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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/vTMnoXfnpD8/story01.htm
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Monday, November 28, 2011
New Best Buy TV ad aimed at bringing Apple Store customers into Best Buy
Best Buy has released a new advert for the holidays called ?Everything Apple at Best Buy”, and it’s aimed squarely at poaching potential Apple purchasers. Best Buy has Apple Stores within a store idea and is aimed at letting its customers know that they sell all of Apple?s products...
Service uses gaming to reward consumers for saving money ...
It?s all too common to see rewards programs that encourage consumers to spend; far more rare are those that promote saving instead. Just last year we featured Piggymojo, which recruits the user?s friends and family to cheer them on toward their financial goals, and recently we came across a similar initiative called SaveUp, a free service that rewards consumers for their smart financial decisions.
Just launched into beta, San Francisco-based SaveUp allows consumers who bank at any of more than 18,000 US financial institutions to earn credits for performing positive financial actions. For example, credits are awarded when a user contributes to their savings or retirement accounts; pays down their credit cards, mortgages or other loans; and engages with SaveUp?s financial education content on the site. Those credits, in turn, can be redeemed for chances to win instant prizes, or for entry into weekly and monthly draws. Underwritten by SaveUp?s sponsors and bank partners, prizes range from retail gift cards and consumer electronics, to luxury vacations, college tuition and even a USD 2 million jackpot. The video below explains SaveUp in more detail:
Consumer debt in the US alone is more than USD 2.4 trillion, according the US Federal Reserve. Could gaming prove the solution to help get rid of some of that?
Website: www.saveup.com
Contact: info@saveup.com
Spotted by: Alice Revel
Source: http://www.springwise.com/gaming/service-gaming-reward-consumers-saving-money/
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Sunday, November 27, 2011
After centuries, Bethlehem church to get new roof
BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) ? Preparations for a long-needed renovation of the 1,500-year-old Church of the Nativity are moving ahead in Bethlehem, the town of Jesus' birth, in the face of political and religious conflicts that have kept one of Christendom's holiest sites in a state of decay for centuries.
The first and most urgent part of the renovation, initiated by the Palestinian government in the West Bank, is meant to replace the building's roof. Ancient wooden beams pose a danger to visitors, officials say, and leaks have already ruined many of the church's priceless mosaics and paintings.
If the repairs go ahead as planned next year, it will be the first time the crumbling basilica has seen major renovation work in more than a century and a half.
Altering a building like the Church of the Nativity, built 1,500 years ago on the site of a church 200 years older than that, is never a simple affair. The building is shared by three Christian sects ? Catholics, Greek Orthodox and Armenians ? who have traditionally viewed each other with suspicion and are wary of upsetting the brittle status quo that governs the site.
To repair a part of the church is to own it, according to accepted practice, meaning that letting other sects undertake renovations or pay for them could allow one to gain ground at another's expense.
The resulting paralysis and disrepair has been a recurring theme at the church.
"In the roof the timbers which were constructed in ancient times are rotting, and this structure is falling daily into ruin," wrote one visitor. That was in 1461.
Some measure of the complications involved in a renovation of this type can be found in the Nativity's similarly ancient and fractious sister church, the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. When a 1927 earthquake badly damaged that building, it took the rival sects more than three decades to agree to major repairs and another three to complete them.
Today, the increasingly dire state of the Nativity's roof and the intervention of an external player in the form of the Palestinian Authority ? which has circumvented the old rivalries and allowed all to save face ? has led the three churches to agree to a renovation to be arranged and funded by the Palestinian government and international donors.
The Palestinian Authority, the Western-backed government that wields limited control in the West Bank under Israel's overall control, sees the church as its premier tourist attraction, with 2 million foreign visitors last year.
The PA and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, are eager to win recognition for the basilica from UNESCO as a world heritage site, but an earlier application was not accepted because UNESCO did not consider the Palestinian government a state. That changed last month, when, in a controversial decision that triggered a funding cutoff by the United States, the U.N.'s cultural arm decided to grant recognition.
The Palestinians are now hoping their application will be approved. The renovation is motivated, in part, by a desire on their part to prove they are responsible stewards of sites of global importance.
"Our president has issued a decree to restore the roof and to prepare for the restoration of the church on behalf of the three churches and in coordination with the three churches, which obviously cannot do it on their own," said Khouloud Daibes, the Palestinian tourism minister.
A high-tech survey by experts from Canada, Italy and elsewhere ended earlier this year. Palestinian officials hope the three churches will sign off on the plans and that the renovation itself will begin in 2012. It is expected to cost between $10 and $15 million.
The roof is in such poor condition that there is a "risk of collapsing beams within the wooden structure which could hurt people inside the church," said Issam Juha of the Centre for Cultural Heritage Preservation, one of the official Palestinian bodies in charge of the UNESCO application.
"We recognize that this is a necessity that goes beyond our different claims, and that this has to be done," said Father Athanasius, the Roman Catholic clergyman in charge of relations with other sects at shared sites in the Holy Land.
Archbishop Aris Shirvanian of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem said his church supported the plan, along with the other churches. A Greek Orthodox representative did not respond to requests for comment.
To someone standing on the worn marble floors of the basilica amid cassocked monks and busloads of tourists and looking upward, the roof appears as an aging latticework of wooden beams, some of them visibly warped.
The roof was first built, along with the rest of the basilica, by the Byzantine emperor Justinian in the 6th century A.D. following the destruction of the original church built on the site of the grotto where Jesus was believed to have been born. Some of Justinian's massive wooden beams are still in use.
In 1480, with Bethlehem under Muslim rule and the roof disintegrating, permission was granted to replace it. Philip, Duke of Burgundy, sent craftsmen, wood and iron. King Edward IV of England sent lead, and the Doge of Venice provided ships. Major work was carried out again two centuries later.
When the British controlled the Holy Land between 1917 and 1948, they recognized the urgency of replacing the roof but simply could not navigate the explosive rivalries between the sects in the church, traditionally backed by powers like France and Russia.
In the mid-1800s the tensions had become so fierce that Russian Czar Nicholas I actually deployed troops along the Danube to threaten a Turkish sultan who had been favoring the Catholics over the Orthodox.
The British managed only small repairs. The same went for the Jordanians, who ruled Bethlehem from 1948 to 1967, and for the Israelis, who captured the West Bank from the Jordanians and turned the city over to the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s.
A UNESCO report in 1997 found that because of water leaking from the roof, most of the mosaics and paintings, some dating from Byzantine times, had been "damaged beyond repair."
In the similar case of the renovation of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the sects put aside their differences only when they realized that their holy building was in danger of collapse, said Raymond Cohen of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, an international relations professor who wrote a book about that renovation project. There was also a measure of judicious outside intervention by a Jordanian official at the right time, he said.
Something similar appears to have happened here.
"The paradox is that everyone needs to repair it, but they can't agree," Cohen said. "When the place is about to fall down, it focusses the mind."
___
Follow Matti Friedman at www.twitter.com/MattiFriedman
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Saturday, November 26, 2011
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Obama turning to Biden for help in 3 key states (AP)
WASHINGTON ? A year from Election Day, Democrats are crafting a campaign strategy for Vice President Joe Biden that targets the big three political battlegrounds: Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, states where Biden might be more of an asset to President Barack Obama's re-election campaign than the president himself.
The Biden plan underscores an uncomfortable reality for the Obama team. A shaky economy and sagging enthusiasm among Democrats could shrink the electoral map for Obama in 2012, forcing his campaign to depend on carrying the 67 electoral votes up for grabs in the three swing states.
Obama won all three states in 2008. But this time he faces challenges in each, particularly in Ohio and Florida, where voters elected Republican governors in the 2010 midterm elections.
The president sometimes struggles to connect with Ohio and Pennsylvania's white working-class voters, and with Jewish voters who make up a core constituency for Florida Democrats and view him with skepticism.
Biden has built deep ties to both groups during his four decades in national politics, connections that could make a difference.
As a long-serving member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden cemented his reputation as an unyielding supporter of Israel, winning the respect of many in the Jewish community. And Biden's upbringing in a working class, Catholic family from Scranton, Pa., gives him a valuable political intangible: He empathizes with the struggles of blue-collar Americans because his family lived those struggles.
"Talking to blue-collar voters is perhaps his greatest attribute," said Dan Schnur, a Republican political analyst. "Obama provides the speeches, and Biden provides the blue-collar subtitles."
While Biden's campaign travel won't kick into high gear until next year, he's already been making stops in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida this fall, speaking at events focused on education, public safety and small businesses and raising campaign cash. Behind the scenes, he's working the phones with prominent Jewish groups and Catholic organizations in those states, a Democratic official said.
Biden is also targeting organized labor, speaking frequently with union leaders in Ohio ahead of a vote earlier this month on a state law that would have curbed collective bargaining rights for public workers. After voters struck down the measure, Biden traveled to Cleveland to celebrate the victory with union members.
The Democratic official said the vice president will also be a frequent visitor to Iowa and New Hampshire in the coming weeks, seeking to steal some of the spotlight from the Republican presidential candidates blanketing those states ahead of the January caucus and primary.
And while Obama may have declared that he won't be commenting on the Republican presidential field until there's a nominee, Biden is following no such rules. He's calling out GOP candidates by name, and in true Biden style, he appears to be relishing in doing so.
During a speech last month to the Florida Democratic Convention, Biden singled out "Romney and Rick", criticizing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for saying the government should let the foreclosure crisis hit rock bottom, and hammering Texas Gov. Rick Perry's assertion that he would send U.S. troops into Mexico.
And he took on the full GOP field during an October fundraiser in New Hampshire, saying "There is no fundamental difference among all the Republican candidates."
Democratic officials said Biden will follow in the long-standing tradition of vice presidents playing the role of attack dog, allowing Obama to stay out of the fray and appear more focused on governing than campaigning.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal strategy. The Obama campaign has been reluctant to publically define Biden's role in the re-election bid this early in the run, though campaign manager Jim Messina did say the vice president would deliver an economic message to appeal for support.
"You'll see him in communities across the country next year laying out the choice we face: restoring economic security for the middle class or returning to the same policies that led to our economic challenges," Messina said.
Democrats say Biden will campaign for House candidates in swing states as the party tries to recapture some of the seats in Congress lost during the 2010 midterms.
And here again, the vice president's efforts in politically crucial Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida could be most important. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is targeting 12 districts in those states that Obama and Biden carried in the 2008 presidential race but are represented by Republican representatives.
New York Rep. Steve Israel, who chairs the committee, said he believes Biden could be a "game-changer" in those districts.
"All he has to do is ask voters, has the Republican strategy of no worked for you?" Israel said.
Israel met with Obama and Biden at the White House earlier this month to discuss, among other things, their role in congressional campaigns. While Israel said he hopes Obama will actively campaign for Democratic House candidates, he said "the vice president has already volunteered."
___
Julie Pace can be reached at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC.
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Friday, November 25, 2011
Mars Science Laboratory Latest NASA Nuclear Powered Space Craft (ContributorNetwork)
The Mars Science Laboratory, carrying the SUV sized Curiosity Mars rover, is due to lift off from the Kennedy Space Center this Saturday. One of the features of the newest Mars rover is the Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator that powers it.
While many space probes use solar panels to power them, some use RTGs, which use the decay of plutonium 238 to provide heat and power. RTGs are used when the probe in question is slated to explore far away from the sun, such as the Outer Planets, or, as in the case of the MSL, the probe is large enough to need to power generated by the RTG.
While there has been some controversy surrounding the safety of launching space craft with RTGs, the only serious contamination occurred when a Russian probe crashed in the Canadian wilderness in 1978, spreading radioactive fuel over the landscape.
RTGs have provided power for space missions since the Apollo program. Some examples include:
Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package
Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package was an instrument package placed on the lunar surface by the crews of Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17. The instruments measured seismic activity on the lunar surface, as well as other phenomenon such as solar wind and magnetic activity. The ALSEPs were powered by a single RTG that generated 70 watts of power.
Galileo
Galileo, which was launched in October 1989, orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003, exploring the largest planet in the solar system and its various moons. Galileo was powered by two GPHS-RTGs that carried just over 17 pound of plutonium. The RTGs provided 570 watts of power at launch, which had decreased to 493 watts when it had arrived at Jupiter.
Ulysses
Ulysses, launched in October 1990, orbited the sun, studying its properties between 1994 and 2009, when communications was lost with the vehicle. The RTG power source on the vehicle generated about 285 watts.
Cassini
Cassini, currently orbiting Saturn, was launched in 1997 and arrived at Saturn in 2004. Cassini is powered by three RTGs, contained 72 pounds of plutonium. The RTGs provide 600 to 700 watts of power.
New Horizons
New Horizons was launched in January 2006, with a planned flyby of Pluto in 2015. The single RTG, which was actually a spare from the Cassini mission, contained 24 pounds of plutonium. It generated 240 watts at launch, but will put out 200 watts by the time it encounters Pluto.
Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times and The Weekly Standard.
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Thursday, November 24, 2011
LG and PRADA, together since 2006, renew their vows
PRADA phone by LG 3.0 coming in 2012
LG and PRADA today announced that they've renewed their partnership and that we can expect the PRADA phone by LG 3.0 early next year. The Korean electronics giant and the Italian fashion giant have worked together since 2006, release a pair of phones the next two years. The PRADA phone by LG 1.0 sold more than 1 million units, LG said in a press release, and is a fixture at New York's Museum of Modern Art as well as in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai, China.
No word yet on how far out of your price range the PRADA phone by LG 3.0 will be. We've got the full presser after the break.
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/yFTOQuf0B8g/story01.htm
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Gingrich: Cutting off gasoline would contain Iran (AP)
WASHINGTON ? Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich says the United States could "break Iran within a year" if allies worked together on a strategy instead of focusing on specific tactics.
Gingrich says that ending gasoline sales to Iran and sabotaging its refineries would lead to regime change and end its nuclear ambitions. The former House speaker says the world must change regimes in Tehran before Iran acquires a nuclear weapon.
Other Republican presidential candidates debating in Washington Tuesday night had different views of how to deal with Iran's aggressive nuclear program.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry says he favors sanction on Iran's central bank.
Businessman Herman Cain says he would support an Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities only if he were convinced it would work.
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Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Mitt Romney drops bombshell from his past (The Ticket)
Via ABC News' Michael Falcone, who got his hands on an interview with Mitt Romney in a forthcoming issue of People magazine:
"I tasted a beer and tried a cigarette once, as a wayward teenager, and never did it again."
Other popular Yahoo! News stories:
? What you need to know about the supercommittee
? Herman Cain and the Holy Land Experience
? First Lady booed at NASCAR race
Want more of our best political stories? Visit The Ticket or connect with us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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Affordable Full Protection Automobile Insurance coverage : 31Night ...
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So, how are you able to get cheap full protection automotive insurance coverage?
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Source: http://www.31night.com/2011/11/affordable-full-protection-automobile-insurance-coverage/
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Nickelback Roar Back To Basics On Here And Now
Band's new album isn't a departure, because it doesn't have to be.
By James Montgomery
Nickelback's Chad Kroeger
Photo: Getty Images
When Nickelback set out to record their brand-new album Here and Now, which hit stores Monday (November 21), they decided not to stray far from the mantra that has made them one of the decade's biggest-selling acts: Namely, keep it simple, stupid.
"If we had a 'vision,' it was pretty much 'Record 11 songs, try to make sure they don't sound like any of the other 11 songs, and make 'em good,'" frontman Chad Kroeger said. "That was about it."
If Kroeger sounds like he's joking, he assures you, he's not. After all, for more than 15 years now, Nickelback have done one thing — write and record the kinds of songs that sound great played very loudly, be it on the radio, in the parking lot or inside venues that house professional sports franchises — and have done it exceptionally well, to the tune of some 50 million albums sold worldwide. And Here and Now seems destined to follow in those footsteps, both sonically (have you heard "Bottoms Up"?) and commercially. Then again, the latter doesn't seem to matter all that much to Kroeger and company, which may very well be the secret to their success.
"Did you read the bio [for the new album]? Oh my God, it's a thrill ride. It's like my mom wrote it. She's like, 'They've sold this many records worldwide, they've won all of these accolades, the band has set these records,' and you just go down it, and there's almost nothing about the new album," Kroeger laughed. "The adjectives are just like, 'Wow, this dude got a thesaurus for Christmas for sure, and he just blew the dust off it.'
"You know what? I think [sales] mean more to my mom. My mom is just pumped when this stuff comes out," he continued. "But I think sometimes, we'll be sitting at dinner, and we'll look at each other, if it's just the four of us, those are those little secret private moments where we'll look at each other and be like, 'That was pretty cool.' Or, you know, 'Pass the butter.' "
And so, on Here and Now, Nickelback return with much of the same that has led them to such lofty heights. They'll make no bones about it, either. It will probably sell a bazillion copies and launch singles onto modern rock radio for the foreseeable future. And it will most definitely be coming to an arena near you very soon. And all those things would be near-certainties even if the band decided to go with their original title for the album, which, truth be told, would've been pretty awesome, really.
"It's called Here and Now because it just represents a snapshot in time, a snapshot of who we were when we made it," Kroeger explained. "And of all the names we had, it was better than Wizard Beating."
Related ArtistsSource: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1674792/nickelback-here-and-now-album.jhtml
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Tuesday, November 22, 2011
China urges progress on climate change fund (AP)
BEIJING ? China is worried the financial crisis is draining contributions to a multibillion-dollar global warming fund but hopes basic financing to help developing countries deal with climate change can be hammered out this month.
Delegates at a U.N.-sponsored climate change conference that starts Nov. 28 in Durban, South Africa, are to consider ways to raise $100 billion a year for the Green Climate Fund.
Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission and China's lead climate official, told a news conference in Beijing that some countries may not be able to pledge as much as originally planned but he hopes there will be progress in determining how the fund is allocated and managed in the long-term.
China is also pushing for new emissions-reduction targets for developed countries to take effect after the 1997 Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.
Countries generally have fallen into camps of rich and poor on the issue. Developing countries insist the Kyoto obligations ? the individual targets for countries to cut emissions ? be extended and new targets adopted. Industrial countries say they want emerging economies to accept similar binding commitments.
Xie reiterated China's stance that developed countries are mainly to blame for the current global warming situation and must take the lead in combatting the problem, while developing countries should not have to face mandatory restraints on emissions because they would hamper efforts to alleviate poverty.
A white paper on China's climate change policies distributed at the news conference said clarifying a new emissions-reduction plan for developed countries was the most urgent task facing negotiators at Durban.
Also important will be securing "new, additional and abundant funds" for developing nations to deal with global warming, it said.
"Climate change hasn't become less important because of the international financial crisis, but it has become less prominent," Xie said. "Some people say that given the economic difficulties in Western countries these days, that it's not the proper time to discuss financing issues."
Xie said China understands that point of view but also believes global economic difficulties are temporary and that progress should be made at Durban on establishing the financing mechanisms for the fund. He said there are multiple options for financing but that the main source will be public funds from developed countries.
"If you have difficulties, for instance, you can donate less money, but the mechanism should be there and we hope, we look forward to positive progress in the allocation and management of these long-term financing mechanisms (in Durban)," Xie said.
China and other emerging economies exempted from the Kyoto pact have sharply increased emissions in recent years, while rejecting calls to commit by treaty to restraints on emissions.
However, China has voluntarily set a target of reducing power consumed per unit of economic output ? a measure known as "energy intensity" ? by 40 percent to 45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels, while also increasing the share of energy produced by renewable sources to 15 percent and expanding forest cover.
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'Breaking Dawn' rises to $283.5M worldwide debut
In this image released by Summit Entertainment, Kristen Stewart, foreground, and Robert Pattinson are shown in a scene from "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1." (AP Photo/Summit Entertainment, Andrew Cooper)
In this image released by Summit Entertainment, Kristen Stewart, foreground, and Robert Pattinson are shown in a scene from "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1." (AP Photo/Summit Entertainment, Andrew Cooper)
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? "The Twilight Saga" has staked out another huge opening with a $139.5 million first weekend domestically and a worldwide launch of $283.5 million.
The domestic total gives "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn ? Part 1" the second-best debut weekend for the franchise, after the $142.8 million launch for 2009's "The Twilight Saga: New Moon." ''Breaking Dawn" did more than half of its business, $72 million, on opening day Friday, while the movie's debut weekend was the fifth-best on record.
Opening in 54 overseas markets, "Breaking Dawn" pulled in $144 million internationally, according to studio estimates Sunday.
But the Warner Bros. dancing penguin sequel "Happy Feet 2" stumbled in its debut, pulling in just $22 million over opening weekend. That's barely half what the first film in the animated franchise earned in its 2006 opening.
The comparison is even worse considering the original did not have the sequel's price advantage for 3-D screenings, which cost a few dollars more than 2-D shows.
The previous weekend's No. 1 movie, Relativity Media's action tale "Immortals," fell to third-place with $12.3 million, raising its domestic haul to $53 million.
George Clooney had a great start with Fox Searchlight's comic drama "The Descendants," which broke into the top-10 despite playing in just a handful of theaters.
"The Descendants" finished at No. 10 with $1.2 million in 29 theaters, averaging a whopping $42,150 a cinema. That compares to an average of $34,351 in 4,061 theaters for "Breaking Dawn."
Directed by Alexander Payne ("Sideways"), the film stars Clooney as a distressed dad tending to his daughters after his wife falls into a coma from a head injury. The film expands to about 400 theaters Wednesday.
In an industry whose main audience is young males, "Twilight" is a rare blockbuster franchise driven by female viewers. Distributor Summit Entertainment reported that women and girls made up 80 percent of the audience for "Breaking Dawn."
The popularity of "Twilight" has left many men scratching their heads, even those involved in releasing the movies.
"I'm 53 years old, and I haven't figured it out yet," said Richie Fay, head of distribution for Summit. "It relates really to young girls and things that are important to them, their romantic ideas of love and relationships, without getting so physical, at least on screen, that it becomes a worry for their parents."
"Breaking Dawn" has brooding teen Bella (Kristen Stewart) marrying vampire lover Edward (Robert Pattinson), whose family strikes an uneasy alliance with jealous werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner) to protect the bride and the baby she's carrying.
The movie's big start points to even better business for next year's "Breaking Dawn ? Part 2," the finale in the five-film series based on Stephenie Meyer's best-selling novels.
"Breaking Dawn" was a windfall for Hollywood in general, whose domestic revenues continue to trail 2010's despite rosy projections last spring of a record box-office year.
Domestic business totaled $222 million, up 14 percent from the same weekend last year, when "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1" led with $125 million, according to box-office tracker Hollywood.com.
The penguins of "Happy Feet 2" were left in the cold compared with the big debut for the first film, a critical favorite that won the Academy Award for feature animation.
The sequel, featuring returning voice stars Elijah Wood and Robin Williams, received mixed to bad reviews. Still, Warner Bros. reported it earned high marks from audiences, which could keep it afloat in the coming weeks.
"We honestly feel we'll pick up some steam and play some catch-up as we get into the holidays," said Dan Fellman, head of distribution at Warner.
But the competition for family audiences turns intense in the next few days with Martin Scorsese's youthful adventure "Hugo," the musical comedy "The Muppets" and the animated holiday tale "Arthur Christmas" all opening Wednesday for the busy Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
The newcomers, combined with "Breaking Dawn," could lift Hollywood above the Thanksgiving record set in 2009, when "New Moon" paced the industry to a $273 million domestic haul from Wednesday to Sunday.
"This could be one of the greatest movie-going weekends ever in the midst of a year that has really had its ups and downs at the box office," said Hollywood.com analyst Paul Dergarabedian.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn ? Part 1," $139.5 million ($144 million international)
2. "Happy Feet 2," $22 million.
3. "Immortals," $12.3 million ($11.9 million international).
4. "Jack and Jill," $12 million.
5. "Puss in Boots," $10.7 million ($2.4 million international).
6. "Tower Heist," $7 million ($4.5 million international).
7. "J. Edgar," $5.9 million.
8. "A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas," $2.9 million.
9. "In Time," $1.7 million.
10. "The Descendants," $1.2 million.
___
Estimated weekend ticket sales at international theaters (excluding the U.S. and Canada) for films distributed overseas by Hollywood studios, according to Rentrak:
1. "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn ? Part 1," $144 million.
2. "The Adventures of Tintin," $21.7 million.
3. "Immortals," $11.9 million.
4. "Real Steel," $6.9 million.
5. "Moneyball," $5.4 million.
6. "Arthur Christmas," $5 million.
7. "Tower Heist," $4.5 million.
8. "In Time," $4.2 million.
9. "The Lion King," $3.6 million.
10. "Paranormal Activity 3," $3.4 million.
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Online:
http://www.hollywood.com
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VIDEO: The Muppets, Paul Rudd and Olivia Wilde Crash Jason Segel's SNL Party (omg!)
In case anyone had any doubt what Jason Segel was promoting on Saturday Night Live, the How I Met Your Mother star wasted no time in bringing out his colorful co-stars from The Muppets movie. During his monologue, Segel decided to sing about how he couldn't believe he's hosting SNL, when Kermit, Miss Piggy and the gang hijacked his song and assumed that they were all hosting the show together as a group. (I mean, hello, the Muppets knew executive producer Lorne Michaels when he still said "aboot"):
Watch more videos from Saturday Night Live
Segel's I Love You, Man and Forgetting Sarah Marshall co-star Paul Rudd also stopped by the show to play Segel's brother in the most recent sketch about the oddly affectionate Vogelchecks:
Olivia Wilde's cameo was much easier to miss in a '80s-inspired digital short about the secrets of seducing women through chess, checkers, jenga, eating glass and hiring a prostitute:
SNL took the opportunity to kick-start the search for Regis Philbin's replacement on Live!. Potential replacements included Ricky Gervais (Jason Sudeikis), the "adorkable" Zooey Deschanel (Abby Elliot) and ? the man behind the Nasonex bee voice ? Antonio Banderas (Segel):
Related Articles on TVGuide.com
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South Africa's FA says forgive Blatter
updated 6:23 p.m. ET Nov. 19, 2011
JOHANNESBURG - The South African Football Association says people should forgive FIFA President Sepp Blatter for his controversial comments downplaying racism in the sport.
SAFA said on Saturday that Blatter's remarks were unfortunate but hopes "the world will move on" after football's highest figure apologized for saying that racist slurs on the field could be sorted out with a handshake after the match.
SAFA said the matter was blown out of proportion but also noted in its statement that Blatter had "sent the wrong signal."
South Africa's football body paid tribute to Blatter's efforts in taking the World Cup to South Africa last year and said his recent comments were "unfortunate, regrettable and out of sync with what he (Blatter) stood for all his life."
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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More newsGetty ImagesDonovan, Becks lead LA to title
Landon Donovan scored in the 72nd minute on passes from Robbie Keane and David Beckham as the Galaxy's three superstars won their first MLS Cup together with a 1-0 victory over Houston.
Getty ImagesBlatter?'sorry'
FIFA President Sepp Blatter apologizes, sort of, for offending people with his racism remarks but refuses to resign.
Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45370093/ns/sports-soccer/
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Monday, November 21, 2011
Spaniards vote to find way out of crisis (Reuters)
MADRID (Reuters) ? Spaniards voted in a parliamentary election on Sunday that was expected to throw out the ruling Socialists and bring in a new center-right government to tackle the country's dire economic situation.
A mood of gloom and resignation dominated as people went to the polls against a background of soaring unemployment, cuts in public spending and a debt crisis that has put Spain in the front line of the euro zone's fight for survival.
"Being a civil servant I'm not optimistic about it as we're already seeing the cuts coming through," said Jose Vasquez, 45, who was among the early voters in the capital Madrid.
"We can choose the sauce they will cook us in, but we're still going to be cooked."
Pre-election opinion polls gave the conservative People's Party (PP), led by Mariano Rajoy, an unassailable lead over the ruling Socialists, who have led Spain from boom to bust in seven years in power.
Voters are angry with the Socialists for failing to act swiftly to prevent the slide in the euro zone's fourth-largest economy and then for bringing in austerity measures that have cut wages, benefits and jobs.
People now seem resigned to further slashes in spending on health and education in the midst of a European debt crisis that has toppled the governments of Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Italy and pushed Spain's borrowing costs ever higher.
"At least we'll see a change in stance. They (the PP) seem more technical to me, it seems they understand the situation better and are more serious than the guys we have now," said Juan Costas, a 73-year-old retiree.
He said he was voting for the PP although in the past he had sometimes voted Socialist.
Spain's grim economic outlook hung over the election campaign. The country is home to nearly one third of the euro zone's unemployed, with one in five Spanish workers without a job, and its economy is threatening to slip into recession next year for the second time in three years.
"Today the nightmare is over," the right-wing Gaceta newspaper said in an optimistic front-page headline.
The Vanguardia newspaper alluded to Spain's precarious position in the wider euro zone crisis. "Europe is watching us," read its banner headline.
Rajoy, who led his party in two previous failed parliamentary election campaigns, is likely to win an absolute majority giving him a clear mandate to enforce the deep cuts seen as necessary to balance Spain's books.
The 56-year-old will not be sworn in until December. But he will be eager to lay out plans during the handover period to reassure fraught markets that have lost faith in the euro zone project.
Spain's borrowing costs touched euro-era highs in the week running up to the election and came perilously close to the 7 percent level at which other euro zone nations like Ireland and Greece sought international bail-outs.
FAREWELL TO SOCIALISTS
Voting stations close at 8 p.m. (2 p.m. ET) on Sunday and complete election results are expected a few hours later.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero decided against running for a third term as his approval ratings sank.
The Socialists chose veteran politician Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba as their leader for the campaign, but he struggled to differentiate himself from Zapatero, since he served in his cabinet for years.
"We have to do something. What we were doing was not enough, things were just getting worse and worse. We have a frightful situation with 5 million unemployed and a million and a half with no income. Thank God I haven't lost my job," said Luis Escobar, a 50-year-old hotel worker.
"The best social policy is to create jobs. The guys in power haven't done anything so if you want things to change you have to do something," he said, adding that he would vote the People's Party.
Spain joined the euro in 1999 and enjoyed years of prosperity and a real estate boom driven by cheap credit. When the property market crashed in 2007 the government, companies and consumers all found themselves over their heads in debt.
The austerity measures, along with bail-outs and forced recapitalization of banks, have succeeded so far in keeping the country from an international rescue.
(Reporting By Sonya Dowsett; Additional reporting by Fiona Ortiz and Martin Roberts; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
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A rally could happen in week ahead but some big "ifs" (Reuters)
NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Wall Street is in for a volatile week as escalating problems in Europe's debt crisis continue to keep investors on their toes.
With light trading volume expected next week due to the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, intraday swings are likely to be wide and frequent as traders instantly react to headlines out of Europe.
In addition, a 12-member "super committee" in Congress has until midnight on Wednesday to strike a deal involving tax increases and spending cuts to rein in federal spending. Investors are concerned that failure to reach a deal would result in automatic reductions that would harm the fragile recovery.
But with Wall Street poised for a technical rebound after finishing the worst week in two months, some say there are a lot of variables that could spark a rally.
If the super committee can come up with a workable deficit-reduction plan and if progress can be made in Europe, "the stage could be set for a fourth-quarter rally that might surprise even the most bullish traders," said Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives for Schwab in Austin, Texas.
"Of course, those are some mighty big 'ifs.'"
GERMAN BUNDS
European debt yields, an important risk barometer for investors these days, have shown exceptionally high correlation to equities. For the past several weeks, stocks have quickly reacted to moves in Italian, Spanish and French yields.
Now, there could be a new worry in German Bunds.
"We do have a new uncertainty that has gotten a bit of attention over the past few days and that is the selloff in the German Bund market. There has been heavy selling by Asian real money investors in Bunds the last few days," said Chuck Retzky, director of the futures division of Mizuho Securities USA in Chicago.
"The Bund market is considered to be one of the safe havens for investors' money in the world and if that should show a significant crack and the selling pressure continues, then people will worry if U.S. Treasuries will see a similar selloff in the future," he said.
On Friday, the Dow and S&P erased losses as the yield on Spanish 10-year bonds eased.
Spanish elections set for Sunday could help support a rise in the euro against the dollar in the very near term because the opposition party, which is seen as favoring austerity measures, is expected to win.
TECHNICALLY SPEAKING
The S&P 500 (.SPX) fell 3.8 percent on the week, ending its worst week in two months, but the index closed above its 50-day moving average near 1,200, showing signs of strength to move up higher.
"Our expectation is that the recent market selloff is not the beginning of a whole scale, multimonth downside collapse, but rather is likely the latter stages of a pause following a surge in October, and another upside rally attempt will develop shortly," said Robert Sluymer, analyst at RBC Capital Markets in New York.
"The overall technical set-up has not materially changed in the past few weeks."
For the week, the Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) fell 2.9 percent and the Nasdaq (.IXIC) lost 4 percent.
Next week's economic data includes existing home sales for October on Monday and third-quarter preliminary GDP report on Tuesday. On Wednesday, durable goods orders, personal income and outlays and weekly jobless claims are due. The markets will be closed on Thursday for Thanksgiving.
(Reporting by Angela Moon; Additional reporting by Doris Frankel in Chicago; Editing by Kenneth Barry)
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Sunday, November 20, 2011
Massive volcanoes, meteorite impacts delivered one-two death punch to dinosaurs
ScienceDaily (Nov. 17, 2011) ? A cosmic one-two punch of colossal volcanic eruptions and meteorite strikes likely caused the mass-extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period that is famous for killing the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, according to two Princeton University reports that reject the prevailing theory that the extinction was caused by a single large meteorite.
Princeton-led researchers found that a trail of dead plankton spanning half a million years provides a timeline that links the mass extinction to large-scale eruptions of the Deccan Traps, a primeval volcanic range in western India that was once three-times larger than France. A second Princeton-based group uncovered traces of a meteorite close to the Deccan Traps that may have been one of a series to strike Earth around the time of the mass extinction, possibly wiping out the few species that remained after thousands of years of volcanic activity.
Researchers led by Princeton Professor of Geosciences Gerta Keller report this month in the Journal of the Geological Society of India that marine sediments from Deccan lava flows show that the population of a plankton species widely used to gauge the fallout of prehistoric catastrophes plummeted nearly 100 percent in the thousands of years leading up to the mass extinction. This eradication occurred in sync with the largest eruption phase of the Deccan Traps -- the second of three -- when the volcanoes pumped the atmosphere full of climate-altering carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide, the researchers report. The less severe third phase of Deccan activity kept Earth nearly uninhabitable for the next 500,000 years, the researchers report. A substantially weaker first phase occurred roughly 2.5 million years before the second-phase eruptions.
Princeton University researchers found that massive, prolonged eruptions of the Deccan Traps in India gradually eliminated species and resulted in the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Marine sediment trapped between Deccan lava flows revealed that a species known as planktonic foraminifera -- widely used to gauge the severity of prehistoric disasters -- succumbed to lava mega-flows and volcano-induced environmental stress such as acid rain and drastic climate changes. As conditions on Earth worsened, large, variedspecies (left) were eliminated. The no more than seven or eight smaller species (right) that remained dwarfed further. (Image courtesy of Gerta Keller)
Another group based in Keller's lab found evidence in Indian sediment of a meteorite strike from the time of the mass extinction that would have been sufficient to finish off the few but weakened species that survived the Deccan eruptions, according to a report in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters (EPSL) in October. This same sediment -- located in Meghalaya, India, more than 600 miles east of the Deccan Traps -- portrayed Earth during this period as a harsh environment of acid rain and erratic global temperatures.
Taken together, Keller said, the Princeton findings could finally put to rest the theory that the mass-extinction event -- known as the Cretaceous-Tertiary, or KT, for the periods it straddles -- was triggered solely by a large meteorite impact near Chicxulub in present-day Mexico. That impact -- which occurred around the time of the second-phase Deccan eruptions -- is thought to have been 2 million times more powerful than a hydrogen bomb and generated an enormous dust cloud and gases that radically altered the climate. Keller has long held that the Chicxulub impact was not catastrophic enough to cause the KT mass extinction -- the newest work from her lab, however, shows that the largest Deccan eruptions were.
"Our work in Meghalaya and the Deccan Traps provides the first one-to-one correlation between the mass extinction and Deccan volcanism," said Keller, who is lead author of the Geological Society paper and second author of the EPSL paper after lead author Brian Gertsch, who earned his Ph.D. from Princeton in 2010. Gertsch is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"We demonstrate a clear cause-and-effect relationship that these massive volcanic eruptions were far more destructive than previously thought and could have caused the KT mass extinction even without the addition of large meteorite impacts," Keller said. "But given the environmental instability caused by the massive Deccan eruptions, an impact could easily have killed off the few survivor species at the end of the Cretaceous. It would have been a double whammy."
Vincent Courtillot, a geophysicist and professor at Paris University Diderot, said that the Princeton papers are based on a closer examination of Deccan volcanism and its aftermath than has been conducted previously. As such, he said, the researchers' "impressive analysis" confirms the timing of the Deccan eruptions and environmental fallout reported in recent years by various research teams, including his own.
Courtillot, who is familiar with the Princeton work but had no role in it, led the team that reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research in 2009 that Deccan volcanism occurred in three phases, the second and largest of which coincides with the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction; the Keller-led study published in the Journal of the Geological Society of India confirms the second and third phases, he said.
"The significance of this recent work is that the analysis was conducted in important sections near the volcanic action, and not thousands of kilometers away as had been the case previously," Courtillot said. "They provide support for the idea that carbon and sulfur dioxide emissions were the principal agents of environmental change and stress, and conclude that the characteristics of the second-phase eruptions were such that it could alone have caused the mass extinction."
In addition, Courtillot said, the approach the teams used could prove valuable to understanding the part volcanoes played in other extinction events in Earth's history. "Exceptional, massive volcanism, I am now quite sure, is the general cause of mass extinctions," he said. "But in order to be considered as proven and quantitatively explained, we need the kind of extensive, detailed work described by these teams to be conducted for all other extinctions."
The case for Deccan over the Chicxulub impact as the cause of the KT extinction
Keller is prominent among scientists who reject the Chicxulub impact's role in the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. She is well known for leading a team of researchers who announced in 2003 that a sediment core from the Chicxulub crater revealed that the impact predated the mass-extinction event by about 300,000 years.
Keller and her co-authors published their findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2004 and suggested that the Chicxulub meteorite was instead one of several meteorite strikes that occurred in the several hundred thousand years leading up to the mass-extinction event. They concluded that while destructive, the Chicxulub impact was not powerful enough to have caused widespread annihilation. Keller and her collaborators have since supported these findings with additional evidence from Texas and northeastern Mexico published in EPSL in 2007 and the Journal of the Geological Society of London in 2009, respectively.
Keller has joined other scientists in focusing her research on the 30-year-old idea first championed by Virginia Tech geologist Dewey McLean that Deccan volcanism was the root of the Cretaceous mass extinction. Until recently, the theory was in question because the eruptions were thought to have been stretched out over a period of more than 1 million years, leaving plenty of time for Earth to recover between eruptions, Keller said.
Improved dating technology, however, allowed scientists -- particularly the team led by Courtillot -- to narrow the time of the largest eruptions to a few hundred thousand years at the end of the Cretaceous. Known as Deccan phase-2, this period accounted for 80 percent of the total volcanism. The first and weakest phase of activity occurred about 67.5 million years ago; the third and final eruption phase began about 300,000 years after the KT mass extinction.
In 2008, Keller and her team reported in EPSL the first direct link that the KT extinction coincided with the end of the second phase of Deccan eruptions. She explained that marine sediments preserved between lava flows from the second- and third-phase eruptions contained evidence of the KT boundary, a thin, worldwide geological layer that marks the mass-extinction event.
Deccan volcanism behind the mass extinction, so say the plankton
The work published Nov. 1 by the Geological Society of India builds on Keller's 2008 paper in EPSL. She and her co-authors examined cores from Deccan lava flows near Rajahmundry in the Krishna-Godavari Basin, the remnant of an ancient sea on the Bay of Bengal coast, and found that lava flows from the second and third Deccan phases are separated by marine sediments.
Keller worked with P.K. Bhowmick, H. Upadhyay, A. Dave, A.N. Reddy and B.C. Jaiprakash, scientists with India's government-operated Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, which owns the sediment cores. Also included is Thierry Adatte, a geologist with the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, who is Keller's long-time collaborator and a co-author on the papers challenging the time of the Chicxulub impact, as well as previous papers on Deccan volcanism.
The team examined the basin's sediment layers to determine the size and number of a species known as planktonic foraminifera that remained following each eruption phase. These plankton are single-celled micro-organisms ranging in size from the point of a needle to a pinhead that are highly sensitive to changes in oxygen, salinity, temperature and nutrients, Keller said. Their sensitivity to environmental changes and their near extinction at the end of the Cretaceous makes the species key to determining the timespan, pace and severity of the mass extinction.
After studying microplankton remains in sediment from below, between and above the second-phase lava flows, the researchers observed that the number of living species dropped 50 percent at the onset of eruptions. The species count plunged by another 50 percent after the first of what would be four lava mega-flows. No more than seven to eight of the species that were most tolerant to environmental changes survived after the first mega-flow, and no recovery occurred between subsequent mega-flows. By the end of the fourth mega-flow the mass extinction was complete, the researchers wrote.
The vast amounts of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide poured into the atmosphere by the end of the second volcanic phase -- estimated to be 30-times more than the levels produced by the Chicxulub impact -- resulted in, among other crises, heavy acid rain, acidic oceans and global temperatures that swung between scorching and frigid, the researchers report. The third eruption phase prolonged these conditions.
Thus, the number of species evolving remained low, and existing species dwarfed during the 500,000-year period after the mass extinction, although no significant extinctions occurred again, Keller and her co-authors found. New, larger marine species did not appear until after the third phase when Deccan eruptions went dormant, suggesting that life began to recover as the atmosphere became less poisonous.
"In my work, I had always observed evidence of marked changes in species abundance with gradually higher levels of stress and extinction during the last several hundred thousand years, rather than one single instantaneous annihilation," Keller said. "For lack of better evidence, scientists had interpreted this steady decline as the result of climate and sea-level changes."
Evidence that a large meteorite helped finish the job
For the paper published Oct. 15 in EPSL, Keller and her co-authors provide a supporting and more nuanced depiction of conditions during the Deccan period. They examined sediments from an ancient shallow sea in Meghalaya where rock layers are known to contain among the clearest fossil records of the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction, Keller said. She worked with lead author Gertsch; the geologist Adatte; Rahul Garg and Vandana Prasad from the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany in India; Zolt Berner from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany; and Dominik Fleitmann at the University of Bern in Switzerland.
Analysis of the Meghalaya sediment revealed an inhospitable planet rife with high humidity, severe storms and massive blooms of the plankton species Guembelitria cretacea, a disaster opportunist that flourished in devastated environments when few other species survived.
At the same time, the team detected large amounts of iridium, an element typically associated with meteorite impacts, Keller said. Iridium is rare on Earth yet is found in high concentrations in the KT boundary, a phenomenon known as the iridium anomaly. Remnants of iridium at the KT boundary in Meghalaya coincide with the global KT boundary iridium anomaly, she said.
The new evidence of a meteorite strike at Meghalaya that coincides with the KT mass extinction supports the theory Keller proffered in 2003 that multiple meteorites struck Earth around the time of the Deccan eruptions, adding to the volcano-fueled misery of the mass-extinction era.
"Our data suggest that the mass extinction of the dinosaurs and other species was caused by the harsh conditions resulting from massive Deccan eruptions and the coincidence of multiple meteorites," Keller said. "In light of this new evidence, the single-impact story seems more like an article of faith at this point."
The study published in the Journal of the Geological Society of India about the Deccan eruption and the meteorite research published in EPSL were both supported by grants from the National Science Foundation.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Princeton University. The original article was written by Morgan Kelly.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal References:
- G. Keller, T. Adatte, S. Gardin, A. Bartolini, S. Bajpai. Main Deccan volcanism phase ends near the K?T boundary: Evidence from the Krishna?Godavari Basin, SE India. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 2008; 268 (3-4): 293 DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2008.01.015
- B. Gertsch, G. Keller, T. Adatte, R. Garg, V. Prasad, Z. Berner, D. Fleitmann. Environmental effects of Deccan volcanism across the Cretaceous?Tertiary transition in Meghalaya, India. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 2011; 310 (3-4): 272 DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2011.08.015
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111117141201.htm
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Saturday, November 19, 2011
Peace Corps to withdraw from Kazakhstan (Reuters)
ALMATY (Reuters) ? The U.S. Peace Corps is withdrawing nearly 120 volunteers from Kazakhstan, ending its 18-year presence in Central Asia's largest economy following a spate of Islamist militant attacks.
The Peace Corps said on Friday it was suspending its operations in Kazakhstan for "a number of operational considerations," without giving further details. It said its 117 volunteers in the country were safe.
Kazakhstan, a country of 16.6 million people four times the size of Texas, is the largest oil producer in Central Asia and its economy has grown to become the largest in the region in the 20 years since independence from the Soviet Union.
More than 1,120 Peace Corps volunteers have served in Kazakhstan since 1993, working with communities in projects focused on teaching English, education, youth development and HIV prevention.
Some officials say Kazakhstan, where per capita GDP exceeds $9,000, has outgrown the need for the Peace Corps, an organization that traces its roots to future President John F. Kennedy's 1960 call for students to work in developing nations.
The Peace Corps itself, citing the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Index, said Kazakhstan was one of the most developed countries to host a program.
Kazakhstan's Ministry of Education and Science said the suspension was "a logical step" given the country's development.
"This organization assists mainly in the least developed countries," it said in a statement. "Many programs of the Peace Corps in Kazakhstan, in general, have come to their conclusion."
Jon Larsen, spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Kazakhstan, confirmed the Peace Corps would be leaving the country but said he was unable to comment on the reasons for the withdrawal.
Larisa Koisina, headmistress of a private school in the central Kazakh city of Karagandy where two Peace Corps volunteers had taught, said she believed the withdrawal could be linked to a spate of militant attacks in a country long viewed as comparatively peaceful.
An Islamist militant killed seven people and blew himself up in the city of Taraz on Saturday, in the latest of a series of attacks.
"All U.S. volunteers are being recalled now," Koisina said. "It's a pity, because I have worked with U.S. volunteers for 17 years now, and they have been of great help, especially teaching our schoolchildren proper English."
Joel Benjamin, an Almaty-based partner in law firm SNR Denton, was part of the first group of volunteers which arrived in 1993. He said he believed the Peace Corps' role was still relevant for Kazakhstan today.
"A big part of what the Peace Corps does is placing English teachers in locations where schools wouldn't otherwise have access to such resources," said Benjamin, who lived in the northern Kazakh city of Kokshetau between 1993 and 1995.
"If you want to move this country economically, it helps to have people speaking English," he said. He added that he had no information about the withdrawal of volunteers.
Since 1961, more than 200,000 U.S. citizens have served in the Peace Corps in 139 different countries.
The suspension of the Kazakhstan program leaves Kyrgyzstan, with 89 volunteers, and Turkmenistan, with 25, as the only countries in the region with a Peace Corps presence. The Uzbekistan program was closed in 2005.
(Editing by Andrew Roche)
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