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Friday, December 23, 2011
Cloud Copy: A Unified Clipboard [App Of The Day]
Thursday, December 22, 2011
MTV 'Teen Mom' star jailed for probation violation
ANDERSON, Ind. (AP) ? A star of the MTV reality show "Teen Mom" has been ordered to jail in central Indiana for violating her probation on felony domestic battery charges.
Court records show that probation revocation was sought for Amber Portwood of Anderson after she was accused of battery and public intoxication in connection with a fight in November. She is also accused of not obtaining her GED or completing anger management classes as required.
Madison Circuit Court Judge David Happe tells The Herald Bulletin (http://bit.ly/uHDF1a ) that Portwood was arrested Monday. The judge ordered her jailed until a Jan. 13 hearing.
Police investigated the then-20-year-old Portwood after a 2010 episode showed her hitting the then-24-year-old father of her daughter with the child present.
A message seeking comment was left for her attorney, Robert Schembs.
___
Information from: The Herald Bulletin, http://www.theheraldbulletin.com
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Sunday, December 18, 2011
The worst-run companies in America
By Douglas A. McIntyre, 24/7 Wall St.
Many American companies have done incredibly well this year. A number posted extraordinary financial results in 2011. Others have launched products that revolutionized markets.
Of course, many big public corporations also did very poorly. Several nearly destroyed their business and dragged down shareholder value with it. 24/7 Wall St. combed through the S&P 500 to find the best and worst managed companies in America for 2011.
To make a list of semifinalists, 24/7 Wall St. considered stock price, changes in earnings per share, major shifts in market share and changes in management, among other data. Once the initial screen was complete, we reviewed product launch success, financial results, success of new management and the performance of each company within its industry. The editors then sifted through the finalist to identify those that rewarded both customers and shareholders and those that caused these two groups the most harm.
24/7 Wall St.: Ten brands that will disappear in 2012
Neither the best-run companies list nor the worst-run companies list includes a large number of corporations from any single industry. This indicates our methodology identifies well- and worst-managed companies regardless of the industry. Based on our criteria, the management of Starbucks did as good a job as the management of Oracle?? two of the best-run companies. Similarly, Eastman Kodak management did as poorly as the management of American Airline parent AMR ? two of the worst-run companies.
Worst
1. Avon Products
- CEO name (tenure): Andrea Jung (12 years)
- YTD stock: down 40 percent
- Latest quarter EPS: flat at $0.38
- Insider ownership: 1.75 percent
- Key event: SEC starts investigation
Avon?s management has taken one of the greatest franchise operations in the world and nearly ruined it. The company has bungled its move into markets like China, where it faces a bribery probe. Revenue growth in emerging markets, such as Brazil and Russia, has faltered. When it announced third-quarter earnings, Avon said it could no longer support its guidance for the balance of the year. The news caused several analysts to downgrade the company?s financial prospects and its stock. CEO Andrea Jung said Avon would continue to seek solutions through another of her interminable restructurings of personnel and operations. Just after Avon announced financial results, it disclosed an SEC investigation into improper contacts between the company?s management and Wall St. analysts. (Since this article was originally published, Avon announced that longtime chief executive Jung, would step down in January of 2012, ending her 12 year term as the longest-serving female executive at a Fortune 500 company.)
24/7 Wall St.: Biggest corporate layoffs of all time
2. Research In Motion
- CEO name (tenure): Jim Balsillie (19 years)
- YTD stock: down 71 percent
- Latest quarter EPS: down 57 percent to $0.63
- Insider ownership: N/A
- Key event: takes $485 million Playbook write-down
Research In Motion was ?the? smartphone company until Apple released the first iPhone in mid-2007. RIM had every chance to move from its core enterprise market into the consumer one, but was slow to do so and released poorly designed products. It then allowed itself to be flanked by another generation of smartphones built with the Google Android mobile operating system. RIM management continued the destruction of the company?s value through the release of several other badly built and badly marketed products, the most recent of which was the tablet PC Playbook meant to compete with Apple's iPad. Sales have been so poor that RIM recently took a $485 million write-down on its Playbook inventory. RIM has recently warned twice that it would miss earnings forecasts. Three months ago, RIM said it would fire 2,000 of its 19,000 workers. RIM?s BlackBerry was the first smartphone, but its sales are close to putting it in last place among its competition. On December 7, after a trademark dispute, RIM backed down on its plan to change the name of its OS.
3. AMR
- CEO name (tenure): Thomas Horton (less than 1 year)
- YTD stock: down 99 percent
- Latest quarter EPS: loss of $0.48, down from $0.39
- Insider ownership: 1 percent
- Key event: declares Chapter 11
AMR, parent company of American Airlines, declared Chapter 11 recently. CEO Gerard Arpey turned down the board?s offer to stay as chief executive. Perhaps he was too humiliated by what he had done to ruin what was once considered the flagship airline of the United States. The most recent error on management?s part was its inability to settle labor disputes with the pilots, losing Wall Street?s confidence in the airline?s viability in the process. Investors traded shares down relentlessly during the month before the bankruptcy filing. Arpey?s greatest mistake, however, was his decision not to merge American with another large U.S. carrier. Meanwhile, a merger between United and Continental was put together to cut routes, personnel and equipment costs, among other things. Delta and Northwest set a marriage for the same reasons. American was left on the outside of the industry?s cost cutting trend.
Click here to read all of 24/7's best- and worst-run companies.
Source: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/18/9305156-the-worst-run-companies-in-america
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GSM Galaxy Nexus 4.0.2 update rolls out, matches its cousin on Verizon
GSM Galaxy Nexus 4.0.2 update rolls out, matches its cousin on Verizon originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Dec 2011 20:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Fitch: comprehensive euro zone deal "beyond reach" (Reuters)
ROME/BERLIN (Reuters) ? The credit rating agency Fitch has told euro zone countries it believes a comprehensive solution to their debt crisis is beyond reach, putting six euro zone economies including Italy on watch for potential downgrades in the near future.
It reaffirmed France's top-notch triple-A rating but even here said the outlook was now negative, meaning it could be downgraded within two years.
Underscoring the tensions within the bloc over a crisis that has spread relentlessly over the past two years, Italy's prime minister urged European policymakers on Friday to beware of dividing the continent with efforts to fight its debt crisis.
In a swipe at Germany, he warned against a "short-term hunger for rigor" in some countries.
Germany has led resistance to allowing the European Central Bank to ramp up its buying of government bonds on the open market to a big enough scale to douse the crisis, but Fitch late on Friday added to the pressure for just such a move.
It said that, following the EU summit a week ago, it had concluded that "a 'comprehensive solution' to the euro zone crisis is technically and politically beyond reach."
"Of particular concern is the absence of a credible financial backstop," it said. "In Fitch's opinion this requires more active and explicit commitment from the ECB to mitigate the risk of self-fulfilling liquidity crises for potentially illiquid but solvent Euro Area Member States."
It put Belgium, Spain, Slovenia, Italy, Ireland, and Cyprus on negative watch, which could mean a downgrade within three months.
Later another agency, Moody's, cut Belgium's credit rating by two notches, saying the euro zone debt crisis raised funding risks for countries with high public debt burdens, and said a further downgrade was possible within two years.
Standard & Poor's had already warned 15 of the currency bloc's 17 members they were close to a downgrade.
"The systemic nature of the euro zone crisis is having a profoundly adverse effect on economic and financial stability across the region," Fitch said.
The euro edged higher against the dollar but still suffered its worst weekly performance against the greenback in three months.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel gained some respite from domestic pressure to take a tougher line in the crisis when eurosceptics in her junior coalition partner, the Free Democrats, lost a grassroots party referendum aimed at blocking a permanent euro zone rescue fund.
A victory for the eurosceptics could have brought down Merkel's centre-right coalition, but the outcome still left the FDP split, with its public support in tatters.
Meanwhile, a first draft of a planned fiscal compact among euro zone countries and aspiring members, published on Friday, showed that countries could be taken to the European Court of Justice if they did not meet agreed budget goals.
AUTOMATIC SANCTIONS
Merkel - under pressure from the revered Bundesbank to force debt-saddled euro zone countries to reform and save their way out of crisis with austerity measures - has led a push for automatic sanctions for deficit "sinners" in the bloc.
This has fed concerns that excessive belt-tightening in southern countries could send their economies into a negative spiral with no prospect of growing out of crisis, while feeding resentment in the prosperous north.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said Europe's response "should be wrapped in a long-term sustainable approach, not just to feed short-term hunger for rigor in some countries."
"To help European construction evolve in a way that unites, not divides, we cannot afford that the crisis in the euro zone brings us ... the risk of conflicts between the virtuous North and an allegedly vicious South," he told a conference in Rome.
French officials have sought to prepare the public for the likelihood that Paris will lose its top-notch rating from S&P for the first time since 1975, playing down the potential setback and focusing attention instead on neighboring Britain. President Nicolas Sarkozy had vowed to keep the top rating, and it could become an issue in next year's election campaign.
"The economic situation in Britain today is very worrying, and you'd rather be French than British in economic terms," Finance Minister Francois Baroin said in a radio interview, a day after Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer said that if ratings agencies were even-handed, Britain deserved to be downgraded before France.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said French Prime Minister Francois Fillon had called him to explain that "it had not been his intention to call into question the UK's rating but to highlight that ratings agencies appeared more focused on economic governance than deficit levels."
Clegg's office said he accepted the explanation "but made the point that recent remarks from members of the French government about the UK economy were simply unacceptable and that steps should be taken to calm the rhetoric."
World Bank President Robert Zoellick said he was "deeply troubled" by the exchanges.
He said politicians needed to be careful because "you've got a tinderbox out there in both political and economic terms."
Euro zone officials said potential downgrades, particularly from S&P, could raise the cost of borrowing for the region's existing EFSF bailout fund, but would not make a big difference to its operations.
EFSF FIREPOWER
EFSF chief Klaus Regling told the Rome conference about 600 billion euros was available to fight the crisis.
"If Italy and Spain were to ask for support, their gross financing needs for 2012 are less than that and I don't think they would need to be taken off the market," he said.
The EFSF has the option of providing first-loss insurance on new bond issues, but the country concerned would have to make a formal request and negotiate conditionality, while the sum guaranteed would have to be agreed unanimously by EFSF members, subject to German parliamentary approval.
Euro zone countries will hold talks next Monday on the draft text of the euro zone fiscal compact and on bilateral loans to the International Monetary Fund, officials in Brussels said.
Slovak Finance Minister Ivan Miklos told Reuters they would commit 150 billion euros to boost the IMF's lending capacity.
The United States has refused to offer additional funding and it remains to be seen how much countries such as China, Russia, Brazil and India are willing to commit.
The European Central Bank has resisted calls for unlimited purchases of euro zone sovereign bonds to quell the debt crisis, putting the onus on governments and their collective financial firewalls.
ECB President Mario Draghi said on Thursday that euro zone governments were on track to restore market confidence and the ECB's bond-buying plan was "neither eternal nor infinite."
But in one intriguing hint on Friday, Bank of Italy governor Ignazio Visco told the Rome conference: "The impression is that there is only one way to convince markets, and we'll work on that." He did not elaborate.
Banks appear to be resisting pressure from governments to help debt-choked euro zone countries by using cheap money lent by the ECB to buy more sovereign bonds.
The chief executive of UniCredit, one of Italy's two biggest banks, said this week that using ECB money to buy government debt "wouldn't be logical."
Euro zone governments need to sell almost 80 billion euros of fresh debt in January alone, and the stand-off between policymakers and banks could turn the slow-burning debt crisis into a conflagration in the New Year.
In Greece, where the debt crisis began two years ago, a senior official of the EU/IMF troika team negotiating terms for a second bailout package said there was no guarantee that talks on the private sector's contribution would lead to a voluntary deal involving the bulk of its creditors.
Agreement has been held up by wrangling over issues ranging from the credit status and interest coupons on the new bonds to legal guarantees to be offered by the official sector. One key question is how many sign up to a private sector debt swap.
Failure to secure agreement could force a disorderly default that might trigger a wider emergency across the euro zone.
Asked if there was a risk of a disorderly Greek default, the troika official said: "Our objective is still to have a voluntary operation. If you ask me 'Is there a guarantee that there will be a voluntary operation?', of course there can never be a guarantee."
(Additional reporting by Steve Scherer in Rome, Annika Breidthardt in Berlin, Gareth Gore, Natsuko Waki, Kirsten Donovan and Ana Nicolaci da Costa in London, Martin Santa in Bratislava, Ingrid Melander in Athens; Writing by Paul Carrel and Paul Taylor/Ruth Pitchford; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt and Kevin Liffey)
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Saturday, December 17, 2011
Recession Hurt Parent-Child Ties, Survey Finds (HealthDay)
THURSDAY, Dec. 15 (HealthDay News) -- The recent recession took a toll on parent-child ties, with parents who were under financial strain reporting that they felt less connected to their kids and kids saying they were less likely to act with generosity, a new study finds.
Researchers from University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Brigham Young University analyzed data from a survey done in 2009 and then again a year later of about 500 families in the Seattle area about their feelings of depression, economic stress and family relationships.
The families were mostly white, middle- to upper-middle-class and college educated. The children were young adolescents, aged 10 to 14.
From one year to the next, parents who reported increasing financial pressure were also more likely to report symptoms of depression, according to the study. In turn, depressed parents were more likely to report feeling less connected and less close with their child.
Likewise, parental financial strain and depression also affected the children. Children whose parents were struggling were less likely to say they volunteered, helped their friends or their families, found enjoyment in doing small favors for others, or tried to cheer up people who were feeling blue -- a group of positive behaviors researchers call "pro-social behaviors."
"The effects of the economic strain are present and having an impact on families that we consider middle-class and upper-middle-class," said lead study author Gustavo Carlo, currently a professor of human development and family studies at the University of Missouri. "These are families you'd think maybe aren't feeling the effects of the economic crisis in the way that other communities are, or that might have access to resources that other families might not have easy access to."
And the families interviewed were from the Seattle area, which wasn't even as hard hit during the downturn as other regions of the country, Carlo added. "One can only imagine how these effects are being felt by families in areas where the communities have really suffered tremendously from the economic situation," he said.
The study appears online and in the December print issue of the Journal of Research on Adolescence.
To be sure, not every parent experiencing economic strain will become anxious and depressed, said Velma McBride Murry, a professor of human and organizational development at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.
"If you enter this situation having an increased vulnerability to depression and anxiety, economic strain elevates it, or sets it off to where you are more likely to experience greater devastation than people who are much more mentally stable," Murry said.
But the current study adds to a large body of evidence that cuts across income levels and racial and ethnic groups and shows that economic stress can have a "cascading effect" on the whole family, Murry said. When under financial stress, parents who are used to being able to give their children a cellphone or new clothes suffer mentally when they can no longer do so. As money worries mount -- they're not sure they can pay the mortgage, or the utility bill, or a medical expense that comes in -- parents can become overwhelmed, irritable, short-tempered, depressed and withdrawn.
"Then it erodes communication in the family, and reduces the connectedness that parents have with their children," Murry said.
The kids feel it, too, and their attitudes and behavior can also suffer. Prior research has shown that the kids aren't bothered by the loss of the material goods -- the new cellphone or the clothes -- but by the impact it's having on their family, she added.
"Prior studies have found that kids will say, 'it's not the stuff that I miss. I miss my relationship with my parents. That has shifted and the environment in my family has shifted,'" Murry said.
Parents who are feeling economically strained and depressed should seek out emotional support, whether it's from family and friends, their church or from a mental health professional, Carlo urged.
"They may have to pay some extra attention to work on the quality of the relationship with their child," he said.
More information
The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health has more on depression.
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