Iran vows to stop "some" oil sales as inspectors visit (Reuters)

TEHRAN (Reuters) ? Iran sent conflicting signals in a dispute with the West over its nuclear ambitions, vowing to stop oil exports soon to "some" countries but postponing a parliamentary debate on a proposed halt to crude sales to the European Union.

The Islamic Republic declared itself optimistic about a visit by U.N. nuclear experts that began Sunday but also warned the inspectors to be "professional" or see Tehran reducing cooperation with the world body on atomic matters.

Lawmakers have raised the possibility of turning the tables on the EU which will implement its own embargo on Iranian oil by July as it tightens sanctions on Tehran over the nuclear program.

But India, the world's fourth-largest oil consumer, said it would not take steps to cut petroleum imports from Iran despite U.S. and European sanctions against Tehran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection delegation will try to advance efforts to resolve a row about the nuclear work which Iran says is purely civilian but the West suspects is aimed at seeking a nuclear weapon.

Tension with the West rose this month when Washington and the EU imposed the toughest sanctions yet in a drive to force Tehran to provide more information on its nuclear program. The measures take direct aim at the ability of OPEC's second biggest Oil exporter to sell its crude.

In a remark suggesting Iran would fight sanctions with sanctions, Iran's oil minister said the Islamic state would soon stop exporting crude to "some" countries.

Rostam Qasemi did not identify the countries but was speaking less than a week after the EU's 27 member states agreed to stop importing crude from Iran from July 1.

"Soon we will cut exporting oil to some countries," the state news agency IRNA quoted Qasemi as saying.

India, a major customer for Iranian crude, made clear it would not join the wider international efforts to put pressure on Tehran by cutting oil purchases.

"It is not possible for India to take any decision to reduce the imports from Iran drastically, because among the countries which can provide the requirement of the emerging economies, Iran is an important country amongst them," Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters on a visit to the Unites States.

The United States wants buyers in Asia, Iran's biggest oil market, to cut imports to put further pressure on Tehran.

DISCUSSION POSTPONED

Iranian lawmakers had been due to debate a bill Sunday that could have cut off oil supplies to the EU in days, in a move calculated to hit ailing European economies before the EU-wide ban on took effect.

But Iranian MPs postponed discussing the measure.

"No such draft bill has yet been drawn up and nothing has been submitted to the parliament. What exists is a notion by the deputies which is being seriously pursued to bring it to a conclusive end," Emad Hosseini, spokesman for parliament's Energy Committee, told Mehr news agency.

Iranian officials say sanctions have had no impact on the country. "Iranian oil has its own market, even if we cut our exports to Europe," Oil Minister Qasemi said.

Another lawmaker said the bill would oblige the government to cut Iran's oil supplies to the EU for five to 15 years, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

By turning the sanctions back on the EU, lawmakers hope to deny the bloc a six-month window it had planned to give those of its members most dependent on Iranian oil - including some of the most economically fragile in southern Europe - to adapt.

NUCLEAR WATCHDOG

Before departing from Vienna, IAEA Deputy Director General Herman Nackaerts said he hoped Iran would tackle the watchdog's concerns "regarding the possible military dimensions of Iran's nuclear program."

Mehr quoted Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi as saying during a trip to Ethiopia: "We are very optimistic about the outcome of the IAEA delegation's visit to Iran ... Their questions will be answered during this visit."

"We have nothing to hide and Iran has no clandestine (nuclear) activities."

Striking a sterner tone, Iran's parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, warned the IAEA team to carry out a "logical, professional and technical" job or suffer the consequences.

"This visit is a test for the IAEA. The route for further cooperation will be open if the team carries out its duties professionally," said Larijani, state media reported.

"Otherwise, if the IAEA turns into a tool (for major powers to pressure Iran), then Iran will have no choice but to consider a new framework in its ties with the agency."

Iran's parliament has approved bills in the past to oblige the government to review its level of cooperation with the IAEA. However, Iran's top officials have always underlined the importance of preserving ties with the watchdog body.

The head of the state-run National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) said late Saturday that the export embargo would hit European refiners, such as Italy's Eni, that are owed oil from Iran as part of long-standing buy-back contracts under which they take payment for past oilfield projects in crude.

The EU accounted for 25 percent of Iranian crude oil sales in the third quarter of 2011. However, analysts say the global oil market will not be overly disrupted if parliament votes for the bill that would turn off the oil tap for Europe.

Potentially more disruptive to the world oil market and global security is the risk of Iran's standoff with the West escalating into military conflict.

Iran has repeatedly said it could close the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping lane if sanctions succeed in preventing it from exporting crude, a move Washington said it would not tolerate.

(Additional reporting by Hashem Kalantari, Robin Pomeroy and Hossein Jaseb in Tehran, Svetlana Kovalyova in Milan and Fredrik Dahl in Vienna; Writing by Parisa Hafezi and Robin Pomeroy; Editing by William Maclean and David Stamp)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iran/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120130/wl_nm/us_iran

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States where people carry the most mortgage debt

By Michael B. Sauter, 24/7 Wall St.

How much residents of each state owe on their mortgages is an interesting statistic. For the most part, residents of the states with the highest average mortgage debt are not in trouble. While the average home price in these states dropped in value during the recession, the foreclosure rates in these states are among the lowest in the country. The reason: residents of these states can generally afford to lose and owe more money than their counterparts in other states. 24/7 Wall St. examined a recent report by Credit Karma to find the 10 states with the highest average mortgage debt.

Most of the states on our list have extremely high mortgage debt because of the size of their initial mortgages. States like Connecticut and Massachusetts, which have among the highest median home values in the U.S., also have among the highest mortgage debt. Hawaii, which has the second-highest average mortgage debt per person, has the highest median home value of $525,400.

Many of the states on the list also experienced the steepest declines in home value during the recession. Home prices in seven of the states with the highest mortgage debt declined during the recession. In states like California and Nevada, properties lost more than 30 percent of their value. Even in states like New Jersey and Maryland, which fared relatively well during the recession, homes lost between 7?percent and 10?percent of their value.

Sharp declines in home values, coupled with high mortgage debt, should translate to financial disaster. However, while home values dropped more than 7?percent in Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey?? states where mortgage debt is the highest? ? foreclosure rates stayed low.

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Meanwhile, states with the lowest median home value and relatively high mortgage debt tend to have the highest foreclosure rates. Illinois, Michigan and Florida all have median home values below the national average and relatively high mortgage debt compared to housing prices in the state. These states also have among the highest foreclosure rates in the country.

These are the 10 states with the worst mortgage debt.

10. Nevada

• Mortgage debt per person: $196,911
• Median household income: $51,001 (19th highest)
• Credit card debt per person: $6,145 (7th lowest)
• Change in home value (2006 - 2010):?-44.5?percent (biggest decline)

No state had a more dramatic downfall in its housing market during the recession than Nevada. In 2006, nearly 40,000 building permits were approved in the state, a nation-high average of 15.8 per 1,000 people. By 2010, the number of permits declined 80?percent and median home values dropped 44.5?percent. This has left thousands of homeowners with underwater mortgages. According to Credit Karma, Nevada residents owe an average of $196,911 on their mortgages. But unlike residents of most of the other states with high debt, many Nevada residents are not affluent enough to shoulder this burden. The state has the highest unemployment rate in the country, 13?percent, and a median income that is only 19th highest in the U.S.

9. Colorado

• Mortgage debt per person: $198,117
• Median household income: $54,046 (15th highest)
• Credit card debt per person: $7,533 (5th highest)
• Change in home value (2006 - 2010):?+1.6?percent (31st smallest increase)

Colorado?s average mortgage debt of just under $200,000 is the ninth-highest in the country. The state?s average credit card debt of $7,533 per person is the fifth-highest. Residents, however, have been able to pay some of these massive debts on time, as Coloradans also boast one of the best average credit scores in the country. However, it had the 12th-highest foreclosure rate in the country in December. While not as wealthy as some of the other states with extremely high personal debt, Colorado is certainly better off than Nevada. Poverty and unemployment are both quite low in the state.

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8. Connecticut

• Mortgage debt per person: $211,516
• Median household income: $64,032 (4th highest)
• Credit card debt per person: $7,730 (3rd highest)
• Change in home value (2006 - 2010): -3.4?percent (13th biggest decline)

In 2006, Connecticut had the second fewest building permits per person issued, behind only Rhode Island. This suggests that fewer people were buying homes they could not afford at the height of the housing bubble. Indeed, just one in every 1,145 homes were foreclosed?on in the state in December, a much lower figure compared to states such as Nevada and California, where the foreclosure rates in December were 1 in 177 and 1 in 254, respectively. Along with the eighth-highest mortgage debt per person in the country, Connecticut also ranks third-highest both in credit card debt and student debt. Nevertheless, the average resident?s credit score is the ninth-highest in the country, meaning state residents can pay off their debts. Connecticut has the fifth-lowest poverty rate in the country, and the fourth-highest median income.

7. Virginia

• Mortgage debt per person: $221,873
• Median household income: $60,674 (8th highest)
• Credit card debt per person: $7,298 (9th highest)
• Change in home value (2006 - 2010): +2?percent (21st biggest increase)

The average Virginia resident has $221,516 in mortgage debt, the seventh-greatest amount of the debt in the country. This does not include the additional $50,000 in debt the average resident has accumulated between their credit cards, car payments and student loans. However, the average household makes more than $60,000 per year, the eighth-most in the country, and so, to a certain extent, Virginians are able to afford their IOUs. The average credit score in the state of 670 is the tenth-best in the country.

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6. Massachusetts

• Mortgage debt per person: $224,661
• Median household income: $62,072 (6th highest)
• Credit card debt per person: $6,851 (16th highest)
• Change in home value (2006 - 2010): -9.8?percent (8th biggest decline)

Massachusetts has the fifth-highest median home value of $334,100, which explains why the average resident owes nearly $225,000 in mortgage payments. But with the state boasting the sixth-highest median income and ninth-lowest poverty, residents are generally able to pay off their debts. While the number of new building projects has not declined as much as the rest of the country, home values still declined nearly 10?percent between 2006 and 2010. This decline affected some homeowners, demonstrated by the fact that the state had the 20th-highest foreclosure rate in the country last year.

5. Washington

• Mortgage debt per person: $225,581
• Median household income: $55,681 (11th highest)
• Credit card debt per person: $6,825 (17th highest)
• Change in home value (2006 - 2010): +1.6?percent (32nd biggest gain)

While Washington has the fifth-highest mortgage debt per person in the country, state residents tend to be more frugal in their other finances. Compared to other states, Washington has only the 17th highest credit card and auto debt per capita, and has the 13th-lowest?student debt. Washington?s median home value in 2010 was the ninth-highest in the country. Home values actually increased 1.6?percent during the recession. As a result, foreclosures in the state are low, despite the fact that the state has the 16th highest unemployment rate in the country and a high poverty rate of 12.5?percent.

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4. New Jersey

• Mortgage debt per person: $236,017
• Median household income: $67,681 (2nd highest)
• Credit card debt per person: $7,608 (4th highest)
• Change in home value (2006 - 2010): -7.5?percent (9th biggest decline)

Most of the states hit hardest by the housing crash had a great deal of new buildings approved in the first half of the decade. This was the case in places like Nevada, California and Arizona. Because all of these?new buildings were built at peak home prices, they had the farthest to fall when home prices collapsed. New Jersey, however, had the ninth-fewest building permits approved in 2006. Nevertheless, median home prices declined nearly $30,000, or the ninth-most in the country. However, since residents have the second highest median income in the U.S., they have been able to bear the loss in their home values. New Jersey had the ninth-fewest foreclosures in the country in December.

3. Maryland

• Mortgage debt per person: $242,445
• Median household income: $68,854 (the highest)
• Credit card debt per person: $7,226 (10th highest)
• Change in home value (2006 - 2010): -9.9?percent (7th biggest decline)

According to Credit Karma, the average mortgage debt per person in Maryland is nearly $250,000. This is at least partially?a result of the fact that the state has the fifth-highest median home value in the U.S., as well as the highest median household income in the country. Like New Jersey, Maryland had a very small number of homes built before the recession. Also like New Jersey, home values still declined significantly. Nevertheless, wealthy Maryland residents have been able to weather the worst of this decline. The state had the 12th-fewest foreclosures in December, and the average credit score per resident is 12th best.

2. Hawaii

• Mortgage debt per person: $307,508
• Median household income: $63,030 (5th highest)
• Credit card debt per person: $7,527 (7th highest)
• Change in home value (2006 - 2010): -0.8?percent (15th biggest decline)

Hawaii has the highest median home value in the country at $525,000. This is $154,000 more than the next highest state. Needless to say, taking out a mortgage on a home in the island state is a tremendous financial commitment. But with extremely low unemployment, high median income, low poverty and the second-highest rate of health insurance coverage in the country, Hawaii homeowners can generally afford it.

1. California

• Mortgage debt per person: $313,749
• Median household income: $57,708 (9th highest)
• Credit card debt per person: $6,434 (30th highest)
• Change in home value (2006 - 2010): -30.8?percent (2nd biggest decline)

While most of the residents of the states with the highest mortgage debt have been able to support the massive mortgages despite the fact that their homes have lost significant value, California is a different story. In 2006, California had the most expensive homes in the country, with a median home value of $532,000. By 2010, that value had declined by $164,000? ? more than 30?percent. The effects of this massive decline in home prices had wide-reaching effects on the state economy. Unemployment in California is now the second-highest in the country, and 14.5?percent of the population lives below the poverty line. The average mortgage debt per person of $313,749 has been too much for thousands of residents. In December alone, one in every 252 homes was foreclosed upon.

Source: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/30/10219047-states-where-citizens-carry-the-most-mortgage-debt

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Gingrich says he's in 'til GOP convention (AP)

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. ? On the weekend before the pivotal Florida primary, Newt Gingrich vowed Saturday to stay in the race for the Republican presidential nomination until the national convention this summer even if he loses Tuesday's vote. Front-runner Mitt Romney poured on the criticism of his rival in television ads airing across the state.

Gingrich's pledge, followed several hours later by an endorsement from campaign dropout Herman Cain, raised the prospect of an extended struggle inside the party as Republicans work to defeat President Barack Obama in the fall. "You just had two national polls that show me ahead," he said. "Why don't you ask Gov. Romney what he will do if he loses" in Florida.

The former Massachusetts governor countered a few hours later while in Panama City. "I think we are going to win here, I sure hope so," he said.

As the two rivals made their appeals to Hispanic, Jewish and tea party voters, veterans of the armed forces and others, all known indicators pointed to a good day for Romney in the primary.

He and his allies held a 3-1 advantage in money spent on television advertising in the race's final days. Robust early vote and absentee ballot totals followed a pre-primary turnout operation by his campaign. Even the schedules the two men kept underscored the shape of the race ? moderate for Romney, heavy for Gingrich.

Campaigning like a front-runner, Romney made few references to Gingrich. Instead, he criticized Obama's plans to cut the size of the armed forces. "He's detached from reality," the former Massachusetts governor said.

"The foreign policy of `pretty please' is not working terribly well," he added. Romney said he wants to add 100,000 troops, not cut them.

If his personal rhetoric was directed Obama's way, the television commercials were trained on Gingrich, whose victory in last Saturday's South Carolina primary upended the race for the nomination. A new ad released as the weekend began is devoted to the day in 1997 when Gingrich received an ethics reprimand from the House while serving as speaker and was ordered to pay a $300,000 fine.

Nearly the entire 30-second ad consists of NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw's nationally broadcast description of the events on the evening news. "By an overwhelming vote, they found him guilty of ethics violations; they charged him a very large financial penalty, and they raised ? several of them ? raised serious questions about his future effectiveness," Brokaw said that night, and now again on televisions across Florida.

Both NBC and the former newsman registered objections. The network called on the campaign to stop using the footage and Brokaw said in a statement, "I do not want my role as a journalist compromised for political gain by any campaign."

A Romney adviser, Eric Fehrnstrom, said the campaign wasn't likely to stop running the ad. "We believe it falls within fair use," he said. "We didn't take the entire broadcast; we just took the first 30 seconds."

Whatever its impact, the ad represented part of a barrage that Gingrich could not match.

A second Romney ad said Gingrich had "cashed in" as a Washington insider while the housing crisis was hitting Florida particularly hard.

Figures made available to The Associated Press showed Romney was spending $2.8 million to air television commercials in the final week of the Florida campaign. In addition, a group supporting him, Restore Our Future, was spending $4 million more, for a combined total of $6.8 million.

By contrast, Gingrich was spending about $700,000, and Winning Our Future, a group backing him, an additional $1.5 million. That was about one-third the amount for the pro-Romney tandem.

Officials said the total of absentee and early vote cast approached 500,000, about 200,000 of them before Gingrich won in South Carolina last weekend.

Cain's endorsement came at a GOP dinner in West Palm Beach. The business executive led briefly in the polls last fall, then cratered and dropped out of the race after he was accused of sexual harassment and marital infidelity.

In supporting the former speaker, he followed an example set by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who bestowed his endorsement a few days before the South Carolina primary.

Gingrich seemed in good humor during the day, despite the obstacles in his way. He joked with reporters that they had missed an example of his grandiosity ? a charge that one rival, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, had used in a recent debate ? when they didn't see him hold a golf trophy on display at the PGA Library.

Gingrich also turned aside one opportunity to criticize Romney, answering a question by saying, `I want to talk about defeating Obama."

But his tone seemed to change after he said he wasn't happy with his performances in a pair of debates during the week, and was asked to explain.

"You cannot debate somebody who is dishonest. You just can't," he said, referring to Romney.

Referring to one answer the former Massachusetts governor had given, Gingrich said it was not true that Romney had always voted for a Republican when one was on the ballot.

"That in fact he could have voted for George H.W. Bush or Pat Buchanan the same day and he chose the Democratic primary, he voted Paul Tsongas, the most liberal candidate. The same year he gave money to three Democrats for Congress," he added, referring to the 1992 campaign.

"Now there's no practical way in a civil debate to deal with somebody who is that willing to say something that is just totally dishonest."

Romney poked fun at Gingrich's debate performances.

"This last one Speaker Gingrich said he didn't do so well because the audience was so loud. The one before he said he didn't do so well because the audience was too quiet. This is like Goldilocks, you know, you've got to have it just right.

"When I debate the president, I'm not going to worry about the audience, I'm going to make sure that we take down Barack Obama and take back the White House."

The two other contenders, Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, have conceded Florida and did not campaign in the state during the day.

___

Associated Press reporter Steve Peoples in Panama City contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120129/ap_on_el_pr/us_gop_campaign

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Quest for the golden cross (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) ? January has turned out strong for equities with just two trading days to go. If you're afraid to miss the ride, there's still time to jump in. You just might want to wear a neck brace.

The new year lured buyers into growth-related sectors, the ones that were more beaten down last year. The economy is getting better, but not dramatically. Earnings are beating expectations, but at a lower rate than in recent quarters. Nothing too bad is coming out of Europe's debt crisis - and nothing good, either - at least not yet.

"No one item is a major positive, but collectively, it's been enough to tilt it towards net buying," said John Schlitz, chief market technician at Instinet in New York.

Still, relatively weak volume and a six-month high hit this week make some doubt that the gains are sustainable.

But then there's the golden cross.

Many market skeptics take notice when this technical indicator, a holy grail of sorts for many technicians, shows up on the horizon.

As early as Monday, the rising 50-day moving average of the S&P 500 could tick above its rising 200-day moving average. This occurrence - known as a golden cross - means the medium-term momentum is increasingly bullish. You have a good chance of making money in the next six months if you put it to work in large-cap stocks.

In the last 50 years, according to data compiled by Birinyi Associates, a golden cross on the S&P 500 has

augured further gains six months ahead in eight out of 10 times. The average gain has been 6.6 percent.

That means the benchmark is on solid footing to not only hold onto the 14 percent advance over the last nine weeks, but to flirt with 1,400, a level it hasn't hit since mid-2008.

The gains, as expected, would not be in a straight line. But any weakness could be used by long-term investors as buying opportunities.

"The cross is an intermediate bullish event," Schlitz said. "You have to interpret it as constructive, but I caution people to take a bullish stance, if they have a short-term horizon ."

GREECE, U.S. PAYROLLS AND MOMENTUM

Less than halfway into the earnings season and with Greek debt talks over the weekend, payrolls data next week and the S&P 500 near its highest since July, there's plenty of room for something to go wrong. If that happens, the market could easily give back some of its recent advance.

But the benchmark's recent rally and momentum shift allow for a pullback before the technical picture deteriorates.

"We bounced off 1,325, which is resistance. We're testing 1,310, which should be support. We are stuck in that range," said Ken Polcari, managing director at ICAP Equities in New York.

"If over the weekend, Greece comes out with another big nothing, then you will see further weakness next week," he said. "A 1 (percent) or 2 percent pullback isn't out of the question or out of line."

On Friday, the S&P 500 (.INX) and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) closed their fourth consecutive week of gains, while the Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) dipped and capped three weeks of gains. For the day, the Dow dropped 74.17 points, or 0.58 percent, to close at 12,660.46. The S&P 500 fell 2.10 points, or 0.16 percent, to 1,316.33. But the Nasdaq gained 11.27 points, or 0.40 percent, to end at 2,816.55.

For the week, the Dow slipped 0.47 percent, while the S&P 500 inched up 0.07 percent and the Nasdaq jumped 1.07 percent.

A DATA-PACKED EARNINGS WEEK

Next week is filled with heavy-hitting data on the housing, manufacturing and employment sectors.

Personal income and consumption on Monday will be followed by the S&P/Case-Shiller home prices index, consumer confidence and the Chicago PMI - all on Tuesday.

Wednesday will bring the Institute for Supply Management index on U.S. manufacturing and the first of three key readings on the labor market - namely, the ADP private-sector employment report. Jobless claims on Thursday will give way on Friday to the U.S. government's non-farm payrolls report. The forecast calls for a net gain of 150,000 jobs in January, according to economists polled by Reuters.

Another hectic earnings week will kick into gear with almost a fifth of the S&P 500 components posting quarterly results. Exxon Mobil (XOM.N), Amazon (AMZN.O), UPS (UPS.N), Pfizer (PFE.N), Kellogg (K.N) and MasterCard (MA.N) are among the names most likely to grab the headlines.

With almost 200 companies' reports in so far, about 59 percent have beaten earnings expectations - down from about 70 percent in recent quarters.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak and Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Jan Paschal)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120128/bs_nm/us_usa_stocks_weekahead

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Doubts cast over Yale QB's honor

The New York Times' Richard Perez-Pena shares details from a report about the quiet collapse of Patrick Witt's Rhodes Scholar candidacy amidst claims of sexual assault.

By Becky Bratu, msnbc.com

Patrick Witt, the 22-year-old Yale quarterback who?made headlines in November when he chose to lead Yale against arch rival Harvard University over an?interview for the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship may not have been faced with that tough choice after all.

According to a New York Times article, the Rhodes Trust suspended Witt's candidacy several days before he announced he had?removed himself from consideration on Nov. 13, 2011.

According to the article, the Rhodes Trust had learned several days earlier "through unofficial channels"?that a Yale student had accused Witt of sexual assault.

---

In a statement released Friday, Mark Magazu, Witt's agent, said,"The New York Times story incorrectly connects Patrick's decision to forego the Rhodes Scholarship with an informal complaint process that had concluded on campus weeks prior to his withdrawal ? a process that yielded no disciplinary measures, formal reports, or referrals to higher authorities."

Citing interviews with several unnamed sources ?with knowledge of all or part of the story,? the Times reported a female Yale student approached the school?s assault response center?in September alleging that Witt had sexually assaulted her in her dorm room. She later also?made a complaint to the University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct, according to the article.

Students at Yale can file formal or informal complaints with this committee, and the university maintains confidentiality in both cases. Yale College Dean Mary Miller told the Yale Daily News that she is only notified of formal complaints.

An informal complaint, which the Times reported was filed against Witt, leads to either brief or no investigation and can be resolved within a few days. Magazu's statement claims Witt's request to the sexual misconduct committee for a formal inquiry was denied because "there was nothing to defend against since no formal complaint was ever filed." Witt considered the matter closed.

The statement claims Witt was aware an anonymous source had contacted the Rhodes Trust about the informal complaint. It goes on to say that Witt and the woman who filed the informal complaint had had an on-again, off-again relationship that began in the spring of 2011 and ended two months before the complaint was filed.

Magazu's statement on behalf of Witt went on to say, "To be clear, Patrick's Rhodes candidacy was never "suspended", as the article suggests, and his official record at Yale contains no disciplinary issues."

Elliot Gerson, the American secretary for the Rhodes Trust, declined to comment on whether Witt's candidacy was indeed suspended.

Witt attended Commencement in May, 2011 and returned to Yale in the fall to complete his studies as a second-semester senior. He told the Yale Daily News on Jan. 8 that he had ?already graduated,? but, according to the college paper, University spokesman Tom Conroy said Thursday night that Witt has not graduated. Conroy told NBC News that was not uncommon.

According to the statement, Witt completed all necessary coursework and will graduate upon completing his senior essay this spring.

Witt has been training in California in preparation for the Feb. 22-28 NFL Combine at Indianapolis, according to the Yale athletics website.

Witt found out on Oct. 31, 2011 that he was one?of the 212 finalists for the Rhodes Scholarship, which?provides full financial support for scholars to pursue a degree at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. But the date of the mandatory interview in Atlanta coincided with "The Game," a longstanding football rivalry between Harvard and Yale taking place in New Haven, Conn.

Witt, the most accurate passer in Yale University history,?spoke with NBC Nightly News?in early November about the tough decision he was facing.

"It's thrilling," Witt said at the time, "but, again, it's a big dilemma."

On the one hand, the opportunity to be a Rhodes Scholar, Witt said, is tremendous. ?And it is a difficult process. There are plenty of excellent candidates every year that aren?t selected, so that?s one part of it,? he said.

On the other, the game against Harvard would be Witt?s last college game. ?And I?ve invested a lot of time. This is a sport I?ve been playing since I was a kid.?

Witt, a history major with a 3.91 grade point average, told Nightly News he wanted?to study international relations at Oxford in preparation for a career in politics. "At the end of the day, the best advice I've been given is ?this is your decision and you have to do what's right for you,?? he said at the time.

Witt transferred to Yale in 2009 from the University of Nebraska, where he had a four-year athletic scholarship as a quarterback for the Cornhuskers.?While the football was challenging, Witt told Nightly News he felt frustrated in the classroom.

The Texas native graduated from high school early and enrolled at Nebraska in January 2007, where he participated in spring drills. He prepared as Nebraska?s No. 3 quarterback throughout the year, but redshirted. Off the field, Witt?posted a 4.0 grade-point average.

In December 2007, Witt was arrested on suspicion of?trespassing in a student dorm, third-degree assault by menacing threats, and possession of a false ID, according to an article published in the Lincoln Journal Star. The paper reported Witt?signed in with a different name and went up to a floor without waiting to be escorted.

Police told the paper Witt pushed a dorm?resident?assistant several times, making threatening remarks.?Police told the paper Witt also?showed signs of alcohol intoxication and his blood alcohol content was 0.115.

The Times reported?a second arrest came in New Haven in 2010 for third-degree criminal trespass and was sparked by a disagreement when Witt was denied entry into Toad's Place, a club near the Yale campus.

In the statement released on his behalf, Witt's agent wrote that "Patrick respects the academic traditions of both Yale and the Rhodes Trust, and he remains grateful for the opportunities each has afforded him."?

In an appearance Friday on MSNBC?s NewsNation, Times education reporter Richard Perez-Pena, who wrote the article, defended the reporting. While anonymous, the sources are ?unimpeachable,? he said.

Several comments on the Times website had criticized the story?as ?lazy reporting? and ?sensationalism.? The story ?was filled with innuendo and numerous anonymous sources,? a commenter called Lillian wrote.

?Had [Witt] not been a Rhodes candidate, this isn?t something that we would have reported on,? Perez-Pena said.?

?

Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/27/10250082-doubts-cast-over-yale-qbs-rhodes-honor

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Arab League suspends Syria mission as violence rages (Reuters)

CAIRO/BEIRUT (Reuters) ? The Arab League suspended its monitoring mission in Syria on Saturday due to deteriorating conditions in the country, as state security forces battled rebels holding three suburbs just outside the capital Damascus.

The decision comes days after the Arab League called for President Bashar al-Assad to step down, following 10 months of revolt against his rule. It will take an Arab peace plan to the U.N. Security Council next week.

"Given the critical deterioration of the situation in Syria and the continued use of violence ... it has been decided to immediately stop the work of the Arab League's mission to Syria pending presentation of the issue to the league's council," Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby said in a statement.

Arab League foreign ministers are expected to discuss early next month the possibility of withdrawing monitors completely, a League official said, but added that the secretary general could pull monitors out at any time if necessary.

A Syrian official said the government could not yet comment.

The Arab League's job was to observe implementation of its peace plan. Though its mandate was extended for a second month, critics lambasted the mission for its failure to stem bloodshed. It was further undermined when Gulf states withdrew their monitors last week, saying the team could not stop the violence.

Diplomatic pressure, tempered by continued support from Russia and regional power Iran, has yet to halt Assad's crackdown on unrest that it blames on foreign-backed militants.

FIGHTING, DEFECTIONS NEAR CAPITAL

Fighting raged outside three rebel-held suburbs of Damascus on Saturday, activists said. They said the army was trying to prevent insurgents from solidifying a stronghold just 15 minutes outside the capital.

But insurgents were emboldened by a string of reports of army desertions amid the fighting. Activists said a group of deserters brought with them the three tanks they operated.

A spokesman for the rebel forces, known as the Free Syrian Army (FSA), said he did not have a complete tally but estimated that over 100 soldiers deserted in the area.

Activists told Reuters by telephone that rebels who control the towns of Saqba, Kafr Batna and Jisreen were exchanging fire with soldiers. Military forces earlier fired from tanks and had used anti-aircraft guns and mortars, they said.

Six residents were killed and dozens wounded as fighting raged, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

A video uploaded by activists, purported to be from a rebel-held Damascus suburb, showed smoke rising from behind a mosque and heavy gunfire erupted in the background as residents screamed "Allahu Akbar (God is greatest)."

It was not possible to verify the video or many of the details from activists, as media access is restricted in Syria

The FSA agreed a truce last week for state forces to withdraw from rebel-held Zabadani, 30 minutes from Damascus. It says the number of desertions there had forced the army's hand.

What began as peaceful protests against four decades of Assad family rule last March has grown more violent as rebels, including army defectors, began fighting back.

"I think they want to try to avoid another Zabadani situation here, so they hope to crush this. But there have been several army defections and we hope this will force them to negotiate," Abu Ishaq said on Skype from the town of Saqba.

Fighting also flared in central Homs province, activists said, after an oil pipeline was blown up on Saturday morning.

The United Nations said in December that more than 5,000 people had been killed by Syrian forces. Syria says over 2,000 security forces have been killed by militants.

The state news agency SANA said "terrorist groups" killed seven soldiers, including an officer, in the Damascus suburbs on Saturday. SANA also reported the burial of 28 members of Syrian security forces killed in several revolt hotspots across the country, showing pictures of bloodied corpses and a funeral procession lead by soldiers carrying flower wreaths.

U.N. RESOLUTION TALKS

In the central city of Hama activists said they found the bodies of 17 men previously in security force custody, shot in the head. They said the killing took place during a military offensive on the town this week.

On Friday, the Security Council discussed a European-Arab draft U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at halting the bloodshed in Syria. Britain and France said they hoped to put the draft resolution to a vote next week.

The Arab League's deputy secretary general said the group was also in talks with Russia ahead of its Security Council meeting this week.

There was no comment yet from Russian officials, but Moscow's U.N. ambassador Vitaly Churkin previously said Russia found the plan unacceptable though he said Moscow was willing to "engage."

Russia joined China in vetoing a previous Western draft resolution in October and which has since promoted its own draft. Churkin said Moscow wanted a Syrian-led political process, not "an Arab League-imposed outcome of a political process that has not yet taken place" or Libyan-style "regime change.

The prominent opposition Syrian National Council said it was joining the Arab League at its Security Council meeting to request "protection." The SNC has previously called for international forces to implement a no-fly zone in Syria.

Turkish officials say the number of Syrians seeking sanctuary in Turkey has risen in the past six weeks, with 50 to 60 arriving daily, taking the total living in refugee camps to nearly 9,600.

More than 6,000 Syrian refugees have fled to Lebanon.

(Additional reporting by Shaimaa Fayed in Cairo, Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, Joseph Logan in Dubai, Steve Gutterman in Moscow, Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations and Simon Cameron-Moore in Istanbul)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120128/wl_nm/us_syria

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Picks revealed for free summer Central Park plays (AP)

NEW YORK ? The Public Theater will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of its Shakespeare in the Park series this summer with a little Bard and a little Sondheim.

The Public said Thursday that Daniel Sullivan will direct "As You Like It" in June with Lily Rabe as Rosalind. A month later, Timothy Sheader and Liam Steel will direct Stephen Sondheim's and James Lapine's "Into the Woods."

Both works will be free at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Additional casting and dates will be announced later.

The Shakespeare comedy reunites Rabe and Sullivan, who combined in 2010 in the park with a thrilling production of "The Merchant of Venice" led by Al Pacino as Shylock that transferred to Broadway and earned Tony Award nominations for all three.

The Sondheim musical, a reimagining of beloved classic fairy tales that opened on Broadway in 1987, will be based on the Olivier Award-winning Regent's Park Open Air Theatre London production in 2010, which also was directed by Sheader and Steel. The original Broadway cast featured Bernadette Peters and a 2002 revival starred Vanessa Williams.

"I'm delighted that we are adding Stephen Sondheim to the Delacorte's roster: our greatest artist of musical theater will sit very comfortably next to Shakespeare," Oskar Eustis, artistic director of The Public Theater, said in a statement. "Sondheim in the Park has a good ring to it."

The Delacorte Theater officially opened in Central Park on June 18, 1962, with a production of "The Merchant of Venice," directed by Joseph Papp and Gladys Vaughan and featuring George C. Scott as Shylock. Since then, stars including James Earl Jones, Kevin Kline, Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Raul Julia and Christopher Walken have acted on its stage.

___

Online:

http://publictheater.org/

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/entertainment/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120126/ap_en_ot/us_theater_shakespeare_park

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Magnitude 5.3 quake off Greek islands, no injuries (AP)

ATHENS, Greece ? Greek authorities say an earthquake with preliminary 5.3-magnitude has shaken the southern Aegean Sea islands, but no injuries or damage have been reported.

The Athens Geodynamic Institute says the undersea earthquake occurred Thursday between the popular tourist resort islands of Santorini and Crete, some 244 kilometers (150 miles) southeast of Athens.

Greece is in one of the world's seismically active areas. Out of the hundreds of quakes that occur every year, very few cause injuries or damage, although a strong earthquake on the outskirts of Athens in 1999 killed 143 people.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120126/ap_on_re_eu/eu_greece_earthquake

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Scientists create first free-standing 3-D cloak

ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2012) ? Researchers in the US have, for the first time, cloaked a three-dimensional object standing in free space, bringing the much-talked-about invisibility cloak one step closer to reality.

Whilst previous studies have either been theoretical in nature or limited to the cloaking of two-dimensional objects, this study shows how ordinary objects can be cloaked in their natural environment in all directions and from all of an observer's positions.

Published Jan. 26 in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society's New Journal of Physics, the researchers used a method known as "plasmonic cloaking" to hide an 18-centimetre cylindrical tube from microwaves.

Some of the most recent breakthroughs in the field of invisibility cloaking have focussed on using transformation-based metamaterials -- inhomogeneous, human-made materials that have the ability to bend light around objects -- however, this new approach uses a different type of artificial material -- plasmonic metamaterials.

When light strikes an object, it rebounds off its surface towards another direction, just like throwing a tennis ball against a wall. The reason we see objects is because light rays bounce off materials towards our eyes and our eyes are able to process the information.

Due to their unique properties, plasmonic metamaterials have the opposite scattering effect to everyday materials.

"When the scattered fields from the cloak and the object interfere, they cancel each other out and the overall effect is transparency and invisibility at all angles of observation.

"One of the advantages of the plasmonic cloaking technique is its robustness and moderately broad bandwidth of operation, superior to conventional cloaks based on transformation metamaterials. This made our experiment more robust to possible imperfections, which is particularly important when cloaking a 3D object in free-space," said study co-author Professor Andrea Alu.

In this instance, the cylindrical tube was cloaked with a shell of plasmonic metamaterial to make it appear invisible. The system was tested by directing microwaves towards the cloaked cylinder and mapping the resulting scattering both around the object and in the far-field. The cloak showed optimal functionality when the microwaves were at a frequency of 3.1 gigahertz and over a moderately broad bandwidth.

The researchers, from the University of Texas at Austin, have shown in previous studies that the shape of the object is irrelevant; oddly shaped and asymmetric objects can both be cloaked using this technique.

Moving forward, one of the key challenges for the researchers will be to demonstrate the cloaking of a 3D object using visible light.

"In principle, this technique could be used to cloak light; in fact, some plasmonic materials are naturally available at optical frequencies. However, the size of the objects that can be efficiently cloaked with this method scales with the wavelength of operation, so when applied to optical frequencies we may be able to efficiently stop the scattering of micrometre-sized objects.

"Still, cloaking small objects may be exciting for a variety of applications. For instance, we are currently investigating the application of these concepts to cloak a microscope tip at optical frequencies. This may greatly benefit biomedical and optical near-field measurements," continued Professor Alu.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Institute of Physics, via AlphaGalileo.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. D Rainwater, A Kerkhoff, K Melin, J C Soric, G Moreno, A Al. Experimental verification of three-dimensional plasmonic cloaking in free-space. New Journal of Physics, 2012; 14 (1): 013054 DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/14/1/013054

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120125195535.htm

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Rift MMO launches Android app with in-game items

Massively multiplayer game Rift has just launched its first companion app for Android. Not only does it have the usual stuff like chat with in-game friends and event notifications, they've also included mini-games through which you can win proper in-game items. 

While World of Warcraft still claims the throne of high fantasy online roleplaying games, I've seen a lot of WoW veterans switch guys and get involved with Rift. Although I haven't played it myself, it seems like Rift offers a lot more in terms of class customizability, and the art style seems to err more on the side of realism rather than cartoony chariactures. Otherwise, it's very much the same sort of stuff - world-spanning player-versus-player combat, cooperative raids, friend-packed guilds, and seasonal events. 

World of Warcraft also has mobile app, but they're kind of jerks for tacking on an extra $3 to your subscription fee if you want to make use of them. It's good to see Rift isn't making such a shameless moneygrab, and are more interested in winning the goodwill of their players before pouncing on their credit card. 

If you're interested in giving Rift a shot, you can download the free week-long trial over here. After that, you'll need to shell out $12/month to keep playing. Hopefully the guys at Rift will be able to add some item database and character look-up features in the future, but in the meantime, you can download Rift Mobile for Android below in the Market. 

read more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/45ZSBD7aFnQ/story01.htm

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Next Xbox console to be six times more powerful, headed for fall 2013 release?

Xbox 720, Xbox Loop -- whatever Microsoft ends up calling it, that hot rod of a console looks to be on deck for a late fall 2013 release. According to IGN's sources, this successor to the Redmond gaming throne is purported to pack a GPU based on AMD's 6000 series of chips and will boast silicon circuitry that catapults its performance past Nintendo's upcoming Wii U by 20 percent. If you're looking for a more apples to green X's comparison, this next-gen console's graphical capabilities are also reportedly six times greater than its 360 progenitor. While MS is likely holding back its monstrous new platform for a big E3 reveal, it appears the company's still whittling down its spec list, with dev kits to be issued later this August. No mention was made of its rumored Kinect 2 integration, but we're more than certain that famous hacking tech will be front and center.

[Image credit: Joseph Dumary]

Next Xbox console to be six times more powerful, headed for fall 2013 release? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/24/next-xbox-console-to-be-six-times-more-powerful-headed-for-fall/

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RVIA Communications Director Morrison Retiring | RV Business

Chris Morrison

The Recreation Vehicle Industry Association (RVIA) announced that Christine Morrison, senior director of marketing communications, will retire on March 31 after a 26-year career in the RV industry.

?Chris has been a mainstay for more than two decades on our marketing and communications team,? said RVIA President Richard Coon. ?Never one to crave the spotlight, she has provided solid leadership and management of our industry?s consumer outreach efforts, and her contributions have positioned the industry for continued success moving forward. I know I speak on behalf of the leadership across our industry in wishing Chris the best in retirement and in thanking her for all she has done to help our industry shine. ?

B.J. Thompson, president of B.J. Thompson Associates Inc. and chairman of RVIA?s Public Relations Committee, added, ?In addition to being very thoughtful and intelligent, Chris is a terrific public relations professional. Her many contributions to the RVIA and Go RVing?s public relations programs have played a significant role in enhancing the image of RVs and the RV industry. I?ve loved working with her since she joined RVIA and will miss her.?

Morrison has overseen public and media relations for RVIA since October 1985 and the efforts of the all-industry Go RVing program since 1996. In managing RVIA staff and agency efforts on a daily basis, she has worked to promote RV travel to the public through print, television, radio and on-line media publicity and paid advertising. Her work has been instrumental in generating a dramatically higher profile for RV travel and camping and in expanding the young, family RV market.

Most recently, she played a key role in the development and production of Go RVing?s new ?AWAY? campaign, which launches in late February. Featuring four print ads, three television commercials, four digital ads and a new website with innovative user tools, this will be Go RVing?s first all-new campaign since 2005. ?AWAY? returns to the emotion-driven family focus of past campaigns along with a continued emphasis on the affordability and accessibility of the RV lifestyle.

?Chris deserves a tremendous amount of credit for RVIA?s and Go RVing?s marketing and public relations success. Over the past year, I?ve relied heavily on her as we made changes to the team?s promotional approach, as well as during the creative and production process of the new ?AWAY? campaign,? said RVIA Vice President of Public Relations and Advertising James Ashurst. ?Her knowledge and counsel have proved invaluable, as she is a terrific asset to me, the team and the industry. I?m sad to see her leave, but happy she has the opportunity to retire to spend more time with family and friends. I join with her colleagues in wishing Chris all the best in everything she does.?

?I?ll certainly miss the challenge and fulfillment of working with RVIA?s PR and advertising team, but I?ve got a long list of personal projects and goals to keep me busy: volunteering at my son?s school, gardening, fixing up our house and making music with friends, ? said Morrison. ?It?s been a privilege and a joy to have played a part in building a marketing communications program that?s so unique in the association world, thanks to this industry?s strong support. I?m very grateful for my years in the RV industry and confident that more success lies ahead for all my friends and colleagues.?

Source: http://www.rvbusiness.com/2012/01/rvia-communications-director-morrison-to-retire/

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Romney pressing reset after SC loss (AP)

ORMOND BEACH, Fla. ? Mitt Romney is pressing reset.

After a crushing loss to Newt Gingrich in South Carolina, the former Massachusetts governor made clear Sunday that he plans to attack his chief rival's character, release his tax returns this week and try to right a campaign he acknowledged had been knocked off kilter.

"It was not a great week for me," Romney acknowledged during an interview on "Fox News Sunday."

Romney now turns to Florida at what is possibly the most critical moment of his campaign, after two weeks of sustained attacks from his opponents and a series of self-inflicted errors that erased any notion that he would be able to lock up the nomination quickly by winning this state's Jan. 31 primary.

"I'm looking forward to a long campaign," Romney said. "We are selecting the president of the United States. Someone who is going to face ups and downs and real challenges, and I hope that through this process, I can demonstrate that I can take a setback and come back strong."

Even if Romney does manage a victory here ? his Florida campaign is by far the strongest of any in the GOP field, and he and his allies have been alone on the air for weeks ? the race has become a two-way fight between him and Gingrich, the former House speaker with a huge dose of momentum.

And now Romney's team is girding for a long and costly fight for the party nod that extends well beyond Florida after Saturday night's shellacking in South Carolina that underscored the former Massachusetts governor's vulnerabilities and undermined his claims of becoming the inevitable Republican nominee.

Over the next 10 days, the candidates ? including former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron Paul ? will meet twice on the debate stage, a venue where Gingrich has thrived in recent weeks and Romney has struggled some when pressed about questions about his wealth and private business experience. The debates ? Monday in Tampa and Thursday in Jacksonville ? present fresh opportunities for both breakout performances and mistakes.

Romney previewed his more aggressive posture and lines of attack toward Gingrich on Saturday night, saying: "Our party can't be led to victory by someone who also has never run a business and never led a state." He also argued, again without naming Gingrich, that "we cannot defeat that president with a candidate who has joined that very assault on free enterprise." Gingrich has attacked Romney's record running Bain Capital, a private equity firm.

But, behind the scenes, aides also indicated that Romney would go after Gingrich's character in Florida as a way to distinguish the father of five who has been married to the same woman for 42 years from his thrice-married rival. And the aides argued that the results in South Carolina don't indicate Republican primary voters everywhere are willing to overlook Gingrich's two divorces and acknowledged infidelity. Gingrich's second wife, Marianne, told ABC News in an interview aired Thursday that the former speaker asked her for an open marriage so he could continue having an affair with the House staffer who is now his third wife.

Publicly, Romney has refused to engage on the subject thus far, saying at a debate Thursday, "Let's get onto the real issues. That's all I got to say."

But Romney has started poking at Gingrich's character by raising questions about the ethics investigation against Gingrich in the 1990s when he was House speaker, and suggested that the former Georgia lawmaker was hiding something by refusing to release reams of documents he apparently gave to investigators back then.

Asked Sunday whether character would become an issue, Romney said: "No question."

"Leadership is the key attribute that people should look for in considering a president," Romney said, "and character is a big part of leadership, as is vision, sobriety, steadiness."

Romney's team also plans to contrast his experience as a governor and businessman with Gingrich's experience in Congress and his later work with former colleagues on behalf of businesses.

"It will really come down to someone who's offering Washington experience, congressional experience, K Street experience, versus a governor and a businessman," said Stuart Stevens, Romney's top strategist. "It will be a straight-up choice."

Romney, meanwhile, also is working to fix a key vulnerability ? defensiveness over questions about his personal wealth, including money in funds in the Cayman Islands, a popular haven for international investment.

Under pressure to release his tax returns immediately, Romney reversed course and said he would release those documents for 2010 and an estimate for 2011 on Tuesday ? months ahead of their April planned release.

The documents will lay out just how Romney, a multimillionaire many times over, makes his money and reveal his actual tax rate, which Romney estimated at about 15 percent.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a backer who had called on Romney to immediately release his returns, told NBC's "Meet the Press" that Romney made the right decision, saying: "I'm happy he's doing it."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120122/ap_on_el_pr/us_romney

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Environmentalists see reason for alarm in GOP race (The Arizona Republic)

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Trends of 2012: Social Gaming ? Articles ? Eurogamer.net

Over the next 12 months, social games will continue be successful. That much isn't particularly hard to predict - the phenomenal numbers of players that the likes of Zynga and Playfish can boast show few signs of dropping off, and if anything they'll swell even further throughout 2012. The real story of social gaming over the next year could be something much more compelling, though. This could well be the year that an area often scorned by traditional gamers finally crosses over to the core.

For many, social gaming is still all about Zynga. For millions ensnared by late-night games of Zynga Poker and many more tending to their virtual lots in FarmVille or CityVille, Zynga is gaming.

Those that consider themselves gamers rest their view of social gaming on a sceptical stance on Zynga's output - these are games with the pleasures of play ripped out of them, replaced with slick and cynical economies. They're Sisyphean slogs in which Sisyphus must drag his friends along for the ride and then spam them with reports on every step of his fruitless trundle.

It's a perception that's long tarnished social gaming, and one that even veterans of this fledgling scene have empathy with. "The very early games on Facebook weren't really games," says Playfish's VP of global studios, Jami Laes, "they were more like these viral vehicles."

Henrique Olifiers, a former studio director at Playfish and now head of fellow London outfit Bossa Studios, goes further. "[Social games] have been in a development cycle for the last three years, and nothing particularly special's come out of it just yet," he tells us. "There have been a lot of copycat games, a lot of games with the same mechanics and the same graphical style, without enough gameplay mechanics or depth of storyline or characters.

Triple Town showed that Facebook can host deep and compelling games - expect more examples in the next 12 months.

"The first generation of social games hit well with a new kind of player, which was typically a 40-year-old woman - the kind who'd never played games before. And that became a self-fulfilling prophecy - since there was money to be made from that segment, everyone started making games for that segment. So that's really the main reason that hardcore gamers don't have any interest. So I see why they don't like these games - I don't blame them at all."

But times are changing, and they're changing rapidly. The past 12 months has seen a sharp upturn in quality and a fresh diversity, from Spry Fox's smart strategy/puzzle hybrid Triple Town to the successful arrival of established gaming brands that have finally managed to etch their own place in social gaming, whether that's with Civ World or, most fruitfully, Playfish's The Sims Social.

"The Sims Social has been successful," confirms Jami Laes, "it's overreached all the targets that we had for the game in terms of audience size and revenue. We were kind of caught off guard in its initial success." It's tailed off somewhat - no real surprise when most social games peak around three months into their lives - but the numbers are still there, and it's showing no sign of disappearing any time soon.

"It's been a big effort from a lot of people," says Laes, admitting that the transposition's been eased as the Sims series comes with a design ethos that already sits comfortably with the unique demands of social gaming.

"It made sense with the brand - it was very suitable to social gaming, and very suitable to Facebook gaming. And when you play the game, I'm sure you'll see that it's one of the only real social games out there, in many ways. Because the relationships really matter in a social context in a more meaningful way than any generic farming or restaurant game or anything like that."

It's not the first of EA's brands to make it across to Facebook, but to date it's been the most successful - and it's paving the way for a fresh wave of games that move further away from the click-farming of old and towards a more traditional gameplay experience. Risk: Factions - a spin on the classic strategic board game that's also made an appearance on console - has already set a strong foundation for EA and Playfish's attack on social gaming in 2012.

"Risk, that we launched a couple of weeks ago, has opened the floodgates," says Laes. "That's a very social game, as it was originally a board game, and board games are social by their very nature. Those games that people traditionally play together lend themselves very well to social gaming. I think Risk is a good example of better execution on social through Playfish and EA on EA's brands, on their core game brands. It's a more hardcore game than The Sims Social is."

Being more hardcore than The Sims is, of course, no real feat, but Risk: Factions is one more step along a path that social gaming looks set to stick to over the next 12 months, and it's one that promises to cross the divide between social gaming and core gaming.

The Sims Social is an example of an existing franchise successfully making the jump to Facebook - can other, more hardcore brands make the jump as well?

It's a divide that's been diminishing for a while already - just as mainstream games have begun to adopt the tropes and themes of social networks - witness, for example, Need for Speed's Autolog, Call of Duty Elite or Forza's Rivals mode - so too are social games beginning to look towards more traditional games for inspiration.

"That borrowing goes both ways," Laes says of the existing relationship between social gaming and console gaming. "Social gaming and Facebook will adopt more of their mechanics from core games, and the core games will adapt some of the themes, mechanics and gameplay from social games."

If a game does emerge in 2012 that successfully caters to the hardcore, it may have to do something more radical than simply weld together two existing templates. "The social mechanic that most social games offer has nothing for the hardcore player," says Olifiers, "it's a lot about using your friends as resources, while more core players are interested in competition and co-operation in a meaningful way. If social games can start doing that - if they start offering stuff like PVP - the game can be a little more casual but could have a large appeal."

Bossa has already started to move towards this, with last year's Monster Mind introducing real-time multiplayer as well as strategic elements that will be familiar to more seasoned games players.

"It's not a departure from social games, but it's a step in the right direction. One of the things that we want to do is comparative real-time multiplayer - we love co-op gaming. We think it's stronger than PVP, and that's something that we don't see on Facebook."

How exactly Bossa Studios delivers on this remains a mystery, but already it's become a source of some excitement. When Yoshifusa Hayama, a veteran developer with one of the industry's most colourful CVs - having worked at Sega's arcade division in the nineties, he went on to work on Shenmue where he's credited with the invention of the QTE, before most recently working at a producer level on The Last Guardian - joined and stated that he wanted to create Facebook's first masterpiece, it sent ripples out among the hardcore.

He's not the first high-profile developer with a more traditional gaming background to make the jump to social; amongst Zynga's many acquisitions there has been the hiring of several notable execs such as Barry Cottle and Stephen Chiang. In 2012, we should start to see this cross-pollination bear fruit.

And it's highly likely that the results will bear little resemblance to the current generation of social games as the technology behind them begins to escalate. "Technology's taking us to 3D," says Olifiers, "and we're starting to look at games that look like their counterparts on console. The final aim is to have something that in terms of gameplay mechanics and depth, and storyline and character and engagement with the player is also on a par; this is something that we want to do this year.

Dusty Welch, a man credited with building the Call of Duty brand, is aiming to replicate his success in the world of social gaming.

"Social games are evolving right now - the production values will evolve very fast and close the gap between social games and consoles - and that will start happening this year."

There are already social games in the pipeline that promise to do this, the most notable at present being the as-yet-unnamed shooter project under development at U4iA, a team founded by Dusty Welch - a man who helped build the Call of Duty brand into the behemoth that it is today.

"The team and the talent and the tech hasn't existed yet today to provide a AAA quality experience, for example in Facebook. Flash really can't take advantage until Flash 3D comes out, but Unity can," Welch said late last year, and he's optimistic that his new game can replicate some of his past successes.

"I kind of liken it to when I created Call Of Duty to dethrone the established leaders back in the early 2000s, and you bet my goal at U4iA is to repeat that success again. And so providing a AAA, first-person shooter experience in a browser is really what the end game is for us. And I think that's going to help lead the new dynamic and a transition of gamers into the social."

And U4iA's game isn't going to be alone in 2012. "I actually know there's a couple of games coming in the next 12 months that are going to attract the core gamers," Laes says somewhat cryptically. "But unfortunately I can't speak to what those are right now."

As and when these games start to appear, social gaming's perception amongst the core may still prove an issue. "The problem with that is to convince hardcore gamers that such a thing could happen on Facebook, so they could give it a try," warns Olifiers; "if we create something like that right now I'm pretty sure it will die, because the players won't believe it's something that can happen."

The incoming swell of new games and new game types to the world of social should hopefully wash any such worries away. "It doesn't really need more than a couple of great games that are going to show the potential, that are going to justify those core gamers making that leap of faith and trying Facebook games," says Laes. "Maybe it's a known brand, maybe it's a generic game that they loved, in the same way that the Sims Social has done that on Facebook but with a more hardcore game from the past."

It all adds up to a potentially transformative 12 months in social. "Creativity and differentiation of social games will be key," Laes says of the year ahead. "Until fairly recently, social games stuck to a strict format; 2012 will be the year that we'll see different variations of this and more creative gameplay. Now that studios are waking up to the opportunities that social gaming brings, the race is on to attract loyal social gamers with games that are increasingly sophisticated and really pushing the boundaries of what is expected of them.

"By the end of 2012 we'll have games that are more interesting, and the companies making these games will be making more hardcore games," Olifiers concludes. "It's going to be very interesting, and it's not going to be an easy ride."

Source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-01-21-trends-of-2012-social-gaming

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Full Disclosure of Romney's Faith and Finances Is a Must (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | At Thursday's Republican debate in South Carolina, the pressure got turned up a notch on Mitt Romney to release his tax returns. Given how removed his financial situation is from that of most Americans, this seems a reasonable request.

In any case, and despite the candidate's obvious reluctance, it is one that is likely to be fulfilled. There is another matter Romney is even more unwilling to discuss but which is guaranteed to cause an even bigger problem for Republicans if not brought out into the open at the earliest possible date: his faith. Just as Romney's finances are foreign to most Americans, so is his Mormon religion. Full disclosure is required in each case.

I take it that unless we want to be accused of ascribing to a massive double standard we can put aside the question of whether a candidate's faith is a legitimate subject of inquiry. The obsessive coverage in 2008 of President Barack Obama's relation with Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago has demonstrated that a potential president's religious affiliation is a justified focus of press coverage.

Indeed, the controversy surrounding the teachings of Rev. Jeremiah Wright provides a single standard that could be reasonably applied to any candidate's religious affiliation: When a candidate's faith, creed, or teaching veers wildly from mainstream religious thought, it deserves an added level of scrutiny.

If there is one defining trait of the three great world Abrahamic religions -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--it is that they all are monotheistic. That is, they all believe there exists a single, all-powerful God. This contrasts with polytheism found in many ancient religions as well as with the conception of divinity in Hinduism or Buddhism. By comparison, Mormonism teaches that there are many Gods and that humans can become gods and goddesses in the celestial kingdom. As it was famously put by Lorenzo Snow, fifth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, "As man is, God once was; as God is, man may be." So when Bob Jones III declares, as he recently did on CNN, that "Mormonism is not Christianity," he is not uttering hateful or even untrue words but stating what is theologically uncontroversial.

Given that a large majority of Americans identify themselves as Christian, this puts Romney's church outside of mainstream American religious thought. Of course in a country that is founded on religious freedom, this does not disqualify Romney from the presidency. But it does make it more than likely that a full accounting of Romney's faith will be even more essential than a full accounting of his finances if America is ever to become comfortable enough with the man to elect him president.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politicsopinion/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120121/cm_ac/10861349_full_disclosure_of_romneys_faith_and_finances_is_a_must

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