"I want to thank you for working on our marriage for 10 Christmases. It's good, it is work, but it's the best kind of work. There's no one I'd rather work with." ? Ben Affleck, thanking his wife, Jennifer Garner, as he accepted the best picture Oscar for "Argo."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/argo-wins-oscar-best-picture-045945405--finance.html
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By Donna Rapado, NBCMiami.com
A man who took his dog out for a walk around the block Saturday night returned home moments later to a raging inferno with flames of up to 30 feet bursting through his roof.
The fire was so bad, it destroyed the home. "There's no positive to this,? said homeowner Dave Rudra, who watched his home of 10 years go up in flames. ?I don't know what's going on."
Police and fire arson investigators spent the day Sunday sifting through the house, looking for evidence to help them identify what caused the fire. Chief Jorge Mara, with Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, said the fire had been so large, firefighters needed to make sure it didn?t spread to other homes.?
?There was such heavy flames involved, they felt it was too dangerous for guys to go in and make an initial interior attack so they decided to go to a defensive mode and protect the houses on either side," Mara said.
Sunday afternoon, Rudra returned to the home and spoke to investigators. He wanted to see whether he can salvage anything inside the home, including pictures of his three children.
"The only thing that I really care about is my children's pictures and the videotapes,? he said. ?Everything else can be replaced, and that's all I want."
He said the fire left him with nothing but the pants he wore. "They've already torn it down with tractors and everything,? he said. ?So even if there was anything left, it's all debris now.?
As Sunday's daylight disappeared and with damage and debris still left to sift through, fire investigators said they planned to return to the destroyed property Monday.
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Evidence from Siberian caves suggests that a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius could see permanently frozen ground thaw over a large area of Siberia, threatening release of carbon from soils, and damage to natural and human environments.
A thaw in Siberia's permafrost (ground frozen throughout the year) could release over 1000 giga-tonnes of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, potentially enhancing global warming.
The data comes from an international team led by Oxford University scientists studying stalactites and stalagmites from caves located along the 'permafrost frontier', where ground begins to be permanently frozen in a layer tens to hundreds of metres thick. Because stalactites and stalagmites only grow when liquid rainwater and snow melt drips into the caves, these formations record 500,000 years of changing permafrost conditions, including warmer periods similar to the climate of today.
Records from a particularly warm period (Marine Isotopic Stage 11) that occurred around 400,000 years ago suggest that global warming of 1.5?C compared to the present is enough to cause substantial thawing of permafrost far north from its present-day southern limit.
A report of the research is published in this week's Science Express. The team included scientists from Britain, Russia, Mongolia and Switzerland.
'The stalactites and stalagmites from these caves are a way of looking back in time to see how warm periods similar to our modern climate affect how far permafrost extends across Siberia,' said Dr Anton Vaks of Oxford University's Department of Earth Sciences, who led the work. 'As permafrost covers 24% of the land surface of the Northern hemisphere significant thawing could affect vast areas and release giga-tonnes of carbon.
'This has huge implications for ecosystems in the region, and for aspects of the human environment. For instance, natural gas facilities in the region, as well as power lines, roads, railways and buildings are all built on permafrost and are vulnerable to thawing. Such a thaw could damage this infrastructure with obvious economic implications.'
The team used radiometric dating techniques to date the growth of cave formations (stalactites and stalagmites). Data from the Ledyanaya Lenskaya Cave ? near the town of Lensk latitude 60?N ? in the coldest region showed that the only period when stalactite growth took place occurred about 400,000 years ago, during a period with a global temperature 1.5?C higher than today. Periods when the world was 0.5-1?C warmer than today did not see any stalactite growth in this northernmost cave, suggesting that around 1.5?C is the 'tipping point' at which the coldest permafrost regions begin to thaw.
Dr Vaks said: 'Although it wasn't the main focus of our research our work also suggests that in a world 1.5?C warmer than today, warm enough to melt the coldest permafrost, adjoining regions would see significant changes with Mongolia's Gobi Desert becoming much wetter than it is today and, potentially, this extremely arid area coming to resemble the present-day Asian steppes.'
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University of Oxford: http://www.ox.ac.uk/
Thanks to University of Oxford for this article.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126980/Caves_point_to_thawing_of_Siberia
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? With the deadline for action less than a week away, exasperated governors are joining a White House push to intensify pressure on Congress to prevent a looming budget crisis.
Both Democrat and Republican chief executives, gathered in Washington for the National Governors Association annual meeting, warned of widespread economic fallout should Washington lawmakers fail to reach an 11th-hour compromise.
"It's senseless and it doesn't need to happen," Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, said Saturday. "And it's a damn shame, because we've actually had the fastest rate of jobs recovery of any state in our region. And this really threatens to hurt a lot of families in our state and kind of flat line our job growth for the next several months."
Indeed, some governors expressed pessimism that both sides could find a way to avoid the automatic spending cuts set to begin March 1, pointing to the impasse as another crisis between the White House and Congress that spooks businesses from hiring and hampers their ability to construct state spending plans.
"I've not given up hope, but we're going to be prepared for whatever comes," said Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, a Republican. "There will be consequences for our state."
White House officials are scheduled to join several governors on Sunday morning television shows, where they're expected to continue a public education campaign designed to outline the real consequences of inaction. Members of President Barack Obama's Cabinet in recent days warned of widespread flight delays, shuttered airports, off-limit seashores and hundreds of thousands of furloughed employees spread across dozens of states.
Both Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are scheduled to appear on national television. O'Malley is among the governors also set to be featured, along with Republican Govs. Bobby Jindal, of Louisiana, Bob McDonnell, of Virginia, and Arizona's Jan Brewer.
There are fewe signs of urgency among congressional leaders, who have recently indicated their willingness to let the cuts take effect and stay in place for weeks, if not much longer.
The cuts would trim $85 billion in domestic and defense spending, leading to furloughs for hundreds of thousands of workers at the Transportation Department, Defense Department and elsewhere.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said the cuts would harm the readiness of U.S. fighting forces.
Obama has unsuccessfully pushed his approach of reducing deficits through a combination of targeted savings and tax increases. House Republicans have said reduced spending needs to be the focus and have rejected the president's demand to include higher taxes as part of a compromise.
___
Follow Steve Peoples at: http://twitter.com/sppeoples and Ken Thomas at: http://twitter.com/AP_Ken_Thomas
___
Online:
National Governors Association: http://www.nga.org
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/governors-join-white-house-fight-automatic-cuts-094954200--politics.html
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RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) ? It took Ryan Travis Christian four days to fill the paper sheet stretching 6?-by-30 feet and push-pinned to the white museum wall. Spreading charcoal with a chamois and Latex-gloved hand, he conjured a dreamy cloudscape of reclining, mouthless ghosts, zigzag patterns and disembodied duck heads.
Then, on the fifth day of the two-week installation at the Contemporary Art Museum, he began blacking over his original design. By day's end, it was gone ? swallowed in the undulating coils of a gigantic black and white snake.
"That's how it goes in my studio," the Chicago-based artist said nonchalantly as he stood beside the re-imagined piece. "There's a lot of pieces that I'll work on, become unhappy with, eradicate them, come out with something completely different. It's all very responsive. But yeah. People were nervous about it ? and surprised."
CAM Executive Director Elysia Borowy-Reeder admits she was initially taken aback when she saw Christian's radical new direction. But that's why she gave the 29-year-old artist this show in the first place.
"It's like the biggest blind date, you know?" says Borowy-Reeder, who first began following Christian's career while working at the Art Institute of Chicago. "I always believe in the artist's intent. ... You want to fuel that creativity and that freedom."
Christian was a tad nervous himself. After all, the installation is his first museum exhibition.
"That's a really frustrating thing to feel when you're kind of in a high-pressure situation ? which I'd consider this," he says. But it's also exhilarating.
Borowy-Reeder took over CAM Raleigh in May 2011. During a visit to Chicago later that year, she caught Christian's "River Rats" show at the Western Exhibitions gallery and was mesmerized.
"His imagery is inventive. It's memorable," she says. "He has all this new text ... He juxtaposes it against older cartoons from the Dust Bowl era. He has this nice tension between what's old and what's new."
And that is why she gave him free rein in the museum's "emerging artist" gallery, housed on the lower level of this converted downtown warehouse.
Christian, who studied graphic design and painting at Northern Illinois University, says his "all-time biggest inspiration and favorite artist all around" is Ub Iwerks, the Oscar-winning Disney animator who created Mickey Mouse. Christian adapted the sinister, phantom-like figures that populate many of his recent works from the late cartoonist's famous dancing ghosts.
"I just love them, how they're adorable, but they're menacing," Christian says of the characters, which vaguely resemble condoms.
Christian, who normally works in graphite, also integrates '80s pop patterns and video game imagery into his pieces.
He says his works are "a metaphysical diary, plugged in through, like, a throwback cartoon language and patterns. And it's slowly changing always."
In the finished work, the snake stretches in an accordion pattern across the entire wall as a bug-eyed frowny face, grinning banana and one of his ghost heads pop from the black background. In addition to charcoal, Christian used spray paint, car finish and gesso ? a mixture of white paint, chalk and gypsum.
Christian calls the piece "You Had to Be Here."
The show opened Friday and will run through June 17.
Christian has done several other large-scale works, but they were drawn right on the walls. This is the first that won't be erased when the show is over.
"After the exhibition, it will get rolled up in a massive tube and, who knows after that?" he says. "I may rework it again, as I'm prone to do."
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Online:
CAM Raleigh http://camraleigh.org/
Western Exhibitions http://westernexhibitions.com/christian/
___
A. Breed is a national writer, based in Raleigh, N.C. He can be reached at features(at)ap.org. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/(hash)!/AllenGBreed
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/artists-show-creation-merges-destruction-135508879.html
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Situation Woman in her mid-50s worries she cannot afford a comfortable retirement
Strategy Work to 71, adopt defensive portfolio strategy, maintain savings
Solution A retirement with no change of lifestyle and without excessive financial risk
A health care professional we?ll call Simone lives in Quebec, spending her days in hospitals, many nights too when she is on call. At 56, though devoted to her work in palliative care, she is still reeling from a divorce five years ago that left her raising her two teenage children.
Her home, a storey and a half, 800 square foot English cottage surrounded by gardens of lavender and rosemary, roses and peonies, is just five minutes from her village hospital. The cottage is much of what she salvaged from her marriage, her second, when she drew down $300,000 savings from her RRSPs to finance her husband?s failing businesses. The withdrawals were subject to tax, adding to losses.
I am beginning the last portion of my working life. I don?t want to be under any illusions or to have to rely on my kids
Simone?s problem is to put her retirement on a sustainable course. The dilemma is financial, but she can make good gains with appropriate tax strategies and investments. She has no company pension plan, so she carries the risk and the rewards of her plans.
She remembers past financial errors ? putting too much money into high tech ventures her husband could not make profitable. ?Those are mistakes that will never recur,? she says. The problem now, as she readily admits, is to build a financial plan that will get her through her remaining working years and then her retirement.
Simone has rebuilt her financial life as an independent contractor for a local health authority. She generates $70,000 to $92,000 a year in billings. With no company pension plan and with only $78,800 left in her retirement savings, Simone knows she must tread carefully ? not retiring too soon or investing foolishly.
?I want to be sure that I am on track for retirement and that, when I quit work, that I will have enough money to live on,? Simone says. ?I am beginning the last portion of my working life. I don?t want to be under any illusions or to have to rely on my kids. This is the time for a financial reality check.?
Simone has two children in their early 20s, both in university. Past financial problems had a legacy: there was no money for registered education savings plans for the children. But Quebec?s university tuition costs are low, a few thousand dollars a year for most undergraduate faculties. The children have jobs and pay these expenses themselves. She provides a roof over their heads, feeds them, and subsidizes them to the tune of $350 a month.
In retirement, Simone plans to keep her tidy village cottage and settle down to a life of gardening with a little travel as her budget allows.
But she isn?t in such a big hurry to do that ? she enjoys her work and recognizes that, financially, she may not be ready.
She worries that her well diversified portfolio with a current value of $78,800 plus $37,000 cash won?t be enough to boost her retirement income to a level adequate to sustain her present monthly expenses. Her mortgage with $108,000 outstanding, will be paid off in 8 1/2 years, just before she turns 65.
Family Finance asked Caroline Nalbantoglu, a financial planner who heads CNal Financial Planning in Montreal, to work with Simone. The object ? evaluate ability to save for that retirement, estimate total income at 65 and in later years and devise investment strategies for building investment value.
Cash management
At 65, Simone would have a CPP benefit of $12,150 a year and a potential annual payout of $7,500 from her RRSP at 4% for total income of almost $19,647 a year. At 67, Old Age Security would add $6,553 a year for total annual income of $26,200. After 10% average income tax based on personal, age and pension credits, her monthly income would be about $1,965. That would not support present spending even after elimination of costs of servicing her mortgage, helping her children, driving to work, and socking away money for retirement.
Enhancing retirement income
To maintain her way of life, Simone should work additional years to 71, and keep contributing to her RRSP at $13,000 a year, Ms. Nalbantoglu suggests. She would be adding to capital and reducing the number of years that she will have to draw down her savings. When she is 71, her RRSP would have a balance of about $319,000. At that time, RRIF payments at statutory rates of about 7.4 % or about $23,600 a year will push her income up to $42,300 before tax. After 15% average income tax, she would have about $3,000 a month in 2013 dollars to spend. That is what she spends now minus her mortgage payments, which will have ended, child care and retirement savings.
This is a story about a person with no financial background who has made a lot of very good decisions
To make sure that her investments do not let her down, Simone needs to adopt a defensive strategy for her current portfolio allocation of 63% equities, 32% bond index exchange traded funds and 5% cash. She must cut her exposure to long bonds due in 10 or more years that have made her a good deal of money in the last four years but that are on the verge of large declines when interest rates rise and make existing bonds less attractive.
Simone could shorten the terms to maturity by moving out of her general Canadian bond index fund to an ETF that holds investment grade corporate bonds with five year terms to maturity or by selecting an ETF that ladders investment grade corporate bonds with terms from one to five years. She might also lock in interest returns and exclude any risk of loss by splitting the fixed income part of her portfolio into half GICs and half 5-year high quality corporate bond ETFs.
?This is a story about a person with no financial background who has made a lot of very good decisions,? Ms. Nalbantoglu says. ?It is about a person who has learned to be careful with money, avoids excessive debt, and plans a viable retirement. Diligent in investing and in making up for some past losses, she is a model for good planning.?
Need help getting out of a financial fix? Email andrewallentuck@mts.net for a free Family Finance analysis.
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