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(News Focus) Challenges remain as S. Korea, China celebrate 20th year of diplomatic ties bit.ly/uGMbuUIl y a environ 4 heuresvia YonhapNewsEnglishRetweeted by 1 person
No Tim this week, sadly, but that won't stop this runaway podcasting freight train. Darren and Terrence will be joining Brian to discuss the biggest news of this post-holiday / pre-CES lull, but mostly we'll be talking about the year that wasn't -- join us in the chat below or send a note to podcast (at) engadget (dot) com to share your thoughts on the biggest tech misfires of the year.
If you've lived in the Big Apple for any amount of time, you've more than likely taken the Subway. You've also probably wasted plenty of time staring at the map. Our video editor Matt Toder threw together a video of the Subway map's evolution, beginning with a map crafted 100 years ago. More »
TOKYO (Reuters) ? Japan and India are in the final stages of deciding on a dollar swap agreement and expect to reach agreement during Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's visit to India this week, Japan's finance minister said on Tuesday.
An earlier $3 billion arrangement came into force in 2008 but expired in June. The Nikkei business newspaper reported on Sunday that the new one would be set at $10 billion.
Further financial cooperation as well as Japanese support for infrastructure in India will be a key focus at talks between the leaders of the two countries, Finance Minister Jun Azumi told a news conference.
Azumi also said he expects Japan's exports will pick up early next year if the European economy stabilizes and currency levels reflect Japan's economic fundamentals.
(Reporting by Kaori Kaneko; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
UNLV basketball's hot start the top local sports story of 2011 ??
?????Wednesday 28th December, 2011??Source: Las Vegas Sun ??
limiting Illinois to 48 points in a win at the United Center in Chicago. UNLV (13-2) is ranked No. 19, and more importantly, giving locals something to be proud about in a town faced with tremendous economic struggles. The team's marketing campaign of "Let's Run" has helped fuel a style of play that has been downright fun to watch. The Rebels are ...
Breaking News Wednesday 28th December, 2011
Our network flyer service provides a medium for putting your important news into a flyer on the web. Whether it be a new product launch, announcing a community event, promoting a Web site, or advertising your business, then our Network Flyers service is for you. Click here for more details
Sleevecandy is proud to donate 30% of each t-shirt sale to The Salvation Army's adult rehabilitation programs which transform the lives of adults suffering from drug and alcohol dependency through education, work therapy, and job training.
MONDAY, Dec. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Teens are more likely to be obese if they had a poor emotional relationship with their mother when they were toddlers, according to a new study.
The findings echo previous research showing that toddlers who didn't have close emotional ties with their parents were more likely to be obese by the time they were 4.5 years old.
In the latest study, researchers examined U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development data collected from hundreds of families who lived in nine states and had children who were born in 1991.
The analysis showed that the children's risk of obesity at age 15 was highest among those who had the lowest-quality emotional relationship with their mothers when they were toddlers, the Ohio State University researchers said.
More than one-quarter of the toddlers who had the lowest-quality relationships with their mothers were obese as teens, compared with 13 percent of those who had closer bonds with their mothers in their early years, according to the report published online and in the January print issue of the journal Pediatrics.
These and previous findings indicate that the risk of obesity may be affected by areas of the brain that control emotions and stress responses working together with those that control appetite and energy balance, the investigators explained.
The authors suggested that obesity prevention efforts should include strategies to improve the mother-child bond, as well as promoting healthier eating and exercise.
"It is possible that childhood obesity could be influenced by interventions that try to improve the emotional bonds between mothers and children rather than focusing only on children's food intake and activity," lead author Sarah Anderson, an assistant professor of epidemiology, said in an Ohio State University news release.
"The sensitivity a mother displays in interacting with her child may be influenced by factors she can't necessarily control. Societally, we need to think about how we can support better-quality maternal-child relationships, because that could have an impact on child health," Anderson added.
More information
The Nemours Foundation has more about overweight and obesity in children.
Study uncovers a molecular 'maturation clock' that modulates branching architecture in tomato plantsPublic release date: 26-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Hema Bashyam bashyam@cshl.edu 516-367-8455 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Manipulating the clock might provide agricultural benefits, as a slower clock increases branching, thereby increasing flower number and fruit yield
Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. The secret to pushing tomato plants to produce more fruit might not lie in an extra dose of Miracle-Gro. Instead, new research from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) suggests that an increase in fruit yield might be achieved by manipulating a molecular timer or so-called "maturation clock" that determines the number of branches that make flowers, called inflorescences.
"We have found that a delay in this clock causes more branching to occur in the inflorescences, which in turn results in more flowers and ultimately, more fruits," says CSHL Assistant Professor Zach Lippman, who led the research team. The new study, which involved a high-resolution, genome-level comparison of the stem cell populations from three tomato varieties that each have different branching architectures, will appear online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of December 26.
When a plant is ready to flower, populations of stem cells, called shoot apical meristems, which are found in the growing tips, stop producing leaves and begin producing flowers by transforming into "inflorescence meristems." Depending on the tomato variety, inflorescences meristems can make just one branch with a few flowers arranged in the familiar, photogenic zigzag pattern (shown), or multiple branches with dozens of flowers, as seen in closely-related wild relatives of tomatoes, which are native to South America.
Although most domesticated varieties, which have been bred to produce edible, delicious fruit, produce a single inflorescence branch with just a few flowers, some varieties make dozens of branches bearing hundreds of flowers. "Although one might think that all this branching is good, too much branching is not a desirable trait, because the plant spends so much energy on making flowers on those branches that it ends up not having the resources to set those flowers into fruits," explains Lippman. "So there needs to be a balance, which the wild relatives of tomatoes seem to have achieved."
Previous studies hypothesized that extreme branching might be the result of a pause or a delay in the maturation of inflorescence meristems, causing them to sprout extra branches instead of ending their growth by making flowers. "Our previous work as well as those of others hinted at the existence of a timer or clock," Lippman notes. "We wanted to define this clock at the highest resolution, in terms of the genes that modulate the rate of meristem maturation, with the idea that finding the genes that define the clock would enable us to tweak it to get the desired level of branching."
Using a systems biology approach and next-generation sequencing technology to "capture" the transcriptome the activity of all the genes in a genome of stem cells at five different stages of maturation, the team identified nearly 4000 genes that represent the clock. With help from CSHL associate professor and computational biologist Michael Schatz, the team, which included post-doctoral researchers Soon-ju Park and Ke Jiang, compared the clocks of a mutant variety that undergoes extreme branching and a wild relative from Peru that undergoes modest branching.
This analysis revealed that subtle differences in the activity of the clock's genes could alter branching architecture. "Our data showed that wild relatives of tomato have evolved to have a slight delay in maturation, which leads to just a few more branches and a doubling of the number of flowers and fruits compared to what is typically found on cultivated tomatoes grown for ketchup or in the home garden," explains Lippman, who is enthusiastic about the implications of this work and the next steps that his team will take. "We now have a master list of candidate genes that we can go after to manipulate the clock in order to make domesticated tomatoes produce a branching architecture that's similar to the wild variety," he says.
###
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation Plant Genome Research Program and the International Human Frontier Science Program Organization.
"The rate of meristem maturation determines inflorescence architecture in tomato" appears in the online early edition of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of December 26. The full citation is: Soon Ju park, Ke Jiang, Michael C. Schatz and Zachary B. Lippman. The paper can be downloaded at: http://www.pnas.org.
About Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Founded in 1890, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has shaped contemporary biomedical research and education with programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology and quantitative biology. CSHL is ranked number one in the world by Thomson Reuters for impact of its research in molecular biology and genetics. The Laboratory has been home to eight Nobel Prize winners. Today, CSHL's multidisciplinary scientific community is more than 350 scientists strong and its Meetings & Courses program hosts more than 11,000 scientists from around the world each year. Tens of thousands more benefit from the research, reviews, and ideas published in journals and books distributed internationally by CSHL Press. The Laboratory's education arm also includes a graduate school and programs for undergraduates as well as middle and high school students and teachers. CSHL is a private, not-for-profit institution on the north shore of Long Island. For more information, visit http://www.cshl.edu.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Study uncovers a molecular 'maturation clock' that modulates branching architecture in tomato plantsPublic release date: 26-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Hema Bashyam bashyam@cshl.edu 516-367-8455 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Manipulating the clock might provide agricultural benefits, as a slower clock increases branching, thereby increasing flower number and fruit yield
Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. The secret to pushing tomato plants to produce more fruit might not lie in an extra dose of Miracle-Gro. Instead, new research from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) suggests that an increase in fruit yield might be achieved by manipulating a molecular timer or so-called "maturation clock" that determines the number of branches that make flowers, called inflorescences.
"We have found that a delay in this clock causes more branching to occur in the inflorescences, which in turn results in more flowers and ultimately, more fruits," says CSHL Assistant Professor Zach Lippman, who led the research team. The new study, which involved a high-resolution, genome-level comparison of the stem cell populations from three tomato varieties that each have different branching architectures, will appear online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of December 26.
When a plant is ready to flower, populations of stem cells, called shoot apical meristems, which are found in the growing tips, stop producing leaves and begin producing flowers by transforming into "inflorescence meristems." Depending on the tomato variety, inflorescences meristems can make just one branch with a few flowers arranged in the familiar, photogenic zigzag pattern (shown), or multiple branches with dozens of flowers, as seen in closely-related wild relatives of tomatoes, which are native to South America.
Although most domesticated varieties, which have been bred to produce edible, delicious fruit, produce a single inflorescence branch with just a few flowers, some varieties make dozens of branches bearing hundreds of flowers. "Although one might think that all this branching is good, too much branching is not a desirable trait, because the plant spends so much energy on making flowers on those branches that it ends up not having the resources to set those flowers into fruits," explains Lippman. "So there needs to be a balance, which the wild relatives of tomatoes seem to have achieved."
Previous studies hypothesized that extreme branching might be the result of a pause or a delay in the maturation of inflorescence meristems, causing them to sprout extra branches instead of ending their growth by making flowers. "Our previous work as well as those of others hinted at the existence of a timer or clock," Lippman notes. "We wanted to define this clock at the highest resolution, in terms of the genes that modulate the rate of meristem maturation, with the idea that finding the genes that define the clock would enable us to tweak it to get the desired level of branching."
Using a systems biology approach and next-generation sequencing technology to "capture" the transcriptome the activity of all the genes in a genome of stem cells at five different stages of maturation, the team identified nearly 4000 genes that represent the clock. With help from CSHL associate professor and computational biologist Michael Schatz, the team, which included post-doctoral researchers Soon-ju Park and Ke Jiang, compared the clocks of a mutant variety that undergoes extreme branching and a wild relative from Peru that undergoes modest branching.
This analysis revealed that subtle differences in the activity of the clock's genes could alter branching architecture. "Our data showed that wild relatives of tomato have evolved to have a slight delay in maturation, which leads to just a few more branches and a doubling of the number of flowers and fruits compared to what is typically found on cultivated tomatoes grown for ketchup or in the home garden," explains Lippman, who is enthusiastic about the implications of this work and the next steps that his team will take. "We now have a master list of candidate genes that we can go after to manipulate the clock in order to make domesticated tomatoes produce a branching architecture that's similar to the wild variety," he says.
###
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation Plant Genome Research Program and the International Human Frontier Science Program Organization.
"The rate of meristem maturation determines inflorescence architecture in tomato" appears in the online early edition of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of December 26. The full citation is: Soon Ju park, Ke Jiang, Michael C. Schatz and Zachary B. Lippman. The paper can be downloaded at: http://www.pnas.org.
About Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Founded in 1890, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has shaped contemporary biomedical research and education with programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology and quantitative biology. CSHL is ranked number one in the world by Thomson Reuters for impact of its research in molecular biology and genetics. The Laboratory has been home to eight Nobel Prize winners. Today, CSHL's multidisciplinary scientific community is more than 350 scientists strong and its Meetings & Courses program hosts more than 11,000 scientists from around the world each year. Tens of thousands more benefit from the research, reviews, and ideas published in journals and books distributed internationally by CSHL Press. The Laboratory's education arm also includes a graduate school and programs for undergraduates as well as middle and high school students and teachers. CSHL is a private, not-for-profit institution on the north shore of Long Island. For more information, visit http://www.cshl.edu.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Welcome to Whitenoise, where you can come to talk about anything you want with other Gizmodo readers. Want to share your the gadget love you received this Christmas? How about we talk about our collective hate of fruit mince pies? Let us know what you?re thinking here.
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KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Carson Palmer knew that Darrius Heyward-Bey, perhaps the Oakland Raiders' fastest wide receiver, could beat the Kansas City Chiefs defense if he went deep down the field.
The Raiders just had to wait for the right moment.
It came on the first play of overtime.
Heyward-Bey beat safety Kendrick Lewis down the left side and Palmer hit him for a 53-yard gain, setting up Sebastian Janikowski's 36-yard field goal 2:13 into overtime Saturday for a 16-13 win that kept the Raiders' playoff hopes alive and eliminated Kansas City from contention.
"It was the right time to call it," Palmer said. "I wanted it earlier, but we saved it for the right time. The protection was flawless and the route was great."
It was just about the only thing that was flawless.
The Raiders committed 15 penalties for 92 yards, one of them ? a delay of game ? wiping out an audacious fake field goal that would have gone for a 36-yard touchdown pass. Palmer also threw a pair of interceptions and the Raiders converted only 3 of 11 third-down opportunities.
"An ugly win is better than a pretty loss," Palmer said.
Especially given the stakes.
Oakland (8-7) can win the AFC West by beating San Diego next week and getting some help from ? of all teams ? the Chiefs, who travel to Denver for a game that's become meaningless to them.
"The man told me, 'Hue, we'll win it in the end.' I believe that," said Raiders coach Hue Jackson, reflecting on a conversation he had with Al Davis before the Raiders owner died in October. "I don't know how it's going to happen. I don't care how it's going to happen."
Oakland led 13-6 late in the fourth quarter when Kyle Orton connected with Dexter McCluster for a 49-yard gain, setting up a short TD toss to Dwayne Bowe with 1:02 remaining in regulation.
The Raiders went three-and-out in short order, giving Kansas City the ball back with only enough time to get into field-goal range. Orton hit Bowe for 25 yards and Terrance Copper for 11 more to set up Ryan Succop, whose 49-yard try was blocked as time ran out.
It was the second field goal that Succop had blocked.
"We had an opportunity to win the game. Those guys came up big," Chiefs linebacker Tamba Hali said. "I mean, blocking two field goals ? what's the odds of blocking two field goals in a big game like this? More credit to those guys."
The Raiders, who blew a 13-point lead in the final five minutes to Detroit last week, have won five straight games at Kansas City. Perhaps none was important as this one, with all four teams in the division beginning the day with a chance of squeaking into the playoffs.
The Chiefs (6-9) struggled to take advantage of drives one week after piling up a season-best 438 yards of offense in a 19-14 victory over previously unbeaten Green Bay. That was their first game with Orton under center and interim coach Romeo Crennel calling the shots from the sideline.
Orton threw a pair of interceptions against Oakland, one of them in the end zone in the second quarter and the other as the Chiefs were driving in the fourth quarter.
"I commend everybody for fighting hard and giving us a chance at the end," Orton said.
The first half amounted to a cacophony of errors that ended in a 3-3 tie.
The Raiders, the most penalized team in the NFL and on pace to set a single-season record, were flagged 10 times for 57 yards, while the Chiefs were flagged eight times for 53 yards.
It wasn't just the quantity of penalties, either. It was the quality.
Javier Arenas had an interception of Palmer wiped out by defensive holding in the first quarter, a turnover that would have given Kansas City prime field position.
The Raiders returned the favor on their next possession. Facing fourth-and-2 at the Chiefs 36, they pulled off fake field goal in which punter Shane Lechler, the holder on the play, threw a shovel pass to tight end Brandon Myers, and he ran untouched around end for the touchdown.
It was called back by a delay of game penalty, and Janikowski's 58-yard try hit the crossbar.
Bowe dropped an easy touchdown catch on the Chiefs' ensuing possession, and Orton was picked off by Matt Giordano in the end zone. Palmer gave it right back when Arenas intercepted him.
The Chiefs promptly wasted another scoring opportunity with a staggering string of penalties: intentional grounding, a delay of game and a false start, all in succession. Succop ultimately had his long field attempt blocked by Richard Seymour, his first miss since Sept. 25 at Buffalo.
It wound up being all the more important by the end of regulation.
"Our guys fought and they hung in there, went into overtime, and it took some guts to do that," Crennel said. "We had a couple of field goals blocked, we got a couple balls thrown over our head, we turned the ball over a couple times. In the NFL, it's hard to win when you do those kinds of things."
Notes: The Raiders have been penalized 155 times for 1,293 yards this season. Kansas City has the NFL record with 158 for 1,304, set in 1998. ... Oakland played without RB Darren McFadden (mid-foot sprain) for the eighth straight game. Michael Bush ran 23 times for 70 yards in his place. ... Chiefs S Jon McGraw (ankle) did not play. ... Kansas City C Casey Wiegmann started his 174th consecutive game despite a minor calf injury. ... Succop's first field goal was his 22nd straight, matching Pete Stoyanovich's franchise record.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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For four teams, it's win and get in
PFT: After all the Christmas Eve fun, the Bengals, Broncos, Giants and Cowboys control their own playof destinies heading into the final week of the regular season.
Mr. Das says banks lend money. That is misleading. Banks create money as they loan (?loans create deposits?). So much for banks being honest, they are not. Furthermore, the interest charged for those loans does not even exist in aggregate unless it is lent into existence too, leading to ever increasing private debt or if the interest comes from government deficit spending, ever increasing government debt (under the current system). So much for economic stability.
I see little difference between banks and drug pushers. The more one uses their ?product?, the more one has to use their product or crash.
VERACRUZ, Mexico ? A group of five gunmen sprayed three passenger buses with bullets in Mexico's Gulf coast state of Veracruz on Thursday, killing seven passengers, before being chased down and killed by soldiers.
Veracruz state government spokeswoman Gina Dominguez said the gunmen apparently resisted detention and died in the ensuing confrontation. They all had rifles and were traveling in a bulletproof vehicle.
While the attackers' identities and cartel affiliation have not yet been established, the men killed match witness descriptions of the assailants in the bus attacks, Dominguez said.
Earlier, gunmen killed four people in the town of El Higo in northern Veracruz, where drug gangs have been particularly active, but Dominguez said those killings appear not to have been related to the bus attacks.
The bloody pre-Christmas bus shootings brought up memories of the brutal murder of dozens of bus passengers whose bodies were found in mass graves in the neighboring state of Tamaulipas in April. A total of 193 bodies had been found in 26 graves, and officials say most of those were Mexican migrants heading to the United States who were kidnapped off buses and killed by the Zetas drug cartel.
But there appeared to be differences between Thursday's killings and the murders in Tamaulipas.
In the Tamaulipas killings, the Zetas gunmen stopped and boarded buses and removed male passengers and killed them, either because they believed a rival gang was trying to send reinforcements into the region aboard buses or because they wanted to force some of the passengers to join their gang.
Thursday's attacks on buses may have been more random; the gunmen apparently just sprayed passing buses with gunfire. The buses hit were covering local routes in northern Veracruz, though authorities did not release the names of the bus lines operating the route.
There was no immediate information on the identity of the dead bus passengers, or the four people killed in El Higo.
The area has been the scene of bloody battles between the Zetas and their former allies, the Gulf cartel.
The two gangs split in 2010.
The U.S. Consulate General in Matamoros, a Mexican border city north of where the attacks occurred, said in a statement that "several vehicles," including the buses, were attacked, but did not specify what the other vehicles were.
The consulate urged Americans to "exercise caution" when traveling in Veracruz, and "avoid intercity road travel at night."
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'Secret' Environment Canada presentation warns of oilsands' impact on habitat zite.to/w190MX via @ziteIl y a environ 5 heuresvia Zite Personalized MagazineRetweeted by 1 person
Only 52 weeks and a day are left before Dec. 21, 2012, when some believe the Maya predicted the end of the world.
Unlike enthusiasts of other doomsday theories who suggest putting together survival kits, southeastern Mexico, the heart of Maya territory, plans a yearlong celebration.
Mexico's tourism agency expects to draw 52 million visitors by next year only to the regions of Chiapas, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Campeche. All of Mexico usually lures about 22 million foreigners in a year.
It's selling the date, the Winter Solstice in the coming year, as a time of renewal. Many archeologists argue that the 2012 reference on a 1,300-year-old stone tablet only marks the end of a cycle in the Mayan calendar.
"The world will not end. It is an era," said Yeanet Zaldo, a tourism spokeswoman for the Caribbean state of Quintana Roo, home to Cancun. "For us, it is a message of hope."
Cities and towns in the Mayan region on Wednesday will start the yearlong countdown. In Chiapas the town of Tapachula on the Guatemalan border will start a countdown on an 8-foot digital clock in the main park exactly a year before the mysterious date.
In the nearby archaeological site of Izapa, Maya priests will burn incense, chant and offer prayers.
In the tropical jungle of Quintana Roo, between the resorts of Cancun and Playa del Carmen, people are putting messages and photos in a time capsule that will be buried for 50 years. Maya priests and Indian dancers will perform a ritual at the time capsule ceremony.
Yucatan state has announced plans to complete the Maya Museum of Merida by next summer.
"People who still live in Mayan villages will host rites and burn incense for us to go back in time and try to understand the Mayan wisdom," Zaldo said.
The Maya reputation for wisdom has people taking the alleged prediction seriously.
The Mayan civilization, which reached its height from 300 A.D. to 900 A.D., had a talent for astronomy
Its Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. Thirteen was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas, and they wrote that the 13th Baktun ends on Dec. 21, 2012.
The doomsday theories stem from a stone tablet discovered in the 1960s at the archaeological site of Tortuguero in the Gulf of Mexico state of Tabasco that describes the return of a Mayan god at the end of a 13th period.
Believers have taken the end-of-the world fears to the Internet with hundreds of thousands of websites and blogs.
"The Maya are viewed by many westerners as exotic folks that were supposed to have had some special, secret knowledge," said Mayan scholar Sven Gronemeyer. "What happens is that our expectations and fears get projected on the Maya calendar."
Gronemeyer of La Trobe University in Australia compares the supposed Mayan prophecies to the "Y2K" hype, when people feared all computer systems would crash when the new millennium began on Jan. 1, 2000.
For some reason, Gronemeyer says, people have ignored evidence that dates beyond 2012 were recorded.
The blogosphere exploded with more speculation when Mexico's archaeology institute acknowledged on Nov. 24 a second reference to Dec. 21, 2012, on a brick found at other ruins.
"Human beings seem to be attracted by apocalyptic ideas and always assume the worst," Gronemeyer said.
It's all a bit frustrating for serious Mayan researchers whose field has made huge strides in recent years.
"This new historical and archaeological knowledge is so much more interesting and mind-blowing than the fantastical claims about Maya prophecies one sees on TV, books or on the Internet," David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin, said in an email to The Associated Press. "We're dealing with thousands of newly deciphered texts and trying to weave together a coherent picture of Maya history and culture, which to me is as exciting as it gets."
While the 2012 hype might increase interest in the Maya, "that will probably be offset by the long and difficult effort ahead to correct the ubiquitous lies and misconceptions, even after 2012 has come and gone," he wrote.
Jonnie Channell of Albuquerque, New Mexico, says that 2012 "is going to be one of those things where people are definitely going to have to plan," not because of impending apocalypse, but because hotel rooms in the Maya region are probably going to be full.
Channell, who owns Maya Sites Travel Services, is surprised that she already has 24 reservations for three tour packages she is offering to major Mayan ruin sites in the week leading up to the solstice.
She named one "Beginning the New Calendar Era Under the Yucatan Stars."
"We put together these tours, and we've got lots of signups, and people are excited about it," she said. "If anybody think it's going to be the end of the world, then they better stay home."
___
Associated Press writer Mark Stevenson contributed to this report
WASHINGTON ? The final Republican presidential debate before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucus crystalized the strengths and weaknesses of the chief contenders as perhaps no other event thus far.
It reinforced the notion that this is a battle between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich unless one of the other five can make a dramatic late run.
Given his likely strength in the Jan. 10 New Hampshire primary, Romney may be able to survive a so-so finish in Iowa. It appears more important for Gingrich to win Iowa, or come close, and Thursday's two-hour televised debate in Sioux City probably helped his cause.
It wasn't so much that the former House speaker had a solid second hour after a somewhat shaky start. It's more that Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning Texan, expressed his anti-war, anti-interventionist views so vehemently that he may have turned off mainstream Republicans who otherwise might have helped him to a surprising first-place finish.
"To declare war on 1.2 billion Muslims and say all Muslims are the same, this is dangerous talk," Paul said of the idea of taking pre-emptive action to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. "Yeah, there are some radicals. But they don't come here to kill us because we're free and prosperous ... They want to do us harm because we're bombing them."
Rep. Michele Bachmann said, "I have never heard a more dangerous answer for American security."
If Paul hurt himself among rank-and-file GOP voters, then Bachmann, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Sen. Rick Santorum may have helped themselves with solid performances. Bachmann, who faded after winning a mid-August straw poll in Iowa, was especially forceful in accusing Gingrich of being soft on abortion and hypocritical for taking big consulting fees from mortgage giant Freddie Mac while criticizing its work.
Perry, whose campaign faltered after several weak debate performances, showed humor and a command of several topics. The big question is whether any of these second-tier candidates ? and conceivably, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman ? can gain the needed traction that has eluded them for months.
As for Romney and Gingrich, the feisty debate on Fox News laid bare their biggest strengths and vulnerabilities.
Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, once again managed to stay above most quarrels. He seemed well prepared for a challenge to his job-creation record. Romney acknowledged that some jobs were eliminated in corporate restructurings he oversaw at Bain Capital, but the overall effort "added tens of thousands of jobs."
However, Fox News' Chris Wallace, with help from Santorum, bore in on Romney's biggest liability: his changed positions on gun control, gay rights and particularly abortion.
Romney gave his standard response about having a change of heart regarding his former support for abortion rights.
He then got drawn into a complicated back-on-forth about what he meant when he vowed in 1994 to be a better defender of gay rights than Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., whom he was trying to unseat.
Later, when he was governor, Romney said, the state's highest court "determined that under our constitution, same-sex marriage was required." It wasn't up to him, he said, "to make a choice as to whether we had it or not."
Romney said he fought "to overturn the court's decision" and make marriage "between a man and a woman."
A similarly testy exchange underscored Gingrich's greatest vulnerability: his long, contentious record in Washington, which included some prominent deal-making with Democrats during his 20 years in Congress.
Gingrich rejected the notion that he's an unreliable conservative. He said he pursued conservative but attainable goals, working when necessary with Democrats such as President Bill Clinton and Speaker Tip O'Neill.
"The term `government-sponsored enterprise' has a very wide range of things that do a great deal of good," Gingrich said, defending his $1.6 million consulting fee for Freddie Mac. "There are a lot of very good institutions that are government-sponsored."
Such comments wouldn't raise eyebrows among independent or Democratic voters. But they may open Gingrich to questions from the staunch conservatives who dominate GOP caucuses and primaries.
Republican consultant Alex Castellanos said via Twitter there will be "zillions of negative ads still dropping on Newt's head in Iowa after this debate."
Gingrich also displayed several flashes of the bravado that strikes some people as brilliance, others as arrogance. A former college professor who used deferments to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War, Gingrich said he spent "23 years teaching one- and two-star generals and admirals the art of war."
Condemning what he sees as liberal activism by federal judges, Gingrich said, "I testified in front of sitting Supreme Court justices at Georgetown Law School, and I warned them: `You keep attacking the core base of American exceptionalism, and you are going to find an uprising against you which will rebalance the judiciary.'"
"Just like Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln and FDR," he said, "I would be prepared to take on the judiciary, if in fact it did not restrict itself in what it was doing."
Republican voters in Iowa and New Hampshire have surprised the nation before. At this stage four years ago, many saw Rudy Giuliani as the likeliest GOP nominee.
Perhaps Perry, Bachmann or Santorum will make an 11th hour surge. Maybe Paul drew more fans than he turned off with his isolationist talk Thursday.
But with little more than two weeks left before the Iowa caucus, most are watching to see if Romney and Gingrich can make the most of their strengths and minimize their weaknesses.
___
EDITOR'S NOTE ? Charles Babington covers politics for The Associated Press.
The Kindle Fire is so hot, it has driven sales of Amazon.com's reader and tablet devices to more than 1 million per week, the online super-retailer said Thursday.
A news release said customers have been buying "well over 1 million Kindle devices per week" for each of the past three weeks, and the new Kindle Fire, with added features and a customized version of Google's Android operating system, is the bestselling item on Amazon.com since its introduction 11 weeks ago.
Hot for the Holidays
"People are buying Kindle Fire because it's a simple, fully integrated service that makes it easy to do the things they love -- watch movies, read books and magazines, listen to music, download apps, play games and surf the Web," said Dave Limp, vice president of Amazon's Kindle division, in the news release. "Customers continue to report preferring their Kindle e-reader for long-form reading, and in fact we've seen many customers buy two Kindles -- both a Kindle Fire and a Kindle or Kindle Touch -- this holiday season."
How many of those devices will remain sold is another matter. Retail returns are up slightly from last year, with 9.9 cents of every dollar going back to customers, the Associated Press reported the same day as Amazon's statement.
The Kindle sells for $199, less than half the cost of the basic model of Apple's market-topping iPad tablet, and Amazon also sells the $79 Kindle reader, $99 Kindle Touch, and $149 Kindle Touch 3G.
"Considering its aggressive pricing, I expect the Kindle Fire to be this year's hot, go-to holiday gift." Said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. "That the economy is in a fragile state is playing a part in this, too. The Fire is one of the few items I can think of that combines consumer buzz and bargain pricing."
'Different Critters'
And the inevitable question when discussing tablets: Should Apple be worried? "Probably so," said King. "Not only is the Fire priced much lower than the iPad but it doesn't really suffer from direct comparisons -- they're two entirely different critters."
The distinction, says King, is that Amazon markets the Fire as an integrated media consumption device compared to Apple's pitch for the iPad as a laptop replacement. "By not attempting to be all things to all people, Amazon may succeed in making the Fire just the sort of ideal "companion" device that many people consider the best use case for tablets," he said.
Jeff Orr, a mobile devices expert at ABI Research, said Amazon's claim of 1 million Kindles per week is plausible -- for now.
"Volumes will likely slow after the end-of-year holidays -- first quarter sales are cyclically slow," said Orr. "Some financial analysts (Amazon investors) have estimated up to 5 million Kindle Fire shipments in 2011. Coupled with continued growth of e-readers at lower prices year-over-year, ABI expects a healthy 4 Q'11 and a robust 2011 in total."
Most of the Kindle volume is domestic, he said. "Very little non-U.S. sales (especially on Wi-Fi only devices). Amazon does have some Kindle book stores on other country portals, Amazon.co.uk, for example, but only a handful of countries where they have content distribution rights."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Republican senators on Wednesday the Fed can't and won't provide bailout funds to support European banks or nations, lawmakers said.
"We're all concerned, is the American taxpayer going to be bailing out European nations and banks," Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters after a meeting with the Fed chairman.
"He said, no, he doesn't have the intention or authority to do that," Graham said.
(Reporting By Mark Felsenthal and Pedro Nicolaci da Costa; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
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Public release date: 26-Dec-2011
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