Veteran congressman Flake favored in Arizona Republican Senate primary

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Conservative Arizona congressman Jeff Flake is favored to defeat a feisty political newcomer with deep pockets in a primary election on Tuesday for a Senate seat that Republicans need to take the majority from Democrats in the November election.

Arizona's Republican Senate contest is the highest profile race among the primaries on Tuesday that also include votes in the states of Vermont and Alaska, as well as a runoff election in Oklahoma.

Flake, a six-term member of the House of Representatives, faces businessman Wil Cardon, a hard-liner on immigration who oversees his family's portfolio of real estate investments.

The winner will be the Republican nominee in the November election to replace Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican leader in the U.S. Senate who announced in February he would not seek a fourth six-year term in office.

The Democratic nominee in the November 6 general election is former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona.

Both Kyl and Arizona Senator John McCain have endorsed Flake in a race that started out fiery but has cooled lately.

Cardon came out swinging early with a costly advertising blitz casting Flake as a Washington insider who favored tax increases and was soft on illegal immigration, although the challenger has reined in his spending in recent weeks.

"There is no reasonable explanation for stopping the spending other than they probably don't want to throw away any more money," said Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor at the Cook Political Report in Washington, D.C. "It says that Flake has a fairly healthy lead and Cardon's people can't find a way to diminish it."

RUNNING ON RECORD

Flake, 49, has focused the race on what he said is a "proven track record" of voting to reduce the size of government and cutting taxes and spending.

"People have seen what I've done already and they recognize the name and my record," Flake said in an interview between campaign stops in Yuma, Arizona. "These are things people agree with philosophically and they want that kind of activity in the Senate."

Promoted as a "battle-tested conservative," the former head of the Goldwater Institute in Arizona, which is named after longtime Arizona Senator and former Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, has the support and funding of the Club for Growth business group and some Tea Party faithful.

Cardon, 41, has contributed nearly $8.8 million of his own money through the August 8 candidate filing period trying to establish himself as an outsider and businessman with experience.

"When you're running against the establishment you have to be able to put your own money into the campaign," said Cardon, following a panel discussion in southern Arizona.

Cardon is one of several self-financed business candidates running against established Republicans in Senate primaries this year. Businessmen lost in Missouri, Wisconsin and Michigan but former World Wrestling Entertainment chief executive Linda McMahon won the Republican nomination in Connecticut.

There has been a dearth of recent polls on the Arizona race. One in May by a Democratic polling firm had Flake's lead over Cardon at 22 points and another financed by a pro-Flake Republican group had the lead unchanged in late July.

Republicans already have a majority in the U.S. House and need to hold onto open seats such as Arizona and make a net gain of four in other states in order to take a majority in the Senate and control the policy agenda.

In another hotly contested Arizona primary race, two Republican incumbents will battle for the chance to make it to the November ballot for a House of Representatives seat.

Ben Quayle, son of former vice president Dan Quayle, takes on David Schweikert, in an expected tight contest brought about by the once-a-decade redistricting. It is one of 11 such House contests between incumbents nationwide this year.

(Editing by Tim Gaynor, Greg McCune and Bill Trott)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/veteran-congressman-flake-favored-arizona-republican-senate-primary-131740238.html

the voice jenelle evans jenelle evans mlb 12 the show sabu google play franchise tag

InHouse/ACC General Counsel Roundtable on Risk Management ...

InHouse/Association of Corporate Counsel has released four videos from its recent General Counsel Roundtable on Risk Management. Each video is about 9 minutes in length:

1. ?The role of external counsel
2. Managing risk in-house
3. How in-house counsel mitigate risk
4. Dealing with the risks of social media

Here is my favourite, the one on an emerging area in risk management, social media:

?

The roundtable is also the cover story of the latest issue of Canadian Lawyer InHouse magazine: Managing risk in-house.

The six participants are:

• Mark Adams, senior vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary, AGF Management Ltd.
• Nathalie Clark, general counsel and corporate secretary, Canadian Bankers Association
• Megan Evans, chief legal and risk officer, The Hospital For Sick Children
• Brian Hilbers, general counsel, Bruce Power
• Av Maharaj, vice president and chief counsel, International, Kellogg Co.
• Veta T. Richardson, president and CEO, Association of Corporate Counsel

Jennifer Brown, editor with InHouse, moderated the discussion.

The videos gave me a better understanding of some of the work of corporate counsel. Law firms who act as external counsel should definitely watch to gain an understanding of the corporate counsel viewpoint.

A few of the things that I learned from the series:

According to Brian Hilbers of Bruce Power, in-house counsel brings value in the area of developing risk strategy in these ways:

• understanding and articulating risks
• developing strong relationships with the key stakeholders in the organization so they go to their in-house counsel with those risks, and counsel can therefore provide feedback
• being "courageous" to speak out in the face of risk; saying no when you need to say no. He points out that having the strong relationships in place makes it easier to speak out.

Nathalie Clark of Canadian Bankers Association sees her role as having a deep understanding of the vision and strategy of the organization. This helps to understand the business and how the vision is being operationalized.

I was interested in the mentions of enterprise risk management strategies and enterprise risk management frameworks. Here on Slaw we sometimes talk about law firm risk management, but we don't usually extend that to look at risk management for corporations and other organizations.

Respond: make a comment

Share: Email | Save as PDF | Print | Bookmark & Share | |

More: in Practice of Law or Substantive Law | from Connie Crosby

Make a comment:

Note that some comments may be moderated. If you have not had an approved comment here before, your comment will be held for approval. We are glad to publish comments that address issues raised in the post or other comments on it and that contribute to a fruitful discussion. We do not publish comments that seek to promote commercial products, that make personal attacks, or that seek personal legal advice.

Although we do not require it, we ask that in making a comment you use your full name. You must supply a valid email address, which will not appear with your comment.

Source: http://www.slaw.ca/2012/08/27/inhouseacc-general-counsel-roundtable-on-risk-management/

legionnaires disease underwear bomber unclaimed money godspell media matters hana taylor momsen

Apple patent victory boosts Microsoft as Asian vendors scramble

HONG KONG/SEATTLE (Reuters) - Apple Inc's decisive triumph over Samsung Electronics in the most closely watched patent trial in years could open the door for Microsoft Corp to finally hop on board the mobile boom as manufacturers of Android-based smartphones and tablets weigh their legal risks.

Microsoft sounded a challenge to Apple and Samsung in July when it took the wraps off its Surface tablet, a showcase for the revamped Windows software that it hopes will pave the way for its entry into the mobile space.

It remains to be seen if the new touchscreen-friendly and cloud computing-ready Windows 8 can prove a serious rival to Android, the world's most-used mobile software, or Apple's iOS. But mobile industry executives who had been cautiously considering Windows as an alternative to Google's Android say Friday's ruling that Samsung had copied Apple's designs and software features had intensified their interest in a Microsoft alternative.

The key reason: fear of patent lawsuits from Apple.

The California company's battle with Samsung was in large measure a proxy war against Google Inc's Android software, which is used by many manufacturers to run its mobile devices. The verdict could empower Apple to file more such lawsuits.

"Some of the other manufacturers of Android products like ourselves are prepared to face similar lawsuits from Apple," a senior executive with a major Chinese mobile maker told Reuters on condition of anonymity as he is not authorized to talk to the media.

"The Apple-Samsung lawsuit has given us some reference point on our future innovation. We'll focus on developing our own unique user interface based on the Android platform.

"Even though the bulk of our shipments run on Android, the trend is to diversify into other products running on Windows," the executive added, predicting that the percentage of Windows-based smartphone shipments would increase significantly, from less than 10 percent now to around a third over the next few years.

CONSUMER APPEAL

Windows 8 and Windows RT - a version of the software made for the ARM Holdings chip designs that are employed in the vast majority of phones and tablets - ship in October.

Some analysts are skeptical that Microsoft can produce a device that the mobile consumer will love.

"Microsoft has been the beneficiary of this whole fight as the other non-Android option," said Ron Laurie, a Silicon Valley-based specialist in IP and investment banking and co-founder of Inflexion Point Strategy. "But safety (from lawsuits) by itself is not enough. You have to appeal to consumers."

And so far the market has seen that consumers want phones and tablets that look like Apple's devices, he added.

Hardware manufacturers, mostly based in East Asia and known in tech industry jargon as original equipment manufacturers or OEMs, are weighing their options.

"From an OEM perspective, the verdict alone, and certainly an injunction on sales of any kind, levels the playing field between Android and Windows Phone," said IDC analyst Al Hilwa. "At this point, the two platforms would have to fight on features and developer ecosystems to win."

Wall Street thinks Microsoft still stands a chance of reclaiming its former glory, with investors citing a promising pipeline for 2013. But they will want hard reasons to pay more than $30 for a stock that hasn't traded above that for any extended period of time since 2000.

The verdict in Apple-Samsung was closely watched at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

"Windows Phone is looking gooooood right now," tweeted a clearly enthusiastic Bill Cox, senior marketing communications director for the firm's phone division, soon after Friday's verdict.

HOMEGROWN OPERATING SYSTEMS

Asian manufacturers now need to invest in further customization of the Android platform, much as Amazon.com Inc has done with its Kindle Fire device, industry officials say.

ZTE and Huawei, China's two largest handset makers, declined comment. Both have announced plans to launch Windows-based phones to supplement their Android products.

"Smaller Android phone makers like (Taiwan's) HTC, (Google's) Motorola and Sony will have challenging times ahead," said Seo Won-Seok," a Seoul-based analyst at Korea Investment & Securities. "They'll face increasing production costs and rising entry barrier to the Android ecosystem. They now face a great risk of similar litigation from Apple."

Manufacturers may also look at other mobile operating systems beyond Windows, analysts said. Samsung, for example, also has phones that use proprietary software called Bada.

Chinese manufacturers also have the option of homegrown operating systems such as those developed by Baidu and Alibaba, but Jane Wang, a Beijing-based analyst from Ovum, doubted they would be adopted in a big way because the ecosystem of applications and services around them remains limited.

"Chinese handset makers are a practical bunch in that they will weigh the costs and benefits when coming up with products running on a different operating system," said Wang, "It may not be worth their while."

Some manufacturers are particularly exposed. The smartphone portfolio of Korea's LG Electronics Inc, for example, is entirely composed of Android devices, leaving it vulnerable should Apple take legal action against it.

And HTC, once the Android market leader, has also struggled in lawsuits with Apple and lacks its own strong patent portfolio, making it vulnerable to further legal challenges. It has tried to rebuild market share with new models, the One series, that incorporate high-level photography functions and audio technology from U.S. firm Beats, in which it bought a stake.

"For all these manufacturers it's a risk management game," said Andrew Milroy, Singapore-based vice president of Frost and Sullivan, a consulting company. "They don't want to put all their eggs in one basket."

(Additional reporting by Poornima Gupta in San Francisco, Kim Miyoung in Seoul, Jeremy Wagstaff in Singapore and Jonathan Standing in Taipei Editing By Jonathan Weber, Edwin Chan and Alex Richardson)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/apple-patent-victory-boosts-microsoft-asian-vendors-scramble-024338396--sector.html

university of louisville louisville ky final four lotto winners mega ball winning numbers baltimore county current tv

Shareholders get $3.2 bln if Heineken offer is approved

Singapore conglomerate Fraser and Neave (F&N) said Friday it plans to distribute Sg$4.0 billion ($3.2 billion) to shareholders if an offer by Dutch firm Heineken to buy its stake in a brewery is approved.

F&N shareholders are due to vote at an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) on whether they are in favour of Heineken's revised Sg$5.6 billion offer for F&N's stake in Asia Pacific Breweries (APB), the maker of Tiger Beer.

A date for the EGM has yet to be set.

Heineken already owns 42 percent of APB and is seeking full control of the brewery by buying over long-time partner F&N's direct and indirect stake of 40 percent as it moves to expand in the fast-growing Asian beer market.

The Amsterdam-based Dutch beer giant said last week it had inked a definitive agreement with F&N's board to "irrevocably recommend" the proposed deal to shareholders.

In a statement issued late Friday, F&N said that if the deal is approved, "the company intends to distribute approximately Sg$4.0 billion from the cash proceeds of the proposed transaction to shareholders."

The cash distribution, representing 84 percent of the gains after transaction costs, will be done through a capital reduction exercise aimed at achieving a "more efficient capital" structure for the company, F&N said.

The rest of the proceeds, or about Sg$1.6 billion, will be used to repay existing debt and strengthen the balance sheet of the F&N Group.

Heineken has said the deal, if approved, was expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of this year, but no later than December 15.

The Dutch brewer was forced to up its bid to Sg$5.6 billion from Sg$5.1 billion to fend off a rival party headed by Thai billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi.

Charoen's Thai Beverage is a key shareholder in F&N, along with Japanese brewer Kirin Holdings.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/shareholders-3-2-bln-heineken-offer-approved-044000387.html

piracy sopa marg helgenberger censorship wikipedia sopa and pipa bills censoring the internet

Romney's convention: Big storm, rape controversy

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) ? His Republican National Convention pushed back by a day, Mitt Romney conceded Sunday that fresh controversy over rape and abortion is harming his party and he accused Democrats of trying to exploit it for political gain.

"It really is sad, isn't it, with all the issues that America faces, for the Obama campaign to continue to stoop to such a low level," said Romney, struggling to sharpen the presidential election focus instead on a weak economy and 8.3 percent national unemployment.

His comments came as aides and party officials hurriedly rewrote the script for the convention, cut from four days to three because of the threat posed by approaching Tropical Storm Isaac. Plans called for longer-than-expected sessions beginning Tuesday.

"We're 100 percent full steam ahead on Tuesday," said Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, expressing confidence the one-day delay would be the extent of the cancellations. He said Romney's nomination would take place on Tuesday, as would approval of a conservative party platform.

The former Massachusetts governor delivers his acceptance speech Thursday night before a prime time TV audience, then sets out on the final leg of a quest for the presidency that spans two campaigns and more than five years.

Polls make the race a close one, with a modest advantage for President Barack Obama.

For all the Republican attempts to make the election a referendum on the incumbent's handling of the economy, other events have intervened.

An incendiary comment more than a week ago by Rep. Todd Akin, the party's candidate for a Senate seat in Missouri, is among the intrusions. In an interview, he said a woman's body has a way of preventing pregnancy in the case of a "legitimate rape." The claim is unsupported by medical evidence, and the congressman quickly apologized.

Romney and other party officials, recognizing a political threat, unsuccessfully sought to persuade Akin to quit the race. Democrats have latched onto the controversy, noting not only what Akin said but also his opposition to abortion in all cases.

"Now, Akin's choice of words isn't the real issue here. The real issue is a Republican Party ? led by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan ? whose policies on women and their health are dangerously wrong," said a recent letter from Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic Party.

The party also posted a Web video that emphasizes the Republican Party's opposition to abortion and digitally alters the Republicans' "Romney-Ryan" logo to say "Romney Ryan Akin."

Interviewed on Fox, his comments broadcast on Sunday, Romney said the controversy over Akin "hurts our party and I think is damaging to women."

Romney spent the day in New Hampshire where he has a summer home. Aides said he was spending part of his afternoon practicing his convention speech with the use of a teleprompter.

Delegates marked time as the storm raked the Florida Keys to the south of the convention city en route to a projected landfall along the Gulf Coast.

"Somebody raised the prospect of marathon Monopoly. I favor the game Risk, but we'll see," said Tom Del Beccaro, chairman of the California delegation. I think people will just be ready for Tuesday and be pretty energetic then."

Hundreds of miles away, Romney said he was concerned for the safety of those who "are going to be affected" by the storm, which is predicted to worsen into a hurricane as it heads for landfall along the Gulf Coast.

In a presidential race defined by its closeness, Republican office-holders past and present said the party must find a way to appeal to women and Hispanics, and they said the economy was the way to do it.

"We have to point out that the unemployment rate among young women is now 16 percent, that the unemployment rate among Hispanics is very high, that jobs and the economy are more important, perhaps, than maybe other issues," said Arizona Sen. John McCain, who lost to Obama in 2008.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush agreed, saying that Romney "can make inroads if he focuses on how do we create a climate of job creation and economic growth." If he succeeds, "I think people will move back towards the Republican side," Bush added.

Obama leads Romney among women voters and by an overwhelming margin among Hispanics, but he trails substantially among men.

The result is a race that is unpredictably close, to be settled in a small number of battleground states.

An estimated $500 million has been spent on television commercials so far by the two candidates, their parties and supporting outside groups, nearly all of it in Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada. Those states account for 100 electoral votes out of the 270 needed to win the White House.

Republicans have made no secret that they are eager to expand the electoral map to include Pennsylvania, Michigan, perhaps running mate Paul Ryan's Wisconsin and even Minnesota, states with 68 electoral votes combined.

All four are usually reliably Democratic in presidential campaigns. Yet Romney has a financial advantage over the president, according to the most recent fundraising reports, and a move by the Republicans into any of them could force Obama to dip into his own campaign treasury in regions he has considered relatively safe.

Making his case for the support of female voters, Romney said in the Fox interview: "'Look, I'm the guy that was able to get health care for all of the women and men in my state. ... 'I'm very proud of what we did."

It was a rare voluntary reference to the legislation he signed as governor of Massachusetts that required the state's residents to purchase coverage, the sort of mandate that is at the heart of Obama's federal legislation that conservatives oppose and Romney has vowed to see repealed.

Romney added that the state law was put into place "without cutting Medicare, which obviously affects a lot of women."

That was a reference to the federal law, which cut more than $700 billion in projected Medicare costs to help provide health care to millions who could not otherwise afford it.

Medicare generally favors Democrats as a political issue, but Romney has aggressively sought to cut into that advantage. He released a new television ad criticizing Obama's handling of the program with a catchphrase of "It ain't right."

The streets around the convention hall were crowded with police, National Guard and other security officials, who manned checkpoints in squads rather than individually.

A few hundred protesters gathered in a park about a half-mile from the convention vowed to make their point regardless of Tropical Storm Isaac. They set out large blocks of ice spelling out the words "middle class," and left them to melt on a warm, humid day, a gesture meant to signify middle class disappearance in a tough economy.

Bush and McCain were interviewed on NBC, and Priebus spoke on CNN.

___

Associated Press writers Tamara Lush and Brendan Farrington in Florida, Steve Peoples in New Hampshire, Philip Elliott in Wisconsin and Alicia Caldwell in Washington contributed to this story.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/romneys-convention-big-storm-rape-controversy-210126981.html

patti smith lottery winners lottery winners april fools day pranks ohio state vs kansas daniel von bargen the beach

UCIrvine: #UCIrvine microbiologists: "New approach to fighting viral illnesses including common cold identified" http://t.co/vz858VJF via India Vision

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://twitter.com/UCIrvine/statuses/239135434171641856

ian stewart odom vt vt los angeles angels los angeles angels lindsay lohan’s playboy cover leaked online

T-Mobile Galaxy Note Canceled, Galaxy Note 2 Incoming?

Yesterday, the T-Mobile Galaxy Note unexpected vanished from the carrier?s website and then proceeded to go out of stock at various retailers. And while speculation rested on a shock shortage, it would appear that the carrier has canceled the device altogether.

According to Android Police, T-Mobile has, in fact, slapped the EOL (End of Life) tag on the T-Mobile Galaxy Note just a few weeks after it launched.

Apparently, the device will officially die on November 1st though that date seems to rest on T-Mobile?s inventory which, at the moment, appears to be extremely low.

Read: T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy Note Vanishes.

The T-Mobile Galaxy Note has apparently been canceled.

While the device itself has been pulled from T-Mobile?s website, retailers like Costco and Walmart are completely out of stock with no end to the shortage in sight. It?s possible that the device will never be replenished considering the news.

T-Mobile itself has yet to confirm anything yet but it?s pretty clear that the carrier is trying to wipe its hands clean of the original Galaxy Note which launched in the first week of August.

Almost instantly there were questions about why T-Mobile was choosing to launch the device this late in the game, AT&T got its Galaxy Note in the first part of 2012, and it didn?t help that there was speculation about the Samsung Galaxy Note 2, the successor to the Galaxy Note which we now know will launch on August 29th.

If the cancellation of the T-Mobile Galaxy Note is true, and it looks like it is, we imagine that the carrier might opt to carry the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 instead.

Read: Samsung Galaxy Note 2 Launch Date: What to Expect.

Thus far, we haven?t heard about HSPA+ connectivity for the Galaxy Note 2 though it remains possible. 4G LTE data speeds have been rumored and it?s possible that T-Mobile will launch the Galaxy Note 2 on its 3G network and then offer it on its 4G LTE network which is set to arrive in 2013.

Of course, that?s all speculation at this point but at the very least, we know that T-Mobile was very interested in hosting a Galaxy Note on its network and that could mean a Galaxy Note 2 in the future.

As for those who bought the Galaxy Note for T-Mobile, we hope that the carrier, at the very least, promises to still roll out the Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update which is rumored to be coming in Q4.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Gottabemobile/~3/pXJT4PcYots/

adele lyrics bruno mars best new artist 2012 grammys foo fighters nikki minaj grammys