Bon Jovi: 'Heaven looks a lot like New Jersey'

FILE - In a Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011 file photo, singer Jon Bon Jovi attends the premiere of "New Year's Eve" at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York. Bon Jovi wants fans to know he's not dead, and he has posted a photo proving it. False reports of the New Jersey-born musician's death spread online after a fake news release surfaced Monday, Dec. 19, 2011 on social media sites. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini, File)

FILE - In a Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011 file photo, singer Jon Bon Jovi attends the premiere of "New Year's Eve" at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York. Bon Jovi wants fans to know he's not dead, and he has posted a photo proving it. False reports of the New Jersey-born musician's death spread online after a fake news release surfaced Monday, Dec. 19, 2011 on social media sites. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini, File)

(AP) ? Jon Bon Jovi wants duped fans to know he's not dead, and he has posted a photo proving it.

False reports of the New Jersey-born musician's death spread online after a fake news release surfaced on social media sites.

Bon Jovi is shown in a picture on his Facebook page holding a sign that reads, "Heaven looks a lot like New Jersey." Below that is scrawled Monday's date.

Bon Jovi was performing at a charity concert that night at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank. His publicist confirmed Bon Jovi was alive and well and playing the show.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-12-20-People-Jon%20Bon%20Jovi/id-389a4085125a4e488d85af2864606fa9

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Egypt soldiers charge Tahrir Square after violent night

By NBC News and news services

CAIRO - Egyptian soldiers with batons charged into Tahrir Square on Saturday after fatal clashes nearby, prompting many demonstrators who have been camped there since last month to flee into side streets.

Shots were also fired in the air as the troops in riot gear pushed into the square following the eruption of a fire in the area around buildings associated with Egypt's upper house of parliament, a Reuters witness said. Troops were seen grabbing some people and beating them.

NBC News reported that protesters' tents had been set on fire. The military was confiscating cameras and attacking photographers and camera crews who had been reporting from the square, NBC said.


Eight people have been killed as clashes between troops and protesters in central Cairo spilled over into a second day, Egyptian state television reported.

It also said that 303 people had been wounded in the unrest in the capital, whose center has turned into a smoke-filled battleground in some of the most violent clashes since a popular uprising ousted President Hosni Mubarak last February.

Egypt's Dar al-Iftah, the body that issues Islamic fatwas (edicts), said one of its senior officials, Emad Effat, was among the dead, state news agency MENA said. He was shot in the chest after joining the protesters outside the Cabinet.

Clashes around government offices and parliament raged on after nightfall on Friday, with protesters throwing Molotov cocktails and stones at soldiers who used batons and what witnesses said appeared to be electric cattle prods.

The violence has sharpened tensions between the ruling army and its opponents, and clouded a parliamentary vote set to bring Islamists, long repressed by Mubarak, to the verge of power.

It first began late Thursday after soldiers stormed an anti-military protest camp outside the Cabinet building near Tahrir Square, expelling demonstrators demanding an end to military rule and an immediate transfer of power to a civilian authority. Witnesses said troops snatched a protester, taking him into the parliament building and beating him. The troops later moved in, burning protesters' tents.

Frustration with military
The military took over after longtime President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular revolt in February. Rights groups and activists charge that the military is carrying on the practices of the old regime, including arresting and beating dissidents.

Many Egyptians have grown increasingly wary of the military and frustrated with its handling of the country's transition period, and many activists accuse it of trying to hang on to power.

Mustafa Ali, a protester who was wounded by pellet shot in clashes last month, on Saturday accused the ruling generals of instigating the violence to "find a justification to remain in power and divide up people into factions."

In a statement read on state TV Friday night, the ruling military said its forces did not intend to break up the protest and said officers showed self-restraint, denying the used any gunfire. It said the clashes began when a military officer was attacked while on duty and protesters tried to break into the parliament compound.

The young activists who led the protests against Mubarak have not translated that success into results at the polls, where Islamist parties won a clear majority of seats in the first round of voting last month over the more liberal parties that emerged from the uprising. Results from this week's second round are expected in the coming days, with the rest of the country set to vote next month.

Images of troops protecting polling centers and soldiers carrying the elderly to the polls have served to boost the military's image as guardians of the country. The military remains the ultimate authority on all matters of state in absence of a president.

The second round of voting took place Wednesday and Thursday in nine of the country's 27 provinces. It covered vast rural areas where the religious stand of Islamist parties has strong support.

More from msnbc.com and NBC News:

NBC News, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/17/9513165-egypt-police-charge-tahrir-square-after-night-of-violence

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The Louvre's Got Game, Replaces Audio Tours With Nintendo 3DS [VIDEO] (Mashable)

[brightcove video="1331731972001" /] The world's busiest museum is getting an upgrade. Starting in March, the Louvre will offer visitors Nintendo 3DS hand-held game consoles instead of the typical audio players most museums use.

[More from Mashable: Use an iPad to Play With Real Pigs ? Without the Mess [VIDEO]]

The Louvre is getting the 5,000 3DS devices through a partnership with Nintendo. This summer Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said the company was exploring the possibility of offering the handheld to deliver "realistic experiences" when visiting museums worldwide.

Those efforts are clearly now bearing fruit, and Nintendo isn't wasting time with small fish -- as museums go, it doesn't get any bigger than the home of the Mona Lisa. The Louve attracts 8.5 million visitors every year, Agence France-Presse reports, although just four percent of them opt for the audio tours, which cost 6 euros each.

[More from Mashable: What Is Anonymous? [VIDEO]]

With the 3DS, that number might go up. At least that's the plan, says Agnes Alfandari, the Louvre's head of multimedia.

"We are the first museum in the world to do this," Alfandari told AFP. "People's habits have changed. But that offers us a huge opportunity to extend the museum's territory, and build a lasting relationship with our visitors."

When visitors choose to tour the museum with a 3DS, they'll have access to themed itineraries and commentaries, including child-appropriate ones, in seven languages. It's not clear how the console will use the 3DS's glasses-free 3D display to enhance the experience, but it'll no doubt figure prominently in the experience. (For a creative take on how 3D tech could enhance classic paintings, check out this Samsung ad.)

Nintendo is developing the tour material, though the museum has editorial control. Around the same time as the consoles' debut, the Louvre will also update its smartphone and iPad apps as part of an overall digital makeover. Perhaps one day we'll see QR codes on every Renoir.

What do you think of the 3DS as a museum aide? Does Does it make you more inclined to take a tech-enhanced tour than a regular audio player? Let us know in the comments.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/videogames/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/mashable/20111216/tc_mashable/the_louvres_got_game_replaces_audio_tours_with_nintendo_3ds_video

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Research shows hands-free phones just as risky (AP)

WASHINGTON ? When someone is talking to you, your brain is listening, processing and thinking about what's being said ? even if you're in the driver's seat trying to concentrate on traffic.

That's why drivers get distracted during cellphone conversations, even when using hands-free phones, researchers say. It's also part of the reason why the National Transportation Safety Board made a recommendation this week it knows a lot of drivers won't like ? that states ban hands-free, as well as hand-held, cellphone use while driving.

It's not where your hands are, but where your mind is that counts, NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman told reporters.

The board doesn't have the power to force states to impose a ban, but its recommendations carry significant weight. And, judging from the public reaction, they've already started a national conversation on the subject. NTSB has been swamped with calls, emails and tweets from drivers both praising and condemning the action.

It's the proposed hands-free ban that has generated the most controversy.

What's next? No passengers? No kids? No tuning the radio? Maybe NTSB will ban driving altogether, was the tenor of the response on Twitter.

The scientific evidence, however, is generally with NTSB, researchers said.

"There is a large body of evidence showing that talking on a phone, whether hand-held or hands-free, impairs driving and increases your risk of having a crash," Anne McCartt, senior vice president for research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said.

Jim Hedlund, a safety consultant and former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration official, recently examined 300 cellphone studies for the Governors Highway Safety Association. He couldn't recall a single study that showed drivers talking on a headset or hands-free phone were at any less risk of an accident than drivers with one hand on the wheel and a phone in the other.

A similar analysis for the government of Sweden recently came to the same conclusion: "There is no evidence suggesting that hands-free mobile phone use is less risky than handheld use."

What's missing is hard evidence that accidents are increasing because of cellphone use. One reason is that U.S. privacy laws have made it difficult for researchers to study whether cell phones were in use in accidents in the U.S. The two large studies that have been done ? in Canada and Australia ? found drivers were four times more likely to have a crash if talking on a cellphone. It didn't matter whether the cellphone was hands-free or hand-held.

But that hasn't translated to an increase in highway fatalities in the U.S., where they hit their lowest level since 1949 last year.

Of 6,000 drivers surveyed by the highway administration, 40 percent said they don't consider it unsafe for drivers to talk on a hands-free cellphone. Less than 12 percent said that about a hand-held phone.

Marcel Just, director of Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging, isn't surprised.

It's counterintuitive to think that hands-free talking is dangerous because people don't have any sense that their conversation is draining brain power away from driving, but that's exactly what's happening, he said.

Just is the co-author of a 2008 study that used driving simulators to test the performance of drivers not engaged in conversation and drivers who could hear someone talking to them through headphones. Drivers took the simulator tests inside an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machine that recorded images of changes in their brains while driving, including which areas of the brain were used for driving. The amount of the brain devoted to driving was 37 percent less in drivers who could hear someone talking to them than for drivers not using cellphones.

"The human mind can multitask, but each task is performed with less brain power and lower proficiency," Just said.

The driving simulators also showed a deterioration of skills on the part of drivers who could hear someone talking to them, including weaving between lanes and edging over the side of the road.

"When someone is speaking your native language, you can't will yourself to not hear and process it. It just goes in," Just said. Even if a driver tries to ignore the words, scientists "can see activation in the auditory cortex, in the language areas (of the brain). "

Accident investigators have seen cases of drivers talking on hands-free phones whose minds are so engrossed in their conversations that they ran into something plainly visible.

In a 2004, a bus driver taking students on a class trip drove his 12-foot-high bus into a 10-foot, 2-inch-high bridge arch in Alexandria, Va., peeling off the roof of the bus. There were signs warning drivers about the height of the bridge, and the bus driver was familiar with the route. He also saw a bus in front of him change lanes to avoid the low arch. But the bus driver, who was talking a hands-free phone at the time, drove right into it.

"There is a standard code for crash investigations called roughly `look, but didn't see.' In other words, I was looking in the right place, but I didn't register what was there," Hedlund said.

Of course, drivers don't have to be using cellphones to have conversations ? they talk with passengers all the time. But talking to an adult passenger doesn't involve the same risk as a phone conversation, researchers said. That's because passengers are engaged in the driving experience with the driver. If they see a danger, they'll usually warn the driver. Passengers also tend to instinctually adjust their conversation to the level of traffic and other difficulties confronting the driver.

There are lots of other things that go on in cars that are risky: eating and drinking, tuning the radio, studying maps and applying makeup, for example. Just like talking on the phone, most of those things involve a choice by the driver.

As for the screaming toddler in the backseat demanding attention, "some things are just part of life," McCartt said.

___

Follow Joan Lowy on http://www.twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy

___

Governors Highway Safety Association: http://www.ghsa.org/

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111215/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_drivers_cellphones

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Verizon?s $300 Galaxy Nexus Price Tag Too High? Check Out These Deals

gnexus6When Verizon officially revealed the Galaxy Nexus last night, some of you were surprised to see it sport such a high price tag. Thanks new Verizon's apparent change in pricing policy, all of their new flagship 4G phones will set customers back about $299. Now if you absolutely have to have a Galaxy Nexus today (something I'm currently debating myself), Verizon stores are likely to be your first thought, but chances are you won't be alone in your quest. However, there are bargains to be found if you're willing to dig a little, and are a few that may make buying a Nexus easier to swallow.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/KWLHXZ7fs20/

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Megadeath's Dave Mustaine Will Teach You to Shred Like Megadeath's Dave Mustaine [Apps]

All kinds of products aspire to be "for everyone" - all readers, all users, all children, all kiteboarders, all whatever. Rarely are these claims accurate, because most things are not really one-size-fits-all. However, when it comes to appealing to guitarists of varying skill levels, Dave Mustaine: Guitar Prodigy succeeds. More »


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Morgan Stanley settles with MBIA, sets $1.8 billion charge (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? Morgan Stanley (MS.N) agreed to give up insurance claims against MBIA Inc (MBI.N) in exchange for a $1.1 billion payment from the ailing insurer, ending a two-year legal fight over guarantees on mortgage bonds.

The deal, announced on Tuesday, is the latest move by Morgan Stanley Chief Executive James Gorman to clear away vestiges of the financial crisis and put the Wall Street bank on a more stable path.

The settlement will cause Morgan Stanley to take a $1.2 billion charge in the fourth quarter after accounting for a tax benefit, but it will also remove risky assets from company's balance sheet that have led to big swings in its quarterly earnings over the past four years.

Additionally, the deal will shore up Morgan Stanley's capital levels under tougher rules that start coming into effect in 2013.

In a statement, Gorman said the settlement had been a "top priority" for Morgan Stanley this year, "consistent with our efforts to build capital and de-risk the balance sheet."

The settlement stems from credit-default swaps (CDS) that Morgan Stanley had entered with MBIA several years ago to protect against losses on mortgage bonds.

MBIA, a bond insurer, historically focused on municipal bonds but as the U.S. real-estate market heated up last decade, it sold large numbers of CDS on mortgage-backed securities and other structured finance products.

MBIA's bets on CDS started souring as the financial crisis ramped up, leading the company to split itself into two parts: a municipal guarantee business and a structured finance unit. MBIA announced the restructuring in 2009 after receiving approval from state insurance regulators.

A group of 18 banks, including Morgan Stanley, objected to the restructuring in court, arguing that it might leave the insurer unable to pay out its structured finance obligations.

As part of the settlement, Morgan Stanley agreed to end its legal objections to MBIA's restructuring, and MBIA agreed to drop a lawsuit pertaining to the quality of the bonds underlying the CDS contracts.

MBIA will pay Morgan Stanley $1.1 billion to settle legal claims, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The insurer's structured finance division, known as MBIA Insurance, will pay the settlement using a loan from its municipal bond division called National Finance, according to another person familiar with the deal.

All but five banks have settled with MBIA, including HSBC Holdings PLC (HSBA.L), Royal Bank of Scotland PLC (RBS.L) and Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N). Those still pursuing claims include Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) and UBS AG (UBSN.VX).

An MBIA spokesman confirmed that there was a settlement with Morgan Stanley, but declined to comment on the $1.1 billion settlement figure.

"We are continuing to work toward resolving all the litigation," said Kevin Brown, a spokesman for MBIA. "We're talking to most, but not all, the parties."

Robert Giuffra Jr, a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell and lead counsel for banks that are still suing MBIA, said the plaintiffs will continue to fight its restructuring.

Benjamin Lawsky, financial services superintendent for the state of New York, said his agency will continue to work with the remaining companies and MBIA to seek resolutions.

A WIN FOR BOTH SIDES

The Morgan Stanley-MBIA settlement will benefit both parties, investors said, though it may represent a bigger win for MBIA.

MBIA shares closed up 0.7 percent on Tuesday at $11.48, having hit $12.60 after the deal announcement. Morgan Stanley fell 1.4 percent to end the day at $15.17, but had risen as high as $16.55 earlier in the day.

The settlement will remove a big swing factor from Morgan Stanley's quarterly earnings results. Because the CDS contracts turned MBIA into a major counterparty of the bank, the widening or narrowing of its credit spreads resulted in big non-cash losses and gains.

Getting rid of MBIA exposure will free up $5 billion worth of capital for Morgan Stanley and improve its Tier 1 common capital ratio by 75 basis points under upcoming rules. Under existing rules, it will reduce Morgan Stanley's Tier 1 common ratio by 30 basis points.

Gorman has been on a mission to improve Morgan Stanley's balance sheet this year, in part to ease investor concerns about the bank's exposure to the European sovereign debt crisis.

In April, Gorman struck a deal with Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, a major investor and partner, to convert 7.8 million Morgan Stanley preferred shares into 385.5 million shares of common stock. That move lifted Morgan Stanley's capital ratios.

Gorman has also overseen the dismantling of risky trading operations to comply with a new financial reform rule, wound down other risky assets and implemented higher pricing for over-the-counter derivatives products to reflect higher risk and cost. He has also adjusted Morgan Stanley's funding model to reduce its exposure to riskier, short-term lending.

Still, its shares are down 43 percent so far this year, compared with a 32 percent decline for the NYSE Arca Securities Broker/Dealer Index.

Walter Todd, a portfolio manager at Greenwood Capital, said Gorman's efforts have been noticed but that concerns remain over Europe and the business model of large investment banks. Todd exited his firm's Morgan Stanley position last week to reduce volatility in the portfolio.

"I think it's nice to get this behind them and check it off as something not to worry about anymore , but I wouldn't go out and buy the name because of this agreement," he said.

For MBIA's part, the deal removes a big hurdle standing in the way of its restructuring, at a lower cost than if Morgan Stanley had pursued its claims in full.

Morgan Stanley had $2.7 billion worth of net exposure to MBIA's derivative contracts as of September 30, according to a quarterly regulatory filing. The bank is writing off $1.8 billion worth of the underlying debt, which will lead to the $1.2 billion charge after taxes.

But Manal Mehta, a founding partner of the hedge fund Branch Hill Capital, which owns MBIA shares, estimates that the total notional amount of the underlying securities was more than $10 billion -- meaning that MBIA's $1.1 billion settlement may represent just 10 percent of the potential cost.

"This is a fantastic deal for MBIA," said Mehta.

A Morgan Stanley spokesman declined to disclose the notional amount of underlying securities. Mehta extrapolated his estimate from disclosures by Bank of America.

(Reporting by Lauren Tara LaCapra in New York,; additional reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York; Editing by Lisa VonAhn, Dave Zimmerman, Dan Wilchins and Steve Orlofsky)

(This story was corrected in paragraph eight to say MBIA regulators allowed the company to split, rather than were forced to split the company)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111213/bs_nm/us_morganstanley_mbia

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