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Source: http://steepdreamer.com/2011/12/strategy-games-online-online-gaming/

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AP source: Ex-VP Dan Quayle to endorse Romney (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Former Vice President Dan Quayle is endorsing Mitt Romney for president, Republican officials told The Associated Press Monday.

Quayle plans to announce his support for the former Massachusetts governor Tuesday afternoon at an event in Paradise Valley, Ariz., where Quayle has a home.

Quayle served as vice president under President George H.W. Bush. He was a House member from Indiana for two terms and a U.S. senator.

Quayle has largely stayed out of the national political spotlight in recent years, though he did mount an unsuccessful presidential bid in 2000. A series of gaffes during his vice presidency made him the subject of late night comedians' punch lines.

His endorsement helps illustrate establishment GOP backing for Romney, who has been trying to consolidate support among party stalwarts despite repeated challenges from conservative alternatives. The latest, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, has been leading in polls both nationally and in critical early states.

Quayle served under Bush, who met with Romney last week at his Houston home. The elder Bush did not offer his endorsement.

Quayle's son, Rep. Ben Quayle, was elected to the House of Representatives in 2010.

A GOP official familiar with Quayle's thinking says the former vice president is backing Romney because he views Romney as the most credible candidate in the race. The official requested anonymity to discuss Quayle's endorsement ahead of the official announcement.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111206/ap_on_el_pr/us_romney_quayle

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Mexico top presidential contender can't name books (AP)

MEXICO CITY ? Oops!

Politicians north of the border aren't the only ones struggling with gaffes this campaign season.

Mexico's leading presidential contender floundered in confusion for about four minutes when the audience at a book fair asked him to name three books that had influenced him. He was able to correctly name only one he has read "parts of:" the Bible.

Former Mexico State Gov. Enrique Pena Nieto holds a comfortable lead in opinion polls for Mexico's July 1 presidential election, but his appearance was reminiscent of the campaign-denting moment that Texas Gov. Rick Perry suffered at a Republican debate in November. The GOP hopeful he couldn't remember one of the three government agencies he pledged to eliminate if he were president and finally said, "Oops!"

The floundering by Pena Nieto, a strikingly handsome man married to a television actress, fed into the images critics have tried to spin around him: telegenic but hollow.

"I have read a number of books, starting with novels, that I particularly liked. I'd have a hard time recalling the titles of the books," Pena Nieto said during a question-and-answer session the weekend book fair in the western city of Guadalajara.

Pena Nieto said that as an adolescent, he had been influenced by the Bible, and had read "parts of" it.

He then rambled on and on, tossing out confused title names, asking for help in recalling the names of authors and sometimes mismatching the two.

He said he liked "La Silla del Aguila, a novel whose title roughly translates as "The Presidential Chair." But he said it was written by historian Enrique Krauze, one of Mexico's most famous historians. It was actually written by Carlos Fuentes, the country's most famous novelist.

That was about as close as the former governor came to correctly identifying a book he has read in the past decade.

"The truth is that when I read books, the titles don't really sink in," he said after several minutes.

Pena Nieto is the leading hope of the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, to return to the presidency it held for 71 years without interruption before losing the 2000 elections to conservative Vicente Fox.

Television images of Pena Nieto's struggles ignited glee among PRI critics on Twitter.

Several referred to him as "the Justin Bieber of the PRI," referring to Bieber's difficulty in naming all seven continents during a television appearance in November.

But Bieber was at least able to work out the answer with some prompting from host David Letterman.

Pena Nieto couldn't. He looked to his aides for help and drew laughter from the audience, saying at least twice "I can't remember the title." He mentioned he had read a political thriller by Jeffrey Archer.

Several demonstrators showed up at party headquarters in Mexico City on Monday to symbolically give him books on Mexican history.

"It's really very shameful that a person wants to be president and doesn't know a single book," said Hugo Giovanni Aguirre, a university law student.

Pena Nieto accepted the gaffe in Twitter posts Monday, apparently hoping that good grace would calm the controversy.

"I'm reading some tweets about my error yesterday, some are very critical, others are even funny. I thank you for all of them," he wrote. Later, he tweeted "Freedom of expression is a central pillar of democracy. Criticism of those of us who aspire to or hold political office is fundamental."

Members of Pena Nieto's PRI party has their own moments of fun mocking former president Fox, a fountain of verbal flubs who prompted hilarity by mispronouncing the name of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges during a speech before one of Spain's most important literary gatherings.

But some Mexican intellectuals, even longstanding critics of the PRI, were sympathetic:

"I myself, and I suppose all of us ... have moments when we forget authors, we forget books," said historian Lorenzo Meyer. "We can't jump on Pena Nieto because he forgets his writers."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mexico/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111205/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_mexico_political_gaffe

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Are Russians getting sick of Vladimir Putin? (The Week)

New York ? After the longtime leader's party suffers a surprise embarrassment at the polls, the strongman's grasp on power suddenly looks shakier

Russian voters delivered an unexpected blow to longtime leader Vladimir Putin on Sunday, slashing his United Russia party's majority in parliament. Putin is hoping to win the presidency for a third time next year, but with his party claiming just under 50 percent of the vote for the State Duma, down from 67 percent in 2007, his political strength may be waning. Putin was even booed at a mixed martial arts event last month, a once unthinkable embarrassment. Are Russians finally tiring of their aspiring president-for-life?

Yes. Voters are fed up: There's no mystery here, says Ben Johnson at Slate. Russians are souring in their "opinion about Putin's dominance in Russian politics and policy." They're sick of seeing photos of their shirtless leader "randomly discovering ancient treasures during scuba trips" and just generally pretending to be superhuman. Ordinary people are increasingly convinced that Putin and his party are out of touch with reality.
"In Russian elections, Putin's party takes a hit"

Even weakened, Putin is still in control: This vote was far from fatal for Putin, say Timothy Heritage and Ralph Boulton at Reuters. Yes, Sunday's balloting was a "heavy blow" that "could dent the authority of the man who has ruled for almost 12 years with a mixture of hardline security policies, political acumen, and showmanship."?But let's face it: Putin still calls the shots in Russia, and he's "likely to win a presidential election in March."?
"Russia's Putin and party suffer election blow"

But Putin's next term will be bumpy: Things would have been even worse for Putin if much of Russia's political system wasn't "rigged," says Gideon Rachman at Britain's?Financial Times.?Putin benefitted from fawning media coverage and rumored ballot-stuffing. But it's encouraging that Russia's democracy, whatever its flaws, "is robust enough to have delivered a genuine slap-in-the-face" to the muscular Putin. "Combined with the famous booing incident," this suggests Putin's next term will "be rather less smooth than his previous periods in office."
"A slap in the face for United Russia"

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Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/oped/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/theweek/20111205/cm_theweek/222135

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Leadership: Handpicking a new generation of African role models

The African Leadership Academy looks for specific traits ? such as courage ? in picking students who may lead the continent someday.

Johannesburg, South Africa

Africa has seen too many failed leaders. Its widespread poverty, ethnic strife, civil wars, and chronic health problems often seem intractable.

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But Fred Swaniker doesn't agree: The right kind of leadership can solve any problem, he thinks, and he's set out to break down the barriers of this negative mind-set among young Africans.

Set on an acre or so of land in Johannesburg's leafy northern suburbs, his international high school ? the African Leadership Academy ? aims to cultivate a kind of African maverick, a problem solver who can embrace a new leadership attitude. Mr. Swaniker has identified four main attributes that leaders ? at the grass-roots level all the way up to heads of state ? should display: "Courage to change things, perseverance in the face of obstacles, passion, and the right values." He's conveying this ethic to 200 carefully chosen students ? from 33 African nations ? at the ALA.

He points to 17-year-old Linda Rebeiz from an upper-middle-class family on the island of Goree in Senegal: She was shocked as she began to understand the repercussions of illiteracy among the domestic workers in her neighborhood. "They couldn't send a text message," Linda says. "So their phone bills were expensive because they had to talk."

The teenager started teaching her domestic worker at home to read and write, and then she started a small school to teach five other people in her neighborhood. She has gone on to found an entrepreneurship academy in a rural area in Senegal, says Swaniker.

By African standards Linda has a privileged life, but she has learned to see the continent's problems in a new way: "I didn't know how to apply my ideas because my education back home was very theoretical. Our education system makes us less independent.... But what I learned at the ALA has helped me."

Linda believes Africa requires more than entrepreneurship to solve its problems: "We need to start at the lowest level of school to understand core values. You have to see the bigger picture; it's not just about you. You have to ask, if you are hungry, is it still OK to steal?"

Veda Sunassee, a Mauritian facilitator at ALA, suggests that these core values have been lost by some leaders who brought Africa out of colonialism: "Africa has many opportunities now and some of the fastest growing economies in the world, but we have a problem where leaders who started as heroes have lost their morals and ethics and their leadership has become toxic."

The key to the ALA model for teaching ways to break this cycle is an ongoing commitment to tangible actions. Students must launch a social venture in poor communities in Johannesburg or start a business on campus. African role models such as Desmond Tutu, Graca Machel, or Lamido Sanusi, the corruption-busting governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, are brought in to speak to the students.

Francis Ekii, a Ugandan teen who grew up in a one-room house in the capital, Kampala, and started a mushroom farm at his school to help raise funding for books and pens, takes the point further: "We have problems in Africa with greed and selfishness; we need a balance between entrepreneurial and other values. Above all, we need integrity, transparency, and accountability. Democracy in Africa has become a business."

"We can point to a number of successes," Swaniker says, even though the academy only opened in 2008. "Our graduates are making a difference already."

He points to examples such as William Kam?kwamba, who built a windmill to bring electricity to his village in Malawi and wrote a bestselling book about it. Joseph Munyanbanza is building a school in a refugee camp in northern Uganda; Julius Shirima from Tanzania has started a consulting business for small shops in Dar es Salaam.

"We teach them that they should think of building a cathedral [because] the transformation of Africa is a 50-to-100-year project," says Swaniker. "Their work won't be finished, but they need to begin, and leave the continent in a better state than they found it. They must leave it to another generation to build further."

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/1aL3E3yLLAs/Leadership-Handpicking-a-new-generation-of-African-role-models

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Why Girls Don't Want Careers In Tech

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Why Girls Don't Want Careers In Tech
This week I was lucky enough collect an award at Red Magazine's Hot Women Awards 2011, which celebrates successful women in industry. What made the experience all the more rewarding was being able to spend some time with a group of women at the top of their fields.

Source: FastCompany
Posted on: Friday, Dec 02, 2011, 8:44am
Views: 42

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/115685/Why_Girls_Don_t_Want_Careers_In_Tech

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Android 4.0, meet your granddad x86

Isn't it nice when different generations get together without bickering? Google's x86 version of Ice Cream Sandwich is finally ready for developers and it promises to do exactly that, by playing happily with Intel and AMD's 33-year-old architecture rather than just those young upstarts from ARM. The union isn't entirely harmonious just yet: Ethernet and camera support won't function, while Wi-Fi, sound and hardware acceleration are currently AMD-only. Devs who remain unfazed by such trifles, however, can download the source code via the links below.

[Family photo via Shutterstock]

Android 4.0, meet your granddad x86 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Dec 2011 10:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/PmDEAvuJrMU/

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Obama pleads with voters for patience on "change" (reuters)

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How NASA Could Get Its Spaceflight Groove Back (SPACE.com)

NASA's better days can appear long past to the public. The U.S. space agency that once landed a man on the moon now wrestles with questions of existential crisis after retiring its space shuttle fleet this year. But it may still have enough leftover mojo to boldly set new goals to go where no man has gone before ? if it can shake off its instinct to always look for guidance from the president and Congress.

A chance exists for NASA to declare a new vision for space exploration, said Jeff Leitner, founder and dean of Insight Labs. His nonprofit group wants to help the space agency control its destiny based on the authority of its "smartest, badass scientists" and spaceflight achievements, rather than acting as a political football for lawmakers while waiting for someone to decide its next mission.

"If they were in Silicon Valley, we'd be worshiping them," said Jeff Leitner, founder and dean of Insight Labs. "But they're NASA, so we're cutting their budget."

Removing the blinders

Part of the uncertainty problem surrounding space exploration is that "the public narrative around NASA seems broken," Leitner explained. Even as news reports glowed over fantastical visions of possible new technologies from the secretive Google X lab in November, NASA was carefully preparing to launch its nuclear-powered Curiosity rover ? the size of a Mini Cooper ? to explore the possibility of life on Mars.

The other part of the problem may come from NASA's blindness to its own "cool" factor. That realization came to Leitner during a 3-hour Friday-morning talk among NASA representatives and big thinkers from all walks of life at NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia on Nov. 18.

"We got there by having people in [the] room who are experts in science and technology say [to the NASA representatives], 'You know we're looking to you for that guidance on space exploration," and watch NASA be surprised by their own credibility," Leitner told InnovationNewsDaily.

NASA's blindness to its brand's coolness became more evident as the discussion wore on. Leitner and his Insight Lab colleagues posed a hypothetical to the NASA representatives: If they summoned Larry Page, Google cofounder, and Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, to a meeting, would the Silicon Valley VIPs attend?

The NASA representatives said they didn't know. "Of course [they'd come], you're NASA!" Leitner and his colleagues responded.

Taking control

NASA's chance to take a new leadership role arises in a time when new countries and private spaceflight companies alike have begun crowding into an area once dominated by the United States and the former Soviet Union. That "fragmented environment" gives a chance for NASA to possibly become both architect and chief builder for space exploration.

"Somebody has to be the architect; NASA has earned that role," Leitner said. "We were in the building where Orville Wright had his office. If you're that guy, you get to declare the nation's priorities for flight."

By setting its own grand strategy, NASA could better hold a steady course despite new presidential administrations or changing budgets. That would buck the trend of allowing Congressionally-approved budgets to decide spaceflight missions and goals.

"NASA has an opportunity that they didn't know they had," Leitner explained."They currently judge their value in the world based on budgetary guidelines; that doesn't quite resonate with public perception or narrative."

One small step

Insight Labs organized its "Reclaiming Public Fascination" meeting with the goal of sparking a conversation among outside thinkers about changing NASA's public narrative and message. Such a target seemed more achievable in a 3-hour meeting than changing the mission of NASA or figuring out a new direction for technological breakthroughs.

But Insight Labs also aims to do much more than simply provide standard consulting advice to organizations for free. It aims to help tackle the big problems that keep the heads of government agencies and nonprofits up at night.

"A lot of people say, 'Here's how you can reorganize yourself to be more efficient,' but a lot of big-name organizations are solving the wrong problem," Leitner said. "We go way up the headwaters of the problem."

The Insight Labs founders have already begun more in-depth interviews with some of the thinkers who attended the meeting, and continue to talk with NASA about making slight changes to past assumptions to make the path forward easier. In one email, Leitner told a NASA contact that the space agency was still "planning for gravity in a zero-gee environment." Why not float free?

You can follow InnovationNewsDaily Senior Writer Jeremy Hsu on Twitter @ScienceHsu. Follow InnovationNewsDaily on Twitter @News_Innovation, or on Facebook.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/science/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/space/20111201/sc_space/hownasacouldgetitsspaceflightgrooveback

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Senate rejects, for now, extending payroll tax cut (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Senate Republicans on Thursday defeated a plan by President Barack Obama to renew a temporary cut in the Social Security payroll tax, even as all sides on Capitol Hill continue to promise an eventual compromise on a tax holiday before Congress leaves Washington for Christmas.

More than two dozen of the Senate's 47 Republicans also voted to kill an alternative plan backed by GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky in a vote that exposed a wide split among the party over whether renewing an existing 2 percentage point payroll tax cut makes sense.

The defeat of the competing plans came as House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said for the first time that renewing the payroll tax cut would boost the lagging economy, a view many in his party don't share. Boehner also promised compromise on a renewal of long-term jobless benefits through the end of 2012.

The payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits are at the center of a costly, politically-charged year-end agenda in which Democrats seem poised to prevail in renewing a tax cut that many Republicans back only reluctantly. But Republicans are insisting ? in a switch from last year ? that the payroll tax cut and jobless benefits be paid for by cutting spending.

Both parties are seeking the political high ground as next year's elections loom, with Democrats accusing Republicans of siding with the rich, and Republicans countering that Democrats were taxing small business owners who create jobs.

The first payroll tax plan to fall was a Democratic measure that was the centerpiece of Obama's jobs package announced in September. It would cut the Social Security payroll tax from 6.2 percent to 3.1 percent next year and also extend the cut to employers, with its hefty $265 billion cost paid for by slapping a 3.25 percent surtax on income exceeding $1 million.

Republicans and a handful of Democrats combined to kill the measure on a 51-49 tally that fell well short of the 60 required under Senate rules. For the first time, a Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, voted to support the millionaires' surcharge.

The White House issued a statement by Obama that accused Republicans of voting to raise taxes on 160 million people because they "refused to ask a few hundred thousand millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share." The statement didn't mention the GOP alternative.

In a surprising result, Democrats and more than two dozen Republicans voted 78-20 to kill the $120 billion GOP alternative that would have simply extended the existing 2 percentage point payroll tax cut, financed by freezing federal workers' pay through 2015 and reducing the government bureaucracy.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Republican opponents "insist on helping the very wealthy while turning their back on the middle class," while another member of the leadership, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Republicans were in full-blown retreat just days after Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said on "Fox News Sunday" that "the payroll tax holiday has not stimulated job creation. We don't think that is a good way to do it."

On Thursday, however, Boehner disagreed.

"I don't think there's any question that the payroll tax relief, in fact, helps the economy," Boehner said. "You're allowing more Americans, frankly, every working American, to keep more of their money in their pocket. Frankly, that's a good thing."

Meanwhile, House Republicans readied legislation of their own that aides said likely would include the tax cut extension as well as renewed benefits for long-term victims of the worst recession in decades and a painfully slow recovery.

Boehner made clear that all costs must be paid for, and said higher taxes were a non-starter.

"Republicans are ready to work with the president and the Democrats to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance temporarily, but they must be offset with spending cuts elsewhere," he said.

A meeting between Boehner and Reid produced no progress, aides said, and House Republicans were considering a GOP-tilting version of the measure before Congress would settle on an eventual compromise that might not pass until just days before Christmas.

But Thursday's votes indicated there was lots of reluctance among Republicans to renew the costly payroll tax cut, which even some Democrats said hasn't much helped the economy.

"I can't find many people who even know that they're getting it, okay?" said Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who opposed both plans. "So with that being said, we're going to double down on something that we thought should have worked that didn't work."

There were other issues under negotiation as lawmakers looked toward the end of a highly partisan year, the first in a new era of divided government.

Boehner said lawmakers were discussing a bill to avoid a scheduled 27 percent cut on Jan. 1 in reimbursement rates for doctors treating Medicare patients.

The two parties also looked for agreement on a measure to fund the government through the Sept. 30 end of the budget year.

Boehner added that he likely would try to include some of the 20 House-passed bills that are part of a GOP jobs package in one of the year-end wrap-up bills. Most of the measures would block federal regulations on various industries, and are stalled in the Senate.

With unemployment hovering around 9 percent nationally, Obama urged Congress in September to renew and expand the Social Security payroll tax cut for workers that he signed a year ago, and called as well for an extension of benefits that can cover up to 99 weeks for the long-term jobless.

State unemployment insurance programs guarantees coverage for six months, but as in previous downturns, Congress approved additional benefits in 2008. Expiration of those payments would mean an average loss of $296 in weekly income for 1.8 million households in January, and a total of 6 million throughout 2012.

On the tax cut extension, Republicans prefer a simple one-year continuation of the existing law, jettisoning Obama's call to deepen the cut to 3.1 percentage points on workers' first $106,800 in earnings, while expanding it to cut in half employers' Social Security contributions for their $5 million in payroll.

To pay for the measure, Senate Republicans proposed freezing federal workers' pay through 2015 ? extending a two-year-freeze recommended by Obama ? and reducing the bureaucracy by 200,000 jobs through attrition.

The Democratic plan would give a worker earning $50,000 a more than $1,500 tax cut; the GOP plan would provide a $1,000 tax cut for such an earner. A two-income family making $200,000 would reap a $6,000 tax cut under the Democratic plan and a $4,000 tax cut under the GOP version.

___

Associated Press writer Donna Cassata contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111202/ap_on_go_ot/us_congress_payroll_tax

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