Chris Weidman takes UFC on Fox 2 decision

CHICAGO -- On 11 days notice, Chris Weidman took a less-than-stellar split decision over Demian Maia. The judges saw it 29-28, 29-28, 29-28 for Weidman at the United Center on Saturday night.

Though both men are accomplished grapplers, the first round started with nothing but stand-up. Neither fighter truly got an edge in striking, though it was Maia who got the first takedown. The two got back to their feet quickly, and Maia followed up with aggressive strikes.

Weidman got the takedown to start the second round, but again, they did not stay there for long. Maia's face started to show damage from the repeated hits Weidman delivered, but Weidman's movement around the cage slowed as the round went on. As Weidman slowed, Maia delivered more kicks and punches. Weidman tried for a takedown with a minute left, but Maia easily avoided it. In the final 20 seconds, Weidman was able to get the takedown, and turned over for a choke, but the round ended before he could secure it.

Weidman return to the clinch in the third round, moving towards Maia and landing knees and punches. They continued their evenly matched striking fest, though both fighters were clearly exhausted.

The crowd in Chicago was unenthused about the action, but that's what happens when two grappling aficionados deciced to engage in a grappling match.

UPDATE: After the bout, UFC president Dana White tweeted that the scores were read wrong. Weidman actually won by a unanimous decision.

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mma-cagewriter/chris-weidman-takes-ufc-fox-2-split-decision-014653119.html

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Trio of actors confirmed to present at Spirit Awards (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES, Jan 27 (TheWrap.com) ? Penelope Ann Miller, Michael Shannon and Zoe Saldana are the first confirmed presenters for this year's Film Independent Spirit Awards, Film Independent announced exclusively to TheWrap on Friday.

In addition, comedian/actor/singer Kate Micucci will perform on the show, which will take place on February 25 on the beach in Santa Monica.

Miller and Shannon appear in the two films that led all Spirit Awards nominees with five nominations each. Miller plays the wife of silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) in "The Artist," while Shannon is nominated for Best Male Lead for his role as a father with disturbing, apocalyptic visions in "Take Shelter."

Saldana's film include the non-indie "Avatar," and she most recently appeared in the action film "Colombiana."

Micucci has appeared on "Scrubs" and "Raising Hope," and is part of the musical comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates. She frequently performs music and comedy onstage in Los Angeles, including regular appearances with the Upright Citizens Brigade.

The Film Independent Spirit Awards will be hosted by Seth Rogen and broadcast on February 25 by IFC.

(Editing By Zorianna Kit)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/movies/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120128/film_nm/us_spirtawards_presenters

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Obama to talk price of college at Michigan

By Alan Silverleib and Tom Cohen, CNN

updated 2:04 AM EST, Fri January 27, 2012

President Obama spoke at a UPS freight facility in Las Vegas, Nevada Thursday.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

  • Obama will speak at the University of Michigan on Friday morning
  • He gave a commencement speech there in 2010
  • The president is on a three-day swing through five politically important states
  • On Thursday, Obama spoke in Las Vegas about increased federal investment in clean energy

(CNN) -- President Barack Obama will talk about keeping college affordable during the final leg of his road trip focusing on themes announced in the State of the Union address.

Obama's speech at the University of Michigan will be his second there since he took office as he gave the commencement speech in 2010.

On Thursday, Obama spoke in Las Vegas about increased federal investment in clean energy and told a crowd in Colorado that America must compete in a global growth industry.

The federal government on Thursday announced plans to sell off oil and gas leases on 38 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico seafloor in a new domestic energy push.

The leases could yield as much as 1 billion barrels of oil and 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the Interior Department estimates. The sale scheduled in June will be the second since the Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010 when nearly 5 million barrels of crude spewed into the Gulf.

Obama mentioned the planned lease sales in his remarks at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, Colorado, which has a 1-megawatt solar array and last year test-piloted jets that run on advanced biofuels.

"We are the Saudi Arabia of natural gas," he told the military crowd in detailing his strategy to increase domestic oil and gas development while promoting investment and innovation in clean energy development.

His energy proposals come amid criticism from Republicans and the oil industry for the administration's rejection of a permit to build a pipeline to transport oil from Canada's tar sands production in northern Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico.

Obama has said the permit was rejected because Republicans forced a decision before there was time for a necessary review of a proposed route change requested by Nebraska officials, including the state's Republican governor. The president also said the rejection was due to timing, rather than the merits of the project that would create several thousand jobs for the two-year construction period.

In his remarks earlier Thursday at a UPS facility in Las Vegas, Obama called his energy plan an "all-out, all-in, all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of American energy."

Among other things, Obama promised more federal assistance for local governments to upgrade their automotive fleets while also pushing new tax incentives for cleaner corporate vehicles.

The president also said the administration is working to develop up to five highway natural gas corridors, and he announced a new competition to encourage the development of breakthroughs for natural gas vehicles.

"We've got to keep at it. Think about what could happen if we do," Obama said. "Think about an America where more cars and trucks are running on domestic natural gas than on foreign oil. Think about an America where our companies are leading the world in developing natural gas technology and creating a generation of new energy jobs. ... We can do this."

The president's remarks Friday will come on the last day of a three-day road trip building on themes announced in Tuesday night's State of the Union address.

CNN's Matt Smith contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/27/politics/obama-trip/index.html?eref=rss_mostpopular

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Google and Bing Searches Help Us Pirate Music? (Mashable)

Of course the public is going to pirate music when 80% of our search results for music direct us to illegal sites. That's the claim made by a coalition of entertainment industry groups in a private document sent to the U.K. government.

[More from Mashable: Facebook IPO: Everything You Need to Know [VIDEO]]

In the paper, the coalition says that Google and other search engines such as Bing implicitly support pirating and copyright infringement by directing users to illegal sites as opposed to the site of rights-holders.

As reported by The Guardian, the document pitches the government to impose stricter guidelines on Google to monitor these links by continuously reviewing key search words and to better screen mobile apps on Android smartphones to stop illegal sharing. The group is also asking the government to create a voluntary body that could remove copyright-infringing websites from search engine results on Google and its peers.

[More from Mashable: What is ACTA? Why Should You Care?]

The paper was sent to Ed Vaizey, the Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries in the U.K. as part of an ongoing conversation about online piracy. The paper was submitted on behalf of major British rights-holder organizations including the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) the Motion Picture Association (MPA) the Premier League, the Publishers Association and the Pact. The search engine accusations come hot on the heels of the SOPA and PIPA controversies and in the middle of a renewed debate over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) rolling through Europe.

The coalition of rights-holders see search engines as the gatekeepers to piracy. As The Guardian reports:

The document claims that 16 of the first 20 Google search results for chart singles link to "known illegal sites", according to searches by the BPI in September. In an attempt to persuade the government to clamp down on search engines, the groups claim that 41% of Google's first-page results for bestselling books in April last year were "non-legal links" to websites.

The idea is that if Google and other search engines stopped linking to illegal sites, than people would have a harder time pirating music and other digital content. Although Google has made efforts to honor removal requests based on illegal sites and piracy, the rights holders say that "as time goes on, the situation is getting worse rather than better."

Well, yeah. Internet censorship is like launching an offensive on Russia in the winter: Long, drawn out and ultimately ineffective. Internet regulation and censorship will have a hard time catching up with the hacker community and the thousands of websites dedicated to sharing content, legal and otherwise.

Should Google try to do more or are the coalition's requests entirely wrong-headed? Sound off in the comments.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Vanessa Pike-Russell

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/digitalmusic/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/mashable/20120127/tc_mashable/google_and_bing_searches_help_us_pirate_music

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Greek village priest held over church treasure dig (AP)

THESSALONIKI, Greece ? Police in northern Greece have arrested a village priest and a church elder for allegedly digging for treasure in the chancel of the church.

A police statement Friday says villagers complained of loud drilling noises late Thursday from the church at Fyska near Kilkis, some 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Thessaloniki.

Officers found a two-by-one-meter (six-by-three-foot) hole in the chancel of the 150-year-old church of the Prophet Elijah. Police are seeking four other people suspected of taking part in the illegal dig ? in which a pneumatic drill was used.

Illegal treasure hunting has increased amid Greece's acute financial crisis. In recent months, police have made a string of arrests, mainly in the north of the country, and located several tunnels.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/religion/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120127/ap_on_re_eu/eu_greece_church_treasure

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Economy likely ended 2011 with strong growth (AP)

WASHINGTON ? A weak year for the economy likely ended on a hopeful note.

The economy likely grew at annual rate of 3 percent in the October-December quarter, according to a survey by FactSet. The Commerce Department will release the actual figure Friday.

The gain would represent modest improvement from this summer, when the economy grew just 1.8 percent. However, even with the strong finish, economists believe the economy expanded just 1.7 percent for the whole year ? roughly half the growth in 2010.

And growth is expected to slow in the first three months of this year. A key reason is wages have failed to keep pace with inflation. That will likely force many consumers to pull back on spending after splurging over the holidays.

Consumer spending is important because it makes up 70 percent of economic activity.

Businesses are also expected to reduce spending in the first quarter after building up their stockpiles in the final months of 2011.

Richard DeKaiser, a senior economist at Parthenon Group, expects just 2 percent annual growth in the January-March quarter. But Kaiser says that should be the weakest quarter. He expects the economy to gain strength in each quarter and grow 2.6 percent for the entire year.

The year is off to a good start. Companies invested more in equipment and machinery in December. The unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent last month ? the lowest level in nearly three years ? after the sixth straight month of solid hiring.

People are buying more cars, and consumer confidence is rising. Even the depressed housing market has shown enough improvement to make some economists predict a turnaround has begun.

Still, many economists worry that a recession in Europe could dampen demand for U.S. manufactured goods, which would slow growth. And without more jobs and better pay, consumer spending is likely to stagnate.

The Federal Reserve signaled this week that a full recovery could take at least three more years. In response, it said it would probably not increase its benchmark interest rate until late 2014 at the earliest ? a year and a half later than it had previously said.

The central bank also slightly reduced its outlook for growth this year, from as much as 2.9 percent forecast in November down to 2.7 percent. The Fed sees unemployment falling as low as 8.2 percent this year.

DeKaiser said part of his optimism stems from a view that housing sales and prices will rise moderately this year. That should lift the battered construction industry, which ended last year with three months of gains in single-family home construction.

At the moment, housing remains the weakest part of the economy. New-home sales fell last month, and total sales for 2011 were the lowest on records dating back to 1963.

"I think the clouds will gradually lift over housing. Rising home prices will make consumers feel wealthier and this will translate into stronger consumer spending," DeKaiser said.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/economy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120127/ap_on_re_us/us_economy

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Pentagon budget: top 3 winners and losers

As the Pentagon rolled out its budget preview Thursday, it stressed the tough work involved in cutting $487 billion over the next decade.?But in Pentagon parlance, the word ?cut? is a relative term. While the Defense Department?s base budget initially decreases from $553 billion this year to $525 billion in fiscal year 2013 ? more than its $480 billion base budget in 2008, when US troops were in the midst of two wars.?The budget will then rebound steadily to $567 billion in fiscal year 2017.?

With this in mind, here are the top three winners and losers:

- Anna Mulrine,?Staff writer

The Pentagon has made no secret of its plan to shift its attention toward the Pacific (read China) in the years to come. This is a boon for the US Navy, whose aircraft carriers and submarines will be key in any US military maneuvering that involves China, senior military officials stress. It is a change of fortune for a service branch that often felt marginalized amid the decade?s two large counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Indeed, despite some robust calls to reduce just one of the 11 aircraft carriers in the Navy?s fleet, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced Thursday that this would not be happening. He cited the need for a Navy ?that maintains forward presence and is able to penetrate enemy defenses.?

What?s more, the Pentagon will be putting money into developing, for example, ?a new afloat forward staging base? and ?a design that will allow new Virginia-class submarines to be modified to carry more cruise missiles.?

The Pentagon is also currently working to develop an ?undersea conventional prompt global strike option? ? essentially arming submarine-based missiles with conventional warheads ? despite a Bush administration decision to scrap it amid concerns that they would be mistaken for nuclear missile strikes.

?Modernizing our submarine fleet will be critical to our efforts to maintain maritime access in these vital regions of the world,? Mr. Panetta said. One senior military official pointed to the Navy?s ?particularly useful role? in the seas around China, ?for the things we want to do in the future.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/cl3MMHOInKQ/Pentagon-budget-top-3-winners-and-losers

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Success Story: A Shift in Communications Worked!

We love to hear success stories about the nonprofits we work with. Elexa Liu works with Hope Worldwide in Hong Kong and has participated in many of our training events both online and in person (Yes, she flew all the way to Seattle to take part in the Total Focus Marketing Plan Workshop I teach with Nancy Schwartz). She recently sent me this email on what happened after she started focusing on telling a good story instead of inundating her supporters with boring statistics. ? ~Kivi

Dear Kivi,

Hope you are doing well. Again, thank you for sharing/teaching/passing on your knowledge and experience and resources about nonprofit marketing and communication.

I have been trying to implement all that I am absorbing from you and others (notably Tom Ahern) in my communications pieces ? tell stories, ?report? back what good has been done with the donations, lay forth visions, and thank, thank, and thank. In essence, going for the heart and the head. For the past 2 years, unsolicited donations from existing supporters has been increasing.

A private individual recently asked us to submit a proposal to apply for a donation of approximately HK$400,000 (about US$51,600). She came to our centre for a visit and told us that our newsletter was what caught her attention as she researched about different NGOs to support. She said most of what she read were boring facts and program details. Instead, we had a story that touched her heart but we also laid out the vision of what we do to help the kids.

So thank you! I still have much to learn (sometimes I feel like my head would explode!) but this was indeed very encouraging to me.

Best regards,
Elexa

Have you made a shift in your communications that?s working? We?d love to hear your story too, so please feel free to share in the comments.

Source: http://www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com/blog/2012/01/26/success-story-a-shift-in-communications-worked/

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I'm So Glad This Chocolate-Themed Phone Isn't Coming To The US [Phones]

If you thought that Apple's attempts to make a wild west-inspired skin for the iPhone was horrific, think again. What we have here is Sharp's attempt to woo their Japanese market with, uh, a chocolate-themed phone. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/oHIiekcLP4w/im-so-glad-this-chocolate+themed-phone-isnt-coming-to-the-us

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