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Friday, February 15, 2013
Get Pregnant Today, Get a Free Ikea Crib in 9 Months
The Pistorius Case and South Africa's Gun Problem
South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius, the first double amputee to compete in the Olympics, has been charged with murder for shooting his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp, early this morning. While initial reports suggested that the 26-year-old athlete had mistaken Steenkamp for a burglar, the BBC reported that authorities were skeptical: "Police say neighbours heard screaming and shouting around the time of the shooting, and that they had been called to investigate incidents of a domestic nature at the same house in the past."
Pistorius' ownership of and affinity for guns has been well documented by journalists, including the New York Times Magazine's Michael Sokolove and others. Check out this tweet from last November:
(Following the shooting, Nike pulled a South African TV ad featuring Pistorius and the tagline "I am the bullet in the chamber.")
The shooting is the most high-profile case from a country that, like the United States, has recently grappled with the impact of its well-established gun culture. Interestingly, firearms are not mentioned in the South African constitution, and a tough gun control law was passed in 2000. When it went into effect five years later, it put a five-gun limit on most citizens, allowing just one gun per person for self-defense purposes. As the Times explained:
But getting any gun at all, critics say, is the big task. Guns are to be automatically denied to drug or alcohol abusers, spouse abusers, people inclined to violence or "deviant behavior" and anyone who has been imprisoned for violent or sex-related crimes. The police interview three acquaintances of each applicant before deciding whether he or she is competent to own a gun. Prospective gun owners must pass a firearms course. They also must install a safe or strongbox that meets police standards for gun storage.
South Africa now ranks 50th in the world in gun ownership rates, and gun-related crime has dropped 21 percent since 2004-05. Shooting murders of women, particularly by their partners, has dropped, as shown by this chart from a 2012 report (PDF) by the South African Medical Research Council. (Murders by partners are called "intimate femicides.")
Still, in 2007, the country's gun homicide rate was among the highest in the world, ranking 12th at 17 gun murders annually per 100,000 people. To put that statistic in context: In 2007, there were 8,319 gun deaths in South Africa, a country of roughly 49 million people. The United States?No. 1 in gun ownership, and with more than six times as many people?had 9,960 gun deaths in 2012.
In many ways, American and South African gun culture and gun violence are quite different. But the possibility that Pistorius intentionally shot and killed Steenkamp brings to mind two of the most prominent pro-gun myths: namely, that keeping a gun at home makes you and your loved ones safer, and that guns make women safer.
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Thursday, February 14, 2013
Kerry's portfolio could grow with Heinz deal
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Secretary of State John Kerry's family financial portfolio could grow by hundreds of thousands of dollars as a result of the $23 billion megadeal between Nebraska billionaire Warren Buffett and a Brazil-owned investment firm to buy out ketchup and food producer H.J. Heinz Co.
Kerry, as part of his confirmation last month, agreed to divest holdings in dozens of companies after leaving his Massachusetts Senate seat. But Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, held at least $3 million in Heinz stock through family trusts as of 2010, according to his most recent financial disclosure form. She was allowed to keep those assets under a January agreement approved by government ethics officials.
Under the terms of the Heinz deal announced Thursday, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital, an investment firm based in Rio de Janeiro and New York, will pay $72.50 a share for Heinz, which closed at $60.48 on Wednesday. The buyers will pay $23 billion in cash and assume more than $4 billion in debt.
Kerry did not file an updated financial disclosure before his confirmation, so it is not clear whether his wife's trusts sold off any of its Heinz stock since 2010. But based on the Kerrys' known Heinz stock holdings of about $3 million and the stock's $49.46 per share value at the end of 2010, the couple could have reaped as much as $1 million from the terms of the offer, according to an Associated Press analysis.
Kerry told State Department officials earlier this year that his wife is a beneficiary of three family trusts, each of which held more than $1 million in Heinz stock in 2010. In his recent divestment agreement, Kerry said he was not a beneficiary of his wife's trusts but agreed to recuse himself from decisions involving the Heinz company when appropriate.
Teresa Heinz Kerry's personal fortune is reportedly worth as much as $1.2 billion, stemming from her earlier marriage to former Pennsylvania Sen. John Heinz III, who died in 1991 in a helicopter crash. Much of John Kerry's own wealth comes from his own family trusts. Worth as much as $125 million according to his disclosures, Kerry had been the wealthiest U.S. senator until he joined the Obama administration last month.
"I will need to recuse from certain matters involving H.J. Heinz Company because the investment of the trusts in H.J. Heinz Company stock is greater than their investment in other publicly traded stocks," Kerry told the State Department's Deputy Legal Adviser Richard C. Visek on Jan. 8.
Kerry also agreed to bow out when necessary from State decisions that could affect 16 of Heinz' foreign subsidiaries and partners.
The agreement indicated Kerry would complete the divestments and other arrangement within 90 days of his confirmation, which occurred Jan. 29. State officials were not immediately available to comment on the Heinz deal's impact on his finances and divestment plans.
___
AP Business Writer Seth Sutel in New York contributed to this report.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kerrys-portfolio-could-grow-heinz-deal-182845438.html
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A&E network brings free full-length episodes and movies to the iPhone
Good news for Rick and Corey fans. A&E's brought its streaming app across from the iPad to the iPhone. Better still, it has all the full length content from favorites like Storage Wars and Pawn Stars. Both the History and Lifetime have followed suit, and there's even some extra A&E content found within the app, the kind that's typically found on the show's dedicated site -- expect plenty of behind-the-scenes antics. If you're also in possession of an Xfinity Comcast account, the app will open up access to previous seasons of the network's top shows. There's still no AirPlay support, although 9to5Mac reports that it's certainly in the works. Hopefully, that means dozing off in front of A&E content on your Apple TV shouldn't be far away. In Duck Dynasty's Si Robertson's immortal words: work hard, nap hard.
Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, HD, Mobile
Via: iDownload blog, 9to5Mac
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/IUBUWhNHnxg/
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Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Get Free Financial Advice from a Professional Advisor, Today Only
Head to Kiplinger's Jump-Start Your Retirement Plan Days, 2013 to submit a question (anonymously if you like) in one of the three chatrooms (one for saving for retirement, another for income in retirement, and the last for other financial challenges). You can also read previous questions and answers from last week's session.
Although the focus of the day is retirement, you can get one-on-one financial advice for any topic. It'll be answered by a professional fee-only financial advisor.
The chat rooms are available today through 5pm ET.
Jump-Start Your Retirement Plan Days, 2013 | Kiplinger
Photo by Jason Winter (Shutterstock)
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Eagles to shift to two-back system under Kelly
Getty ImagesRegardless of the total percentage of revenue that has ended up in the pockets of the players since the new labor deal was reached in 2011, the salary cap hasn?t gone up much over the last three league years.? In 2012, the NFLPA was forced to agree to $46 million in cap penalties for the Redskins and Cowboys merely to ensure that the team-by-team cap number would go up, not down.? (And if the cap number had gone down, a mutiny would have ensued.)
This year, the increase will be modest again, despite past claims from the NFLPA that cap growth will not be primarily flat.? And that has spawned a new argument from the union and some agents:? The cap doesn?t matter and teams who want to spend will find a way to spend.
It?s accurate, to an extent.? A fairly hard cap remains in place.? While it?s possible to spend cash above the cap in any given year, every dollar given to a player must eventually be accounted for under the cap.? And with the cap not going up very much, more and more teams are in cap crunches every year ? something that rarely happened under the 2006 CBA.
The next argument is that teams can create cap space if they want to.? And that?s entirely accurate.? As long as teams are willing to squeeze certain players with existing contracts to take less money, to shift their money around, or to cut veteran players prematurely.
In other words, teams are now actually robbing Peter to pay Paul, with ?Peter? being a guy who once was ?Paul,? and ?Paul? being a guy who may eventually be ?Peter.?? The process will further highlight the gap between a small handful of star players who will have enormous payouts and cap numbers and the collection of players who actually play in games but who get far less money.
So with Joe Flacco cashing in, other players will be cashing out.? Or cashing less.The new dynamic becomes crystal clear between Flacco and the guy who has snapped him the ball for the last four years, Matt Birk.? With Flacco swinging for the financial fences, the Ravens may not be able to afford Birk?s $2.75 million salary.And with both guys represented by Joe Linta, at a certain point Linta?s push to get one of his clients as much as possible is going to hurt one of his other clients.Other agents will be facing similar dilemmas in other cities.? While, in the end, the teams control how much they pay to their various players, the NFL now consists of four crops of players:? veterans who get paid a whole lot of money, veterans who get paid well and who have to worry constantly about being forced to take less, veterans who get the one-year minimum, and young players laboring under tightly-controlled rookie deals who look forward to the day when they can become veterans who get paid a whole lot of money.
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