British skier sets record for solo Antarctic trek

FILE - In this Nov. 19, 2011 file photo provided by the Kaspersky ONE Trans-antarctic Expedition, Felicity Aston takes a picture of herself at Union Glacier days before she traveled to her starting point on the Ross Ice Shelf for a solo trek across Antarctica. Aston, 34, crossed Antarctica in 59 days, pulling two sledges for more than 1,084 miles (1,744 kilometers) from the Leverett Glacier to the Hercules Inlet on the Ronne Ice Shelf. On Monday morning, Jan. 23, 2012, she tweeted that she has completed her journey. (AP Photo/Kaspersky ONE Trans-antarctic Expedition/Kaspersky Lab, File)

FILE - In this Nov. 19, 2011 file photo provided by the Kaspersky ONE Trans-antarctic Expedition, Felicity Aston takes a picture of herself at Union Glacier days before she traveled to her starting point on the Ross Ice Shelf for a solo trek across Antarctica. Aston, 34, crossed Antarctica in 59 days, pulling two sledges for more than 1,084 miles (1,744 kilometers) from the Leverett Glacier to the Hercules Inlet on the Ronne Ice Shelf. On Monday morning, Jan. 23, 2012, she tweeted that she has completed her journey. (AP Photo/Kaspersky ONE Trans-antarctic Expedition/Kaspersky Lab, File)

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) ? British adventurer Felicity Aston completed her crossing of Antarctica on Monday, becoming the first woman to ski across the icy continent alone.

She did it in 59 days, pulling two sledges for 1,084 miles (1,744 kilometers) from her starting point on the Leverett Glacier on Nov. 25.

"!!!Congratulations to the 1st female to traverse Antarctica SOLO.V proud," her Twitter message said.

She announced her achievement from Hercules Inlet on Antarctica's Ronne Ice Shelf, where she waited alone in her tent for bad weather to clear so that a small plane could pick her up and take her to a base camp. Other expeditions also have gathered there, preparing for the summer's last flight off the continent.

Aston also set another record: the first human to ski solo, across Antarctica, using only her own muscle power. A male-female team already combined to ski across Antarctica without kites or machines to pull them across, but Aston is the first to do this alone.

A veteran of expeditions in sub-zero environments, Aston, 34, worked as a meteorologist in Antarctica and has led teams on ski trips in the Antarctic, the Arctic and Greenland.

Her journey took her from the Ross Ice Shelf, up the Leverett Glacier and across the Transantarctic Mountains to the continent's vast central plateau, where she fought headwinds most of the way to the South Pole. Then she turned toward Hercules Inlet and a base camp where the Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions company provides logistical support to each summer's Antarctic expeditions.

She arranged in advance for two supply drops so that she could travel with a lighter load, one at the pole and one partway toward her final destination. Otherwise, her feat was unassisted.

Aston tweeted that she's been promised red wine and a hot shower after she gets picked up. "No plane tonight but I have my last Beef and Ale Stew to enjoy for my final evening alone ? yum!" she wrote.

And while she pondered her achievement in her last hours of solitude Monday, she shared more of her thoughts in a phone call she broadcast live online.

"It's all a little bit overwhelming. After days and days to get here, I seem to have arrived all in a rush. I don't really feel prepared for it. It feels amazing to be finished and yet overwhelmingly sad that it's over at the same time," she said. "I can't quite believe that i'm here and that i've crossed Antarctica, just over 1700 kilometers, just under 1,000 nautical miles, 14.5 degrees and 59 days and here I am."

"I'm just going to sit here and enjoy these last precious moments on my own, and running through my mind all those days behind me, the plane leaving me on my own ... the awful day when I thought I was going to get blown away, all those days of bad weather, slogging through those mountains, up those hills with my sledges, arriving at the pole, leaving the pole again, more bad weather and just empty horizons..."

"I remember all the bad times, sitting in my tent, thinking 'what on Earth am I doing?', but despite all that, this has been the most amazing privilege, to have the opportunity to do this, and just a huge thank you to all those people who made it possible."

___

Online:

Aston's expedition site: www.kasperskyonetransantarcticexpedition.com

Aston on Twitter: www.twitter.com/felicity(underscore)aston

Aston on ipadio: http://www.ipadio.com/broadcasts/TransantarcticExpedition/2012/1/22/Transantarctic-Expedition--63rd-phonecast

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-01-23-AA-Antarctica-Solo-Crossing/id-7534e8806dea4912bc76d961544c8624

alabama crimson tide barry larkin at the drive in jay z new song torrie wilson alabama lsu bcs national championship

Eye on State of the Union, Obama promotes tourism

President Barack Obama sings before speaking at a campaign event, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, at the Apollo Theatre in the Harlem neighborhood of New York. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)

President Barack Obama sings before speaking at a campaign event, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, at the Apollo Theatre in the Harlem neighborhood of New York. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)

President Barack Obama pauses before shaking hands at a campaign event, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, at the Apollo Theatre in the Harlem neighborhood of New York. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)

President Barack Obama speaks at a campaign event, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, at the Apollo Theatre in the Harlem neighborhood of New York. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Eye on the State of the Union address, President Barack Obama is citing his work to bolster tourism and aid the economy as he readies to outline his election-year priorities.

Obama used his radio and Internet address Saturday to bring attention to steps he outlined in Florida's Walt Disney World on Thursday to make it easier for tourists to travel to the U.S. The White House said more than 1 million U.S. jobs could be created over the next decade, according to industry projections, if the nation took a larger share of the international travel market.

"We want more visitors coming here. We want them spending money here. It's good for our economy, and it will help provide the boost more businesses need to grow and hire," Obama said in the radio address.

The tourism initiative was part of an executive order Obama signed to increase non-immigrant visa processing capacity in China and Brazil by 40 percent this year and expand a visa waiver program that lets participating nationals to travel to the U.S. for stays of 90 days or less without a visa.

Obama said too often "we've seen Congress drag its feet and refuse to take steps we know will help strengthen our economy."

The president said that has prompted him to take executive actions to give states more flexibility to help children meet higher educational standards, help small businesses with federal contracts get paid at a faster rate, offer incentives for companies to hire veterans and help families refinance their mortgages.

Obama will deliver his State of the Union address on Tuesday. The president said he'd offer a "blueprint for actions we need to take together ? not just me, or Congress, but every American ? to rebuild an economy where hard work and responsibility are rewarded. An economy that's built to last."

Republicans said Obama's previous State of the Union addresses have offered plenty of promises but few results.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, delivering the weekly Republican address, said Obama told Americans in 2009 that an economic stimulus plan would improve the economy and offered health care reform as an economic boost in his 2010 speech. Last year, Hensarling said Obama vowed "that his budget would help us 'win the future.'"

Instead, the lawmaker said 1.9 million fewer Americans have jobs since the president took office, gas prices have doubled and more Americans are now on food stamps than ever before.

"Regardless of the president's good intentions, his policies have failed the American people. His policies haven't just failed to make the economy better ? they have actually made it worse," he said, criticizing the president for rejecting a pipeline extension that would have run from Canada to Texas and added thousands of jobs.

___

Online:

Obama address: www.whitehouse.gov

GOP address: www.youtube.com/HouseConference

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-01-21-Obama/id-2d442efa196c4e80a444d17944890f21

asus transformer nebraska football nebraska football online deals leap pad lauren alaina lowes

'Open Marriage,' Newt Gingrich? Not Sure That's Traditional (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | Newt Gingrich loves to use indignation to get out of answering sticky questions, and the last installment of the debate season without end held no exception. According to Yahoo! News, Newt raged at moderator John King for asking about Marianne Gingrich's assertion (ex-wife No. 2, for anyone keeping score) that Newt wanted an open marriage.

Newt said of the question: "The destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office."

I'll give you a moment to digest that statement. You might need a glass of irony to help it go down.

When you're a celebrity, your life's details aren't relevant to fulfilling the requirements of your job. You can do or say things away from your work that aren't so great, yet still be such a great entertainer (Alec Baldwin, I'm looking at you) that we'll turn on the TV anyway. Celebrities' lives do not impact ours.

A politician isn't a celebrity. A politician is a representative of the people, both in Washington and to the rest of the world. A politician has actual power to shape lives, destroy lives, make things easier for people and make things so much harder.

If Newt Gingrich's platform supported inclusion of non-traditional relationships, then focusing on his alleged desire for an open marriage would venture into salacious. Why? Because then we would know that his view is that people's relationships are their relationships and people's bedrooms are their business.

That is not his platform. Instead, he is a vocal proponent of protecting "traditional marriage." While that term has become code for marriage between a man and a woman, traditional marriage is monogamous. Whether Newt asked for an open marriage or not -- and he says it's not true -- we know he was not monogamous.

Journalists ask these questions and discuss the answers because we, the people, have a right to know the true political agendas of the individuals in whom we place the trust of our nation. Without journalists, politicians could say absolutely anything and do absolutely anything and we would never know. That is what it seems Newt means when he says that journalists make it "harder" to govern the country: it would be far easier for politicians to get elected if no one questioned their true agendas, and then for them to do whatever they wanted, in secrecy, once they got there.

That sentiment alone should terrify anyone in this country with even a passing fondness for the Constitution.

Trust is a delicate thing, and yet we must support all of the weight of our governance on something so fragile. We are entitled to have as much information as possible to find the people least likely to crumble under our trust.

We do agree on one point, though, Newt. It does seem harder and harder to find a decent person running for public office.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/oped/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120120/cm_ac/10860481_open_marriage_newt_gingrich_not_sure_thats_traditional

josh hamilton beavis and butthead cardinals jennifer nicole lee jennifer nicole lee chris harris peter schiff

Video: President Obama Sings Al Green at the Apollo Theatre (Little green footballs)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/188827382?client_source=feed&format=rss

boxing day radio shack bethany hamilton bethany hamilton after christmas sales macys stratfor

Action-Oriented Analytics Can Help Manage Risk | Big Fat Finance ...

Risk has always been an integral part of business, but as I?ve noted, companies deal with risk with varying degrees of effectiveness. A complex, ongoing process, operational risk management identifies risks to support successful operations of an organization, estimates the monetary and other measurable impacts if a risk event occurs, establishes methods for mitigating the severity of impacts should they occur, continuously measures the probability of a risk occurring within a relevant period of time, periodically reports on the risk environment to appropriate decision-makers and alerts executives and managers when risk thresholds are crossed. These important activities should make operational risk management of greater interest to executives in today?s volatile business environment.

Operational risk management also is a key reason for an emerging trend toward action-oriented IT systems. The easier availability of broad sets of corporate data and third-party data, along with the ability to process it quickly and explore implications in real time, makes it practical to expand the scope of risk management and improve the effectiveness of responses when risk events occur. Operational risk now can be managed more comprehensively ? and the potential consequences mean it should be.

However, many companies handle risk haphazardly, leaving it to functional or business units. One reason for this is that ?risk? means different things to different parts of the business. Another is that companies have had a hard time defining operational risks in a way that is measurable and therefore manageable. Often, the data needed to measure and monitor operational risks comes from disparate sources. For example, senior executives should be made aware if health and safety issues have become more probable because required maintenance or other actions have been skipped. Rather than relying solely on document-based attestations by, say, plant managers, higher-ups could also be alerted if maintenance repair and overhaul (MRO) data suggests procedures have been skipped or if accounting data shows a large enough positive variance in maintenance expense accounts. Another reason for slipshod risk management is that relatively few companies use advanced analytics, as our research shows. Rather than relying solely on sales-to-date data as the means of assessing the probability of missing future sales targets, for instance, they could employ predictive analytics (used by just one in eight companies) in a variety of ways to generate alerts as soon as actual results diverge too far from expected in many areas, whether sales of complementary products, cumulative rainfall or social media mentions.

Until now it?s been very difficult to assemble and use enough data to quantify risk. Because of this, operational risk management has been confined to a handful of industries (notably financial services, which is literally a business of numbers), a few kinds of projects (for instance, in engineering and construction, aerospace or defense) or the most easily measured general corporate risks (tracking revenues, expenses and cash flow). To be sure, some individual businesses and some functional areas are better than others at managing operational risk quantitatively. For example, companies that decide to make their supply chains leaner are more exposed to risk of disruption. The scope of the costs associated with leaner supply chains became clear this past year because of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the floods in Thailand. Corporations that had implemented comprehensive supply chain analytics were in a better position to react to these events because they had a more detailed understanding of their implications than those that had to wait days or weeks to quantify and analyze their positions.

Now that data is increasingly available and big data technologies as well as in-memory processing capabilities are accessible, corporations can apply a range of analytics and reports to limit the probability of preventing risk events from occurring or mitigating their impacts if they do occur. However, even though the technology foundation for more comprehensive risk management exists, it?s unclear how quickly companies will adopt it. The history of business computing is full of examples of business process changes lagging the introduction of technology that make them possible. For instance, in our ERP Innovation benchmark we found that two decades after modern ERP systems were introduced, only half of companies were using imaging ? which increases the availability of source documents such as invoices ? and only half used streamlined end-to-end processes such as procure-to-pay.

One of the first technology applications where executives should put operational risk management to work is scorecards. Corporations use balanced scorecards because all business decisions involve some sort of trade-off, such as market share vs. profitability. Moreover, all business decisions involve some form of risk and often more than just the risk of not achieving a business objective. Weighing and balancing trade-offs recognizes the reality that managers and executives must make these decisions intelligently in ways that are consistent with their organization?s overall objectives and risk appetite. Indeed, I believe that scorecards that don?t explicitly include risk are not truly balanced.

One reason for using scorecards as the jumping-off point for capturing and applying risk metrics is that this tool can be adopted and adapted at whatever pace a corporation prefers. Since few companies include risk metrics in management assessments today, there are few best practices at hand. Lacking a well-established set of metrics for a variety of operational functions, early adopters of operational risk metrics may well want to proceed with caution (as one would expect from people concerned with risk). Corporations that have already started with big-data initiatives and have deployed in-memory analytics systems have made most of the investment necessary to support an operational risk management initiative. They can follow the steps I outlined in the first paragraph above, from identifying the most relevant risks through reporting them. This is not a trivial task, but with the right tools it need not be overwhelmingly time-consuming. When done across a company it can keep senior executives alert to the severity of risks and their potential impacts and help them manage the organization more safely on an ongoing basis.

Source: http://bigfatfinanceblog.com/2012/01/20/action-oriented-analytics-can-help-manage-risk/

ohio state kobe bryant wife bonjovi dead amber portwood sam shepard sam shepard johnny knox

Romanian riots reveal growing gloom in region (AP)

BUCHAREST, Romania ? Romanian cities are gripped by the worst street violence in over a decade. Slovaks seem poised to re-elect a confrontational and divisive populist. Hungary alarms the European Union with laws that erode democratic rights.

In former Soviet bloc nations now part of the EU, frustration is mounting due to economic stagnation and worrisome governance, encouraging street protests and unpredictability that could jeopardize growth and stability in an already troubled part of the continent.

Many of the problems are common far beyond the region: indebted states hiking taxes and slashing state spending to stay solvent. But the added burdens come to a region that was already grappling with much deeper poverty and corruption than in the West before the global financial crisis hit.

In recent days, the situation has played out most dramatically in Romania, where pent-up fury with the government and an eroding standard of living exploded into days of street protests that at times turned violent. In Bucharest over the weekend, 59 people were injured in fighting that saw riot police turn tear gas on protesters who attacked them with stones and firebombs.

"What happened last weekend is only the beginning," commentator Gabriel Bejan wrote in Tuesday's Romania Libera daily paper. "We are in an important electoral year and such confrontations will be frequent. What will they lead to when nobody seems willing to take a step back?"

Much of the frustration goes back to the way Romania transitioned to democracy after its 1989 coup against dictator Nicolae Ceausescu ? with many former communists keeping control of power and resources. The results, today, are seen in entrenched cronyism, a huge gap between rich and poor and a lack of government transparency that feeds a widespread sense of injustice.

"The Mafioso government stole everything we had!" protesters declared on banners at several of the rallies that have taken place in more than a dozen Romanian cities since Thursday and appear set to go on.

Hungarians have also been taking to the streets with increased frequency in recent months over a new constitution and a blizzard of new laws that concentrate power for the right-wing Fidesz party of Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Freedom House, a U.S. group that carries out a yearly global survey of political freedom and civil liberties, has observed "hints of re-emergent illiberalism" across central Europe, said Christopher Walker, the group's vice president for strategy and analysis.

This year's report, to be published Thursday, will highlight what it sees as a deteriorating climate for civil liberties in Hungary due to threats to the independence of the press and the judiciary.

"Hungary has shown a bent towards illiberalism which is really inconsistent with the European idea," Walker said.

The EU agrees. On Tuesday the EU Commission launched legal challenges against Budapest over its new constitution and other laws which took effect Jan. 1, saying they undermine the independence of the national central bank and the judiciary and do not respect data privacy principles.

Orban's tightening hold on many institutions comes thanks to an overwhelming 2010 victory for his party on the heels of near economic collapse by the previous, Socialist-led government.

But the mounting EU pressure appeared to have some effect: EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Wednesday that he received a letter from Orban promising to modify the legislation that raised EU concerns.

In Slovakia, meanwhile, opinion polls predict a probable return to power in March elections for Robert Fico, a former left-wing prime minister who has also worried Western diplomats with a sympathetic approach toward authoritarian states. Fico took Russia's side during its 2008 war with Georgia ? bucking a trend across the former Soviet bloc to express concern over Moscow's use of power. He has also celebrated Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution.

In striking contrast to trouble in much of the region, there is one relative oasis: Poland, the largest of the 10 ex-communist states that joined the EU in recent years. Its economy has seen unusual dynamism given the difficult times, thanks in some part to massive infrastructure projects in recent years as Poland prepares to co-host this summer's European football championships with Ukraine.

But economists fear that its economy, too, could lose momentum after the Euro 2012 and with far-ranging austerity measures set to start taking effect this year in an effort to keep state debt from spiraling out of control.

But for now, anger is clearly greater in Hungary and Romania, and in both places the unfolding developments are shaped greatly by the legacy of communist rule.

In Hungary, Orban has justified his upending of the country's laws by arguing that the former communists and their way of thinking were never purged entirely from democratic Hungary.

Romania sees many of its problems exacerbated by the continued rule of some former communists, including President Traian Basescu, 60, who under Ceausescu was a ship captain for the state shipping company Navrom in Antwerp. That was a position of privilege which allowed him to earn coveted hard currency.

Feeding frustration is a sense that there is too little transparency over the doings, past and present, of Romania's leaders.

More than two decades after the overthrow of Ceausescu, authorities have opened only a handful of the files of the former dreaded Securitate secret police, which had 760,000 informers in a nation of 22 million. Former agents are believed to be active in politics, business and the media ? though the public has never been given the full picture.

Also, only a handful of senior officials were ever tried for the mass shootings of unarmed civilians in the 1989 revolution, perpetuating a sense that that story, too, is being covered up.

A political analyst who has studied the revolutions of Eastern Europe, Christopher Chivvers with the RAND Corporation, sees many of today's injustices as being rooted in the overly rapid move toward a market economy in the 1990s.

When state-run industries were privatized then, it was generally only the former communist apparatchiks who knew how to maneuver the system to take hold of them and run them.

"Those who had the know-how ? the former regime officials ? were able to snatch up large amounts of former state property in ways that ultimately entrenched their position in society and in the state," said Chivvers, who is also a professor in European studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Many Romanians express deep frustration over this.

"We still have unanswered questions regarding shady privatization deals made in the 90s," said Cristina, a Romanian woman who asked that her last name not be published because she works for the government and fears retribution.

___

Vanessa Gera reported from Warsaw, Poland. Associated Press writer Karel Janicek contributed from Prague.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120119/ap_on_re_eu/eu_eastern_europe_s_gloom

bobolink breeders cup hamilton park brian wilson freedom writers lemony snicket lemony snicket

Jonathan Talat Phillips: Gnosis: The Not-So-Secret History of Jesus (Huffington post)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS Feeds and Widgets via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/187828155?client_source=feed&format=rss

mary j blige cole hamels cole hamels curtis painter apple news conference apple news conference apple news