ECB's Draghi urges closer integration in eurozone (AP)

BRUSSELS ? European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi said the 17 countries that use the euro must unify more closely to avoid a repeat of the debt crisis that's rocked the common euro currency and is threatening the global financial system.

He also hinted that the European Central Bank may play a more pivotal role in the resolution of the crisis, but he insisted that the governments must first back proposals to align their budgetary policies.

"Other elements might follow, but the sequencing matters," Draghi told the European Parliament Thursday. "And it is first and foremost important to get a commonly shared fiscal compact right.

"Confidence works backwards: if there is an anchor in the long term, it is easier to maintain trust in the short term," he added. "After all, investors are themselves often taking decisions with a long time horizon, especially with regard to government bonds."

In his speech, Draghi said a "new fiscal compact" is needed, that would force governments to play by more stringent rules.

"Just as we effectively have a compact that describes the essence of monetary policy ? an independent central bank with a single objective of maintaining price stability ? so a fiscal compact would enshrine the essence of fiscal rules and the government commitments taken so far, and ensure that the latter become fully credible, individually and collectively," he said.

A summit of EU leaders on Dec. 9 is expected to focus on how to make the eurozone more unified.

Draghi also says Wednesday's joint intervention by the world's leading central banks to make dollars more easily available is only a temporary measure.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111201/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_europe_financial_crisis

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Fed's No. 2 sees scope for further monetary easing (Reuters)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) ? Janet Yellen, the Federal Reserve's influential vice chair, said on Tuesday the U.S. central bank has room to ease monetary policy further, possibly by providing more information on the path of interest rates.

Another top official, Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank President Dennis Lockhart, said he sees a benefit in providing more information on the policy assumptions underlying Fed forecasts. He made clear, however, that he believes the current policy stance is appropriate.

With its usual economic lever of interest rates already pressed close to zero and its balance sheet triple the size of its pre-crisis norm, the central bank has been considering how it can better use communications as a policy tool.

The Fed has been debating for months ways to provide more clarity on when it might eventually tighten monetary policy, although officials have differed on how best to proceed.

Yellen said turmoil in financial markets stemming from both Europe's banking crisis and general uncertainty about the outlook had increased the risks to the global economy, and that the Fed could offer additional support to U.S. growth.

"The scope remains to provide additional accommodation through enhanced guidance on the path of the federal funds rate or through additional purchases of long-term financial assets," she told a conference sponsored by the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank.

A number of communications shifts are being discussed, including a controversial proposal from the Chicago Fed president to allow for temporarily higher inflation. Officials are also considering offering explicit forecasts for the overnight federal funds rate.

The deputy governor of Sweden's central bank, Lars Svensson, urged the Fed to begin providing forecasts for short-term rates as a way to push borrowing costs lower.

"Publishing a policy-rate path would be the most direct way to affect interest-rate expectations, especially since central banks should have better information about their intentions than anyone else," he told the San Francisco Fed conference.

WORDS? ASSETS? BOTH?

Some Fed officials have expressed a predilection for purchasing mortgage-backed securities if policymakers do decide that further easing is needed.

But others appear to favor deeper policy guidance as a way to stimulate economic activity.

In August, the Fed said it expected to hold the federal funds rate at ultra-low levels at least until mid-2013; it has been searching for ways to express that vow in terms of economic variables rather than time.

In a Reuters poll earlier this month, 16 of 19 primary dealers said they expected further Fed easing in coming months, most through changes in communications.

For his part, Lockhart repeated his view that the Fed's present policy stance was appropriate, although he said no options should be taken off the table.

"I am skeptical that further asset purchases will produce much gain in terms of increased economic activity," he told business students at the University of Georgia in Atlanta.

Still, Lockhart, who will rotate into a voting seat on the Federal Open Market Committee next year, appeared warm to the idea of offering more explicit policy guidance, calling it a "worthy priority."

Yellen, who is leading a subcommittee on communications at the Fed, did not tip her hand. But previously she has said it might be fruitful to use the Fed's existing quarterly forecasts as a platform for further transparency.

MORE HELP NEEDED

Yellen also called for policies to spur a faster recovery in the battered U.S. housing market, although she did not provide any specific recommendations.

In September, the Fed decided to dip its toes back into the housing market by reinvesting proceeds of maturing mortgage and housing agency debt from its portfolio back into the mortgage-backed securities market.

Yellen said the contribution to the U.S. recovery from housing, which is usually key to economic rebounds, is likely to remain tepid in the near term, and that consumer spending is also not likely to be a key source of growth due to high household debt levels.

"The recovery in the United States and other advanced economies has been proceeding too slowly to provide jobs for millions of unemployed people," she said.

The U.S. economy grew just 2 percent in the third quarter, and the jobless rate has hovered near 9 percent all year. While the pace of recovery appears to be accelerating, the debt crisis in Europe poses a threat, as does the possibility that U.S. fiscal policy will tighten in the new year.

More broadly, Yellen worried about risks to global growth, with weak performance in advance economies being compounded by softening expansions in the emerging world.

"In effect, we face a dearth of aggregate demand, not just among advanced economies, but also for the global economy as a whole," Yellen said.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/economy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111129/bs_nm/us_usa_fed_yellen

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NASA rover launched to seek out life clues on Mars (Reuters)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) ? An unmanned Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Florida on Saturday, launching a $2.5 billion nuclear-powered NASA rover toward Mars to look for clues on what could sustain life on the Red Planet.

The 20-story-tall booster built by United Launch Alliance lifted off from its seaside launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 10:02 a.m. EST (3:02 p.m. GMT).

It soared through partly cloudy skies into space, carrying NASA's Mars Science Laboratory on a 354-million mile (556 million km), nearly nine-month journey to the planet.

"I think this mission is an important next step in NASA's overall goal to address the issue of life in the universe," lead scientist John Grotzinger, with the California Institute of Technology, told reporters shortly after the launch.

The car-sized rover, nicknamed Curiosity, is expected to touch down on August 6, 2012, to begin two years of detailed analysis of a 96-mile (154-km) wide impact basin near the Martian equator called Gale Crater.

The goal is to determine if Mars has or ever had environments to support life. It is the first astrobiology mission to Mars since the 1970s-era Viking probes.

Scientists chose the landing site because it has a three-mile-high (4.8-km high) mountain of what appears from orbital imagery and mineral analysis to be layers of rock piled up like the Grand Canyon, each layer testifying to a different period in Mars' history.

The rover has 17 cameras and 10 science instruments, including chemistry labs, to identify elements in soil and rock samples to be dug up by the probe's drill-tipped robotic arm.

'LONG SHOT'

The base of the crater's mountain has clays, evidence of a prolonged wet environment, and what appears to be minerals such as sulfates that likely were deposited as water evaporated.

Water is considered to be a key element for life, but not the only one.

Previous Mars probes, including the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, searched for signs of past surface water.

"We are not a life-detection mission," Grotzinger said. "We have no ability to detect life present on the surface of Mars. It's an intermediate mission between the search for water and future missions, which may undertake life detection."

With Curiosity, which is twice as long and three times heavier than its predecessors, NASA shifts its focus to look for other ingredients for life, including possibly organic carbon, the building block for life on Earth.

"It's a long shot, but we're going to try," Grotzinger said.

Launch is generally considered the riskiest part of a mission, but Curiosity's landing on Mars will not be without drama.

The 1,980-pound (898 kg) rover is too big for the airbag or thruster-rocket landings used on previous Mars probes, so engineers designed a rocket-powered "sky-crane" to gently lower Curiosity to the crater floor via a 43-foot (13-meter) cable.

"We call it the 'six-minutes of terror,'" said Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, referring to the landing. "It is pretty scary, but my confidence level is really high."

Curiosity is powered by heat from the radioactive decay of plutonium. It is designed to last one Martian year, or 687 Earth days.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/science/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111129/sc_nm/us_space_mars

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BlackBerry PlayBook gets root thanks to childishly named DingleBerry tool

DingleBerry
It's been a long time coming, but the PlayBook has finally been rooted. Devs neuralic, xpvqs and Chris Wade have been hard at work and have finally discovered a persistently exploitable hole that enables unfettered root access to the PlayBook. The culmination of their efforts, DingleBerry, hasn't been released just yet, but it should be hitting the series of tubes in the not too distant future. Obviously having super user access opens a world of posibilities to developers, but there are some immediate advantages too. For one, with DingleBerry the creators were able to re-enable web access to Hulu -- not only bypassing the lack of an app, but skipping the usual requirement of a Plus account for mobile consumption. Head on after the break to see the hack in action.

Continue reading BlackBerry PlayBook gets root thanks to childishly named DingleBerry tool

BlackBerry PlayBook gets root thanks to childishly named DingleBerry tool originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/29/blackberry-playbook-gets-root-thanks-to-childishly-named-dingleb/

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Usher?s Ex Wife Tameka Is Suing For Sole Custody

Usher’s ex-wife Tameka Raymond has filed suit against the singer in a bid to receive full custody of their two kids and recoup $34,000 in child support. The Yeah! hitmaker filed for divorce from Tameka in June, 2009, and together they share joint physical custody of their two boys, Usher Raymond V, four, and Naviyd [...]

Source: http://www.celebritymound.com/ushers-ex-wife-tameka-is-suing-for-sole-custody/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ushers-ex-wife-tameka-is-suing-for-sole-custody

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New Zealand Labour leader concedes to PM Key (AP)

WELLINGTON, New Zealand ? The leader of New Zealand's Labour party conceded defeat to Prime Minister John Key's National Party in elections Saturday, paving the way for him to return for a second term as the nation's leader.

The dominant performance by Key's National Party, however, appeared to come up just short of giving it enough votes to govern alone. Key is likely to find enough support among minor parties to shore up his leadership.

With most of the vote counted Saturday, the National Party was projected to win 60 of Parliament's 121 seats, an increase of two.

The Labour party had just 27 percent of the vote, meaning it will lose about nine of its 43 seats and prompting party leader Phil Goff to concede to Key.

"It wasn't our time this time," Goff told supporters.

The Green party, on the other hand, won 11 percent of the vote, its best showing ever.

But the big news among minor parties was the return of the anti-immigration New Zealand First party to Parliament after it didn't win any seats in the last election. The party was winning nearly 7 percent support, enough for about eight seats.

The election has been driven by Key's personal popularity. After three years in power, polls have shown the former currency trader is far more popular than the Labour party leader, Phil Goff. Key has earned the nickname "Teflon John" for the way that nothing politically damaging seems to stick to him.

"He's a clever strategist and a good manager," said Jennifer Lees-Marshment, a political studies lecturer at the University of Auckland.

She said Key has been adept at knowing when to forge ahead with policies and when to pull back. His common touch was reassuring to people when a deadly earthquake struck Christchurch last February, she said, and enabled him to share in their excitement in October when the country's national All Blacks team won the Rugby World Cup.

Key's campaign has focused primarily on the economy. He's promising to bring the country back into surplus and begin paying down the national debt within three years. Part of his plan to achieve that is to sell minority stakes in four government-owned energy companies and in Air New Zealand.

That's where the center-left Labour party found its biggest point of difference. During the campaign, Goff promised not to sell anything and to raise money by other means, including by introducing a capital gains tax and by raising the age at which people get government pensions by two years, to 67.

On the campaign trail, however, those issues got crowded out by a mini-scandal known as the teapot tape saga. While meeting at a tea shop with a political ally, Key reportedly made rude and embarrassing political comments that were captured on a recording device left by a cameraman.

Key complained to police on the grounds that it's illegal to record a private conversation, and the tape never went public.

Lees-Marshment said she thinks voters grew tired of the attention given to the story and may have begun feeling more sympathetic toward Key.

"It became a story about the story," she said. "The voters got put off by it."

The saga certainly didn't seem to do much to boost the campaign of Goff, who was effectively shut out of any coverage for a few days. Labour's lackluster result has pundits speculating Goff will be replaced as leader of the party within days of the election.

But the saga did seem to boost the fortunes of Winston Peters, who leads the small New Zealand First party. Peters grabbed the headlines with pointed criticism of Key over the affair and his poll numbers shot up.

Early results also indicated the Green party would get about 13 seats, a result leaders would be happy with.

Voters were also deciding on whether to keep their electoral system, in which parties get a proportion of parliamentary seats based on the proportion of the votes they receive. Some wanted to return to a winner-takes-all format, although polls indicated most favored sticking with their current system.

In early results, about 54 percent of voters were favoring keeping the proportional system.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111126/ap_on_re_as/as_new_zealand_election

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Black Friday Online Sales Up 24.3% (Mashable)

Black Friday is starting to look a bit more like Cyber Monday. According to IBM's study of 500 retailers, online sales on Friday were up 24.3% over last year, suggesting that people stayed home to avoid the crowds and in-store havoc. Mobile devices accounted for 14.3% of all online Black Friday traffic, up from 5.6% last year, and they were responsible for 9.8% of online sales. The iPad proved to be the king of post-Thanksgiving retail -- its users were more likely to purchase than other mobile users, with conversion rates reaching 4.6%.

[More from Mashable: Shop Small: Small Business Saturday Takes to Twitter]

Ecommerce sales increased from last year in many retail sectors, from home to apparel to beauty, and web traffic catapulted department store sales to 59% higher than last year's Black Friday.

Black Friday was a hot topic on social media channels, too. Visits to Twitter and Facebook were likely to yield chatter about Black Friday sales, out-of-stock items, parking troubles and long lines. The volume of Black Friday dialogue was 110% more than last year, and there was "a spike in positive sentiment" around and anticipation for Cyber Monday.

[More from Mashable: How Digital Marketing Fueled Fashion Label Tory Burch?s Global Expansion]

Did you use your mobile device to shop on Black Friday? Are you holding out for Cyber Monday? Let us know in the comments below.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/enterprise/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/mashable/20111126/tc_mashable/black_friday_online_sales_up243

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