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| FRIDAY • MARCH 5, 2010 |
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LBN-INVESTIGATES: A middle-income American family with a child born in 2008 can expect to spend about $221,190 ($291,570 when adjusted for inflation) for food, shelter, and other necessities to raise that child over the next seventeen years. In 1960, a middle-income family could have expected to spend $25,230 ($183,509 in 2008 dollars) to raise a child through age seventeen.
A middle-income American family with a child born in 2008 can expect to spend about $221,190 ($291,570 when adjusted for inflation) for food, shelter, and other necessities to raise that child over the next seventeen years. In 1960, a middle-income family could have expected to spend $25,230 ($183,509 in 2008 dollars) to raise a child through age seventeen.
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 JOBLESS RATE HOLDS STEADY AT 9.7%; 36,000 JOBS LOST IN FEBRUARY: The American economy shed 36,000 nonfarm jobs in February as the unemployment rate held at 9.7 percent, the Labor Department said Friday, a more positive report than expected given the series of winter storms that shut down much of the East Coast. The report interrupted a trend of easing in the recession-bleakened job market in recent months. But economists, whose forecasts for Friday’s report had varied more widely than usual, said the February data may be substantially revised in the next few months’ reports.
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TERROR TRIALS MAY MOVE TO TRIBUNAL: In what would be a major reversal for President Obama, White House advisers are close to announcing a new policy regarding terror detainees that would see Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected 9/11 plotter, tried in a military court. Obama’s decision to try Mohammed in civilian court in New York created endless political headaches from both sides of the aisle and the Washington Post reports that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is offering to help with bipartisan support for closing Guantanamo Bay if the decision is reversed.
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 10 BILLION TWEETS SERVED: The Internet’s premier hub for bite-sized conversation has reached a major milestone: according to tweet ID numbers, the site’s users have surpassed 10 billion tweets. Only four months ago Twitter passed the 5 billion mark on the 140-character updates, used by everyone from publicity-hungry celebrities to protestors in Iran. The contents of tweet #10,000,000,000 are unknown, as the user has protected their updates, but #999,999,999 (a link to an gallery of urban photography) and #10,000,000,0001 (a simple phrase: “DON’T U EVER”) are viewable online.
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 TOYOTA OBFUSCATING INFORMATION?: Only adding to public distrust in Toyota, the car company has been found to be keeping information that could help explain safety issues due to sudden unintended acceleration confidential. Similar to airline “black boxes,” cars are equipped with event data recorders, or EDRs, but, in statements made to the Associated Press, Toyota gave contradicting and ambiguous information about what the EDRs actually recorded.
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PRISONER ARRESTS: Complaints and new arrests have prompted some states to reconsider giving prisoners’ time off for good behavior.
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WAS THE PENTAGON SHOOTER A WINGNUT?: Two officers were wounded when a man walked up to them outside of the Pentagon Metro station and opened fire. The gunman was later fatally shot by police in a shootout. John Patrick Bedell is the man believed responsible for shooting 2 officers at the Pentagon Thursday evening, he has been linked to postings about 9/11 conspiracies.
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LBN-BUSINESS INSIDER: ***China is in the middle of a spectacular real estate boom. But the question is whether it is in the middle of a bubble — one that might threaten the global economy. ***A vast project in Florida will be the world’s second-largest solar plant, attached to the nation’s largest fossil-fuel power plant.
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 SMART PEOPLE READ THE LBN E-LERT: Nationally syndicated talk radio host and publishing legend Judith Regan along with over 317,000 other “influencers” understands that information is power and the LBN E-Lert is a power-tool.
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UNEMPLOYED APPLICANTS SWARM THEME PARKS: If you see a long line outside Disneyland, don’t worry—it’s probably for job applicants, not Space Mountain. A job fair at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, California, drew 1,600 people—in the rain. Universal Studios received more than 1,100 job applications in one day last month, and Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm have received so many applications they are postponing their job fairs. Applications are coming from everyone from unemployed mortgage agents to sales clerks to construction workers looking for temporary positions. With the unemployment rate in California at 12.4 percent, those theme-park jobs are no longer just for teenagers seeking their first jobs. “We are getting a lot of people who, in a normal economy, would be considered overqualified,” said a manager at Universal Studios Hollywood.
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LBN-MEDIA INSIDER: ***As NBC patches together a new lineup for the 10 p.m. hour to fill the hole left by the former “Jay Leno Show,” the network is calling on “Dateline” to fill in the gap on Fridays by stretching the news magazine to two hours. “Dateline” will face a familiar foe: ABC’s “20/20.” ***Facebook is worth almost 10 times as much as Twitter, according to media expert and author Michael Levine. Index pegs Facebook’s worth at $11.5 billion, while Twitter’s value is said to be $1.44 billion. Other companies with values estimated at more than $1 billion include LinkedIn. ***Newsweek, a subsidiary of the Washington Post Co., plans to launch an edition in Pakistan, marking the first such move by a Western magazine in the country. Newsweek Pakistan will be published under a licensing deal with local publisher AG Publications. ***Time Inc.’s Entertainment Weekly is marking its 20th anniversary with three special issues this year. The magazine is also expanding its coverage to include apps, games and Web sites, says managing editor Jess Cagle. “We’re going to keep expanding the stuff we cover.” ***The Huffington Post attracted a staggering 40 million unique visitors in the last month, according to the news and opinion sites own numbers. Verticals are driving growth, says cofounder Arianna Huffington. The new tech and sports sections already account for 10% of traffic. ***Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert may have lost his voice, but he found it again on the Web. Ebert aims to monetize his blog by starting “The Ebert Club.” An annual fee of $5 will offer Ebert fans a variety of content, including advance notice of ticket sales to Ebertfest.
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 ACROSS THE UNIVERSE: Israel is just one of the 24 foreign countries with daily LBN E-Lert readers.
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LBN-HOLLYWOOD INSIDER: ***Maybe this ’80s nostalgia kick is going a bit too far. After seven films in its original ten-year run, New Line is planning on reviving its Police Academy series, which grossed $240 million worldwide and spawned a pair of TV spin-offs. The slapstick comedy will be helmed by original producer Paul Maslansky. “It’s going to be very worthwhile to the people who remember it and to those who saw it on TV,” Maslansky told the Hollywood Reporter. “It’s going to be a new class. We hope to discover new talent and season it with great comedians. It’ll be anything but another movie with a numeral next to it. And we’ll most probably retain the wonderful musical theme.” ***Tonight at Getty House, L.A. Mayor Villaraigosa is hosting a pre-Oscars reception for Academy Awards nominees. The mayor’s office says it’s being paid for by Microsoft Bing and L’Oreal Paris, but the Coalition of L.A. City Unions says it plans to protest with a “mock red carpet” as close as the LAPD lets them get. ***P.R. firm 42West has appointed veteran music publicist Dvora Vener Englefield to head their newly created music department.
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LBN-NOTICED: ***Samuel L. Jackson at the Mann Chinese Theatre in Hollywood last night for the 2010 Italian Film Festival. ***Eva Longoria was spotted at the Hollywood Reporters Nominees Night in Los Angeles last night. ***Diane Lane and Gerard Butler attend the star-studded Artists for Peace & Justice Fundraiser in Beverly Hills. *** “Avatar” director James Cameron and wife Suzy Amis arrive at the Global Green USA annual pre-Oscar party in Hollywood. ***BE AN LBN-CORRESPONDENT Send your celebrity sightings to: LBNElert@TimeWire.net.
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LBN-LINK: Watch the cost of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan Click here - www.CostOfWar.com.
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 LBN-BOOK NEWS: ***Sarah Palin is entering a deal to write a new book for News Corp. unit HarperCollins. Palin’s yet-to-be-titled book will be “a celebration of American virtues and strength.” Palin is the author of the 2009 bestseller “Going Rogue,” also published by HarperCollins. ***Journalist Richard Rushfield’s AMERICAN IDOL, a look behind the scenes at the tumultuous ten year history of America’s most popular television show, sold to Elisabeth Dyssegaard at Hyperion, with Brenda Copeland editing, for publication in January 2011, by Daniel Greenberg at Levine Greenberg Literary Agency (world).
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GAY SEX SCANDAL AT THE VATICAN: The Vatican is dealing with fallout from a corruption scandal within its ranks that took a salacious turn Thursday with the news that one of the Pope’s aides was soliciting gay prostitutes. According to The Guardian, Angelo Balducci, a Gentleman of His Holiness, or staffer who attended to the Pope, was caught on a police wiretap allegedly negotiating the procurement of a male prostitute with Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, a Vatican chorister. “I saw your call when I was in the Vatican, because I was doing rehearsals in the choir in St Peter’s,” Ehiem says in one conversation, the Guardian reports. He then suggests Balducci meet a man “two metres tall 97 kilos aged 33, completely active.” Balducci was arrested last month on suspicion of corruption over public-works contracts, but the investigation also revealed his suspected involvement in prostitution.
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SHOW SOME COURAGE: Have some guts for once in your life and forward this LBN E-Lert to your friends, family and associates. They will thank you.
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 LBN-COMMENTARY By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: So the yearlong production, set to close after Massachusetts’ devastatingly negative Jan. 19 review, saw the curtain raised one last time. Obama care lives.
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 LBN-COMMENTARY By BARBIE LATZA NADEAU: Amanda Knox was not convicted of murdering Meredith Kercher because she did cartwheels in the police station or owned a vibrator, as her supporters suggest. Knox, 22, along with her 25-year-old former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, were found guilty by a jury in Perugia, Italy, based on hard forensic evidence, according to the sentencing judge’s 427-page reasoning, which was issued Thursday and obtained by The Daily Beast. The two judges and six jury members for the 11-month trial agreed with the prosecution’s case, calling it a “comprehensive and complete picture without gaps and inconsistencies.”
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 LBN-COMMENTARY By PEGGY NOONAN: It is now exactly a year since President Obama unveiled his health-care push and his decision to devote his inaugural year to it—his branding year, his first, vivid year. What a disaster it has been. At best it was wastes of history’s time, a struggle that will not in the end yield something big and helpful but will in fact make future progress more difficult. At worst it may prove to have fatally undermined a new presidency at a time when America desperately needs a successful one.
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LBN-COMMENTARY By MELENA RYZIK: This awards season has had as much narrative sweep as a made-for-television mini-series.
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FILM REVIEW By MANOHLA DARGIS: Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” is busy, garish and periodically amusing.
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LBN-COMMENTARY By PAUL KRUGMAN: Democratic and Republican debates over unemployment benefits and health care show that the parties currently live in different universes, both intellectually and morally.
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LBN-COMMENTARY By PETER HANKOFF (Documentary Filmmaker): Going to visit the captive dolphins and whales is like going to death row to play with the inmates. Their deceptive smiles and friendly performances belie the bigger issues: where did these creatures come from, where are they going, and how long do they live? Is this really any less barbaric than applauding dancing bears or the other now-outlawed animal acts of the 19th century? The simplest way to show the dolphins how intelligent we are is by how we choose to spend our discretionary income.
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 LBN-COMMENTARY By ASRA Q. NOMANI: When Marine Jake Scully drapes his sinewy blue body around his Na’vi bride, Neytiri, the heroine of James Cameron’s Oscar-nominated epic Avatar, his neural tendrils fuse with hers in one of the most unusual sex scenes ever produced on film. Critics and commentators have been dissecting the themes of the Hollywood mega-blockbuster, from its just-war doctrine and environmental ethics. But there’s a philosophical dimension that this otherworldly sex scene captures that most folks have overlooked: the Tantra of Avatar.
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 LBN-HISTORICAL COMMENTARY By LOUIS PASTEUR: The universe is asymmetric and I am persuaded that life, as it is known to us, is a direct result of the asymmetry of the universe or of its indirect consequences. The universe is asymmetric.
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 LBN-A DIFFERENT VIEW:
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 LBN-OVERHEARD: ***The cab driver who accused Naomi Campbell of assaulting him earlier this week has apologized to the supermodel, saying in a statement from his lawyer that he “got angry and overreacted This whole thing has been blown out of proportion and I apologize to Ms. Campbell for causing that to happen.” In spite of a history of violent outbursts Campbell has insisted that this time around she’s in the clear. “I have worked very hard on correcting my previous wrongdoings and I will not be held hostage to my past,” she said. “I try to treat everyone with respect and I am pleased the driver has apologized.” ***Mick Jagger and Angelina Jolie got satisfaction and spent more than one night together during a torrid affair, according to a bombshell new book. The puffy-lipped rocker and actress, who’s 32 years younger than Mick, first hooked up in 1997 when Jolie appeared in the Rolling Stones video “Anybody Seen My Baby,” author Jenny Paul claims in her tell-all, “Brad Pitt and Angeline Jolie: The True Story.” ***While most stars were loading up on swag from the Oscar gifting suites, Sarah Palin left one of them with less than when she arrived. The former vice-presidential candidate made a $1,700 donation to the Red Cross for Haiti and Chile at a swag suite at LA’s Interior Illusion store Wednesday.
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LBN-DID YOU KNOW: ***10 percent of the Russian government’s income comes from the sale of vodka. ***15 percent of Americans secretly bite their toes. ***160 cars can drive side by side on the Monumental Axis in Brazil, the world’s widest road. ***68 percent of a Hostess Twinkie is air! ***A ball of glass will bounce higher than a ball made of rubber.
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LBN-QUOTE: “You know, do I hope that those people die screaming of rectal cancer, yeah” -Sean Penn on the cynics who question his Haiti relief efforts.
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LBN-HISTORY: On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo.
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LBN E-Lert Edited by Natgeda Remy
Contributing Editors: Teju Jyothi, Rachel Yip, Kevin Aquino, Marissa Stone, Delia Ramos, Ben Yano, Anna Alaverdyan.
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