamed and kept screaming and running till she came home," she said.

She said she and her daughter would go to the park when she visited the city.

"This was a park where we would walk every day. The girls would jog or run and we would walk along," she said. "Just that one day, she went alone and this happened and it changed our outlook as far the safety of our girls was concerned."

Her daughter gave up jogging and wouldn't leave the house alone for months. Her parents got themselves transferred to the city to look after her.

"That was when we decided that protecting our children had to be our first priority. We've given them a good education. We cannot now tell them now not to pursue their careers because it is not safe to be out working late," she said.

She has trained the young woman to be alert: "Never let your guard down."

Now, Ganeshan is thinking of moving to the central city of Indore to protect her younger daughter, who got a job there.

But for now, she has arranged a special plan to watch over her from far away.

Every evening, her daughter calls as soon as she gets off the bus on her way home from work. The two talk for the next 15 minutes while the young woman walks the kilometer to her home, Ganeshan said.

"Every day, I wake up and my first thought is of my daughters and their safety. I call them up, or they call me," she said. "It is a real fear we confront when, even for a few hours, we are not in touch over the telephone."

Sandhya Jadon, 26, a lawyer from the northern town of Agra, said the harassment starts as soon as she leaves her home.

"For most men, any woman who is out of the four walls of her house is fair game," she said.

Last week, she was repeatedly groped on a public minibus.

"It was broad daylight. I was heading to court, and this man kept trying to touch my thigh. I shouted at him and he had the gall to ask me, 'So what can you do to stop me?'" she said.

She shouted, made the driver stop and got off. But the man continued sitting in the bus and grinning at his audacity. Not one of the 10 other passengers came to her help. Most looked away, she said.

"All day that day I was disturbed. I was shaking inside but also angry. Why do we women have to suffer this?" she asked.

For the next few days, she avoided public buses for fear she would run into the man again.

She feels relatively safe at court, in her lawyer's robes. But she still doesn't stay late at work and asks her parents to meet her at the bus stop to walk her home.

"But the fear — that something bad will happen if you are not careful — is always with you. It hangs over your work; it hangs over everything you do — what you wear, or don't wear; how you talk or how you walk. It is like this big suffocating cloud hanging over you every single day of your life," she said.

Priyanka Khatri, a 21-year-old college student, said fear of attack has forced her to limit her world.

There are no movies in the evening, no late-night parties, no outside activity at all after sundown. College events are cut short because she has to get home.

"Whatever happens, I have to be home before dark. Otherwise, my parents get so worried and they will keep calling me on my cell phone till they know I'm safe," she said.

Khatri said she will only go out in the evening accompanied by her parents to a nearby temple or a family wedding.

She is shadowed by fear when she gets dressed in the morning.

"I wouldn't dream of wearing shorts or skirts in public," she said.

She is petrified by her daily commute to school on public buses.

"Usually I carry a safety pin with me, because in buses there are always men who will try to touch you," Khatri said. "Some men are so brazen, you tick them off and they will persist on groping you. Then you feel you have to do something. So I stick my pin into them, or I use my elbow, and just jab them with my elbow. But that too makes you afraid."

And she has tempered her dreams to fit the reality of life in Delhi. The outgoing badminton enthusiast longed to be an event planner. Instead, she is looking for teaching jobs, "because then I can be home before dark."

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SKorea's president-elect faces NKorea uncertainty

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Park Geun-hye promises to reach out to North Korea with more humanitarian aid and deeper engagement after she moves into South Korea's presidential Blue House on Feb. 25. Pyongyang, however, may be in no mood to talk anytime soon.
Park's declarations ahead of Wednesday's election that she will soften five years of hard-line policy rang true with voters, even as they rejected her opponent's calls for a more aggressive pursuit of reconciliation with the North.
A skeptical North Korea may quickly test the sincerity of Park's offer to engage — possibly even before she takes office. She is both a leading member of the conservative ruling party and the daughter of the late anti-communist dictator Park Chung-hee, and Pyongyang has repeatedly called her dialogue offers "tricks."
Outgoing President Lee Myung-bak's tough approach on North Korea — including his demand that engagement be accompanied by nuclear disarmament progress — has been deemed a failure by many South Koreans. During his five years in office, North Korea has conducted nuclear and rocket tests — including a rocket launch last week — and it was blamed for two incidents that left 50 South Koreans dead in 2010.
But reaching out to North Korea's authoritarian government also has failed to pay off. Before Lee, landmark summits under a decade of liberal governments resulted in lofty statements and photo ops in Pyongyang between then-leader Kim Jong Il and South Korean presidents, but the North continued to develop its nuclear weapons, which it sees as necessary defense and leverage against Washington and Seoul.
Analysts said Park's vague promises of aid and engagement are not likely to be enough to push Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions, which Washington and Seoul have demanded for true reconciliation to begin. To reverse the antipathy North Korea has so far shown her, Park may need to go further than either her deeply conservative supporters and political allies or a cautious Obama administration will want.
"North Korea is good at applying pressure during South Korean transitions" after presidential elections, said Yoo Ho-yeol, a professor at Korea University in South Korea. "North Korea will do something to try to test, and tame, Park."
Even the last liberal president, Roh Moo-hyun, a champion of no-strings-attached aid to Pyongyang, faced a North Korean short-range missile launch on the eve of his 2003 inauguration.
North Korea put its first satellite into space with last week's rocket launch, which the U.N. and others called a cover for a test of banned ballistic missile technology.
Despite the launch, Park says humanitarian aid, including food, medicine and daily goods meant for infants, the sick and other vulnerable people, will flow. She says none of the aid will be anything that North Korea's military could use. She's open to conditional talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The aid won't be as much as North Korea will want, to be sure, and it won't be as much as her liberal challenger in Wednesday's election, Moon Jae-in, would have sent. Park's conditions on aid and talks also could doom talks before they begin.
Pursuing engagement with North Korea "really would have to be her top priority for her to be a game-changing kind of leader on the issue," said John Delury, an analyst at Seoul's Yonsei University. He added that Park is more likely to take a passive, moderate approach.
"In the inter-Korean context, there's not a big difference between a passive approach and a hostile approach," Delury said, "because if you don't take the initiative with North Korea, they'll take the initiative" in the form of provocations meant to raise their profile.
North Korea was not a particularly pressing issue for South Korean voters, who were more worried about their economic futures and a host of social issues. But it is of deep interest to Washington, Beijing and Tokyo, which had been holding off on pursuing their North Korea policies until South Korean voters chose their new leader.
The next Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is a hawk on North Korea matters who has supported tighter sanctions because of the rocket launch.
The U.S. had attempted to warm relations with North Korea with an aid-for-nuclear-freeze deal reached with Pyongyang in February, but that collapsed in April when the North conducted a failed rocket launch.
Washington could use a new thaw on the Korean Peninsula as a cover to pursue more nuclear disarmament talks, analysts say, but the Obama administration will also likely want a carefully coordinated approach with Seoul toward Pyongyang.
Park's North Korea policy aims to hold talks meant to build trust and resolve key issues, like the nuclear problem and other security challenges. Humanitarian assistance to the North won't be tied to ongoing political circumstances, though her camp hasn't settled details, including the amount.
Park also plans to restart joint economic initiatives that were put on hold during the Lee administration as progress occurs on the nuclear issue and after reviewing the projects with lawmakers.
Park's statement that she's willing to talk with Kim Jong Un "practically means she's willing to give more money to North Korea," which is Pyongyang's typical demand for dialogue, said Andrei Lankov, a scholar on the North at Seoul's Kookmin University.
But the heart of the matter — North Korea's nuclear program — might be off limits, no matter how deeply the next Blue House decides to engage.
"North Korea isn't going to surrender its nukes. They're going to keep them indefinitely," Lankov said. "No amount of bribing or blackmail or begging is going to change it. They are a de facto nuclear power, period, and they are going to stay that way."

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"Fiscal cliff" drag on economy less than feared so far

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy showed surprising signs of resilience in November despite the approach of the so-called fiscal cliff as consumer spending rose by the most in three years and a gauge of business investment jumped.
Consumer spending rose 0.6 percent when adjusted for inflation, while new factory orders for capital goods outside the defense and aerospace sectors - a proxy for business spending plans - jumped 2.7 percent, the Commerce Department said on Friday.
Economists had pinned earlier weakness in investment plans on worries lawmakers and the White House might fail to strike a deal to avoid the brunt of tax hikes and government spending cuts scheduled to begin in January.
They also worried consumers would hold back as the end-of-the-year deadline approached with both parties far apart on how to avoid the potential hit to the economy. But Friday's data suggested both consumers and businesses had mostly shrugged off the cliff, at least in November.
"It appears that the looming fiscal cliff hasn't been nearly as disruptive as we had feared," said Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics in Toronto.
Still, another report provided ample reason for caution as U.S. consumer sentiment slumped in December, with households apparently rattled by on-going negotiations to lessen the fiscal tightening that could easily trigger a recession next year.
The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's final index of consumer sentiment in December tumbled more than expected to 72.9 from 82.7 a month before.
U.S. stocks fell sharply after a Republican proposal for averting the fiscal cliff was abandoned late on Thursday, eroding optimism that a deal could be reached quickly. At the same time, U.S. government debt prices rallied and the dollar gained ground as investors sought a safe haven.
Economists still expect economic growth to cool in the fourth quarter as companies slow the pace at which they have been re-stocking their shelves, but the data on Friday suggested consumers are offsetting some of that drag.
Consumer spending is on track to grow at a 2.2 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, faster than during the prior three months, said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan in New York.
Forecasting firm Macroeconomic Advisers raised its forecast for fourth-quarter economic growth by four tenths of a point to a 1.4 percent annual rate. In the third quarter, the economy expanded at a 3.1 percent rate.
"The economy is holding in here at the end of the year despite the concerns about the fiscal cliff," said Gary Thayer, an economic strategist at Wells Fargo Advisors in St. Louis.
WORRIES AHEAD
Those concerns are not going away.
In November, many analysts on Wall Street said they expected Washington would largely avert the fiscal cliff, and optimism had grown over the last week that a deal was within reach. Since Wednesday, however, negotiations have fallen into disarray.
If Congress and the White House do not reach a deal in time, taxes will go up for all Americans beginning in January and the government will cut spending on a host of programs. Running off the fiscal cliff would slash the nation's trillion-dollar budget deficit nearly in half in just one year.
The impact would only come gradually, but economists expect it would be enough to knock the country into recession in the first half of the year.
So far, uncertainty over the talks appears to have had only a limited impact on the economy.
New orders for durable goods, items meant to last three years or more, rose a greater-than-expected 0.7 percent in November due to gains in machinery, fabricated metal products, and computer and electronic products. Those increases were offset by a decline in volatile aircraft orders.
The report also showed a rise in shipments, brightening the prospects for fourth-quarter economic growth.
Shipments of non-defense capital goods orders excluding aircraft, used to calculate equipment and software spending in the government's measures of gross domestic product, gained 1.8 percent, after rising by a softer 0.6 percent in October.

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IMF extends zero interest loans to poor nations

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Poor countries with loans from the IMF can continue to pay no interest until the end of 2014, the Fund's board said on Friday, as their economies are still recovering from the global economic crisis.
The IMF's zero-interest loan program for low-income countries had been set to expire at the end of this year.
"The executive board decision to keep interest rates at zero ... is testament to the Fund's continued support for low-income countries since the global economic crisis hit in 2009," IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said in a statement.
The IMF decided in 2009 to allow countries eligible for its anti-poverty loan program to pay zero interest on loans in light of the financial crisis.
The Fund also set a target to raise $17 billion to lend to the poorest countries, which are threatened by the risk of euro-zone contagion and by a drop-off in foreign aid after the global recession.
IMF's Lagarde has pushed to meet that goal, seeking to ease concerns that the IMF and donor nations may turn a blind eye to the world's poor as they focus on containing the euro zone crisis.
In September, the IMF said it would distribute a $3.8 billion windfall from gold sales to its 188 member countries if they agreed to commit most of the money to the anti-poverty loan program.

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Top business story in '12: Sluggish global economy

This would be the year when the global economy finally regained its vigor. At least that's what many had hoped.
It didn't happen.
The three largest economies — the United States, China and Japan — struggled again in 2012. The 17 countries that use the euro endured a third painful year in their financial crisis and slid into recession. Emerging economies slowed.
President Barack Obama defied predictions by sailing to re-election. And his landmark health care plan surprisingly survived Supreme Court review. Obama's re-election triggered a face-off with Republicans over averting the "fiscal cliff" — the drastic spending cuts and tax increases that were set to kick in Jan. 1.
The tech world dueled over smartphones and tablets and saw Facebook's IPO sour as fast as it had sizzled. The housing market inched toward recovery. And Americans suffered both a catastrophic drought and a catastrophic superstorm.
Least surprisingly, perhaps, another gallery of rogues brought investigative scrutiny to Wall Street.
The achingly slow global economic recovery was chosen as the top business story of the year by business editors at The Associated Press. The U.S. presidential election came in second, followed by the Supreme Court's upholding Obama's health-care plan.
1. THE GLOBAL ECONOMY: Worldwide growth was slack again in 2012. The global economy grew just 3.3 percent, down from 3.8 percent in 2011 and 5.1 percent in 2010, the International Monetary Fund estimates. The U.S. economy, the world's largest, failed to gain traction. Five years after a recession seized the economy and more than three years after it ended, growth in the United States was only about 2 percent. Unemployment remained a high 7.7 percent.
Europe fared worse. Its financial crisis did stabilize, thanks in part to the European Central Bank's plan to buy government bonds to help countries manage their debts. But the euro alliance sank into recession. Europeans, in turn, held back China, the world's No. 2 economy, by cutting back on Chinese goods. China's economy grew at a 7.4 percent annual rate in the July-September quarter. Though a scorching pace for developed countries, that marked a 3½-year low for China. And at year's end, Japan's economy, the world's third-largest, was shrinking.
2. U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: Obama vaulted to a re-election victory over Mitt Romney, who had staked his bid on the weakest U.S. economic rebound since the Great Depression and had pledged to slash taxes. Unemployment under Obama topped 8 percent for 43 straight months.
Yet he won despite the highest unemployment rate of any president seeking re-election since World War II. Voters assigned him higher marks on the economy as the year progressed, perhaps encouraged by job gains. As the fiscal cliff neared, Obama fought to raise taxes on the highest-earning Americans. He also demanded aid for the long-term unemployed and money for roads, bridges and other infrastructure. Economists raised hopes that if the fiscal cliff was averted, the gloom would lift in Obama's second term.
3. OBAMA HEALTH CARE PLAN UPHELD: The Supreme Court caught many by surprise when it backed Obama administration's health care reform in a 5-4 vote. The law requires Americans to buy insurance or pay a tax, while subsidizing the needy. Hospitals and health insurers will likely benefit from 30 million new customers. Medical device makers, though, will face a new sales tax. And some small businesses say the law will discourage hiring because it requires companies to provide health care once they employ more than 50.
4. THE FISCAL CLIFF: A dreaded package of tax increases and deep spending cuts to domestic and defense programs loomed over the economy in the year's final months. Negotiators struggled to forge a budget deal to avert those measures. If they failed, the tax increases and spending cuts would kick in Jan. 1. That threat was intended to be so chilling that it would force Congress and the White House to take the painful budgetary steps needed to avoid it. Economists warned that if the fiscal cliff measures remained in place for much of 2013, they would cause a recession.
5. FACEBOOK's IPO: Years of anticipation led to Facebook's initial public offering of stock — the hottest Internet IPO since Google's in 2004. Many of the billion or so users of the world's largest online social network craved a chance to buy in early. On the eve of its first trading day, Facebook's market value was $104 billion — more than Amazon.com's or McDonald's at the time. Yet the IPO bombed. Its debut was marred by technical glitches with the Nasdaq exchange, allegations that a revenue gap wasn't publicly disclosed and complaints that the IPO had been priced too high. Traders lost confidence fast. Within three months, Facebook's stock had shed more than half its IPO value.
6. HOUSING RECOVERY: After a six-year slump that sent more than 4 million homes into foreclosure and shrank home prices about one-third nationwide, the U.S. housing market began to recover in mid-year. Modest job gains and record-low mortgage rates fueled demand. And the supply of available homes sank. By June, prices began rising. And builders broke ground on the most homes in four years. Housing boosted economic growth this year for the first time since 2005.
7. THE RETURN OF BIG OIL: Domestic crude oil production achieved its biggest one-year gain since 1951, driven by output in North Dakota and Texas. The United States is on pace to pass Saudi Arabia as the world's top oil producer within two years. Credit goes to drilling improvements, like those that have fed a boom in domestic natural-gas production — horizontal drilling combined with hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The new production helped cut natural gas prices to their lowest levels in more than a decade. Higher oil production helped reduce oil imports to 1992 levels and hand record profits to U.S. refiners. Gasoline prices declined in the last three months of the year. But for all of 2012, the average gallon was a record $3.63.
8. BANKS BEHAVING BADLY: It was a banner year for bank drama. JPMorgan Chase lost $6 billion in a complex series of trades. And one of its bankers in London grew famous for big bets and became known as the "London whale." Morgan Stanley was accused of botching Facebook's IPO. An ex-banker trashed Goldman Sachs for putting profits ahead of customers and for mocking clients as "muppets." Barclays and UBS were fined for their roles in manipulating a key global interest rate. And HSBC agreed to pay $1.9 billion to settle charges that it enabled money laundering by Mexican drug traffickers.
9. MOTHER NATURE: There wasn't enough rain in much of the nation. Then, suddenly there was much too much. The nation suffered its worst drought since the 1950s, covering 80 percent of U.S. farmland. Grain and food prices soared. Then a storm so destructive it was dubbed a "superstorm" walloped the Northeast. Sandy blasted coastal New Jersey and New York and put 8.5 million customers in 21 states in the dark. Sandy will likely end up as the second-costliest U.S. storm ever after Hurricane Katrina.
10. MOBILE-GADGET WARS: Competition in mobile technology intensified. Apple maintained its worldwide dominance. But the use of Google's Android software on competing smartphones and tablets spread faster than Apple's market share. Forty-four percent of U.S. adults own smartphones, up from about 35 percent a year ago. Tablet ownership doubled in 2012. Taking on Apple's iPad, Microsoft unleashed its Surface tablet and began selling Windows 8, a tablet-friendly operating system. Amazon and Barnes & Noble rushed out high-definition-screen tablets. Each priced its premium model less than the entry-level iPad. Apple struck back with the iPad Mini. Struggling to compete, once-formidable Nokia and BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion floundered.

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