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The Johnson C. Smith University men?s basketball team let one slip away Monday, losing 85-84 to Virginia Union University.

The Golden Bulls are now 7-7 on the season and 2-2 in the CIAA, while Virginia Union improves to 9-10 overall and 3-3 in the conference.

After grabbing a 37-28 lead in the first half, JCSU, playing on the road, saw Virginia Union go on a 11-2 scoring burst and went in at the half tied 39-39.

After a seesaw battle in the second half, it all came down to one possession. With the game tied 82-82 with 52 seconds left in regulation, Virginia Union?s Calvin Brown hit a three pointer to give his team an 85-82 lead. But JCSU junior center Delonta Boyd converted a field goal in the paint to cut the deficit to one (85-84).

JCSU quickly fouled and sent Brown to the free-throw line with five seconds remaining. Brown missed the foul shot and the Golden Bulls had one last shot attempt, but JCSU junior guard Phillip Wood was off target with a jumper as time expired.

The Golden Bulls shot 53.6 percent from the floor and had 15 turnovers.

Junior guard Trevin Parks led his team with a game-high 28 points with three assists. Boyd produced a double-double — 17 points and 11 rebounds. Wood and sophomore forward Robert Williams each scored double figures with 14 and 12 points, respectively. Sophomore forward Antwan Wilkerson (Greensboro, NC) ended the night with 11 points, six boards and three blocks off the bench.

Damion Harris had a team-high 19 points and nine rebounds for the Panthers. Brown pitched in 18 points and three steals for VUU.

Johnson C. Smith moves on to face No. 12 Bowie State University Thursday, Jan. 19, in Bowie, Md. Tip-off is slated for 7:30 p.m.
***
Editor’s Note: This story was written using the work of JCSU Director of Sports Information Lamont Hinson.

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Source: http://www.qcitymetro.com/news/articles/jcsu_men_suffer_close_loss_to_virginia_union083916835.cfm

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It’s time we moved past the whole “With great power comes great responsibility” thing. It totally ruins all the fun you could have with superpowers.
In “Chronicle,” a new found-footage film about three teenage boys who acquire superpowers, we learn what happens when superheroes forget responsibility and focus more on having a good time.

Also, [...]

Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2012/01/17/exclusive-chronicle-clip/

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Online resources can be very helpful in your search for health insurance. Naturally, you don?t want to provide your personal information haphazardly, but there are insurance agents through specific companies or websites who can help you in your search. Among other tips, a good rule of thumb is to try contacting a specific agent by telephone before beginning an Internet search.

Increase out-of-pocket expenses. If you are in general good health, and don?t anticipate any large medical expenses in the near future, think about choosing a plan with larger out-of-pocket expenses. Most health insurance companies offer an option of reduced monthly premiums if you agree to pay a yearly deductible and co-pay for certain services and medications.

A good health insurance tip that can save you a lot of money is to be very careful about going to the emergency room. If you go to the emergency room to get treated, you can expect to pay a huge medical bill. In some cases you can even receive two medical bills!

If your family is in the fortunate position of both husband and wife being offered by health insurance it puts you in a good position. Simply choose one over the other, and in no way pay for both. You will save money, and have a luxury most don?t have, the luxury of an option.

Most of us have had to deal with HMO?s, which wield a lot influence. However good their plan may sound on paper, you may want to make a visit to their offices. Are you able to talk face to face with a human being? Or are you doomed to speak anonymously with ?John? or ?Jane? in a call center. This can make a big difference if a problem arises.

A great health insurance tip that can save you money is to make sure you don?t use any prescriptions that have expired. You might think you?re saving money by using up your old prescriptions, but you?ll only harm yourself, and you?re just insuring another medical visit in the future.

Create a plan of action for handling your deductible in the event of a health related incident. These situations are normally few and far between, yet you should set aside a few dollars each pay period until you reach your deductible amount. If it is not easy to save on your own, look at a health insurance savings plan which will be deducted from your paycheck.

If your insurance plan offers prescription drug coverage, make sure you understand it. With some plans, you will pay a considerable amount more for brand name medications. With others, you can save by ordering three month supplies from a particular pharmacy. If you play by the rules you?ll get the medications you need and save money too.

Take detailed noted. When speaking with an insurance agent, take notes regarding the conversation you are having. These could come in handy later. If you are not particularly good at taking notes, request having your conversation recorded. Always ask first. Never record someone without their consent as this is illegal in some states.

If you need or want health insurance and it is offered by your employer then it would be your best bet to get it through them. Many employers pay a certain percentage of the premiums making insurance much cheaper through them than what it would be if bought in the private market.

Generally, the larger the pool, the lower the cost of insurance for those people in the pool. This is why many states are now starting to implement exchanges on the open market, because it will eventually enable a pool the size of the population of the state. It also is why federal insurance plans can be so cheap ? because the pool is millions of employees large. You can also take advantage of this by getting your health insurance through whomever in your family works for the larger company. These premiums will likely be cheaper.

Health insurance can be a dirty word in this day and age. Many who have it, don?t have enough, and many don?t have any at all. Using the information here, you will be better prepared to get the health insurance you need and the most benefit from what you have.

Are you interested in learning more about Massage Tables? Great information and links are available from Jayne?s Massage Table website.

Source: http://articlezrank.com/2012/01/does-your-family-need-a-health-insurance-policy/

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CHARLESTON, S.C. ? With a week left to halt Mitt Romney from sweeping to a third straight victory, his GOP rivals are struggling in South Carolina for a theme, momentum and most crucially, one strong challenger to consolidate conservatives’ misgivings about the front-runner.

The dynamics that lifted Romney to wins in Iowa and New Hampshire seem to be working for him here, even though South Carolina is often described as too evangelical and culturally southern for his background.

In some ways, the former Massachusetts governor is lucky, benefitting from a fractured opposition that has divided the anti-Romney vote for months. In other ways he is benefiting from shrewd and well-organized supporters. He uses TV ads to shore up his weaknesses and to batter the rivals he sees as most threatening.

In Iowa, the target was former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who plummeted under the barrage. In South Carolina, it’s former Sen. Rick Santorum, a longtime champion of home-schooling, anti-abortion efforts and other social conservative causes.

Santorum nearly won the Iowa caucus, and some consider him the best bet for unifying the anti-Romney vote.

But a private group that supports Romney is pounding Santorum in South Carolina with TV ads and mailings. So is Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning candidate who helped attack Gingrich in Iowa.

Paul’s ads are especially harsh. They vilify Santorum for pushing pork-barrel projects as a Pennsylvania senator, and they portray him as an insincere conservative.

A group of social conservative leaders meeting in Texas voted Saturday to recommend Santorum as the Romney alternative. But a portion of them preferred Gingrich, who denied Santorum a two-thirds majority on their first head-to-head ballot, said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

Perkins said the group’s actions did not constitute an endorsement, adding that some participants will remain Gingrich supporters. He declined to say how he voted.

“Santorum was the preferred candidate by a significant majority,” former presidential candidate Gary Bauer told The Associated Press by telephone from Texas. “They were all looking for the best Reagan conservative,” he said. “It came down to things like, who do you most trust.”

The Texas vote is obviously good news for Santorum. But it’s unclear how much impact it will have in South Carolina’s primary on Saturday.

The state is known for campaign surprises, and there’s still time for twists and turns. Undercurrents of anti-Romney sentiment, perhaps fueled by his Mormonism, could be stronger than they seem.

But on the surface, at least, Romney is well-positioned with a week to go. If he wins South Carolina, only a seismic change in the campaign will keep him from becoming the nominee.

The next primary, on Jan. 31, is in Florida, a sprawling and expensive state where Romney’s superior money and organization could essentially put the matter to rest, kicking off the general election against President Barack Obama.

“Romney is in good shape now, but the race is tightening,” said LaDonna Ryggs, Spartanburg County GOP chairwoman.

There is little a barrage of ads depicting Romney as a heartless corporate raider is having much effect. He is airing a counter-ad defending his record at Bain Capital, which sometimes created jobs, and sometimes reduced them, when it restructured dozens of companies in the 1980s and `90s.

“That’s what his job was, and he did it well,” said Carleen Coffey, 51, who defended Romney even as she attended an event for Texas Gov. Rick Perry in Charleston.

The anti-Romney ad, aired by a group supporting Gingrich, has generated much comment in political and media circles. Many conservative leaders have condemned it, and Gingrich later back-pedaled, questioning the accuracy of the anti-Romney documentary film behind it.

For ordinary South Carolina Republicans, however, the ad risks being lost in an avalanche of TV commercials, which many voters say they ignore.

Romney’s campaign events run like clockwork, while his opponents often suffer glitches and modest crowds. Gingrich, in particular, has left people scratching their heads.

He spoke at a home-ownership rally Thursday in Columbia that appeared to be dominated by Democratic speakers and attendees. Gingrich got a big introduction at a GOP barbecue Friday in Duncan, but he inexplicably didn’t show up for many minutes. Santorum jumped into the void, working the room and getting valuable one-on-one time with voters.

Then on Saturday, Gingrich’s scheduled telephone conference with voters never took place. The dial-in number was invalid.

Perry has faded. Once seen having a good chance to beat Romney in South Carolina, the drawling Texan is drawing small crowds at cafes and restaurants. Saturday morning in Mount Pleasant, about half the people at Page’s Okra Grill didn’t bother to stop eating or talking while Perry spoke in a corner.

The TV attack ads in South Carolina skip Perry. It’s a sign of his perceived insignificance, although he could benefit if the others slice each other up.

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman is getting even less attention.

Some people think Santorum is rising, but the attack ads might slow him. Santorum’s boyish looks have always boosted his image as a principled crusader for unborn children and other causes. But the ads being aired by Paul’s campaign and the pro-Romney group depict him as a conniving, old-fashioned politician who grabbed federal money for his state whenever possible.

“Some people are going to be swayed,” said Alexia Newman, a South Carolina GOP activist and Santorum supporter. “If you know about his records, you know the ads are false,” she said. But that requires Santorum to break through the noise and clutter of political commercials flooding the airwaves.

The pro-Romney PAC, Restore Our Future, is running $1 million in ads in the state this week, and more than $800,000 next week. Not all of them target Santorum, however. Santorum’s campaign and a PAC that backs him are running pro-Santorum ads.

No single issue is dominating the primary. That makes it harder for any one Romney opponent to catch fire.

Religion and the military play bigger roles here than in Iowa, and especially New Hampshire. Romney has worked hard to address both.

He has built several events around military service, starting with his Veterans’ Day trip to South Carolina last November. He has been campaigning lately with Sen. John McCain, the 2008 presidential nominee and Vietnam War hero.

As for religion, Romney has tried to portray himself as a moral and faithful man, without going into details of Mormonism. On Friday, a woman in Hilton Head asked him, “Do you believe in the divine saving grace of Jesus Christ?”

“Yes, I do,” Romney replied, adding: “Our nation was founded on the principle…of religious tolerance and liberty in this land, and so we welcome people of other faiths.”

Romney’s campaign has produced a Web ad in which an anti-abortion activist endorses him. Romney supported abortion rights as Massachusetts governor.

Romney’s main worries might involve currents he can’t see. South Carolina has a reputation for dirty campaign tricks, although many Republicans here say it’s mostly a thing of the past.

Whatever the case, an anonymous group has sent a text message purporting to be a Romney campaign item. But callers hear Romney being criticized on abortion.

___

Associated Press writers Julie Pace, Jim Davenport, Kasie Hunt and Philip Elliott contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120114/ap_on_el_pr/us_gop_campaign

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The luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia leans on its side after running aground the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012. A luxury cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Tuscany, sending water pouring in through a 160-foot (50-meter) gash in the hull and forcing the evacuation of some 4,200 people from the listing vessel early Saturday, the Italian coast guard said. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

The luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia leans on its side after running aground the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012. A luxury cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Tuscany, sending water pouring in through a 160-foot (50-meter) gash in the hull and forcing the evacuation of some 4,200 people from the listing vessel early Saturday, the Italian coast guard said. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

The luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia leans on its side after running aground in the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012. The luxury cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Tuscany, sending water pouring in through a 160-foot (50-meter) gash in the hull and forcing the evacuation of some 4,200 people from the listing vessel early Saturday, the Italian coast guard said. The number of dead and injured is not yet confirmed Coast Guard Cmdr. Francesco Paolillo said. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

The luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia leans on its side as seen from the Giglio harbor, after running aground the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012. A luxury cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Tuscany, sending water pouring in through a 160-foot (50-meter) gash in the hull and forcing the evacuation of some 4,200 people from the listing vessel early Saturday, the Italian coast guard said. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

The luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia leans on its starboard side as seen from the Giglio harbor, after running aground off the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012. The luxury cruise ship ran aground, sending water pouring in through a 160-foot (50-meter) gash in the hull and forcing the evacuation of some 4,200 people from the listing vessel early Saturday, the Italian coast guard said. The number of dead and injured is not yet confirmed Coast Guard Cmdr. Francesco Paolillo said. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

The luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia leans on its side as after running aground the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012. A luxury cruise ship ran aground off the coast of Tuscany, sending water pouring in through a 160-foot (50-meter) gash in the hull and forcing the evacuation of some 4,200 people from the listing vessel early Saturday, the Italian coast guard said. (AP Photo/Enzo Russo)

PORTO SANTO STEFANO, Italy (AP) ? The first course had just been served in the Costa Concordia’s dining room when the wine glasses, forks and plates of cuttlefish and mushrooms smashed to the ground. At the magic show in the theater, the trash cans tipped over and the theater curtains turned on their side. Then the hallways turned upside down, and passengers crawled on bruised knees through the dark. Others jumped alone into the cold Mediterranean Sea.

The terrifying, chaotic escape from the luxury liner was straight out of a scene from “Titanic” for many of the 4,000-plus passengers and crew on the cruise ship, which ran aground off the Italian coast late Friday and flipped on its side with a 160-foot (50-meter) gash in its hull. At least three bodies had been recovered and divers searched the underwater belly of the boat for a few dozen more who remained unaccounted for. By late Saturday, the number of missing had dwindled to about 40.

The Friday the 13th grounding of the Concordia was one of the most dramatic cruise ship accidents in recent memory. It immediately raised a host of questions: Why did it hit a reef so close to the the Tuscan island of Giglio? Did a power failure cause the crew to lose control? And why did crew members tell passengers they weren’t in danger until the boast was listing perilously to the side?

The delay made lifeboat rescue eventually impossible for some of the passengers, some of whom jumped into the sea while others waited to be plucked to safety by helicopters. Some boats had to be cut down with an axe.

“We had to scream at the controllers to release the boats from the side,” said Mike van Dijk, from Pretoria, South Africa. “It was a scramble, an absolute scramble.”

Van Dijk said the boat he was on ? on the upended port side ? got stuck along the ship’s wall as it came down.

“It was a hell of a sound, the crunching,” he said.

Costa Crociera SpA, which is owned by the U.S.-based cruise giant Carnival Corp., defended the actions of its crew and said it was cooperating with the investigation. The captain was detained for questioning by prosecutors, investigating him for suspected manslaughter, abandoning ship before all others, and causing a shipwreck, state TV and Sky TV said. Carnival Corp. issued a statement expressing sympathy that didn’t address the allegations of delayed evacuation.

France said two of the victims were Frenchmen; a Peruvian diplomat identified the third victim as Tomas Alberto Costilla Mendoza, 42, a crewman from Peru. Some 30 people were injured, at least two seriously.

The ship began its lurch at the beginning of dinner service in the ship’s two-story dining room, where passengers described a scene of frantic confusion.

Silverware, plates and glasses crashed down on them from the upper floor balcony, children wailed and darkened hallways upended themselves after the ship began its lurch. Panicked passengers slipped on broken glass as the lights went out while crew members insisted nothing serious was wrong.

“Have you seen ‘Titanic’? That’s exactly what it was,” said Valerie Ananias, 31, a schoolteacher from Los Angeles who was traveling with her sister and parents. They all bore dark red bruises on their knees from the desperate crawl they endured along nearly vertical hallways and stairwells, trying to reach rescue boats.

“We were crawling up a hallway, in the dark, with only the light from the life vest strobe flashing,” her mother, Georgia Ananias, 61 said. “We could hear plates and dishes crashing, people slamming against walls.”

She choked up as she remembered the moment when an Argentine couple handed her their 3-year-old daughter, unable to keep their balance as the ship listed to the side.

“He said,’Take my baby,’” Georgia Ananias said, covering her mouth with her hand. “I grabbed the baby. But then I was being pushed down. I didn’t want the baby to fall down the stairs. I gave the baby back. I couldn’t hold her.”

Whispered her daughter Valerie: “I wonder where they are.”

The Ananias family was among the last passengers off the ship, left standing on the upended port side. They were forced to exit from a still-attached lifeboat that became impossible to use once the ship began to tip over; so they climbed a ladder dropped too them off a deck and shimmied down a rope to a waiting rescue vessel.

“We thought we were dying four times,” Valerie said, recounting the most terrifying moments in their escape.

A top Costa executive, Gianni Onorato, said Saturday the Concordia’s captain had the liner on its regular, weekly route when it struck a reef. Italian coast guard officials said the circumstances were still unclear, but that the ship hit an unknown obstacle.

Despite some early reports that the captain was dining with passengers when his ship crashed into the reef, he was on the bridge, Onorato said.

“The ship was doing what it does 52 times a year, going along the route between Civitavecchia and Savona,” a shaken-looking Onorato told reporters on Giglio, a popular vacation isle off Italy’s central west coast.

He said the captain was an 11-year Costa veteran and that the cruise line was cooperating with Italian investigators to find out what went wrong.

Malcolm Latarche, editor of maritime magazine IHS Fairplay Solutions, said a loss of power coupled with a failure of backup systems could have caused the crew to lose control.

“I would say power failure caused by harmonic interference and then it can’t propel straight or navigate and it hit rocks,” Latarche said.

There were no firm indications that anyone was trapped. Rescuers carried out extensive searches of the waters near the ship for hours and “we would have seen bodies,” said Coast Guard Capt. Cosimo Nicastro.

Many passengers complained the crew didn’t give them good directions on how to evacuate and once the emergency became clear, delayed lowering the lifeboats until the ship was listing too heavily for many to be released.

Several other passengers said crew members told passengers for 45 minutes that there was a simple “technical problem” that had caused the lights to go off.

Seasoned cruisers knew better and went to get their life jackets from their cabins and report to their “muster stations,” the emergency stations each passenger is assigned to, they said.

Passengers said they had never participated in an evacuation drill, although one had been scheduled for Saturday. The cruise began on Jan. 7.

Miriam Vitale, a hostess on the cruise liner who disembarked earlier this week in Palermo, told SkyTG24 the ship conducts a drill every 15 days. She said that since passengers on the Concordia embark or disembark every day, some passengers could miss it depending on which day they begin the trip.

Surviving passengers huddled under woolen or aluminum blankets in a middle school on the Italian mainland of Porto Santo Stefano, where passengers were ferried early Saturday from Giglio. Some wore their life preservers, their shoeless feet were covered with aluminum foil.

Christine Hammer, from Bonn, Germany, shivered near the harbor as she waited for a bus to take her somewhere ? she didn’t know where. She wore her gray cashmere sweater and a silk scarf with a large pair of hiking boats loaned to her by an islander after she lost her shoes in the scramble. Her passport, credit cards and phone were left in her cabin.

Hammer, 65, said the ship lurched to the side as she ate an appetizer of cuttlefish, sauteed mushrooms and salad on her first night aboard her first-ever cruise, a gift to her and her husband, Gert, from her local church where she volunteers.

“We heard a crash. Glasses and plates fell down and we went out of the dining room and we were told it wasn’t anything dangerous,” she said.

Alan and Laurie Willits from Wingham, Ontario, celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary, said they were watching the magic show in the ship’s main theater when they felt an initial lurch, as if from a severe steering maneuver. That was followed a few seconds later by a “shudder” that tipped trash cans over.

The subsequent listing of the ship made the theater curtains seem like they were standing on their side.

“And then the magician disappeared,” Laurie Willits said.

Florida-based Carnival Corp. issued a brief statement Saturday.

“Our hearts go out to everyone affected by the grounding of the Costa Concordia and especially the loved ones of those who lost their lives. They will remain in our thoughts and prayers in the wake of this tragic event.”

Costa Cruises said about 1,000 Italian passengers were onboard, as well as more than 500 Germans, about 160 French and about 1,000 crew members. The State Department said about 126 U.S. citizens were onboard.

Coast guard Cmdr. Francesco Paolillo said the exact circumstances of the accident were still unclear, but that the first alarm aboard went off about 10:30 p.m., about three hours after the Concordia had begun its voyage from the port of Civitavecchia to Savona, in northwestern Italy. No SOS was sent, he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

The vessel “hit an obstacle,” that tore a 50-meter (160 feet) gash in the side of the ship and started taking on water, Paolillo said. It wasn’t clear if the obstacle was a jagged, rocky reef or something else, he said.

The captain, Paolillo said, then tried to steer his ship toward shallow waters, near Giglio’s small port, to make evacuation by lifeboat easier.

Five helicopters from the coast guard, navy and air force took turns airlifting survivors still aboard and ferrying them to safely.

Costa Cruises said the Costa Concordia was sailing on a weeklong cruise across the Mediterranean Sea that began Jan. 7 in Savona with stops at Civitavecchia, Marseille, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Cagliari and Palermo.

The Concordia had a previous accident in Italian waters, ANSA reported. In 2008, when strong winds buffeted Palermo, the cruise ship banged against the Sicilian port’s dock, and suffered damage but no one was injured, ANSA said.

___

D’Emilio reported from Rome; contributing to this report were David Stringer in London, Franklin Briceno in Lima, Peru and Curt Anderson in Miami.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-01-14-EU-Italy-Cruise-Aground/id-12c3daa93a4847feb8ffe70304e6b93f

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(Reuters) ? Stock index futures pointed to a flat to slightly lower open on Wall Street on Thursday, with S&P 500 futures down 0.14 percent, Dow Jones futures down 0.10 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.01 percent at 0925 GMT.

Chevron Corp (CVX.N) will be in the spotlight after it warned that fourth-quarter profit would be significantly below the previous quarter, with production still falling short of prior expectations. Shares of the group trading in Frankfurt (CVX.F) were down 2.1 percent.

Nervous investors kept the euro currency and European stocks within narrow ranges on Thursday morning with the markets focused on any signal from the European Central Bank’s rate meeting about a policy easing and a Spanish bond sale that will test demand for Europe’s debt.

The ECB was seen taking a breather this month after cutting interest rates, pausing to assess the impact of a series of measures it took in late 2011. In a Reuters poll, 56 out of 66 economists expected rates to remain at the current level, with investor focus on a news conference with ECB President Mario Draghi, starting at 1330 GMT.

Greece may need more funds from European partners bailing out the country if not enough private creditors sign up for a voluntary swap of bonds to cut the country’s debt burden, its deputy finance minister said on Thursday.

China’s inflation rate eased to a 15-month low in December, though food prices are a reminder of the risks the government is weighing as it tilts policy towards boosting growth as internal and external demand for Chinese goods falters.

Car sales in China climbed 5.2 percent in 2011, the slowest pace since the nation’s car culture took off at the turn of the century, as consumers shunned local brands after Beijing scrapped tax incentives for small cars.

China’s economy is being weighed down by slowing growth in the United States and the European Union, but the possibility of a hard landing should be ruled out, said David Lipton, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L) is to axe 3,500 investment bank jobs and sell or shut equities and advisory business under a 3-year plan to further reduce risk and focus more on domestic retail and corporate banking.

Big 5 Sporting Goods Corp (BGFV.O) cut its quarterly earnings forecast and posted weak sales, as a warmer-than-expected weather hurt demand for winter merchandise, sending shares down 13 percent in after-hours trading.

Infosys Ltd (INFY.NS), the No.2 Indian software exporter, trimmed its full-year revenue growth outlook for a second time and warned of lower client spending due to the debt crisis in Europe, sending its shares down nearly 8 percent to their lowest in more than a month.

Raymond James Financial Inc (RJF.N) said on Wednesday it agreed to acquire Southeast investment bank and brokerage Morgan Keegan from Regions Financial Corp (RF.N) for $930 million in stock, concluding a drawn-out auction.

Morgan Stanley has cut 10 fixed-income jobs, mainly in sales and trading, in Singapore and Hong Kong, as competition from Asian banks heats up in that asset class and traditional markets shrink.

On the macro front, investors awaited weekly jobless claims and December retail sales as well as business inventories for November.

U.S. stocks held firm near recent five-month highs on Wednesday as investors awaited key bond market tests for Europe in the next two days that could determine the direction of the euro zone crisis.

The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) slipped 13.02 points, or 0.10 percent, to 12,449.45. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (.SPX)(.INX) gained 0.40 points, or 0.03 percent, to 1,292.48. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) gained 8.26 points, or 0.31 percent, to 2,710.76.

(Reporting by Blaise Robinson; Editing by Helen Massy-Beresford)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120112/bs_nm/us_markets_stocks

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Enlarge Lynne Sladky/AP Shoppers look at a display at the Dadeland Mall in Miami on Nov. 25. Princeton professor Sheldon Garon says Americans spend too much and save too little compared to Europeans and Asians.

Lynne Sladky/AP Shoppers look at a display at the Dadeland Mall in Miami on Nov. 25. Princeton professor Sheldon Garon says Americans spend too much and save too little compared to Europeans and Asians.

The 2008 financial crisis made it clear: Americans save too little, spend too much and borrow excessively, says Princeton professor Sheldon Garon. In Western Europe and East Asia, governments aggressively encourage people to save through special savings institutions and savings campaigns. Garon has just released a new book, Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves. He discussed his findings with NPR: Do Americans spend more than people in Western Europe and Asia? “They definitely do. You can look at consumption levels and control for purchasing power over the last several decades, and America is simply in a league of its own. The only people who come close are people in Britain, but they are about 85 percent of the level of American consumption. Germans, French and others are in the 70 percent range, Japanese even a little lower. So Americans spend like no one else.”

Were we savers before? The Benjamin Franklin admonition was to save money. Did we do that up until a certain point? “Benjamin Franklin had more of an effect on Europe and Japan in the 19th century than he did on us. [Still,] we were good savers [in earlier times] where we had good savings institutions, like savings banks, in New England and the mid-Atlantic and Upper Midwest. “But many people in America, particularly in the South and West, didn’t even have an accessible bank as late as 1910 in which they could save. We became very good savers during World War II and in the few decades after World War II.” What happened in the more recent decades from the ’80s on out, where we seem to have greatly stepped up our use of credit cards and other kinds of debt? “You’ve identified the 1980s as the right point — that’s when you have almost a perfect storm in terms of deregulating financial institutions that results in a tremendous outpouring of credit in various ways. The credit card industry is deregulated after about 1980. They can charge whatever they want on interest rates; they tend to then see their credit-card operations as cash cows; they tend to target riskier and riskier customers.

U.S. Household Saving Rate
Percent of disposable personal income

“There’s also the creation of the home equity loan, which more or less did not exist before the mid-1980s. But the 1986 tax law reforms made home equity loans — the interest on them — tax deductible just like home mortgages. No other form of credit was tax deductible. “So you had an explosion of home equity, and that resulted in lots of middle- to upper-income homeowners actually draining the equity out of their homes as they expanded their lines of credit. And we got to a point where, in so many different ways, Americans came to the conclusion: Why would you save when it was so easy to get credit?” These habits we’ve developed — shop till you drop — it seems like it’s so much a part of our culture to overconsume that it’s got to be hard to reverse that direction. What has to happen to make us better savers? “One thing is the unfortunate: Many households — millions of households — don’t have the means to get more credit and to spend more now, so that automatically is going to make people more cautious. But I think institutionally, we need to do several things. We need to improve the access of lower-income households to savings institutions.

“We just witnessed Bank of America and other banks trying to charge an extra fee on people with debit cards, particularly with low minimum balances. That tends to discourage people. [Among lower-income households] 25 percent of them are unbanked: They don’t have bank accounts. “So we need to incentivize banks to create … small savers accounts [such as those in Europe]. They have a low or minimum balance, that have no fees, [and they] actually pay an interest rate that people can see. These can be subsidized by government working with banks — we can do that. “We need to clearly do more to curb predatory lending, and I think we need to revise our tax laws, which right now incentivize really affluent taxpayers to contribute to their retirement accounts and to buy more and more housing, while not incentivizing lower- and middle-income households to put more of their money away in savings. In many countries, small savings accounts are tax exempt. Here we have the opposite — tax exempt advantages incentivize borrowing, not saving.

How optimistic are you that things could change? “It’s a long shot, and as you have implied, there’s a lot of resistance out there. On the other hand, if we can’t even talk about the problem, if we can’t even talk about the benefits of some saving and we think that only consumer spending is good for the economy, then we’re not even getting to first base on this. We have to begin talking about the benefits of saving, and how we might restore a balance between saving and spending.”

Why Americans Spend Too Much

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In the same space as BeCouply and Tokii, social “network” for couples theicebreak is now available on the iPhone — for those that want to stay hyper-connected their SOs via mobile. Upon opening theicebreak gives you two options: First is the option to answer an “icebreaker” or a question related to your partner, your relationship or your personality — like, “What are the best words to hear from your partner?” or “What’s your favorite thing to do when the weather gets cold?” You also have the option to “capture today’s moment,” or share a picture of something you saw during the day that “amazed you.”

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PDF Connoisseur – Kdan Enterprise iPad Edition: A versatile, top-notch file reader from Kdan Mobile?s PDF product series that includes the following features: Save to PDF, Text to Speech, annotations, file transfer, and more. [$9.99 for iPad - App Store link] iDownloader Pro: Easily download anything from the…

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