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Emmy Nominations 2011

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Emmy Nominations 2011

Emmy Nominations 2011: Actresses Who Should Win And Who Will Win (VIDEO) Primetime Emmy Nominations 2011: Outstanding Dramas including Dexter, FNL, Game of Thrones & More Peaceful200906 says: RT @ HuffPostCulture : Check out our complete list of Emmy predictions. Do you agree? http://t.co/dFrNEcnN

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6.8 India Earthquake

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6.8 India Earthquake

TheFireTracker2 says: USGS PAGER info for 6 . 8 India # earthquake http://t.co/yQGdil5 6 #Sept18quake

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The future of Greece rests on a phone call

‘Make-or-break’ conversation between finance minister, EU and IMF will determine next measures to prevent default Europe’s debt crisis intensified last night as Greece ‘s embattled government said the country’s financial future would rest on a make-or-break conference call with EU and IMF officials on Monday. Signalling that the 20-month saga had reached crunch point, Athens’ finance minister prepared the austerity-weary nation for further belt-tightening, saying the time had come for “decisive” action to avoid a Greek default. “There is great volatility in the markets,” Evangelos Venizelos said after emerging from crisis cabinet talks. “If we want to avoid default, to stabilise the situation, to remain in the eurozone … we must take big strategic decisions. “Measures must be specified,” he added, referring to reforms outlined in a contentious budget plan passed in July. “After tomorrow’s talks with the troika [of representatives from the EU, ECB and IMF] we will spell out the measures.” With the threat of bankruptcy looming, Greece was told in no uncertain terms over the weekend that a critical ¤8bn rescue loan would not be released next month unless it proved that it had bitten the bullet with reforms. The funds would be the sixth instalment of cash Athens has received since being bailed out to the tune of €110bn in May 2010. But reading the riot act to Greece as never before, EU finance ministers meeting in Poland insisted that without “concrete facts and figures” to show that Athens was intent on bringing its budget deficit in line, the aid would not be forthcoming. Without the cash injection, the ruling socialists will be unable to cover state wages and pensions in October. “The atmosphere was far from diplomatic,” said one Greek insider. “They don’t seem to have faith in us. The choice is clear. Either we go down or show real determination, not words but deeds.” For George Papandreou’s administration, that determination is likely to mean a massive reduction of the bloated civil service – previously unthinkable in a nation reared on the notion of jobs for life – on top of austerity measures that have seen pensions and wages decline dramatically. The authoritative Sunday Vima , citing an internal government email, said the country’s international creditors had not only demanded that 100,000 public sector workers be laid off by 2015 but also that the pensions of farmers, sailors and employees with the telecommunication organisation OTE be cut immediately. Around 50,000 state employees would have to be placed on reduced pay in a special labour reserve immediately. With the atmosphere becoming ever more explosive, such measures would almost certainly exacerbate social unrest. “Everyone wants a smaller state,” said Venizelos. “The 2012 budget is now being put together. And the central direction for 2012 is to reduce expenditures.” Although senior ministers have conceded that widespread resistance has slowed reforms – not least the privatisation of state assets and deregulation of professions – the government has argued that a worse than expected recession has also slowed the pace of change. Venizelos recently said the Greek economy would contract for a fourth consecutive year in 2012, partly because of the tough cuts. The budget deficit, originally expected to be around 7.4% of GDP by year’s end, is now projected to be nearer 10%. In an effort to meet a shortfall that is ¤2bn and rising, the government unveiled a surprise property tax last week, but with the backlash immediate and likely to grow, EU ministers indicated that they did not have “great faith” in the measure. The lack of political consensus over the austerity measures has further eroded Greece’s credibility. The main conservative opposition leader, Antonis Samaras, is calling for snap elections and for the loan conditions to be renegotiated. “Our problem is to ensure that we get the sixth payment and each future payment with the best possible terms as we can’t keep having a repeat of the same scenario [before the disbursement of each loan],” Venizelos said in Poland. “The situation is serious in the sense that we need to take serious, definitive and complete decisions.” Papandreou highlighted the sense of urgency by cancelling a trip to the US, where he was to address the UN and meet the IMF managing director, Christine Lagarde. Greece Global recession IMF Euro Global economy Economics European Union Europe Helena Smith guardian.co.uk

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The future of Greece rests on a phone call

‘Make-or-break’ conversation between finance minister, EU and IMF will determine next measures to prevent default Europe’s debt crisis intensified last night as Greece ‘s embattled government said the country’s financial future would rest on a make-or-break conference call with EU and IMF officials on Monday. Signalling that the 20-month saga had reached crunch point, Athens’ finance minister prepared the austerity-weary nation for further belt-tightening, saying the time had come for “decisive” action to avoid a Greek default. “There is great volatility in the markets,” Evangelos Venizelos said after emerging from crisis cabinet talks. “If we want to avoid default, to stabilise the situation, to remain in the eurozone … we must take big strategic decisions. “Measures must be specified,” he added, referring to reforms outlined in a contentious budget plan passed in July. “After tomorrow’s talks with the troika [of representatives from the EU, ECB and IMF] we will spell out the measures.” With the threat of bankruptcy looming, Greece was told in no uncertain terms over the weekend that a critical ¤8bn rescue loan would not be released next month unless it proved that it had bitten the bullet with reforms. The funds would be the sixth instalment of cash Athens has received since being bailed out to the tune of €110bn in May 2010. But reading the riot act to Greece as never before, EU finance ministers meeting in Poland insisted that without “concrete facts and figures” to show that Athens was intent on bringing its budget deficit in line, the aid would not be forthcoming. Without the cash injection, the ruling socialists will be unable to cover state wages and pensions in October. “The atmosphere was far from diplomatic,” said one Greek insider. “They don’t seem to have faith in us. The choice is clear. Either we go down or show real determination, not words but deeds.” For George Papandreou’s administration, that determination is likely to mean a massive reduction of the bloated civil service – previously unthinkable in a nation reared on the notion of jobs for life – on top of austerity measures that have seen pensions and wages decline dramatically. The authoritative Sunday Vima , citing an internal government email, said the country’s international creditors had not only demanded that 100,000 public sector workers be laid off by 2015 but also that the pensions of farmers, sailors and employees with the telecommunication organisation OTE be cut immediately. Around 50,000 state employees would have to be placed on reduced pay in a special labour reserve immediately. With the atmosphere becoming ever more explosive, such measures would almost certainly exacerbate social unrest. “Everyone wants a smaller state,” said Venizelos. “The 2012 budget is now being put together. And the central direction for 2012 is to reduce expenditures.” Although senior ministers have conceded that widespread resistance has slowed reforms – not least the privatisation of state assets and deregulation of professions – the government has argued that a worse than expected recession has also slowed the pace of change. Venizelos recently said the Greek economy would contract for a fourth consecutive year in 2012, partly because of the tough cuts. The budget deficit, originally expected to be around 7.4% of GDP by year’s end, is now projected to be nearer 10%. In an effort to meet a shortfall that is ¤2bn and rising, the government unveiled a surprise property tax last week, but with the backlash immediate and likely to grow, EU ministers indicated that they did not have “great faith” in the measure. The lack of political consensus over the austerity measures has further eroded Greece’s credibility. The main conservative opposition leader, Antonis Samaras, is calling for snap elections and for the loan conditions to be renegotiated. “Our problem is to ensure that we get the sixth payment and each future payment with the best possible terms as we can’t keep having a repeat of the same scenario [before the disbursement of each loan],” Venizelos said in Poland. “The situation is serious in the sense that we need to take serious, definitive and complete decisions.” Papandreou highlighted the sense of urgency by cancelling a trip to the US, where he was to address the UN and meet the IMF managing director, Christine Lagarde. Greece Global recession IMF Euro Global economy Economics European Union Europe Helena Smith guardian.co.uk

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The Hotel Minibar Gets a Makeover

Is it possible that those ridiculous prices for in-room goodies might actually become worth it? When we’re on the road, NewsFeed is known to trek to the local convenience store rather than offer our firstborn for a simple bottle of Evian from the hotel room’s minifridge. And hoteliers are starting to wise up to the

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Switched On: The great slate debate of Windows 8

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On , a column about consumer technology. Just as Windows Phone 7′s “touch-only” interface threw away the past to create a streamlined, more approachable experience, Microsoft is creating a “touch-first” experience for Windows 8 that has more in common with its new phone software than previous versions of Windows. This “Metro-style” UI will be able to run on virtually any modern PC, with screens from 10- to 30-inches and above. The touch interface will be only occasionally relevant on desktops, though, more so on laptops. Where it’s obviously meant to shine is on pure slates — will consumers really flock to Windows 8 for such slates, though? Continue reading Switched On: The great slate debate of Windows 8 Switched On: The great slate debate of Windows 8 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 18 Sep 2011 18:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

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Herman Cain Claims He Doesn’t Want to Compromise the Confidentiality of His Economic Advisers

Click here to view this media GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain appeared on Fox News Sunday again this weekend and he’s still out there touting his ridiculous 999 plan as some magical cure for our economy, when it’s pretty much more of the same that we’ve been hearing from most of these Republicans, which is to lower taxes on the rich at the expense of everyone else and privatize Social Security . When Chris Wallace pointed out to Cain that they took a look at his plan and his numbers didn’t quite add up and even though Cain claimed his plan was researched by leading economists, they couldn’t find any of their names. Cain’s explanation — he doesn’t want to “compromise their confidentiality.” I’d say it’s more likely he either doesn’t have any advisers who are actually economic experts, or they’re about as reputable as Arthur Laffer and his infamous Laffer Curve he drew on a napkin that got all the right-wingers worked into a frenzy as an excuse for the rich not to pay their fair share of taxes. Transcript via Fox News : WALLACE: OK, you are now pushing what you call the 999 plan for economic growth — 9 percent corporate flat tax and 9 percent personal flat tax and 9 percent sales tax, but you would eliminate the payroll tax, the estate tax and the tax on capitol gains. Question, what do you think that would do to the economy? CAIN: It would boost the economy and here’s why. Think about the fact that corporations now are looking at for the next year and few months a 35 percent top corporate tax rate. To wake up and say you mean the tax rate is going to be 9 percent? That is going to inspire the business community. Secondly, small businesses which generate most of the jobs, they are also going to be excited because it is going to treat subchapter S and S corporations the same. What the president doesn’t understand, a lot of people don’t understand, is when he throws around numbers like everybody making over $250,000 is going to impose another tax, he is punishing small business, because with a subchapter S corporation, if you eke out a profit, you have to run it through personal income tax and you could be penalized if you make too much money. WALLACE: Let me ask you about this, though, you say that this plan would be revenue neutral, yet you would lose all these rates — you would lower all these rates, you would eliminate the deductions and we’d end up with the same amount of total revenue for the government as what we currently have. We went to your website to try to check this out. There is no explanation on your website of how you arrived at 999 or how these numbers add up. CAIN: Here is how we arrived at it. I had some of the best economists in this country help me to develop this plan. You know, my background is mathematics. It was a simple regression analysis. We took the government data and looked at how much tax revenue from personal income tax, how much tax revenue came from corporate tax, how much revenue came from capitol gains tax, how much revenue from the death tax. We added them all up and you do a simple regression analysis and say in order to reduce this much on corporate income, personal income and national sales tax, what should that number be if we equally break up those three buckets. It was a simple regression analysis. WALLACE: Now you say that, and you say — and you just repeated that this plan was researched and developed by some of the leading economic thinkers in the country. Again we looked at your website, no mention of anyone. CAIN: No, I haven’t put them on there, — the most important thing is to put the plan on there. We are following up now with an official scoring of my plan, but because the way it was derived was so simple to produce such a simple concept we didn’t make that a priority. WALLACE: All right. But let me ask you about this, because Mitt Romney came out with a 59-point plan on jobs. Glenn Hubbard who was — is now the Dean of Columbia Business School and was the chairman of the council of economic advisers for George W. Bush wrote the forward, helped him develop the plan. Tell me the name of one of these leading economic thinkers who helped you come up with this plan. CAIN: The chairman of my economic advisers is a gentleman by the name of Rich Lowery of Cleveland, Ohio. He worked with a couple of other people quite frankly that are well known that I’m not at liberty to mention their names. WALLACE: Why not? CAIN: Because they have their own independence businesses and I don’t want to compromise their confidentiality at this point. When they tell me it is OK to mention their names publicly, I will mention it. But I — trust me, it was a couple of people that you know very well. But I don’t want to compromise their… WALLACE: But wouldn’t they be proud? I mean, if this is a great plan wouldn’t they be proud to say? CAIN: They’d be proud after I get it passed. And then they would be. But no, Chris, I got some people to work — help me go through the thinking on this that I’m not going to compromise their confidentiality at this point just to prove to people that this is a well thought out plan. WALLACE: Well, let me just say, because there isn’t a whole lot of back up, and we don’t have the bona fides of a guy like Glenn Hubbard. We tried to do our own very rough analysis and you are a lot better of this idea of regression analysis than we are. It looks to us under your plan corporations and the wealthy will end up paying a considerably less than they currently do, and lower income people, particularly the 45 percent, roughly of Americans who don’t pay any income tax now will end up paying a lot more true? CAIN: No. Not true. Everyone who works pays the payroll tax, which is 15.3 percent. So even if you don’t own a corporation and don’t have to pay corporate taxes, your tax goes from 15.3 to — Secondly on the national sales tax. WALLACE: Yeah, but what about the 45 percent who don’t pay income tax now? CAIN: A good economic growth plan should not be designed to help more people not pay taxes, Chris. And let me give you the statistic as to why. 50 percent of the taxpayers pay 97 percent of the taxes. What are we supposed to do, get that number to 50 percent paying 100 percent? No. And — WALLACE: I’m not saying it’s wrong, I’m just saying though that they’re going to end up paying more in taxes. CAIN: They are going to end up paying some taxes, but not necessarily more. And here’s why. The individual taxpayer will decide how they spend their money in terms of the 9 percent sales tax. OK? Now, their behavior will determine how much tax they pay. Only if they spend every dime that they make will they pay the full 9 percent. It will encourage savings and it will encourage people to be responsible for their own decision-making WALLACE: Mr. Cain, we’re going to have to leave it there. It is one of the new plans, one of the few new plans that’s come out. And we’re going to have to explore it some more. CAIN: We will have it officially explored (ph), and I’m going to try to get my advisers to allow me to use their name. WALLACE: Well, we would like to have them and you back on. Mr. Cain, it’s always a pleasure. CAIN: Thanks, Chris. It’s a pleasure. Thank you. WALLACE: And we’ll see you at the big debate on Thursday in Florida. CAIN: I’ll be there. I’ll be there. WALLACE: I am sure you will be. Me too.

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Gregory: ‘Republicans Have Been Talking About’ Getting the Jewish Vote for Years – ‘It Never Happens’

NBC's David Gregory clearly isn't hearing any alarm bells from what happened in New York's ninth Congressional district Tuesday. When Republican strategist Alex Castellanos mentioned Sunday that Jews believe President Obama is more pro-Palistiniaan than pro-Israel, the “Meet the Press” host responded, “Republicans have been talking about the Jewish vote going Republican for a long time. It never happens” (video follows with transcript and commentary): DAVID GREGORY, HOST: What you're also seeing on the Republican side, Alex, is a special election. ALEX CASTELLANOS, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Yeah. MR. GREGORY: Anthony Weiner's district that went to a Republican, and the back and forth, whether you can nationalize these results. What do you take away from that? MR. CASTELLANOS: Interesting, two special elections. The one in Nevada tells you something. This was an election that a district that McCain won by 88 votes, a Republicans just won it by 20 percent. Those are numbers like Virginia where–elected Republican governor, like in New Jersey where Chris Christie won, where Scott Brown won. Again, that's kind of a seismic shift. And in New York, President Obama was a huge factor and so was the economy. About 40 percent of the voters there said that their vote was a vote to send Obama a message. Some of them were Republicans, but some were Democrats trying to help their president and save their president and tell him he needs to get going on the economy. But the big news here is that there's trouble now for Obama within his base. His base, he has economic concerns, but now he also has foreign policy concerns. Jewish voters are concerned that he is, I think, 15 to 45 more pro-Palestinian than he is pro-Israeli. MR. GREGORY: Right. But Republicans have been talking… MR. CASTELLANOS: In that district. MR. GREGORY: …about the Jewish vote going to Republicans for a long time. It never happens. So that may be…(unintelligible). I want to talk about Rick Perry, however. MR. CASTELLANOS: Until last–until this week. MR. GREGORY: Yeah, well, we'll see. Actually, we just did. As the American Thinker's Richard Baehr noted Sunday: Since voters do not register their religion and ballots are secret, estimates of how Jews voted on Tuesday is guesswork. The Brooklyn section of the district, which is estimated to have a higher Jewish percentage and a higher Orthodox Jewish percentage than the district as a whole, voted about 2 to 1 for Turner, while Weprin won a much smaller majority (about 5%) in the larger Queens portion of the district. Overall, it appears that Turner may have won a small majority of all Jewish voters. So much for “It never happens.” Gregory must have also missed this piece at Politico Friday: President Barack Obama’s support among Jews has dropped, new data shows. Four out of 10 Jewish Americans currently disapprove of Obama, according to polling data provided to POLITICO by Gallup, which has yet to post the numbers on its website. This 40 percent disapproval rating is 8 percent higher than the 32 percent disapproval rating among Jewish Americans that was last reported by Gallup in June. While Obama still remains popular with Jews, the data, from a poll conducted Aug. 1-Sept.14, is the latest concrete indication that the president is facing worsening problems among a key group. Even someone like CNN's Jack Cafferty heard the warning bells publishing the following at his blog Thursday: The Democrats' loss in New York's special congressional election this week could signal serious trouble for Obama and the Jewish vote in 2012. District 9, made up of parts of Brooklyn and Queens, is one of the most Jewish in the nation. And many believe that if the Democrats lost there, Obama could be in jeopardy in key states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. It's nearly impossible to win a presidential election without those states. The problem is, a lot of American Jews feel neglected by this president and think he has been too tough on Israel. Apparently, none of that matters to Gregory. As far as he's concerned, Obama's got the Jewish vote in the bag. Yeah, well, we'll see.

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UBS has revised the $2 billion loss it suffered at the hands of a rogue trader this week, and not in a good way: The actual damage was $2.3 billion, reports the BBC . The grim news comes amid increased scrutiny of the banking giant, after reports that its internal…

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‘Kimchi Chronicles’ Spices Up Public TV

Marja Vongerichten on the American Public TV series ‘Kimchi Chronicles’ about Korean food and culture, which she co-hosts with her husband, Chef Jean Georges. (Sept. 13)

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