Resolve to Get Clearer Skin in the New Year– Tips From the Paula’s Choice Research Team






It’s frustrating, but true: Acne, to one degree or another, can occur at any age. The Paula’s Choice Research Team behind the best-selling book, Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me, share the facts and products they’ve uncovered to have acne-free skin at any age.


Seattle, Washington (PRWEB) December 21, 2012






Let 2013 be a year where skin is beautiful and clear—because, while it’s frustrating, it is true: Acne can strike at any age and at any time. Whether it’s during the teen years or in the middle of menopause, acne affects up to 95% of the population at various stages of life. It’s a struggle that the Paula’s Choice Research Team, writers of the best-selling book, Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me, know all too well.


Through their investigative work evaluating and reviewing all kinds of skin-care products, as well as published research on acne and its treatments, they developed this essential guide to having clear skin at any age.



  •     Cleanse Twice Daily: Use a gentle, water-soluble cleanser to remove excess oil and makeup that lead to clogged pores and dull-looking skin. Drying cleansers will cause irritation, making acne worse. Try Paula’s Choice CLEAR Normalizing Cleanser, a face wash that’s tough on blemishes but gentle on skin.



  •     Leave-On Exfoliant is a Must: Daily use of a well-formulated, leave-on product with salicylic acid (also known as beta hydroxy acid, or BHA) works beautifully to unclog pores that cause breakouts. Salicylic acid also reduces the redness and red marks from acne and provides an additional antibacterial punch. Truly, BHA is an anti-acne miracle! Find the top-rated salicylic acid products on CosmeticsCop.com.

  •     Eradicate Acne-Causing Bacteria: After exfoliating, apply a lightweight, nonirritating anti-acne product that’s medicated with benzoyl peroxide. This well-researched topical disinfectant works to quickly eliminate acne-causing bacteria. Apply it to all breakout-prone areas as a preventive measure—don’t just spot-treat current pimples.

  •     Avoid Heavy Moisturizers: Those with oily skin and breakouts should not use traditional cream moisturizers, even if they claim to be oil-free, because the ingredients in cream moisturizers can clog pores. Instead, if dry areas are a concern, apply a lightweight, gel-textured moisturizer for soothing relief or opt for a serum, which is especially great to prep skin for makeup.

  •     Remove Surface Pimples: Beauty magazines and even some dermatologists say one should never pop a pimple, but let’s get real—sometimes, it’s just plain necessary. In reality, popping a pimple the right way reduces inflammation, scarring, and healing time, and gets rid of the ugly white bump. Follow this step-by-step guide to safely and effectively pop, treat, and conceal a blemish.

These basic tips for clear skin are the first step in the battle against blemishes. For information on how to treat, conceal, and prevent acne visit CosmeticsCop.com.


###



Led by best-selling author and beauty expert Paula Begoun, the Paula’s Choice Research Team evaluates and reviews hundreds of skin-care and makeup products, in books such as Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me, and online at CosmeticsCop.com. Combining cosmetics industry knowledge and expertise, Paula and her team have developed the Paula’s Choice line of state-of-the-art formulations based on reliable, published skin-care research. Products include skin-care, makeup, body, and hair-care products, beauty tools, and accessories. All products are fragrance-free, cruelty free, and environmentally friendly, and they perform beautifully without false promises.


Tanya Wayne
[email protected]
212-243-1431
Email Information


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He’s 28, and Here to Take Over Your Company






Ryan Morris spent a week steeling himself for the showdown. Then 27 years old, he was in his first campaign as an activist investor, trying to wrest control of a small company named InfuSystem (INFU), which provides and services pumps used in chemotherapy. In the meeting, Morris would confront InfuSystem’s chairman and vice chairman, two men in their 40s, and tell them that as a shareholder, he thought the company was heading in the wrong direction.


Morris is competitive—his high school rowing teammates nicknamed him “Cyborg,” and he took a semester off college to race as a semi-pro cyclist—but face-to-face confrontation wasn’t something he relished. “I like the thrill of the hunt, but not the kill,” he says. To prepare, Morris outlined questions, guessed potential responses, and tried to anticipate what tense “pregnant moments” could arrive. He built his clout by lining up support from InfuSystem’s largest shareholder as well as a veteran activist investor. Morris knew his own looks—he resembles a sandy-haired Mitt Romney—could help mask his youth, and decided he’d wear a tie, much as he hates to.






The company, with just $ 47 million in revenue, was spending too much money, and in the wrong places. In the previous year, InfuSystem’s board and CEO earned more than $ 11 million combined. This was for a company whose stock had lost 40 percent of its value over the previous three years. Morris figured that as a shareholder voice on the board, he could help cut expenses—including the high pay—and, once it was clean enough to sell, reap a return for his own small hedge fund.


On Dec. 13, 2011, he finally sat at a conference table across from the two directors. After 45 minutes of discussion, he still didn’t think his concerns were being acknowledged. So he got to the point: He wanted three board seats.


When an activist investor like Carl Icahn tries to take over a household brand, it plays out on CNBC. Most shareholder struggles occur when little-known investment funds try to take over little-known companies like InfuSystem. Of the more than two dozen activist battles in 2012, most involved companies with a market value under $ 50 million. In the smallest face-off this year, Georgetown Law student Daniel Rudewicz, 29, tried and failed to gain control of a $ 2.2 million company that makes microwave filters.


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Many of the fights are being waged by a younger generation of activists, according to Ron Berenblat, Morris’s attorney at Olshan Frome Wolosky. Among the firm’s clients is a 24-year-old about to start his first activist campaign, trying to take over a technology company. Morris’s experience, says Berenblat, puts him “on the new forefront of 30-and-younger activist investors who are ​intelligent, patient, and highly methodical.” After the financial crisis exhausted even the most seasoned investors, young activists like Morris are bringing new energy to the hunt, shining light into dark corners of the market that are often overlooked.
 
 
Growing up in Toronto, Morris dreamed of becoming a nuclear physicist, obsessed with the idea that nuclear fusion could create infinite, clean energy—that was, until his father let him in on some bad news. “Even if you become the best scientist in the world, you will not make fusion happen,” Ryan recalls him warning. “If you want to make something happen, you need to be in charge of capital. It’s the resource allocation that gets things done.”


Morris started reading Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRK/A) shareholder letters. To the 12-year-old Morris, it seemed so easy: With hard work and a clear mind, an independent thinker could spot an undervalued company, buy it cheap, and hold on until other investors recognize the company’s true worth. “Something where you can do well while being a loner was kind of appealing,” he says.


Using money from a summer job laying lawn sprinklers, Morris soon bought his first stock, a company that made fuel cells. He kept investing when he moved to upstate New York to study operations research at Cornell University and later as he extended his undergraduate degree into a master’s in engineering. Alongside classes and cycling, Morris worked with fellow student Paul George to found a profitable company called VideoNote that made it easy for Cornell to stream lectures online. As graduation loomed, Morris decided he didn’t want to take a job on Wall Street, where he could earn millions in the algorithm-driven world of quantitative finance. The financial models that drive the market’s split-second trades were “dumb” in Morris’s eyes, George says. “His whole position is take long-term positions on companies and don’t try to trade on noise. You can’t predict anything.”


He still wanted to be an investor, though. In the fall of 2008, with the stock market in freefall, and lots of companies at historic lows, Morris saw an opportunity. By early 2009 he was talking with George about managing his money, with a compelling pitch: “He said, ‘Cast aside your emotions. … People are overreacting, so I can come in and be rational,’ ” George recalls. George handed over some of their payout from VideoNote and a small inheritance, becoming Morris’s first investor. With their combined $ 50,000, Morris opened his fund on Feb. 24, 2009, naming it Meson Capital Partners after a subatomic particle. His timing was perfect: The stock market bottomed in March and has more than doubled since.


1cddb  investing activist52  01inline  405b Hes 28, and Here to Take Over Your Company


Over the coming months, Morris sent some close friends and professors a 10-page letter detailing his value approach, which embodied Buffett’s idea of investing in companies that have strong business prospects and are not simply hot stocks. A few gave him money, and a single question Morris asked of Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger at Wesco Financial’s annual meeting helped him pull in more. He asked whether it’s harder to pursue a “buy and hold” strategy when businesses seem to evolve faster and faster. Ben Claremon, a blogger who circulated a transcript of the meeting, noted next to Morris’s name: “Watch out for this guy: Some very smart people think he is going to be a star fund manager.”


Morris didn’t start out as an activist. At first he looked for sound companies that had been swept up in the market panic and noticed that some small aircraft leasing companies had taken a beating. “If you think of a headline for an investment that involves ‘airlines’ and ‘finance’ you can imagine there was not much competition in buying these stocks,” Morris would write to investors. He invested about 40 percent of his fund in three companies and the stocks soared. By the end of the year, Morris’s fund had gained 753 percent before fees—17 times the return of the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. In his first annual letter, he told his investors this was “embarrassingly far off our target” of beating the S&P by 10 percent annually over three to five years. “This was not a sustainable performance.”


The returns attracted great interest, some of which Morris calls “the wrong kind of attention.” One potential investor asked, “OK, I will get 50 percent a year, right?” Morris says he turned away several of these hot money types. His letters, which laid out his strategies, started making the rounds among well-known value investors and eventually landed in the hands of Whitney Tilson, founder of hedge fund T2 Partners. “There’s this young guy who looks off the beaten path for interesting, misplaced situations,” Tilson says. And those returns? “That catches anyone’s eye.” In 2010, Tilson and Zeke Ashton, founder of Centaur Capital Partners, became seed investors in Morris’s partnership, providing a bit of capital and a regular source of advice.


Morris’s second year didn’t match his first. In the words of his next annual letter, it was “marked by frustration and underperformance.” There were some bright spots when he “coat tailed” the work of other activist investors. One forced a bloated pharmaceutical company to sell itself, and another managed to wring some money for shareholders out of an industrial laser business reorganizing in bankruptcy. Reflecting on the year, Morris told his investors that the success of those activists made him optimistic about his own future, writing, “Hopefully, as we grow in the future, we can be the ones to save the day.”
 
 
“Why did he become an activist investor? Because he got screwed,” George says. In early 2011, Morris invested in a hearing aid provider called HearUSA, which he thought was undervalued after it signed a long-delayed deal with AARP. Then HearUSA’s largest supplier, Siemens (SI), forced the company to file for bankruptcy protection over a contract dispute. Morris says he was caught totally off guard—he’d seen no warning signs in the hundreds of pages of filings he’d read—and sold 80 percent of his shares at a loss.


After reading more documents from the case, Morris decided that HearUSA’s business was sound and that Siemens acted because it was at odds with the company’s management. As HearUSA’s stock fell in the wake of the bankruptcy filing, Morris began buying shares, paying on average a third of what he paid for his original stake. He then joined other investors in persuading the bankruptcy trustee to establish an equity committee to represent shareholders. Morris and the rest of the committee helped negotiate a deal for Siemens to buy HearUSA, avoiding liquidation and doubling Meson’s total investment.


As that foray ended, a HearUSA shareholder tipped Morris off to InfuSystem. The company had a steady, recurring revenue stream. After all, “cancer treatment services are totally economically insensitive,” says Morris. “If Europe crashes, you still need this service.” But that cash flow was obscured by what Morris politely calls “nonessential costs.” In 2010 the board awarded $ 7.2 million in salary, stock, and other compensation to Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Sean McDevitt, gave $ 1.3 million to Vice Chairman Pat LaVecchia, and awarded at least $ 400,000 to almost every other member of the board, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. It let the stock awards vest immediately and had InfuSystem pay the personal income taxes they triggered. That meant InfuSystem’s board earned six times the median compensation for other micro-cap companies, according to data from the National Association of Corporate Directors. Reading the filings, Morris questioned how the board, which included pharmaceutical executives and an astronaut, could approve the largess. “These don’t seem like bad people,” he thought. (Members of the board did not respond to requests for comment for this article.)


Fresh off his experience with HearUSA, Morris thought if he could get a voice on the board, he could help investors. He says he called the largest shareholders and learned they were irked too. That’s when Morris began laying the groundwork for battle. He bought 2 percent of InfuSystem’s shares and persuaded Kleinheinz Capital Partners, the company’s largest shareholder, and veteran small-cap activist Chuck Gillman to join him in an official group of concerned shareholders. On Dec. 6, 2011, Morris filed a form called a Schedule 13D with the SEC, declaring the group controlled 11.4 percent of InfuSystem’s shares and intended to influence the board.


In the face-to-face meeting a week later, Morris says McDevitt and LaVecchia defended the stock awards, explaining that the board wanted to boost the company’s market capitalization so it could move from trading on over-the-counter exchanges to the NYSE Amex. Morris says that when he raised the prospect of joining the board, McDevitt’s face reddened as he sarcastically retorted, “Oh, we’d love to spend more time with you.”


Five days later, Morris learned the board rejected the shareholders’ request for three seats. He scoured InfuSystem’s bylaws and decided to demand a “special meeting,” which management must call within 75 days after a majority of all shareholders demand one. Morris was confident he could get the support he needed, and on Jan. 18, 2012, filed a preliminary proxy statement calling for the special meeting to replace the board.


This is about the time when many shareholder activists would start firing off nasty press releases attacking current management as corrupt or incompetent in an effort to rally shareholder support. Such battles can escalate quickly and end up in court. Morris says, “as much as I love lawyers, I don’t really love paying them.” Instead, he issued what he calls “gentlemanly” press releases that announced his SEC filings.


When Morris called shareholders, some said, “Thank God you’re here.” Others were skeptical. How did they know that Morris wouldn’t raid the company for himself? “I was like, ‘I’m 27. I would be ending my career right now if I was going to do that,’ ” he recalls. By March 5, Morris’s group had more than the 50 percent support needed. The InfuSystem board now had until May 7 to call the special meeting.


McDevitt and the board began negotiating. In the final deal, McDevitt, LaVecchia, and all but two of the board members were out. “I fired an astronaut,” Morris says now with a slight smile. McDevitt waived the 2 million shares he was entitled to under his employment contract and instead took a $ 1 million payout. “If we had had nasty press releases, there’s no way we would have settled that severance thing,” Morris says. InfuSystem would get a new CEO and seven new board members, with Morris as the chairman, one of the youngest on the NYSE. “I am two months younger than Zuckerberg,” he says. “But he’s about a zillion dollars richer.”
 
 
On a November afternoon in Manhattan, Morris sat at a desk stacked with moving boxes and explained that he was closing InfuSystem’s New York office. InfuSystem had leased the office for McDevitt and a team of financial analysts to use as they looked for other biotech firms to buy. “They had these investment bankers to make acquisitions, but we don’t have capital to do acquisitions,” Morris says.


After the takeover, Morris and the board laid off the New York staff and sublet the midtown office space, saving InfuSystem about $ 1 million a year, Morris estimates. When he visits New York, Morris crashes on George’s couch rather than charge the company for a hotel. These cost-cutting moves helped InfuSystem post its first quarterly profit since 2010 in November. Yet Morris has more work to do—shares are still down since he bought them.


Morris now spends about a third of his time on InfuSystem and the rest on other investments. Knowing he’s not likely to see another market like 2009, he views activism as a way to get a persistent advantage in normal times. “I think now he is struggling to say, How do I apply this? What will allow me to be my own catalyst and allow me to find another edge?” says Ashton. “Not in terms of size of return, but where I have an edge that is somewhat durable.” Chris Cernich, executive director for proxy contest research at Institutional Shareholder Services, has found that companies with an activist investor on the board typically outperform their peer groups by 16.6 percentage points. But activism, with its patience and strategizing and expense, isn’t for most people, and the battles don’t always end well.


In August, Morris saw a different activism project fall apart. He’d tried to take over Pinnacle Airlines, a regional carrier, which later fell into bankruptcy. After a judge denied Morris’s requests for more shareholder input, Morris decided it wasn’t worth appealing the ruling. “Investing isn’t a crusade, it’s about making money,” he says. Pinnacle became the 28-year-old’s biggest loss to date.


Around the same time, a friend who runs another small hedge fund tipped Morris off to Lucas Energy (LEI), a small energy producer with rights to drill on oil-rich properties but not enough capital to get the crude out of the ground. It also had a CEO and co-founder who was “not a great communicator,” Morris says. “I’m being polite here.” After acquiring 11 percent of the company’s shares, Morris flew to Texas to meet the CEO and chairman. He headed back the next day with an invitation to have two seats on the board, with no strings attached. Within three weeks, he and the rest of the board brought on a new CFO, and in December they replaced the CEO.


Morris says he’s getting used to the ups and downs that are part of long-term investing. He works out of a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco he shares with his “really supportive fiancé,” a blonde Belarussian he met at a coffee shop in Santa Monica. “So that keeps me sane,” he says. Plus: “My investors are very patient with me. I’m very grateful.” Morris now has 33 investors and about $ 15 million under management.


His long-term plan is to “cut my teeth with these small ones that I fix up and sell, and then you can start doing more interesting strategic stuff once you get bigger.” Eventually, he wants to merge companies, change operations, and make the big plays. But to get there, Morris needs more money, and more experience sitting across the table from executives and demanding a seat on a board. It may require a new tie.


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Kenya police: 28 people killed in clashes






NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A police official says 28 people have been killed in clashes between farmers and herders in south-eastern Kenya.


Anthony Kamitu, who is leading police operations to prevent the attacks, said Friday that the Pokomo tribe of farmers raided a village of the Orma herding community, called Kipao, at dawn in the Tana River Delta.






The latest deaths in a tit-for-tat cycle of killings may be related to a redrawing of political boundaries and next year’s general elections, according to the U.N.


At least 110 people were killed in clashes between the Pokomo and Orma in September and October.


Animosity between the two communities over land and water resources has existed for decades.


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Nokia to get payments in patent deal with RIM






HELSINKI (Reuters) – Struggling Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia has settled its patent dispute with BlackBerry maker Research in Motion in return for payments, as it tries to exploit its trove of technology patents to boost its finances.


Terms of the agreement were confidential, but Nokia said on Friday it included a one-time payment to be booked in the fourth quarter, as well as ongoing fees, all to be paid by RIM.






Nokia is one of the industry’s top patent holders, having invested 45 billion euros ($ 60 billion) in mobile research and development over the past two decades.


It has been trying to make use of that legacy to ensure its survival, amid a fall in sales as well as cash. The Finnish firm is battling to recover lost ground in the lucrative smartphone market to the likes of Apple and Samsung.


The agreement with RIM settles all existing patent litigation between the two companies, Nokia said, adding similar disputes with HTC Corp and ViewSonic still stood.


“This agreement demonstrates Nokia’s industry leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market,” said Paul Melin, Nokia’s chief intellectual property officer.


Nokia has earned around 500 million euros a year from patent royalties in key areas of mobile telephony.


Some analysts have said it could earn hundreds of millions more if it can negotiate with more companies successfully.


Analysts estimated its June 2011 settlement with Apple was worth hundreds of millions of euros.


($ 1 = 0.7555 euros)


(Reporting by Ritsuko Ando; Editing by Hans-Juergen Peters and Mark Potter)


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Thousands mourn U.S.-Mexican singer Jenni Rivera






LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Thousands of mourners on Wednesday packed a Los Angeles theater to pay their final respects to Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera more than a week after her death in a plane crash.


Rivera, 43, best known for her work in the Mexican folk Nortena and Banda genres, died after the small jet she was traveling in crashed in northern Mexico on December 9.






Rivera’s family, dressed in white, led the memorial service eulogizing the singer. A bank of white roses was displayed in front of Rivera’s bright red coffin and a brass band performed musical interludes.


More than 6,000 people crowded into the theater about 30 miles north of her childhood home in Long Beach, California. Tickets for the service at the Gibson Amphitheatre sold out within minutes, organizers said.


The daughter of Mexican immigrants, Rivera was called the “Diva de la Banda.” She sold about 15 million albums and earned a slew of Latin Grammy nominations during her 17-year career.


“Jenni made it OK for women to be who they are,” her manager Pete Salgado said at the service. “Jenni also made it OK to be from nothing, with the hopes of being something.”


Rivera had five children, the first at age 15, and was married three times. Her third husband was baseball pitcher Esteban Loaiza. Rivera’s private life influenced her songs, which often referenced living through hardship.


“She’s a fighter and she knows it’s in all of us,” Rivera’s son Michael said between video tributes.


In recent years, Rivera branched out into television, appearing on a reality television show and serving as a judge on the Mexican version of the singing competition “The Voice.” Television broadcaster ABC was reported to be developing a comedy pilot for the singer.


Rivera’s plane crashed in mountains south of Monterrey killing all seven on board.


The singer was to perform in the city of Toluca, 40 miles southwest of Mexico City, in central Mexico after a concert in Monterrey. It is not clear what caused the crash.


(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Stacey Joyce)


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Texas governor asks cancer agency to halt grants






AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A $ 3 billion cancer-fighting effort that’s already under criminal investigation received yet more humiliation Wednesday when Texas Gov. Rick Perry called for a moratorium on new grants until confidence is restored in a once-celebrated agency that has plunged into turmoil in just three years.


Leaders of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas quickly embraced the request from Perry, who unveiled the unprecedented state-run cancer fight in 2009 with promises of medical breakthroughs. But the effort has unraveled into one of Texas‘ biggest tempests involving a state agency in Perry’s 12 years as governor.






A key Republican lawmaker who filed the original bill creating CPRIT piled on Wednesday by introducing new legislation, this time calling for new polices to bolster agency oversight and accountability. The agency also faces another round of scrutiny Thursday in front of a key state budget-writing committee.


“The mission of defeating cancer is too important to be derailed by inadequate processes and a lack of oversight,” Perry said in a letter to CPRIT’s oversight committee. That panel includes members appointed by Perry and some of his top political donors.


The governor added, “It is important that we restore the confidence of the Texas taxpayers who approved this important initiative before new funds are dispersed.”


The letter was co-signed by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and state House Speaker Joe Straus, who also appoints members of the agency’s governing board.


CPRIT controls the nation’s second-largest pot of cancer research dollars, behind the National Institutes of Health. That federal department’s cancer-research arm, the National Cancer Institute, also has said it is reviewing the troubles surrounding the Texas agency.


NCI confers on CPRIT prestigious status as an approved funding entity and losing that designation would be another blow for the beleaguered agency. It’s already under a criminal investigation, is the target of widespread rebuke from scientists and has seen its leadership purged by resignations, including its executive director last week.


In a statement, oversight committee Chairman Jimmy Mansour and Vice Chairman Joseph Bailes said they agreed with Perry’s call to cooperate with current reviews, implement recommended changes, enact reforms and fill key positions.


“These issues need to be resolved to restore public confidence in CPRIT,” they said in a joint statement.


The reviews began after CPRIT disclosed that an $ 11 million grant to a private company had bypassed review.


The award to Dallas-based Peloton Therapeutics, a biomedical startup, marked the second time this year that a lucrative taxpayer-funded grant authorized by CPRIT instigated backlash and raised questions about oversight.


The first involved a $ 20 million grant to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston that CPRIT’s former chief science officer, Nobel laureate Dr. Alfred Gilman, described as a thin proposal that should have first been scrutinized by an outside panel of scientific peer-reviewers, even though none was required under the agency’s rules.


Dozens of the nation’s top scientists agreed. They resigned en masse from the agency’s peer-review panels along with Gilman. Some accused the agency of “hucksterism” and charting a politically-driven path that was putting commercial product-development above science.


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Wall Street ticks lower on “fiscal cliff” stalemate






NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks edged slightly lower on Thursday as investors fretted that a deal on the U.S. budget wouldn’t come as soon as they had hoped after President Barack Obama threatened to veto a controversial Republican plan.


The market barely reacted to a round of strong data, including on gross domestic product growth and housing, suggesting talks to avert the “fiscal cliff,” steep tax hikes and spending cuts due to take effect in 2013, remain the primary focus for markets.






Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner said Wednesday his chamber would pass a proposal that spares many wealthy Americans from tax hikes needed to balance the budget. Obama has threatened to veto the plan if it passes, while some Republicans oppose any deal featuring tax increases.


“The closer we get to the end of the year without a deal, the more optimism is going to evaporate,” said Todd Schoenberger, managing partner at LandColt Capital in New York. “Volatility is going to be extreme until there’s a deal, and the probability of being caught on the downside is much greater than being on the upside.”


While investors have hoped for an agreement soon between policy makers over the fiscal cliff, this seems unlikely as wrangling continues over the details.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 18.74 points, or 0.14 percent, at 13,233.23. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index <.spx> was down 0.84 points, or 0.06 percent, at 1,434.97. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 4.18 points, or 0.14 percent, at 3,040.18.</.ixic></.spx></.dji>


NYSE Euronext was the S&P 500′s top percentage gainer, surging 35 percent to $ 32.56 after IntercontinentalExchange Inc said it would buy the operator of the New York Stock Exchange for $ 8.2 billion. ICE shares rose 1.3 percent to $ 130.06.


Stocks rallied earlier in the week on signs of progress in the negotiations, led by banking and energy shares, which tend to outperform in times of economic expansion. On signs of complications, however, many have turned to hedging their bets through options and exchange-traded funds.


The U.S. economy grew 3.1 percent in the third quarter, faster than previously estimated, while the number of Americans filing new claims for jobless benefits rose more than expected in the latest week.


“It is great to see this kind of growth, but investors know it could all disappear if there’s no deal on the cliff,” Schoenberger said. “Macro data may be on the back burner for a while.”


Existing home sales jumped 5.9 percent in November, more than expected, and by the fastest monthly place in three years. And the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s December index of business conditions in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region rose to 8.1 from -10.7 in November. Analysts were looking for a read of -3.


Google Inc agreed to sell set-top TV box maker Motorola Home to Arris Group Inc for $ 2.35 billion in cash and stock. Arris rose 6.6 percent to $ 15.51 while Google was little changed.


(Editing by Bernadette Baum)


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State Department security chief leaves post over Benghazi






WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday its security chief had resigned from his post and three other officials had been relieved of their duties following a scathing official inquiry into the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.


Eric Boswell has resigned effective immediately as assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a terse statement. A second official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Boswell had not left the department entirely and remained a career official.






Nuland said that Boswell, and the three other officials, had all been put on administrative leave “pending further action.”


An official panel that investigated the incident concluded that the Benghazi mission was completely unprepared to deal with the attack, which killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.


The unclassified version of the report, which was released on Tuesday, cited “leadership and management” deficiencies, poor coordination among officials and “real confusion” in Washington and in the field over who had the authority to make decisions on policy and security concerns.


“The ARB identified the performance of four officials, three in the Bureau of the Diplomatic Security and one in the Bureau of (Near Eastern) Affairs,” Nuland said in her statement, referring to the panel known as an Accountability Review Board.


Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted Boswell’s decision to resign effective immediately, the spokeswoman said.


Earlier, a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Boswell, one of his deputies, Charlene Lamb, and a third unnamed official has been asked to resign. The Associated Press first reported that three officials had resigned.


PANEL STOPS SHORT OF BLAMING CLINTON


The Benghazi incident appeared likely to tarnish Clinton’s four-year tenure as secretary of state but the report did not fault her specifically and the officials who led the review stopped short of blaming her.


“We did conclude that certain State Department bureau-level senior officials in critical positions of authority and responsibility in Washington demonstrated a lack of leadership and management ability appropriate for senior ranks,” retired Admiral Michael Mullen, one of the leaders of the inquiry, told reporters on Wednesday.


The panel’s chair, retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering, said it had determined that responsibility for security shortcomings in Benghazi belonged at levels lower than Clinton’s office.


“We fixed (responsibility) at the assistant secretary level, which is, in our view, the appropriate place to look for where the decision-making in fact takes place, where – if you like – the rubber hits the road,” Pickering said after closed-door meetings with congressional committees.


The panel’s report and the comments by its two lead authors suggested that Clinton, who accepted responsibility for the incident in a television interview about a month after the Benghazi attack, would not be held personally culpable.


Pickering and Mullen spoke to the media after briefing members of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee behind closed doors on classified elements of their report.


Clinton had been expected to appear at an open hearing on Benghazi on Thursday, but is recuperating after suffering a concussion, dehydration and a stomach bug last week. She will instead be represented by her two top deputies.


Clinton, who intends to step down in January, said in a letter accompanying the review that she would adopt all of its recommendations, which include stepping up security staffing and requesting more money to fortify U.S. facilities.


The National Defense Authorization Act for 2013, which is expected to go to Congress for final approval this week, includes a measure directing the Pentagon to increase the Marine Corps presence at diplomatic facilities by up to 1,000 Marines.


Some Capitol Hill Republicans who had criticized the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi attacks said they were impressed by the report.


“It was very thorough,” said Senator Johnny Isakson. Senator John Barrasso said: “It was very, very critical of major failures at the State Department at very high levels.” Both spoke after the closed-door briefing.


Others, however, took a harsher line and called for Clinton to testify as soon as she is able.


“The report makes clear the massive failure of the State Department at all levels, including senior leadership, to take action to protect our government employees abroad,” Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.


Senator Bob Corker, who will be the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when the new Congress is seated early next year, said Clinton should testify about Benghazi before her replacement is confirmed by the Senate.


Republicans have focused much of their firepower on U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who appeared on TV talk shows after the attack and suggested it was the result of a spontaneous protest rather than a premeditated attack.


The report concluded that there was no such protest.


Rice, widely seen as President Barack Obama’s top pick to succeed Clinton, withdrew her name from consideration last week.


(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Christopher Wilson)


World News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Best Practice Institute Introduces New Social Network that Promises ‘Future of 360′






A new social network, skillrater.com launched today, makes it easy for members to request work performance ratings from overseers, co-workers and direct reports across a domestic and global workforce.


West Palm Beach, Fla. (PRWEB) December 20, 2012






Skillrater.com, an online social network that launched today, makes it easy for members to request work performance ratings from overseers, co-workers and direct reports across a domestic and global workforce.


“This is the future of 360-degree assessment and social learning,” said the network’s creator, Louis Carter, CEO of Best Practice Institute.


“Get rated. Get better. Get noticed,” says Skillrater.com’s website, which describes the new social network as “the world’s first rating, networking and feedback tool on a social platform.”


Executives, employees and entrepreneurs who have already been friended, linked and tweeted can now get feedback and rating on their skill sets and work at Skillrater.com. Individuals may join the Skillrater social network at no cost; corporations may purchase a premium or enterprise membership to use Skillrater as an in-house platform for feedback, talent management and social networking.


The Next Thing in 360 Assessment and Corporate Social Networking


“I want to bring a revolution to 360 so that organizations become more open and transparent, and driven by the desire for employees to request feedback on their competencies/skills and activities they execute on a daily basis” said Carter, BPI’s founder and a social-organizational psychologist.


The world of work is becoming more open and transparent. “A new IBM study of 1709 Chief Executive Officers from 64 countries and 18 industries worldwide reveals that CEOs are changing the nature of work by adding a powerful dose of openness, transparency and employee empowerment to the command-and-control ethos that has characterized the modern corporation for more than a century.”


Employees using skillrater engage in conversations and threaded discussions around improving their activities at work. Instead of hiding feedback from employees, employees may receive immediate correction of negatively reinforcing workplace habits directly from their bosses, peers, and customers. Employees may continue the feedback process in a threaded discussion to receive deeper advice and help from executive coaches or other members of the team. Repeating this process will show measurable changes in behavior and actions over time for your organization, as well as show patterns for the changes that need to me made on an individual, team, and organization level. The employee requests feedback of others directly, so that a culture of accountability and feedback is encouraged. Instead of “big brother/sister” HR forcing feedback of competencies and workplace performance, employees take ownership for creating their own culture of transparency so they may show their progress toward growth.


One study found that as many as 90 percent of all Fortune 500 companies use 360-degree feedback with their employees. In a 360 assessment, feedback is sought from all directions of an employee’s circle: overseers, peers, direct reports, and sometimes even external sources, such as customers and suppliers.


Skillrater brings several innovations to the 360-degree process to make the technique easier to use and to increase the tool’s beneficial results. Features include:


“Skillrater is a great tool. Leaders and managers are going to fall in love with it,” said the world’s leading executive coach and bestselling author Marshall Goldsmith. “There is no better way for organizational leaders to track talent data. Skillrater gives you a simple way to request receive feedback on what you are doing, while building an in-house social network to discuss the feedback. The ability to customize Skillrater around the desired competencies of your organization is brilliant.”"


Focus on Leadership Development in Globally Dispersed Workforces


Most importantly, Carter said, Skillrater provides a social network through which members can springboard from quantitative ratings to qualitative discussions that make the feedback truly transformative. This is especially beneficial for dispersed workforces where consistent face-to-face communication is costly to accomplish.”


“Our goal is to create a social network within an organization that is focused on helping employees improve their skills and improve performance,” Carter said. “Skillrater is not primarily about promotion and pay decisions, it’s about leadership development and positive behavioral change throughout a national or global workforce.”


Studies have shown 360-degree feedback is an effective way to help workers identify their strengths and weaknesses, including blind spots in which they need further development. Skillrater’s convenient online platform, along with the addition of a social networking dimension, makes Skillrater a powerful leadership development for dispersed or collective learning environments.


After corporate clients learn their way around all the bells and whistles of Skillrater’s multi-rater feedback tool, Carter said, they will move on to appreciate the richness of the in-house social network, creating a dispersed learning environment in which ongoing leadership development and action learning is cultivated within domestic or global workforces.


Skillrater Benefits for Individual Users


Individuals may join Skillrater.com for free and choose up to five skills upon which to be rated. Top executives, mid-level rising stars and lower-level workers with an eye on advancement may all use Skillrater to request feedback and map their own course of development. Requesting a Skillrater rating is an excellent way for an individual to confirm satisfaction with a completed project or identify additional steps needed to achieve satisfaction. Using Skillrater, a worker can demonstrate to higher-ups one’s desire to perform well and also document tangible improvement.


An individual who has acquired several ratings on one’s Skillrater profile and has made those ratings public may catch the attention of employers on the search for talent. Skillrater will become a go-to destination for talent recruitment. Other social networks provide an individual’s name, personal background and employment history, but Skillrater provides rubber-meets-the-road details of how an individual has been evaluated by co-workers, clients and customers on actual projects.


Skillrater Benefits for Corporate Users


Companies may purchase an enterprise membership, giving executives an unparalleled tool for talent management and leadership development. Enterprise membership enables companies to enroll 1,000 users and place them in 20 groups or divisions.


For senior talent management executives, Skillrater provides a remarkable way to track the job performance, skill sets and leadership development of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of employees spread out across a national or global workforce. For years, connecting the right employees with the right tasks has been the elusive aim of talent management. With Skillrater, when a particular skill set is needed for a particular task, a manager can search on those specific skills, and then read fresh feedback on recent projects, including not only numerical ratings but subsequent comments and discussion. That is rich, valuable talent data, which Skillrater puts at executives’ fingertips.


Managers from different divisions may customize their own groups to have specific skills or competencies that are important for success on-the-job. Users can select these group skills when requesting ratings to get targeted feedback that meets the need of the department head or head of leadership development. The ability to customize skills is critical to an organization’s success, making this a key feature of Skillrater’s enterprise membership level.


VPs of leadership development have the ability to set up action learning groups with specific action items. Group members work together online to achieve goals and get ratings on the skills that will make them most successful on the action learning project. Changes in behavior and actual project results may be tracked over time, proving the ROI of the leadership development program.


How Does Skillrater Work?


Joining Skillrater is easy and painless. An individual can create a Skillrater profile in a few moments or import one’s profile and skill set from LinkedIn.


A Skillrater member may request a rating from anybody on anything. It really is that simple. The user simply clicks the “Request Rating” button, specifies the task or activity for which one seeks a rating and the specific skills on which feedback is desired.


Then the member sends off the rating requests. If the desired rater is already a Skillrater.com member, requesting a rating is just one additional click. If not, the user enters the desired rater’s email address, and a message is sent requesting the rating and providing the necessary link.


After feedback has been received, Skillrater notifies the user. Results include a spider chart, an easy-to-understand graphical interpretation of how the feedback lines up with one’s self-assessment. Users continue to share advice and further clarification via a discussion thread to continue the social learning and coaching experience online.


ABOUT BEST PRACTICE INSTITUTE


Best Practice Institute is an award-winning leadership development center, think tank, peer network, research institute and online learning portal with more than 10,000 corporate and individual members around the world. Corporate members include Walmart, Bank of America, Pfizer, Hilton Hotels Worldwide, Scripps and many more of the world’s top corporations. BPI is based in West Palm Beach, FL, and is on the web at http://www.bestpracticeinstitute.org. BPI is ranked as one of the top ten “Best in Leadership Development” by Leadership Excellence Magazine.


Louis Carter is the founder and CEO of Best Practice Institute. Carter is a social-organizational psychologist, concept innovator, entrepreneur and a highly regarded authority on learning, talent, leadership development and change. He is the author or co-author of 11 books and a regular contributor to Fast Company, Chief Learning Officer, Talent Management, and Training Magazine.


For More Information or to schedule an interview, please contact Louis Carter: 800-718-4274; lou(at)bestpracticeinstitute.org


Louis Carter
Best Practice Institute
800-718-4274
Email Information


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“Best Funeral Ever” premiere delayed after Newtown school shootings






LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Fans of death-centric reality TV will have to wait a little longer to dig into TLC‘s “Best Funeral Ever.”


TLC has pushed back the premiere of the special to January 6 at 10/9c in light of the school shootings in Newtown, Conn. last week.






“Best Funeral Ever” was initially scheduled to premiere on December 26 at 8/7c.


“Best Funeral Ever” centers around the Golden Gate Funeral Home in Dallas, which specializes in elaborate specialty funerals catering to the deceased’s interest. In the special, a doo-wop singer famous for his rib-sauce jingle receives a barbecue-themed sendoff, while a disabled man who was unable to ride roller coasters in mortal life receives a State Fair-themed funeral.


Since last Friday’s horrific shootings, a number of programs and other entertainment-related events have been moved out of sensitivity. Syfy, for one, decided not to air its scheduled episode of “Haven” on Friday night, because it contained elements of fictionalized school violence.


TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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