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Exiled president of Madagascar, Marc Ravalomanana, shows his air tickets at a news conference in Johannesburg, Friday, Jan. 20, 2012. Ravalomanana, exiled in South Africa since a 2009 coup, said Friday he will return to his Indian Ocean homeland on Saturday even though he faces arrest there. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell)

Exiled president of Madagascar, Marc Ravalomanana, smiles during a news conference in Johannesburg, Friday, Jan. 20, 2012. Ravalomanana, exiled in South Africa since a 2009 coup, said Friday he will return to his Indian Ocean homeland on Saturday even though he faces arrest there. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell)

Exiled president of Madagascar, Marc Ravalomanana, speaks during a news conference in Johannesburg, Friday, Jan. 20, 2012. Ravalomanana, exiled in South Africa since a 2009 coup, said Friday he will return to his Indian Ocean homeland on Saturday even though he faces arrest there. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell)

JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? Madagascar's ousted president left South Africa Saturday after three years in exile, saying he wanted to help restore peace and democracy in his Indian Ocean island homeland and that he did not fear possible arrest.

Marc Ravalomanana sat next to his wife in the front row of the commercial South African Airways flight. Journalists and aides accompanied the couple. Earlier in the airport, his wife, Lalao, gave a subdued thumbs up.

Security officials in Madagascar, where the populist former disc jockey who ousted Ravalomanana still wields great power, have said the toppled president will be arrested if he returns. Ravalomanana said arresting him would be unlawful and would destabilize Madagascar at a delicate time in efforts to restore democracy.

When Ravalomanana tried to return last year, he was stopped at the Johannesburg airport after aviation authorities in Madagascar wrote to say he was not welcome.

Saturday, thousands of supporters awaited Ravalomanana at the airport in Madagascar's capital. The flight to Antananarivo, Madagascar took off from Johannesburg just after 10 a.m. and was scheduled to take three hours.

Following Andry Rajoelina's military-backed coup, Ravalomanana was convicted in absentia of conspiracy to commit murder in a case related to the turmoil during the overthrow that forced him to leave. Ravalomanana called the tribunal appointed by Rajoelina illegitimate.

Late Friday, South Africa's deputy foreign minister Marius Fransman, who has led regional efforts to restore democracy in Madagascar, issued what could be read as a warning to Ravalomanana not to return, or to Rajoelina not to seek his rival's arrest.

Fransman noted "the current contextual challenges relating to the political situation in Madagascar," but did not elaborate. Then he said he was calling "on all the political formulations and the political leadership, in particular ... Mr. Andry Rajoelina and former President Mr. Marc Ravalomanana to exercise political maturity."

Asked at the Johannesburg airport about Fransman's comments, Ravalomanana said, "We are mature."

Ravalomanana has accepted a plan negotiated by Fransman that calls for elections next year overseen by a unity government. The unity government is in place, with Rajoelina as its president, but members are bickering over how positions were filled.

Friday, Ravalomanana told reporters he would work with anyone, including Rajoelina, to "build a new Madagascar." But he acknowledged Rajoelina has rebuffed his overtures.

The Ravalomanana-Rajoelina rivalry is a particularly bitter example of a long history of strong men vying for power in Madagascar since independence from France in 1960. The political influence of the security forces is strong.

For months before the coup, Rajoelina led rallies against Ravalomanana, whom he accused of being out of touch with the sufferings of the country's impoverished majority.

Ravalomanana's government at one point blocked the signal of a radio station Rajoelina owned. In response, Rajoelina supporters set fire to a building in the government broadcasting complex as well as an oil depot, a shopping mall and a private TV station linked to Ravalomanana. Scores of people were killed.

Days later, soldiers opened fire on anti-government protesters, killing at least 25. The incident cost Ravalomanana much of the support of the military, which blamed him for the order to fire at demonstrators.

Friday, Ravalomanana told reporters he had nothing to do with orders to close the radio station or fire on demonstrators. Ravalomanana added that if he were to regain power, he would put into practice what he said he had learned during exile in South Africa about respecting the rule of law and freedom of expression. South Africa saw brutal white minority rule peacefully toppled in 1994 and multiracial democracy installed through negotiations and power-sharing.

"We cannot solve this crisis in Madagascar without genuine dialogue," Ravalomanana said.

____

Associated Press reporters Jerome Delay in Johannesburg and Lova Soarabary in Antananarivo, Madagascar contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-01-21-AF-Madagascar/id-c6033d50abc94cbea791d33ca06de974

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CALEBASSE, Haiti ? The American missionaries arrived in a beige bus in the days after the earthquake, promising a better life for the children of this village in the mountains above Haiti's capital.

The Idaho-based Baptist volunteers said they wanted to rescue the boys and girls they believed were orphaned by the Jan. 12, 2010, quake. But their effort to spirit away 33 children to the neighboring Dominican Republic failed when they were stopped by police and then jailed on kidnapping charges. It later came out that all the children had parents.

Two years on, residents of Calebasse describe a tempered sense of hope for their returned children even as they struggle against hardship. A humanitarian group has provided the families modest aid, and UNICEF has helped the children by building new schools.

"We still have problems but the children are able to eat and go to school," said Lelly Laurentus, 29, a computer repairman who's been unable to find work except as an occasional cab driver.

Laurentus, whose two daughters boarded the beige bus late that morning in January 2010, thought he was sending them to a better life.

A U.S. missionary accompanied by a Haitian translator had circulated among the homes of Calebasse, offering to bus children across the border following the quake, which officials said killed 314,000 people and left more than a million homeless. In the Dominican Republic, the children would find shelter and a school, the missionary promised.

Laurentus couldn't resist the offer. His home had just collapsed in the earthquake and he was forced to sleep outside. Many Haitians of humble origins believe in lougarou, mythical werewolves that prey on children, and Laurentus is among them. He was terrified that in the dark, the shape-shifting beasts would fly from the mountaintops and attack his children as they slept.

"We had to confront the devils of night," Laurentus said, standing outside his concrete house Tuesday as he waited for his daughters to walk home from school.

Everybody wanted a seat on the bus, a ready-made escape from the desperation that followed the quake, he said.

"If all the kids didn't leave, it was because there wasn't enough room on the bus," said Laurentus.

Nevertheless, Laurentus felt ashamed for sending away his daughters, Leila, now 6, and Soraya, 5. A man should be able to support his family, yet he was powerless in the aftermath of the quake.

But the children never made it to the Dominican Republic. Police took them into custody and handed them over to SOS Children's Villages International, a global group that aims to keep families together by providing support.

The Haitian government and foreign relief groups reunited the children with their natural-born parents in March 2010, a month after the "orphan rescue" grabbed international headlines amid an outpouring of legitimate efforts to help quake survivors.

The 33 were among more than 2,770 children returned to their families after the quake. At the time, UNICEF and other groups feared that child traffickers were taking advantage of the chaos and smuggling children out of the country.

Charges against all but one of the missionaries were dropped and they returned to the United States. Laura Silsby, the group's leader, was convicted of arranging illegal travel under a 32-year-old statute restricting movement out of Haiti, but was later released and returned to Idaho.

SOS housed the children for a month as the government sought to locate their parents.

When their daughters were returned to them, Laurentus and his wife, Manette Ricot, 29, were given money from the organization to pay this year's school tuition along with food like spaghetti, rice, oil, milk and sardines.

The leg up amounts to about $1,400 total, said Karl Foster Candio, a Haiti spokesman for SOS.

"I know this doesn't resolve their problems but it allows them to strengthen themselves so they can have better lives," Candio said.

Ricot earns some money as a tailor when she can find the work, and her husband drives a cab part-time.

"Even though the tuition is paid for, life is still heavy for us," she said. "After two years, we're fighting to survive, because everything was destroyed. It's like we're starting over."

Ricot and her husband use that extra money to feed the girls breakfast and buy school uniforms. But even now, they would still welcome the chance to send the girls abroad, legally, if the opportunity presented itself. They face a harsh reality in Haiti, a country where about 60 percent of the population is either unemployed or underemployed.

"I'm the one who should be working, to help them," said Laurentus, who was forced to close his shed-housed cybercafe. He sold his three computers to pay for construction materials to rebuild his home.

Despite a multibillion dollar reconstruction effort, most Haitians remain hostage to the country's relentless poverty. But the nation has made key advances in school reconstruction since the earthquake, which crippled an already fragile education system, damaging or destroying almost 4,000 schools, according to UNICEF.

Now more than 80,000 children in this country of 10 million people have been able to return to hundreds of repaired and newly built schools, the aid agency says.

Just before dusk, the girls stepped foot in the dusty courtyard. They wore royal blue uniforms and white ribbons in their pigtailed air.

"Ca va?" Leila whispered in French, planting cheek kisses on her father, mother and their friends.

Laurentus rubbed Leila's chin and she eased her way under his arm. Soraya held onto his leg.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/latam/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120121/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_haiti_earthquake_children

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How on earth does a $450 million cruise ship end up on its side, only a third of a mile off a picturesque Italian island? What is going on in the crazy photographs making the rounds? The annotated images below should help paint a more complete picture of how the Costa Concordia fiasco went down. Hover over the highlighted sections for a guide to what you see and facts about what happened off the shore of Giglio. ?
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Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=89887aced1485b710b3084f4efed14ba

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CANBERRA, Australia ? A newly discovered horse fly in Australia was so "bootylicious" with its golden-haired bum, there was only one name worthy of its beauty: Beyonce.

Previously published results from Bryan Lessard, a 24-year-old researcher at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, were recently announced on the species that had been sitting in a fly collection since it was captured in 1981 ? the same year pop diva Beyonce was born.

He says he wanted to pay respect to the insect's beauty by naming it Scaptia (Plinthina) beyonceae.

Lessard said Beyonce would be "in the nature history books forever" and that the fly now bearing her name is "pretty bootylicious" with its golden backside.

"Bootylicious" was the title of a song by Beyonce's previous group, Destiny's Child.

It's unknown if the rare species is a bloodsucker like many female horse flies. Lessard says he was unable to find any live specimens when he went looking in 2010 in northeast Queensland's Atherton Tablelands, where it was captured three decades ago. However, at least one member of the public has alerted him that he was recently bitten by what's locally called the "gold bum fly."

The description of the fly was earlier published in the Australian Journal of Entomology, but the results were announced last week.

Lessard says he hasn't heard from Beyonce, who recently gave birth to her first child, but he is a fan and hopes she will take his scientific gesture as a compliment. He also said the name was picked to help draw attention to the importance of his field and the need for more researchers to catalog and study insects.

Horse flies are "vital pollinators of native plants, not just in Australia, but all over the world," Lessard said. "It's extremely important to name all the undescribed species so we can measure our human impact on the environment and hopefully protect it for future generations to enjoy."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/music/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120116/ap_en_mu/as_australia_beyonce_horse_fly

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SAN DIEGO ? The U.S. Border Patrol is moving to halt a revolving-door policy of sending migrants back to Mexico without any punishment.

The agency this month is overhauling its approach on migrants caught illegally crossing the 1,954-mile border that the United States shares with Mexico. Years of enormous growth at the federal agency in terms of staff and technology have helped drive down apprehensions of migrants to 40-year lows.

The Border Patrol now feels it has enough of a handle to begin imposing more serious consequences on almost everyone it catches from Texas to San Diego. The "Consequence Delivery System" divides border crossers into seven categories, ranging from first-time offenders to people with criminal records.

Punishments vary by region but there is a common thread: simply turning people around after taking their fingerprints is the choice of last resort. Some, including children and the medically ill, will still get a free pass by being turned around at the nearest border crossing, but they will be few and far between.

"What we want to be able to do is make that the exception and not necessarily the norm," Fisher told The Associated Press.

Consequences can be severe for detained migrants and expensive to American taxpayers, including felony prosecution or being taken to an unfamiliar border city hundreds of miles away to be sent back to Mexico. One tool used during summers in Arizona involves flying migrants to Mexico City, where they get one-way bus tickets to their hometowns. Another releases them to Mexican authorities for prosecution south of the border. One puts them on buses to return to Mexico in another border city that may be hundreds of miles away.

The new tactics are part of the Border Patrol's new national strategy that is to be announced within weeks ? and follow several changes along the border in recent years.

The number of agents since 2004 has more than doubled to 21,000. The Border Patrol has blanketed one-third of the border with fences and other physical barriers, and spent heavily on cameras, sensors and other gizmos. Major advances in fingerprinting technology have vastly improved intelligence on border-crossers. In the 2011 fiscal year, border agents made 327,577 apprehensions on the Mexican border, down 80 percent from more than 1.6 million in 2000. It was the Border Patrol's slowest year since 1971.

It's a far cry from just a few years ago. Older agents remember being so overmatched that they powerlessly watched migrants cross illegally, minutes after catching them and dropping them off at the nearest border crossing. Border Patrol Chief Mike Fisher, who joined the Border Patrol in 1987, recalls apprehending the same migrant 10 times in his eight-hour shift as a young agent.

In the past, migrants caught in Douglas, Ariz., were given a bologna sandwich and orange juice before being taken back to Mexico at the same location on the same afternoon, Fisher said. Now, they may spend the night at an immigration detention facility near Phoenix and eventually return to Mexico through Del Rio, Texas, more than 800 miles away.

Those migrants are effectively cut off from the smugglers who helped them cross the border, whose typical fees have skyrocketed to between $3,200 and $3,500 and are increasingly demanding payment upfront instead of after crossing, Fisher said. At minimum, they will have to wait longer to try again as they raise money to pay another smuggler.

"What used to be hours and days is now being translated into days and weeks," said Fisher.

The new strategy was first introduced a year ago in the office at Tucson, Ariz., the patrol's busiest corridor for illegal crossings, and is being expanded on a larger scale.

Field supervisors ranked consequences on a scale from 1 to 5 using 15 different yardsticks, including the length of time since the person was last caught and per-hour cost for processing.

The longstanding practice of turning migrants straight around without any punishment, known as "voluntary returns," ranked least expensive ? and least effective.

Agents got color-coded, wallet-sized cards ? also made into posters at Border Patrol stations ? that tells them what to do with each category of offender. For first-time violators, prosecution is a good choice, with one-way flights to Mexico City also scoring high. For known smugglers, prosecution in Mexico is the top pick.

The Border Patrol has introduced many new tools in recent years without much consideration to whether a first-time violator merited different treatment than a repeat crosser.

"There really wasn't much thought other than, `Hey, the bus is outside, let's put the people we just finished processing on the bus and therefore wherever that bus is going, that's where they go,'" Fisher said.

Now, a first-time offender faces different treatment than one caught two or three times. A fourth-time violator faces other consequences.

The number of those who have been apprehended in the Tucson sector has plunged 80 percent since 2000, allowing the Border Patrol to spend more time and money on each of the roughly 260 migrants caught daily. George Allen, an assistant sector chief, said there are 188 seats on four daily buses to border cities in California and Texas. During summers, a daily flight to Mexico City has 146 seats.

Only about 10 percent of those apprehended now get "voluntary returns" in the Tucson sector, down from about 85 percent three years ago, said Rick Barlow, the sector chief. Most of those who are simply turned around are children, justified by the Border Patrol on humanitarian grounds.

Fisher acknowledged that the new strategy depends heavily on other agencies. Federal prosecutors must agree to take his cases. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement must have enough beds in its detention facilities.

In Southern California, the U.S. attorney's office doesn't participate in a widely used Border Patrol program that prosecutes even first-time offenders with misdemeanors punishable by up to six months in custody, opting instead to pursue only felonies for the most egregious cases, including serial border-crossers and criminals.

Laura Duffy, the U.S. attorney in San Diego, said limited resources, including lack of jail space, force her to make choices.

"It has not been the practice (in California) to target and prosecute economic migrants who have no criminal histories, who are coming in to the United States to work or to be with their families," Duffy said. "We do target the individuals who are smuggling those individuals."

Fisher would like to refer more cases for prosecution south of the border, but the Mexican government can only prosecute smugglers: smuggling migrants is a crime in Mexico but there is nothing wrong about crossing illegally to the United States. It also said its resources were stretched on some parts of the border.

Criticism of the Border Patrol's new tactics is guaranteed to persist as the new strategy goes into effect at other locations. Some say immigration cases are overwhelming federal courts on the border at the expense of investigations into white-collar crime, public corruption and other serious threats. Others consider prison time for first-time offenders to be excessively harsh.

The Border Patrol also may be challenged when the U.S. economy recovers, creating jobs that may encourage more illegal crossings. Still, many believe heightened U.S. enforcement and an aging population in Mexico that is benefiting from a relatively stable economy will keep migrants away.

"We'll never see the numbers that we saw in the late 1990s and early 2000s," said Edward Alden, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Doris Meissner, who oversaw the Border Patrol as head of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service in the 1990s, said the new approach makes sense "on the face of it" but that it will be expensive. She also said it is unclear so far if it will be more effective at discouraging migrants from trying again.

"I do think the Border Patrol is finally at a point where it has sufficient resources that it can actually try some of these things," said Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.

Tucson, the only sector to have tried the new approach for a full year, has already tweaked its color-coded chart of punishments two or three times. Fisher said initial signs are promising, with the number of repeat crossers falling at a faster rate than before and faster than on other parts of the border.

"I'm not going to claim it was a direct effect, but it was enough to say it has merit," he said.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120117/ap_on_re_us/us_border_patrol_zero_tolerance

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Republican presidential candidate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks to members of the media after a GOP forum at Byrnes High School, Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, in Duncan, S.C. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Republican presidential candidate former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum meets with audience members at a GOP forum at Byrnes High School, Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, in Duncan, S.C. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Between the sand sculpted faces of Jon Huntsman and Rick Perry, Team Sandtastic's Patrick Harsch steps back to look at Mt. Myrtle as it takes shape with the Republican presidential candidates' faces and parts of their torsos nearly complete Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012, in Myrtle Beach, S.C.. (AP Photo/The Sun News, Janet Blackmon Morgan)

Republican presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry waits to be introduced at a campaign stop Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012, in Mt. Pleasant, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, campaigns with, from left to right: former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in Hilton Head, S.C., Friday, Jan. 13, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) ? Two of Mitt Romney's rivals said Sunday the GOP front-runner needed to better respond now to criticism of his record at a private equity firm or face unrelenting attacks on the issue from President Barack Obama if he were the party's nominee.

Romney was taking a rare day off from campaigning while his challengers focused on the South Carolina coast in hopes of slowing the former Massachusetts governor's momentum before next Saturday's first-in-the-South primary.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich appeared on national talk shows and headed to church.

With the Florida contest Jan. 31, Romney's opponents are under great pressure to alter the trajectory of the race after his victories in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Gingrich and Perry used their broadcast interviews to raise questions about Romney's leadership of the Bain Capital venture firm.

Romney's campaign claims that Romney was a creator of more than 100,000 jobs while heading up Bain. But the campaign cites success stories without laying out the other side ? jobs lost at Bain-acquired or Bain-supported firms that closed, trimmed their workforce or shifted employment overseas.

Gingrich said questions about Bain were fair game and a source of vulnerability for Romney, who has made his experience in the business world a top selling point for his candidacy.

"It's fair to raise the questions now, get them out of the way now to make sure that whoever we nominate is clear enough, public enough, accountable enough that they can withstand the Obama onslaught," Gingrich told CBS' "Face the Nation."

Perry suggested Obama's team was eager to attack Romney over his Bain tenure.

"If this is a fatal flaw we need to be talking about it now, not talking about it in September and October," Perry said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"The issue is not going to go away and it's not like we've cracked an egg open here for the first time."

Polls show Romney leading the race in a state where the stakes are high. South Carolina historically has voted for the Republican candidate who eventually won the party's nomination.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul was returning to campaigning for the first time since Wednesday. He has spent several days at home in Texas after his second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary last week.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2012-01-15-GOP%20Campaign/id-0d1ababffcda43e1b7f11ace6d5bb52c

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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. ? The parents of Natalee Holloway, the American teenager who disappeared in Aruba in 2005, say their ordeal hasn't ended with a judge declaring their daughter dead. Their lawyers say they hope a young Dutchman seen leaving a bar with Holloway on the last day she was seen alive might ultimately be brought before a U.S. court on charges stemming from the case.

Joran van der Sloot, 24, pleaded guilty Wednesday in Peru to the 2010 slaying of a young woman he had met in a Lima casino. That plea from the Dutchman described as the prime suspect in the Holloway case came hours before Thursday's hearing in a Birmingham court where Dave and Beth Holloway watched the difficult step of a judge ruling their daughter legally dead.

"We've been dealing with her death for the last six and a half years," Dave Holloway said after Thursday's hearing. He said the judge's order closes one chapter in the ordeal, but added: "We've still got a long way to go to get justice."

Thursday's hearing was scheduled before van der Sloot ? who had been questioned in Holloway's disappearance ? pleaded guilty to the 2010 murder of a 21-year-old Peruvian, Stephany Flores. Flores was slain five years to the day after Holloway, an 18-year-old from the wealthy Birmingham suburb of Mountain Brook, disappeared.

Dave Holloway said he hopes van der Sloot, who awaits sentencing, gets a 30-year prison term sought by Peruvian prosecutors. Shortly after Flores' death on May 30, 2010, van der Sloot told police he had killed the woman in Peru in a fit of rage after she discovered on his laptop his connection to Holloway's disappearance. Police forensic experts disputed the claim.

"Everybody knows his personality. I believe he is beyond rehabilitation," Dave Holloway said.

Attorneys said both parents spoke of hopes that van der Sloot's next stop will be Birmingham, where he faces federal charges accusing him of extorting $25,000 from Beth Holloway to reveal the location of her daughter's body. Prosecutors said the money was paid, but nothing was disclosed about the missing woman's whereabouts.

Authorities said they believe the tall, garrulous Dutchman used the money to travel to Peru on May 14, 2010, where Flores was killed two weeks later. Van der Sloot is now jailed in Peru.

"I expect to see him in Birmingham," Dave Holloway said of van der Sloot on Thursday, shortly after Probate Judge Alan King declared his daughter dead.

Natalee Holloway disappeared on May 30, 2005, during a high school graduation trip to the Dutch Caribbean island where van der Sloot grew up. Her body was never found and repeated searches turned up nothing as intense media coverage brought the case worldwide attention.

Investigators have long worked from the assumption that the young woman was dead in Aruba, where the case was classified as a homicide investigation. That investigation remains open, though there has been no recent activity, said Solicitor General Taco Stein, an official with the prosecutor's office in Aruba.

"The team that was acting in that investigation still is functioning as a team and they get together whenever there is information or things are needed in the case or a new tip arrives," Stein said in a phone interview Thursday.

In Birmingham, Natalee Holloway's parents, who have been divorced since 1993, shook hands and talked briefly before Thursday's hearing. During the 10-minute proceeding, they looked on somberly.

Dave Holloway told the judge in September he believed his daughter was dead and wanted to stop payments on her medical insurance and use her $2,000 college fund to help her younger brother. Beth Holloway initially objected, but her lawyer, Charlie DeBardeleben, said she later changed her mind once she understood her husband's intentions.

Beth Holloway sat in the back row in court, staring at her hands as she held them in her lap most of the time. Her attorney said it was difficult for her to witness the judge signing the death declaration.

"She's ready to move on from this," DeBardeleben added.

Mark White, an attorney for Dave Holloway, told the judge before he ruled that there was no indication Holloway was alive ? despite exhaustive searches, reward offers and blanket media coverage at times.

"Despite all that no evidence has been found Natalee Holloway is alive," he told the judge.

King had ruled in September that Dave Holloway had met the legal presumption of death for his daughter and it was up to someone to prove she didn't die on the trip. Thursday's hearing was held after a wait of several months but no one came forward with new information.

Attorneys said they are unaware of any plans for a memorial service.

___

Online:

AP interactive: http://hosted.ap.org/interactives/2012/natalee-holloway

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/crime/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120113/ap_on_re_us/us_missing_teen_aruba

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NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Bank of America (BAC.N), Goldman Sachs (GS.N) and Citigroup (C.N) could be among companies that beat estimates when they report next week, Thomson Reuters StarMine forecasts show.

Bank of America's forecast by StarMine, which weights forecasts based on analyst accuracy and how recent the estimates are, is 18.4 percent above the consensus estimate, or the average of analysts' forecasts compiled by Thomson Reuters.

A forecast of at least 2 percent above consensus suggests the company is likely to post results above it, according to StarMine.

Goldman Sachs' forecast by StarMine is 2.8 percent above consensus, while Citigroup's forecast is 2.1 percent above, the data showed.

The companies are among 46 Standard & Poor's 500 (.SPX) components expected to report earnings next week.

On Friday, JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) reported earnings in line with Street estimates. But its stock fell 2.5 percent to $35.92.

Among companies StarMine data has identified as likely to disappoint next week are Freeport-McMoRan (FCX.N), with a StarMine forecast 3.2 percent below consensus, and Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB.O), with a StarMine forecast 4.1 percent below consensus.

The picks are based on comments by analysts who StarMine says have a strong history of being correct with their forecasts.

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Jan Paschal)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/stocks/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120113/bs_nm/us_usa_stocks_earnings

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CES 2012 Microsoft Booth

Like it or not, Microsoft?s Windows Phone is on the rise. They have a deal with Nokia to thank for the traction and all the publicity their mobile platform is getting. Speaking of it, Nokia announced Lumia 900 at the big event in Vegas, while CEOs of both companies agreed there?s money to be made in the U.S. smartphone market.

At the same time, the Redmond giant talked about Windows 8, praising its new Metro UI and all of the new features it will bring to the world. Tablets were also mentioned and we had an opportunity to see a 4G LTE model at AT&T?s Developers Summit.

We?ll see whether Windows will be able to get some market share from iOS and Android, and in the meantime here?s how Microsoft?s booth looks like?

CES 2012: Microsoft Booth Tour originally appeared on IntoMobile.com on 2012-01-11T12:24:25Z. FV1gMYsz9b5j

IntoMobile

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Source: http://betterthaniphone.com/samsung/ces-2012-microsoft-booth-tour/

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Source: http://blogs.technet.com/b/cs2010/archive/2012/01/05/get-lync-news-on-windows-phone-7-and-android.aspx

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When federal (and state) financial aid programs make money available to well-off students, it is in a college's interest to capture that aid and use it to 'improve' the college, thus driving up costs and tuition. Aid must be restructured so that more of it goes to needy students.

Something is fundamentally wrong with America?s college financial aid system when students from families with triple-digit incomes receive plenty of federal aid ? while the less well-off are scrambling for it.

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According to the Department of Education, 35 percent of dependent students from families making at least $100,000 a year received Federal Stafford Loans in 2008, and 15.6 percent received the ?subsidized? variety (where the government pays the interest while the student is in school). Stafford loans account for 82 percent of all federal financial aid lending.

Two theories compete to explain this, and they offer radically different policy prescriptions.

The first explanation holds that college costs are mostly determined by factors over which colleges have little control, such as prevailing faculty salaries. Colleges can do little other than react by setting tuition to cover costs.

If students are having to pay more, then financial aid and state appropriations budgets must be inadequate. The solution is straightforward: The federal government should increase the money available for financial aid.

We think this theory is incorrect. An alternative, which holds that the real problem is out-of-control spending in higher education, provides the better explanation.

Under this view, more money for financial aid will simply be absorbed as college spending increases. Our research (most notably our 2009 study, ?Financial Aid in Theory and Practice?) found that increased financial aid can be downright counterproductive by fueling the academic arms race ? a major driver of the cost and tuition explosion in higher education.

The underlying problem is that the ?value-added outcomes? of colleges (how much their students learn, how much their skills increase, etc.) are not easily observed or measured. That largely precludes colleges from competing based on the education they provide.

Instead, they compete on prestige or reputation. Their goal is to signal high quality, and the easiest way to signal that is to have high-quality ?inputs,? such as prize-winning faculty and state-of-the-art equipment.

But these are costly, and without a measure of the true benefits they bring to a school, cost-benefit analysis cannot reliably guide decisions. Thus, anything that has a plausible claim of improving the institution will be funded if money is available, with the final allocation of spending largely determined by stakeholder struggles among constituencies of the university.

Regardless of how money is allocated, the end result is that schools have an insatiable need for more money ? a phenomenon described as (Howard R.) Bowen?s Rule, and thoroughly documented by Charles T. Clotfelter in ?Buying the Best: Cost Escalation in Elite Higher Education.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/lhHjH4fvpiY/How-can-it-be-Student-financial-aid-fuels-increase-in-college-tuition

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Well, well, have a look at what the proverbial internet cat dragged in. The image above comes to you via Japanese forum, giving us a pretty good idea of what is allegedly Fujifilm's next interchangeable lens camera. Following in the footsteps of the retro-looking X10 and the X100, not much is known about the shooter's specs, but we'd venture that it probably isn't full-frame. Guess it won't take too long to find out, as the grapevine also muses its proper reveal will happen at CES. Too frothy to wait until then? Well, hop on past the break where we've conveniently culled an old mockup for ya.

Continue reading New Fujifilm camera pictures leak, shooter scheduled for CES debut?

New Fujifilm camera pictures leak, shooter scheduled for CES debut? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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