Liam Neeson's "The Grey" topped the weekend box office with $20 million, according to studio estimates Sunday, continuing the actor's success as an action star in the winter months.
The Alaskan survivalist thriller opened above expectations with a performance on par with previous Neeson thrillers "Taken" and "Unknown." Those films, both January-February releases, opened with $24.7 million and $21.9 million, respectively.
But the R-rated "The Grey," which has received good reviews, drove home the strong appeal of Neeson, action star. It's an unlikely turn for the 59-year-old Neeson, previously better known for his dramatic performances, like those in "Schindler's List" and "Kinsey."
"Liam is a true movie star, period," said Tom Ortenberg, CEO of Open Road Films. It's the second release for the newly formed distributor, created by theater chains AMC and Regal.
"My guess is that Liam Neeson in action thrillers would work just about any time of year."
January is often a dumping ground for less-stellar releases, a tradition held up by two badly reviewed new wide releases: "Man on a Ledge," with Sam Worthington, and "One for the Money" with Katherine Heigl.
"One for the Money" fared better, earning $11.8 million, while "Man on a Ledge" opened with $8.3 million.
Those were reasonably solid returns, and, in an unusual twist, were both ultimately for Lions Gate Entertainment. Its film studio, Lionsgate, released the romantic comedy "One for the Money." The action thriller "Man on a Ledge" was released by Summit Entertainment, which Lions Gate bought for $412.5 million earlier this month.
"One for the Money" was helped by a promotion with Groupon, the Internet discount site, with which Lionsgate previously partnered for "The Lincoln Lawyer." David Spitz, head of distribution for Lionsgate, said the large number of older, female subscribers of Groupon matched well with the audience of "One for the Money."
Groupon email blasts, he said, had a significant promotional effect.
Last week's box-office leader, "Underworld: Awakenings," Sony's Screen Gem's latest installment in its vampire series, came in second with $12.5 million, bringing its cumulative total to $45.1 million.
The unexpectedly large haul for "The Grey," strong holdovers (such as the George Lucas-produced World War II action film "Red Tails," which earned $10.4 million in its second week) and the bump for Oscar contending films following Tuesday's nominations added up to a good weekend for Hollywood. The box office was up about 15 percent on the corresponding weekend last year.
So far, every weekend this year has been an "up" weekend, after a somewhat dismal fourth quarter in 2011.
"`Mission: Impossible,' I think, really helped reinvigorate the marketplace, and that's carried over into the first part of the year," said Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com. "That's good news for Hollywood after the down-trending box office of 2011."
Oscar favorites "The Descendants," "Hugo" and "The Artist" sought to capitalize on their recent Academy Awards nominations. Each expanded to more theaters and saw an uptick in business.
Fox Searchlight's "The Descendants," which is nominated for five Oscars including best picture, added 1,441 screens in its 11th week of release. It added $6.6 million and has now made $58.8 million, making it one of Fox Searchlight's most successful releases.
Sheila DeLoach, senior vice president of distribution for Fox Searchlight, said the film's nominations and its recent Golden Globes wins (for best drama and best actor, George Clooney) "played a big role" in its weekend box office.
Paramount's "Hugo," which led Oscar nominations with 11 including best picture, saw a 143 percent jump in business over its last weekend. In its tenth week of release, it earned $2.3 million, bringing its total to $58.7 million.
The Weinstein Co.'s "The Artist," with 10 Oscar nominations including best picture, expanded a modest 235 screens to bring it to a total of 897 screens in its 10th week of release. It earned $3.3 million, with a total of $16.7 million.
The Weinstein Co. is being careful with the black-and-white, largely silent film. Thus far, it has appealed particularly to older audiences.
"It's not the same type of picture as any other picture in the marketplace," said Erik Loomis, head of distribution for the Weinstein Co. "Now that the nominations are out, we're going to look to capitalize on it as best we can. ... We're being very, very meticulous with it. We're not throwing it out there and grabbing every theater we can. At some point, we'll open the floodgates on the movie, maybe closer to the awards."
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Monday.
Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by Rainbow Media Holdings, a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corp.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.
Many bodies make 1 coherent burst of lightPublic release date: 30-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University
Rice University researchers first to see superfluorescence from solid-state material
In a flash, the world changed for Tim Noe and for physicists who study what they call many-body problems.
The Rice University graduate student was the first to see, in the summer of 2010, proof of a theory that solid-state materials are capable of producing an effect known as superfluorescence.
That can only happen when "many bodies" in this case, electron-hole pairs created in a semiconductor decide to cooperate.
Noe, a student of Rice physicist Junichiro Kono, and their research team used high-intensity laser pulses, a strong magnetic field and very cold temperatures to create the conditions for superfluorescence in a stack of 15 undoped quantum wells. The wells were made of indium, gallium and arsenic and separated by barriers of gallium-arsenide (GaAs). The researchers' results were reported this week in the journal Nature Physics.
Noe spent weeks at the only facility with the right combination of gear to carry out such an experiment, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University. There, he placed the device in an ultracold (as low as 5 kelvins) chamber, pumped up the magnetic field (which effectively makes the "many body" particles the electron-hole pairs more sensitive and controllable) and fired a strong laser pulse at the array.
"When you shine light on a semiconductor with a photon energy larger than the band gap, you can create electrons in the conduction band and holes in the valence band. They become conducting," said Kono, a Rice professor of electrical and computer engineering and in physics and astronomy. "The electrons and holes recombine which means they disappear and emit light. One electron-hole pair disappears and one photon comes out. This process is called photoluminescence."
The Rice experiment acted just that way, but pumping strong laser light into the layers created a cascade among the quantum wells. "What Tim discovered is that in these extreme conditions, with an intense pulse of light on the order of 100 femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second), you create many, many electron-hole pairs. Then you wait for hundreds of picoseconds (mere trillionths of a second) and a very strong pulse comes out," Kono said.
In the quantum world, that's a long gap. Noe attributes that "interminable" wait of trillionths of a second to the process going on inside the quantum wells. There, the 8-nanometer-thick layers soaked up energy from the laser as it bored in and created what the researchers called a magneto-plasma, a state consisting of a large number of electron-hole pairs. These initially incoherent pairs suddenly line up with each other.
"We're pumping (light) to where absorption's only occurring in the GaAs layers," Noe said. "Then these electrons and holes fall into the well, and the light hits another GaAs layer and another well, and so on. The stack just increases the amount of light that's absorbed." The electrons and holes undergo many scattering processes that leave them in the wells with no coherence, he said. But as a result of the exchange of photons from spontaneous emission, a large, macroscopic coherence develops.
Like a capacitor in an electrical circuit, the wells become saturated and, as the researchers wrote, "decay abruptly" and release the stored charge as a giant pulse of coherent radiation.
"What's unique about this is the delay time between when we create the population of electron-hole pairs and when the burst happens. Macroscopic coherence builds up spontaneously during this delay," Noe said.
Kono said the basic phenomenon of superfluorescence has been seen for years in molecular and atomic gases but wasn't sought in a solid-state material until recently. The researchers now feel such superfluorescence can be fine-tuned. "Eventually we want to observe the same phenomenon at room temperature, and at much lower magnetic fields, maybe even without a magnetic field," he said.
Even better, Kono said, it may be possible to create superfluorescent pulses with any desired wavelength in solid-state materials, powered by electrical rather than light energy.
The researchers said they expect the paper to draw serious interest from their peers in a variety of disciplines, including condensed matter physics; quantum optics; atomic, molecular and optical physics; semiconductor optoelectronics; quantum information science; and materials science and engineering.
There's much work to be done, Kono said. "There are several puzzles that we don't understand," he said. "One thing is a spectral shift over time: The wavelength of the burst is actually changing as a function of time when it comes out. It's very weird, and that has never been seen."
Noe also observed superfluorescent emission with several distinct peaks in the time domain, another mystery to be investigated.
###
The paper's co-authors include Rice postdoctoral researcher Ji-Hee Kim; former graduate student Jinho Lee and Professor David Reitze of the University of Florida, Gainesville; researchers Yongrui Wang and Aleksander Wojcik and Professor Alexey Belyanin of Texas A&M University; and Stephen McGill, an assistant scholar and scientist at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University, Tallahassee.
Support for the research came from the National Science Foundation, with support for work at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory from the state of Florida.
Read the abstract at http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nphys2207.html
Rice University researchers have confirmed a long-held theory that solid-state materials are capable of producing an effect known as superfluorescence. From left: Rice physicist Junichiro Kono, postdoctoral researcher Ji-Hee Kim and graduate student Tim Noe. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)
Pumping laser pulses into a stack of quantum wells created an effect physicists had long sought but not seen until now: superfluorescence in a solid-state material. The Rice University lab of physicist Junichiro Kono reported the results in Nature Physics. (Credit: Tim Noe/Rice University)
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is known for its "unconventional wisdom." With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is less than 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 4 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://www.rice.edu/nationalmedia/Rice.pdf .
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Many bodies make 1 coherent burst of lightPublic release date: 30-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University
Rice University researchers first to see superfluorescence from solid-state material
In a flash, the world changed for Tim Noe and for physicists who study what they call many-body problems.
The Rice University graduate student was the first to see, in the summer of 2010, proof of a theory that solid-state materials are capable of producing an effect known as superfluorescence.
That can only happen when "many bodies" in this case, electron-hole pairs created in a semiconductor decide to cooperate.
Noe, a student of Rice physicist Junichiro Kono, and their research team used high-intensity laser pulses, a strong magnetic field and very cold temperatures to create the conditions for superfluorescence in a stack of 15 undoped quantum wells. The wells were made of indium, gallium and arsenic and separated by barriers of gallium-arsenide (GaAs). The researchers' results were reported this week in the journal Nature Physics.
Noe spent weeks at the only facility with the right combination of gear to carry out such an experiment, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University. There, he placed the device in an ultracold (as low as 5 kelvins) chamber, pumped up the magnetic field (which effectively makes the "many body" particles the electron-hole pairs more sensitive and controllable) and fired a strong laser pulse at the array.
"When you shine light on a semiconductor with a photon energy larger than the band gap, you can create electrons in the conduction band and holes in the valence band. They become conducting," said Kono, a Rice professor of electrical and computer engineering and in physics and astronomy. "The electrons and holes recombine which means they disappear and emit light. One electron-hole pair disappears and one photon comes out. This process is called photoluminescence."
The Rice experiment acted just that way, but pumping strong laser light into the layers created a cascade among the quantum wells. "What Tim discovered is that in these extreme conditions, with an intense pulse of light on the order of 100 femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second), you create many, many electron-hole pairs. Then you wait for hundreds of picoseconds (mere trillionths of a second) and a very strong pulse comes out," Kono said.
In the quantum world, that's a long gap. Noe attributes that "interminable" wait of trillionths of a second to the process going on inside the quantum wells. There, the 8-nanometer-thick layers soaked up energy from the laser as it bored in and created what the researchers called a magneto-plasma, a state consisting of a large number of electron-hole pairs. These initially incoherent pairs suddenly line up with each other.
"We're pumping (light) to where absorption's only occurring in the GaAs layers," Noe said. "Then these electrons and holes fall into the well, and the light hits another GaAs layer and another well, and so on. The stack just increases the amount of light that's absorbed." The electrons and holes undergo many scattering processes that leave them in the wells with no coherence, he said. But as a result of the exchange of photons from spontaneous emission, a large, macroscopic coherence develops.
Like a capacitor in an electrical circuit, the wells become saturated and, as the researchers wrote, "decay abruptly" and release the stored charge as a giant pulse of coherent radiation.
"What's unique about this is the delay time between when we create the population of electron-hole pairs and when the burst happens. Macroscopic coherence builds up spontaneously during this delay," Noe said.
Kono said the basic phenomenon of superfluorescence has been seen for years in molecular and atomic gases but wasn't sought in a solid-state material until recently. The researchers now feel such superfluorescence can be fine-tuned. "Eventually we want to observe the same phenomenon at room temperature, and at much lower magnetic fields, maybe even without a magnetic field," he said.
Even better, Kono said, it may be possible to create superfluorescent pulses with any desired wavelength in solid-state materials, powered by electrical rather than light energy.
The researchers said they expect the paper to draw serious interest from their peers in a variety of disciplines, including condensed matter physics; quantum optics; atomic, molecular and optical physics; semiconductor optoelectronics; quantum information science; and materials science and engineering.
There's much work to be done, Kono said. "There are several puzzles that we don't understand," he said. "One thing is a spectral shift over time: The wavelength of the burst is actually changing as a function of time when it comes out. It's very weird, and that has never been seen."
Noe also observed superfluorescent emission with several distinct peaks in the time domain, another mystery to be investigated.
###
The paper's co-authors include Rice postdoctoral researcher Ji-Hee Kim; former graduate student Jinho Lee and Professor David Reitze of the University of Florida, Gainesville; researchers Yongrui Wang and Aleksander Wojcik and Professor Alexey Belyanin of Texas A&M University; and Stephen McGill, an assistant scholar and scientist at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University, Tallahassee.
Support for the research came from the National Science Foundation, with support for work at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory from the state of Florida.
Read the abstract at http://www.nature.com/nphys/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nphys2207.html
Rice University researchers have confirmed a long-held theory that solid-state materials are capable of producing an effect known as superfluorescence. From left: Rice physicist Junichiro Kono, postdoctoral researcher Ji-Hee Kim and graduate student Tim Noe. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)
Pumping laser pulses into a stack of quantum wells created an effect physicists had long sought but not seen until now: superfluorescence in a solid-state material. The Rice University lab of physicist Junichiro Kono reported the results in Nature Physics. (Credit: Tim Noe/Rice University)
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is known for its "unconventional wisdom." With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is less than 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 4 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://www.rice.edu/nationalmedia/Rice.pdf .
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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.
LOS ANGELES ? When your dinner party guests include Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Kate Winslet and Glenn Close, and the whole affair is televised live, it can take months to plan the menu. That's why the team behind the Screen Actors Guild Awards began putting together the plate for Sunday's ceremony months ago.
It was still summer when show producer Kathy Connell and executive producer and director Jeff Margolis first sat down with chef Suzanne Goin of Los Angeles eatery Lucques with a tall order: Create a meal that is delicious at room temperature, looks beautiful on TV, is easy to eat and appeals to Hollywood tastes. Oh, and no poppy seeds, soups, spicy dishes, or piles of onions or garlic.
"It can't drip, stick in their teeth or be too heavy," Connell said. "We have to appease all palates."
The chef put together a plate of possibilities: slow-roasted salmon with yellow beets, lamb with couscous and spiced cauliflower and roasted root vegetables with quinoa. There was also a chopped chicken salad and another chicken dish with black beans.
To ensure the dishes are both tasty and TV-ready, Connell and Margolis, along with the SAG Awards Committee and the show's florist and art director, dined together at this summertime lunch on tables set to replicate those that will be in the Shrine Exposition Center during the ceremony. The pewter, crushed-silk tablecloths and white lilies you'll see on TV Sunday were also chosen months ago.
The diners discussed the look of the plate, the size of the portions and the vegetarian possibilities.
"We'd like the portions a little larger," Connell told the chef.
"And a little more sauce on the salmon," Margolis added.
Come Sunday, it's up to Goin to prepare 1,200 of the long-planned meals for the A-list audience.
CULIACAN, Mexico ? A man charged with brutally beating a Canadian tourist at a luxury beach hotel told reporters Saturday that he tried to hold the woman in an elevator and punched her several times in the face when she cried for help.
Police presented Jose Ramon Acosta Quintero, 28, to local and foreign journalists in the Pacific port city of Mazatlan, where the attack on Sheila Nabb of Calgary, Alberta, occurred in the early hours of Jan. 20.
He was arrested Friday and charged with attempted murder. Prosecutors have said investigators were led to Acosta by a hotel security video that showed him leaving the elevator where Nabb was attacked.
Sinaloa State Prosecutor Marco Antonio Higuera Gomez said Saturday that Acosta was drinking in local bars and had taken cocaine with a Canadian friend when they decided to go to one of the large tourist hotels where bars operate 24 hours. He said Acosta frequents those hotels and sometimes goes by the name "Ray."
Flanked by police, Acosta spoke in fluent English as he answered a few questions from foreign reporters. He said he entered the hotel from the back beach doorway and was taking an elevator up to the roof when the doors opened and Nabb got in. They talked and then he put his hand on the door, he said, to prevent her from leaving so they could keep talking.
"She got afraid when I didn't let her out and she started yelling, 'He won't let me out,'" Acosta said. "I got afraid also, because she's a North American and I'm Mexican and I wasn't supposed to be in the hotel."
He said he covered her mouth as she continued to yell for help.
"Then I hit her four or five times in the face with my fist and then I left," said Acosta, who swallowed nervously as he talked.
Nabb's husband was in their hotel room at the time of the attack and she was found lying in the elevator and bleeding heavily.
She was flown to Canada, and Canadian media have reported that she remains hospitalized with major injuries to her face and jaw.
"Yeah, I did it. I did, but it wasn't planned or anything like that," Acosta said in a soft voice. "I didn't try to abuse her, or I didn't try to kill her or anything or rob her."
Acosta said police had shown him a security camera video of him leaving the elevator, but he denied it showed him kicking Nabb. He said that possibly he was using his foot to move her hand out of the door so it would close.
Higuera has said Acosta had Nabb's blood on his shoes when he was arrested.
"I'm sorry and I hope that she recovers," Acosta said before being led away by police. "I've seen the papers. Her face was bad."
SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) ? Bird enthusiasts are reporting rising numbers of snowy owls from the Arctic winging into the lower 48 states this winter in a mass southern migration that a leading owl researcher called "unbelievable."
Thousands of the snow-white birds, which stand 2 feet tall with 5-foot wingspans, have been spotted from coast to coast, feeding in farmlands in Idaho, roosting on rooftops in Montana, gliding over golf courses in Missouri and soaring over shorelines in Massachusetts.
A certain number of the iconic owls fly south from their Arctic breeding grounds each winter but rarely do so many venture so far away even amid large-scale, periodic southern migrations known as irruptions.
"What we're seeing now -- it's unbelievable," said Denver Holt, head of the Owl Research Institute in Montana.
"This is the most significant wildlife event in decades," added Holt, who has studied snowy owls in their Arctic tundra ecosystem for two decades.
Holt and other owl experts say the phenomenon is likely linked to lemmings, a rodent that accounts for 90 percent of the diet of snowy owls during breeding months that stretch from May into September. The largely nocturnal birds also prey on a host of other animals, from voles to geese.
An especially plentiful supply of lemmings last season likely led to a population boom among owls that resulted in each breeding pair hatching as many as seven offspring. That compares to a typical clutch size of no more than two, Holt said.
Greater competition this year for food in the Far North by the booming bird population may have then driven mostly younger, male owls much farther south than normal.
Research on the animals is scarce because of the remoteness and extreme conditions of the terrain the owls occupy, including northern Russia and Scandinavia, he said.
The surge in snowy owl sightings has brought birders flocking from Texas, Arizona and Utah to the Northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest, pouring tourist dollars into local economies and crowding parks and wildlife areas. The irruption has triggered widespread public fascination that appears to span ages and interests.
"For the last couple months, every other visitor asks if we've seen a snowy owl today," said Frances Tanaka, a volunteer for the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge northeast of Olympia, Washington.
But accounts of emaciated owls at some sites -- including a food-starved bird that dropped dead in a farmer's field in Wisconsin -- suggest the migration has a darker side. And Holt said an owl that landed at an airport in Hawaii in November was shot and killed to avoid collisions with planes.
He said snowy owl populations are believed to be in an overall decline, possibly because a changing climate has lessened the abundance of vegetation like grasses that lemmings rely on.
This winter's snowy owl outbreak, with multiple sightings as far south as Oklahoma, remains largely a mystery of nature.
"There's a lot of speculation. As far as hard evidence, we really don't know," Holt said.
BC-GLF--Farmers Insurance,997Stanley leads at Torrey as Mickelson heads homeAP Photo CALI107, CALI123, CALI117, CALI115, CALI114Eds: With AP Photos.By DOUG FERGUSONAP Golf Writer
SAN DIEGO (AP) ? Phil Mickelson doesn't lack faith in his game. He just doesn't have an explanation for a shoddy start to his season.
One week after he had to rally to make the cut in his 2012 debut at the Humana Challenge, he didn't come close to making the cut at Torrey Pines, getting the weekend off at his hometown event for the first time in 10 years.
"I've got to let it go and move on," Mickelson said.
The Farmers Insurance Open goes forward Saturday with Kyle Stanley, a 24-year-old with the skills of a rising star, making seven birdies on the South Course to overcome a double bogey for a 4-under 68. That gave him a 130 total and a one-shot lead over Brandt Snedeker, who had a 64 on the easier North Course and is making a habit of getting into contention at Torrey Pines.
Mickelson, meanwhile, headed home to nearby Rancho Santa Fe to do a little work and get ready for the Phoenix Open next week.
What's the problem? He's not sure.
On paper, it was the 11 bunkers he found on the South Course that led to an opening 77 and forced him to go low on the North just to make it to the weekend. Mickelson needed to make a move when he made the turn and headed to the front nine, which starts with three birdie holes. He played them in even par, and his lot was effectively cast.
"I don't feel like there's any one area that I feel about my game," Mickelson said. "It's just that I'm not bringing it from the practice session onto the golf course yet. I'm not sure why that is. But the good news is in my practice sessions, it's been great in every area.
"The scores look like I'm way off," he said. "But it doesn't look far off."
The flip side of that would be Snedeker.
After the Asia Pacific Classic the last week of October, Snedeker flew home Malaysia and had surgery on his hip. He was on crutches for most of the offseason, returned to practice and came back out earlier than he expected at the Humana Challenge, where he went into the final round with a chance to win and settled for a tie for eighth.
One week later, he's in the final group going into the weekend.
"I'm certainly surprised that I played this well this fast," Snedeker said. "Normally, it takes me a while to get the rust off. But my practice at home went really, really well. I was actually chomping at the bit to get out here because I knew I was playing well.
"Hopefully, that can happen through the weekend."
Sang-Moon Bae, a PGA Tour rookie who is No. 34 in the world, had a 67 to match the best score on the South for the second round. That put him two shots behind at 12-under 132, along with Martin Flores, who also had a 67 on the South.
Hunter Mahan shot 65 on the North, while FedEx Cup champion Bill Haas had a 71 on the South. They were three shots behind.
The cut came at 2-under 142, and there will be another cut Saturday because more than 78 players are still around. That group includes Geoff Ogilvy, who birdied his last hole on the North for a 70, and Ernie Els, who was at 3-under 141.
Stanley goes about his work quietly. He prefers boring golf of fairways and greens, though there was a little too much excitement when his 7-iron from the rough jumped on his and went over the green, down the slope and into the hazard. He chipped to 5 feet and missed the putt, taking double bogey, effectively wiping out the two birdies he had made.
He followed that with a bogey from the bunker on the par-3 16th.
"I got off to a good start, and it was tough to take," Stanley said. "But you've just got to be patient out here."
That he was. He had birdie putts on the last 11 holes he played and birdied all the par 5s. As a testament to his length, he hit his tee shot 346 yards on the par-5 ninth, and hit 2-iron from 270 yards.
"Not a very good one," he said, though it left him an up-and-down from the bunker for one last birdie.
Mickelson had said at the start of the week that he expected to win early during the West Coast swing, which he based on how well he was playing casual rounds and how well he felt during practice. For most of the offseason, he spent up to three hours a day on the green he built in his backyard, going back to his blade putter, trying to get feel back in his hands.
"The exciting thing for me is the last two years, I have not felt good on the greens, and I feel better than I have in years," he said. "I'm making a lot more putts than I've made in years. Each round I'm making extra putts that I haven't been making."
It's just not adding up, and Mickelson was more than a little wistful when he gazed at the blue sky and talked about a perfect weekend of weather on a public course along the Pacific bluffs, one of his favorite places to be this time of the year.
"I'd love to be playing," he said. "But I don't have that opportunity."
Instead, he walked off toward the gallery and stood in place for some 20 minutes to sign autographs.
"Last one," he said, and as a dozen or so people groaned, Mickelson added, "I just wanted to be sure I took care of the kids." Just like that, two youngsters came to the front of the wooden railing, and Lefty smiled and kept signing.
LJUBLJANA (Reuters) ? The Slovenian parliament confirmed conservative Janez Jansa as prime minister on Saturday, almost two months after an inconclusive December 4 election, parliamentary speaker Gregor Virant said.
Jansa has 15 days to put forward a cabinet charged with driving economic growth and introducing reforms to stop the country's credit rating from being cut - but he has a corruption trial hanging over him, which could derail his premiership if he were found guilty.
The cabinet must be confirmed by parliament, in which Jansa's five-party coalition has a solid majority.
Jansa, also prime minister from 2004 to 2008, has promised to cut taxes, red tape and the budget deficit, ease the credit crunch and raise the retirement age in the euro zone member.
"The first steps of this government will be stabilisation of public finances ... decrees to give impetus to economic growth and enable formation of new jobs," Jansa told reporters after the vote, saying he hoped the new government would be voted in by February 10.
President Danilo Turk said earlier this week that Jansa lacked legitimacy for the post because of a trial, which began in September, in which he and four co-defendants are charged with bribery over a 2006 deal for Finnish armoured vehicles worth 278 million euros ($365 million). Jansa denied all charges.
Earlier this month parliament rejected Turk's candidate as prime minister, centre-left Zoran Jankovic. Jankovic's Positive Slovenia party won most votes at the election but was unable to form a coalition that would have a majority in parliament.
Jansa's centre-right Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) signed a coalition pact this week with the centre-right People's Party and New Slovenia, the centrist Civic List of Gregor Virant and the pensioners' party Desus. The five parties hold 50 out of 90 seats in parliament.
On Friday credit rating agency Fitch cut Slovenia's sovereign debt rating by two notches to A because of a deterioration in the economic outlook.
All major credit agencies have cut Slovenia's rating since September because of the political crisis, lack of reforms and the deepening euro zone debt crisis, and put it on negative watch. Slovenia is rated A+ by Standard&Poor's and A1 by Moody's.
The political crisis started in September when parliament ousted the centre-left government of Prime Minister Borut Pahor amid internal coalition squabbles and an inability to implement reforms that would speed economic growth.
"The new government will have a hard time because of the need for big budget savings ... and because it is made of five parties which are very different," Meta Roglic, an analyst at the daily Dnevnik, told Reuters.
"Even so it might succeed in staying in power for the full four-year mandate, particularly since it can expect that the opposition will support some of the main economic reforms," she added.
Slovenia's budget deficit soared to some 5.5 percent of GDP in 2011 from a balanced budget in 2007 because of lower tax income and high government spending.
On Thursday, the government's macroeconomic institute said Slovenia's economic growth would slow to 0.2 percent this year from 0.5 percent in 2011 because of lower export demand and low domestic spending.
Slovenia was the fastest-growing euro zone member in 2007 but its export-oriented economy was badly hit by the global crisis and shrank by 8 percent in 2009. Recent data showed another recession was possible as the economy shrank by 0.5 percent in the third quarter of 2011.
BOSTON - Former Mayor Kevin H. White, who led the city for 16 years including racially turbulent times in the 1970s and was credited with putting it on a path to prosperity, died Friday, a family spokesman said. He was 82.
White, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer?s disease in 2003, died peacefully at his Boston home surrounded by his family, spokesman and friend George Regan said.
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?He was a man who built Boston into the world-class city it is today,? said Regan, who called his loss ?devastating.?
White, a white Irish Catholic from a family of politicians, is credited with revitalizing Boston?s downtown and seeing the city through court-ordered busing, but he ended his four-term tenure in 1983 under a cloud of ethics suspicions.
White, a Democrat, was elected Massachusetts secretary of state three times before running for mayor for the first time in 1967 against antibusing activist Louise Day Hicks. He defeated her with support from the black community and liberals.
After losing a 1970 bid for governor, White was re-elected mayor in 1971, again defeating Hicks. He won again narrowly in 1975 and 1979.
White was considered as a vice presidential running mate to South Dakota U.S. Sen. George McGovern in 1972 but was passed over for Missouri U.S. Sen. Thomas Eagleton, who was later shunted aside for R. Sargent Shriver Jr.
After U.S. District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity ordered busing to desegregate public schools in 1974, White protected schoolchildren from violence with federal and state assistance during the period of crisis and in 1976 led a march of 30,000 to protest racial violence.
White was never totally comfortable with busing, however, and called Garrity?s plan ?too severe.?
?I wish I knew a way to have taught Garrity or convinced Garrity to be more generous ? or softer in his implementation of that order,? White said after his time as mayor.
Massachusetts? U.S. Sen. John Kerry, a fellow Democrat, said White ?knew how to wisely wield the power of the mayor?s office for the public good.?
?For 16 years,? Kerry said in a statement, ?the mayor shepherded the city through the turbulence of the late ?60s and mid-?70s and in the process ushered in the remarkable city we know today.?
Current Mayor Thomas Menino, also a Democrat, praised White for his contributions to the city.
?Mayor Kevin White was a great friend and a great leader who left a lasting mark of hope and inspiration on the City of Boston,? he said in a statement. ?He will be sorely missed.?
Wouldn't it be absolutely splendid if you could hand your phone over to a friend (or complete stranger) without fear of them mucking up your system or digging into your personal bits? Yes, we'd absolutely love to see guest accounts become standard issue on all handsets, but until that day arrives, a new application called SwitchMe will work in a pinch. Word of caution, this app requires root privileges, which may deter many folks.
Rather than allowing multiple sessions to run simultaneously, as you'd expect on a desktop computer, SwitchMe lets users to easily jump between different installations of Android -- they exist separately and don't talk to each other. Naturally, this also allows hobbyists to easily jump between their favorite ROMs, and gives developers clean sandboxes for app testing. The first hit is free, but if you want to manage more than two installations, you'll need to buy the unlock key for $1.98. Still, those who find the SwitchMe useful should consider tossing the developer a few bones.
Update: As a commenter pointed out, multiple ROMs are not supported at this time. The developer has verified this, stating that any content inside /system cannot be changed. Bummer.
BOSTON (Reuters) ? A former Boston-area dentist accused of substituting paper clips for stainless steel posts in patient root canals faces the possibility of decades in prison when he is sentenced next week for Medicaid fraud, authorities said on Tuesday.
Michael Clair, 53, who has admitted to charges including filing false claims and assault and battery, billed Medicaid for the cost of standard root-canal posts and submitted claims using other dentists' identification numbers, authorities said.
Clair, who ran a dental practice in Fall River, Massachusetts, also pleaded guilty to illegally prescribing powerful pain killers such as Hydrocodone and Percocet to staff members who would give all or some of the medication back.
He entered the plea on Friday, reversing a not guilty plea made in 2010, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley's office said. He is due to be sentenced next Monday.
A single count of Medicaid fraud carries a penalty of up to five years in state prison, while each count of illegal prescription of controlled substances could mean up to 10 years in prison.
Authorities said Clair used pieces of paperclips in place of stainless steel posts as a permanent fix in root canals to save money. Although such a process can be used as a temporary solution in certain cases, it can lead to infection, discomfort and pain, authorities said.
(Reporting By Lauren Keiper; Editing by Cynthia Johnston)
A NASA rover celebrates eight years on the Martian surface today (Jan. 24), and the long-lived robot is still going strong.
The Opportunity rover landed on the Red Planet at 9:05 p.m. PST Jan. 24, 2004 (12:05 a.m. EST Jan. 25), three weeks after its twin, Spirit, touched down. While NASA declared Spirit dead last year, Opportunity continues to gather data in its dotage, helping scientists understand more and more about Mars' wetter, warmer past.
"It is amazing. I have to remind myself ? my God, this thing is still going!" said John Callas, Opportunity's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "But more importantly, it is still very productive on the surface."
Following the water
Spirit and Opportunity were originally supposed to spend 90 days searching for signs of past water activity on Mars. The solar-powered robots found plenty of such evidence at their disparate landing sites, dramatically reshaping scientists' understanding of the Red Planet and its history. [Mars Photos by Spirit and Opportunity]
Spirit, for example, found strong evidence of an ancient hydrothermal system. The discovery showed that at least some areas on Mars once had two key ingredients necessary to support life as we know it ? liquid water and an energy source.?
Opportunity, for its part, recently found clues that warm water may also have flowed or percolated on the rim of Mars' huge Endeavour Crater long ago.
The golf-cart-size rovers just kept chugging along, continuing to make observations years after their warranties expired.
Spirit got mired in soft sand in May 2009, after a bad wheel compromised the rover's mobility. The robot failed to maneuver into a position that would have slanted its solar panels toward the sun over the course of the 2009-2010 Martian winter, and it stopped communicating with Earth in March 2010.
NASA declared Spirit dead in May 2011, identifying hypothermia as the likely cause. But Opportunity remains an active and alert planetary explorer.
Studying Endeavour Crater
After a three-year trek, Opportunity arrived at the 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer) Endeavour Crater in August 2011. The rover spent the next few months poking along Endeavour's rim, where it recently uncovered what researchers say is the best evidence yet for liquid water on ancient Mars.
In December, Opportunity found a good spot to wait out the looming Martian winter ? a rocky outcrop informally named Greeley Haven. The location allows the rover to tilt its solar panels northward at about 15 degrees, maximizing the power it can draw from the sun to stay warm, active and healthy, researchers said.
Opportunity isn't sleeping the winter away. It will stay awake though relatively stationary, investigating the rocks at Greeley Haven and taking panoramic pictures of its surroundings. And, most importantly, it will beam radio signals home to Earth.
Mission scientists will track those signals, using Opportunity's motion relative to Earth as a proxy for the rotation of Mars, Callas said. Scientists should thus be able to get very precise measurements of the planet's spin.
They'll use that information to draw inferences about Mars' mysterious interior structure ? how big the planet's core is, for example, and whether that core is liquid or solid.
'A whole new landing site'
The winter solstice at Opportunity's location comes in late March; a few months after that, Callas said, solar energy should be strong enough to allow the rover to get moving again. [Mars Explored: Landers and Rovers Since 1971 (Infographic)]
At that point, the plan is to send the robot south along Endeavour's rim, toward a place about 1.8 miles (3 km) away called Cape Tribulation. Mars-orbiting spacecraft have detected clay minerals ? which form in water ? at Cape Tribulation, so the team wants Opportunity to investigate the area.
"It speaks a lot to the biopotential and habitability of Mars in the ancient past," Callas told SPACE.com. "We want to go there. It's on some challenging slopes, some 30-degree slopes, and we'll have to do some Martian mountaineering. So it'll be a spectacular adventure with the rover to get to these locations."
Mission scientists are eager to explore large swaths of the huge crater, which offers a wealth of possible new discoveries.
"Endeavour is like a whole new landing site, and we've really only just scratched the surface so far," rover principal investigator Steve Squyres, of Cornell University, told SPACE.com in an email.
Chasing down a record
Despite an arthritic joint in Opportunity's robotic arm, the rover is in good health overall, Callas said. Still, the mission team isn't taking the aging robot's continued performance for granted.
"Every day is like a gift," Callas said. "We just keep charging ahead as if every day is our last day, and we want to maximize the science we can do with this vehicle."
While science remains the team's top priority, Callas said he'd like Opportunity to tick off one big exploration milestone as well.
The Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 robot currently holds the record for the greatest distance traveled on the surface of another world. The unmanned rover covered 23 miles (37 km) on the moon in 1973.
Opportunity's odometer currently reads 21.35 miles (34.4 km).
"I want to beat that record," Callas said. "After the winter, I hope to knock that record off and claim the mantle of the longest distance traversed by another vehicle beyond the Earth."
You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
British Foreign Minister William Hague waits for the start of a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the EU Council building in Brussels on Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. EU foreign ministers are expected on Monday to agree to new economic sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
British Foreign Minister William Hague waits for the start of a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the EU Council building in Brussels on Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. EU foreign ministers are expected on Monday to agree to new economic sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton speak with journalists prior to a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the EU Council building in Brussels on Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. EU foreign ministers are expected on Monday to agree to new economic sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
Italian Foreign Minister Guilio Terzi di Sant'Agata speaks with the media prior to a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the EU Council building in Brussels on Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. EU foreign ministers are expected on Monday to agree to new economic sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
British Foreign Minister William Hague, left, speaks with Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn during a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the EU Council building in Brussels on Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. EU foreign ministers are expected on Monday to agree to new economic sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
British Foreign Minister William Hague, right, speaks with Czech Republic's Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg during a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the EU Council building in Brussels on Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. EU foreign ministers are set to impose an embargo on Iranian oil to pressure the country to resume talks on its nuclear program. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
BRUSSELS (AP) ? The European Union and Iran raised the stakes Monday in their test of wills over the Islamic republic's nuclear program, with the bloc banning the purchase of Iranian oil and Iran threatening to retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's crude is transported.
The escalating confrontation is fraught with risks ? of rising energy prices, global financial instability, and potential military activity to keep the strait open.
The EU's 27 foreign ministers, meeting Monday in Brussels, imposed an oil embargo against Iran and froze the assets of its central bank, ramping up sanctions designed to pressure Iranian officials into resuming talks on the country's nuclear program.
EU officials say the tighter sanctions are part of a carrot-and-stick approach, an effort to increase pressure while at the same time emphasizing their willingness to talk.
In Washington, Department of State Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton and Department of the Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner welcomed the EU decision, calling it "another strong step in the international effort to dramatically increase the pressure on Iran." In their joint statement, they said the EU sanctions, combined with earlier ones imposed by the U.S. and the international community, 'will sharpen the choice for Iran's leaders and increase their cost of defiance of basic international obligations."
But the initial response out of Tehran, the Iranian capital, was harsh.
Ramin Mehmanparast, a spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry, called the economic sanctions "illogical and unfair" saying: "It is only understandable in the framework of propaganda and psychological war."
Mehmanparast was quoted by website of state broadcasting company as saying, "Pressure and sanctions against a nation that has a strong logic and reason for its policy is a failed method."
He said due to the world's long-term need for energy, "It is not possible to impose sanctions on Iran," which has huge resources of oil and gas.
And two Iranian lawmakers threatened that their country would close the strait in retaliation for the EU embargo.
Lawmaker Mohammad Ismail Kowsari, deputy head of Iran's influential committee on national security, said Monday the strait "would definitely be closed if the sale of Iranian oil is violated in any way."
The strait ? just 34 miles (54 kilometers) wide at its narrowest point ? runs alongside Iran and is the only way to get from the Persian Gulf to the open sea. Tensions over the potential impact its closure would have on global oil supplies and the price of crude have weighed heavily on consumers and traders. The U.S. and Britain both have warned Iran not to disrupt the world's oil supply.
After news of the EU move, benchmark crude for March delivery rose 90 cents on the day to $99.23 a barrel in early morning European time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude was down 35 cents at $109.51 a barrel on the ICE futures exchange in London.
Many analysts doubt that Iran would maintain a blockade for long, but any supply shortages would cause world oil supplies to tighten temporarily. But Kowsari said that, in case of the strait's closure, the U.S. and its allies would not be able to reopen the route, and warned America not to attempt any "military adventurism."
An American aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln entered the Gulf on Sunday without incident to conduct scheduled maritime security operations, and U.S. warships frequently operate in the Gulf. But when the carrier USS John Stennis departed the Gulf in late December, Iranian officials warned the U.S. not to return. The British Ministry of Defense said British and French warships joined the U.S. carrier group transiting through the Strait of Hormuz "to underline the unwavering international commitment to maintaining rights of passage under international law."
Russia's Foreign Ministry said the sanctions are a severe mistake likely to worsen tensions. "It's apparent that in this case there is open pressure and diktat, aimed at 'punishing' Iran for uncooperative behavior. This is a deeply mistaken policy, as we have told our European partners more than once," the ministry said in a statement. "Under pressure of this sort, Iran will not make any concessions or any corrections to its policies," it said.
The EU sanctions include an include an immediate embargo on new contracts for crude oil and petroleum products. Existing contracts with Iran will be allowed to run until July.
Last month, the U.S. enacted new sanctions targeting Iran's central bank and its ability to sell petroleum abroad, but it has delayed implementing the sanctions for at least six months, worried about sending the price of oil higher at a time when the global economy is struggling.
Other countries are steering clear of such measures altogether. China also does not support an embargo, and Japan's finance minister, Jun Azumi, has expressed concern about the effectiveness of U.S. sanctions on Iran ? not to mention their potential impact on Japanese banks.
Some 80 percent of Iran's foreign revenue comes from oil exports and any sanctions that affect its ability to export oil would hit its economy hard. With about 4 million barrels per day, Iran is the second largest producer in OPEC.
"It means that we will paralyze, bit by bit, Iran's economic activity and keep the country from using a major part of its resources," said French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe. "You can be skeptical, but it is better than making war."
At the heart of the dispute is international unease about Iran's nuclear program. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful, but the United States and other nations suspect it is trying to build nuclear weapons. Iran is now under several rounds of U.N. sanctions for not being more forthcoming about its nuclear program.
Late Monday, British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy issued a joint statement urging Iran to suspend its sensitive nuclear activities.
"Our message is clear," the statement said. "We have no quarrel with the Iranian people. But the Iranian leadership has failed to restore international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program. We will not accept Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon."
Iran's denials of military intent have utterly failed to convince EU officials.
"The recent start of operations of enrichment of uranium to a level of up to 20 percent in the deeply buried underground facility in Fordo near Qom further aggravates concerns about the possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program," the foreign ministers said in a statement Monday.
That accelerated enrichment is in violation of six U.N. Security Council resolutions and 11 resolutions by the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, "and contributes to rising tensions in the region," the statement said.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague called the embargo part of "an unprecedented set of sanctions."
"I think this shows the resolve of the European Union on this issue," Hague said.
The EU also decided to freeze the assets of the Iranian central bank. Together, the two measures are intended not only to pressure Iran to agree to talks but also to choke off funding for its nuclear activities.
Before Monday's decision, negotiators worked hard to try to ensure that the embargo would punish only Iran ? and not EU member Greece, which is in dire financial trouble and relies heavily on low-priced Iranian oil.
The foreign ministers agreed to a review of the effects of the sanctions, to be completed by May 1. And they agreed in principle to make up the costs Greece incurs as a result of the embargo.
___
Raf Casert in Brussels, Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Matthew Pennington in Washington, and Gregory Katz in London contributed to this report.
January 23rd, 2012 Posted in News, Vita
Posted By: Valay
Gust has been hinting at a new title on its website and in Dengeki PlayStation. Today, the title has been revealed in the Japanese gaming magazine following several days of teasing.
The developer behind the Atelier and Ar tonelico series is currently working on a project known as ?Sarge Concerto?. This will be the company?s first title for Vita.
Thus far, we?ve been able to determine that Sarge Concerto will incorporate significant online functionality. Some Japanese forum goers are wondering if all of the gameplay will be online only.
It also seems that Sarge Concerto won?t be an RPG unlike the company?s previous games.
Rumor has it that certain womanly features will be ?highlighted? in the experience. I?m sure you folks know what I?m referring to!
According to Dengeki PlayStation, Gust?s new project will arrive in Japan on April 26.
TAMPA, Fla. ? A newly aggressive Mitt Romney charged in campaign debate Monday night that Newt Gingrich "resigned in disgrace" from Congress after four years as speaker and then spent the next 15 years "working as an influence peddler" in Washington.
Gingrich shot back that Romney's attacks were riddled with falsehoods, and he referred to statements by two men who ran against Romney in 2008 in contending the former Massachusetts governor "can't tell the truth."
The clash occurred in the opening moments of the first of this week's two debates before the Jan. 31 Florida primary.
Gingrich trounced Romney in last Saturday's South Carolina contest, an upset that reset the race to pick a rival to President Barack Obama in the fall.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron Paul shared the debate stage.
Asked if he could envision a path to the nomination for himself, Santorum said the race has so far been defined by its unpredictability. He conceded he had been defeated for re-election in 2006 in Pennsylvania but said the party lost the governorship by an even bigger margin than his own defeat.
"There's one thing worse than losing an election and that's not standing for the principles that you hold," he said, a comment he frequently makes while campaigning in an attempt to question Romney's commitment to conservatism.
Paul sidestepped when moderator Brian Williams of NBC asked if he would run as a third-party candidate in the fall if he doesn't win the nomination. "I have no intention," he said, but he didn't slam the door.
The polls post-South Carolina show Gingrich and Romney leading in the Florida primary. That and the former speaker's weekend victory explained why the two were squabbling even before the debate began.
Romney began airing a harshly critical new campaign ad and said the former House speaker had engaged in "potentially wrongful activity" with the consulting work he did after leaving Congress in the late 1990s.
Gingrich retorted that Romney was a candidate who was campaigning on openness yet "has released none of his business records."
He followed up two hours before the debate by arranging the release of a contract his former consulting firm had with the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. for a retainer of $25,000 per month in 2006, or a total for the year of $300,000. The agreement called for "consulting and related services."
Despite Romney's attempts to call Gingrich a lobbyist, the contract makes no mention of lobbying.
Increasingly, the race for the nomination appeared to be a two-way competition between the former Massachusetts governor and the one-time speaker of the House.
After relying on allies to make most of the attacks on his rivals earlier in the campaign, Romney unleashed a commercial that went straight at Gingrich.
"While Florida families lost everything in the housing crisis, Newt Gingrich cashed in," the TV ad says, noting that the former speaker made more than $1.6 million working for Freddie Mac. "Gingrich resigned from Congress in disgrace and then cashed in as a D.C. insider."
Gingrich never registered as a lobbyist, but said he was a consultant for Freddie Mac, the federally backed mortgage company that played a significant role in the housing crisis.
It remains to be seen if Romney can effectively use his newly aggressive stance on the debate stage, a forum in which Gingrich has excelled so far. Underfunded and overmatched by Romney's massive ground game across the country, Gingrich has relied upon strong debate performances to build support.
It appears Romney has brought in outside help to improve his debate technique.
Veteran debate coach Brett O'Donnell was spotted at a Romney campaign stop on Monday. He previously advised President George W. Bush and GOP nominee John McCain and was a senior adviser and speech writer for Michele Bachmann's abbreviated campaign.
Gingrich showed no signs of backing down.
During an appearance on ABC's "Good Morning America," he referred to Romney as "somebody who has released none of his business records, who has decided to make a stand on transparency without being transparent." After initially balking, Romney is set to release personal tax records on Tuesday
MILAN (Reuters) ? Plans to launch a European ratings agency to compete with S&P, Moody's and Fitch are at an advanced stage and a new private institution could start business as soon as the first half of this year, German businessman Roland Berger told an Italian newspaper.
The founder of consultancy Roland Berger said he hoped a new private, non-profit organization, in the form of a foundation, could be ready in "the first half or the first nine months of the year," according to Saturday's Corriere della Sera.
Berger, who has been lobbying European governments and companies to gather support and financing for a new agency, hopes to have raised the 300 million euros of capital needed from European investors by that time, the paper said.
"The proposed model is of an agency where the service is paid by the clients, who have an interest in having reliable and objective results," Berger said.
Roland Berger partner Markus Krall, who is largely tasked with setting up the agency, told Germany's Euro am Sonntag weekly that it would differentiate itself from competitors by accepting liability for its analysis.
This would mean customers could potentially claim damages from the agency, which Krall said provides a "strong incentive" to provide accurate analysis.
"Currently ratings are legally speaking purely opinion and are not subject to any product liability (laws)," Krall told the paper in comments published on Saturday.
European policymakers have criticised agencies Standard & Poor's (MHP.N), Moody's (MCO.N) and Fitch (LBCP.PA) during the euro zone debt crisis, saying they have been too quick to downgrade the credit ratings of indebted EU states despite bailouts and austerity programmes.
Earlier this month, S&P downgraded the credit ratings of nine euro-zone countries, stripping France and Austria of their coveted triple-A status but not EU paymaster Germany.
Berger's plan for the new agency, which would be incorporated in the Netherlands, has received signals of support from the European Commission and governments in Europe but also in China and among some Arab states, the paper said.
(Reporting by Michel Rose, additional reporting by Christiaan Hetzner in Frankfurt; Editing by Alison Birrane)
(Reuters) ? A judge in Southern California on Friday sentenced a former financial advisor to life in prison for strangling a wealthy biotech executive and attempting to steal $9 million from one of his investment accounts.
A San Diego Superior Court jury last November convicted Kent Keigwin, 61, of first-degree murder in the June 2010 death of 65-year-old, British-born retired biotech executive John Watson.
Keigwin, who was a financial advisor, strangled Watson at his apartment in the wealthy La Jolla beach enclave near San Diego, California, and subsequently transferred $8.9 million out of one of his accounts.
In handing down the sentence on Friday, San Diego Superior Court Judge Frederic Link said Keigwin would not be eligible for parole.
Watson, a millionaire who since his death has been praised for helping San Diego entrepreneurs win investments, was the former CEO and president of locally based biotechnology company Ionian Technologies Inc.
Keigwin, who was friends with Watson, used a Taser to jolt Watson with an electric shock at the front door of his apartment in La Jolla, prosecutor Sharla Evert said in her closing arguments in the case.
Keigwin then strangled Watson. His DNA was subsequently found under the victim's fingernails which suggested the two men had struggled against each other, Evert said.
Keigwin's defense attorney, Stacy Gulley, said earlier in the case that Watson died after an "all-out fight" with Keigwin and her client had no motive to kill him.
But the day after Watson's death, Keigwin transferred $8.9 million from one of the victim's investment accounts into a new account that he had opened in Watson's name, prosecutors said.
Police arrested Keigwin three days after the murder.
Aside from the crime of murder, Keigwin also was convicted of the special circumstances that the killing took place for financial gain and during a robbery. Jurors also found Keigwin guilty of using the personal identity of another, burglary, forgery and attempted grand theft.
When he died, Watson was a board member with investor group Tech Coast Angels, which funds and guides fledgling companies with high growth potential in Southern California. Watson first came to the United States from Britain as a Fullbright scholar at Indiana University.
Earlier this month, Tech Coast Angels said it had established the John G. Watson Foundation with a $1 million gift from his family to support entrepreneurs in the San Diego area.
The group described Watson as a shrewd investor who liked to hike and swim in the ocean.
(Reporting By Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Tim Gaynor)
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Public release date: 30-Jan-2012
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