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Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Monday, December 5, 2011
Video: Hazing scandal casts a cloud
>>> there are multiple investigations under way in the state of florida after the suspected hazing death of a drum major at a university long known for its famed marching band . tonight as his family grieves, questions remain about what happened to that student aboard a bus, and if there was a pattern of behavior that went unchecked. nbc's thanh truong has more.
>> reporter: with pageantry, precision and precaution, the florida a and m marching band has played in front of presidents and sports fans alike. but the alleged hazing scandal that left robert champion dead this week prompted florida 's governor to have all state universities review their anti -- hazing policies.
>> our children go to our universities, and we expect them to come back home.
>> reporter: champion was found unconscious, apparently beaten on the band's bus shortly after performing at a football game in orlando two weeks ago. this week, 911 recordings from that night were released.
>> is he breathing or is he not breathing?
>> >> we don't know if he's breathing or not. but we need an ambulance asap.
>> the exact cause of champion's death is still unknown and details of the hazing are unclear. multiple investigations are under way. the university has expelled four students for their alleged roles, and now more accusations of abuse are emerging. just days before champion died, a 18-year-old female band member filed a police report saying she was beaten during a hazing. the university has not responded. and the former band member who sued and settled with the university describes how he was hit with a wooden paddle.
>> after the paddling stopped, physical blows, face slapping.
>> reporter: the university fired its long-time band director . julian white acknowledges there was a pattern of hazing but says he reported it to proper authorities.
>> in all cases where i suspect there's hazing involved i take immediate action.
>> reporter: with their son laid to rest, champion's parents plan to sue the university.
>> no one wants to be standing in our shoes. no one wants to hear on a phone call that your son collapsed and died.
>> reporter: the school's president vows to eliminate hazing at the campus. a pledge that may have come too late for one student. thanh truon, abc news, atlanta.
Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/45536716/
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Charlie Sheen's ex-wife arrested in Colorado (Reuters)
DENVER (Reuters) ? Brooke Mueller, the ex-wife of actor Charlie Sheen, was arrested for cocaine possession and assault in Aspen, Colorado, the ski resort town where Sheen was arrested for assaulting Mueller in December 2009.
The Aspen Police Department said in a news release that officers were conducting "a routine walk through" of the Belly Up bar late Friday night when a woman reported she was assaulted by Mueller.
"The woman identified Brooke Mueller, 34, of Los Angeles, California as the aggressor," the release said.
Mueller was arrested at a second bar sometime after midnight and charged with felony possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, and misdemeanor assault, police said.
Mueller posted a $11,000 bond and was released. She has a December 19 court date. Her spokesman Steve Honig said she would have no immediate comment on the arrest.
On Christmas Day 2009, police were called to an Aspen home the couple was renting for the holidays and arrested Sheen for assaulting Mueller during an argument. Sheen pleaded guilty to the charge in August 2010 and was ordered to serve 30 days in a California drug and rehabilitation facility.
The couple divorced earlier this year.
Sheen was fired from his role on TV's "Two and a Half Men," sitcom after he ranted against his employers and posted videos on the Web in which he bragged about his "winning" ways and the "tiger blood" he had running through in his veins.
He will return to television in summer 2012, in a new "Anger Management" series on FX.
(Editing by Greg McCune)
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Romney, Gingrich proceed carefully in GOP showdown
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, speaks to supporters and volunteers during a rally Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011, in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, speaks to supporters and volunteers during a rally Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011, in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)
Republican presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks at a town hall style event in the Staten Island borough of New York Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. Gingrich praised GOP presidential rival Herman Cain for bringing optimism and big ideas to the 2012 campaign on Saturday. Polls show that Gingrich's candidacy has surged in recent weeks, with many showing him topping the Republican field. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)
Gloria Cain, left, blows a kiss to the crowd as she arrives with her husband, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, right, at an event Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011, in Atlanta. Cain announced he is suspending his campaign for president. (AP Photo/David Goldman)
MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) ? The once-bursting 2012 Republican presidential field is narrowing to a two-man race, and GOP voters have one month before casting the first votes to winnow it to one. Barring a dramatic new turn, their chief options will be the steady but often bland demeanor of Mitt Romney and the idea-a-minute bombast of Newt Gingrich.
Herman Cain's suspension of his campaign Saturday, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry's continued struggles to regain traction, have focused the party's attention on Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, and Gingrich, the former House speaker. They offer striking contrasts in personality, government experience and campaign organization.
Romney has maintained a political infrastructure since his 2008 presidential bid, especially in New Hampshire. Gingrich, whose campaign nearly collapsed several months ago, is relying much more heavily on his televised debate performances and the good will he built up with conservatives as a congressional leader in the 1980s and 1990s.
Gingrich's efforts appear to be paying off in Iowa, which holds first in the nation caucuses January 3.
A Des Moines Register poll released late Saturday found Gingrich leading the GOP field with 25 percent support among likely caucus goers. Texas Rep. Ron Paul had 18 percent support and Romney, who began campaigning in Iowa in earnest only recently, had 16 percent.
Gingrich's and Romney's political philosophies and differences are a bit harder to tease out. Both men have changed their positions on issues such as climate change. And Gingrich, in particular, is known to veer into unusual territories, such as child labor practices.
Gingrich, Romney and the other Republican contenders except former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman sat for interviews at a Fox News campaign forum Saturday hosted by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who sought the GOP nomination in 2008. Questioned by three Republican state attorneys general, the candidates described ways they would scale back federal programs.
Cain's announcement in Atlanta offered a possible opening for Romney or Gingrich to make a dramatic move in hopes of seizing momentum for the sprint to the Jan. 3 Iowa caucus. Neither man did. They appear willing to play things carefully and low-key for now.
At a town hall meeting in New York sponsored by tea party supporters, Gingrich declined to characterize the race as a direct contest between himself and Romney. Any of the remaining GOP contenders could stage a comeback before the Iowa caucuses, he said. "I'm not going to say that any of my friends can't suddenly surprise us," Gingrich said.
But once high-flying contenders such as Perry and Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota have not managed to bounce back so far, despite weeks of trying.
Gingrich was careful when asked why voters should choose him over Romney.
"I'll let you decide. I think we are very, very different in a wide variety of ways," Gingrich said.
Romney seemed as eager as Gingrich to avoid casting the contest as anywhere close to decided. He repeatedly turned aside reporters' invitations to light into Gingrich, offering only gentle critiques. As usual, he aimed much sharper remarks at President Barack Obama.
"I don't think people have really settled down, in a final way, to decide who they're going to support in the nomination process," Romney told reporters in Manchester, where he held a rally and knocked on a few doors. "I hope they give us a good, careful look."
That was about as much emotion and daring as he showed all day. With the second-tier candidates ramping up their criticisms of Gingrich, Romney stuck to his steady-as-she-goes campaign style of criticizing Obama's economic record, and saying little else.
Cain's once-prospering campaign was undone by allegations of sexual wrongdoing. Gingrich has been the most obvious beneficiary of Cain's precipitous slide. But Perry, Bachmann and possibly others are likely to make a play for Cain's anti-establishment tea party backing. Time is running short for them to establish themselves as the top alternative to Romney, who has long been viewed with suspicion by many conservatives.
Cain said he would offer an endorsement. His former rivals were quick to issue statements on Saturday praising his conservative ideals and grassroots appeal.
Romney seemed loath on Saturday to criticize Gingrich or to stir the political waters. Reporters asked why his background makes him more qualified than Gingrich. "Speaker Gingrich has been a legislator and has worked in government affairs, and he can describe his own background," Romney replied.
Why are his positions better than Gingrich's on issues such as immigration, Romney was asked. "We have very similar views on a whole host of issues," he said. "There are some places, I'm sure, where there are differences." The biggest difference, he said, is "our life experience."
Asked if he fears that Gingrich will draw more tea party support, Romney said tea party activists "want someone who comes from outside Washington," someone who has spent his life "in the private sector, who has learned the experiences of the American economy."
"Speaker Gingrich is a fine person," Romney said, "but he spent his life in Washington, the last 40 years. That doesn't exactly line up with the tea party."
He also said he differed with Gingrich on child labor laws. Gingrich recently suggested that children as young as nine should work as assistant school janitors, to earn money and learn work ethics.
Romney noted that Gingrich would end taxes on dividends and capital gains for everyone, whereas Romney would keep them in place for the wealthiest Americans.
Romney's generally mild reproofs contrast with the hits Gingrich is taking from rivals such as Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. Paul's campaign is airing a video accusing Gingrich of "serial hypocrisy." It shows Gingrich in a TV commercial with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., talking about the dangers of climate change.
Gingrich has called the Pelosi spot a stupid mistake on his part.
Romney's campaign had hundreds of volunteers knocking on doors and making phone calls Saturday, pushing a slogan that presidential hopefuls must "earn it."
Romney has a vacation home in New Hampshire, where he is well known. His campaign structure there isn't perfect, however.
Aides sent reporters to 827 Chestnut Street in Manchester, where Romney would start some door-knocking of his own. But there was no one home at 827, or the next house he tried, or the three after that. In nearly an hour of door-knocking, Romney met only a handful of voters, and all of them already seemed in his corner.
Asked at the day's end why he was being so gentle with Gingrich, Romney replied: "I think the right course for me is to continue talking about my vision for the country, my experience, and how I'd lead the nation. And Speaker Gingrich will get the chance to do the same thing."
___
Fouhy reported from New York.
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Romney, Gingrich proceed carefully in GOP showdown (AP)
MANCHESTER, N.H. ? The once-bursting 2012 Republican presidential field is narrowing to a choice between former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Republican voters have one month before casting the first votes to winnow it to one.
Romney and Gingrich offer striking contrasts in personality, government experience and campaign organization. Gingrich has scant infrastructure in the early voting states. Romney has maintained an organization since his 2008 campaign, especially in New Hampshire.
Both candidates were campaigning on Saturday, Romney in New Hampshire and Gingrich in New York. Neither offered few criticisms of each other. Romney seems content for now to let other rivals such as Ron Paul aim the sharpest barbs at Gingrich, while Gingrich focused more on his vision to bring the U.S. in line with his vision.
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Sunday, December 4, 2011
A day in the life of an Apple store
The cast members are ready. The curtain goes up. It's showtime at the Apple (AAPL) Store in Palo Alto.
Here comes our first contestant for Stump the Genius Bar Geniuses: Bill Mainzer, of Portola Valley. He's clutching a MacBook Pro the size of a radiator. He looks worried.
"I've got a glitch," he says. "It keeps shutting itself off."
It's 10 a.m. on a recent weekday. For the next 11 hours, the 40 or so "Specialists" and "Creatives" and "Geniuses" employed inside this glass-skinned jewel box on University Avenue will eagerly welcome the Bill Mainzers of the world, cheerfully put out one fire after another, soft-sell first-timers on the mesmerizing features of the new iPad 2, and essentially play starring roles in one of the biggest blockbusters in the annals of American retail.
In a rare outbreak of media outreach, Apple offered a Mercury News reporter and photographer a close-up, day-in-the-life look at what some consider the chain's flagship, because it's just down the street from former CEO Steve Jobs' home.
As anyone who's ever stepped inside one of Apple's 360 worldwide outlets knows, these are not simply stores. They are products in their own right, with all the design dazzle of a MacBook Air. They kick out
sales revenue that would make most shopkeepers salivate. And they are a destination, a veritable Tahiti for geeks.On this day in downtown Palo Alto, the Apple Store will also serve as day care center, lonely hearts club, homework haven, temporary homeless shelter, startup incubator and recording studio.
It's 10:10 a.m. and in walks Francesca Freedman, of Menlo Park, trying to swap the white iPhone 4S she bought for her boyfriend "because he wants a black one." Alas, black ones are apparently in short supply. So despite the window poster boasting "The Perfect Gifts are Perfectly Easy to Get," Freedman will still be trying to make that swap seven hours later when she returns to wait in the nightly queue for available phones.
Still, smiling specialists like Anush Venkatesan and Bianca Antonio stand ready this morning to help, or at least offer moral support to haggard Apple fans. A clutch of customers gathers at the Genius Bar, where Apple's best and brightest turn loose their inner Sherlock Holmes on flummoxed customers.
An hour later, retired college professor Francina Nur is ready to pay for her new MacBook Pro. "I came for an iPad appointment," Nur confesses. "But I realized when I got here that I should upgrade my laptop." Her clerk, dressed in a red shirt that matches the red signage on the walls, is wearing a Secret Service-type earpiece that presumably allows him to communicate with every other red-shirted, wired-up clerk.
Olivia Viveros, a stay-at-home mom from Palo Alto, sidles up to the Genius Bar. What'll she have? "My iMac is slow at times," she says. "It keeps crashing, but I think it's because my kids keep downloading stuff. I need to clean it out." Like many here today, Viveros is a repeat customer and a huge fan of the store and its staff. "My kids love this place, too. What I love most is that you can touch and play with all the products. It's a clean, comfortable space, and no other store compares. Sony tried, but it just isn't the same."
Shortly after 1 p.m., visiting Swiss banker Isabelle Montegut, 38, is asking how she can set up an iTunes account based in the United States and access it from Geneva. She says she appreciates Apple's "secrecy and security. We try to do the same in banking: be discreet."
No problem there. Apple is as notoriously secretive about its retail operations as it is about its products. Curious about the size of the store? Apple won't release square footage. Wonder how many customers come through here each day? Apple won't say. Of the 100-plus staffers, how many are women? No comment.
After a midafternoon lull, the store comes alive. Only a few of the 40 stools are unoccupied. Sarah Westbook, owner of Palo Alto's Piccadilly Pets, is at a horseshoe-shaped desk in the back where classes sometimes are given, working with an Apple specialist on setting up her new online -- and top-secret -- business.
"I come in a couple times a week," she says, as a clerk fetches a cup of water for her 9-year-old Weimaraner, Luna, the Apple fandog at her side. "I love the people who work here and they love my dog."
As the daylight fades, the neon "waxing" and "massage" signs from across University Avenue reflect in the Apple Store windows, mixed in with Santa Claus chatting away on a super-sized iPad window display. Kathleen Schwartz waits for an appointment to have her broken MacBook looked at -- "It's getting wiggly," she says -- while daughters Ellen, 9, and Elisabeth, 7, play a "Dora the Explorer" video game in the children's pod, both dressed like fairies. ("Every day for them," says Mom, "is fairy day.")
Near the front, silver-haired regular Rosemary Halley playfully grabs the arm of her young specialist, Venkatesan, while they talk about whether her "hunt-and-peck" typing style would work on the iPad she's lusting after. "He's the best," exclaims Halley, who would not give her age but admits, "I stopped counting my birthdays quite a while ago." She says the staff "never hard-sells me on anything. The products sell themselves."
Dr. Ginny Fong is not quite so sold. "I'm so frustrated after spending three hours here," Fong says as she leaves the store empty-handed. She says neither Apple nor Sprint, her carrier, could figure out a problem with her new iPhone, with each company blaming the other.
Fong, though, seems to be in the minority as the sun goes down on another exciting day in Apple land. Middle-schooler James Pedersen works on an essay, a squatter on a huge MacBook Pro in the back. ("When they catch me," he says, "they take away my chair to try and make me leave.") Geetha and Vijay Kancharia, of Santa Clara, wait while specialist Chico Patel closes the 25 apps that had been quietly running and eating up their iPhone's battery life. And the entire staff stops to applaud and hug a departing employee as she makes her way out of the store on her last day.
And while Freedman returns as instructed to hopefully swap that white iPhone for a black one, and 8-year-old Holden Johnson takes a workshop on recording his own music using GarageBand ("I want to learn whatever the teacher teaches us," he says), darkness settles over Palo Alto and the Apple Store comes aglow like a cathedral lit up with a million candles.
From one end of the shop to the other, all but a few of the 50 customers seem enraptured, sitting or standing silently, their heads bowed in reverence toward the iPads and iPhones they hold in their fingers like rosary beads.
Contact Patrick May at 408-920-5689. Follow him at Twitter.com/patmaymerc.
apple stores By the numbers
Total number worldwide: 360
Total number of employees: Approximately 36,000
September quarterly retail revenue of all stores: $3.6 billion
Apple's total revenue that quarter: $28.3 billion
Average revenue per store in that quarter: $10.7 million
Number of visitors to all Apple stores over time: More than 1 billion
Source: Apple
Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_19459455?source=rss_viewed
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Herman Cain 'suspends' presidential campaign, effectively ending it
Herman Cain continues to deny any wrong doing involving other women. But the "continued distraction" has led him to suspend his campaign, ending what had been a meteoric political rise.
Faced with continued allegations of inappropriate behavior involving women, Herman Cain has ?suspended? his presidential campaign ? effectively ending it.
Skip to next paragraphCain continues to vigorously deny any wrong-doing. With his wife Gloria standing nearby, smiling and applauding, Cain said: ?I am peace with my God. I am peace with my wife, and she is at peace with me. I am at peace with myself.?
But ?with a lot of prayer and a lot of soul-searching,? he said, ?I am suspending my presidential campaign because of the continued distraction, the continued hurt caused me and my family.?
Cain also noted the impact on his ability to raise the campaign funds necessary to stay competitive in a field that ? for the moment, at least ? includes two strong and politically experienced front-runners, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Undoubtedly, that was the most important tactical reason for Cain?s dropping out of the race.
Herman Cain speaks out: His seven most memorable one-liners
Just hours before his announcement Saturday, the Des Moines Register?s new Iowa Poll showed Cain in political free-fall.
The poll ? a significant indicator of how the candidates are doing in the first state to begin choosing the GOP nominee one month from today ? had Cain dropping from a very competitive 23 percent in October to just 8 percent as the news of an alleged 13-year affair was breaking.
?Although Cain has denied the affair, bad feelings about him doubled during the time the poll was in the field, from Sunday through Wednesday,? Jennifer Jacobs, the newspaper?s chief politics writer, reported Saturday. ?On a question about the candidate most likely to have a scandal in the White House, Cain?s numbers rose from 25 percent at the start of polling, then to 36 percent, and to 47 percent at the end of polling. Asked which candidate caucus goers most want to see in person, Cain was at 22 percent in a two-day rolling average of Sunday and Monday polling. That fell to 8 percent for the Tuesday-Wednesday results.?
Meanwhile, Cain also has been dropping in polls in Florida and South Carolina ? both early-voting states.
A businessman and broadcaster with no elected experience, Cain quickly gathered campaign momentum following the announcement that he was running for president ? a fresh face untarred by the sometimes dirty business of politics, especially in Washington (although he?d been a lobbyist).
He was an attractive personality who could burst out in decent baritone song, he did well in the debates, and his ?9-9-9? plan for fixing the economy had the benefit of simplicity (if not accuracy once the details were penciled out).
But he made a number of significant gaffes on major issues, he seemed to know little if anything about foreign affairs, and he appeared to flip-flop (or at least be inarticulate) about his position on abortion.
Then came a series of women ? four so far, two of whom have spoken out publicly ? making what appeared to be credible sexual harassment charges. At least two of those cases had resulted in significant settlement payments to women who had worked for Cain when he headed the National Restaurant Association.
With those charges still out there, and despite Cain?s vehement denials of ever having acted inappropriately with women, Ginger White last week alleged that she and Cain had had a 13-year sexual affair. Though Cain denied that, he admitted that he had given money to Ms. White without telling his wife.
Suspending his campaign allows Cain to continue raising and spending campaign funds. Just before his speech in Atlanta Saturday, he had met with major donors.
Cain ended his campaign suspension announcement ? what was a virtually a total withdrawal speech ? by saying that he would endorse one of the other candidates ?in the near future.?
Still, he said, ?I am not going to be silenced, and I am not going away.?
Election 101: What you should know about Herman Cain
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