LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) ? A month before he directs and co-produces his second Academy Awards show, Don Mischer will receive an honor of his own at one of the key Oscar precursor shows, the Producers Guild of America's 23rd annual Producers Guild Awards.
The PGA announced on Monday that Mischer, a veteran of decades in live television, will receive the Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television, the first time a producer known for live television has been given the honor.
"Don Mischer is an extraordinarily talented producer whose work is amongst the best and most watched entertainment in the world," Producers Guild Awards co-chairs Paula Wagner and Michael Manheim said in a statement announcing the award. "His ability to consistently deliver live event productions of the highest caliber is unmatched in this industry."
Mischer's track record includes last year's Oscar show, numerous Kennedy Center Honors, Super Bowl halftime shows, Olympic Games opening and closing ceremonies and dozens of music-themed specials.
The Producers Guild Awards will take place on January 21 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. The PGA's award for feature film production is one of the most accurate barometers of what film will win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Mischer is producing the next Oscars with Brett Ratner; he also produced the last show with Bruce Cohen.
It's the week before Halloween and my office is abuzz with ghosts and goblins. Skeletons sleeping in closets have suddenly woken with fervor. My clients grant me prescient powers and command me to explain what they deem the inexplicable.
Melanie, newly separated, just returned from a business trip and she's rattled. "Please work your magic Rachel. It's happening again." I know what Melanie is referring to because we've had this conversation time and again. "Intellectually I understand that my marriage is over, but I thought about Kenny a lot while I was away. It's crazy, but I'm afraid I'm slipping back. I keep thinking about the good times and wondering if I made a mistake. Maybe he can still change?" Melanie is referring to her ex - a manipulative and adulterous man who has caused her ample grief. She worked hard in counseling to process her raw feelings and form significant realizations, which finally gave her the courage to exit the marriage. Yet on occasion her worries get hold of her and she imagines a different outcome should they reunite.
Bob's mind is also playing tricks on him following a string of bad dates. After an amicable divorce, that was initiated by him, he questions his choice after a dinner with his ex. "We had such a nice evening. We really connected and I even felt a slight attraction to her. I'm a mess today. Maybe I made a mistake and we should give it another shot?" I know Bob's wife, and she is wonderful woman. Yet they are ill suited and make much better friends than lovers.
The road towards ending a marriage and cutting emotional ties with your ex is a long and winding one. Saying goodbye to someone you once loved and imagined a future with is extraordinarily complicated and painful. I do believe that the majority of us take our vows seriously, and it's practically inconceivable to imagine on our wedding day that we may be one of those couples whose marriage end in divorce.
Couples and individuals regularly seek my guidance when their marriage is in jeopardy of terminating. And even as the unapparent develops into the inevitable, it is human nature to cling to what is perceived as "comfortable", even when it's not. This is the back and forth tango that most of us dance when faced with the prospect of divorce.
Fear causes our minds to play tricks on us
Whether you initiated your divorce, or if you were the one who was left, the prospect of ending a marriage and starting afresh is terrifying. My clients and friends regularly confess their "fear list" to me -- and it is lengthy. It includes fear of the unknown, fear of the divorce process, fear of living alone, fear of dating, fear of being single forever, fear of financially supporting oneself, and fear of damaging children. Fear also keeps many people stuck in loveless, "likeless," and abusive marriages for too long. Unfortunately, when we are leading with our fears, we temporarily stop thinking with our brains. This setup inevitable causes us to question our choices or fantasize about different outcomes.
Facing your Fears
Facing your fears is paramount to disconnecting from your ex, getting healthy and moving forward. The first step towards change is to identify when you are thinking frightening, negative or anxious thoughts. Once you learn how to do this, and you can, you can then begin to break the fear cycle. Try these useful tips: Train yourself to acknowledge scary thoughts, and then, release them. Talk back to them with a calm and optimistic internal voice. A great exercise that I suggest is to write down all of your fears and sort through each one with a level head. When you clear your "fear list" from your head and actually see it in front of you, it looks much less intimidating. Then you can physically see fact vs. fiction and begin creating strategies to conquer the valid ones.
Practice doing these exercises daily and you'll be surprised how your fears will be replaced with faith. Then I promise you there will be no ghosts at your door on Halloween or evermore.
*Please note that all names in this post have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.
Android?s open platform has incurred countless devices, all flooding the market. But the gaming industry is helping some manufacturers set themselves apart. With a lucrative gaming sector drawing in advertisers, in-app purchases and virtual goods, mobile gaming has created a sub-market all its own. There?s a growing number of gadget makers looking to put their stamp on Android devices. Video game retailer GameStop, for instance, will soon sell Android tablets as part of an effort to expand its device offerings.
Just in time for the holiday season, GameStop?s family of specialized tablets will come from manufacturers Asustek, Acer and Samsung. They?ll be pre-loaded with a handful of games, including EA titles like Madden NFL. The Android-powered game tablets will also become distribution channels for GameStop?s own mobile app store, Kongregate Arcade. The game store was an early initiative for GameStop as it felt its way into the mobile realm, and only gains potential with a concentrated effort around GameStop devices. The tablets will be priced around $400 to $500, which could be an issue for the retailer if it hopes to compete with the Amazon Kindle Fire, also primped with a gaming marketplace.
Sony looks to Android for PlayStation distribution
Sony is another company anxious to cash in on Android?s gaming potential. In an effort to control more of its mobile offerings, Sony is paying Ericsson about $1.5 billion for its half of the Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications joint venture. Their devices have pretty much always been media-centric, but Sony really began to realize its mobile promise with the Xperia PLAY launch. The device was designed for true gamers, with familiar button placement and optimized graphics support. The Xperia PLAY has also become a distribution channel for the Sony PlayStation network, closing the loop for Sony?s mobile and gaming offerings.
Sony also hopes its PlayStation Suite will help sell more Android devices in the future, extending beyond the Xperia PLAY to include the Sony Tablet S and Sony Tablet P. But the company may be looking even further, as Sony executive deputy president Kazuo Hirai shares their plans beyond Sony devices.
?That?s the beauty of Android,? Hirai says. ?We?re in discussions with non-Sony companies to bring them on board. We?ll make those announcements when it?s time to go public with it. This is not just for Sony devices.?
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NEW YORK ? Procter & Gamble Co. said on Thursday that its fiscal first quarter profit fell 2 percent because the higher prices consumers are paying for its products like Gillette razors and Crest whitening strips were not enough to offset its rising costs for oil and other raw materials.
The world's largest consumer-products company, which makes Tide detergent and Pampers diapers, is locked in a battle that's familiar to companies of all stripes. Faced with higher costs themselves, they have been raising prices at a time when Americans are worried about the economic downturn. But companies' profits continue to be strained as they are careful not to increase prices so much that customers won't buy.
P&G's strategy has been to raise prices mostly on premium products like Crest 3D whitening strips and Gillette ProGlide razors, which have sold well even in the weak economy, executives said Thursday. They think those customers will continue to pay up if the company can keep introducing new products to grab their attention, while customers on the lower end may not be willing to shell out more money for goods.
"An unemployed consumer continues to look for good value and continues on occasion to trade down," said Bob McDonald, P&G's CEO. "But on the other hand you've got people on the other end of the economic portfolio who continue to trade up."
Overall, P&G raised prices an average of 4 percent in the fiscal first quarter, which covered July through September. That was on top of price hikes of 3 percent and 1 percent the previous two quarters. P&G said that its price increases caused it to lose some market share in Western Europe, where it gets 20 percent of its revenue, and North America, where it gets about 40 percent. But P&G held or gained market share in Asia, Latin America, and the region that includes Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, where it sells lower-priced items with lower profit margins, hoping those customers eventually move to buying higher-priced products.
The price increases helped to boost revenue, as did the weak U.S. dollar, which meant that P&G got more dollars back in the U.S. from goods sold overseas. In the fiscal first quarter, which covered July through September, revenue increased 9 percent to $21.92 billion from $20.12 billion. That beat the $21.58 billion expected by analysts polled by FactSet.
But the price hikes were not enough to offset the company's higher costs for raw materials like oil. Net income fell to $3.02 billion from $3.08 billion. Per-share earnings were $1.03 per share, in line with analysts' estimates, and up from $1.02 per share in the same period a year ago. Gross margin fell to 49.5 percent from 51.9 percent.
Executives acknowledged that the costs of some materials have fallen, but they emphasized that many are still up significantly from a year ago. For example, Brent Crude oil is trading for about $112 per barrel, up from about $84 a year ago.
McDonald said P&G is working to find other, renewable materials, which won't be subjected to such big spikes, to use in its products. P&G said it expects revenue to increase 3 to 6 percent for the current fiscal year, which runs through June, though some of that would be due to higher prices.
The company also noted that the boost it and other companies have enjoyed from the favorable currency translation will likely decline as the dollar shows signs of strengthening.
But Chief Financial Officer Jon Moeller said the company wouldn't base its decision-making on short-term market trends.
"It's just more of the same in the volatile environment that we live in," he said.
P&G shares rose 31 cents to close at $65.26 Thursday amid a broad market rally.
Amazon may have faced stiff opposition to its plans to acquire British online bookseller The Book Depository, but one of those not standing in its path is the Office of Fair Trading. Over protests from the UK Booksellers Association, Publishers Association and Independent Publishers Guild, the OFT approved the purchase, saying that the acquisition would not form a de facto monopoly. While Amazon's market share is "strong" its newest purchase only holds between two- and four-percent -- hardly making it a competitor of the internet giant. The Book Depository will continue to operate as an independent entity for the foreseeable future, but our friends across the pond now have one less option if they choose not to do business with Bezos.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) ? Police arrested at least 85 people and cleared a camp used by anti-Wall Street protesters near the Oakland, California, city hall early on Tuesday, a city spokeswoman said.
Those arrested faced charges for camping or assembling without a permit in Frank Ogawa Plaza, the site of two weeks of "Occupy Wall Street" protests, Oakland spokeswoman Karen Boyd said.
The plaza remained cordoned off at midday on Tuesday for cleanup of debris, Boyd said. Once cleaned, it is expected to be reopened and protesters will be free to use it for daytime demonstrations, she said.
The city said it began to clear the plaza before dawn and had "contained" the area in about an hour.
About 350 people were in the plaza when police began to clear the area, Boyd said. Police deployed beanbags and sprayed gas at protesters, she said. There were no reports of injuries.
The protest was the Oakland version of the movement launched more than a month ago as Occupy Wall Street in New York.
The protesters are angry at government bailouts of big banks, high unemployment, and economic inequality in the United States. Demonstrations have spread across the nation and overseas, although crowds remain relatively small in most cities.
Oakland said in a statement it told protesters last Thursday to cease overnight camping and cooking at the plaza.
"Over the last week it was apparent that neither the demonstrators nor the city could maintain safe or sanitary conditions, or control the ongoing vandalism," Oakland Mayor Jean Quan said in a statement.
The city said conditions at the plaza had begun to deteriorate by the second week of the protests with police, fire and medical care reporting they were denied access to the plaza to respond to service calls.
The city also said it had received reports of a sexual assault and a severe beating, and that the lack of sanitation had worsened a rodent problem in the plaza. Officials also said the plaza was damaged by graffiti, litter and vandalism.
Hundreds of demonstrators have been arrested in New York since the protests began. There have also been numerous arrests in other cities.
(Reporting by Emmett Berg and Peter Henderson; Additional reporting by David Bailey in Minneapolis; Editing by Jerry Norton, Greg McCune and Eric Beech)
SACO, Maine -- A Maine man and his car are celebrating a million-mile milestone.
Joe LoCicero (luh-SISS'-er-oh) was given a 2012 Honda Accord at a parade in the city of Saco on Sunday after surpassing the million-mile mark on the odometer of his 1990 Accord. He reached the milestone last Thursday.
LoCicero says he bought the car in 1996 with 74,000 miles. The former mechanic did much of his own work. The secret he says is following maintenance schedules, using quality parts and driving safely.
He swears the transmission and engine are original.
Now that he has a new Accord, he's not sure what he'll do with the old one.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. ? Victims of a career con artist who helped federal investigators expose illegal activity do not want him to get a lenient sentence that's possible because of his cooperation.
Court filings show David Whitaker spent two years helping federal investigators expose how illegal Canadian pharmacy operators used Google Inc. to attract American consumers.
Prosecutors say Whitaker helped investigators set up phony websites used in the probe. Whitaker has admitted ripping off a credit card processing company and small businesses that purchased electronics from him.
Federal prosecutors say they will recommend a lesser punishment for the 36-year-old Whitaker when he is sentenced Dec. 2 in U.S. District Court in Providence.
Google agreed in August to forfeit $500 million to settle claims it let illegal Canadian pharmacies advertise on its site.
Yesterday was not Lindsay Lohan's best day ... aesthetically or legally.
After showing up for court with her makeup applied haphazardly and dressed like a ghost for reasons unknown, she was briefly jailed for violating probation before posting $100,000 bail ... standard operating procedure for LiLo.
Most mugshots don't tell you a whole lot about the person, but if your impression was that Lindsay is a whiny, pouty brat ... this isn't gonna dissuade you.
She'll be back in court for a full hearing Nov. 2, at which point Judge Stephanie Sautner could reinstate her probation, or send her to jail for a long ass time.
Short story: Linds is on probation in her necklace heist case, but is a Class A f*%k-up who cannot even do community service without getting kicked out.
She was handcuffed and thrown in jail yesterday mostly to send a message. If she can't convince the judge Nov. 2 that she has it together, watch out.
NEW YORK (Reuters) ? A New York City policeman has been docked more than a third of his vacation time after he used pepper spray on anti-Wall Street protesters corralled by police on a sidewalk during a rally against economic inequality.
In a viral online video, Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna was shown pepper-spraying several protesters involved in a march about a week after the Occupy Wall Street movement set up camp in a park in the city's financial district on September 17.
He received a command discipline for "using pepper spray outside of department guidelines" and was docked 10 vacation days, police said. Bologna normally gets 27 days vacation a year, the NYPD Captain's Endowment Association said.
"Deputy Inspector Bologna is disappointed at the results of the department investigation," said Roy Richter, president of the NYPD Captain's Endowment Association.
"His actions prevented further injury and escalation of tumultuous conduct."
More than 800 people have been arrested at rallies held by the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City, which has been driven by social media and culminated in global protests on Saturday that were mostly peaceful apart from those in Rome, where riots broke out.
Author Naomi Wolf was arrested in New York City on Tuesday when she joined protesters outside an event due to be attended by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Wolf wrote in The Guardian newspaper that she had also attended the Huffington Post event and was arrested wearing her evening gown.
Occupy Arrests, a Twitter feed compiling arrests related to Occupy Wall Street, said 1,800 people had been arrested around the world so far.
Protesters can now download a new phone application called "I'm Getting Arrested," which sends a mass alert to family, friends and even one's lawyer by pushing one button. Since it was launched 10 days ago it has been downloaded more than 5,400 times, said the application's developer Jason Van Anden.
Van Anden said he came up with the application, available on Android phones and being tested by Apple for the iPhone, after his colleague's girlfriend was nearly arrested during an Occupy Wall Street protest earlier this month.
The Occupy movement has sprung up in cities across North America and prompted hundreds of arrests from Boston and Washington to Denver, Chicago, San Francisco, San Diego and Austin, Texas.
The protesters say billions of dollars in bank bailouts doled out during the recession allowed banks to resume earning huge profits while average Americans have had no relief from high unemployment and job insecurity.
They also believe the richest 1 percent of Americans do not pay their fair share in taxes.
Critics have accused the protests of lacking a clear message or goal, and in many cities the number of demonstrators has been relatively small.
(Additional reporting by Zach Howard in Conway, Mass.; Editing by Jerry Norton)
(In 10th paragraph corrects to ...colleague's girlfriend... from ...his girlfriend...)
30-year mortgage proof of payoff, setting a budget, and baby life insurance are three topics in this week's reader mailbag. Answer to payoff of 30-year mortgage comes in question No. 9.
What?s inside? Here are the questions answered in today?s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question. 1. Saving for future dream home 2. Setting a budget 3. Forgiving loans to stimulate economy 4. Should we buy a house? 5. Best book of 2011 6. Repaying an old debt 7. Baby life insurance 8. Paying off no-interest loan 9. 30-year mortgage payoff paperwork 10. Vegan to vegetarian
Skip to next paragraph Trent Hamm
The Simple Dollar is a blog for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two. Our busy lives are crazy enough without having to compare five hundred mutual funds ? we just want simple ways to manage our finances and save a little money.
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I?ve learned some things and gained some new insights from the Occupy Wall Street movement. They encouraged me to learn more about the issues they?re protesting about and made me reconsider some of my political ideas.
The thing is, I could make the same exact statement about the Tea Party movement.
You can always learn something and grow from anyone, particularly when people congregate under the same banner. Something is making them do this. Why? What makes them so passionate about the idea that they take action? There?s usually something valuable there if you take the time to learn about it instead of just discarding it.
Q1: Saving for future dream home I was just wondering how you and your family save for your future dream home? Do you put it in a Index fund? If so, at what point would you move it out from that and into a cash account? I remember reading unless my goal is greater than 10 years away, to just keep it as cash. Does that mean 10 years out from your goal you would move it into a savings? - Fred
For us, we sat down and asked ourselves what needed to be in place for us to move forward with our plans for a dream home. We decided that we needed to be able to pay cash for the land and have our current house completely paid for before we decided to move forward with the plan. Mostly, this is because we?re pretty debt-averse. Ideally, we would like to buy the land with cash, then use the future sale of our house as collateral to build, then put our house onto the market as soon as (or just before) we?re able to move.
Once we had that set in mind, we asked ourselves what financial moves would get us to our goal as quickly as possible. After playing around with several investment and debt calculators, we came to the conclusion that the approach that would lead to success most effectively was a split approach, where we made larger-than-average payments on our mortgage while also contributing a small amount each month to some sort of investment.
Since our timeline for this is a little more than a decade off, we elected to use an index fund for this savings. We are placing half of our savings into Vanguard Total Stock Market Index, which basically indexes most domestic stocks, and half in Vanguard Total International Stock Index, which indexes a wide variety of international stocks.
We re-evaluate these choices every year, watching how the investment grows and adjusting our splitting of our ?savings? on an annual basis. As we get closer to the date where we?re able to do this (a date that?s inching earlier and earlier, actually), we?ll move the stock investments into something more conservative that won?t lose value.
Q2: Setting a budget A friend of mine (she?s 23 and single, part time student with a good paying job and benefits) asked me about budgeting. She said she looks up to my frugal ways and wanted to know if her budget was good percentage wise. I was embarrassed to tell her that other than making sure that housing is no more that 25% of your gross and saving AT LEAST 10% per month, I didn?t know what the ?rules? were for percentage of income in the other areas (needs, wants, debt repayment, etc). My personal method is to list my fixed expenses first (of which I include tithe, retirement and regular savings as fixed expenses) and then I try to keep all my other stuff (gas, groceries, entertainment, etc) as low as humanly possible, and then either save the remainder at the end of the month for short term stuff or other things we are working towards (home improvement, vacation). Can you tell me the rule of thumb for budgets? What percentage should be housing, savings, transportation, needs, wants, etc? - Jill
The problem with sticking to someone else?s recipe for percentages is that they vary widely. The proportion of housing costs, for example, depends heavily on where you live, your housing requirements, and your total salary. For example, a single person making $30,000 a year in New York City is going to have a lot higher percentage of their annual income devoted to housing than a married couple making $120,000 a year in rural Iowa.
The best way to budget is to simply track all of your expenses for a few months, then use that data to calculate the percentages of what you?re actually spending. Then, spend some time thinking about that data. What can you actually cut? What percentages would you like to see elsewhere?
You can categorize all of your spending however you?d like. Just make sure that it?s grouped in ways that make easy sense to you.
Q3: Forgiving loans to stimulate economy I keep seeing posts on Facebook about asking the government to forgive student loan debts. I?m no economist, but I cannot understand how not repaying the government could prove to be a good idea (though it would benefit me). I?d be interested to read your thoughts on the matter. - Andy
The idea is that if the government forgave student loan debt, a lot of people under the age of 40 would suddenly have a lot more discretionary income. They would of course then spend that discretionary income, thus stimulating the economy.
Think of it in terms of your situation. If your student loans vanished, you?d probably use that money in other ways. You might buy some things you?ve wanted. You might make a down payment on a house much sooner rather than later.
All of those things would help out the economic recovery. It would be a huge economic boon at the sake of some significant government income over the next few decades. It would increase personal income tax a bit and also increase business revenue a bit too so the government would get to recoup some of it in the form of tax revenues.
Q4: Should we buy a house? My husband and I are in our early 30?s. We are both from India and have been working in the United States (Texas) for 6 years now. We have no debts and are pretty disciplined about savings. We are on H1b (work) visas and hope to get our Green Card in the next 2 or 3 years.
We have been renting and would like to know if its a good idea to buy a house in the current market? Does it make sense to buy if there is chance that for some reason our GC is not approved and we have to move back to India? Our concern is that we would most probably end up staying and might be wasting money paying rent when we could already be investing in our house. What additional expenses are we looking at and is there anything we need to keep in mind if there is a need to sell in the next 1, 2 or 3 yrs? - Claire
The best time to buy a house is when you can afford one and it meets your housing needs. If you?re buying a home as a residence, that?s the primary consideration.
Market timing on a home purchase is only a good idea if you?re able to move it easily as an investment. That?s much harder to do if it?s your primary residence. Besides, the future is notoriously difficult to predict. I wouldn?t make a house-buying decision based on the arcane art of market timing.
One point of advice, though. Without a green card, you may find that some lending institutions are hesitant to offer you a mortgage, even if you have a full down payment and good credit, as you might be a risk of just disappearing back into your home country. Don?t let it get you down and shop around.
Q5: Best book of 2011 Your list of your favorite authors was a bit overwhelming. How about just sharing your favorite book so far this year? - Leslie
I?ll name two books. No, three.
The most enjoyable book I?ve read this year so far, at least in terms of keeping me entertained and keeping me turning the pages, was The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. It?s a fantasy novel that centers around a small handful of really compelling characters, plus Sanderson has a particular gift for making it all come to life.
The most thought-provoking book I?ve read this year so far, in terms of making me reflect on it and altering my way of thinking, was Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer, which focuses on the neuroscience of memory and how to improve one?s own memory. I?ve also got to give a nod to Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, the best book on running I?ve ever read.
Home > Economy, home buyers, News Item, Trends > Would-be Homeowners Dream, Economy Screams, ?Not Yet?
villagesoup reports a survey of 3,000 renters and home owners showed 68 percent say it is a good time to buy a home, although the tight credit and uncertain job market continue to dog actual sales. ?We thought people would be soured after watching home values fall, but instead we found the typical American still places high value on home ownership,? says Frank Anton, chief executive officer of Hanley Wood, which conducted the survey. Senior fellow Kent Colton, of Harvard University?s Joint Center for Housing Studies, says 33 percent of home owners and 25 percent of renters are living with family and friends. As soon as the job market expands they will be house-hunting. ?It means you have up to 2 million people that are part of what can be easily considered a pent-up demand when the time changes,? he told Reuters News.
(image credit: villagesoup)
Categories: Economy, home buyers, News Item, TrendsTags: 68 percent want to buy, Hanley Wood CEO Frank Anton, Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, MHMSM.com, MHProNews.com, Reuters News, senior fellow Kent Colton, survey 3000 renters and homeowners, two million pent-up demand, villagesoup
KANSAS CITY, Mo. ? The parents of a missing 10-month-old Missouri girl are no longer cooperating with authorities, and their claims that whoever took their daughter stole their cellphones hasn't produce any leads, police said Thursday night.
Jeremy Irwin and Deborah Bradley, who said their daughter, Lisa, was snatched from her crib sometime Monday night or early Tuesday, had been cooperative since reporting her missing. But they changed course Thursday, Kansas City police spokesman Steve Young said.
"Tonight, they decided to stop talking to detectives, and I don't have to illustrate how that affects the investigation. That speaks for itself," he said.
But he reiterated that investigators still have no suspects.
During a tearful news conference Thursday morning, Irwin and Bradley described how they frantically searched their home for any sign of their daughter after her father came home from work early Tuesday and she wasn't in her crib.
They said they found an open window, an unlocked front door and house lights blazing, and later discovered that their three cellphones were gone.
"They told us three cell phones were missing. It hasn't produced anything we can go forward with," Young said. "The investigation is directed and handled by hard information."
Investigators focused their search Thursday on a heavily wooded area, sewers and an industrial park. About 100 officers were scouring the industrial area and adjacent woods, while others were lifting drain covers and crawling inside.
Authorities have used search dogs to go over the family's home and nearby woods, helicopters, all-terrain vehicles and door-to-door interviews with neighbors.
Police have said one possibility was whether someone entered the home through a front window and snatched the baby, but they haven't pointed to any sign of forced entry.
___
Associated Press writer Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City contributed to this report.
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Anyone who has watched an episode of "NCIS," "Criminal Minds," or "Hawaii Five-O" has witnessed amazing technological accomplishments in the areas of data loss prevention and data recovery from damaged or intentionally "wiped" storage devices. In fact, in each of these shows, the "techies" enjoy an entire room of sophisticated equipment that allows them to recover critical evidence and information leading to a crime's solution.
In the real world of computer forensics, however, data loss prevention and data recovery are far more primitive. Most organizations rely on specific software solutions or upon online backup storage systems, neither of which is fully secure and neither of which is effective when storage devices are corrupted or damaged in some manner. Establishing an entire in-house solution, moreover, requires computer forensic equipment and data recovery equipment which has traditionally required huge expense and rigorous, costly training.
Fortunately, like everything else in the world of technology, computer forensics has evolved, and there are now more reasonable equipment solutions and training that allow both public and private organizations and businesses to fully protect their information and data flow, by maintaining data recover equipment and computer forensic equipment on-site.
Consider these scenarios:
1. A large university has a complete student database, including all student academic, financial, and personal records. It is using an online backup service, in the event of data loss on its campus. Unfortunately, the online backup service is "hacked," and this student information is now in the hands of unscrupulous individuals who can do what they will with this wealth of information! There would have been no need to use an online backup service in the first place, if there were equipment on-site that would prevent loss or allow recovery of data, in the event of storage device damage.
2. A medium-sized business has a healthy customer base and maintains records of customer information and purchases. An employee, either by accident or by intention, corrupts or damages a storage device, and the information is lost. The business owners will now have to locate and employ an outsider who has the data recovery equipment necessary to retrieve the records. If, on the other hand, the owners had purchased their own data loss prevention equipment in the first place, or if the owners already had data recovery equipment and trained individuals, the crisis would have been prevented, at best, or now solved through recovery.
The point is this: software and online solutions are fallible, and critical and confidential information is at risk! Any business, public, financial, or educational organization can now have its own in-house computer forensics lab with its own equipment and its own highly trained staff members. The cost is more reasonable than one would expect, the training is impeccable, and the peace of mind is priceless!
Contact us today at either www.recoverytoolsrus.com or www.salvationdata.com and let's discuss your specific needs and the potential solutions we can provide. Our experience and our record of providing perfect equipment and training solutions are un-matched, designed to meet individual customer need, and will provide any organization with the ability to solve is loss or recovery issues.
Author Resource:- computer forensic equipment, data recovery equipment
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By: James White
Anyone who has watched an episode of "NCIS," "Criminal Minds," or "Hawaii Five-O" has witnessed amazing technological accomplishments in the areas of data loss prevention and data recovery from damaged or intentionally "wiped" storage devices. In fact, in each of these shows, the "techies" enjoy an entire room of sophisticated equipment that allows them to recover critical evidence and information leading to a crime's solution.
In the real world of computer forensics, however, data loss prevention and data recovery are far more primitive. Most organizations rely on specific software solutions or upon online backup storage systems, neither of which is fully secure and neither of which is effective when storage devices are corrupted or damaged in some manner. Establishing an entire in-house solution, moreover, requires computer forensic equipment and data recovery equipment which has traditionally required huge expense and rigorous, costly training.
Fortunately, like everything else in the world of technology, computer forensics has evolved, and there are now more reasonable equipment solutions and training that allow both public and private organizations and businesses to fully protect their information and data flow, by maintaining data recover equipment and computer forensic equipment on-site.
Consider these scenarios:
A large university has a complete student database, including all student academic, financial, and personal records. It is using an online backup service, in the event of data loss on its campus. Unfortunately, the online backup service is "hacked," and this student information is now in the hands of unscrupulous individuals who can do what they will with this wealth of information! There would have been no need to use an online backup service in the first place, if there were equipment on-site that would prevent loss or allow recovery of data, in the event of storage device damage.
A medium-sized business has a healthy customer base and maintains records of customer information and purchases. An employee, either by accident or by intention, corrupts or damages a storage device, and the information is lost. The business owners will now have to locate and employ an outsider who has the data recovery equipment necessary to retrieve the records. If, on the other hand, the owners had purchased their own data loss prevention equipment in the first place, or if the owners already had data recovery equipment and trained individuals, the crisis would have been prevented, at best, or now solved through recovery.
The point is this: software and online solutions are fallible, and critical and confidential information is at risk! Any business, public, financial, or educational organization can now have its own in-house computer forensics lab with its own equipment and its own highly trained staff members. The cost is more reasonable than one would expect, the training is impeccable, and the peace of mind is priceless!
Contact us today at either www.recoverytoolsrus.com or www.salvationdata.com and let's discuss your specific needs and the potential solutions we can provide. Our experience and our record of providing perfect equipment and training solutions are un-matched, designed to meet individual customer need, and will provide any organization with the ability to solve is loss or recovery issues.
Author Resource:->??computer forensic equipment, data recovery equipment
The mobile web, social media, gamification, real-time have forced us to rewire the way we think about and run our businesses. Consumers are creating a new digital culture, shifting business landscapes one tweet at a time. New networks have created an ever- expanding ?egosystem,? in which everyday people believe their lives deserve 24-hour broadcasts. But now, we need to decipher the significance of this behavior and understand where the social and mobile web is headed. At the heart of all of this, a new breed of consumer is emerging, and they?re changing the very foundation of business.
Brian Solis?s Movie: ?The End of Business As Usual? explores each layer of this complex consumer revolution that is changing the future of business, media, and culture. As con- sumers connect with one another, a vast and efficient information network takes shape and begins to steer experiences, decisions, and markets. It is nothing short of disruptive.
Insights include:
Shared experiences are redefining brands in digital consumer landscapes, and astute brands can now also create and steer these experience
Consumer influence is growing, and businesses can use this to their advantage
Connect with a rising audience and with audi- ences of audiences through new touchpoints between consumers, brands, and new influencers
Create a culture of change to earn trust, influence, and significance among connected customers
Contact: Glenna Picton picton@bcm.edu 713-798-4710 Baylor College of Medicine
HOUSTON - (Oct. 2, 2011) When cells divide normally, DNA gets copied perfectly and distributed among the daughter cells with an even hand. Occasionally though, DNA breaks during division and is rearranged, resulting in duplications or deletions of important parts of the blueprint.
Now researchers at Baylor College of Medicine who study families with such genomic disorders have found a shared, yet unusual, architecture resulting from this jumble that is associated with very severe forms of disease. They also identified the genomic elements that produce such architecture, a finding that will help predict other unstable regions in the human genome.
The unusual architecture left a footprint, and a search for similar footprints in other regions of the genome may identify regions that underwent the same alteration during the evolutionary past. This event might occur more often than previously expected. A report on their work appears online in the current issue of Nature Genetics.
The rearrangement structure triplicated genetic material inverted and embedded within duplications of genetic material appeared in 20 percent of patients who had been diagnosed with MECP2 duplication syndrome, said first author Dr. Claudia Carvalho, a postdoctoral associate in the laboratory of Dr. James Lupski, vice chair of the department of molecular and human genetics at BCM and corresponding author of the report.
A mutation in MECP2 was first identified in association with Rett syndrome by the laboratory of Dr. Huda Zoghbi at BCM. In Rett syndrome, the protein associated with the gene has minimal or no activity and the disorder mainly affects girls. Later studies showed that too much MeCP2 protein because of increased MECP2 gene dosage could cause another serious disorder this time in boys and called MECP2 duplication syndrome.
In this new discovery, patients with the unusual complex triplication called in shorthand, DUP (duplication)-TRP (triplication)/INV (inverted)-DUP had a more severe constellation of symptoms associated with the genomic disorder. The patients required oxygen or a ventilator and had hearing loss, heart defects and difficulty swallowing that necessitated a feeding tube. In most patients with the syndrome, developmental delays in motor skills, limited or absent speech, autistic behavior, intellectual disability and recurrent infections are also typical symptoms.
"Dr. Melissa Ramocki (another of the paper's first authors and an assistant professor of pediatrics neurology at BCM) started to be able to predict which patients would have the DUP-TRP/INV-DUP," said Lupski. This means that the increased amount of genetic material increased the dosage of MeCP2 protein and made the disorder worse.
Carvalho proposes that the rearrangement may have occurred during the sperm cell generation. During meiosis (sexual cell division), a cell divides and produces four haploid cells containing one copy of each chromosome. The resulting chromosome set in each gamete (sperm or egg) cell is a unique mixture of paternal and maternal DNA, ensuring that offspring are genetically distinct from either parent. The process involves copying DNA and producing new strands for which special cellular machinery exists.
Sometimes, this process goes wrong. At one point, a piece of DNA replication machinery called the replication fork may collapse, forcing the cell to trigger its repair process. When the cell tries to make a new fork, the DNA can line up improperly and pair with a piece of seemingly compatible DNA oriented in the opposite direction. These elements called "inverted repeats" are ubiquitous in the human genome. This first event causes replication of the DNA in the wrong direction opposite to the way that it was going when the fork collapsed, which will lead to a segmental inverted duplication. A second event, believed to be obligatory to the viability of the cell, will bring the replication fork back into the correct direction and resume the replication process. This second event may now produce a triplication if the new replication fork is re-established within the region that was just copied twice.
This jumble of machinery, mismatched DNA ends and aberrant reproduction of the genetic material can cause the strange complex triplication rearrangement that results in disease, and it appears to occur in more than just MECP2 duplication syndrome.
Studying patients with another genomic disorder associated with the PLP1 gene, the researchers were able to find the same unusual genomic architecture (The PLP1 gene is associated with Pelizaeus-Merzbacher Disease, Spastic Paraplegia 2). In each case, inverted repeats of genomic DNA sequence appear to help mediate the complex inverted triplication.
"These inversions are important," said Carvalho. "There is no easy way to assay them, and we don't know how common they are in the genome."
"It may be possible that there are a lot of disease genes there and we don't see them," said Lupski. "The same mechanism that causes disease might also be involved in evolutionary change. In fact, this mechanism may have created new genes that might have made us more fit for our environment."
Dr. Philip J. Hastings, professor of molecular and human genetics at BCM who has studied mutational events resulting in rearrangements of different genomes for many decades, helped work out how the rearrangements might happen and is an author on the report as well.
###
Other authors include: Davut Pehlivan, Luis Franco, Claudia Gonzaga-Jauregui, Ping Fang, Alanna McCall, Daniela del Gaudio, Marjorie Withers, Pengfei Liu, Sau Wai Cheung, John Belmont and Huda Zoghbi, all of BCM; Eniko Karman Pivnick of the University of Tennessee; Stacy Hines-Dowell of LeBonheur Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee; Laurie Seaver and Sansan Lee of Kapiolani Medical Specialists in Honolulu, Hawaii; Linda Friehling of Children's Medical Associates in Alexandria, Virginia; and Rosemarie Smith of Maine Medical Center in Portland.
Funding for this work came from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the Baylor College of Medicine Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
For more information on basic science research at Baylor College of Medicine, please go to From the Lab at Baylor College of Medicine.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Contact: Glenna Picton picton@bcm.edu 713-798-4710 Baylor College of Medicine
HOUSTON - (Oct. 2, 2011) When cells divide normally, DNA gets copied perfectly and distributed among the daughter cells with an even hand. Occasionally though, DNA breaks during division and is rearranged, resulting in duplications or deletions of important parts of the blueprint.
Now researchers at Baylor College of Medicine who study families with such genomic disorders have found a shared, yet unusual, architecture resulting from this jumble that is associated with very severe forms of disease. They also identified the genomic elements that produce such architecture, a finding that will help predict other unstable regions in the human genome.
The unusual architecture left a footprint, and a search for similar footprints in other regions of the genome may identify regions that underwent the same alteration during the evolutionary past. This event might occur more often than previously expected. A report on their work appears online in the current issue of Nature Genetics.
The rearrangement structure triplicated genetic material inverted and embedded within duplications of genetic material appeared in 20 percent of patients who had been diagnosed with MECP2 duplication syndrome, said first author Dr. Claudia Carvalho, a postdoctoral associate in the laboratory of Dr. James Lupski, vice chair of the department of molecular and human genetics at BCM and corresponding author of the report.
A mutation in MECP2 was first identified in association with Rett syndrome by the laboratory of Dr. Huda Zoghbi at BCM. In Rett syndrome, the protein associated with the gene has minimal or no activity and the disorder mainly affects girls. Later studies showed that too much MeCP2 protein because of increased MECP2 gene dosage could cause another serious disorder this time in boys and called MECP2 duplication syndrome.
In this new discovery, patients with the unusual complex triplication called in shorthand, DUP (duplication)-TRP (triplication)/INV (inverted)-DUP had a more severe constellation of symptoms associated with the genomic disorder. The patients required oxygen or a ventilator and had hearing loss, heart defects and difficulty swallowing that necessitated a feeding tube. In most patients with the syndrome, developmental delays in motor skills, limited or absent speech, autistic behavior, intellectual disability and recurrent infections are also typical symptoms.
"Dr. Melissa Ramocki (another of the paper's first authors and an assistant professor of pediatrics neurology at BCM) started to be able to predict which patients would have the DUP-TRP/INV-DUP," said Lupski. This means that the increased amount of genetic material increased the dosage of MeCP2 protein and made the disorder worse.
Carvalho proposes that the rearrangement may have occurred during the sperm cell generation. During meiosis (sexual cell division), a cell divides and produces four haploid cells containing one copy of each chromosome. The resulting chromosome set in each gamete (sperm or egg) cell is a unique mixture of paternal and maternal DNA, ensuring that offspring are genetically distinct from either parent. The process involves copying DNA and producing new strands for which special cellular machinery exists.
Sometimes, this process goes wrong. At one point, a piece of DNA replication machinery called the replication fork may collapse, forcing the cell to trigger its repair process. When the cell tries to make a new fork, the DNA can line up improperly and pair with a piece of seemingly compatible DNA oriented in the opposite direction. These elements called "inverted repeats" are ubiquitous in the human genome. This first event causes replication of the DNA in the wrong direction opposite to the way that it was going when the fork collapsed, which will lead to a segmental inverted duplication. A second event, believed to be obligatory to the viability of the cell, will bring the replication fork back into the correct direction and resume the replication process. This second event may now produce a triplication if the new replication fork is re-established within the region that was just copied twice.
This jumble of machinery, mismatched DNA ends and aberrant reproduction of the genetic material can cause the strange complex triplication rearrangement that results in disease, and it appears to occur in more than just MECP2 duplication syndrome.
Studying patients with another genomic disorder associated with the PLP1 gene, the researchers were able to find the same unusual genomic architecture (The PLP1 gene is associated with Pelizaeus-Merzbacher Disease, Spastic Paraplegia 2). In each case, inverted repeats of genomic DNA sequence appear to help mediate the complex inverted triplication.
"These inversions are important," said Carvalho. "There is no easy way to assay them, and we don't know how common they are in the genome."
"It may be possible that there are a lot of disease genes there and we don't see them," said Lupski. "The same mechanism that causes disease might also be involved in evolutionary change. In fact, this mechanism may have created new genes that might have made us more fit for our environment."
Dr. Philip J. Hastings, professor of molecular and human genetics at BCM who has studied mutational events resulting in rearrangements of different genomes for many decades, helped work out how the rearrangements might happen and is an author on the report as well.
###
Other authors include: Davut Pehlivan, Luis Franco, Claudia Gonzaga-Jauregui, Ping Fang, Alanna McCall, Daniela del Gaudio, Marjorie Withers, Pengfei Liu, Sau Wai Cheung, John Belmont and Huda Zoghbi, all of BCM; Eniko Karman Pivnick of the University of Tennessee; Stacy Hines-Dowell of LeBonheur Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee; Laurie Seaver and Sansan Lee of Kapiolani Medical Specialists in Honolulu, Hawaii; Linda Friehling of Children's Medical Associates in Alexandria, Virginia; and Rosemarie Smith of Maine Medical Center in Portland.
Funding for this work came from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the Baylor College of Medicine Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
For more information on basic science research at Baylor College of Medicine, please go to From the Lab at Baylor College of Medicine.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
When it comes to keep pace with today?s global marketplace, distance learning is the way to go. The opportunity to take classes online assures that anyone can keep his or her working skills current without being tied to the restrictions of a physical campus.
Some real-life attendance at college will likely still be required, but the convenience of distance education makes it possible to reduce the strain of showing up physically for class. Students who are working at the same time they?re upgrading skills or completing a degree find this option to be an enormous advantage. This benefit is particularly prized by working parents who must juggle their courses around Junior and job.
Such juggling acts aren?t unknown to long-distance students, however, because people who enroll take online classes are typically highly self-motivated. They either have or quickly learn the skills they need to navigate educational software successfully. What?s more, they?re already well disciplined for such things as downloading essentially coursework and instructions, as well as scheduling their lifestyles so that they complete and submit their homework on time.
Furthermore, since distance education first came into use, many colleges and universities have added required online participation to the back-and-forth of digital files. Instructors regularly schedule online discussion groups that students are required to attend, either via text on discussion boards or chat rooms, or via telephone or video conference. This adds an important level of interpersonal communication to the information transmitted via the Internet.
Distance education has developed one major caution, however: the unscrupulous, profit-seeking ?educational institution? that takes students? tuition money (usually higher-than-average fees) and then delivers a substandard education. Some students have invested thousands of dollars in an online degree online to find it unacceptable to employers and graduate schools alike.
The best way to avoid being duped by a profit-seeking online school is by enrolling in a recognized and accredited private or public educational institution. There?s hardly a technical school, college or university without a mixture of online and on-campus study programs. This combination of options gives students the opportunity to craft a distance learning schedule perfect for their lifestyles.
If you are unable to relocate for your degree, distance education may be the perfect solution. You can learn more about opportunities and requirements by accessing the website at http://www.distancelearningplan.com/ now.
Most likely if you are one of the many with private student loan debt along with several government loans, it?s because your parents couldn?t take out one of those parent plus loans. Maybe they had less than adequate credit history or a recent foreclosure due to the recession. Some parents just feel like it?s the child?s responsibility to figure out their finances for school. In either case, its six months from graduation and the lenders are starting to bombard you with emails, texts, and recurring letters.
Paying Private Student Loans First
You might have every intention of paying them back, but you just cannot figure out where to start with repaying each lender.
You have done your best to save money in certain areas like eating out less, switching from unlimited cell service to prepaid cell phones for you and your partner, and even walking to places less than a mile from home. With all the budget cuts to your spending, you still find it nearly impossible to pay each student loan fully. Which student loans need to be paid each month and which can wait for later?
It is so important to pay the private student loans off first because these are private lenders will be much more aggressive with getting their payment each month. All private loans carry a variable interest rate than can always change. And while your first couple of years? payments will go to paying off the interest before principle, you have no choice but to pay these loans of prior to the federal loans.
When contacting private lenders, they are in no place to offer extended repayment plans or any type of income based repayment plans whatsoever.
According to Forbes, on average private loans have at least double the interest rate of federally-based loans. The average being at about 12% for private loans these days means the interest will always put you in the hole. While it?s aggravating to think that each month you make a payment, you might not be making any type of headway, you need to pay the payment each month.
With the recession, if you have multiple private student loans, it is nearly impossible to find any lender to do a consolidation. Even with great credit banks are refusing graduates. With any federal loan, on the other hand, graduates always have the ability to compromise with the government. There are so many possibilities from income sensitive repayments to income based repayments to extended repayment plans. It?s a good idea to ask for application for all of these options and consulting an expert to help you choose.
Oftentimes, graduates will qualify for several options at one time, and each one can result in a very different payment amount.
For those students who find some of their federal loans and private loans being managed by the same lender, (which does happen) means graduates need to keep communications vague.
Private lenders that have taken over certain government loans are often trained to find out whether you could afford to also pay all your loans at once. If a customer service rep refers to your private loan when calling about your federal loan, kindly ask them to not do so. Try to maintain communication between the private and federal loans separate and confidential, so you don?t find yourself in a sticky situation.
Android?s open platform has incurred countless devices, all flooding the market. But the gaming industry is helping some manufacturers set themselves apart. With a lucrative gaming sector drawing in advertisers, in-app purchases and virtual goods, mobile gaming has created a sub-market all its own. There?s a growing number of gadget makers looking to put their stamp on Android devices. Video game retailer GameStop, for instance, will soon sell Android tablets as part of an effort to expand its device offerings.
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villagesoup reports a survey of 3,000 renters and home owners showed 68 percent say it is a good time to buy a home, although the tight credit and uncertain job market continue to dog actual sales. ?We thought people would be soured after watching home values fall, but instead we found the typical American still places high value on home ownership,? says Frank Anton, chief executive officer of Hanley Wood, which conducted the survey. Senior fellow Kent Colton, of Harvard University?s Joint Center for Housing Studies, says 33 percent of home owners and 25 percent of renters are living with family and friends. As soon as the job market expands they will be house-hunting. ?It means you have up to 2 million people that are part of what can be easily considered a pent-up demand when the time changes,? he told Reuters News.
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Public release date: 2-Oct-2011
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