On Friday, we learned that Joy Behar is leaving The View, which is a big deal, considering she's been co-hosting the show for over 16 years. Over the weekend, however, the plot has thickened -- and rumor has it that Elisabeth Hasselbeck is leaving too, possibly followed by (gasp!) Barbara Walters herself. What is going on over there?
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DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran's parliament has passed a three-month stop-gap budget while it debates President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's full-year spending proposals, delivered nearly 90 days late at a time when economic sanctions have cast doubt over future revenue.
This year will be the third in a row that parliament has been unable to pass a full-year budget in time for the March 21 start of the Iranian calendar and fiscal year. Western sanctions over its disputed nuclear program have cut oil exports by more than half over the past year, sharply reducing Iran's income.
"This short-term budget shows that planning beyond 90 days has become impossible because of sanctions," said Iranian-born economist Mehrdad Emadi of the Betamatrix consultancy in London. "The government faces huge uncertainties."
The temporary "three-twelfths" budget authorizes spending of 450,000 billion rials total for the first quarter of the year, Fars news agency reported. That is roughly equivalent to a single month's spending in rial terms in last year's budget, or $13 billion at the current open market exchange rate.
Ahmadinejad proposed the temporary budget as a stop-gap last month when he asked lawmakers to consider his long overdue draft for the full year.
His full-year budget foresees a 31 percent increase in spending in domestic currency, amounting to a cut in dollar terms as the rial has halved in value over the past year on the open market.
Ahmadinejad, coming to the end of a second and final four-year term, has often quarreled with parliament over economic policies, including cuts in subsidies for food and fuel.
Iranian state media quoted lawmakers who saw the temporary spending bill as a necessity but expressed frustration with the need to resort to such bills. Parliament needed a two-month stop-gap before it passed last year's budget.
"Last year the government presented two-twelfths to parliament and this year it is three-twelfths. Maybe next year it will be four-twelfths," said member of parliament Mehdi Sanaei, according to state news agency IRNA reported. "This sort of budget-writing is incorrect and it must be reformed."
The International Energy Agency, which advises rich countries, estimated last week that Iran's oil exports may have dropped below 1 million barrels per day in January, from 2.2 million bpd in late 2011.
New sanctions imposed by the United States and European Union since the start of 2012 banned Iranian oil sales to Europe, and made it difficult for other countries to pay for Iranian oil or for ships that carry it to get insurance.
Western countries accuse Iran of seeking a nuclear weapon. Tehran says its nuclear program is peaceful and the sanctions are a form of economic warfare.
The temporary budget must be ratified by the parliamentary Planning and Budget Committee and the 12-member veto-wielding Guardian Council of jurists and clerics, Fars reported.
DEPENDENCE ON OIL
The full draft budget amounts to 7,305,000 billion rials - $595 billion at the official exchange rate, but only around $200 billion at the free market rate. The 2012 budget was 5,560,000 billion rials.
In a television interview before the budget draft was presented, Ahmadinejad said it would reduce Iran's dependence on oil income and boost non-oil exports, to limit the impact of "heavy factors active from outside".
He said non-oil exports of goods and services could reach $75 billion in the coming year, a 50 percent increase compared to estimated figures for this year.
The draft budget did not give an estimate for oil exports for the forthcoming year. Iranian media said it was based on an average oil price of $95 per barrel. Brent crude oil is now at about $110 a barrel.
The approval process for the budget is likely to be hampered by the deep political divisions between the president and a mainly hostile parliament who accuse him of reckless financial management they see as a major cause of Iran's economic pain.
The president also drew parliamentarians' ire by proposing to increase funding for the executive branch while cutting the budgets of other state bodies, including parliament.
(Additional reporting Yeganeh Torbati; Editing by Peter Graff)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iran-passes-three-month-stop-gap-budget-sanctions-154806011--business.html
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Here at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference, tons of startups and tech companies are vying to get people's attention. Since we're in Austin, a city known for being weird, it turns out that some of the most interesting and innovative technology being exhibited at the conference also happens to be a little offbeat.
For example, if you ever get tired of 'liking' things on Facebook all the time and want to be a little more negative, there's the 'Hater' App for iOS. Hater's Chief Executive, Jake Banks, says the app was made to, "share the things you hate with the people you love." Users make profiles to upload photos of the things they can't stand- long lines, self-taken photos, or "selfies," and for some, Kim Kardashian. So if you're looking for a way to cut the positivity and just vent a little bit about the things that annoy you, Hater might be for you. It's available for iOS devices now.
If you're looking for a combination of things you never thought you would see, how about Twitter, and cycling? Well, thanks to digital ad company Razorfish, SXSW is overrun with 'tweeting bikes' employing UseMeLeaveMe.com. The bikes tweet both their location using GPS, as well as clever quips like, 'Who needs a ride to their lunch date? Better yet, who needs a lunch date? Find me and I'm all yours." Riders can hop on, take one where they need to go, and leave it for the next person who needs a quick ride.
Finally, we have some technology that might have potential to change the health world. Intelligent M, a startup being featured at SXSW Interactive, addresses one problem that is surprisingly common in hospitals- washing one's hands. According to Intelligent M, 100,000 people a year in the United States alone die because of infections that arise from hospital visits. The company created a wristband that monitors how often and how properly hospital staff are washing their hands, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Now that sounds like some cleanliness we can get on board with.
Have you heard of any cool technology you would like to share with us? Tell us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter, and don't forget to use the hashtag #YahooTrendingSXSW.
[Related: Hear Songs from South by Southwest 2013]
Like us on Facebook.com/TrendingNow, and follow "Trending Now" on Twitter: @Knowlesitall and@YahooTrending.
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There are also online directions for making a frame from PVC Pipe.
Source: http://www.houserepairtalk.com/f103/small-greenhuose-15679/
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The sixth-grade class at St. Paul's Lutheran School in Waverly, Iowa, sent a message this week that was heard in the White House briefing room.
"The White House is our house," the class said in a video posted on Facebook. "Please let us visit."
But their trip to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, which had been set for March 16, is off. White House tours will be suspended starting on Saturday due to mandated across-the-board spending cuts known as "sequestration." The move will save the federal government an estimated $74,000 a week.
Many were left holding worthless tour tickets, secured months in advance through members of Congress. There is no rain check for a White House tour.
The children's video caught the attention of White House reporters, and of the top Republican in Congress.
"What is your answer, or the president's answer, to the sixth-graders at St. Paul's Lutheran School?" one reporter asked White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.
"It is extremely unfortunate that we have a situation like the sequester that compels the kinds of tradeoffs and decisions that this represents," said Carney.
He said the Secret Service, which is involved in the tours, offered various options to deal with sequester-related cuts ranging from canceling tours to furloughs and cuts in overtime.
"And in order to allow the Secret Service to best fulfill its core missions, the White House made the decision that we would, unfortunately, have to temporarily suspend these tours," Carney said.
When another White House spokesman was asked whether private donations might put the tours back on track, he said that step might be unfeasible given the technical requirements of the sequester.
The last time the White House closed its doors to school groups was after the September 11, 2001, attacks. The tours resumed the following February, with a suspension in the spring of 2003 during the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The general public was not allowed back into the White House until September 2003.
'A LITTLE BIT HEARTBREAKING'
The decision found little favor with supporters of St. Paul's sixth-graders, who asked Facebook viewers to "like" their video to agitate for putting the tour back on their Washington itinerary.
By late Friday, nearly 1,000 had "liked" the post, nearly 500 had shared it and more than 100 had commented.
House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner boasted that tours of the Capitol would continue.
"Even though our budget's been cut like everyone else's, thanks to proper planning, we're able to avoid furloughs amongst Capitol workers, and tours are going to remain available for all Americans," Boehner told reporters on Thursday.
He called the White House decision "disappointing" and "silly," the result of a failure to find savings in other parts of the budget.
Benno Nelson, a Los Angeles-based film director and self-described "civic nerd" who is planning a family trip to Washington in May, had a one-word response when told of the tour cancellations: "Nooooo!"
"Definitely to get a tour of the White House is something I was really looking forward to, and I planned it in advance and called my congressman. ... To hear that they're not doing that is a little bit heartbreaking," he said.
The recorded White House message for those looking for tour information is as contrite as a recorded message can get:
"Due to staffing reductions resulting from sequestration, we regret to inform you that White House tours will be canceled effective Saturday, March 9, 2013, until further notice. Unfortunately we will not be able to reschedule affected tours. We very much regret having to take this action, particularly during the popular spring touring season."
(Reporting By Deborah Zabarenko, additional reporting by Richard Cowan and David Lawder; Editing by Marilyn W. Thompson and Xavier Briand)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/budget-cuts-end-white-house-tours-not-finger-061937089--business.html
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Crazy Celebrity Hookups: Can You Believe They Dated?
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Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/03/crazy-celebrity-hookups-can-you-believe-they-dated/
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Your phone may or may not already contain an NFC (near field communication) chip ? if you have an Android phone, it might; if you have an iPhone, it doesn?t. We?ll begin to see NFC in more and more phones, though.
And one of the main marketing points for these NFC chips has been the ability to tap your phone on a payment terminal in a retail environment instead of taking five seconds to pull your wallet out of your pocket like a heathen. Samsung, for instance, also promotes NFC as a way to share music playlists and ? ahem ? private, marital videos by tapping two NFC-equipped phones together.
But if you ask me, a man of arguably inconsequential stature, the true power of NFC lies in its ability to unlock doors without using traditional keys.
If you work for a large-ish company, you may already have a keycard that either uses NFC or NFC-like technology to grant you access to certain employee-only areas. Now imagine having a keycard integrated directly into your NFC-equipped smartphone and outfitting your house with NFC door locks. Instead of fumbling for your keys when you get home, you?d just tap your phone against the lock. If you?re like me and you don?t use a car every day, you?d be able to leave the house with your wallet and your phone ? no need to carry keys around. (Of course, all the mobile payment companies would rather you leave your wallet at home, too.)
The technology gets even more intriguing when you consider that smartphones are always connected: Granting someone with an NFC-equipped phone time-limited access to your house simply by e-mailing them is a logical extension of the technology. Germany?s Fraunhofer Society ? famous for inventing MP3 technology, among other things ? is working on a system called Key2Share that would allow you to do just that.
According to CNet?s Stephen Shankland:
Key2Share uses smartphones equipped with near-field communications (NFC) short-range wireless networking abilities to unlock phones. But because approval to use the key becomes digital data, a person can e-mail that approval.
It could be useful for other situations, too, said Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, a researcher involved with the project. For example, a hotel could send a key to important customers by text message or e-mail so they can bypass check-in. And a company could also quickly revoke access if an employee loses a smartphone then issue new keys as fast.
Sadeghi told CNet, ?It is not that far from being a product, but it is not there yet.? Fraunhofer?s system skews more toward a corporate environment ? there?s an entire paragraph?in the marketing materials devoted to protecting the system against attacks ? but it?s not a stretch to imagine a consumer version somewhere down the line.
There are a handful of similar products already on the market, however. The $179 Lockitron, for instance, is a Wi-Fi-connected apparatus that you can retrofit over the top of an existing deadbolt and use to remotely grant people access to your home. It doesn?t require NFC-equipped phones, either: In fact, iPhone users can program the door to unlock when they get within a few feet of it. And a U.K. upstart called Onefinestay uses a connected keyless entry system to let people rent out their homes without exchanging physical keys with renters.
So this technology exists and is in use already; that Fraunhofer is throwing weight behind it is a good sign we may see more and more of it around the world. Just don?t forget your phone. Or maybe hide a backup phone under a fake rock? that?s waterproof? and sports a built-in solar charger.
Need to lend your key? E-mail it, Fraunhofer says [CNet]
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/forget-mobile-payments-where-nfc-really-shines-151009165--finance.html
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