Tax filing delay looms if no fix for minimum tax: IRS

The top U.S. tax collector warned on Thursday of a delayed start to 2013's tax season if Congress fails to reset the alternative minimum tax (AMT) on high-income taxpayers so that it does not sweep in millions of middle-income people.
Without another adjustment by lawmakers soon to the AMT, "many of us will see a delayed filing season," said Steven Miller, named just last month as Internal Revenue Service acting commissioner.
Miller did not give an exact date by which Congress must approve an AMT "patch" to prevent a delay to the tax season, which is scheduled to begin on January 22.
"We don't have any drop-dead time in mind," Miller told reporters after a speech at a conference in Washington.
But his remarks came on a day of continued stalemate in Washington between Democrats and Republicans over what to do about the "fiscal cliff" approaching at the end of the year.
The AMT is a crucial part of the assorted tax increases and automatic spending cuts that make up the so-called "cliff," a convergence of events that, absent congressional action, threatens to plunge the U.S. economy back into recession.
"Many people don't realize that they could potentially face a significantly delayed filing season and a much bigger tax bill for 2012," if the AMT is not dealt with, Miller said.
"In programming our systems, the IRS has assumed that Congress will patch the AMT as Congress has for so many years.
"And I remain optimistic that the fiscal cliff debate will be resolved by the end of the year. If that turns out not to be the case, then what is clear is that many of us will see a delayed filing season," Miller said.
The AMT is a tax intended to make sure that at least some tax is paid by high-income people who otherwise could sharply reduce or eliminate their regular income tax bills through using tax loopholes. About 4 million people annually pay the AMT.
Unlike the regular income tax, the AMT is not indexed for inflation. So the thresholds that determine who must pay the tax have to be regularly raised. This prevents the AMT from hitting middle-class people whose incomes may have crept upward on the back of inflation, but who are not wealthy.
Congress last patched the AMT in late 2010. Without another patch, the AMT could hit as many as 33 million people for the 2012 tax year, according to the IRS.
Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York said on Thursday he is "hopeful" that the AMT problem will be fixed with a broader "fiscal cliff" resolution before December 31.
Republicans in Congress may see the AMT as leverage in their "fiscal cliff" negotiations with President Barack Obama and the Democrats.
The IRS might have until mid-January to implement an AMT patch and still start the tax season on time, if Congress approves the fix as expected, said Richard Harvey, a tax professor at Villanova University and a former IRS official.
The AMT "is a ticking time bomb that is going to go off some time in January," Harvey said.

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Oregon governor says Nike plans to hire thousands

Sporting goods giant Nike plans to expand its operations in Oregon and hire as many as 12,000 new workers by 2020 but wants the government to promise it won't change the state tax code, prompting a special session of the Legislature.
Gov. John Kitzhaber said he'll call lawmakers together Friday in Salem to create a new law authorizing him to grant Nike's wish.
The governor did not release information about the company's expansion plans but the $440 million project would create 2,900 construction jobs with an annual economic impact of $2 billion a year.
Nike Inc. has its headquarters in Beaverton. Company officials could not immediately be reached.
The Legislature is due to meet in its regular annual session beginning Jan. 14, but Kitzhaber said Nike needed certainty sooner. The company was being wooed by other states, he said.
"Getting Oregonians back to work is my top priority," Kitzhaber said in a news conference.
Either the governor or the Legislature itself can call lawmakers into session at times other than the state Constitution specifies.
For much of the state's history, the Legislature's regular sessions have been held every other year, at the beginning of odd-numbered years. That's the kind of session the Legislature is scheduled to begin early next year.
In recent years, the Legislature has moved to meet annually, running test sessions of briefer sessions in even-numbered years. Those led to voter approval of a constitutional amendment in 2010 that called for annual sessions.
Records list 38 special sessions since Oregon's statehood, ranging from one day on eight occasions to 37 days in 1982.

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Oregon governor says Nike plans expansion

 Nike wants to expand its Oregon operations and hire hundreds of workers but is asking the government to promise it won't change the state tax code.
Gov. John Kitzhaber (KIHTS'-hah-bur) says he'll call the Legislature into session Friday to create a law to give Nike its wish.
The company has not specified its expansion plans except to say it would create at least 500 jobs and $150 million in capital investment over five years.
Nike Inc. has its headquarters in Beaverton, outside Portland. Company officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
It employs 44,000 people globally, including 8,000 in Washington County.
Nike has been selling off brands and making other moves to focus on its most profitable businesses, which include its namesake Nike brand, Jordan, Converse and Hurley.

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Report: Most Pakistani lawmakers do not file taxes

The majority of Pakistani lawmakers do not file tax returns despite a legal requirement to do, a report said Wednesday, reinforcing concerns about the low level of tax revenue in the country.
Pakistan has one of the lowest tax-to-GDP rates in the world because payment is not well enforced, and major areas of the economy, such as the agriculture sector, are either taxed at very low rates or not at all.
Around two-thirds of the country's 446 lawmakers failed to file tax returns in 2011, the latest data available, said the report, co-published by the Center for Investigative Reporting in Pakistan and the Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives.
A similar percentage of the government's 55 Cabinet members also failed to file returns, said the report, titled "Representation Without Taxation." Among those politicians who failed to file a return was Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
Even lawmakers who filed returns often paid very low amounts of tax on outside income. The lowest-paying lawmaker who filed a return, Senator Mushahid Hussain, paid less than $1 in taxes, said the report.
The figures do not take into account the tax paid by lawmakers on their official salaries, which is automatically deducted. It instead focuses on declarations of supplemental income from land, businesses and other sources of revenue.
Analysts have said that the country's effective tax rate is so low because a small elite, comprised of the military, land owners and the rising urban upper and middle classes is reluctant to give up any of its wealth. These groups either put pressure on lawmakers or are the lawmakers themselves.
"End result is the erosion of public trust in the government that is frequently blamed for serving the interests of the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and low-income groups," the report said.

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Pennies over patriotism? Stars move to tax havens

 France's Socialist government is introducing a 75-percent income tax on those earning over €1 million ($1.3 million), leading some of the country's rich and famous to set up residency in less fiscally demanding countries.
Here's a look at some big names in France and elsewhere whose changes of address over the years have meant lighter taxes.
DEPARTING DEPARDIEU
The French prime minister has accused actor Gerard Depardieu of being "pathetic" and "unpatriotic," saying he set up residence in a small village just across the border in neighboring Belgium to avoid paying taxes in France.
The office of the mayor in Depardieu's new haunts at Nechin, also known as the "millionaire's village" for its appeal to high-earning Frenchmen, said that for people with high income, like Depardieu, the Belgian tax system, capped at 50 percent, is more attractive.
Depardieu, who has played in more than 100 films, including "Green Card" and "Cyrano de Bergerac," has not commented publicly on the matter.
BEATLE TAX
In 2005, the Beatles' Ringo Starr took up residency in Monaco, where he gets to keep a higher percentage of royalties than he would in Britain or Los Angeles. France's tiny neighbor Monaco, with zero percent income tax for most people, has obvious appeal for the 72-year-old drummer and his estimated $240 million fortune.
The Beatles' resentment of high taxes goes back to their 1960s song "Taxman." George Harrison penned it in protest of the British government's 95 percent supertax on the rich, evoked by the lyrics: "There's one for you, nineteen for me."
Harrison reportedly said later, "'Taxman' was when I first realized that even though we had started earning money, we were actually giving most of it away in taxes."
LICENSE TO DODGE?
Former "James Bond" star Sean Connery left the U.K. in the 1970s, reportedly for tax exile in Spain, and then the Bahamas — another spot with zero income tax and one of the richest countries per capita in the Americas. His successor to the 007 mantle, Roger Moore, also opted for exile in the 1970s — this time in Monaco — ensuring his millions were neither shaken nor stirred.
EXILE ON MAIN ST.
In 1972, The Rolling Stones controversially moved to the south of France to escape onerous British taxes. Though it caused a stink at the time, it spawned one of the group's most seminal albums, "Exile on Main St." The title is a reference to their tax-dodging. In 2006, British media branded them the "Stingy Stones" with reports that they'd paid just 1.6 percent tax on their earnings of $389 million over the previous two decades.
FISCAL HEALING
In 1980, U.S. singer Marvin Gaye moved to Hawaii from L.A. to avoid problems with the Internal Revenue Service, the American tax agency. Later that year, Gaye relocated to London after a tour in Europe. Gaye, whose hits include "Sexual Healing" and "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" settled in Belgium in 1981. He was shot to death in 1984.

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AP IMPACT: Steroids loom in major-college football

With steroids easy to buy, testing weak and punishments inconsistent, college football players are packing on significant weight — 30 pounds or more in a single year, sometimes — without drawing much attention from their schools or the NCAA in a sport that earns tens of billions of dollars for teams.
Rules vary so widely that, on any given game day, a team with a strict no-steroid policy can face a team whose players have repeatedly tested positive.
An investigation by The Associated Press — based on interviews with players, testers, dealers and experts and an analysis of weight records for more than 61,000 players — revealed that while those running the multibillion-dollar sport say they believe the problem is under control, that control is hardly evident.
The sport's near-zero rate of positive steroids tests isn't an accurate gauge among college athletes. Random tests provide weak deterrence and, by design, fail to catch every player using steroids. Colleges also are reluctant to spend money on expensive steroid testing when cheaper ones for drugs like marijuana allow them to say they're doing everything they can to keep drugs out of football.
"It's nothing like what's going on in reality," said Don Catlin, an anti-doping pioneer who spent years conducting the NCAA's laboratory tests at UCLA. He became so frustrated with the college system that it was part of the reason he left the testing industry to focus on anti-doping research.
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EDITOR'S NOTE — Whether for athletics or age, Americans from teenagers to baby boomers are trying to get an edge by illegally using anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, despite well-documented risks. This is the first of a two-part series.
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While other major sports have been beset by revelations of steroid use, college football has operated with barely a whiff of scandal. Between 1996 and 2010 — the era of Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong — the failure rate for NCAA steroid tests fell even closer to zero from an already low rate of less than 1 percent.
The AP's investigation, drawing upon more than a decade of official rosters from all 120 Football Bowl Subdivision teams, found thousands of players quickly putting on significant weight, even more than their fellow players. The information compiled by the AP included players who appeared for multiple years on the same teams.
For decades, scientific studies have shown that anabolic steroid use leads to an increase in body weight. Weight gain alone doesn't prove steroid use, but very rapid weight gain is one factor that would be deemed suspicious, said Kathy Turpin, senior director of sport drug testing for the National Center for Drug Free Sport, which conducts tests for the NCAA and more than 300 schools.
Yet the NCAA has never studied weight gain or considered it in regard to its steroid testing policies, said Mary Wilfert, the NCAA's associate director of health and safety.
The NCAA attributes the decline in positive tests to its year-round drug testing program, combined with anti-drug education and testing conducted by schools.
The AP's analysis found that, regardless of school, conference and won-loss record, many players gained weight at exceptional rates compared with their fellow athletes and while accounting for their heights.
Adding more than 20 or 25 pounds of lean muscle in a year is nearly impossible through diet and exercise alone, said Dan Benardot, director of the Laboratory for Elite Athlete Performance at Georgia State University.
In nearly all the rarest cases of weight gain in the AP study, players were offensive or defensive linemen, hulking giants who tower above 6-foot-3 and weigh 300 pounds or more. Four of those players interviewed by the AP said that they never used steroids and gained weight through dramatic increases in eating, up to six meals a day. Two said they were aware of other players using steroids.
"I ate 5-6 times a day," said Clint Oldenburg, who played for Colorado State starting in 2002 and for five years in the NFL. Oldenburg's weight increased over four years from 212 to 290.
Oldenburg told the AP he was surprised at the scope of steroid use in college football, even in Colorado State's locker room. "There were a lot of guys even on my team that were using." He declined to identify any of them.
The AP found more than 4,700 players — or about 7 percent of all players — who gained more than 20 pounds overall in a single year. It was common for the athletes to gain 10, 15 and up to 20 pounds in their first year under a rigorous regimen of weightlifting and diet. Others gained 25, 35 and 40 pounds in a season. In roughly 100 cases, players packed on as much 80 pounds in a single year.
In at least 11 instances, players that AP identified as packing on significant weight in college went on to fail NFL drug tests. But pro football's confidentiality rules make it impossible to know for certain which drugs were used and how many others failed tests that never became public.
Even though testers consider rapid weight gain suspicious, in practice it doesn't result in testing. Ben Lamaak, who arrived at Iowa State in 2006, said he weighed 225 pounds in high school. He graduated as a 320-pound offensive lineman and said he did it all naturally.
"I was just a young kid at that time, and I was still growing into my body," he said. "It really wasn't that hard for me to gain the weight. I love to eat."
In addition to random drug testing, Iowa State is one of many schools that have "reasonable suspicion" testing. That means players can be tested when their behavior or physical symptoms suggest drug use. Despite gaining 81 pounds in a year, Lamaak said he was never singled out for testing.
The associate athletics director for athletic training at Iowa State, Mark Coberley, said coaches and trainers use body composition, strength data and other factors to spot suspected cheaters. Lamaak, he said, was not suspicious because he gained a lot of "non-lean" weight.
But looking solely at the most significant weight gainers also ignores players like Bryan Maneafaiga.
In the summer of 2004, Bryan Maneafaiga was an undersized 180-pound running back trying to make the University of Hawaii football team. Twice — once in pre-season and once in the fall — he failed school drug tests, showing up positive for marijuana use but not steroids.
He'd started injecting stanozolol, a steroid, in the summer to help bulk up to a roster weight of 200 pounds. Once on the team, he'd occasionally inject the milky liquid into his buttocks the day before games.
"Food and good training will only get you so far," he told the AP recently.
Maneafaiga's former coach, June Jones, said it was news to him that one of his players had used steroids. Jones, who now coaches at Southern Methodist University, believes the NCAA does a good job rooting out steroid use.
On paper, college football has a strong drug policy. The NCAA conducts random, unannounced drug testing and the penalties for failure are severe. Players lose an entire year of eligibility after a first positive test. A second offense means permanent ineligibility for sports.
In practice, though, the NCAA's roughly 11,000 annual tests amount to a fraction of all athletes in Division I and II schools. Exactly how many tests are conducted each year on football players is unclear because the NCAA hasn't published its data for two years. And when it did, it periodically changed the formats, making it impossible to compare one year of football to the next.
Even when players are tested by the NCAA, experts like Catlin say it's easy enough to anticipate the test and develop a doping routine that results in a clean test by the time it occurs. NCAA rules say players can be notified up to two days in advance of a test, which Catlin says is plenty of time to beat a test if players have designed the right doping regimen. By comparison, Olympic athletes are given no notice.
Most schools that use Drug Free Sport do not test for anabolic steroids, Turpin said. Some are worried about the cost. Others don't think they have a problem. And others believe that since the NCAA tests for steroids their money is best spent testing for street drugs, she said.
Doping is a bigger deal at some schools than others.
At Notre Dame and Alabama, the teams that will soon compete for the national championship, players don't automatically miss games for testing positive for steroids. At Alabama, coaches have wide discretion. Notre Dame's student-athlete handbook says a player who fails a test can return to the field once the steroids are out of his system.
The University of North Carolina kicks players off the team after a single positive test for steroids. Auburn's student-athlete handbook calls for a half-season suspension for any athlete caught using performance-enhancing drugs.
At UCLA, home of the laboratory that for years set the standard for cutting-edge steroid testing, athletes can fail three drug tests before being suspended. At Bowling Green, testing is voluntary.
At the University of Maryland, students must get counseling after testing positive, but school officials are prohibited from disciplining first-time steroid users.
Only about half the student athletes in a 2009 NCAA survey said they believed school testing deterred drug use. As an association of colleges and universities, the NCAA could not unilaterally force schools to institute uniform testing policies and sanctions, Wilfert said.
"We can't tell them what to do, but if went through a membership process where they determined that this is what should be done, then it could happen," she said.
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Associated Press writers Ryan Foley in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; David Brandt in Jackson, Miss.; David Skretta in Lawrence, Kan.; Don Thompson in Sacramento, Calif., and Alexa Olesen in Shanghai, China, and researchers Susan James in New York and Monika Mathur in Washington contributed to this report.
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Contact the Washington investigative team at DCinvestigations (at) ap.org.
Whether for athletics or age, Americans from teenagers to baby boomers are trying to get an edge by illegally using anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, despite well-documented risks. This is the first of a two-part series.

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Cleared Minnesota college coach fights suspension

A Minnesota college football coach who was cleared of child porn charges is fighting a suspension, his union said Thursday, although neither it nor the university would say what prompted the punishment or shed light on his prospects for reinstatement.
Coach Todd Hoffner received a written notice from Minnesota State University, Mankato late Tuesday afternoon about a 20-day unpaid suspension that begins Jan. 7, the general counsel for the Inter Faculty Organization said in an email to The Associated Press. Connie Howard said the union has filed a grievance challenging the suspension.
Hoffner was put on paid administrative leave after videos of his naked children were found on his university-issued cellphone in August. A judge ruled Nov. 30 that the videos were not pornographic and dismissed the felony charges against Hoffner, accepting his testimony that the videos merely showed his children acting silly after a bath.
"The grievance charges that the university failed to follow progressive discipline and did not have just cause to issue the suspension," Howard wrote. She declined to provide further details and would not say what reason the university gave for Hoffner's suspension, whether it was related to the videos or what his prospects might be for being reinstated as head coach of the Mavericks.
The MnSCU system has a policy prohibiting the use of university-issued cellphones or mobile devices for personal business.
Hoffner was beginning a new four-year contract when he was escorted off a practice field in August, a few days after he returned his malfunctioning phone to the school. University technicians found the videos and notified university officials, who contacted police. Hoffner was not allowed back and had to miss the Mavericks' 13-1 season, including their appearance in the NCAA Division II semifinals Dec. 8. He had a 34-13 record in his first four years at Mankato.
Minnesota State issued a brief statement Wednesday night saying Hoffner's administrative leave ended Monday and he remains on the university's payroll, but Aaron Keen remains acting coach.
"One complaint against the football coach was investigated and the investigation has been completed. One complaint against Mr. Hoffner is pending and is under investigation," the statement said without elaboration.
University spokesman Dan Benson, citing privacy laws, told the AP he couldn't comment on the nature of the complaints.
"The word 'reinstated' would not be accurate," Benson said. "He is no longer on leave. He remains on the payroll ... but he has not assumed duties as the head football coach again at this time."
Hoffner could not be reached immediately for comment Thursday. He does not have a listed phone number. His civil attorney, Chris Madel, was in court and unavailable Thursday. His attorney for the criminal case, Jim Fleming, said he was not directly involved in the personnel case.
Minnesota State athletics director Kevin Buisman did not immediately return a call seeking comment Thursday.

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College basketball's best _ so far

Kentucky's Anthony Davis was pretty much everyone's choice as the national player of the year last season.
This season, at least as it nears the midpoint, the player of the year honor appears to be up for grabs.
Though there are a few players who might be considered front-runners, there are roughly two dozen, maybe more, who could be considered the best in the country.
Here's a few, sort of a sampler of the season so far:
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Mason Plumlee, Duke. Best player on the No. 1 team is a pretty good start the conversation. The versatile, 6-foot-10 forward has been dominating at times during his senior season, shooting 61 percent from the floor while averaging 19.1 points and 11.3 rebounds per game. Plumlee had 21 points and 15 rebounds in the Blue Devils' rout of Elon Thursday night, a day after getting 19 and nine against Cornell. When Duke (11-0) needs a big shot or rebound, it's usually Plumlee who gets it, and he's a big reason the Blue Devils climbed to No. 1 for the 16th straight season under coach Mike Krzyzewski.
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Trey Burke, Michigan. Burke thought about leaving for the NBA after his freshman season. Deciding to stick around may end up helping his draft status. The 6-0 sophomore was an AP preseason All-American and has arguably been the nation's best point guard through the first two months of the season. Burke got away with playing on natural ability last season, but his game has matured and he's helped the Wolverines open the season 11-0 and climb to No. 2 in the AP Top 25. He's shooting 53 percent, impressive for a guard, while averaging 18 points and seven assists, teaming with Tim Hardaway Jr. in what may be the nation's best backcourt.
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Doug McDermott, Creighton. Another preseason All-American, the coach's son is as tenacious as anyone in the game. Teams have tried just about everything against the 6-8 junior forward and few have found a way to slow him down. McDermott was third nationally with 22.9 points per game last season and is third again this year, up to 23.7. McDermott became the first Creighton player since 1990 to score 30 points in consecutive games last week and is averaging 6.8 rebounds. He's also shooting 55 percent, including 51 percent from 3-point range.
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Nick Johnson, Arizona. East Coast fans probably don't get to see much of Johnson since Arizona's games are usually on late, but he's been the glue that's held the Wildcats (9-0) together during their best start in 25 years. An athletic 6-3 guard, he was solid as a freshman last season, but has played with much more poise and confidence as a sophomore. Johnson has hit some big shots for Arizona while scoring 13.6 points per game, second on the team, and is a tenacious defender in the vein of his uncle, former Boston Celtics great Dennis Johnson.
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C.J. McCollum, Lehigh. McCollum was fifth nationally with 21.9 points per game last season and drew plenty of attention by scoring 30 points in Lehigh's upset victory over Duke in the NCAA tournament. Even with opponents geared toward stopping him, McCollum has been nearly unstoppable during his senior season. The 6-3 guard leads the nation with 24.9 points per game and is averaging 5.4 rebounds and 3.1 assists. McCollum is tied for fifth nationally in 3-point shooting, hitting 51.9 percent, and is generating plenty of attention from NBA scouts.
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Isaiah Canaan, Murray State. Canaan may be the best player in his state, which is saying something with powerhouses like Louisville and Kentucky just down the road. The 6-1 senior guard led the Racers to national prominence last season and has been even better this season. A preseason All-American and the reigning Ohio Valley Conference player of the year, he's seventh nationally in scoring at 21.3 points per game and has led Murray State to a 9-1 record. Relatively unheralded when he joined the Racers, he could be headed to the NBA after he leaves Murray.

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NCAA considering proposals to change recruiting

The NCAA released a package of proposals Friday that would change the recruiting calendar, lift restrictions on how and how often coaches can contact recruits, and allow athletes to accept more money for participating in non-scholastic events.
All the proposals are expected to be voted on Jan. 19 at the NCAA's annual convention near Dallas. If approved, they could take effect Aug. 1.
This is the first detailed glimpse into how the NCAA intends to rewrite its massive rulebook and Jim Barker, chairman of the NCAA rules committee working on the plan, said the goal is "smarter rules and tougher enforcement."
If the package is approved, the overall result would provide coaches with more leeway in recruiting. The hope is that athletes will build more meaningful relationships with their coaches, and they will get more opportunities to showcase their skills in front of college and pro scouts.
Campus leaders are embracing the moves, too.
"We have to keep track of all that now," Indiana athletic director Fred Glass said before the sixth-ranked Hoosiers hosted Florida Atlantic on Friday night. "If don't have to do that, it will eliminate a substantial part of it."
One key recommendation would create a uniform recruiting calendar for all sports and allow coaches to begin contacting potential recruits after July 1 of their sophomore year, though coaches would still have to abide by the no-contact periods.
"The rules group believes that the uniform recruiting date will create significant ease of administration on campus, make the rules more understandable and allow for better recruiting decisions from both the coach and prospective student-athlete," said Barker, the Clemson president.
Those were the goals NCAA President Mark Emmert outlined more than a year ago when he backed the move to shrink the rulebook following a year of major college scandals that included stripping a national champion of its title, a Heisman Trophy winner giving back his trophy, criminal allegations and the accusation that another Heisman winner's father was peddling his son's services.
In the wake of so much turmoil, Emmert held a presidential retreat in August 2011 to acknowledge that the governing body needed to focus more on enforcing the rules that go to heart of college sports — fair play, ethical behavior and tough penalties that dissuade coaches from considering cost-benefit analyses when making decisions about playing by the rules.
Some rules, Emmert acknowledged are simply unenforceable or so narrow they consume too much time and effort at the institution level and the NCAA level.
That's one reason another proposal would allow coaches to reach out players through any communication mode with no limitation on the number of contacts. College basketball coaches were given that ability in June, and now the working group Barker has led wants to extend those privileges to all sports.
"I've always thought they should let that go anyways and let the marketplace decide," Glass said when asked about lifting the contact restrictions.
Other proposals would allow:
—Athletes to accept up to $300 per year beyond their own expenses to attend non-scholastic events, receive expenses and "reasonable benefits" associated with practices and competition with national teams, including tryouts;
—Schools to provide normal expenses, including travel expenses, for athletes representing the school at events such as goodwill tours and media appearances;
—Amateur teams or event sponsors to award money beyond an athlete's expenses based on the performance of that athlete or team in all sorts, not just tennis;
—Schools, conferences or the NCAA to pay for medical expenses and any related expenses for the athlete.
Barker acknowledged this is only the first phase of recommendations. The working group is expected to focus next on financial aid, playing and practice season rules.

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NCAA suspends Texas Longhorns guard Myck Kabongo of Toronto 23 games

The NCAA has suspended Texas basketball player Myck Kabongo of Toronto for 23 games for accepting impermissible benefits and providing false statements during an investigation into the infractions.
The Division I committee on student-athlete reinstatement announced the suspension Friday.
Kabongo also must repay $475 to a charity of his choice. The suspension includes the 10 games he has already missed.
The NCAA says Kabongo accepted airfare and personal training instruction and then provided false and misleading information about the infractions during two interviews with university officials.
University officials were notified of the decision last week, the NCAA said. An appeal was heard Thursday, and the NCAA decided to overturn the original decision to suspend Kabongo for the entire season.

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Dakar mosque lit up for Christmas in Senegal

After prayers at the mosque, Ibrahim Lo is off to do some last-minute Christmas shopping. Soon he is eyeing the rows of dolls wrapped in plastic bags on a wooden table as he searches for gifts for his four children.
A bouquet of inflatable Santa toys tied to a nearby tree bobs in the air at this outdoor market in the seaside capital as he makes his picks.
It looks a lot like Christmas in Senegal, where 95 percent of the 12.8 million residents are Muslim. Even the Grande Mosquee, a mosque that dominates the city's skyline, is aglow in holiday lights.
"When they go to school, the children learn about Santa," says Lo, wearing a flowing olive green robe known as a boubou. "We are born into the Senegalese tradition of cohabitation between Muslims and Christians. What is essential is the respect between people."
Senegal, a moderate country along Africa's western coast, has long been a place where Christians and Muslims have coexisted peacefully. Most Christians here are Catholic and live in the south of country and in the capital.
Hadim Thiam, 30, normally sells shoes but during December he's expanded to an elaborate spread of tinsel, cans of spray snow and fireworks.
"It's not linked to God. It's for the children," says Jean Mouss, 55, a Christian out shopping for holiday decorations at Thiam's stand. "We wish Muslims a Merry Christmas and invite them into our homes for the holiday."
Signs of Christmas are prevalent in this tropical seaside capital.
Green and flocked plastic trees of every size are sold on street corners alongside Nescafe carts and vendors splitting open coconuts. "My First Christmas" baby sleepers are folded neatly on the top of the piles of second-hand clothing for sale on the streets. There are French "buches de Noel" and chocolate snowmen for sale in the upscale patisseries.
At lunchtime, a chorus of schoolchildren singing "Silent Night" echoes across a courtyard. The main cathedral is now a spectacle of lights each night — no easy feat for a city often subjected to power cuts.
Still, not everyone in Senegal thinks embracing Christmas is all in good cheer. Mouhamed Seck, a Quranic teacher and imam for a mosque in a Dakar suburb, says taking part in the holiday is supporting a non-Muslim's religion.
"Islam forbids Muslims from taking part in these festivities," he says.
Parents who celebrate Christmas, though, say it's a secular time to celebrate with their families on a national holiday.
"To make my two children happy, I buy gifts for them and ask their mother to prepare a very hearty meal but we don't go to Mass," says Oumar Fall, 46, who has a 10-year-old and a 13-year-old.
Santa Claus, known in this former French colony as Pere Noel, also makes the rounds at upscale shopping centers and grocery stores in the weeks before Christmas.
Mamadou Sy, 40, had been working at a hotel in Morocco until his visa recently expired. Now back in Senegal, he's making extra money this December as a Santa at the seaside Magicland amusement park.
Like children everywhere, some are frightened by him, but most just want pictures — and presents.
"Senegal is a unique case where 5 percent of the country is Christian," he says, seeking shade while wearing his red fur costume and hat. "Christians celebrate Muslim holidays and Muslims celebrate Christian holidays."
The tradition even extends to Senegalese schools. Therese Angelique Soumare's students all get together for a Christmas party the weekend before the holiday with their parents. The teachers put presents under a tree and Santa Claus shows up to hand them out.
"Everyone celebrates because it's for the children. Here in Senegal we are good neighbors," she says as she picks out gifts for the party. "We sing, we dance and we love seeing the children's joy.

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4 foreign sailors kidnapped off Nigeria coast

Gunmen attacked a supply tug boat off the coast of Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta, kidnapping foreign sailors, including Italians, in the latest attack in the West African region that is increasingly dangerous for shippers and oil companies, officials said Monday.
The attack happened 40 nautical miles off the coast of Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta on Sunday night, as the gunmen stormed the moving vessel, the International Maritime Bureau said Monday in a warning to other shippers. The gunmen seized four workers and later fled, the bureau said. Those remaining onboard safely guided the ship to a nearby harbor, the bureau said.
The bureau did not identify the shipper, nor the sailors. However, a separate notice to private security contractors working in Nigeria and seen by The Associated Press identified the four hostages as foreigners.
In Rome, the Foreign Ministry confirmed the kidnapping, saying the four hostages were members of the crew. A Foreign Ministry official said three of the four were Italian. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information publicly, said he didn't know the nationality of the fourth hostage.
Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi was following the case personally, and the ministry was working with Nigerian officials to secure the safe return of the crew, the official said. The official and the private security notice seen by the AP identified the vessel attacked as the Asso Ventuno, operated by Augusta Offshore SpA, a Naples-based shipping company.
Calls to the company were not successful on Monday, Christmas Eve. Someone who answered the phone hung up when contacted by the AP, and then didn't pick up on subsequent calls. The company's website says it does business with oil companies Total SA and Exxon Mobil Corp. in Nigeria.
Commodore Kabir Aliyu, a spokesman for Nigeria's navy, declined to immediately comment Monday.
Pirate attacks are on the rise in West Africa's Gulf of Guinea, which follows the continent's southward curve from Liberia to Gabon. Over the last year and a half, piracy there has escalated from low-level armed robberies to hijackings and cargo thefts. Last year, London-based Lloyd's Market Association — an umbrella group of insurers — listed Nigeria, neighboring Benin and nearby waters in the same risk category as Somalia, where two decades of war and anarchy have allowed piracy to flourish.
Analysts believe many of the attackers come from Nigeria, whose lawless waters and often violent oil region routinely see foreigners kidnapped for ransom. Increasingly, criminal gangs also have targeted middle- and upper-class Nigerians as well.
Typically, foreign companies operating in Nigeria's Niger Delta pay cash ransoms to free their employees after negotiating down kidnappers' demands. Foreign hostages can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece.
Foreign companies have pumped oil out of the Niger Delta, a region of mangroves and swamps the size of Portugal, for more than 50 years. Despite the billions of dollars flowing into Nigeria's government, many in the delta remain desperately poor, living in polluted waters without access to proper medical care, education or work. The poor conditions sparked an uprising in 2006 by militants and opportunistic criminals who blew up oil pipelines and kidnapped foreign workers.
That violence ebbed in 2009 with a government-sponsored amnesty program that offered ex-fighters monthly payments and job training. However, few in the delta have seen the promised benefits and sporadic kidnappings and attacks continue. The end of the year in Nigeria usually sees an uptick in criminal activity as well, as criminal gangs target the wealthy returning to the country to celebrate the holidays.
Sunday's kidnapping is just the latest attack in the region. On Dec. 17, gunmen kidnapped five Indian sailors on the SP Brussels tanker as it sat about 40 miles (64 kilometers) off the coast of the Niger Delta. That came the same day gunmen abducted four South Koreans and a Nigerian working for Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. at a construction site in the Brass area of Bayelsa state. Those workers were later released, though the Indians are still believed to be held by the abductors.

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Zimbabweans brace for bleak holidays

 Zimbabweans are facing bleak holidays this year amid rising poverty, food and cash shortages and political uncertainty, with some describing it as the worst since the formation of the coalition government in the southern African nation.
President Robert Mugabe, in a four-year-old coalition with former opposition leader Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, announced an extra public holiday Monday which has created chaos for holiday shoppers and travelers. Banks have closed, ATMs have run out of cash and transport services have been paralyzed.
This caps a year of political uncertainty, a deadlock in constitutional reforms and calls for elections in coming months, seen as critical for Mugabe, 88, who has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980.
In 2008, Mugabe's party was accused of vote-rigging and blamed for the worst election violence since independence. As the election tempo quickens, political intimidation has resurfaced, according to independent human rights groups.
Zimbabwe's unemployment is pegged at around 80 percent with many people in Harare, the capital, eking out a living by selling vegetables and fruits on street corners.
Matthew Kapirima, 60, waits outside a busy supermarket for customers to buy his boxes of weather-beaten peaches and litchis for $10 each.
But holiday shoppers go about their business without even giving him a second glance.
Kapirima has not sold any fruit in days and with a day left before Christmas, he said has to concede that he won't be able to provide his family with food and new clothes this year.
"This is the worst Christmas ever," Kapirima told The Associated Press.
Kapirima has four wives and 25 children living in the rural areas, but all he has managed to get them this Christmas is a 40-kilogram (88 pound) bag of maize seed to plant on his small-sized family plot in Mudzi.
He said he can't travel to his rural home because transport operators are taking advantage of the holiday rush to charge exorbitant fares.
"I have to forget about going there and continue working for school fees for January," he said.
Christmas in Zimbabwe is also the hunger season — the time between harvests from September to March — for most of the nation's impoverished rural population who depend on food handouts.
Kapirima's family joins the 1 million Zimbabweans who live in drought-prone areas who have received food handouts for Christmas this year from the United Nations.
Food shortages are "worse" this year compared to the last three years due to drought and constrained access to cash to buy seed and fertilizer for rural farmers, said World Food Program Zimbabwe country director Felix Bamezon.
Bamezon said the Zimbabwe government for the first time has assisted by providing grain to give to starving communities in rural areas.
"This is good because they don't interfere to tell us which people to give the food to," he said.
The World Food Program has been donating hampers of 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of cereal, vegetable oil and mixed beans to each person in qualifying households every month since September.
For those who live in areas where there are grain traders, WFP gives out $3 per person in a household to buy the grain from traders instead of the food hampers.
An average household has five people, making it $15 for a family to spend for Christmas.
Bamezon also said their organization helps vulnerable communities by engaging them in "food for work" projects where people work to get food during the time they are not provided food assistance.
Rural communities have come up with coping mechanisms such as cutting down the number of meals a day from three to one and selling their prized livestock, furniture and household goods. Bamezon said he had heard reports that some young girls are given away to elderly men for early marriages.
The U.N.'s childrens agency, UNICEF, has in previous research this year noted that girls and young women have been pressured by destitute families to solicit as prostitutes in bars and shopping areas.
In the troubled economy, money is not trickling down from the nation's urban elite, who own luxury cars and mansions, to the urban and rural poor.
"Life is getting harder in this country," said fruit vendor Kaparima. "There is nothing to celebrate this Christmas."

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South Africa: Mandela in hospital over Christmas

 South Africa's presidency says former leader Nelson Mandela will spend Christmas Day in hospital.
The presidency says in a statement that Mandela's doctors confirmed the news on Monday. The anti-apartheid figure was admitted Dec. 8 to a hospital in Pretoria, the South African capital. He was diagnosed with a lung infection and had a procedure to remove gallstones; officials have said Mandela is improving and is responding to treatment.
South African President Jacob Zuma says the whole country is behind Mandela and he is urging people to keep the former president in their thoughts on Christmas Day and throughout the holiday season. Zuma describes Mandela, who was imprisoned under apartheid for 27 years, as an "ardent fighter.

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South Africa: World watches Mandela's struggle

A chipped street mural in South Africa's Soweto township depicts stations in the life of Nelson Mandela, each matched by a portrait of the global icon as he advanced from robust youth to old age. Now this infirm giant of history faces a struggle with mortality, its duration unknown but its outcome certain.
There may be no living figure so revered around the world as a symbol of sacrifice and reconciliation, his legacy forged in the fight against apartheid, the system of white minority rule that imprisoned him for 27 years.
As an idea, Mandela is monumental. As a 94-year-old man, he is frail and vulnerable, in hospital since Dec. 8, shielded from outside scrutiny by protective relatives and the South African government and military.
"He's sick. What can we do? He's sick," said Beauty Sedunedi, a Soweto resident who described Mandela as a hero. "People are crying, 'Oh, he mustn't die, he mustn't...' If God says 'come,' he'll come."
The former president would probably agree with that down-to-earth sentiment, as a man who is said to have been uncomfortable with his iconic status. The narrative of what he endured and what he contributed in the name of all South Africans tends to eclipse any personal failings, or shortcomings as a president when he took office for a five-year term after the country's first democratic elections in 1994. The country today struggles with poverty and inequality, but Mandela is widely credited with helping to avert race-driven chaos as South Africa emerged from apartheid.
He was diagnosed with a lung infection and had a procedure to remove gallstones after being admitted to a Pretoria hospital, and the South African presidency said Monday that Mandela would spend Christmas Day there. The physical decline of Mandela, who boxed in his youth and exercised regularly in prison, could be anyone's story; an ordinary man would make this wistful journey alone, or within the cocoon of family intimacy.
In the case of a man-turned-myth, however, the media, the government and the nation are passengers on what has become an awkward ride, defined by tension between the right to medical privacy and the public's interest.
"They were very secretive about his health," Sebastian Moloi, another resident of the Johannesburg township of Soweto, said of the government's initial, sometimes contradictory pronouncements about Mandela's condition. "They shouldn't keep it away from the public."
Moloi spoke outside Regina Mundi, a Catholic church that was a center of protests and funeral services for activists during the apartheid years. He said Mandela was the "godfather" of South Africa, but objected to extreme discretion about Mandela's hospital stay, saying: "He gets enough privacy in his home."
Officials have reported that Mandela has steadily improved, but warn the situation is inherently uncertain because of his age. The media has urged the government to provide regular updates or briefings with doctors. Dire rumors have swirled on social media, angering Mac Maharaj, the presidency's spokesman.
"Why are there no voices raised in our society against the human depravity manifested in such rumors?" Eyewitness News, a South African media outlet, quoted Maharaj as saying. "It has become a matter of concern. Is it not time for all of us to look at ourselves in the mirror?"
In fact, Mandela's public image has been closely managed for a long time. He has not been seen on a major stage since South Africa hosted the World Cup football tournament in 2010, and his meetings have become increasingly rare.
In August, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Mandela at his home in the village of Qunu in Eastern Cape province. An Associated Press photographer who accompanied Clinton said the former leader appeared "fragile although also happy," and seemed pleased to see his visitor.
"After some deliberation, at the last moment, I was allowed inside to photograph them together. While I was in the room I never heard him say a word or hardly even move," photographer Jacquelyn Martin wrote in an email. She described how aides encouraged Mandela to smile for the camera and remarked fondly to him on what a beautiful smile he had. They called him "Madiba," which is Mandela's clan name, a term of affection.
"He scarcely moved and was a whisper of the legend," Martin wrote. She said Mandela was seated in a corner with a blanket over his legs and a newspaper in his lap. His wife, Graca Machel, was also there.
In 2009, British journalist David James Smith met the Nobel laureate while working on "Young Mandela," a book that sought, in part, to humanize the man by examining reports about his often conflicted family life.
In an email, Smith said he was required to sign a document promising he would not ask "direct questions," take photos or ask Mandela to endorse any products.
"He was sitting in his huge office behind a massive desk and seemed slightly shrivelled and sparrow-like in comparison with the sharp-suited giant of the 1950s I had come to know so well from my research," Smith wrote.
"He apologized for not getting up to greet me. 'My knees will not allow it.' I struggled to get a conversation going for a few minutes until I told him I had been to Qunu and met his 'brother' Sitsheketshe, who had been brought up with Mandela as his brother after his own parents had died."
Smith recounted: "'Ah, Sitsheketshe!' he boomed. 'Do you know the story of how he came to live with my family?' I did but said I didn't and off he went ... He seemed mortal and ordinary and that I think is one of the reasons why, though not a saint, he is a very great human being."
Sitsheketshe Morris Mandela, Nelson's cousin, died this year at the age of 80.
History offers rough parallels for Mandela and the movement to safeguard his legacy as he approaches the end of his life. Men of his stature — American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. and Indian independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi — were assassinated while actively engaged in their callings. Tragedy elevated their reputations.
The Soweto mural marks Mandela's birth in 1918; the Rivonia trial that led to his conviction for sabotage in 1964; the 1990 release from prison; the 1993 awarding of the Nobel peace prize to Mandela and the last white ruler, F.W. de Klerk; Mandela's 1994 election as South Africa's first black president; and his 90th birthday in 2008.
Truly, a momentous life. Yet Mandela, whose image adorns South African banknotes and statues and whose name was bestowed on buildings and squares, found ambiguity in it. In a passage described as part of an unpublished sequel to his autobiography, "Long Walk to Freedom," he wrote:
"One issue that deeply worried me in prison was the false image that I unwittingly projected to the outside world; of being regarded as a saint. I never was one, even on the basis of an earthly definition of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying."
Reflecting on his 2009 meeting, Smith said in an interview that Mandela still retained his spark of charisma, "the glint of mischief that he had that people were so charmed by, presidents and paupers."
But he added: "You can imagine that must be almost gone now.

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Bringing Sunlight to Light an Underground Garden

Imagine an inviting green park with tall, shady trees and wide swaths of grassy lawn where you can hear live music or see theater or simply sit quietly soaking up the noonday sun.
Now, imagine that all underground in an old disused parking garage … but still with trees and grass in the bright sunlight - a little less bright, of course, on cloudy days.
This paradoxical vision is already halfway to becoming a reality in downtown Manhattan, a dream made possible partly by fiber-optic technology that can capture sunlight on high rooftops and literally pipe it down to shine further from big underground "skylights."
Dan Barasch and James Ramsey envisioned it all in 2008 when they teamed up with an idea to transform an abandoned trolley terminal, a 1.5-acre lot underneath the Williamsburg Bridge and next to the Delancey St. subway station.
They dubbed their underground park the "Lowline," a nod to Manhattan's popular Highline Park that transformed another swatch of urban blight - in that case an unused and overgrown elevated rail bed.
PHOTOS: Lowline Park Project
Since they teamed up, Ramsey, an architect and principal at RAAD Studio, and Barasch, formerly VP of strategic partnerships for PopTech, have raised more than $500,000 for the project, including a Kickstarter campaign that totaled $155,000.
This past September, Ramsey and Barasch also staged an exhibit at a warehouse on Essex Street, just above where the proposed park would exist, in an effort to show the public what the Lowline could look like.
But lighting the underground space is a challenge and that is where Ramsey's background in engineering comes in; the former NASA employee turned architect had already been working on a way to collect and funnel light when he approached Barasch about the idea of an underground park.
Ramsey and Barasch explain their concept and in more detail here:
The technology consists of fiber optic cables attached to devices Ramsey refers to as remote skylights. Equipped with GPS, these solar collectors follow and capture the sun funneling it down through the cables. The glass surface of the skylights filters out infrared and UVA rays, but still harvests the light necessary for photosynthesis to take place.
For the exhibit, Ramsey and Barasch, alongside a team of volunteers put this technology to the test; together with their team they hand fit together 600 pieces of anodized-aluminum sheets to create a curved dome, a silver canopy that cast the light down on the warehouse space. On the warehouse roof, 20 feet above, six tracking systems collected the light and piped it down to the space below.
"We looked to the way that they build space telescopes to actually cobble together a mesh of flat pieces to create a very completed curved surface, and that curved surface is calibrated to actually deploy the light," said Ramsey, who worked with infrared spectrometry while at NASA.
With the help of volunteers, including engineers and team members from RAAD Studio, the duo created a mock-up complete with moss-covered knolls and Japanese maples. For their installation, they partnered with Sun Central, a Canadian-based solar technology firm, and Arup, a design and engineering firm that is also working on the Second Avenue subway line in Manhattan.
"All of a sudden you have this idea beginning to emerge where you can take this ancient disused space underneath the city and actually turn it into a public space, a garden really, for everyone to enjoy," Ramsey said.
Both Barasch and Ramsey point out despite their success so far, they still have a long way to go before making the Lowline a reality; first, they need to convince city and MTA officials (and ultimately the state) to let them use the site, a process that Barasch says requires both political and public support.
Barasch, who resigned from his position at PopTech in March, is devoting his efforts full time to the project focusing on fundraising and engaging with members of the community.
"This is not a short-term project," Barasch said. "It's very big in terms of its integration with the overall ecosystem of the space, the neighborhood, the subway line, the community and the city and we want to do this right."
If they gain control of the terminal, Ramsey and Barasch estimate the project would cost $50 million in capital costs for construction and may take five to eight years to complete. Nevertheless, both remain determined to see the Lowline complete.
"It taps into this thing that every human actually just needs, which is public space and some semblance of being outdoors as well as being inspired by making the city more beautiful, more livable," Barasch said.
For now, the trolley terminal remains an empty, shadowy cavern with an undetermined future, but one in which Ramsey and Barasch hope they can play a part.

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Cancer Immunotherapy Where Are We Going?

The compelling concept of utilizing the patient's own immune system for a stronger and more effective way to attack cancer cells is not a new one. William Coley observed in 1891 that infections produced in patients with inoperable cancer following an injection of streptococcal organisms (Gram-positive bacteria) led to tumor shrinkage especially when the patients developed fever and other signs of a full-blown infection.1 Since then, research has embraced approaches to "train" the patient's own immune system to recognize certain biomarkers or proteins that are mainly found on cancer cells and to destroy the cells.
After several setbacks the first cellular immunotherapy, Dendreon's Sipuleucel-T (Provenge(R)), was approved for the treatment of prostate cancer in 2010. Today, new promising cancer immunotherapy approaches are in clinical trials. Most recently, researchers at the 54th American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting reported early success with a developmental-stage cell-based cancer vaccine for the treatment of leukemia and have shown remission in several patients 2,3, including a 7-year old girl who relapsed twice after chemotherapy.
Cancer immunotherapy can be thought of as either active or passive immunotherapy. The most prominent passive immunotherapies, which have revolutionized cancer therapy, are monoclonal antibodies that either target tumor-specific antigens and receptors or block important pathways central to tumor growth and survival. Therapeutic monoclonal antibodies are the market leader in the targeted cancer therapy space and include blockbusters such as trastuzumab (Herceptin(R)) or rituximab (Rituxan(R)).
In general, antibodies are significant elements of the body's adaptive immune system. They play a dominant role in the recognition of foreign antigens and the stimulation of the immune response. Therapeutic antibodies target and bind to antigens, usually proteins that are mainly expressed on diseased cells such as cancer cells. After binding, cancer cells can be destroyed by different mechanisms such as antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity, the activation of the complement system -- an important part of the immune system -- and triggering cell death.
Although very successful, especially in oncology, therapeutic antibodies have a significant limitation: they don't generate a memory response by the immune system, and thus, repeated antibody infusions are required. Further, monoclonal antibodies are only able to recognize specific proteins present of the cell surface. Monoclonal antibodies are mostly produced in cell culture systems which are often costly. Humanization of murine monoclonal antibodies by replacing of certain parts of the antibody with human sequences has improved the tolerability of antibodies and made them less immunogenic, but even fully human sequence-derived antibodies can carry some immunological risk.
Novel approaches in the passive immunization strategy include antibody drug conjugates, a combination of targeting antibody with a very potent drug such as the recently approved brentuximab vedotin (ADCETRIS(TM)) for Hodgkin lymphoma and anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL). ADCETRIS comprises an anti-CD30 monoclonal antibodyanti-CD30 monoclonal antibody and a cytotoxic (cell-killing) agent that is released upon internalization into CD30-expressing tumor cells. Currently, the development of next generations of ADCs is underway.
Alternatively, specific and durable cancer immunotherapies designed to actively "train" or stimulate the patient's intrinsic immune response have been more problematic; however, recent success stories, such as the cell-based immunotherapy Provenge, have revitalized this field. Dendreon's approach modifies the patients' own dendritic cells to present a protein specific to prostate cancer cells.
Dendritic cells are the most potent, "professional" antigen-presenting cells. They process the antigen material and present it on their surface to other cells of the immune system. Once activated, the dendritic cells migrate to the lymphoid tissues where they interact with T-cells and B-cells -- white blood cells and important components of the immune system -- to initiate and shape the adaptive immune response. To develop Provenge, each patient's own dendritic cells are harvested and then loaded ex vivo with the tumor-associated antigen. Now "presenting" the antigen, the dendritic cells are administered back into the patient to induce a potent, cell-mediated anticancer immune response resulting in tumor shrinkage and clinical benefit.
In another experimental approach for the treatment of leukemia, patients' own modified T-cells were infused back into the patients. Prior to this, the T-cells were transduced with a lentivirus to express the CD19-specific chimeric antigen receptor. CD19 is an antigen which is found on B-cell neoplasms, cancerous B-cells, and the lentivirus was the vehicle to transfer the genetic material for CD19 into the cells. A case report published in the New England Journal of Medicine stated that a patient with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) was in ongoing remission 10 months after treatment.3
These promising results have spurred continued research for new and safe ways to achieve effective tumor vaccination, and drug developers have explored many cancer immunotherapy strategies. To generate an effective antitumor immunity, therapeutic intervention should drive several functions; specifically, it should promote the antigen presentation functions of dendritic cells, promote the production of protective T-cell responses, stimulate B-cells and overcome immunosuppression characteristics that are common to tumor cells.4
Cell-based therapeutic vaccines are most frequently produced outside the patient's body and involve isolation of the specific cells, such as dendritic cells, and the introduction of preselected antigens, often with the use of specific vehicle, into the cells. The antigens can be encoded in viral vectors (frequently DNA) or administered as peptides or proteins in a suitable adjuvant and carrier through a long and cumbersome process.
During my doctoral thesis, I conducted immunization experiments using RNA as a negative control, assuming that the RNA would be degraded during the experiment thus making it impossible to use as a vaccine. The physiological role of messenger (m) RNA is to transfer genetic information from the nucleus to the cytoplasm where this information is translated into the corresponding protein. mRNA is known to be very unstable and has a relatively short half-life. But astonishingly, we were able to measure a solid T-cell immune response. We repeated the experiment and confirmed that the RNA we had produced had the potential to be used as a vaccine. Importantly, we didn't need to isolate the patients' cells: mRNA-based vaccines can be injected directly into the skin (intradermal). The mRNA-based vaccines are then taken up by antigen-presenting cells, such as dendritic cells, and are then able to induce an immune response. Importantly, mRNA-vaccines can also be synthesized quickly for any antigen sequence identified.5
The first mRNA-based vaccines (RNActive(R)) are now in the clinic for the treatment of prostate cancer and lung cancer and have demonstrated that they do what they are supposed to do - induce a balanced humoral, as well as T cell-mediated, immune response that is entirely HLA independent. The HLA (human leukocyte antigen) system is used to differentiate the body's own cells (self) and non-self cells. Additionally, RNA-vaccines do not need a vehicle such as a virus for delivery to the cells, nor do they contain virus-derived elements that are often found in DNA-vaccines. These attributes make RNActive a very safe therapeutic.
The risk of integration of the RNA into the host-genome is minimized (RNA would have been transcribed first to DNA, and then it has to be transported to the nucleus), as is the residual risk of DNA-based vaccines for inactivating or activating genes or affecting cellular regulatory elements, which can induce oncogenesis. Thus, the favorable safety profile of mRNA-based therapies broadens their potential use not only for the treatment of diseases but for use as prophylactic vaccinations. A recent proof-of-concept study using mRNA-based vaccines (RNActive) in animal models for influenza was published in Nature Biotechnology.6
Therapeutic cancer immunotherapies and vaccines have come a long way, and novel, promising approaches give hope for safe and effective treatment options. This may one day lead to the treatment of all cancers as chronic diseases.
Literature
1Kirkwood JM, Butterfield LH, Tarhini AA, Zarour H, Kalinski P, Ferrone S: Immunotherapy of cancer in 2012. CA Cancer J Clin. 2012
2June CH, Blazar BR: T-Cell Infusions: A New Tool for Transfusion Medicine That Has Come of Age. Presentation at 54th ASH Annual Meeting 2013
3Porter DL, Levine BL, Kalos M, Bagg A, and June CH: Chimeric Antigen Receptor-Modified T Cells in Chronic Lymphoid Leukemia. N Engl J Med 2011
4Mellman I, Coukos G, Dranoff G: Cancer immunotherapy comes of age. Nature. 2011
Petsch B, Schnee M, Vogel AB, Lange E, Hoffmann B, Voss D, Schlake T, Thess A, Kallen KJ,
5Hoerr I, Obst R, Rammensee HG, Jung G: In vivo application of RNA leads to induction of specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes and antibodies. Eur J Immunol. 2000
6Petsch B, Schnee M, Vogel AB, Lange E, Hoffmann B, Voss D, Schlake T, Thess A, Kallen KJ, Stitz L, Kramps T: Protective efficacy of in vitro synthesized, specific mRNA vaccines against influenza A virus infection. Nat Biotechnol. 2012

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Viral Video Recap: Funniest Memes of the Week

A cat stuck in a box. A dramatic reading of Fifty Shades of Grey from George Takei. And another "Gangnam Style" remix. These are just three examples of the top videos that the web world watched this week.
We rounded up the most viral videos from this past week for your holiday weekend viewing pleasure. After all, what's better than explaining the significance of a philosophic cat to your mother at the dinner table?
[More from Mashable: 83 of 2012′s Best Viral Videos Crammed Into 4 Minutes]
What was your favorite video from this week? Tell us in the comments below.
12. Photobombing Stingray
Five years ago, three college girls on a Caribbean vacation got a serious case of the heebeejeebies when a stingray photobombed their “say cheese” moment. The hilarious photograph could have ended up as just a fond vacay memory if it weren’t for a friend, who shared the image on Reddit in September of this year.

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Top 5 Apps for Kids This Week

1. I Spy With Lola HD
Ages 3-8 Overall rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars Why we like it: This app effectively takes the common hunt-and-find play pattern down a notch by way of a series of carefully leveled challenges, clear labels and a playful theme. Need to know: Don't confuse this with the Scholastic I SPY titles. This is a different kettle of fish. And get the paid version. It is well worth the $2 -- there are no gimmicks or in-app purchases. Ease of use: 9/10 Educational: 9/10 Entertaining: 9/10 $1.99
Click here to view this gallery.
[More from Mashable: 10 Apps to Keep You Safe and Healthy in 2013]
Chris Crowell is a veteran kindergarten teacher and contributing editor to Children's Technology Review, a web-based archive of articles and reviews on apps, technology toys and video games. Download a free issue of CTR here.
In this week's Top 5 Kids Apps, we've got a creepy crawly feeling. Your kids can learn counting with Bugs and Numbers or take up Spanish as a hobby. There's also a beautifully-designed interactive e-book sure to capture your child's attention and spark the imagination.

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Telepresence robots let employees 'beam' into work

Engineer Dallas Goecker attends meetings, jokes with colleagues and roams the office building just like other employees at his company in Silicon Valley.
But Goecker isn't in California. He's more than 2,300 miles away, working at home in Seymour, Indiana.
It's all made possible by the Beam — a mobile video-conferencing machine that he can drive around the Palo Alto offices and workshops of Suitable Technologies. The 5-foot-tall device, topped with a large video screen, gives him a physical presence that makes him and his colleagues feel like he's actually there.
"This gives you that casual interaction that you're used to at work," Goecker said, speaking on a Beam. "I'm sitting in my desk area with everybody else. I'm part of their conversations and their socializing."
Suitable Technologies, which makes the Beam, is now one of more than a dozen companies that sell so-called telepresence robots. These remote-controlled machines are equipped with video cameras, speakers, microphones and wheels that allow users to see, hear, talk and "walk" in faraway locations.
More and more employees are working remotely, thanks to computers, smartphones, email, instant messaging and video-conferencing. But those technologies are no substitute for actually being in the office, where casual face-to-face conversations allow for easy collaboration and camaraderie.
Telepresence-robot makers are trying to bridge that gap with wheeled machines — controlled over wireless Internet connections — that give remote workers a physical presence in the workplace.
These robotic stand-ins are still a long way from going mainstream, with only a small number of organizations starting to use them. The machines can be expensive, difficult to navigate or even get stuck if they venture into areas with poor Internet connectivity. Stairs can be lethal, and non-techies might find them too strange to use regularly.
"There are still a lot of questions, but I think the potential is really great," said Pamela Hinds, co-director of Stanford University's Center on Work, Technology, & Organization. "I don't think face-to-face is going away, but the question is, how much face-to-face can be replaced by this technology?"
Technology watchers say these machines — sometimes called remote presence devices — could be used for many purposes. They could let managers inspect overseas factories, salespeople greet store customers, family members check on elderly relatives or art lovers tour foreign museums.
Some physicians are already seeing patients in remote hospitals with the RP-VITA robot co-developed by Santa-Barbara, Calif.,-based InTouch Health and iRobot, the Bedford, Mass.,-based maker of the Roomba vacuum.
The global market for telepresence robots is projected to reach $13 billion by 2017, said Philip Solis, research director for emerging technologies at ABI Research.
The robots have attracted the attention of Russian venture capitalist Dimitry Grishin, who runs a $25 million fund that invests in early-stage robotics companies.
"It's difficult to predict how big it will be, but I definitely see a lot of opportunity," Grishin said. "Eventually it can be in each home and each office."
His Grishin Robotics fund recently invested $250,000 in a startup called Double Robotics. The Sunnyvale, Calif.,-company started selling a Segway-like device called the Double that holds an Apple iPad, which has a built-in video-conferencing system called FaceTime. The Double can be controlled remotely from an iPad or iPhone.
So far, Double Robotics has sold more than 800 units that cost $1,999 each, said co-founder Mark DeVidts.
The Beam got its start as a side project at Willow Garage, a robotics company in Menlo Park where Goecker worked as an engineer.
A few years ago, he moved back to his native Indiana to raise his family, but he found it difficult to collaborate with engineering colleagues using existing video-conferencing systems.
"I was struggling with really being part of the team," Goecker said. "They were doing all sorts of wonderful things with robotics. It was hard for me to participate."
So Goecker and his colleagues created their own telepresence robot. The result: the Beam and a new company to develop and market it.
At $16,000 each, the Beam isn't cheap. But Suitable Technologies says it was designed with features that make "pilots" and "locals" feel the remote worker is physically in the room: powerful speakers, highly sensitive microphones and robust wireless connectivity.
The company began shipping Beams last month, mostly to tech companies with widely dispersed engineering teams, officials said.
"Being there in person is really complicated — commuting there, flying there, all the different ways people have to get there. Beam allows you to be there without all that hassle," said CEO Scott Hassan, beaming in from his office at Willow Garage in nearby Menlo Park.
Not surprisingly, Suitable Technologies has fully embraced the Beam as a workplace tool. On any given day, up to half of its 25 employees "beam" into work, with employees on Beams sitting next to their flesh-and-blood colleagues and even joining them for lunch in the cafeteria.
Software engineer Josh Faust beams in daily from Hawaii, where he moved to surf, and plans to spend the winter hitting the slopes in Lake Tahoe. He can't play pingpong or eat the free, catered lunches in Palo Alto, but he otherwise feels like he's part of the team.
"I'm trying to figure out where exactly I want to live. This allows me to do that without any of the instability of trying to find a different job," Faust said, speaking on a Beam from Kaanapali, Hawaii. "It's pretty amazing.

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Exclusive: Pakistan's army chief makes Afghan peace "top priority"

WANA, Pakistan/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan's powerful army chief has made reconciling warring factions in Afghanistan a top priority, military officials and Western diplomats say, the newest and clearest sign yet that Islamabad means business in promoting peace with the Taliban.
General Ashfaq Kayani is backing dialogue partly due to fears that the end of the U.S. combat mission in Afghanistan in 2014 could energize a resilient insurgency straddling the shared frontier, according to commanders deployed in the region.
"There was a time when we used to think we were the masters of Afghanistan. Now we just want them to be masters of themselves so we can concentrate on our own problems," said a senior Pakistani military officer stationed in South Waziristan, part of the tribal belt that hugs the Afghan border.
"Pakistan has the power to create the environment in which a grand reconciliation in Afghanistan can take place," he said, speaking in the gritty town of Wana, about 30 km (20 miles) from Afghanistan. "We have to rise to the challenge. And we are doing it, at the highest level possible."
On December 7, Kayani hammered home his determination to support a negotiated end to the war in Afghanistan at a meeting of top commanders at the army headquarters in Rawalpindi.
"He (Kayani) said Afghan reconciliation is our top priority," said a Pakistani intelligence official, who was briefed about the meeting.
Major progress with Kayani's help could enable U.S. President Barack Obama to say his administration managed to sway Pakistan - often seen as an unreliable ally - to help achieve a top U.S. foreign policy goal.
Afghan officials, who have long suspected Pakistan of funding and arming the Taliban, question whether Kayani genuinely supports dialogue or is merely making token moves to deflect Western criticism of Pakistan's record in Afghanistan.
Pakistan backed the Taliban's rise to power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s and is seen as a crucial gatekeeper in attempts by the U.S. and Afghan governments to reach out to insurgent leaders who fled to Pakistan after their 2001 ouster.
Relations between Taliban commanders and Pakistan's security establishment have increasingly been poisoned by mistrust, however, raising questions over whether Kayani's spymasters wield enough influence to nudge them towards the table.
Nevertheless, diplomats in Islamabad argue that Pakistan has begun to show markedly greater enthusiasm for Western-backed attempts to engage with Taliban leaders. Western diplomats, who for years were skeptical about Pakistani promises, say Islamabad is serious about promoting stability in Afghanistan.
"They seem to genuinely want to move towards a political solution," said an official from an EU country. "We've seen a real shift in their game-plan at every level. Everyone involved seems to want to get something going."
"PAST MISTAKES"
The army has ruled Pakistan for more than half its history and critics say generals have jealously guarded the right to dictate policy on Afghanistan, seeing friendly guerrilla groups as "assets" to blunt the influence of arch-rival India.
But army attitudes towards former Islamist proxies have also begun to evolve due to the rise of Pakistan's own Taliban movement, which has fought fierce battles in the tribal areas and launched suicide attacks in major cities.
Kayani seemed to signal that the army's conception of its role in Pakistan and the region was changing in a speech to officers in Rawalpindi last month.
"As a nation we are passing through a defining phase," Kayani said. "We are critically looking at the mistakes made in the past and trying to set the course for a better future."
Kayani ordered Pakistan's biggest offensive against the militants in 2009, pouring 40,000 troops into South Waziristan in a bid to decisively tip the balance against the growing challenge they posed to the state.
Outsiders are largely barred from the tribal belt, but Reuters was able to arrange a rare three-day trip with Pakistan's military last month.
Security appeared to have improved markedly in South Waziristan since the offensive, but the visit also underscored the huge task Pakistan's army still faces to gain control over other parts of the border region.
Haji Taj, who runs an Islamic seminary for boys and girls in Wana, said militants were still at large in surrounding mountains. "Outside the army camp, it's Taliban rule," he said.
"CHANGE IN MINDSET"
Kayani, a career soldier who assumed command of the army in 2007, has been a key interlocutor with Washington during one of the most turbulent chapters in U.S.-Pakistan relations.
Arguably Pakistan's most powerful man, he has earned a reputation as a thoughtful commander who has curbed the military's tendency to meddle overtly in politics.
With Kayani's support, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar has held repeated rounds of discussions with Afghan counterparts, and in November Pakistan released more than a dozen Taliban prisoners.
The move aimed to reassure the Afghan government and Pakistan's allies of Islamabad's good faith and telegraph to the Taliban that Pakistan is serious about facilitating talks.
"There is a change in political mindset and will on the Pakistani side," Salahuddin Rabbani, the chairman of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, told Reuters. "We have reason to be cautiously optimistic."
Seeking to overcome a bitter legacy of mistrust, Pakistan has also built bridges with Afghan politicians close to the Northern Alliance, a constellation of anti-Taliban warlords who have traditionally been implacable critics of Islamabad.
Kayani flew to Kabul last month for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and accompanied Khar on a visit to Brussels to meet top NATO and U.S. officials in early December.
Skeptics in Kabul wonder, however, whether Pakistan is still hedging its bets. Afghan officials are particularly irked by Pakistan's refusal to release Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban's captured second-in-command, who is seen as a potentially significant go-between with insurgents.
Even with Pakistan's unambiguous support, diplomats warn that there are unanswered questions over what form any peace process might take, and whether Taliban hardliners will engage.
"THERE IS NO OTHER WAY"
Kayani's growing support for dialogue is driven to a large extent by a realization that the United States is intent on sticking to its Afghan withdrawal plans, diplomats say.
A series of high-profile attacks in Pakistan in recent months, including a December 15 raid on the airport in the north-western city of Peshawar, has sharpened concerns that instability in Afghanistan could invigorate Pakistani militants.
Hawks in Pakistan's security bureaucracy may balk at the idea of supporting dialogue unless they can be certain that any future settlement will limit India's influence in Kabul.
But officers deployed in outposts clinging to the saw-toothed peaks of the frontier fear they may soon face an even fiercer fight unless the leaders of the insurgency in Afghanistan can be persuaded to talk.
"After 2014, when the U.S. leaves, what will these guys do? You think they'll suddenly become traders and responsible citizens of society?" said another officer serving in South Waziristan. "We have to make sure of a post-2014 framework that can accommodate these elements. There is no other way."

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Ind. taxpayers to see $111 credit from surplus

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana taxpayers will receive a $111 credit on their state income tax returns next year as the state distributes part of its budget surplus.
Gov. Mitch Daniels on Wednesday announced the credit that will be $222 for couples filing joint returns. The credit represents the automatic taxpayer refund plan that Daniels pushed through the state Legislature last year.
That refund kicked with the state's reserves reaching about $2.1 billion. The governor's office says about $360 million will go toward the tax credits, with another $360 million to the state's pension liabilities.
Daniels says including the credit on tax returns is simpler and less expensive than mailing out additional checks.
Critics argue that Daniels created the surplus by cutting money for public schools, the child welfare agency and other important services.

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Lawmakers urged to resolve property tax inequities

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — County and real estate officials urged the Legislature on Wednesday to deal with a thorny problem of property tax inequities among New Mexico homeowners, also known as "tax lightning," when taxes skyrocket on some residential property.
At issue are widely varying valuations of residential property for tax purposes and continuing fallout from a more than decade-old law intended to protect longtime homeowners in communities such as Santa Fe when market prices — and potentially property tax bills — were rising dramatically.
Several county officials told a legislative committee it's a good time for lawmakers to resolve the property tax problem because recent market declines will ease some of the needed valuation changes.
The goal is to equalize valuations of residential property — ensuring that New Mexicans pay their fair share of property taxes — but minimize the tax increases for those whose homes are assessed for tax purposes at well below market prices.
Under a law that took effect in 2001, property values can climb only 3 percent a year for tax purposes. However, that doesn't apply when a home changes hands. New homeowners can be hit by "tax lightning" and their property taxes are much higher than their neighbors whose houses are covered by the 3 percent annual cap.
A homeowner's property tax bill depends upon local tax rates as well as the taxable valuation of their property.
San Juan County Assessor Clyde Ward outlined a proposal to a legislative committee to update the assessed valuation of most homes to 90 percent of market values. However, there would be limits on the valuation increases for certain people, including those who've lived in their homes at least 10 years.
He estimated that one-third of the homes in New Mexico were valued at less than 80 percent of market values.
The proposal was developed by a task force assembled by the Realtors Association of New Mexico. Among those who participated were county assessors, the New Mexico Association of Counties, a legislator who leads a tax committee and officials from budget and tax agencies in Gov. Susana Martinez's administration.
Ward and Gary Perez, Santa Fe County deputy assessor, acknowledged that some New Mexicans will face property tax increases but said the proposal softens the impact.
"It's not a win-win situation," said Ward. "We're going to have a near-win, near-win situation because there is no way we can rip this off after so many years of the cap being in place. We have to have some sort of adjustment."
The effect of the proposal would vary widely from county to county. Only about 10 percent of homes in Santa Fe are below 90 percent of market value, according to Perez.
In the Albuquerque area, however, there are some homes at about 40 percent of market value, lawmakers were told.
Sen. Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, expressed concern that the proposal could cause large tax increases if property valuations jump by as much as 40 percent for some homeowners.
"How is that not going to result in a displacement situation where someone simply can't afford to pay those taxes?" Wirth asked.
County officials said there are protections in current law, including a freeze on valuations for low-income and elderly taxpayers. They also emphasized that all homeowners potentially suffer from higher tax rates when property valuations are artificially low. If property valuations are equalized, they said, there's a broader tax base and rates potentially may go down under the state's "yield control" law that's supposed to prevent large revenue spikes for government simply from a property revaluation.

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Exclusive: India's fiscal deficit could reach 5.5-5.6 percent of GDP in 2012/13 - source

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's fiscal deficit could reach 5.5-5.6 percent of GDP in the current fiscal year that ends in March, forcing the government to borrow up to 400 billion rupees ($7.2 billion) extra from the market, a senior government official told Reuters on Thursday
Just last month, subdued tax revenue and higher spending on subsidies forced the government to revise its fiscal deficit target to 5.3 percent for the current financial year from a previous target of 5.1 percent.
However, a dismal response to last week's auction of mobile phone airwaves, has cast doubts on that target.
India, which had budgeted for 400 billion rupees revenue from the auction of mobile phone airwaves, managed to raise about 94 billion rupees from an auction this month. The government plans to conduct a second auction in this financial year for the unsold airwaves.

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Italy's lower house approves Monti's budget plans

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's lower house of parliament on Thursday approved a package of budget measures including a sales tax hike and a cut in some payroll taxes, aimed at helping the government reach its deficit-cutting targets.
Approval was expected after Prime Minister Mario Monti's government won three confidence votes on Wednesday that it had called to speed up passage of the budget.
The measures will now move to the Senate for approval, which is expected before Christmas.
The Chamber of Deputies approved the plans by 372 votes against 73.
The budget, enshrined in a so-called Stability Law, is central to Monti's efforts to lower Italy's public deficit to 1.8 percent of output next year from a targeted 2.6 percent in 2012.
Monti agreed at the end of October to overhaul the first draft of the budget legislation by replacing a planned income tax cut with a reduction in payroll taxes paid by employers.
The package still includes a one percentage point rise in the highest value-added tax (VAT) rate, which will go into effect next July, bringing it to 22 percent. The lower 10 percent rate will not be increased as previously planned.
The Stability Law is expected to be one of the final pieces of major legislation approved under Monti before Italy gears up for a national election.

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Connecticut Job Shops and Contract Manufacturers Join the MFG.com Manufacturing Marketplace

Connecticut manufacturers prove to be uniquely qualified for entrance into the largest global manufacturing ecosystem.

Atlanta, GA (PRWEB) December 18, 2012
MFG.com, the world’s largest online manufacturing marketplace for made-to-order parts, announced that prominent Connecticut-based manufacturers have joined the MFG.com marketplace.
A few of the recent additions include:

Perfection Screw & Rivet Co. is an ISO 9001:2008 certified, family-owned cold heading job shop located in Wolcott, CT. With a foundation of quality customer service, cost reduction and employee education, Perfection Screw & Rivet Co. has an impeccable record of satisfying customers. Capabilities include fasteners and hardware, machining, rapid prototyping, cold forming, cold headed parts, cold head machining, cold form parts, screws, rivets and knurling.
Windmade Products is a turn-key powder coating, sheet metal fabrication and machining service provider. As the exclusive manufacturer of Neumade Products, Windmade Products is a leading provider of high quality projection room equipment for the cinema industry. Windmade Products services a wide variety of industries and customers throughout the Northeast with a simple commitment to provide quality work, at a competitive price, delivered on time and in full. Capabilities and services include in-house powder coating, sheet metal fabrication, machining, assembly, kitting, warehousing and fulfillment.
Nerjan Development Co. is a family-owned, AS 9100, ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 9001:2008 certified precision CNC milling and turning electro mechanical assembly job shop located in Stamford, CT. Established in 1967, Nerjan Development Co. provides manual and CNC milling, turning, and drilling to meet customer specifications. Nerjan machines a wide variety of metals and plastics to sensitive and accurate dimensions.
Shearwater Engineering & Manufacturing LLC (S.E.A.M.) is located in Brooklyn, CT and has been providing manufacturing valves and components for 35 years. Their experience with valve assemblies for the marine and aerospace industries has been extended to power plants, paper mills, railroads, waste management plants and hydraulic manifolds for machines. S.E.A.M. specializes in the manufacturing of complex, controlled geometric parts. By utilizing state-of-the-art programming technology, they have achieved superior results in the processing and machining of strategic materials such as Monel, Inconel, and titanium, as well as the normal alloys of steel and aluminum.
“We are proud to announce the acceptance of these quality suppliers from Connecticut into the MFG.com marketplace. By introducing companies like Perfection Screw & Rivet Co., Windmade Products, Nerjan Development Co. and Shearwater Engineering & Manufacturing into our marketplace, buyers and sourcing professionals are further reassured that they can trust the suppliers in the MFG.com marketplace,” said Mitch Free, Founder and CEO of MFG.com. “MFG.com is excited to work with these suppliers from Connecticut to help them grow their businesses and develop win-win customer relationships with our buyer members.”
About MFG.com

MFG.com is the largest online marketplace for the manufacturing industry, facilitating interaction between buyers and manufacturers. MFG.com enables sourcing professionals and engineers to quickly and easily locate quality suppliers for CNC Machining, Injection Molding, Metal Stamping, Metal Fabrication and many other processes through an easy-to-use online marketplace. With more than $115 billion in RFQs passing through the marketplace, MFG.com has helped thousands of manufacturers - ranging from small machine shops to large conglomerates - increase sales and grow profits. MFG.com is a global business, with offices in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Mexico.

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Vint Cerf, Award-Winning Computer Scientist and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, Joins TruthMarket™ Board of Advisors

Dr. Vint Cerf, one of the true “Fathers of the Internet,” an international authority on digital communications and outspoken advocate for a free and open Internet adds global perspective to TruthMarket’s Platform for Crowd-funding Public Challenges to False Political, Commercial and Science Claims.

Atherton, California (PRWEB) December 18, 2012
Today Truth Seal Corp. announced that Vinton G. Cerf, Ph.D. has joined the TruthMarket™ Board of Advisors. TruthMarket is an online Marketplace for Truth Telling™. It provides ordinary citizens with a platform to “crowd-fund” and execute grass roots campaigns that publicly expose misrepresentations and false political, commercial and science claims, while highlighting true claims and offering cash rewards to successful campaign creators, sponsors and challengers.
Widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet," Dr. Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. He is known for his pioneering insights and innovative contributions to technologies that further advance the Internet and its important role is fostering open, global dialogue. Explaining his decision to join the TruthMarket Board of Advisors, Dr. Cerf notes that, “in a world of false dichotomies and factual denial, the TruthMarket concept seems set to clear away the fog of uninformed debate."
“We’re very enthusiastic about Dr. Cerf joining our Board of Advisors. He will be adding important philosophical and technological insights to a growing cadre of reputable experts committed to challenging manipulative speech, false claims and distorted facts,” said Rick Hayes-Roth, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Truth Seal. “Dr. Cerf’s contributions to the culture of modern communication and his insightful positions have attracted a strong following of like-minded people supportive of truth in public affairs. We look forward to having them participate in TruthMarket campaigns."
“Truth Seal has been actively recruiting reputable authorities like Dr. Cerf for the Board of Advisors,” stated Mark L. Feldman, Ph.D., Board Member and investor. “Advisors known for their high integrity are important to TruthMarket’s mission to increase truth and trust throughout the information space.” Feldman adds that "more announcements of public figures joining the TruthMarket Board of Advisors can be expected."
About Vinton G. Cerf, Ph.D.
Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google. Cerf has held positions at MCI, the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, DARPA, Stanford University, UCLA and IBM. Vint Cerf is president of ACM and served as chairman of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and was founding president of the Internet Society. Widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet," he received the U.S. National Medal of Technology in 1997, the Marconi Fellowship in 1998 and the ACM Alan M. Turing award in 2004. In November 2005, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and in April 2008 the Japan Prize. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, and AAAS, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Computer History Museum and the National Academy of Engineering. Cerf holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Stanford University and Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from UCLA and holds over 20 honorary degrees from universities around the world.
About TruthMarket
TruthMarket is a division of Truth Seal, a California Corporation. TruthMarket is designed to be popular online platform that enables everyone to campaign for truth in public dialogue. The primary objective is to increase truth and trust throughout the public information space – online and offline – by publicly exposing false claims and highlighting true claims. TruthMarket’s ultimate goal is to predispose all public dialogue toward truth telling.

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Alibaba Becomes Largest e-Commerce Company - Impact for Retail Brands

Simon Jackson, chief commercial officer at brand protection company NetNames, comments on the news that Alibaba has become the largest ecommerce company in the world.

(PRWEB UK) 18 December 2012
“The news that Chinese online marketplace Alibaba has become the largest ecommerce company in the world has important implications for brand owners in the retail and consumer goods industries. The fact that Alibaba’s gross merchandise volume of $157 billion, for just two if its sites, adds up to more than Amazon and eBay combined shows China’s exponential growth into the world’s biggest retail market and reveals just how much retail traffic is moving online.
However, these spectacular figures, bring in to focus the growing threat of counterfeit products available online. Netnames is working in partnership with Alibaba to tackle counterfeit products which, for NetNames customers, can be as high as 70% of products offered on global marketplaces. This is a serious issue for brand owners as these products divert revenue, particularly in retail and luxury goods sectors where replica goods are most common.
So what can brand owners do to protect against this threat? By actively monitoring those selling fake products online via auction sites, organisations are able to identify where the goods are being offered for sale and can work with the platform providers to have them removed from the internet. In the past 12 months, NetNames has worked together with Alibaba to remove thousands of listings of counterfeit items from their websites, equating to millions of dollars of potential revenue – proof that action can be taken to remove a significant proportion of this threat.”

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