Monday, August 5, 2013

Australians to go to the polls on Sept. 7

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) ? Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called an election on Sept. 7 and said Sunday that it will be fought over who can be trusted to manage the Australian economy as it transitions from a decade-old mining boom fed by Chinese industrial demand that is now fading.

In starting the five-week election campaign, Rudd said the economy can no longer rely on Chinese demand for iron ore and coal that made the country one of the few wealthy nations to avoid a recession during the global economic downturn.

"The boom, of course, has fuelled so much of our nation's wealth," he told reporters at Parliament House. "That boom is over."

"Who do the Australian people trust to best lead them through the new economic challenges that lie ahead?" he asked.

Rudd conceded that his center-left Labor Party was the underdog, saying his advisers had told him that if the election had been held this weekend, his government would have lost.

But opinion polls also show that more voters prefer Rudd as prime minister than opposition leader Tony Abbott.

The latest economic figures show the trend, with the Treasury Department on Friday raising its estimated deficit for the current fiscal year to 30.1 billion Australian dollars ($26.8 billion) due to the mining slowdown. The new forecast for the year ending June 30, 2014, reveals a substantial deterioration in Australia's finances since May, when the department forecast a deficit of AU$18 billion.

The government also announced a AU$33.3 billion shortfall in the revenue forecast over the next four years ? a deterioration of about AU$3 billion a week since the May forecast.

Rudd said Sunday that the date meant he would not attend the G20 meeting in Russia that week, but Australia would likely be represented by Foreign Minister Bob Carr.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/australians-polls-sept-7-063206662.html

kentucky derby Iron Man 3 margaret thatcher MET GALA 2013 proflowers Susannah Collins George Jones funeral

Traders to focus on insurance company earnings, latest Canadian ...

Here at Maclean's, we appreciate the written word. And we appreciate you, the reader. We are always looking for ways to create a better user experience for you and wanted to try out a new functionality that provides you with a reading experience in which the words and fonts take centre stage. We believe you'll appreciate the clean, white layout as you read our feature articles. But we don't want to force it on you and it's completely optional. Click "View in Clean Reading Mode" on any article if you want to try it out. Once there, you can click "Go back to regular view" at the top or bottom of the article to return to the regular layout.

TORONTO ? The focus on earnings moves to the financial sector this week as traders wait for reports from insurance giants Manulife Financial Corp. (TSX:MFC) and Sun Life Financial Inc. (TSX:SLF).

The Toronto market ended the week with a modest loss of 45 points or 0.35 per cent following the release of a slew of earnings from corporate Canada, particularly from the resource sector. The materials sector was the biggest drag after fertilizer producers PotashCorp of Saskatchewan (TSX:POT) and Agrium (TSX:AGU) racked up huge losses after Russian producer Uralkali opted to break up a powerful cartel. The move raised concerns that potash prices could fall by around 25 per cent.

The reports, Sun Life on Wednesday and Manulife on Thursday, come at a time when both stocks are trading close to their 52-week highs. Sun Life has risen 62 per cent from its 52-week low to $33.95 while Manulife has surged 81 per cent from its low for the year to $18.74.

?(You) couldn?t give them away last year,? said Chris King, portfolio manager at Morgan, Meighen and Associates.

?We?ve gone from a significant price to book value discount to trading at an appropriate multiple probably for a company of this complexity and style. But it reflects optimism in the sector obviously.?

These insurers and others have been hit with a double-whammy that has affected earnings and stock ever since the financial collapse of 2008 ? anaemic stock market returns and interest rates close to zero.

But 2013 has proved to be the turnaround year as three waves of stimulus by the U.S. Federal Reserve have sparked a stock market rally that has seen the Dow industrials up about 20 per cent year to date.

And long-term rates are headed higher with the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury sitting at around 2.6 per cent, a full point higher than where it was at the beginning of May.

It was later that month when Fed chairman Ben Bernanke first raised the possibility that the central bank will ease up on a key element of stimulus, its monthly US$85 billion of bond purchases.

King pointed out that insurers have benefited from a generally improving global economy and a recovering U.S. housing market.

?A better economy ergo produces more people hiring, more premiums, people adding life insurance,? he said.

?And as you write more mortgages, you put more life insurance on them.?

At the same time, King said he is concerned that market expectations may have slightly exceeded what they will deliver in the earnings for the second quarter.

At Sun Life Financial, analysts are looking for 67 cents per share of adjusted earnings, compared with 64 cents a year earlier.

Manulife Financial is expected to post 34 cents per share of adjusted earnings, compared with 31 cents a year earlier.

In addition to these earnings, a number of Canadian corporate heavyweights will also be reporting this week including movie theatre operator Cineplex (TSX:CGS), coffee chain Tim Hortons, Telecom giants BCE Inc. (TSX:BCE) and Telus (TSX:T), along with fertilizer company Agrium (TSX:AGU).

Meanwhile, there is little in the way of U.S. economic news this week, but traders will look to the latest Canadian job creation figures at the end of the week.

Economists expect Statistics Canada to report on Friday that about 10,000 jobs were created during July after a near-flat reading in June.

?While July benefitted from a bounce-back in activity with the end of the Quebec construction strike and post-Alberta flood cleanup, it?s not clear those factors had a meaningful impact on hiring figures,? said CIBC World Markets economist Emanuella Enenajor, who is looking for a higher job creation figure than the consensus.

?But recent resilient activity in construction and retailing may have contributed to a 15,000 increase in employment.?

Traders will also look to June merchandise trade figures and housing starts data.

In the U.S., the Institute for Supply Management hands in its July survey on the non-manufacturing sector on Monday.

Source: http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/08/04/traders-to-focus-on-insurance-company-earnings-latest-canadian-jobs-data/

donald driver mariana trench transcendental meditation obama care miss universe canada don draper gallagher

Gender earnings equality inches forward, but why hasn't policy kept ...

Spencer Thompson is economic analyst at IPPR

Gender equalitySlowly but surely, the persistent inequality in earnings between men and women is declining.

It is an established fact that there is little gender gap in pay for those in their mid to late-twenties, but that childbirth and the career break that often follows it drags the earnings of women down compared to males of a similar age.

This ?motherhood pay penalty? has a negative impact on family living standards, as well as highlighting the low level of policy support we offer families, and mothers in particular, to reduce the barriers to work following childbirth.

But even among families with children, the status quo is shifting. New research by IPPR published today shows that since the late 1990s, a million more British mothers are earning half or more of family earnings. All in all, around a third of mothers are now the main breadwinner in their family, up from less than a quarter a decade and a half ago.

Women are both earning more and working more, with the gap in hours worked and hourly wages of mothers and fathers shrinking considerably.

What is driving this change? Partly it reflects the gap in overall employment rates, which remains large but has shrunk enormously over recent decades. There are more opportunities for women to work and they face less workplace discrimination than in the past.

At the same time, men are performing worse in the labour market than ever before, partly caused by de-industrialisation and the shift to a service economy.

More fundamentally, an enormous cultural shift has taken place; gender roles at home and at work have started to break down, with the outdated model of a male breadwinner and female home-maker no longer representative of the lived family experience of most people.

While this change has taken place across different family types, persistent gaps still remain between groups, with some families being left behind in this shift. Fewer younger mothers, those with low or no qualifications, and those from an ethnic minority background are breadwinning as compared to older, highly-skilled white mothers.

This is unlikely to be solely caused by some groups of mothers preferring to stay at home than work, the danger is rather that for some, real choice in family preferences for work and care is being held back by external factors.

One of the biggest disparities is between families with a youngest child of different ages. In the latest year for which we have data, over a third of mothers with school-age children are earning the majority of family income, up from around 23 per cent in the late 1990s. On the other hand, only around 21 per cent of mothers of pre-school children are breadwinning.

What this points towards is the established fact that some of the greatest barriers to maternal employment and therefore higher family earnings, living standards, and reduced poverty risk, are faced in the early years following childbirth.

Percentage of mothers earning half or more of family income by age of youngest child

IPPR

While the proportion of mothers breadwinning in families with pre-school children has risen since the 1990s, what is worrying is the fact that policy seems to be moving in the opposite direction. While mothers are going out to work in greater numbers, in many areas policy assumes that a mother?s place is in the home.

The structure of parental leave in the UK is geared towards fathers taking a much smaller role in caring for new-borns than mothers, meaning it is the woman who is more likely to lose their attachment to the labour market following childbirth. Inequality in access to high quality flexible working also means many mothers face few options in the labour market beyond low-paid, low-skilled part-time work.

The lack of a comprehensive system of universal affordable childcare, combined with the high and growing cost of private provision, means that for many families work simply does not pay. And the shift to universal credit will generate all sorts of perverse incentives for mothers in couples to remain out of work rather than re-join the labour market.

In this context talk of a married couples tax allowance seems woefully antiquated, going against the grain of the changing experience of most families.

By not acknowledging in policy terms the fundamental shift taking place in families? preferences and attitudes towards work, we risk holding mothers and families back.

Having more families with all parents in work is a good thing, alleviating child poverty, raising living standards, reducing gender inequality and ensuring greater long-term stability in the public finances. And the data suggests that more and more families are actively choosing to combine care and work.

But to continue this trend requires policy to actively support families decision to work, rather than close down opportunities to make real choices about work and care.

The IPPR report, ?Who?s Breadwinning: working mothers and the new face of family support? is available here

Source: http://www.leftfootforward.org/2013/08/gender-earnings-equality-inches-forward-but-why-hasnt-policy-kept-up/

Liz Cheney robin roberts ESPYS 2013 project runway Honey Boo Boo Behati Prinsloo Talia Castellano

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Why can't the snakes cross the road, secret lives of baby snakes and other questions

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Researchers are conducting some of the first ever scientific studies of neonate pine snakes, performing snake surgery for radio tracking and helping snakes survive road crossings through the busy New Jersey shore traffic.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/0gPenz8bv7c/130802132209.htm

Robert Guerrero may day 747 crash Kentucky Derby 2013 Barcelona celtics harry connick jr

Time Warner Cable blacks out CBS stations

8 hours ago

Image: CBS logo

CBS

After fee negotiations failed between Time Warner Cable and CBS, the cable provider on Friday blacked out the network for customers in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, Denver and Pittsburgh at 5 p.m. ET.

"We agreed to an extension on Tuesday morning with the expectation that we would engage in a meaningful negotiation with CBS. Since then, CBS has refused to have a productive discussion," the company said in a statement. "It's become clear that no matter how much time we give them, they're not willing to come to reasonable terms. We thank our customers for their patience and support as we continue to fight hard to keep their prices down."

CBS claims in its own statement that Time Warner Cable "has conducted negotiations in a combative and non-productive spirit, indulging in pointless brinksmanship and distorted public positioning ? such as the fictional and ridiculous 600 percent increase CBS supposedly demanded ? while maintaining antiquated positions no longer held by any other programming distributor in the business."

The network insists it wants only "fair compensation for the most-watched television network with the most popular content in the world."?

"Big Brother" and "Under the Dome" are two of the network's big summer hits that TWC subscribers in the affected cities will not be able to to watch during the blackout. The network is also home to megahits "The Big Bang Theory," "NCIS," "Two and a Half Men" and more.?

Because of the TWC blackout, CBS said that the cable provider's subscribers will miss the World Golf Championships featuring Tiger Woods on Aug. 3, and the PGA Championship, which kicks off Aug. 8.

Subscribers in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas will also be missing various baseball and football events in August.

Showtime, which is also owned by CBS, is blacked out as well.

The premium cable network said in a statement that Time Warner Cable's move was "completely unnecessary" and "totally punitive to our subscribers." Showtime also noted that it had agreed to allow the cable provider to continue carrying the premium network while negotiations were ongoing, and is "deeply disappointed" by the decision.

On Demand content from CBS, The Movie Channel, Flix and Smithsonian Channel will also be unavailable during the blackout. TWC said on its website that "as a courtesy," it is providing Showtime subscribers with Starz temporarily, and The Movie Channel subscribers with Encore.

TWC subscribers in the affected areas who have TV antennae and digital tuners should be able to get the CBS signal from their local stations.

CBS said in its statement that it hopes the blackout will be short-lived, but it is unclear how long it will last.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/entertainment/time-warner-cable-blacks-out-cbs-stations-6C10833602

2012 Olympics Chad Everett London Olympics Kristen Stewart Rupert Sanders Photos 2016 Olympics TD Bank mountain lion

Friday, August 2, 2013

Denzel Washington Turned Down Small Role In 'Fast & Furious 7'

During a longwinded, occasionally entertaining rant about how studios can't seem to formulate new intellectual properties, Deadline's Mike Fleming, Jr. let some biggish news slip: Denzel Washington, who can be seen in this weekend's oddly satisfying shoot 'em up "2 Guns," turned down a "small role" in the next 'Fast and Furious' movie (currently titled "Fast & Furious 7"), to be directed by James Wan ("The Conjuring," "Insidious: Chapter 2"). No details on who Denzel would have played or why he turned down the role, but Fleming is still hopeful that a major star can fill the void before Wan starts shooting. Considering Universal has already set a July 6th, 2014 date for "Fast & Furious 7," they'd better hurry up and find someone.

There are a lot of question marks surrounding "Fast & Furious 7," which doesn't even have a definitive lockdown of the cast (although series mainstay Vin Diesel has been tweeting about it since the spring). Dwayne Johnson, who has become a highlight since joining the series from "Fast Five" on, says that he won't be back due to scheduling conflicts with his forthcoming "Hercules: The Thracian Wars" (are they really going to call it that?), but we wouldn't rule him out just yet. These movies seem to exist in their own pocket universe, where scheduling conflicts don't exist and airport runways stretch on for miles. Jason Statham will be around as the villain, teased in a mid-credits cookie during "Fast & Furious 6" and we assume most of the principles will be back because, well, what else do Michelle Rodriguez or Paul Walker really have going on?? ? ?

We look forward to hearing about what character Washington would have played (and who they woo to replace him). If anything, the critical and commercial success of "The Conjuring" showed what a world-class filmmaker Wan has become, and whatever he chooses to do next is an incredibly exciting proposition. He's hoping he brings a decidedly old school flavor back to the franchise.

"Fast & Furious 7," without Denzel Washington, hits theaters on July 6th, 2014. "2 Guns," with Denzel Washington, hits theaters this week.?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/theoldplaylist/~3/Kv7233hyisA/denzel-washington-turned-down-small-role-in-fast-furious-7-20130801

hunger games review jeff saturday jason smith jon corzine austin rivers austin rivers sweet home alabama

The Live-Action Akira Is Back in Development

Posted 8:39 PM August 1st, 2013 by Binh Ngo



Warner Bros. shut down its live-action Akira adaptation early last year due to concerns over the script and budget, but it is now back on, Variety has learned. Jaume Collet-Serra is in talks to helm the movie. Again.

Before its collapse back in 2012, the movie had a $90 million budget with Garrett Hedlund attached to play the title character. Ken Watanabe, Helena Bonham Carter, and Kristen Stewart were in various stages of negotiation. Collet-Serra was attached to direct.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, WB wanted the budget to be in the $60-$70 million range, although another source had said it was actually problems with the script that had halted the production and the budget would still remain in the $90 million range.

Collet-Serra, along with producers Andrew Lazar and Jennifer Kiloran Davisson, tried to modify the script to meet WB's requirements, but to no avail. The director eventually left to direct Liam Neeson in the thriller Non-Stop, which will be release on February 28, 2014.

Before restarting talks with Collet-Serra, WB had considered other directors like Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, but the studio determined it liked Collet-Serra's vision of the movie the best. More importantly, Collet-Serra supposedly found a way to make the movie that would meet WB's new budget, which is unknown at the moment.

Akira will begin production in spring 2014 after Collet-Serra is done with the Liam Neeson crime pic Run All Night. It's unknown whether or not Hedlund is still attached to star.

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1928045/news/1928045/

the talented mr ripley weather new orleans orcl the hartford illinois primary 2012 michael bay zsa zsa gabor