Store that sold gun to Nancy Lanza loses license

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) ? A shop that sold a gun to the Newtown school shooter's mother has lost its federal firearms license.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives revoked the license of Riverview Gun Sales in East Windsor in December. The agency, which confirmed the revocation to reporters Thursday, didn't say why.

Authorities raided the store for undisclosed reasons shortly after the December school shootings in which Adam Lanza killed 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. He also shot to death his mother, Nancy, at their home. Authorities say he fired 154 shots with a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle inside the school, then killed himself with a Glock handgun.

Nancy Lanza purchased a Bushmaster from Riverview, according to a person close to the investigation into the school shooting who spoke on condition of anonymity because the probe is continuing. It could not be confirmed whether the Bushmaster was the one used in the shooting.

Shop owner David LaGuercia said in December that Nancy Lanza bought a gun from him years ago, but he couldn't remember what kind. LaGuercia said at the time he was cooperating with law enforcement.

"There is nothing more devastating than the loss of a child," LaGuercia said in a statement in December. "We are absolutely appalled that the product that we sold several years ago would be used in this type of horrendous crime. Our hearts go out to the victims and the families."

His wife, Shelley Clemens, said Friday that she and her husband still don't know why the ATF revoked his firearms license. She said the store remains open selling ammunition and other items that aren't firearms while LaGuercia appeals the revocation.

"They just came in the store after Sandy Hook, raided the store and took away the license," she said, referring further questions to her husband. LaGuercia, of Agawam, Mass., didn't return phone messages Friday.

Clemens said in December that store records show one gun was sold to Lanza.

The weapons used in the shooting had all apparently been purchased by Nancy Lanza, prosecutor Stephen J. Sedensky III said last week when search warrants were unsealed showing the Lanzas' home was packed with weapons and ammunition.

Riverview Gun Sales is about 15 miles north of Hartford and about 65 miles northeast of Newtown. In December, its website described it as a place that sold a variety of rifles and pistols, including Bushmaster and Glock, but on Friday, the website's links to specific guns indicated they were not available.

The shop also sold high-capacity ammunition magazines like the ones authorities say were used by Adam Lanza. In a law passed this week, Connecticut banned the sale or purchase of magazines holding more than 10 rounds.

___

Associated Press writer Dave Collins in Hartford contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/shop-sold-gun-newtown-mom-loses-license-124638882.html

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Fukushima nuclear plant leaking contaminated water

TOKYO (Reuters) - As much as 120 tons of radioactive water may have leaked from a storage tank at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, contaminating the surrounding ground, Tokyo Electric Power Co said on Saturday.

The power company has yet to discover the cause of the leak, detected on one of seven tanks that store water used to cool the plants reactors, a spokesman for the company, Masayuki Ono, said at a press briefing.

The company plans to pump 13,000 cubic meters of water remaining in the tank to other vessels over the next two weeks.

Water from the leaking tank, which located 800 meters from the coast, is not expected to reach the sea, Kyodo news wire reported, earlier, citing unidentified officials from the utility.

The company did not say how long the tank had been leaking.

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant has faced a range of problems with controlling ground water and maintaining the massive cooling system built to keep the reactors stable.

The power company said on Friday said it lost the ability to cool radioactive fuel rods in one of the plant's reactors for about three hours. It was the second failure of the system to circulate seawater to cool spent fuel rods at the plant in the past three weeks.

The facility was the site of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in March 2011 when a magnitude 9.0 earthquake triggered a tsunami that destroyed back-up generators and disabled its cooling system. Three of the reactors melted down.

The storage tanks, pits excavated at the site in the wake of the disaster, are lined with water proof sheets meant to keep the contaminated water from leaking into the soil

Work to decommission the plant is projected to take decades to complete.

(Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Michael Perry)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/japans-fukushima-nuclear-plant-leaking-contaminated-water-024822283--finance.html

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Reuters: Media exec Peter Chernin bid $500 million for Hulu

Since the sun came up today it must mean that Hulu is up for sale, again. The latest extension to the sale rumors for the video streaming site is one from Reuters citing anonymous sources that indicates Peter Chernin, a former News Corp exec and Hulu board member has submitted a $500 million bid. There's no word on how big a stake he'd be interested in taking, but that's significantly lower than the reported $1.9 - $4 billion bids received from Dish and Google when the site was up for sale back in 2011. Of cours,e any sale price may vary on whether or not the acquisition come content included, but either way, we'd expect a few more possibilites to pop up before something (or nothing, like last time) happens. Of course, Peter Chernin was one of the folks pushing for a shorter theater to home release window and more TV on the Xbox, both of which have come to fruition in one form or another -- maybe he can make a deal happen.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD

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Source: Reuters

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/YYJVmWZarp4/

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Why there will never be another 'Siskel & Ebert'

By Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, TODAY

Opinion: In 2009, Roger Ebert wrote of his late partner in criticism, "Gene died 10 years ago on Feb. 20, 1999. He is in my mind almost every day."

AP file

Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert in an undated photo.

Siskel and Ebert -- the use of their last names a badge of honor and mark of fondness rather than a formality -- became the best-known movie critics in the nation, maybe on the planet, when their Chicago TV show "Sneak Previews" moved to PBS in 1978. The show would go through many titles, but its thumbs-up, thumbs-down format remained as simple and addictive as Raisinets during a matinee.

There will never be another pair like them. Part of that is because the world has moved on, for good or for ill. In 1978, most of us still had five or so television channels, and even if we didn't watch regularly, we all knew Siskel and Ebert, the chubby guy and the skinny guy, the guy with glasses and the bald guy. Now there are hundreds of ways to get movie reviews -- blogs, Twitter, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb.com, online forums, alt-weeklies. A horror-movie buff can get his or her reviews from fellow gore freaks, a romantic can gravitate to sites that dissect rom-coms kiss by kiss.

When "Sneak Previews" began, the idea of two guys sitting in a fake theater arguing with each other was not just a novel setup, it was a real way to get a peek at the latest films and help decide what we wanted to see. We needed Siskel and Ebert. We still do, but we don't know it.

Any new Siskel and Ebert wouldn't make it past the casting directors anyway. In a 2009 blog post about his fellow critic, Ebert mentioned that Siskel was hired for his first TV job under the theory, "Don't hire someone because they look good on TV; hire them because they cover a beat and are the masters of it."

Can you even imagine that happening today? Look at your average sideline reporter on a football game or your local anchor. Do any of them look like people you know? Siskel and Ebert did. It helped make them credible, and it made us want to spend time with them. They were Chicagoans, not New Yorkers or Los Angelenos, and that helped too. They didn't look or sound like people who attended big social events or hung out on red carpets. They looked and sounded like your brothers-in-law, or maybe your neighbors, more comfortable at a Bulls game or a college film festival than at the Oscars.

Much has been made of Siskel and Ebert's sometimes snappy relationship. After Ebert died on Thursday, a YouTube video (Ebert-approved!) began to circulate. It showed the two fighting with each other as they struggled to record promos for their show.?

"You know that for Gene, speech is a second language?" cracks Ebert when Siskel trips up.

"Roger's second language is, 'Yes, I'll have apple pie with my order,' " retorted Siskel.

"This is going on in heaven right now," wrote a YouTube commenter.

(Warning: Good-natured swearing in the video below.)

But Siskel and Ebert never let their disagreements get in the way of their work or their friendship. "If we were fighting -- get out of the room," Ebert wrote in the 2009 blog post. "But if we were teamed up against a common target, we were fatal."

The animated show "The Critic" once ran a skit in which Siskel and Ebert break up. Ebert is seen sitting alone on a teeter-totter, and Siskel looks sadly at a photo of another famed duo, Bert and Ernie. Of course they get back together in the end. What was Bert without Ernie? A teeter without its totter? It wasn't as much fun to just hear one critic pontificate from on high. It was way more entertaining to hear him forced to defend his views against someone who had a much different opinion.

Remembering Siskel just after he died in 1999, Ebert noted that his favorite sparring partner would always end his own interviews of movie stars or other celebrities by asking, "What do you know for sure?" Ebert went on to say that what he knew of Siskel was that he was "one of the smartest, funniest, quickest men I've ever known, and one of the best reporters. It was almost impossible to tell you anything that you didn't already know."

What do we know for sure about Siskel and Ebert, then? That their fantastic, easy chemistry came from a place that was real, not anything ordered up in a studio laboratory. That we might not have agreed with either one of them all the time, but we'd welcome the chance to pull up a stool at Chicago's Billy Goat Tavern and have a beer with them.

And now with Ebert gone, the balcony is closed forever.

Related content:

Source: http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2013/04/04/17604675-why-there-will-never-be-another-siskel-ebert?lite

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Study: Mexican wages fall below Chinese levels

Associated Press

Friday, April 5, 2013 | 5:15 p.m.

MEXICO CITY ? Mexico is looking to penetrate the Chinese market after a new report suggested that Mexican labor costs have fallen below those of China.

President Enrique Pena Nieto visited Hong Kong on Friday, and said "I am convinced that Mexican products should take advantage of the dynamism of China's markets."

Just a decade ago, Mexico's prospect of exporting much to China seemed distant. Mexican average labor costs were then almost double China's.

But a report by a chief economist for Bank of America Merrill Lynch this week estimated that Mexico's labor costs are now 19.6 percent lower than China's.

The study by chief economist Carlos Capistran cites the bank's own estimates and official data indicating that a big increase in China's costs have turned the balance.

Source: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/apr/05/study-mexican-wages-fall-below-chinese-levels/

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Arkansas Oil Spill Sheds Light On Aging Pipeline System

A worker cleans up oil in Mayflower, Ark., on Monday, days after a pipeline ruptured and spewed oil over lawns and roadways.

Jeannie Nuss/AP

A worker cleans up oil in Mayflower, Ark., on Monday, days after a pipeline ruptured and spewed oil over lawns and roadways.

Jeannie Nuss/AP

Amber Bartlett was waiting last Friday for her kids to come home from school. One of them called from the entrance to the upscale subdivision near Little Rock, Ark., to tell her the community was being evacuated because of an oil spill. Bartlett was amazed by what she saw out her front door.

"I mean just rolling oil. I mean it was like a river," she says. "It had little waves in it."

ExxonMobil, the company that runs the pipeline, says it has collected hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil and water from Bartlett's neighborhood.

Bartlett says things could have been much worse. Her children's baby sitter lives in the house closest to where the pipeline burst.

"They play right there every day where it busted," she says. "We are fortunate our babies were not out there during that time."

Bartlett says ExxonMobil has paid hotel bills, fed families and even given children Easter baskets.

"I'm upset," she says. "But accidents happen."

'It Is Catastrophic'

It's not yet clear what caused the accident. Exxon's Pegasus pipeline is 65 years old. It runs 858 miles from Illinois to Texas. It was adapted a few years ago to increase its capacity by 50 percent.

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, who is investigating the spill, visited the subdivision Wednesday.

"I have been reminded by Exxon's representatives that this is a relatively small spill and cleanup is going just great," he said. "I hope that they realize that to the homeowners in this area it is not small. It is catastrophic."

McDaniel said he knows underground pipelines are essential to keeping the country's economy going. They carry fuel for cars, airplanes and home furnaces.

"We got to have that, but it has to be maintained," he said. "It has to be inspected."

McDaniel said Exxon has repeatedly told him that inspections were up to date and showed no cause for concern. He said the accident raises questions about whether the inspection process for aging pipelines is adequate.

In fact, more than half of the nation's pipelines were built before 1970. More than 2.5 million miles of pipelines run underground throughout the country. According to federal statistics, they have on average 280 significant spills a year. Most of these accidents aren't big enough to make headlines.

Accidents Preventable?

The National Transportation Safety Board has investigated 20 pipeline accidents since 2000. Debbie Hersman, who heads the agency, says by and large the system is safe.

"But that still doesn't mean that we should accept these accidents when they occur," she says. "Particularly if you can demonstrate that they are preventable. And I will tell you 100 percent of the accidents that we've investigated were completely preventable."

Hersman says her investigators repeatedly find the same problems. For example, cracks and corrosion that were discovered by inspections but never fixed.

"If companies invest in safety, we can get to zero accidents in the pipeline industry," she says.

John Stoody, director for government and public relations at the Association of Oil Pipe Lines, stresses that pipelines' safety record is getting better.

"We spend over a billion dollars every year inspecting the pipelines, checking them for any issues, performing maintenance on them as they're needed," he says. "And it's something we care a lot about. We certainly want to have as few incidents as possible."

Stoody says pipelines are the safest way to transport the fuel we need for our daily lives. He notes than 99.995 percent of petroleum barrels reach their destination safely.

But Anthony Swift, an attorney for the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Counsel, says that's "not a particularly comforting statistic if you look at the sheer amount of crude oil spilled."

Federal data show that on average over the past decade, nearly 3.5 million gallons of oil spilled from pipelines each year.

Swift says the spill in Arkansas sends a wakeup call: It's a reminder of the real risks of an aging pipeline system.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/04/04/176189205/arkansas-oil-spill-sheds-light-on-aging-pipeline-system?ft=1&f=1007

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Rich investors betting on emerging equities | Global Investing

By Philip Baillie

Emerging equities may have significantly underperformed their richer peers so far this year (they are about 4 percent in the red compared with gains of more than 6 percent for their MSCI?s index of developed stocks) , but almost a third of high net-worth individuals are betting on a rebound in coming months.

A survey of more than 1,000 high net-worth investors by J.P. Morgan Private Bank reveals that 28 percent of respondents expect emerging market equities to perform best in the next 12 months, outstripping the 24 per cent that bet their money on U.S. stocks.

That gels with the findings of recent Reuters polls where a majority of the 450 analysts surveyed said they expect emerging equities to end 2013 with double-digit returns.

(Note a caveat on the survey ? the responses were collated before recent unsettling events in Cyprus ? which could have some knock-on effects on emerging markets, especially given the banking exposure to countries such as Slovenia, Luxembourg, Malta and Russia).

However, regardless of the growing list of risks, 60 percent of the investors pick equities as their top performing asset class for the next 12 months ?? more evidence that the so-called Great Rotation ? the offloading of bond holdings in favour of equities ? remains a theme despite some growth and political risks.

This from Cesar Perez, Chief Investment Strategist for J.P. Morgan Private Bank in EMEA:

For the first time in four years we are not underweight in our global equities allocation?..Similar to respondents, we believe there is considerable value in global equity markets. In the current environment, we have tilted our equity allocations towards the U.S. and emerging markets, increasing exposure to Asian equities in early 2013.

Despite the tilt towards equities, almost half the? respondents cited global growth as their biggest investment concern. Politics (23 percent) geopolitical unrest (15 percent) and monetary policy mistakes (11 percent) also emerged as acute risk themes. A mere 4 percent worried about inflation.

Nevertheless,? 14 per cent of those surveyed believe the supposedly riskier European periphery will perform better than the European core which garnered the votes of just 10 percent.? Interestingly, Japan, the best performing equity market so far in 2013 with gains of almost 20 percent, was least favoured at? just 6 per cent.

The J.P. Morgan Private Bank (assets of $878 billion) survey was conducted throughout January and February. See below for a graphic detailing the survey?s findings.

Source: http://blogs.reuters.com/globalinvesting/2013/04/04/rich-investors-betting-on-emerging-equities/

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