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শনিবার, ৩ ডিসেম্বর, ২০১১

Only two PGA documentary nominees on Oscars shortlist (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) ? Reinforcing that the 2011 documentary-awards picture is almost as confusing as the Oscar Best Picture race, the Producers Guild of America nominated five films for its top doc award on Friday -- and only two of the five even made the final 15 in the Oscars doc category.

The five films competing for the PGA's Documentary Theatrical Motion Picture award are "Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest," "Bill Cunningham New York," "Project Nim," "Senna" and "The Union."

Only "Cunningham" and "Nim" made the Academy's shortlist of 15 feature documentaries. None of the five are competing for the top award at Friday night's International Documentary Association Awards, and only "Nim" and "Senna" are in contention for the Cinema Eye Honors' Nonfiction Feature award.

The nominees are notably light on hard-hitting issue-oriented documentaries, and do not include either Steve James' "The Interrupters" or Werner Herzog's "Into the Abyss," both of which drew attention when they were left off the Academy's shortlist.

The winner will be announced on January 21, 2012 at the Producers Guild ceremony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

The PGA will announce its television series nominees on December 7 and all other nominees on January 3.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/enindustry/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111202/media_nm/us_documentaries_dga

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শুক্রবার, ২ ডিসেম্বর, ২০১১

30 percent of iPhone 4S owners paid the iPhone 4 early termination fee (Digital Trends)

iphone-4-vs-4s

According to a survey conducted by?Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, the research firm found that 30 percent of iPhone 4S owners upgraded from the iPhone 4. Since the iPhone 4 was released during June 2010, anyone upgrading to the iPhone 4S?approximately?16 months later would be subject to the early termination fee issued by wireless service providers like Verizon and AT&T. For instance, the?early termination fee on smartphones for?AT&T is set at $325 per line minus $10 for each month of service. Anyone upgrading to the iPhone 4S that previously purchased an iPhone 4 at launch would have paid around $175 to get their hands on the new model. Verizon customers likely paid around $270 to upgrade since the CDMA version of the iPhone 4 was released during?February?2011.

at&t iphone 4S The survey also found that more than 40 percent of iPhone 4S purchases were made online through Apple, wireless carrier sites or retail establishments like Best Buy. Of those purchases, one fourth were made through Apple stores and the official Apple site while the remainder were made through the other channels. The?64GB version of the iPhone 4S accounts for approximately 23 percent of all sales. Seventy-one percent of all iPhone 4S purchases were upgrades from previous versions of the iPhone including the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G. In addition, 18 percent of new purchases were people switching from other smartphones.?

Approximately 37 percent of the respondents switched carriers to purchase the iPhone 4S. Forty-nine percent of the respondents purchased an AT&T phone, 34 percent purchased a Verizon phone and 17 percent picked up the Sprint version. The research firm also found that females prefer the white version of the iPhone 4S over the black model and the purchase of an iPhone leads to interest in other Apple products like the Macbook, iPad and Apple TV.

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends

Kourtney Kardashian is pregnant again

Get ready for one more member of the extended Kardashian family to keep up with! Kourtney Kardashian and beau Scott Disick are expecting their second child together, they tell the new Us Weekly in an exclusive cover story.

PHOTOS: Adorable snapshots of Mason Dash Disick

The E! reality star, 32, took a pregnancy test about five weeks ago ? and woke up Disick, 28 (not a morning person!), around 7 a.m. to tell him the positive results.

"Now I'm nine weeks along," Kardashian tells Us. "You're supposed to wait 12 weeks to tell people, but I feel confident."

PHOTOS: Look back on Kourt's first pregnancy

The son- or daughter-to-be will be the second child for the couple of five years, whose son Mason, nearly 2, was a bit of a surprise.

Not so much for baby number two, the happy couple tells Us.

PHOTOS: Babies of 2011

"It wasn't like we weren't trying," Disick, 28, says. "We kind of just said, 'If it's meant to be, it'll be.'"

Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45489685/ns/today-entertainment/

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Wall Street jumps 3 percent after central banks' move (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Stocks rose 3 percent on Wednesday as major central banks jointly added liquidity to the world's financial system, easing worries about a global downturn.

The Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank as well as the central banks of Canada, Britain, Japan and Switzerland agreed to lower the cost of temporary dollar loans to banks by half a percentage point.

The move helped to ease investor worries about another financial crisis or recession, but the euro zone debt problems remain unresolved and could continue to plague markets.

Wednesday's rally put the S&P 500 on track for its best daily percentage gain since August.

The Dow industrials were poised to end the month of November slightly higher, while both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq looked likely to end the month in the red. The S&P 500 was down 1.3 percent for November.

Among the day's biggest gainers were the most economically sensitive sectors, including financials, energy, materials and industrials, though all S&P 500 sectors advanced. Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) rose 6.1percent to $5.38 after hitting a near three-year low, while JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) surged nearly 8 percent to $30.78. The S&P financial-sector index (.GSPF) jumped 5.7 percent, its best day in a month.

"I don't see the global economy going into recession. In fact, today's movement by the central banks to inject massive liquidity, I think, cushions the global economy," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital in New York.

The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) was up 408.11 points, or 3.53 percent, at 11,963.64. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) was up 41.92 points, or 3.51 percent, at 1,237.11. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) was up 83.45 points, or 3.32 percent, at 2,598.96.

Copper and oil futures also rose sharply.

The S&P materials sector index (.GSPM) gained 4.9 percent.

The central banks' actions were intended to ensure that European banks, facing a credit crunch, have enough funding amid the euro zone's worsening sovereign debt crisis.

The moves followed an unexpected cut in bank reserve requirements in China, intended to boost an economy running at its weakest pace since 2009.

Further encouraging investors, the latest U.S. data suggested the U.S. economy was moving more solidly toward recovery. The U.S. private sector added the most jobs in nearly a year in November, while business activity in the U.S. Midwest grew faster than expected in November.

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Additional reporting by Edward Krudy; Editing by Jan Paschal)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/stocks/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111130/bs_nm/us_markets_stocks

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বৃহস্পতিবার, ১ ডিসেম্বর, ২০১১

Britney Spears' 'Slave 4 U': The Story Behind The Video

'Slave' is facing off against 'Criminal' in the finals of MTV News' Britney Spears tournament — vote now!
By Jocelyn Vena

Britney Spears on the set of her video for "I'm a Slave 4 U" in 2001
Photo: MTV News

The competition was stiff in MTV News' Britney Spears Tournament: 30 Videos for 30 Years, but we're finally at the homestretch.

After narrowing 30 videos down to the final two — Brit's sweaty, old-school clip for "I'm a Slave 4 U" and her newer, equally sexy one for "Criminal" — it's all up to fans to decide which video will reign supreme on Friday (December 2), Britney's 30th birthday.

But before you cast your vote, let's take a deeper dive into the Francis Lawrence-directed video for "Slave."

Up until the raw clip, Britney's sex-kitten antics had been reserved for the PG set, but with "Slave 4 U," the singer launched herself into full-on sex-siren status. Appearing in the video drenched in sweat, it was the most provocative look (including her thong over her jeans!) that the then 19-year-old vixen had ever given her audience.

Spears told MTV during a taping of "Making The Video" that the theme of the song and the video, which put Spears right in the middle of a sexy dance party (with an appearance by celeb DJ du jour DJ Skribble), really matched who she was at the time.

"We're in Los Angeles shooting my first single off my new album," she said of the clip, shot over Labor Day weekend in 2001. "It's basically saying 'I'm a slave for the music.' Like, when you go into a club, you can't help yourself; you're enraptured in it. When I go to a club, I can't just sit there and chit-chat. I'd much rather be on the dance floor, just dancing. And that's what the song's talking about."

Lawrence, who would later go on to direct Spears in 2008's "Circus" as well, wanted the video to move far beyond the sleek dance clubs of L.A. or New York. He wanted it to go global. "I came up with this concept of having this club be in this abandoned Asian bath house and having it be filled with young world travelers, the kind of people who would go to these far exotic places to go to a place like this."

Head over to Britney30.MTV.com and vote for your favorite music video in MTV News' Britney Spears Tournament: 30 Videos for 30 Years.

Many of Spears' clips up until "Slave" had been very high-concept. This one, however, focused on Spears and her dance moves. "Really, the concept of the video, it's not this deep, drawn-out concept story line," she said. "It's just me going to a really cool club, the kind of club that you watch on TV and [you go], 'I wish I was there.' "

Lawrence added, "Everything we do incorporates a lot of dance, every little vignette [is] all really done through dance."

The video, which debuted in September of that year, follows Spears as she makes her way through the club, dancing and sweating the night away. As the party progresses, anything and everything that can hydrate the revelers has completely disappeared. So Spears and her pals take the party elsewhere.

"I walk in, and everyone's just hanging out. Everyone's in their own world," she said. "And it ends up being really, really late and the sun comes up, and we're all out of drinks, and we get really thirsty and it's raining, and we drink the water."

Do you think "Slave" or "Criminal" should come out on top? Let us know in the comments!

What's your favorite Britney video? Make sure to vote at Britney30.MTV.com or the MTV Newsroom blog, and share your picks in the comments below!

Related Videos

Britney Spears: 30 Videos For 30 Years

Related Artists

Britney Spears

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1675236/britney-spears-video-tournament-slave-4-u.jhtml

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Chronic Disease May Up Out-of-Pocket Costs for Insured (HealthDay)

TUESDAY, Nov. 29 (HealthDay News) -- Among families with employer-sponsored health care plans, those coping with chronic illness pay more out of their pockets than those without chronic illness, primarily because of higher prescription drug copayments, a new study finds.

"Even when you are looking at the same level of total spending, families covering chronic conditions spent more out of pocket than those without chronic illnesses, and it doesn't appear to be because the families are in different types of plans," researcher Anne Beeson Royalty, a professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, said in a university news release.

"It looks as though the difference is because certain types of services -- such as prescription drugs -- are covered less generously," she added.

Royalty and colleagues analyzed data from a 10-year national survey of more than 47,000 American families and found that those dealing with chronic conditions spent 1.5 to two times more on prescription drugs.

For example, among households spending a total of $7,000 on health care, those with chronic conditions spent an average of $2,215 of the $7,000 on prescription drugs, compared with $1,065 for other households.

"Because average coinsurance for prescription drugs is much higher than coinsurance on other health care services, that means that the households with chronic conditions pay more of that $7,000 out of their own pockets than do other households -- roughly $500 more in this case. The differences grow more pronounced as total spending increases," Royalty explained in the news release.

She and her colleagues said the study raises questions about how health care plans are designed. They suggested that employers and insurers should investigate whether better-designed health plans would promote the use of "high value" services (for example, taking prescription medicines) by cutting the patients' out-of-pocket costs of these services.

"If a person can keep a chronic condition under control with medication, not only will that produce better health but also fewer expensive hospitalizations," Royalty said.

Total spending was defined as what the insured family paid in out-of-pocket copayments and/or deductibles plus what the family's insurance company paid health care providers. The chronic conditions were asthma, cancer, diabetes, anxiety and depression.

More information

The U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality offers a consumer's guide to health insurance.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/health/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20111130/hl_hsn/chronicdiseasemayupoutofpocketcostsforinsured

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Pa. spruce tree gets a chance to shine in NYC (AP)

NEW YORK ? Cheering crowds have gathered to watch as a spruce tree from Pennsylvania gets its chance to shine in New York City.

The 74-foot-tall Norway spruce will be illuminated by 30,000 lights during a ceremony at Rockefeller Center on Wednesday night.

The crowd has been entertained with performances by Neil Diamond and Justin Bieber. It's also going to Cee Lo Green and the Radio City Rockettes.

The tree was cut down in Miffinville, Pa. It's decorated with 5 miles of lights. The lights will be on until Jan. 7. After that, the Christmas tree will be turned into lumber for the housing charity Habitat for Humanity.

Workers building Rockefeller Center set up the first Christmas tree there in 1931. The first official tree-lighting ceremony was in 1933.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/music/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111201/ap_en_mu/us_rockefeller_center_tree

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