Hillary Clinton leaves New York hospital with family, aide

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton left New York-Presbyterian hospital on Wednesday and was driven away with her husband, Bill, and daughter, Chelsea, and an aide, a Reuters photographer witnessed.

It was unclear where she was going or whether she had been discharged from the hospital, where she had been admitted for treatment of a blood clot behind her right ear.

A hospital spokeswoman directed all questions about Clinton, 65, to the State Department, which had no immediate comment.

Earlier Wednesday, a State Department spokeswoman said Clinton, who had not been seen in public since December 7, had been talking with her staff by telephone and receiving memos.

Clinton also spoke to two foreign officials – the U.N. envoy on Syria and the prime minister of Qatar – on Saturday, the day before the State Department disclosed the blood clot and her stay at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

“She’s been quite active on the phone with staff and taking paper, etc.,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at the department’s daily briefing.

The State Department announced on Sunday that Clinton was in a New York hospital for treatment of a blood clot that stemmed from a concussion she suffered in mid-December.

The concussion was itself the result of an earlier illness, described by the State Department as a stomach virus she had picked up during a trip to Europe that led to dehydration and a fainting spell after she returned to the United States.

In a statement released by the State Department on Monday, Clinton’s doctors said they were confident that she would make a full recovery and that she would be released from the hospital once the correct dosage of blood thinners had been determined.

(Reporting by Joshua Lott in New York; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Jackie Frank)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Hillary Clinton leaves New York hospital with family, aide
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/hillary-clinton-leaves-new-york-hospital-with-family-aide/
Link To Post : Hillary Clinton leaves New York hospital with family, aide
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Avis buys car sharing firm Zipcar

2 January 2013 Last updated at 11:54 ET

The global car hire firm Avis Budget has agreed to buy Zipcar, the world’s biggest car-sharing firm, for $ 500m (£307m).

The car hire giant is buying into the fast-growing sharing market, which it says is worth $ 400m in the US.

Zipcar has 767,000 members, who pay an annual joining fee and then are charged by the hour to use its cars.

Avis is paying $ 12.25 per share for Zipcar, almost 50% more than the shares were trading at, at the end of 2012.

Zipcar, whose shares surged after the announcement, have three quarters of the US market.

Its most recent results showed that membership numbers had increased by almost a fifth at the end of 2012, and industry analysts suggest that rate of growth is set to continue.

When it floated on the Nasdaq exchange last year, Zipcar said it thought the US car sharing market would be worth $ 3.3bn by the end of the decade, up from $ 250m in 2009.

Similar growth rates are forecast for the European market, with analysts suggesting revenue of 2.6bn euros in 2016, up from 220m in 2009.

Continue reading the main story

Avis Budget Group’s acquisition should be seen as strategic; it is based on a prediction that people will increasingly want to buy ways to get around, referred to as mobility solutions, rather than buying cars.

On any given journey, more and more people will be choosing between shared cars or taxis, subways or trains, bicycles or old fashioned shoe leather, and smartphone technology is making it easy for them to mix and match.

Moreover, at a time when it appears to be more important to see and be seen in the world of social media, the car as a status symbol is losing its lustre.

The motor industry is doing all it can to adjust, though the big players’ responses often come across as sluggish, leaving gaps in the market for newcomers such as Zipcar to emerge.

“We see car sharing as highly complementary to traditional car rental, with rapid growth potential and representing a scalable opportunity for us as a combined company,” said Ronald Nelson, chairman and chief executive of the Avis Budget Group when he announced the Zipcar deal.

Car sharing has become popular in cities as individual cars are kept in residential streets, outside workplaces or student accommodation, and some people find using the service cheaper than owning their own car.

It cuts out servicing and maintenance costs and the cost of fuel is included in the hourly charge.

Avis Budget wants to accelerate the growth of Zipcar by putting more cars in more locations. It also plans to adopt some of Zipcar’s technology across the existing group.

Car sharing clubs give members a smartcard which they use to open the car, eliminating the need to go to an office to collect and return keys.

Some of the major car rental companies. including Hertz and Enterprise, have launched their own car sharing operations in the past few years.

Zipcar was founded in 2000 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to take the European car-sharing idea to the US.

It has grown into the world’s biggest car-sharing firm, helped by recent mergers with US rival Flexcar and the purchase of UK company Streetcar and Spain’s Avancar, which it bought to expand its European operations.

Avis dropped from the second to the third largest car rental firm in the US in 2010, when Hertz took over Dollar Thrifty. Avis hopes to complete the purchase of Zipcar during early 2013.

BBC News – Business

Title Post: Avis buys car sharing firm Zipcar
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/avis-buys-car-sharing-firm-zipcar/
Link To Post : Avis buys car sharing firm Zipcar
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

GM recalls 145,628 mid-sized pickups for hood latch issue

(Reuters) – General Motors Co said on Thursday it is recalling 145,628 mid-sized pickup trucks globally as the hood could open unexpectedly due to a possible missing latch.

Of the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon pickups affected by the recall, 118,800 are in the United States, 15,264 are in Canada, 7,492 are in Mexico and the rest are exports, GM said.

GM is recalling the model year 2010 to 2012 trucks because the hood may be missing a secondary hood latch, so if the primary latch is not engaged the hood could open and block the driver’s view and increase the risk of a crash, according to documents filed with the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

There are no reports of crashes or injuries related to the issue, and there are four known cases of the secondary hood latch being missing, GM said.

GM said it will notify owners and instruct them to inspect their trucks for the presence of a secondary hood latch or take the truck to a dealer for inspection. If the secondary latch is missing, a new hood will be installed, the company said.

Dealers were notified of the issue on December 18 and GM expects to begin mailing letters to owners on January 17, according to NHTSA.

(Reporting By Ben Klayman in Detroit; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

Canada News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: GM recalls 145,628 mid-sized pickups for hood latch issue
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/gm-recalls-145628-mid-sized-pickups-for-hood-latch-issue/
Link To Post : GM recalls 145,628 mid-sized pickups for hood latch issue
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Four Android productivity apps you should use in 2013

Happy New Year! Like most folks, I am working on some resolutions for 2013. One resolution I have is to be more productive. One way I am going to do this is by using my Android phone better. Now there are apps that I have, but really have not used to their fullest. As I work on this resolution, I might discover even better apps. For now I will focus on these impressive apps that can make anyone more productive.

I use Hootsuite on the computer, but rarely find myself engaging with it on my smartphone. With Hootsuite, you can manage Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Foursquare accounts. The free version allows for up to five accounts and one member of your team to access the account. There is a pro version with a monthly fee, in which you can have more accounts and team members and helpful analytics tools.

The design of the app is very good. If you sync the web version to mobile, you will have everything automatically downloaded to the phone. When viewing content, you swipe left or right to change columns or streams. If you are in the middle of a stream, simply tap the top menu bar to automatically return to the top. The app allows for multiple profiles and scheduled tweets. My goal is to keep up with my feeds and tweets in real-time rather than waiting until I get to a computer.

Another web service that I started to use, but find myself not using it to the fullest. Producteev is a web-based task management service. With Producteev you can work as an individual or in a team by setting up workspaces and then organize tasks by labels. For each task you can assign a priority, due date, and share with team members, if you have any. Overall, this is a great service, since I like making lists, even though I rarely remember having made them.

The Producteev app is available for all platforms. The app has a very clean interface and is easy to find tasks. Probably the best way to keep up with tasks is to use the different widget for the home screen. Seeing the widgets will help keep those key tasks in the forefront of your mind. The app will work offline and syncs in the background.

I read blogs every single day, especially those related to new apps, Android, or mobile news. The only way I can do that is via my Google Reader. I find myself trying to catch up each day on the computer (just like with Twitter activity) when I would be better off reading a little bit over time during the day. NewsRob is a Google Reader that I have had for years. The interface is very clean and easy to use. The developer created a bunch of customizations options, which really make this reader stand out.

With NewsRob you can set up a notification of new articles, how you synchronize with Google and when, how many articles to keep in your cache, and more. If you set up folders within Google Reader, NewsRob will download the folders, too. This enables you to read the posts by blog or folder. The app provides a very clean blogpost display optimized for smaller screens. With each post you can zoom in or out, mark a post read or unread, view in the browser, and share the link to email or services such as Evernote. There is a free version of the app.

The last task I need to work on to be more productive is to keep up with the calendar. I find myself checking on the computer, after the fact, finding out that I am either late or forgot about a meeting or appointment. Using Google calendar is a good place to start, but I have not found the standard calendar app on my Droid was all that helpful.

Business Calendar is a very capable calendar app that has a ton of features. The app lets you view your calendar in a number of different views, and has search and favorite-calendar features, to name a few. The option of viewing different calendars, color coding and being able to easily add, delete, and edit events is helpful. The ability to use widgets for reminders is important. The pro version has over 10 different sizes and allows for the import or export of calendar files in the iCalendar format. Business Calendar also has a free version.

So my top goal or resolution for 2013 is to be more productive. I think using these apps more will help me accomplish that goal. Are there any apps you have but not using to their fullest? What resolutions do you have for 2013?

Download the Appolicious Android app

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Four Android productivity apps you should use in 2013
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Playboy Hugh Hefner marries his ‘runaway bride’

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hugh Hefner is celebrating the new year as a married man once again.

The 86-year-old Playboy magazine founder exchanged vows with his “runaway bride,” Crystal Harris, at a private Playboy Mansion ceremony on New Year’s Eve. Harris, a 26-year-old “Playmate of the Month” in 2009, broke off a previous engagement to Hefner just before they were to be married in 2011.

Playboy said on Tuesday that the couple celebrated at a New Year’s Eve party at the mansion with guests that included comic Jon Lovitz, Gene Simmons of KISS and baseball star Evan Longoria.

The bride wore a strapless gown in soft pink, Hefner a black tux. Hefner’s been married twice before but lived the single life between 1959 and 1989.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Playboy Hugh Hefner marries his ‘runaway bride’
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Senate’s “fiscal cliff” bill adds $4 trillion to deficits: CBO

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday said Senate-passed legislation to avert the “fiscal cliff” would add nearly $ 4 trillion to federal deficits over a decade, largely because it would extend low tax rates for almost all Americans.

The congressional scorekeeper’s analysis was released as a number of Republicans in the House of Representatives voiced opposition to the bill, and considered amending it with deeper spending cuts.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and others complained the bill’s spending cuts would do little to curb trillion-dollar deficits.

Senate-passed plan extends decade-old Bush-era tax rates for individuals earning up to $ 400,000 and couples earning up to $ 450,000 – nearly 99 percent of U.S. taxpayers.

But the non-partisan CBO compared the Senate plan’s revenue and expenditure changes to laws that are currently in force, which call for $ 600 billion in tax hikes and automatic spending cuts in 2013 alone – effectively a dive off the fiscal cliff.

With Congress feverishly working to avoid the fiscal cliff in recent weeks, many Washington policymakers had viewed the current-law budget “baseline” as unlikely to be maintained.

Compared to an alternative CBO scenario in which Congress extends all expiring tax provisions and turns off automatic spending cuts slated to start taking effect this week, the Senate plan achieves minimal deficit reduction in the early years.

Over 10 years, deficits under the Senate plan would be $ 3.75 trillion less than permanently extending all of the tax and spending policies in the alternative scenario. That is largely because the CBO expects that remaining on an unsustainable fiscal path would severely constrict economic growth later in the decade, holding back revenue growth and keeping outlays higher.

FISCAL 2013 EFFECTS

By going over the fiscal cliff, the CBO had previously forecast that the higher taxes and lower spending would slash the fiscal 2013 U.S. budget deficit by more than half, to $ 641 billion from $ 1.1 trillion the prior year.

But in its analysis of the Senate-passed plan, the CBO said fiscal 2013 revenues would be $ 280 billion lower and spending $ 50 billion higher, resulting in a $ 330 billion deficit increase, for a total deficit of around $ 971 billion.

Under the CBO’s keep-taxes-unchanged scenario, the deficit would be $ 1.04 trillion for fiscal 2013.

None of the CBO’s analyses takes into consideration possible future spending cuts and reforms to federal health care and retirement programs that Congress might make in a new budget battle emerging around mid-February over the next increase in the U.S. debt limit.

(Reporting By Kim Dixon and David Lawder; Editing by David Gregorio and Vicki Allen)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Senate’s “fiscal cliff” bill adds $4 trillion to deficits: CBO
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

US may skirt ‘fiscal cliff’ but faces higher taxes

WASHINGTON (AP) — A last-ditch tax deal in the Senate might let the U.S. economy escape the worst of the so-called fiscal cliff and avoid going back into recession. But even if the House goes along, the tax increases likely coming in 2013 will dent economic growth anyway.

In the early hours of the new year, the Senate voted to end a long stalemate and raise taxes on upper-income households, extend long-term unemployment benefits and postpone decisions over government spending cuts, officials said. But any deal needs approval from the House.

About $ 536 billion in 2013 tax increases were scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, along with $ 109 billion in cuts from military and domestic-spending programs, if Democrats and Republicans could not reach agreement.

Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wells Fargo, said he expects budget policy, including the higher taxes in the Senate plan, to shave 0.8 percentage points off economic growth in 2013. The economy doesn’t have much growth to give. Vitner predicts it will grow just 1.5 percent in 2013, down from 2.2 percent in 2012.

The biggest hit to the economy is expected to come from the end of a two-year Social Security tax cut. The so-called payroll tax is scheduled to bounce back up to 6.2 percent from 4.2 percent in 2011 and 2012, amounting to a $ 1,000 tax increase for someone earning $ 50,000 a year.

“Even with this deal, fiscal policy will still be a net drag on economic growth,” Vitner said. “The expiration of the payroll tax holiday will reduce after-tax income for all workers and hit lower to middle income families the hardest.”

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, calculates that the higher payroll tax will reduce economic growth by 0.6 percentage points in 2013. The other possible tax increases — including higher taxes on household incomes above $ 450,000 a year — will slice just 0.15 percentage points off annual growth, Zandi said.

Economy News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: US may skirt ‘fiscal cliff’ but faces higher taxes
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

France counts 1,193 cars torched on New Year’s Eve

PARIS (AP) — A New Year’s Eve tradition for some in France of torching empty, parked cars has continued.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls said Tuesday that 1,193 vehicles were burned overnight around the country, where the stunt began in the 1990s.

There was no way to compare this figure to recent ones because the conservative government of former President Nicolas Sarkozy stopped making the numbers public while he was in office. But the rate of burned cars was apparently steady. On Dec. 31, 2009, 1,147 vehicles were burned.

For some, the decision of France’s current Socialist government to resume making public figures of New Year’s Eve’s torched cars is unwise.

Bruno Beschizza, a security chief for Sarkozy’s UMP party, said on iTele TV that publishing the numbers motivates youths to commit such crimes.

Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: France counts 1,193 cars torched on New Year’s Eve
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Sony No Longer Shipping PlayStation 2 in Japan

You may have grown up with it. Your children may have, too.

Sony‘s PlayStation 2 home game console, released in 2000, was one of the most popular game consoles of all time, rivaled in sales only by the different kinds of Nintendo DS handheld console. It continued to be sold new on store shelves until just recently, even years after Sony launched its PlayStation 3 successor.

Now, however, Sony’s sent out its last shipment of new “PS2″ consoles for the Japanese market, according to Japanese gaming news site Famitsu (as reported by Polygon’s Emily Gera). Some other regions are continuing to receive shipments for now, but the heart of the PlayStation 2 phenomenon has finally stopped beating.

A gaming legend

Japanese PlayStation fans saw thousands more titles released in their language than English-speaking players. The PlayStation 2 was especially well-known for its role-playing games, such as the MMORPG Final Fantasy XI, which was designed so closely around the PS2′s capabilities that its Windows PC version uses almost entirely the same graphics and controller-based interface.

New PS2 games continue to ship; Final Fantasy XI is even getting a full-fledged, retail-boxed expansion pack this March. It’ll only support the PS2 in Japan, however, where dedicated players continue to use the original “fat” PS2 consoles with the hard drive expansion slot. Internationally, it will only support the PC and Xbox 360.

PS2 games in a post-PS2 world

The first PlayStation 3 consoles — infamous for the silence which ensued at the Sony event where their price at launch was announced to be “599 U.S. dollars” — were backwards-compatible with the vast majority of PlayStation 2 and original PSOne games. Sony achieved PS2 backwards compatibility, however, by including the PS2′s actual “Emotion Engine” and “Graphics Synthesizer” chips inside each PS3, essentially making it two game consoles in one (and helping to drive up that launch price).

A redesign bumped down the price some, but at the cost of removing the Emotion Engine chip, which caused the redesigned PS3 consoles to sometimes have bugs or fail to play certain games. Today’s PS3 consoles lack both chips, which means that while they play PSOne games just fine, they don’t support PS2 game discs at all and can’t be upgraded to do so.

The legend lives on?

Sony has made HD remakes of certain PS2 titles, and republished others for the PS3 under the “PlayStation 2 Classics” brand. Dozens of such titles have been re-released as digital downloads in the PlayStation Network store.

This method of playing a PS2 game on the PS3, however, involves essentially buying the game again (assuming that it’s even in the store), sort of like Sony’s method of playing PlayStation Portable games on the Vita. Even rebuying the games for the PS3 doesn’t ensure continued playability on modern Sony consoles; the upcoming “PlayStation 4″ (not its actual name) reportedly won’t be able to play games made for the PS3.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Sony No Longer Shipping PlayStation 2 in Japan
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Green Day to get back on road in March

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The members of Green Day said on Monday they will return to the road in March after the punk rock band canceled its fall club tour and postponed later dates as frontman Billie Joe Armstrong underwent treatment for substance abuse.

“We want to thank everyone for hanging in with us for the last few months,” the band members said in a statement on their website. “We are very excited to hit the road and see all of you again, though we regret having to cancel more shows.”

Armstrong, lead singer and guitarist for the Grammy-winning rock band, sought substance abuse treatment in September following an angry, guitar-smashing on-stage outburst in Las Vegas. The details of his addiction were never specified.

Armstrong, 40, added to the website posting with a note on Instagram, saying:

“Dear friends … I just want to thank you all for the love and support you’ve shown for the past few months. Believe me, it hasn’t gone unnoticed and I’m eternally grateful to have such an amazing set of friends and family.

“I’m getting better every day,” he said. “So now, without further ado, the show must go on. We can’t wait to get on the road and live out loud! Our passion has only grown stronger.”

The tour will begin in Chicago on March 28, with dates in Pittsburgh, New York, Toronto and other cities up through April 12 in Quebec City.

The band said it would announce additional West Coast dates in early 2013.

Tickets for the postponed shows will be honored at the new dates, Green Day said. Tickets for canceled shows will be refunded at the point of purchase.

In November the band moved up the release date of “iTré!,” part of an ambitious trilogy of albums that marks their first collection of new music since 2009, to December 11 from its original date of January 15, in part to make up for the canceled and postponed dates.

The California-based punk rock band, formed in the late 1980s, has sold more than 65 million records worldwide and won five Grammys, including best alternative album for its 1994 major-label debut, “Dookie,” and best rock album for “American Idiot” and “21st Century Breakdown.”

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Bill Trott)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Green Day to get back on road in March
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..