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Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan defended his bank’s controversial new $5 debit card fee in a CNBC interview yesterday, saying that most customers would avoid it, and that the bank had given customers plenty of warning about it. Asked to respond to President Obama’s statement that banks don’t have…

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New Auto Technology Can Tell When You’re ‘Driving While Drowsy’

In the age of multilingual GPS devices, driver seat massages and cruise control navigation, it was only a matter of time before manufacturers developed drowsy driver alerts. That’s right – technology to tell you when you’re in danger in nodding off behind the wheel, bringing you back to full attention through dashboard icons and warning

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Ed Miliband drops former ministers from shadow cabinet in first reshuffle

Shadow health secretary John Healey and shadow business secretary John Denham to make way for backbench successors Labour is to attempt to step up its attack on the government with the promotion of backbench MPs to replace two former ministers in Ed Miliband’s first reshuffle of his shadow cabinet team. Labour claimed that both the shadow health secretary, John Healey, and the shadow business secretary, John Denham, had told the Labour leader some time ago that they did not want to carry on in frontline positions. The party insisted the departures were civilised and that they had not been sacked. It is generally accepted in Whitehall, however, that Healey had underperformed. Sources said he stood down after he was offered a more junior role having fallen out of favour with the leadership for failing to make political capital out of the government’s NHS reforms. Andy Burnham, health secretary in the last Labour government, has been tipped as a replacement. He is familiar with the brief, and well placed to lead Labour’s response when the government publishes a social care white paper in spring next year. The paper will bring issues on which Burnham has previously developed well-respected ideas back onto the political agenda. John Denham’s departure is more of a surprise. The former universities minister is close to the Labour leader, being one of only four shadow cabinet members to have backed Ed Miliband in the Labour leadership election. He is thought, however, to have been unhappy with parts of Miliband’s party conference speech that dealt with the business sector. Miliband hopes to go into the new parliamentary term with a fresh slate after a mixed reaction to his conference speech delivered in Liverpool a fortnight ago. Healey was the second most popular candidate when MPs stood for election to the shadow cabinet a year ago, but his performance has confirmed to Miliband the problems with those elevated to the cabinet through popularity rather than ability. Miliband is understood to believe he has been poorly served by the patchy quality of shadow cabinet members over the last year and during this year’s conference. John Prescott, the former deputy prime minister, urged him to use new rules allowing the party leader to choose his frontbench team to shake up his shadow cabinet. Having stayed away from conference for the first time in 40 years, Prescott said: “This is a Tory government that’s doing some outrageous things and we haven’t had many words of protest. Ed, you’re the leader, get a shadow cabinet who’ll do that.” The new rules were approved by the Labour party conference and Miliband is using the last day of the conference season inter-regnum to assemble a stronger line-up. The MP for Leeds West, Rachel Reeves, who previously worked at the Bank of England, is expected to be made shadow chief secretary to the Treasury. Angela Eagle, who currently holds the position, is expected to be made shadow energy and climate change secretary, replacing Meg Hillier after the latter’s lacklustre performance. Other new intake MPs tipped for promotion include Michael Dugher, the MP for Barnsley East; Tristram Hunt, the MP for Stoke; and Gloria del Piero, the MP for Ashfield. Suggestions that the former lord chancellor Charles Falconer would return to politics as shadow leader of the Lords, opposing Lord Strathclyde, were dismissed. Some shadow cabinet members expressed alarm at the frontbench names being floated. One source said: “Here is a man who has won an election, changed the rules governing who must be in the shadow cabinet but is nonetheless seeking to fill it with Blairites who are not the people who supported him to become leader.” Ed Miliband Labour House of Commons John Denham Labour party leadership Allegra Stratton guardian.co.uk

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Scott Brown Replies To Warren: ‘Thank God’ She Didn’t Take Her Clothes Off

Click here to view this media Via TPM : Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) was interviewed on a local talk radio show Thursday morning. And he had an interesting response to a recent line from Democratic frontrunner Elizabeth Warren. At a Democratic primary debate this week, Warren was asked how she paid for college — in contrast to Brown having posed nude for Cosmopolitan. “I kept my clothes on,” Warren replied. “I borrowed money.” This morning, one of the hosts asked Brown: “Have you officially responded to Elizabeth Warren’s comment about how she didn’t take her clothes off?” Brown began laughing lightheartedly, and gave his reply. “Thank God,” he said, with more laughter. “Listen, bottom line is I didn’t go to Harvard. You know, I went to the school of hard knocks. And I did whatever I had to do to pay for school.” Brown continued. “And for people who know me, and know what I’ve been through — my mom and dad married and divorced four times each, and you know some real challenges growing up. You know, whatever. Yeah, “whatever.” Blue Mass Group has a great round up of responses: The Boston Channel WCVB-TV : “Senator Brown saying ridiculously ignorant, rude, sexist, and false things? Weird, that never happens,” wrote Julia Leja, the finance director for the Massachusetts Democratic Party, on Twitter. Slate : I’m just struck by how lazy this is. … Warren is older than Brown, and has grandchildren, so she’s a particularly bad target for a joke like this. Also, she’s attractive! She’s been profiled in Vogue, with a photo that showed off her trimness and bright blue eyes. It’s… just best to avoid this. … This lazy “elitism” attack has been central to the entire GOP campaign against Warren. Brown needs to do a lot better. Mother Jones : Brown’s comment might seem hilarious to your average bro, but elections aren’t won by bros alone. Attacking your female opponent for her looks won’t necessarily play well with women voters, and Brown can’t afford to lose much more ground than he already has: several polls have already shown Warren within striking distance of the incumbent. … American Banker ‘s Rob Blackwell has suggested this may be Brown’s “Macaca moment”—referring to when then-Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) used the word “Macaca” to address a dark-skinned employee of his opponent, James Webb. (Allen lost.) There’s a whole lot more out there: the locals (the Boston Globe , The Boston Channel WCVB-TV , the Boston Herald ); the political (and other) blogs and forums ( Politico , Huffington Post , Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire , Free Republic , Democratic Underground , The Hill , Talking Points Memo , Dan Savage/The Stranger , Gawker ); the national and international press ( Washington Post , ABC News , International Business Times , National Journal , The Atlantic ). I find this one hard to explain away with a line about “ injecting levity ,” Senator. Brown makes a bad mistake which comes across as sexist and juvenile and may be his Macaca moment. Republicans will try to paint Elizabeth Warren as some dowdy old liberal academic who has little experience in the real world. A brief look at her bio suggests this tactic will backfire. Via wikipedia : Elizabeth Warren was born Elizabeth Herring in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the daughter of middle class parents Pauline and Donald Herring. When Warren was twelve, her father had a heart attack, which led to a pay cut, excessive medical bills, and eventually the loss of their car. Her mother went to work answering phones at Sears and Warren worked as a waitress. She graduated from Northwest Classen High School in 1966 and a ttended George Washington University on a scholarship , where she was on the debate team. At that time, most scholarships were athletic scholarships for men, and there were few women on the debate team. At 19, she married Jim Warren; they divorced in 1979. She graduated from the University of Houston in 1970 with a degree in speech pathology and audiology, and worked with children who had suffered brain injuries. Warren went on to study law at the Rutgers School of Law–Newark , where she served as an editor of the Rutgers Law Review, and was one of two female summer associates at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft’s Wall Street office. She received her Juris Doctor in 1976. After law school, Warren worked from home, writing wills and doing real estate closings for walk-in clients. I’ve included Warren’s closing remarks at the debate where she mentions her own background. Scott Brown may not have gone to Harvard (neither did Warren) but he did go to Tufts University and Boston College Law School , private institutions among the most expensive in the country (tuition is $42,000 a year now). Elizabeth Warren attended a public university on scholarship. There is a big difference between the two candidates seeking a U.S. Senate seat in 2012 and it shouldn’t take the voters of Massachusetts that long to decide which of the two is genuine and who is not.

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If the Democrats are serious about actual governing and fixing the many urgent problems that afflict our nation, they have to stop opposing any attempts to fix things like this. Charlie Pierce, who’s now the political editor at Esquire.com, really lets loose his wrath on this latest example of sheer greed: At a time when the president’s getting some real traction with his new, not-quite-red meat rhetoric, and with an actual movement rising on the Left that, for all its diverse enthusiasms, is primarily about the opportunity buried in the visceral knowledge that we’re all being swindled , and with the 2012 re-election utterly dependent on their doing something to turn the country’s employment situation from surface-of-Mercury to merely bleak, the Democrats seem now ready to run the truck back over their own feet again . And it doesn’t seem possible to believe that there are some Democrats who actually would sabotage the whole effort over something like this: Other Democrats have expressed concern about a call to end the so-called carried interest loophole, which allows hedge fund and private equity managers to count their income as capital gains, and thus pay taxes at a significantly lower rate than most individuals. There is no excuse for this tax break. None whatsoever. It has nothing to do with creating jobs. It doesn’t do anything except make extraordinarily rich people even richer, for which they demonstrate their gratitude by crashing the whole economy. It has nothing to do with anything except the tender feelings of people who’d sell their white-haired grandmothers to the Somali pirates for whatever change fell out of their purses . If we are at all serious about The Deficit — and we’re not, except as a vehicle for working out our economic sociopathy on the less fortunate — this monstrosity wouldn’t  exist at all. More than anything else, this tax break symbolizes perfectly the forces behind the ruination of responsible government and of a viable economy. This thing couldn’t represent GREED more perfectly if it were drawn up by Thomas Nast. It is a perfect campaign issue for any Democratic party truly interested in economic justice.  Andrew Jackson could run against it. And this is what breaks the deal for some Democrats. The unbridled avarice of some hedge-fund cowboys. The ultimate feast of fat things, to turn Isaiah on his head for a minute. They deserve whatever befalls them. Truly, they do. But of course, first someone would have to tell us which Democrats they are. And maybe the President could stop doing crap like this.

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Secret panel can put Americans on ‘kill list’

WASHINGTON

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NY Times Touts ‘Unexpected Success’ of Wall Street Protest; Almost Ignored NYC Tea Party in 2009

The left-wing, anti-capitalist Occupy Wall Street camp-out in Lower Manhattan stretched into its third week, bolstered by an influx of labor unions. The story made the front of Thursday’s New York Times along with a large photo of protestors in Foley Square, “ Seeking Energy, Unions Join Wall Street Protest. ” It’s a far cry from the paper’s coverage of the first major Tea Party rally in Manhattan. The paper’s hostile reporting of the nationwide Tea Party rallies on April 15, 2009 (Tax Day) virtually ignored a supportive crowd of thousands, citing in a single sentence an Associated Press report on Newt Gingrich speaking at the Manhattan rally. The report made Page 16. Labor reporter Steven Greenhouse and Cara Buckley promoted the labor perspective on Thursday. Stuart Appelbaum, an influential union leader in New York City, was in Tunisia last month, advising the fledgling labor movement there, when he received a flurry of phone calls and e-mails alerting him to the rumblings of something back home. Protesters united under a provocative name, Occupy Wall Street, were gathering in a Lower Manhattan park and raising issues long dear to organized labor. And gaining attention for it. Mr. Appelbaum recalled asking a colleague over the phone to find out who was behind Occupy Wall Street — a bunch of hippies or perhaps troublemakers? — and whether the movement might quickly fade. So far, at least, it has not, and on Wednesday, several prominent unions, struggling to gain traction on their own, made their first effort to join forces with Occupy Wall Street. Thousands of union members marched with the protesters from Foley Square to their encampment in nearby Zuccotti Park. “The labor movement needs to tap into the energy and learn from them,” Mr. Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said. “They are reaching a lot of people and exciting a lot of people that the labor movement has been struggling to reach for years.” In fact, the unexpected success of Occupy Wall Street in leveling criticism of corporate America has stirred some soul-searching among labor leaders . They have noted with envy that the new movement has done a far better job, not only of capturing interest, but also of attracting young people. Protests have spread to dozens of cities, including Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles. What precisely is that criticism? The Times doesn’t say, perhaps because the Occupy protests are more a collection of various grievances than specific demands (as Greenhouse hinted at deeper into the story). Greenhouse at least committed some accurate labeling when reporting on the activists’ confrontations with the police: Others said they were wary of being embarrassed by the far-left activists in the group who have repeatedly denounced the United States government. Those concerns may be renewed after a disturbance about 8 p.m. Wednesday as the march was breaking up. The police said they arrested eight protesters around the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street, after people rushed barriers and began spilling into the street. While a couple of witnesses said that officers used pepper spray to clear the streets, Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said that one officer “possibly” used it. Several protesters were also arrested at State and Bridge Streets at 9:30 p.m.; the police said one protester was charged with assault after an officer was knocked off his scooter.

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Digital video game distribution finds brick and mortar camping, moves in for win

Blame it on the economy, or simply chalk it up to a better way of earning revenue, but physical distributors of new video games are beginning to feel some major heat from the scrappy competition . While this mainstay segment still comprises the bulk of sales with $1.44 billion earned in the previous quarter, the combination of digital purchases, subscriptions, downloadable content, social network and mobile games — along with help from rentals and used purchases — now tops $1.74 billion dollars. This news comes from the NPD Group , and while we’re still scratching our heads at the logic of combining second-hand purchases with electronic distribution, it provides a strong indicator of consumers’ changing tastes and preferences (along with their willingness to spend). Does this industry titan simply need a new console or another Call of Duty to maintain supremacy? Perhaps a modest uptick in GDP? Or does this signal the changing of the guard for our favorite electronic pastime? There’s a full PR after the break, where you’re welcome to fire one off in the comments and let us know your take. [Image courtesy bradleyolin / flickr ] Continue reading Digital video game distribution finds brick and mortar camping, moves in for win Digital video game distribution finds brick and mortar camping, moves in for win originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Oct 2011 14:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

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The Occupy Wall Street movement staged its biggest demonstration yet yesterday, with thousands marching from lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park to Foley Square near City Hall. Their ranks were bolstered by students, workers, and members of more than 30 unions, DNAinfo reports. But the night also saw things get ugly once…

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That’s a Lot of Rings: Husband and Wife Marry for 100th Time

They’ve done it in a canyon, in Hawaii, and even in the Hard Rock Cafe. One thing’s for sure — Lauren and David Blair love tying the knot.But far from being serial contortionists, these lovebirds are in fact the world record holders for the “Most Marriage Vow Renewals by the Same Couple,” reports the Huffington

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