Source: http://feeds.salon.com/salon/index
brandy michael pineda charles taylor bruins boston bruins carl crawford mad cow disease
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Monday, April 8, 2013
Avon culling: Company plans to slash more than 400 jobs
Avon Products Inc said on Monday it will slash more than 400 jobs and exit the Irish market, the latest moves in the new chief executive's plan to return the beauty products company to profitability in the next two years.
Avon, the world's largest direct seller of cosmetics, is already showing signs of stabilizing its business under new CEO Sheri McCoy, who was brought in a year ago, following years of inconsistent sales in Brazil and Russia and dwindling business in China and the United States.
The company, known for products such as Skin So Soft, in December set an annual cost savings target of $400 million by the end of 2015 and said it would exit South Korea and Vietnam. The moves announced Monday are part of those initiatives.
In February, Avon reported surprisingly strong fourth-quarter earnings after reversing sales declines in top markets like Brazil and Russia and selling more products globally.
McCoy said at an investor conference later that month in her most expansive comments about the restructuring plan that she had no qualms about exiting unprofitable markets to focus on emerging markets. She said a key priority is to reverse a long sales slide in the United State.
The CEO also wants operating profit margin to hit the low teens in percentage terms by 2016. In 2012, it had fallen to 2.9 percent of sales from 9.9 percent two years earlier.
"While considerable work remains to be done to improve operating margin, we believe Avon can return to a low double-digit margin," Stifel analyst Mark Astrachan said.
Staff will be cut across all regions and functions and will include the restructuring or closing of smaller, underperforming markets, primarily in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Avon said on Monday.
The cuts, which will be completed by the end of the year, are expected to generate $45 million to $50 million in annual savings.
Total charges are expected to range from $35 million to $40 million, with about $20 million coming in the first quarter of 2013, the company said.
Avon had 39,100 employees as of December 31, 2012, and more than six million active sales representatives.
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters.
obama birth certificate nick cannon lindsay lohan saturday night live snl lindsay lohan valley fever project x the lorax
Milestones in the life of Margaret Thatcher
LONDON (AP) ? Milestones in the life and career of Britain's former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher:
Oct. 13, 1925: Born in Grantham, central England.
June 1947: Graduates from Oxford with chemistry degree.
Dec. 13, 1951: Marries wealthy oil executive Denis Thatcher.
Aug. 15, 1953: Gives birth to twins, Mark and Carol.
June 1, 1954: Qualifies as lawyer.
Oct. 8, 1959: Elected to Parliament.
June 20, 1970: Becomes education secretary.
Feb. 11, 1975: Elected leader of Conservative Party.
May 3, 1979: Wins national elections, becomes Europe's first female prime minister.
March 1, 1981: Refuses to concede demands of Irish Republican Army convicts for prisoner-of-war status in Northern Ireland, inspiring a hunger strike. Ten inmates starve to death over following seven months.
Sept. 14, 1981: Dumps or reassigns most of her moderate ministers in Cabinet reshuffle.
April 2, 1982: Argentina invades Falkland Islands, a British territory in the South Atlantic. Thatcher sends a naval task force that recovers the islands after a 74-day war.
June 9, 1983: Wins second term.
Oct. 12, 1984: Survives IRA assassination bid after time bomb explodes near her room in hotel hosting Conservative Party conference. Five others killed, 32 wounded.
Dec. 15, 1984: Becomes first Western leader to meet Mikhail Gorbachev as he visits London prior to becoming Soviet Union's leader.
Dec. 19, 1984: Signs accord with Chinese Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang to cede the British colony of Hong Kong to China in 1997.
Nov. 15, 1985: Signs Anglo Irish Agreement that gives the Republic of Ireland a role in Northern Ireland for the first time. Move infuriates province's Protestant majority.
Jan. 9, 1986: Defense Secretary Michael Heseltine resigns in dispute over moves to rescue the failing Westland helicopter company. Triggers a Cabinet crisis that pushes Thatcher close to resignation.
April 15, 1986: Allows U.S. to bomb Libya with aircraft based in Britain.
Aug. 1, 1986: Cabinet unanimously supports her resistance to sanctions against South Africa.
March 28, 1987: Travels to Moscow for talks with Gorbachev, strengthens role as key player in arms control negotiations.
June 11, 1987: Wins third term.
Jan. 3, 1988: Becomes Britain's longest continuously serving prime minister of 20th century.
Nov. 22, 1990: Announces resignation after party revolt.
Nov. 28, 1990: Succeeded by John Major as prime minister.
June 26, 1992: Becomes Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, a member of the unelected House of Lords with a lifetime title.
March 22, 2002: Ends public speaking after a series of strokes.
June 26, 2003: Her husband dies.
April 8, 2013: Dies of stroke.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/milestones-life-margaret-thatcher-125054713.html
little league world series us open tennis us open tennis Empire State Building shooting Republican National Convention Karlie Redd guild wars 2
WCPOTV reports that Northern Kentucky University athletic director Scott Eaton was fired for having intimate inappropriate re...
1:00 PM: Texas Tech's Kliff Kingsbury on one of the differences of being a head coach: "You've got to tone the trash talking down during practice, as opposed to being the offensive coordinator when you can yell at the defense."
12:45 PM: The Minnesota Vikings share video of a TMZ cameraman asking Adrian Peterson who will be the first NFL player to "come out of the closet", as the cameraman takes a spill after tripping over a traffic cone.
12:30 PM: Former Baltimore Ravens LB Brendon Ayanbadejo says there are up to four NFL players who might reveal that they are gay: "I think it will happen sooner than you think. We're in talks with a handful of players who are considering it."
12:15 PM: Jeff Goodman of CBS Sports reports former UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian has been selected for the Basketball Hall of Fame.
12:00 PM: Sacramento Kings player Jimmer Fredette is suing a Utah clothing company over $50,000 in unpaid royalties.
11:45 AM: A 12-year-old basketball player hit a half-court buzzer beater while playing in a halftime intermission game during a Toronto Raptors game.
11:30 AM: Recently resigned Pac-12 basketball officiating head Ed Rush said his comments about giving Arizona coach Sean Miller a technical foul was an "attempt to lighten the atmosphere".
11:15 AM: New York Jets QB Tim Tebow is scheduled to speak at an event for a pro-life pregnancy center in Dallas on April 26.
11:00 AM: AEK Athens soccer player Giorgos Katidis has been given a five-match ban & fined $1,300 by the Greek Football Association for giving a Nazi salute during a game last month.
10:45 AM: The Newark Star Ledger reports that Tim Pernetti is out as Rutgers athletic director. The move comes after basketball coach Mike Rice was fired for abusing players during practice.
10:30 AM: A Frisco, Texas cheer & dance coach wanted on child sexual abuse charges was arrested at the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport on Tuesday. Kyle Austin Ware was about to leave on a flight for Paris when his name appeared on a passenger security manifest.
10:15 AM: The Indianapolis Star reports that Ohio State & Kentucky have used money from the NCAA Student Assistance Fund to help pay travel costs for the families of basketball players so they can attend the NCAA tournament.
10:00 AM: Baylor defeated Iowa 74-54 Thursday night to clinch the Bears' first NIT title.
9:00 PM: Video of Manny Ramirez hitting his first home run for the EDA Rhinos of Taiwan's Chinese Professional Baseball League. The Chinese TV announcers say on a replay of Manny's homer: "See you later!"
8:45 PM: Brendon Ayanbadejo believes the Baltimore Ravens may have released him due to his support of same-sex marriage: "I make a lot of noise and garner a lot of attention for various things off the football field .... I don't necessarily think that teams want this type of attention."
| ? previous entries |
Source: http://www.sportsbybrooks.com/sbblive?eid=49974
kyra sedgwick honor killings mary tyler moore x games pro bowl 2012 rick santorum daughter gainesville
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Integrated Automotive commences with Greater Amman Municipality ...
All trucks imported by Integrated Automotive are manufactured according to international standards and feature technical add-ons that are the first of their kind in Jordan, such as a rear camera that allows the driver to effectively monitor and manage the waste loading process via a control panel.
The machines are highly durable and reliable, and comprise numerous other features that will significantly benefit Jordanian citizens and tackle waste challenges in Amman.
"We are proud to implement this unique tender which is the second largest of its kind for GAM. The Integrated Automotive team responsible for implementing the tender exerted all efforts and expedited their work pace, emphasizing their commitment to actively contribute to addressing the local community's issues. It also reflects Integrated Automotive's awareness on the importance of tackling the Kingdom's waste issues and their direct impact on the daily lives of Jordanians," commented the General Manager of Integrated Automotive, Ahed Sukhon.
Integrated Automotive is a leading supplier of trucks and busses in Jordan and is the exclusive dealer of MAN Truck & Bus AG which is headquartered in Munich, Germany, and is the largest company of MAN Group, a DAX top 30 listed company. It is a leading provider of commercial vehicles and buses that are renowned for their robustness, reliability and adherence to high standards of driver and passenger comfort and safety.
Integrated Automotive's specialized and highly qualified customer care team efficiently delivers a wide and diversified range of maintenance and customer support services. These include an around-the-clock mobile phone service, in addition to the provision of original spare parts and training programs to MAN truck and bus drivers.
Source: http://www.ameinfo.com/integrated-automotive-commences-amman-municipality-tender-336447
Linda McMahon Voting Results 2012 pbs ron paul Cnn Electoral Map roseanne barr guy fawkes
First trial to investigate magic mushrooms as a treatment for depression delayed by UK and EU regulations
Apr. 5, 2013 ? The world's first clinical trial to explore the use of the hallucinogenic ingredient in magic mushrooms to treat depression is being delayed due to the UK and EU rules on the use of illegal drugs in research.
Professor David Nutt, president of the British Neuroscience Association and Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London (UK), will tell the BNA's Festival of Neuroscience today (Sunday) that although the UK's Medical Research Council has awarded a grant for the trial, the Government's regulations controlling the licensing of illegal drugs in research and the EU's guidelines on Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) have stalled the start of the trial, which was expected to start this year. He is calling for a change to the regulations.
He will tell the meeting at the Barbican in London, that his research has shown that psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient in magic mushrooms, has the potential to alleviate severe forms of depression in people who have failed to respond fully to other anti-depressant treatments. However, psilocybin is illegal in the UK; the United Nations 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances classifies it as a Schedule 1 drug, one that has a high potential for abuse with no recognised medical use, and the UK has classified it as a Class A drug, the classification used for the most dangerous drugs. This means that a special licence has to be obtained to use magic mushrooms in research in the UK, and the manufacture of a synthetic form of psilocybin for use in patients is tightly controlled by EU regulations.
Prof Nutt will say: "The law for the control of drugs like psilocybin as a Schedule 1 Class A drug makes it almost impossible to use them for research and the reason we haven't started the study is because finding companies who could manufacture the drug and who are prepared to go through the regulatory hoops to get the licence, which can take up to a year and triple the price, is proving very difficult. The whole situation is bedevilled by this primitive, old-fashioned attitude that Schedule 1 drugs could never have therapeutic potential, and so they have to be made impossible to access."
"The knock-on effect is this profound impairment of research. We are the first people ever to have done a psilocybin study in the UK, but we are still hunting for a company that can manufacture the drug to GMP standards for the clinical trial, even though we've been trying for a year to find one. We live in a world of insanity in terms of regulating drugs at present. The whole field is so bogged down by these intransient regulations, so that even if you have a good idea, you may never get it into the clinic."
He will say that the regulations need to be changed. "Even if I do this study and I show it's a really useful treatment for some people with depression, there's only four hospitals in this country that have a licence to hold this drug, so you couldn't roll out the treatment if it worked because the regulations would make it difficult to use," he said.
Prof Nutt and his team at Imperial College London (UK) have shown that when healthy volunteers are injected with psilocybin, the drug switched off a front part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex, which is known from previous imaging studies to be over-active in depression. "We found that, even in normal people, the more that part of the brain was switched off under the influence of the drug, the better they felt two weeks later. So there was a relationship between that transient switching off of the brain circuit and their subsequent mood," he will explain. "This is the basis on which we want to run the trial, because this is what you want to do in depression: you want to switch off that over-active part of the brain.
"The other thing we discovered is that the major site of action of the magic mushrooms is to turn down a circuit in the brain called the 'default mode network', which the anterior cingulate cortex is part of. The default mode network is a part of the brain between the front and back. It is active when you are thinking about you; it coordinates the thinking and emotional aspects of you."
The researchers discovered that the 'default mode network' had the highest density of 5HT2A receptors in the brain. These are known to be involved in depression and are the targets for a number of existing anti-depressive drugs that aim to improve levels of serotonin -- the neurotransmitter [1] that gives people a sense of well-being and happiness. Psilocybin also acts on these receptors.
"We have found that people with depression have over-active default mode networks, and they are continually locked into a mode of thinking about themselves. So they ruminate on themselves, on their incompetencies, on their badness, that they're worthless, that they've failed; these things are not true, and sometimes they reach delusional levels. This negative rumination may be due to a lack of serotonin and what psilocybin is doing is going in and rapidly replacing the missing serotonin, switching them back into a mind state where they are less ruminating and less depressed," Prof Nutt will say.
The proposed trial will be for patients with depression who have failed two previous treatments for the condition. Thirty patients will be given a synthetic form of psilocybin and 30 patients will be given a placebo. The drug (or placebo) will be given during two, possibly three, carefully controlled and prepared 30-60 minute sessions. The first session will be a low dose to check there are no adverse responses, the second session will give a higher, therapeutic dose, and then patients can have a third, booster dose in a later session if it's considered necessary. While they are under the influence of the drug, the patients will have guided talking therapy to enable them to explore their negative thinking and issues that are troubling them. The doctors will follow up the patients for at least a year.
"What we are trying to do is to tap into the reservoir of under-researched 'illegal' drugs to see if we can find new and beneficial uses for them in people whose lives are often severely affected by illnesses such as depression. The current legislation is stopping the benefits of these drugs being explored and for the last 40 years we have missed really interesting opportunities to help patients."
Ethical approval for the trial was granted in March and Prof Nutt says he hopes to be able to start the trial within the next six months -- so long as he can find a manufacturer for the drug.
[1] Neurotransmitters are chemicals that transmit signals from neurons (nerve cells) to target cells.
[2] Funding: The Beckley Foundation has funded part of Prof Nutt's research, and the Medical Research Council has agreed a grant for the proposed clinical trial.
Abstract title: "Can we use psychedelic drugs to treat depressions?" Symposium: "Treating depression with antidepressants: where are we now and where are we going?"
Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by British Neuroscience Association, via AlphaGalileo.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/strange_science/~3/pA07KX3YSxA/130407090832.htm
Joe Webb Fiesta Bowl Jeanie Buss NFL playoff schedule 2013 Bronson Pelletier andy reid redskins
Saturday, April 6, 2013
FAA delays closing of airport control towers
This photo taken March 22, 2013 shows a Cessna aircraft parked near by the air traffic control tower at the Collin County Regional Airport at McKinney, in McKinney, Texas. Starting this weekend, control towers at scores of small airports are to begin shutting down because of government-wide automatic spending cuts. But federal officials insist the closures won't compromise safety, and there's evidence that some of the closures may even make economic sense. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
This photo taken March 22, 2013 shows a Cessna aircraft parked near by the air traffic control tower at the Collin County Regional Airport at McKinney, in McKinney, Texas. Starting this weekend, control towers at scores of small airports are to begin shutting down because of government-wide automatic spending cuts. But federal officials insist the closures won't compromise safety, and there's evidence that some of the closures may even make economic sense. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
FILE - In this March 7, 2013 file photo, a small plane takes off past the control tower at Troutdale Airport in Troutdale, Ore. Starting this weekend, control towers at scores of small airports are to begin shutting down because of government-wide automatic spending cuts. But federal officials insist the closures won't compromise safety, and there's evidence that some of the closures may even make economic sense. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)
FILE - Transportation Secretary Raymond LaHood, left, listens as Federal Aviation Administrator Michael Huerta, right, speaks during a news conference in this Jan. 11, 2013 file photo taken in Washington. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said in a joint statement Thursday that the FAA is conducting ?a robust safety review and monitoring process to identify any hazards, and develop appropriate risk mitigations? associated with the tower closures. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The closings of control towers at 149 small airports, due to begin this weekend because of government-wide spending cuts, are being delayed until mid-June, federal regulators announced Friday.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it needs more time to deal with legal challenges to the closures.
Also, about 50 airport authorities and other "stakeholders" have indicated they want to fund the operations of the towers themselves rather than see them shut down, and more time will be needed to work out those plans, the agency said in a statement.
The first 24 tower closures were scheduled to begin Sunday, with the rest coming over the next few weeks. Obama administration officials have said the closures are necessary to accomplish automatic spending cuts required by Congress.
Despite the delay, the FAA said it will stop funding all 149 of the airport towers, which are operated by private contractors, on June 15. Under the new schedule, the closures will be implemented at once, rather than a gradual phase-in as had been planned.
Airport operators in several states, including Florida, Illinois and Washington state, and the U.S. Contract Tower Association, which represents the companies that operate contract towers, have filed lawsuits with the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington seeking to halt the closures.
The suits contend that the closures violated a federal law meant to ensure major changes at airports do not erode safety, and unfairly targeted the program for an outsized share of the more than $600 million the agency is required to trim from its budget by the end of September.
"The administration has decided to make tower closures the poster child of sequestration (automatic spending cuts)," said the group's director, J. Spencer Dickerson. "We believe there are other ways they could have skinned this cat."
Federal officials have insisted that the closures wouldn't affect safety. And there is evidence that with improving safety, some of the closures would make economic sense.
It turns out that the FAA has been using 30-year-old data on aircraft collisions to justify the cost of operating many of the control towers, even though accident rates have improved significantly over that time.
Had the FAA used more current data, it's probable that some low-traffic airport towers operated by private contractors would no longer have met the agency's criteria for funding, industry officials say. But the FAA has long been under pressure from members of Congress to open new towers at airports in their states, not to close them.
The FAA began paying contractors to staff and operate towers at a handful of small airports after President Ronald Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers in 1981. Today, there are 251 towers operated by private contractors at airports across the country at an average annual cost of more than $500,000 each.
The closure plan is unrelated to the FAA's use of obsolete safety data to justify the contract tower program.
In 1990, the FAA developed a complicated cost-benefit methodology for the tower program that relies on accident data from 1983 to 1986 to determine how many accidents would be averted and lives saved if an airport had controllers working onsite. The safety data have never been updated, despite marked improvements in accident rates.
In 1983, there were 10.7 accidents for every 100,000 departures involving small planes, business jets and other non-airline flights in the U.S., according to the National Transportation Safety Board. By 2011, the latest year for which figures are available, that rate had dropped to 6.5 accidents per 100,000 departures. The commercial airline accident rate has also dropped, and fatalities have declined even more. There have been no passenger airline fatalities in the U.S. in more than four years, the longest period without fatalities since the dawn of the jet age half a century ago.
"None of the formulas have been updated since 1990, despite a very significant change in the aviation operating environment and the general aviation and commercial accident rates," the FAA said in a statement in response to questions from The Associated Press. "The FAA is in the process of updating this policy."
Agency officials offered no explanation for the oversight.
"The FAA methodology likely overestimates present-day collisions," the Congressional Research Service said in a recent report.
Initially the cost-benefit ratios were to be recalculated every two years, but that didn't happen, said David A. Byers, an aviation professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a consultant to the companies that operate the towers. If they were recalculated now, some airports would certainly fall below the FAA threshold for funding, he said.
Of the nation's 5,000 public airports, only about 10 percent have control towers. Those without towers generally have relatively few flights, and pilots coordinate takeoffs and landings among themselves.
Airport towers are prized by local communities as economic boosters, particularly in rural areas. Airlines are sometimes reluctant to schedule flights to airports where there are no on-site air traffic controllers.
Former Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., a critic of the contract tower program, said he refused to allow lawmakers to insert provisions into bills requiring the FAA to pay for new control towers at airports in their districts when he was chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
"We couldn't always stop it in all instances in the appropriations process, particularly when a bill comes from the Senate and it has a designation of funding for a particular tower," Oberstar said.
___
Online:
FAA airport contract tower closure list: http://www.faa.gov/news/media/fct_closed.pdf
___
Follow Joan Lowy on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy
Associated PressStacy Dash Amber Tamblyn Lilit Avagyan Nashville TV Show VP debate drew brees drew brees
Friday, April 5, 2013
Apple Leads U.S. Smartphone Market, But Android Is Top OS
While Samsung sits atop the global smartphone market, things are a little different here in the U.S., where Apple currently leads the pack, according to new data from comScore.
As of February, Apple ranked as the top phone maker with 38.9 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, up 3.9 percentage points from November. Samsung took second place with 21.3 percent market share, up 1 percent.
Rounding out the top five were HTC, Motorola, and LG, all of which lost share in February. No. 3 HTC dropped 1.7 percentage points to nab 9.3 percent share while Motorola lost 1.1 percent to grab 8.4 percent; and LG took 6.8 percent, a 0.2 percent drop.
Meanwhile, Google's Android once again ranked as the most popular operating system as of February. However, Android's share of the market dropped exactly 2 percent to 51.7 percent. Apple, on the other hand, saw its iOS platform increase 3.9 percent to grab 38.9 percent share.
BlackBerry came in third with 5.4 percent share, a 1.9 point drop, while Microsoft increased 0.2 points to nab 3.2 percent and take fourth place, and fifth-place Symbian remained flat with 0.5 percent share.
Overall, 133.7 million people in the U.S. now own smartphones, comScore said, or about 57 percent of the country, up 8 percent since November.
The smartphone race could shift in the coming months, as a number of high-profile Android phones hit shelves, including the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4.
Meanwhile, it looks like the Apple faithful are going to have to wait a few more months for a new iPhone. A report this week from the Wall Street Journal suggests that Apple will release its next smartphone this summer.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/breakingnews/~3/OHKClV6DkuQ/0,2817,2417442,00.asp
Mitch Lucker Red Cross CMA Awards 2012 election day Electoral College map nyc marathon nyc marathon
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)