ltte latest news

Monday, November 26, 2012

Steelers turn ball and game over to Browns

By TOM WITHERS

AP Sports Writer

Associated Press Sports

updated 3:52 p.m. ET Nov. 25, 2012

CLEVELAND (AP) - The Pittsburgh Steelers have more to worry about than starting a 37-year-old, third-string quarterback.

Their playoff lives are in peril.

Chris Rainey's fumble with 2:25 left - Pittsburgh's seventh turnover - was recovered by Cleveland's Phil Taylor and the Browns handed their hated rivals a potentially devastating loss, 20-14 on Sunday.

Charlie Batch, forced to start at quarterback for Pittsburgh because of injuries to Ben Roethlisberger and Byron Leftwich, was picked off three times and the Steelers (6-5) lost five fumbles, the last on a final-play lateral to help the Browns (3-8) beat Pittsburgh for just the second time in 18 games.

Browns rookie quarterback Brandon Weeden sustained a head injury in the final minutes, allowing backup Colt McCoy to come in and finish off a victory that Cleveland fans will savor long after this season ends.

Rookie Trent Richardson rushed for 85 yards, scoring the go-ahead touchdown for the Browns on a 15-yard run in the third.

Batch finished 20 of 34 for 199 yards.

For one of the few times in recent years, the Browns were finally able to win a close game. And this one had to please new owner Jimmy Haslam, who had a minority share of the Steelers before buying the Browns for $1.05 billion in August.

One of his goals was to revive one of the NFL's fiercest rivalries, which has been shaded in yellow and black for most of the past decade. Even with the loss, Pittsburgh is 23-5 against Cleveland since 1999, but in each of the seasons they lost one game to the Browns, the Steelers missed the playoffs.

That could happen again. Pittsburgh came in trailing first-place Baltimore by two games in the AFC North, and will visit the Ravens next week.

Coach Mike Tomlin has a lot to work on before then.

All four Pittsburgh running backs fumbled and while Batch didn't necessarily hurt the Steelers, he didn't make enough big plays either. The Steelers were also called for several holding penalties that slowed drives.

Wide receiver Plaxico Burress, re-signed by the Steelers during the week, did not have a reception but did draw an interference penalty in the end zone.

Weeden finished 17 of 26 for 158 yards, but the 29-year-old was taken to the locker room in the closing minutes. He banged his head on the leg of teammate Joe Thomas as he fell to the ground and got up groggily. The Browns then turned to McCoy, their former starter who sustained a concussion the last time the Browns faced the Steelers on a vicious hit by James Harrison.

Pittsburgh lost linebacker LaMarr Woodley in the first half with a left ankle injury.

Phil Dawson kicked field goals of 28 and 32 yards for the Browns.

Cleveland's fourth takeaway set up Richardson's TD run.

Browns cornerback Sheldon Brown, picked on during the Steelers' late scoring drive in the first half, intercepted Batch at Pittsburgh's 31.

Two completions by Weeden got it to the 10, and after a false-start penalty, Richardson burst up the middle, ran through some arm tackles and scored to make it 20-14.

The Steelers led 14-13 at halftime despite losing three fumbles, converting just one third down and keeping Batch under wraps.

One play after Brown was called for pushing Burress in the end zone, Rainey, on the field only because the three Pittsburgh running backs ahead of him fumbled, scored on a 1-yard TD run after being stopped for no gain.

Rainey was stuffed on a carry over center by several Browns, who knocked him backward. Rainey, though, kept his legs moving and ran untouched into the end zone with 1 second left before halftime.

The Browns capitalized on a fumble by Isaac Redman when Weeden hit tight end Jordan Cameron for a 5-yard TD, giving Cleveland a 10-7 lead in the second quarter.

Redman fumbled at Pittsburgh's 10 and when he came to the sideline, he and Rashard Mendenhall, who coughed the ball up earlier to set up a field goal for the Browns, got an earful from running backs coach Kirby Wilson.

Weeden had been struggling in the red zone of late, but he hooked with Cameron, who scored his first career TD.

Cleveland was winning the battle of field position, pinning Pittsburgh deep and daring Batch to try and throw and beat them. He had little success, and the Browns took a 13-7 lead on Dawson's 32-yarder, making him 21 of 21 this season.

It took the Steelers just 71 seconds to take a 7-0 lead.

On Cleveland's third play, Weeden's pass to Greg Little was tipped at the line by Steelers end Brett Keisel and caught on the fly by Lawrence Timmons, who took it back 53 yards.

---

Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP-NFL

More newsJonathan Daniel / Getty Images

Cutler returns with roar for Bears

??Jay Cutler threw for 188 yards and a touchdown after missing a game because of a concussion, and the Chicago Bears broke it open early in a 28-10 victory over the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday.

Peyton's 2 TDs lead Broncos to 6th straight win

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - Peyton Manning threw for 285 yards and two touchdowns, and the Denver Broncos rallied to beat the woeful Kansas City Chiefs 17-9 on Sunday for their sixth straight win.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/49957847/ns/sports-nfl/

armenian genocide asteroid mining memorial day ivan rodriguez planetary resources mothers day gift ideas natalee holloway

New York Reassessing Building Code to Limit Storm Damage

In the countdown to Hurricane Sandy last month, construction workers on a teeming pier in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, rushed to strap down materials and move forklifts and excavators into half-built structures to shield them from the tempest to come.

But the real storm preparations had been accomplished six years earlier, when Sims Metal Management approved a design for a state-of-the-art city recycling plant that is rising at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal.

Reviewing projections for local sea-level rise, the company and its architects decided to elevate portions of the site to heights exceeding city requirements by four feet. Using recycled glass and crushed rock discarded from projects like the Second Avenue subway line, they raised the foundation for the plant?s four buildings and a dock.

The fill added $550,000 to the plant?s costs of around $100 million, said Thomas Outerbridge, Sims Metal?s general manager.

But it proved more than worth it. When a 12-foot storm surge swept through nearby streets and parking lots on Oct. 29, the plant?s dock and partly completed buildings did not flood.

?It paid for itself long before we expected it,? Mr. Outerbridge said. ?It was built with the idea that, over the next 40 years, this would prove a prudent thing ? and the proof came during construction.?

For years, experts have warned that New York City has failed to keep pace with the threats posed by sea-level rise along the 520-mile coastline of the city?s five boroughs. Builders that have taken steps on their own, like Sims Metal, have been relatively few.

But as city officials and real estate developers ponder a landscape of devastation from the South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan to the Rockaways in Queens to Midland Beach on Staten Island, new flood protections for all building types suddenly seem inevitable, whether voluntary or mandated by new laws.

?Now there?s a different calculus,? the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, said. ?You pay now or you pay more later.?

Last week, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Ms. Quinn convened a new ?building resiliency? task force to study potential changes in the building code and to make recommendations by the summer. Ms. Quinn said she anticipated that the city would require retrofits to reinforce existing structures and more floodproofing for new projects.

The chairman of the task force, Russell Unger, is executive director of the Urban Green Council, which advises the city on sustainable building issues. He said the new group would need to address both direct impacts from the storm, like structure collapse and flooding, and secondary ones, like power losses from utility failures. Levels of protection will have to vary according to location, building use and other variables, he said.

Speaking of the different expectations for different buildings, for example, Mr. Unger said, ?we probably expect elevators at senior centers to work, no matter what happens.?

Some of the potential measures are relatively simple, like keeping sandbags handy and installing floodgates at building entrances. Others are more complicated, like relocating critical equipment like boilers above ground level or encasing them in watertight enclosures and rebuilding houses on concrete piles.

The storm?s aftermath also revealed a need for emergency generators to run at least one elevator in tall residential buildings and to pump water to high floors so the buildings remain habitable after a severe storm, some owners said.

Yet some builders say they have every incentive not to wait for government mandates and have taken some steps on their own.

At Queens West, the sprawling multiuse riverfront complex in Long Island City, Queens, the developer TF Cornerstone built higher over fill, eliminated basements, installed mechanical systems on the first and second floors and added floodgates at the entrances of five residential buildings, said Jon McMillan, the firm?s director of planning. He said the firm was acting on advice from Architectonica, a Miami firm that is familiar with the ravages of hurricanes.

During Hurricane Sandy, Mr. McMillan said, the water did not reach the lobby doors of the five buildings, which are all occupied, so the protections were not tested.

Still, such provisions might have made a big difference at another TF Cornerstone property, the 52-story luxury high-rise at 2 Gold Street in Lower Manhattan, he said. The flooding there knocked out the building?s electrical and mechanical systems, and residents of its 850 apartments have been told they cannot return home until March because the equipment, which corrodes with saltwater, has to be reordered and built.

?This is in the center of Lower Manhattan on the East Side, so we were not thinking about sea-level rise,? Mr. McMillan said of the building, completed in 2005.

TF Cornerstone is now planning to create watertight, submarine-like enclosures for the electrical room and other equipment at 2 Gold, he said. And the firm is considering placing all mechanical equipment above ground in a new Midtown project it envisions building on the Hudson.

Some in the real estate industry predict a new appeal for midrise buildings. Thomas Guss, a broker who caters to an international wealthy clientele, said interest in smaller luxury residential buildings like the 19-floor Centurion, a condominium at 33 West 56th Street designed by I. M. Pei, had doubled since the storm. He said potential buyers had told him they feared being trapped in their apartments with no lights or water, or having to climb 50 flights of stairs.

?Suddenly, people who wanted the 50th floor now want the 15th,? he said. ?People realize that when there?s no elevator, maybe the view is not as magical anymore.?

Some developers worry about losing rentable space above ground to mechanical equipment. Others are reluctant to forgo the aesthetics of ground-floor luxury retail stores. Still, that lesson has been well absorbed in flood-prone areas of New Orleans and Hamburg, Germany, where homes have been rebuilt on stilts and waterfronts raised.

Some architects and building experts say the city should widen its efforts to plant more wetlands and parks that can serve as natural buffers to floods. ?All the little blades of grass actually makes the flow of the water lower,? said Susannah C. Drake, associate director of the Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design and the principal architect at dlandstudio.

What does not seem to be getting consideration, at least for now, is banning development altogether in the city?s flood zones, humble or affluent.

?This is not a viable policy option in New York City, and to be honest, nor is it in any other major coastal city I?ve been working,? said Jeroen Aerts, a water risk expert from the Free University in Amsterdam who has been hired by the mayor?s office to assess flood protections. ?The stakes of developers and general economic activities in the waterfront are too high.?

In Mr. Aerts?s view, the most realistic options for New York are to build levees and surge barriers, and elevate and floodproof buildings.

Ms. Quinn, a likely candidate for mayor when Mr. Bloomberg?s term expires at the end of 2013, said changes in the building code were a far higher priority than rethinking zoning rules. But she said that nothing was off the table.

?I don?t think there?s anything that?s taboo to discuss at this point,? she said.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/science/earth/new-york-reassessing-building-code-to-limit-storm-damage.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Red Bull Stratos Redbull Stratos justin tv justin tv steve mcnair vice presidential debate Martha Raddatz

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Hobby Lobby and Religious Liberty Under ObamaCare

[First published at Real Clear Politics.]

Hobby Lobby, the mega craft store, has lost the first round of their case against the government over the contraception mandate, and will be?fined?$1.3 million per day starting January 1st if they do not pay for contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients through employee provided insurance.

As a ?secular? corporation, they have no rights to use the religious beliefs of their ownership as a justification not to abide by the contraception mandate. This decision is?inconsistent?with the Tyndale House one you may have heard about. So apparently being a Bible publisher does make you religious, but being a Bible seller doesn?t.

The argument the administration advanced successfully in the Hobby Lobby case is a particularlytroublesome?one for believers of all faiths who operate under the assumption that they can use their moral principles to guide the way their place of business spends money. According to the administration?s legal arguments, the family that owns Hobby Lobby is not protected by the First Amendment?s ?free exercise? clause because ?Hobby Lobby is a for-profit, secular employer, and a secular entity by definition does not exercise religion.?

If Hobby Lobby ultimately loses this case, it?s not hard to see which decision they?ll make given the choice between a $1.3 million per day fine and a $2 million per month fine. The latter, of course, is the amount they estimate they?ll pay for simply dropping insurance altogether and shifting all employees onto Medicaid and the subsidized exchange coverage.

Think it?ll be a hard decision? Maybe understanding who these people are would give you some clarity.

The Hobby Lobby folks are a straight-up American success story. A family business, started in Oklahoma in 1970 with a $600 bank loan, they started by making their frames from wood bought from local sellers, building them in their garage. The kids glued them together on the kitchen table in exchange for baseball cards. The family opened their first frame retail shop in Oklahoma City in 1972. They had four employees. Now they have 514 stores in 41 states. They employ 13,240 people full time. In 1981 they added another store to the family, Mardel, a Christian/church supply shop which sells Bibles and study books, curriculum, Christian craft supplies. That?s another 35 stores, in 7 states, with 372 employees. So they went from a garage business started with $600 to two businesses that employ more than 13,600 people full time across basically the entire country.

The company remained all privately owned, with no franchising. Their statement of purposes and various commitments all begin with Bible verses, commitments to honor the Lord. The Hobby Lobby folks pay well above minimum wage and have increased salaries four years in a row despite the recession. They are teetotalers of the old Oral Roberts variety, refusing to stock shot glasses, don?t sell any of their store locations with liquor stores, don?t allow backhauling of beer shipments ? all things that could make them money, but they just bear the costs. Every Christmas and Easter, the Hobby Lobby folks advertise a free Bible and spiritual counseling. They are closed every Sunday. The family also signed the giving pledge, committing to donate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy.

So: I doubt this is the type of company to spend one dime on this contraception mandate. They will just drop coverage, and pay employees the difference, shifting them onto the exchanges or the taxpayer, rather than compromise their beliefs. It?s logical, it?s more predictable as a budgeting choice, and it will save them tens of millions in the long run versus retaining coverage and paying the fine.

The case isn?t over, of course ? there will be an appeal, and I wouldn?t be surprised to see this end up at the Supreme Court. There?s also a?bipartisan?effort to expand the religious exemption, though that?s more targeted at individuals than companies. It may be that the next major court decision regarding Obamacare will deal with how religious freedom rights apply to corporations ? a Hobby Lobby case which follows with, or breaks from, the lessons of Citizens United could have enormous ramifications for religious business owners across the country. Americans will find out soon whether freedom of association matters or doesn?t under the Obama health insurance regime.

Source: http://blog.heartland.org/2012/11/hobby-lobby-and-religious-liberty-under-obamacare/

mitch daniels shirataki noodles john kerry prince fielder state of the union address 2012 obama state of the union 2012 2012 state of the union address

buzz soviet: Shopping and Product Reviews by Marcell Eward: Gift

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Source: http://kirbybarrick.typepad.com/blog/2012/11/buzz-soviet-shopping-and-product-reviews-by-marcell-eward-gift.html

trisomy leon panetta luck sag awards 2012 nominees sag awards pro bowl 2012 roster yamaguchi

Source: http://coil-raffarty.blogspot.com/2012/11/buzz-soviet-shopping-and-product.html

paul williams paul babeu kevin costner budweiser shootout animal house invincible

Queens Park Rangers fires manager Hughes

By STEVE DOUGLAS

AP Sports Writer

Associated Press Sports

updated 2:29 a.m. ET Nov. 24, 2012

LONDON (AP) -Former Tottenham coach Harry Redknapp said Friday he expects to take over as manager of struggling Queens Park Rangers, just hours after the club fired his predecessor Mark Hughes.

Having sacked Hughes earlier in the day, QPR opened discussions with Redknapp about him taking over a side which is in last place in the Premier League and without a win this season, having earned only four points from 12 games.

Late Friday night, Redknapp told British television channel Sky Sports News that he was keen to become QPR's new manager and that "hopefully we can get it done tonight. There shouldn't be any problems.

"If everything gets sorted, and I'm sure it will, I'll be in Sunday morning, will have the team in training on Monday, then fly up to Sunderland." QPR faces Sunderland on Tuesday in what would be his first match in charge.

Redknapp said he planned to go to watch QPR's match at Manchester United on Saturday. He also said he hoped to bring his two longstanding coaching assistants - Kevin Bond and Joe Jordan - with him to the west London club.

"I'm looking forward to it. It's a big challenge and a tough job to take on - but I'm up for the challenge," said the 65-year-old Redknapp.

Though widely acknowledged as a shrewd mover in the transfer market, he ruled out any major splashes when the transfer window opens in January, despite the very real threat of relegation.

"I don't think too much will happen in January," he said. "There is a big staff there and you can't keep bringing players in. The players have got to start performing. If they do that we've got a chance."

He said the team had to "find a way to pick up points, be hard to beat and win some matches. It's all about the players."

Redknapp took charge of Tottenham in 2008 when the team was last in the Premier League with only two points from eight games. He turned their fortunes around, guiding them into the Champions League for the first time in 2010.

He was fired in June despite Tottenham finishing in fourth place last season, and has since taken on a non-paid advisory role at third-tier Bournemouth and become a television pundit with the BBC.

Hughes was dismissed after failing to turn around a dismal run of results.

"Mark has shown integrity and professionalism throughout his time here, but ultimately the circumstances we find ourselves in have left the board of directors with very little choice but to make a change," QPR said in a statement.

Fans turned on Hughes - and the QPR players - after the loss to Southampton, which left the team five points from safety with nearly a third of the season gone.

"Maybe it's a watershed moment because we can't get any lower," said a despondent Hughes, who had 1 1/2 years left on his contract.

Tellingly, QPR owner Tony Fernandes refused to defend Hughes last weekend, as he has done in recent weeks. Only last Friday, Fernandes posted a Twitter message responding to calls for Hughes' departure, saying: "Won't be happening. For the one millionth time. Hahaha. Stability."

That changed this Friday.

"This decision has been taken after careful consideration by the board of directors, following numerous meetings over the last few days," QPR said.

Assistant coaches Mark Bowen and Eddie Niedzwiecki will take charge of QPR's match at United.

Hughes managed to keep QPR in England's lucrative top league thanks to a strong finish last season and attempted to revitalize the squad by signing 11 players in the offseason, including Park Ji-sung from Manchester United, Jose Bosingwa from Chelsea and Julio Cesar from Inter Milan.

Getting so many new players to gel has been his major problem, while the team has struggled to score and also has one of its leakiest defenses.

More newsStephen Dunn / Getty Images

Beckham and Donovan, a love story

PST: It was a disastrous first few years, but the relationship between David Beckham and Landon Donovan improved dramatically over the seasons.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/49937782/ns/sports-soccer/

Jake Dalton London 2012 field hockey Missy Franklin Hunter Pence NBCOlympics Danell Leyva Ye Shiwen

Tamil film Project in CHENNAI (INDIA) | Accounting | Business Plans ...

Tax Type Tax Rate Tax ID or Company no.

eg. VAT, GST ? Registration no.